by Poe, S. B.
“How did she know?”
“It’s Tilly. She knows everything that goes on inside these fences. Everything. It’s spooky. Comforting. But spooky.” Bridger said. He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her again.
“I guess I need to get ready.” He said.
“I know.”
“This was good.” He said awkwardly.
“I’ll see you at the gate.” She said. She finished putting her boots on and opened the door. “And yes. It was good.” She walked into the darkness of the early morning.
Bridger sat in the front seat of the SUV. Jahda was driving with Devin and Ed in the back seat. Josh and Lori were in the mascot truck behind them. Bridger looked at the side mirror and waved at the reflection of Martin. He was putting the pin back in the gate. They had said their goodbyes and loaded up just as the sun started to turn the inky blackness to a muddy gray. The headlights cut through the fading darkness. They crossed over the small rise and for the first time in months they went beyond what they could see from the fence. The trail was still there but only the slow growth of winter had prevented it from being covered over with clover and blackberries. The muddy spots were still muddy but not as bad. They moved through the woods swiftly and finally came to where the trees meet the asphalt. They were back at the road. Bridger looked right and then left. He looked at Jahda.
“Well, here we go.” Bridger said. He thumbed the walkie. “Josh?”
“Yep.” The walkie crackled.
“Stay close.” Bridger said.
“Will do.”
He turned to Ed and Devin.
“Ready guys?” He asked. Devin gave him thumbs up. Ed was asleep.
He turned back and looked at Jahda. The glow of the instruments showed her face. She had a little smile.
“Ok Jahda. Show us the way.” He smiled and turned back to face forward. She put the SUV back in gear and touched the gas. They rolled out of the mud and onto the road. The sound of mud slapping against the wheel-wells died out in a few minutes replaced by the hum of the tires on the asphalt. The radio was silent.
“So how far?” Jahda looked in the mirror at Ed. Devin reached over and woke him up.
“Huh? What?” Ed said as he woke.
“How far?” Jahda said.
“About an hour. Just keep going down this road. Just look for a big crossroad with a sign that says Rhone’s Crossing. Take a left and in another few miles you’re there.”
“An hour?” Bridger said.
“If you go the speed limit.” Ed said. “We could go faster. No cops.”
“Let’s see. No cops. Lots of deaduns. Maybe not.” Jahda said.
“Yeah, I agree. Let’s just take our time and see what we see.” Bridger said.
“If it’s this close, why did you say it would take a couple of days? We can be there and back in a few hours.” Devin asked.
“If we can get there and find what we need and get back in a few hours, great. I hope that is the way it goes. But it keeps them from trying to do some half-assed search if it takes a bit longer.” Bridger said. “It allows us to take our time and be careful.”
“Good. I can go back to sleep.” Ed said.
Jahda kept her eyes focused on the road ahead. The land around became more visible as the sun rose in the sky. The fog hung close to the ground across the open fields. Bridger leaned his head against the cold window and watched the world go by. Well, a world. He wasn’t sure if it was the same one any more.
3
Collier Part 1
The End
Cotton Smalls had seen enough. The family was stuffed inside the van along with what looked like a household worth of crap.
“Turn em around.” Cotton yelled down to the Sheriff. “Turn em around and get em the hell out of here. Then get your ass out to Rhone Crossing and send anyone else coming this way back out to the interstate. Collier is officially closed.”
Dave Waters had been Sheriff for almost ten years and was re-elected just last fall. Cotton was neither elected nor appointed to anything but ever since the news reports echoed the outbreak of the Marionette virus there had been no doubt about who was in charge in Collier.
Cotton’s family had lived in Collier for seven generations. They could trace their land all the way back to a pension of six thousand acres given to Jedediah Smalls for service to the United States during the British invasion of 1812. It had been passed down and sold off in bits and pieces over the years. Cotton lived in the house his grandfather had built in Collier. He still owned one thousand three hundred and thirty seven acres and his son, Cody, lived in the house he built on the farm. Cotton raised beef cattle and spent most of his time tending hay and soybeans. He stood slightly less than six feet tall and although thin, no one doubted that Cotton could stand his ground and take some if he needed to. He was over sixty and his face was perpetually deep red from years spent outside. His eyes were now a paler blue than when he won the heart of his wife. She had been gone almost fifteen years now but not before giving him his son Cody and his daughter, Emma Grace.
The panic had ripped through Collier like everywhere else. Cotton had stood on his porch and watched families loading up and leaving. Most of them were new comers recently arrived from the city life. Now they were fleeing again. Looking for someone else to protect them.
“Good riddance.” Cotton had thought in those early days. Then the “refugees” started flowing in.
He watched as the van turned around. He could see the girl in the backseat looking at him through the window. She waved. He didn’t wave back.
“Not my problem.” He said to himself. Sheriff Dave stepped up on the first step.
“Look Cotton, I know why but how far do we go? What happens if someone tries to run the roadblock? What…” Dave started. Cotton raised his hand slightly. He turned and looked over his reading glasses at Sheriff Dave.
