The Missing

by Gary Chesla

  About three weeks of going from town to town without any success, I stumbled onto the small town of Colby. In Colby I found what I hadn’t been able to find in any of the other towns, people that were still alive. All the other towns that I had passed through looked like they had been bombed. Blood stained skeletons of destroyed buildings were all that remained. I imagine that anyone with a car, loaded up their families and headed for the interstates in an attempt to flee the death and destruction and to find someplace safe. That of course, ended up being the worst thing they could have done, but that is another story I will tell you about later.

  But one day as I was crossing a hill outside of Colby, I spotted movement down in the town. I studied the movement for a few hours, trying to decide what I was seeing before finally deciding to move in closer for a better look.

  As I got closer to the outskirts of the town, I was finally able to make out what the movement was. On the edge of town was a football field next to a school. The school was in ruins, the windows had all been smashed and it looked like there had been a fire. Dark soot covered the outside walls above the broken windows. Apparently, the people in Colby that had survived the first wave of the dead had tried to hold up in the school. When the school was overrun, they all gathered in the football field. The football field was surrounded by an eight-foot high cyclone fence. Inside the fence were about fifty people with their blankets, campfires, tents and whatever personal belongings that they had been able to carry with them. They were huddled in small groups which I assumed were made up of their family members and a few of their friends.

  Outside the fence were about a hundred of the dead, grabbing onto the fence, shaking the fence and moaning. The people were surrounded and couldn’t get out, and the dead were on the outside, staring at the living, but unable to get inside to get at them.”

  “That sounds creepy,” Bill said. “Having the dead staring at you day and night.”

  “I imagine it was scary as hell,” I replied. “The people seemed to have some supplies, but with the dead able to see the survivors, the dead was never going to go away. The people were too afraid to try and do anything, besides I didn’t see any kind of weapons the people could use to defend themselves. I knew that if they didn’t get help soon that they were going to starve.”

  “Our advantage is that the dead can’t see us hiding inside the fort,” Charlie smiled. “The dead always soon lose interest and go away.”

  “I sat for hours on that hill overlooking the field where all these people were trapped, trying to figure out what I could do to help them,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you use your bow and pick off the dead one by one until they were all dead and the people could get out?” Bill asked.

  “Back then I didn’t have a bow,” I replied. “I was still using clubs and stones to protect myself. I didn’t find a bow until a month later, it was another month of trying to use the bow before I was able to hit anything smaller than the side of a barn.”

  “So, what did you do?” Bill asked, enthralled by my story.

  “I tried for two days to come up with a plan,” I replied. “The idea of having to fight the dead was still something new and I didn’t know a lot about the dead and how they acted at that point. There was only one of me and a hundred of the dead so I knew I couldn’t try to attack them. I figured the best chance to help those people was to set up some sort of diversion to lure the dead away from the ballfield long enough for the people to get out. In the early days, since I didn’t know much about the dead, it was difficult to figure out what to do. But long story short, before I could come up with something that I thought would work, it was all over in less than an hour.”

  “What happened?” Bill asked.

  “As I was thinking over my options, I heard a rumbling sound coming from the other side of town. It was a sound that I had become all too familiar with before leaving Lexington. What I had expected to see appeared about ten minutes later. Thousands of the dead came through town and began to surround the ballfield. The difference between fifty of the dead surrounding the ballfield and a thousand of the dead soon became all too clear.

  Charlie, this next part is what I have been trying to tell you will happen here at the fort if all those groups end up outside our walls,” I said.

  Charlie just looked at me, so I continued.

  “Like I said before, the dead don’t seem to pay much attention to each other, and I’ve never seen them work together to solve a problem. But what I saw that day surprised the hell out of me, it also scared the hell out of me to know that something like that could happen,” I said.

  “What happened?” Bill asked.

  “When the dead began to crowd in against the fence,” I began.

  “The weight of all the dead made the fence collapse,” Charlie said. “I’ve heard of that possibility before, but the wooden posts in our wall won’t collapse like a simple fence.”

  “No, that’s not what happened. The fence held and never collapsed the entire time the dead were attacking. That was what I had expected to happen at first myself, but it didn’t happen. What did happen was something that I never expected. As the dead pressed up against the fence, the bodies up front began to get crushed or fall to the ground. The dead behind them began to crawl over the fallen bodies. The ones behind them began to crawl over and on top of the them. Soon, instead of having to climb over an eight-foot high fence, the dead crawling over the others only had to scale a six-foot high obstacle. Five minutes later, they only had to climb over a four-foot obstacle. Fifteen minutes later, the dead were falling over the top of the fence and were inside with the group of trapped terrified survivors. Within twenty minutes, the dead were getting in over all four sides of the fence. What I saw happen next gave me nightmares for the next two weeks. Not all the dead were able to get over the fence, but hundreds of the gruesome creatures swarmed into the fenced in area and slaughtered those people as I watched helplessly from that hilltop. Charlie, you get a thousand of the dead attacking the front wall of this fort, they will be flooding in over the wall within less than thirty minutes.”

