A Long Walk

by Traverse Davies

  There was also a low wooden platform in the middle of the camp. It didn’t seem to fit. A round platform of wood that was large enough to fit about ten people if they were tightly packed. It was on legs that were less than a foot tall. The whole thing might have stood a foot and a half above the ground. Everything else had a clear purpose, but the platform was just there.

  Watch was uneventful, but hard. The camp was doing three hour watches, and staying awake for three hours starting at two o’clock in the morning was a challenge after pushing so hard for so long. The camp had a few pairs of night vision goggles, and Jasper was issued a set for his watch. The landscape was converted into a series of greens and blacks, but the goggles made it clear and easy to see. When he was relieved he was still awake and alert. The first light had started to appear on the horizon, just a faint glimmer.

  Jasper lay down in the tent and slept instantly.

  Halfway Between the North Pole and the Equator

  Jasper had only been in bed for an hour when Naomi shook him awake. Breakfast was first, then Robert wanted to address the group. Apparently Jasper, Naomi, and Mona were the third group to get to eat. The food was identical to supper, but there was a lot of it and no rationing. After they had finished Robert cleared his throat and started speaking. His voice carried through the room, even though he was barely talking above a whisper.

  “Okay, we’ve taken as much as we can from Upper Musquodoboit. The place is pretty over run and we can’t risk moving in. It’s time to get going. I know travel is a bitch these days, but it’s time to pack up and hit the road. Work details are posted on the main board at the back of this tent. Eat up, then get to work.”

  He walked out, not pausing to see the reaction to his announcement. A bunch of the men groaned, but Jasper was happy, every delay made him panic a little bit inside. His main concern with joining Robert's band was that it would slow him down too much. If it kept him alive though, arriving was better than not.

  The tear down of the camp was quick and efficient. By ten in the morning they were ready to get on the road. Jasper was assigned to tearing down the mess hall with Naomi, while Mona was excused for the day. Nobody seemed to begrudge her. Most people didn’t realize that she had looked that thin before the zombies appeared and assumed it was evidence she was frail and failing.

  Life with the group was vastly different from the nomadic life that the trio had suffered prior to meeting the group. Everything was structured. Breaks came at regular intervals, with watches set. As Naomi was working with Jasper she got to chatting with one of the other women in the camp. "You look familiar, where have I seen you before?" the woman said.

  "You ever eat at the Caribbean place in the north end?"

  "Yeah, that's it. You worked behind the counter right?"

  "Yep. That me. Didn't think anything would make me miss the work, but yeah... I'd go back in a minute."

  "You do any of the cooking there or just serve?"

  "Auntie was teaching me to make it all. I always helped."

  "We have to get you in the kitchen, maybe you can make some of this slop taste like actual food."

  The woman dragged Naomi away to talk to the cook, leaving Jasper with most of the manual labour.

  The next day Jasper got assigned scouting duty. He took Snow with him, both of them eager to be useful, and in Jasper's case especially to be moving the group ahead faster. They took off each morning, running quietly. Jasper could run far more than five kilometers these days. Any fat he had had on his body had melted away on the journey, and his stride, developed over months of running, was longer, more sure. His skin was dark from weeks spent in the open. He looked like a pre-apocalypse homeless man, hair dirty and tousled, clothing ragged, layered. They bathed as often as they could, but even in the camp it wasn't often. Despite the amount of water in the area they had to carry what they used.

  Snow would range ahead and to each side, sniffing the air for signs of zombies. If he found them he would come back to Jasper, silently letting his master know something dangerous was ahead. The two of them were the most effective scouting party in the group, the dogs’ sense of smell put them ahead of any of the exclusively human groups.

  At night Jasper would come back to camp, hang out with Mona and Naomi if they were available. Mona was given nothing but light duty, so she was always available. Naomi was in the mess tent most of the time, and the food was better. She always hung out with Jasper and Mona after shift though.

  "Why don't you ever hang with the soldiers?"