“Dave, were you out at the Derbing place when that thing wandered into Hank’s barn? Did you watch as Hank Derbing took a pitchfork and run it through three times and it still kept coming for him? Were you there when I pulled out my pistol and shot it four more times and it still kept coming?” As Cotton spoke Dave’s eyes fell lower and lower.
He had not been there. He had arrived a short while later. He came because Theresa Derbing called 911 to report a stranger had attacked her in her home. He arrived just in time to see Hank Derbing fall to his knees as his wife, or what had been his wife, stumble out of the house and across the yard. He watched as Cotton shot her between the eyes.
“Now get your ass out to the highway. Grab however many men you think you need and you make sure no one else comes down this fucking road. If you have to shoot them to stop them, then shoot them. Anything coming this way now is a threat to our town and your job is to keep that threat away.” Cotton said.
By the time Dave reached the front seat of his patrol car he knew things had changed. The roadblock had been the beginning. Within days Cotton had rallied the remaining townsfolk to use whatever they could to barricade the town. They closed Rhone’s Crossing with logs brought over from Clete Berry’s saw mill and by the time the temperatures really started dropping they had enclosed two square miles of the town proper in a mishmash of reclaimed fencing, logs and vehicles. Cotton had directed most of it from his front porch. His house now sat at the de facto center of town. They had encountered some of the dead. Each encounter with a goner spurred them to work faster. The goners had become fewer and fewer as winter arrived. Within weeks the barricades reached all the way to the bridge over the Oyohusa creek. The old ladder truck from the volunteer fire department sat blocking the crossing. The twenty-six people remaining inside the barricades were perfectly content letting Cotton direct their efforts.
A few days after they got the bridge barricaded Cody found himself listening to Cotton’s latest demand.
“So what? That bridge looks like a way in. It looks like the only way in since the barricade went up. Sends a message.�
� Cotton said as he smiled at his son standing at the foot of the porch.
“To who?” Cody asked.
“To whoever the hell tries to get across.” Cotton said.
“I don’t see how stringing up a couple of goners on the bridge is going to send any message other than we’re a bunch of crazy folks.” Cody said.
“As long as they go away I don’t care what damn message they get. They’ll get the message that if they screw with us we’ll hang them up there too.” Cotton continued. “I guarangotdamtee that.”
“Fine. Next time we take some down.” Cody started.
“No, no. You gotta catch a couple. String em up alive like. Let em dangle. Let em hang like scarecrows. That’s what they are. Scaring off the scavengers.” Cotton trailed off, he gazed through the barren limbs whipped by the cold wind. He came back and lowered his eyes to Cody. “Get it done.”
Cody broke free from his gaze and turned back down the walk. He climbed in his truck and looked back at the man sitting on the porch. Cotton had lifted his eyes again to darkening sky. Cody pulled away slowly.
The spring on the screen door squalled as it swung open.
“Was that Cody?” Emma Grace said as she walked halfway out the door.
“Yes. He’s off to work again.” Cotton said as he turned and smiled at his youngest.
“What’s he working on now?” She asked.
“Don’t you worry about it honey. He’s doing what needs doing.” Cotton said.
“Alright. Well come on daddy. Supper’s ready.” She turned walked back inside.
Cotton looked back out at the purple sky. The streets were empty. He stood and adjusted his waistband. He turned and grabbed his pipe from the table beside the rocking chair and absentmindedly brushed off the cushion. He put his glasses in his pocket, straightened his back and walked into the house. He sat down at the head of the large oblong table and pulled the napkin off his plate. He tucked it into his collar. Emma Grace spooned the vegetable soup into the bowl. She had canned lots of vegetables last summer, long before this happened. She did it every year. Her grandmother had taught her when she was younger. Her grandmother had moved in when her mother had gotten sick and had stayed after she died. Emma Grace was named for her and when she passed, she seemed to inherit her spirit too. She stepped in and became the surrogate mother in the motherless home. She was twelve when her grandmother died. That was six years ago.
If Cotton ever had anything about him that was soft, it was the spot in his heart for Emma Grace. Although Cotton was gruff and demanding he wasn’t without some introspection. When his wife had died Cody was nine and even though still a child he understood what death meant. He was upset but he accepted Momma was gone. Emma Grace had been three. She was at that age when the entire world is at the end of Momma’s skirt. She was devastated. She withdrew and grew quiet. She remained quiet to this day. Cotton comforted her in his own way but he knew he was incapable of giving her what only a mother could give. That tinge of guilt is the only solvent that ever penetrated. He ate his soup.
Emma Grace walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. He heard the door open and close. He had watched her hundreds of times. She often went outside to the small shed behind the house to look inside the trunk of her mother’s keepsakes. He had found her there over the years and had never said a word.
She walked into the shed and sat down on the chair opposite the trunk. She reached down and pulled the leg of her jeans up over her ankle and pushed her sock down. She stroked the mark on her leg. It was almost healed now. It barely looked like a bite any more. She opened the trunk and stared at the bloody pants she had hidden inside right after it had happened.