  “Holy shit,” Bill said. “I didn’t know the dead could do that.”

  “The only thing that could have saved those people would have been if they would have had an escape tunnel so they could have gotten out as the dead were getting in,” I said.

  Charlie thought for a minute, I could finally see that he was taking what I had been saying seriously.

  “If that happened here, couldn’t we knock them back over the wall before they made it inside?” He asked.

  “Not with the twelve rocks and twenty pieces of firewood that the men gathered up yesterday,” I replied. “Besides, even if we would have gathered up as many stones and as much wood as I had wanted, under an assault as large as I think could happen here, it would only buy us a few extra minutes before the dead got inside the fort.”

  “How about that trick you used the other day where you shot flaming arrows into that group of the dead?” Charlie asked. “It seemed to destroy most of them before they could get too close to the fort.”

  “That was a different situation,” I replied. “If I started shooting flaming arrows into the dead when they were pressed up against the fort’s walls, we could end up burning down the fort.”

  “The dead climbing on top of each other, how likely is that to actually happen?” Charlie asked. “Maybe what you saw was a fluke, something that will never happen again?”

  “Charlie, I’ve seen them do that more times than I can count,” I replied. “When you have to fight off the dead, when you only have a few of them to fight off, the dead aren’t really much of a problem. One on one, they aren’t that dangerous. They are slow and clumsy and easy to outsmart. The real threat from the dead is that there are so damn many of them. They can overwhelm you, trap you, and when you find yourself surrounded by a large mob of the dead there isn’t much you can do about it. When you see a large mob of the dead, the o
nly thing you can do is run while you can if you expect to survive. When the dead know where you are, they just keep coming. They don’t get bored, they don’t go away and they aren’t afraid of anything. They don’t get cold, they don’t feel pain, all they do is kill the living and at that, they are very good. Charlie, what you have faced here at the fort so far is nothing. You haven’t really had to deal with the dead, all you’ve dealt with has been a few defenseless stragglers that didn’t pose much of a problem. Believe me, what could happen here is something that you can’t begin to imagine. I’ve seen it happen many times and I still don’t want to believe it happened.”

  “That tunnel that you started, that could save us?” Charlie asked.

  “It might,” I replied. “It could at least give us a chance. When you’re faced with that many of the dead, so many things can go wrong and usually does go wrong. The best you can do is put yourself in a position to have a chance.”

  “Is it too late to save your tunnel, or have the boys already finished filling it in?” Charlie asked.

  “It’s not too late, it could still be salvaged,” I replied.

  “But couldn’t the dead find the tunnel and get into the fort that way?” Charlie asked.

  “The dead aren’t that smart,” I replied. “The only way that would happen is if one of the dead accidentally fell into the tunnel and that won’t happen because I don’t plan on having an outside exit until the very last minute.”

  Charlie thought for another minute before he finally relented and gave in to common sense.

  “OK,” Charlie said. “Go tell the boys to stop filling in the tunnel. Maybe it will come in handy. I guess it couldn’t hurt to have an emergency backup escape plan.”

  “Don’t we need to have a vote on that?” I asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

  “I don’t think we have time,” Charlie replied. “I’ll stick my neck out and take the responsibility for this.”

  “Charlie, I want to ask you another question,” I said, carefully thinking over what I wanted to say. I decided the best way to do it was to just get it out.

  “What was going on last night?” I asked. “I didn’t appreciate you insinuating that I was responsible for what happened last night. I also didn’t appreciate you saying that Bear had attacked Janie or acting like I was crazy because I had two of the men start to dig a tunnel to protect these people. You knew we had talked earlier in the day and you told me to do what I felt needed to be done, then you acted like you had no idea about what I was doing.”

  “I’m sorry about that, I didn’t mean it to sound that way,” Charlie replied. “It was late, and I guess I was still half asleep. I realize that I shouldn’t have reacted that way in front of everyone, I should have spoken to you in private. I’ve been wanting to talk to you because I had been thinking earlier yesterday that you have been attracting too much attention lately. The others have been talking about what all you’ve been doing and quite frankly, I was starting to worry that your influence was beginning to make the others stray from the system we have of doing things here at the fort. The system is all we have, without the system I’m afraid these people would fall apart. In case you haven’t noticed, these people aren’t the most capable people. Without a system, they don’t know how to survive. I learned that very soon after we found ourselves trapped here at the fort. I found that after I introduced the system, I was able to get them to start doing something. I’ve been trying to help these people, and the system is the only way these people are going to survive. Again, I apologize, I should have handled things differently, but it’s important that these people respect the system. I know this may not be the best time to talk about this, but when things settle down, I think we should talk about how we can work you into our system and help you blend into our group.”