  "They grab my ass too much. These boys got no manners. You look at my tits, I notice it, but I don't mind. You never grab me or nothing. I like you."

  "Alright, duly noted. I'll be more careful with my gaze in the future." Jasper was thrown by Naomi's very frank manner.

  "Nah, it's all good. Not like I don't look at pretty boys. You feel free to look."

  Things were easier. Robert kept paying special attention to the three of them. He made excuses to visit their tent every evening, made sure his meals corresponded with theirs. Then one night Mona spent the night in the command tent and the reason clear. From that point on Robert and Mona were together.

  Jasper felt his frustration with the pace mounting. They were moving as fast as possible, but a group that size with gear and no vehicles doesn't move fast. He needed to stay alive to reach Charlottetown, and his odds were much better if he was with the group, so he managed to put it aside, day after slowly moving day.

  Jasper was heading back from scouting duty and found the camp, except the active duty watches, clustered around the wooden platform. Robert was standing in the centre of the platform, another piece of wood was slotted into a groove, forming a pillar. One of the men was handcuffed to the pillar, naked to the waist.

  "This man slept on watch, endangering all of us," Robert said, "I will not tolerate chaos and disorder in this camp. You have jobs to do, and when one of you doesn't do it we are all at risk. Imagine if his negligence had caused a breach, imagine if you, or your wife, or your child, had been killed because of him."

  He took out a heavy leather whip and laid into the man. The whole thing was done in silence. The soldier had a gag in his mouth, preventing him from screaming or crying out. His body jerked with every stroke. He tried to scream around the gag, but it rendered him mute. After a half dozen precise strokes Robert stopped.

  Jasper was sickened. He understood the purpose, he just didn’t think it was effective. If it kept this sort of incident from occurring maybe it was justified, but Jasper was pretty sure it didn’t - the man fell asleep because he was run to the edge of his endurance, not because he was lazy or shiftless. Jasper had seen this sort of thing from Robert when they were on course together. Robert was a bully. He was larger than most people and used his size to intimidate. It was often subtle, standing too close to someone, invading their space. On the course he had lost his temper once, and only once, but it had been with a smaller woman who was having a hard time starting a fire. He screamed at her until she broke down in tears, then he walked away. Everyone had attributed it to the stress at the time, however Jasper was seeing a pattern emerge.

  They started to run low on supplies after a few weeks, right when they were reaching Middle Stewiacke, a small town with a few restaurants and a co-op grocery store. The plan was simple. Move in under cover of darkness in small teams, most of them assigned to draw the zombies, two other teams to raid the grocery store. Jasper and Snow pulled decoy duty. Naomi and Mona were sitting this one out. Robert deemed Naomi's other duties too important to risk her, and Mona was never required to work anymore.

  The walk into town was tense. They were part of a team of five, Snow made six, but only Jasper counted him. The rest of the team was mixed. There were two women, Candice and Sasha, and two men, Matt and Jordan. Sasha was an older woman with grey hair and a permanent scowl. Candice was young and fit. Jasper pegged her as white trash. Matt was a young private, and Jordan might have been Matt's
twin. The six of them moved into town, splitting from the other groups right away. They wandered for a few minutes, making noise, yelling, hitting things. They started to attract a lot of attention, groups of zombies forming up behind them.

  After about fifteen minutes the primary groups sent off two flares, the signal that they had reached their target. Jasper and company took a prearranged route out of town. The way had been prepped in advance, they studied all the possible routes to their destination.

  They started moving faster. So far they'd been keeping pace with the zombies, making sure to stay close, to get as many following as possible. Now they needed to be a bit ahead of them, to give themselves a tiny bit of breathing room, while not losing the horde.