The thing had been caught in a tangle of roots that were exposed in an undercut in the creek bank. She liked to watch the water flow by after a heavy rain so she sat next to the old oak, dangling her feet over the edge. She muffled a scream when it happened because she wasn’t supposed to be down there. She knew he would yell at her, so she screamed into her hands. When she saw the blood she ran home. She locked herself in her room, awaiting the inevitable. She had watched the television broadcasts before they stopped. She knew what was going to happen to her. She waited all night, rocking back and forth on her floor. Nothing happened. Another day passed. She didn’t tell anyone.
A week later she was convinced that it had not been a goner that bit her and she got the courage to sneak back down to the creek. She climbed down the little bank and looked under the tree. She leaned close to peer into the dark void and a dead hand reached out and grabbed her. She jerked, breaking its grip, as the thing pressed its face against the tangle of roots. She watched as it brought its hand, the one that grabbed her, to its nose and inhaled deeply. It turned its face to her, nostrils flared. She stepped closer and brought her hand up. It wedged its face between the roots. A raspy sound came from the rotted throat and she flinched back when it pushed its nose against her skin. She tilted her head and returned her hand. It smelled it again but didn’t try to grab her. And didn’t try to bite her. After a while she turned and walked back towards the house. She rubbed the back of her hand the whole way there. There was a little smile on her face.
“That was interesting.” She thought to herself. When she visited a few days later, the thing was gone. Swept farther down the stream.
Sitting there in the darkness of the little shed, she stared out the small window looking at the ghost white moon. The pale light filled the room and she watched the dust dance in the glow. She rubbed the mark on her leg and smiled. She closed the trunk.
4
Collier Part 2
The End again
Cody stood next to the base of the ladder truck. He looked up at the steel cables strung from the boom to the rusting girders over the bridge. The nooses dangled in the breeze, empty. He lowered his gaze to the ground beneath and the piles of rotting flesh. The smell had driven him back the day before but Cotton’s stare had driven him to return. A winter had passed since the first time Cotton had told him to hang some goners up on the bridge. He thought it was crazy then and it’s still crazy now. He had to admit though that no one had breached the bridge. He wasn’t sure if anyone had tried but Cotton had been adamant that the ‘Pirates, ye be warned’ bullshit was the reason. After going through the winter inside the barricades, Cody wasn’t sure what they were still trying to protect. He covered his mouth and nose with the scarf and started forward, shovel in hand.
After scooping the larger chunks of rotted flesh over the side of the bridge he stood back as Vernon fired up the ladder truck. One hose snaked from the Oyohusa creek to the reservoir tank on the truck and when he flipped the switch the pumper came to life. They hosed off the spot on the bridge and shut everything back down. In the dead of winter the noise from the pumper hadn’t made a difference but once the temperatures climbed above freezing and stayed there the goners had started showing up again. They watched them meander back and forth on the other side of the creek, sometimes falling down the steep bank into the black water to be washed away. The barricade on the far side of the bridge kept most of them from coming across. Occasionally one or two would make it through the maze of barbed wire and sharpened fence posts. Most would impale themselves or become so hopelessly entangled that they would have to send it over the edge with wire still wrapped around it, barbs embedded in its skin. Keeping the bridge clear had become most of what Cody did these days.
After everything fell apart and Cotton had taken charge Cody did the dutiful son part. At the time he was kind of glad his father was such an asshole. Assholes seem to not panic for some reason. And once they had managed to barricade the town under Cotton’s direction, Cotton became asshole in chief. And if Cotton said to catch a couple of live ones and string them up on the bridge, he did it. As rot dripped off the edge of the bridge into the water below, Cody wondered if this time it would be easier to catch some alive than the last four times.
“Are we going to put some mor
e up there?” Vernon asked as he walked over next to Cody.
“Do you think we should?” Cody asked.
“Does it really matter what you or I think?” Vernon asked as he turned and looked Cody in the eye.
“Nope. I guess it doesn’t.” Cody said. They turned and shouldered their rifles and started walking back towards Green Ave.
“You talk to the Baker’s?” Vernon asked.
“For a few minutes.” Cody said as they turned onto Scales Street.
“Did you try to stop them?”
“Why would I?” Cody asked without looking up.
“Cotton didn’t want them to leave did he?” Vernon asked.
“He didn’t care. Well that’s not true. He cared in a one less man on the fence and one less woman in the kitchen kind of way.” Cody said.
“That sounds like something he would say.” Vernon conceded.
“Don’t it though.” Cody smiled.
“So where did they say they were going?” Vernon asked.
“They didn’t.”
“How much longer can this work man?” Vernon asked. He stopped.
“What else can we do?” Cody stopped.
“I don’t know. But…” He was interrupted. They could hear the bell ringing. They started jogging.
The ship’s bell had been given to the town after the end of the Second World War. It came from one of the thousands of small troop transports built and named for little towns across the US. It was mounted on a pole in front of the VFW, which sat just down the street from the house on Greene Ave. Cotton stood next to the pole waiting. The bell echoed through the afternoon sky and he looked up shielding his eyes from the sun. He lowered his gaze and saw Cody and that fat ass buddy of his turning the corner on Scales St.
“My god,” Cotton thought to himself, “how does someone survive the winter like we had and still look like a fat piece of shit”. Cotton just shook his head.