  I nodded, it was partially what I had expected to hear, but I was surprised that Charlie would admit that he felt threatened by my presence. But it was an answer I could understand under the circumstances. These people were strange, and in the normal course of events they should have never managed to survive this long. I’m sure none of them realize that the only reason they are still alive has nothing to do with anything they have done, but simply as a result of dumb luck. But since they had survived, Charlie and his system were taking all the credit.

  “I have one more question. Charlie, what were you doing last night when Janie was attacked?” I asked.

  “What?” Charlie asked. “Why are you asking me that question?”

  “I am convinced that the missing girls were taken by someone here at the fort,” I replied. “I don’t know who that person is yet, but I’m not ruling anyone out, not even you. If we manage to live through the next few days, I hope to figure that out before I leave.”

  “You’re leaving?” Charlie asked looking surprised. I wasn’t sure if it was a look of surprise that I was leaving, or if it was a look of relief.

  “I feel it is time that I move on,” I replied. “You won’t have to worry about me getting in the way of your system for much longer, one way or another.”

  I looked over at Bill, who had been listening intently to my conversation with Charlie and said, “Bill, let me know if you see anything changing out there, I’m going over to get Ken and Dave to reopen the tunnel.” I then crawled down the ladder and headed towards the blacksmith shed.

  As I walked, I thought about what Charlie had said. In a way, I got the feeling that Charlie resented the others here at the fort. He also was overly protective of “His System.” That could be a reason why he kidnapped the women, that is if he was the kidnapper, because it could be a way for him to exert control over the others.

  Also, if he was becoming envious of my influence here at the fort, and if he was looking for some way to regain the upper hand, maybe kidnapping the women was part of his plan.

  I had been getting attention because of my hunting ability, the group was now eating better than they had in some time. I was also getting attention because I had been showing them here at the fort that you didn’t have to bury your head in the sand when the dead came around, that there were ways to fight back.

  Then there were the missing women. Charlie seemed to make a big deal of pointing out that he didn’t think the dead were coming off the interstate because the missing women had gone out to the highway. He said he didn’t feel the woman would have gone out to the highway. It was almost as if he was telling the others that my ideas were wrong and wouldn’t result in us finding their missing wives.

  Then it dawned on me, besides trying to downplay my efforts and ideas, what if his goal was to demonstrate that his ideas and his ways were better than mine. It would restore his reputation and secure his place as the undisputed leader of this group if despite everything I was doing to try and find the missing women, that he would be the one to find them.

  The only way that could happen was if he already knew where the women were, because he was the one who took them.

  As far as Charlie’s wife Susan, also being one of the missing, he could have faked her disappearance so that she could watch and take care of the missing women until he was ready to discover them and announce to everyone that he had saved the women.

  All the evidence has pointed to the women never having left the fort, so where could they be? Charlie’s quarters would be the only place in the fort that no one else would be able to look.

  The theory made sense, and all the pieces seemed to fit, but it was just another theory.

  I needed more information to prove or eliminate this new theory.

  Then another thought came to mind, if all the survivors had to gather over in the blacksmith shed to use the tunnel to escape the dead, I wonder if Charlie would sacrifice his wife and leave here in his quarters to maintain his cover, or if Susan would suddenly show up out of nowhere just in time to escape with the rest of the group?

  That gave me an idea, if I could get a look inside Charlie’s quarters without his knowledge, I j
ust might be able to solve this mystery.

  Chapter 12

  I walked into the blacksmith shed and found Ken and Dave both sound asleep. I wasn’t surprised, but I felt that they needed to be taught a lesson. Nothing too harsh, but something to make them take our situation a little more serious, stay awake and do their jobs. The two of them staying awake and doing what I had told them to do could mean the difference between getting out of the fort, or all of us dying here.

  “Bear,” I said. “Go give Dave a kiss.”

  Bear trotted over and began to lick Dave’s ear.

  Dave swatted at his ear, then looked up into a mouth full of big white teeth. I thought he was going to have a stroke.

  He rolled away from Bear and braced his back against the large anvil in the middle of the floor. He sat frozen against the anvil and it looked like he was expecting to be torn limb from limb at any second.

  “Call off your dog,” Dave trembled, “I promise I won’t fall asleep again, just don’t let him eat me.”

  I laughed, “Bear isn’t going to hurt you, he was just asking you nicely to please wake up.”

  “I’m up,” Dave added quickly.

  Ken was awake by now and had strategically moved so that the firepit was between him and Bear.

  “I’m up too,” Ken said.

  I smiled, “Sorry, I hope I didn’t scare you too badly, but what would have happened if Charlie had walked in here and found both of you asleep?”

  “I don’t think he would have eaten me,” Dave replied.

  “Well, time to get up,” I said. “I have good news. You can uncover the tunnel again. Charlie has decided that the tunnel is a good idea after all.”