  Ahead of them the mouth of the alleyway yawned, dark and foreboding. Even in the light of day it was dark and hard to see, a narrow gap between low buildings. They ran for it, a couple of hundred zombies behind them. There was the ramp, as promised, leading up a short wall - only about eight feet. The group ran up the ramp, Jasper in the lead. The zombies followed, close behind. Matt kicked the ramp down as he went over. Snow wasn’t all the way up yet, front paws still inches from safety. He jumped as the board fell, barely clearing the wall. The rest of them climbed up a fire escape that almost touched the short wall. They dropped the iron stairs, giving Snow an opportunity to climb up. As soon as he was sure Snow was safe, Jasper punched Matt in the jaw. He knocked the soldier down with one shot, then lifted him up and held him over the edge of the fire escape. “You don’t risk his life. Got it? You don’t fucking risk his life.”

  Matt was crying, bawling with fear. If Jasper dropped him he would fall into the horde below, and from the look on his face he knew it "please, please, I'm sorry. Please, let me up."

  Jasper didn’t care about Matt's tears. Snow was visibly limping; he’d hurt his leg in the leap. Jasper was pretty sure it wasn’t broken, but not one hundred percent. He was seeing red, wanting to drop the soldier into waiting horde. Jordan and Candice were trying to pull Matt back up, grabbing the fabric of his pants, keeping him steady. Sasha on the other hand didn’t seem to care. She pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her jacket and lit one, taking a long drag. Finally, Jasper pulled Matt up and let him drop to the landing. He kneed the soldier in the face. Matt dropped prone, nose broken.

  “Alright, time to get to it. We have a schedule to keep.”

  He started up the fire escape. It was a set of steel stairs. This time he made sure Snow was right behind him. Matt was moving slowly behind the group, hanging back. He was silent. They made it up to the roof, and dropped the gate on the other side of the alley. They had several hundred zombies trapped in the narrow space.

  They headed out. Matt trailing slowly. There were still a few zombies on the street, only small numbers, easily dealt with. Snow was still favouring his right front leg. Once they got out of town Matt called out. “Jasper, wait.”

  Jasper stopped to wait. He knew he could take Matt, especially now that the man was injured.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think," Matt said, "I was panicked. I understand why you went after me. You were right. My nose fucking hurts, but I earned it.”

  “Alright. Apology accepted.”

  “We good?”

  “Yeah. We’re good. Don't let it happen again.”

  They caught up to the group, Matt moving at full speed now.

  "Look guys, let me deal with the nose thing. It was my fuckup, I don't want Robert knowing the details. Just let me take my lumps. Anyone asks, I fell jumping to the fire escape, banged my face. It's a dangerous job right?" he said with a pained wink.

  Jasper was surprised. He found he had gained respect for the soldier, his willingness to accept fault, his understanding of what Jasper had done. They headed back to camp.

  The run was a success. They did lose two, but managed to get enough food for several weeks. Robert was in a dark mood however, as a result of the death of the two men.

  Everything falls apart in the end

  Eventually food ran low again. By this point they were near Truro. Truro was much larger than Stewiacke, a medium sized town with some suburbs, a central hub in the province. Jasper didn't like the idea of using the same tactics here as they had been in the past. A larger town meant a lot more zombies. Different places should mean different tactics. Jasper took Robert aside, “Look man, there’s way too many for the Stewiacke plan to work. We’re going to get pinned down, cut off, it’s too many.”

  “It will work. You’ve only seen this a couple of times. We have done it a shitload of times.” Robert was playing with his baton as he talked, extending it, collapsing it, extending it again.

  “Let's figure something else out, a better way to do this. We need to evaluate based on the conditions on the ground.”

  “Maybe I’ve been unclear, too nice or something. You are a nice guy, but you are a civilian. This is a military operation. As soon as you joined up you joined the army. Either you follow orders or you take a turn on the platform. Up to you, makes no difference to me either way.”

  Jasper ended up deciding to go ahead with the plan, but to make sure he had an exit, alternate ways out of town even if they didn't help with the mission. The setup was the same as last time, lure zombies into blind alleys, into traps. Cut them off, then take the supplies. The plan started pretty much the same, moving around, getting a crowd following them. It took Jasper a few minutes to be clear that things were not going smoothly. The numbers were larger, much larger. In fact, they were even larger than expected with the increased population. Somewhere along the line a bunch of extra zombies had shown up in Truro.

  They started heading to the pre-arranged alleyway, but kept finding themselves cut off. Every turn they made, there were hordes of zombies ahead of them. The six of them had learned to move well together, and Jasper kept them moving despite the route being cut off. He kept looking for an angle, for some way to get out of there. The horde was close when they hit downtown. They made it to the core of the old town, surrounded by ancient buildings, Jasper taking them on one of his planned escape routes. There was a department store, a relic of a bygone era. Jasper had been in there once years earlier with Karen, it would do the trick, at least if his memory was correct. From the exterior it appeared to be a series of buildings, but inside it all connected. Not only that, the levels connected in weird ways. Jasper kicked the door at one end of the store open. The rest of the group had no idea why this place, but they followed. “Hope you have a plan dude. Not keen on getting eaten,” Jordan said as he ducked inside the ancient building.

  “Just wait, this place will work for us.”

  "K, trusting you dude."

  The first building was a single level, but there was a stairway down just inside the arch to the next building, so Jasper took it. They knocked over clothing racks as they went. The basement had more clothing, and they tore through it, crossing three more surface structures, knocking down racks behind them, anything to slow the zombies. Finally, Jasper led them up in the farthest one of the group. There was a narrow staircase leading up from there, and it had a door. The door was solid wood, enough to last at least a few minutes. Jasper pulled it shut behind them, right behind Snow. They ran up to the top retail floor. There was another door here, this one with an employee’s only sign on it. Unfortunately, one of the employees was there already, and long dead. Snow wrapped his teeth around the zombies’ arm, pulling him to the floor and Matt spiked his head. They headed up that flight of stairs into an office area. He found what he was looking for, a rear facing fire escape, and then set all of the papers in the manager’s office on fire. The place lit up fast as the team climbed out the window and down.

  The streets were still crawling with zombies, but the fire seemed to be drawing a lot of them. The group headed out of town as fast as they could. They made it out and into the surrounding woods, unobserved by the crowds of undead wandering the streets.

  Travel was ridiculousl
y slow. They had to make it several kilometers through woodland, with zombies wandering everywhere. The area around Truro was thick with them, the team was still getting cut off, still having to backtrack every few minutes. They ended up getting caught by small clusters twice and had to fight their way free. It was touch and go, one of the zombies bit through Sasha’s uniform, but missed her skin.

  Finally, they made it back to base camp. There was a skeleton crew still there. Robert and Mona were sitting in the mess tent, Naomi was in the kitchen trying to make something for the returning soldiers, not knowing they were already mostly dead, and a few others were scattered around. Jasper came in, strode straight to Robert and punched him. Robert fell on his back, but rolled back to his feet without pausing, “What the fuck?”

  “I told you. Too many, far, far too many. They cut us off, the plan didn’t stand a chance.”

  “You made it back, you left your unit, and you came back? You fucking chickenshit. That’s desertion.”

  “Fuck you! The plan failed. All of them are dead. We should be dead.”

  Matt, Jordan, Candice, and Sasha were standing behind Jasper, visibly lending him the weight of their support. Something had changed when Jasper got them out of Truro alive, they were with him. Naomi came out from behind the kitchen area and stood with them as well.

  Robert pulled a gun. They didn’t typically use guns, the noise drew zombies, so Jasper had completely forgotten about them. Clearly Robert hadn’t. “No, fuck you. We suffered a loss. We keep going. We fight on. You are a chickenshit little bitch. Knew I shouldn’t have let a civilian in. Now, get down on your knees.”

  Robert had the advantage. Nobody else had a gun on them. Jasper went to his knees. Robert threw him a pair of cuffs and told him to put them on. A bunch of Roberts’ men came in to check out the commotion. Robert pointed at Jasper and his group, “Arrest them”.