by catt dahman
Conners actually took a few seconds to think; the soft part of his heart was still intact. “Why, you take this nice van and go a little south and stay away from the cities and get some better weapons. Those are shit. You fight back, like we are. You remember you’re an American fighting to retain a part of this country so the biters don’t win.”
Norman stared blankly.
Conners took that for something else, and he good-heartedly did something else. “Gillume, bring me some of those AKs and a few side arms we got extra lying around. Weiner, get ammo for those, bring it, and put it in this here van. Hurry up. We leave in less than two. Gosling, get MREs and water bags, and a few survival bags. Jenks, slap some first aid kits in there. Ernest, get ‘em some bags and pads. Fill ‘em.”
The five men he called to started running, gathering armloads of items, and getting other men and women to help carry extras. Hank, big as he was, moved to the driver’s seat with Dana beside him. Norman and Peri sat in the second area, and Rudy, the girls, and the child sat in the third seating area. While guns, knives, and ammunition were stuffed around their feet and legs, the huge back section, seats folded away, was filled with food, water, camping, and survival gear of every type. Each was handed a backpack as well.
Peri and Dan kept looking at one another, wondering what was going on.
Norman asked Conners, “Why? Why’re you giving us this stuff?”
Conners lit a cigarette and offered one to Norman who took it, and they lit up.
“Okay, in five and I mean Five. Move it. Move it. Move it,” Conners bellowed. He looked at Norman and said, “The orders were to wait for the doctors, Dallas and Hoyt, and Reid so they could report. Meanwhile, everything went to shit here, so their reports were useless, but yanno, they were with Parce, the doctors were doing all this, and so we figured we’d give him until his time limit at dawn to get here once it went hot there. Common courtesy, yanno.”
“Right,” Norman said.
“I don’t care about Reid. Don’t wanna know how he died; figure he was a pussy after all and couldn’t complete the mission….”
“A girl. She wasn’t a zom. Just a girl killed his ass,” Norman said.
Conners began laughing and cackled so hard he had tears running down his cheeks. When he could speak, he motioned, “Jenks, slide three grenades into that shit you’re loading.” He waved him away. “You know how to use a grenade?”
“Yeah.”
“You earned those for telling me that. That just tickled my jimmies. Reid bested by a chick. Was she a big one or little?”
“Tiny actually.”
Conners laughed again, “Jenks, put a LAW in there, too. You use it once, and it will take down a T-Rex, you get me? They drop it ‘cause it’s one shot. Lord love a duck, but that’s funny. Norman? Well, Norman, you gave me the best report I could get. I hated that bastard. Coward. Dallas and Hoyt were fairly useless, too. They die badly?
“Dallas got beat to death by an old woman with a hoe, and Hoyt jumped off a cliff.”
“You shitting me?
“It’s the truth. Ask anyone of the rest.”
Conners laughed again, “I should give you a chopper for that news. Wheee but that is funny as hell. Jenks.”
“Yes, Major.”
“Now you keep it on the down low, and load up two bottles of rum for our friends, ya hear…for Hoyt. And for Dumb ass Dallas, get these good people one box of Anna Bells.”
“Sir?”
“Now!”
Norman shrugged, “Sending us a box of hookers? What? What’s an Anna Bell?”
“You set ‘em. You got ten minutes. I suggest throwing all the nails or sticks, metal, concrete, rocks, and anything ya got on top of her. Load her six feet deep if you want. Seven. Then she’s gonna begin to sing and talk and just make a lot of noise. When she does, you better get the hell out of there real damned fast, and go off to the side and behind something metal or brick and far away. You better get fifty yards away. You have ten minutes.”
“It sings and talks?” Norman exhaled out his nose and looked at Conners with disbelief.
“She. Anna Bell, she’s like one of them sailor stories: sirens that called to them? Biters moan and shamble over trying to find her. She’ll draw a horde faster than you could. She’s tested for it. She will draw ‘em all. Then you put your head down, and don’t look ‘cause it can blind ya, but then Anna Bell blows, baby. And I mean she blows and blows the house down, and everything around is torn to little bitty pieces that no one can put back together.”
“We appreciate that.”
“I don’t care about the doctors…well…Dickson was okay at best…how did they go?”
“Eaten alive.”
That snotty bitch Lindsay, ha ha. Jenks, bring a bottle of scotch and vodka, and tequila. Hurry now.”
Jenks looked exhausted.
“Why all this for us? We’re nobody.”
Conners nodded, “That team of five met really pussy ends. That makes me laugh after Dr. Parce and they thought they were so important. Out of three hundred, you seven make it with hardly a scratch. That tells me you have more sand than they do and that you might survive this. If I make it and run into you again…better for me… just hedging my bets that with you, I may have another place to rabbit to.” He lit another cigarette and again shared with Norman.
“Well, thanks. We will go south a bit and avoid places with people.”
“Do me a little favor?”
Norman thought this had been coming all along, “What’s that?”
“I got two wounded. Not bitten or infected. One’s got a hairline fracture in his freakin’ arm, but it’s enough they’ll scrap him on the next mission, and anyone scrapped gets….well…scrapped. Sergeant Myers. Call him Sarg. He’s young and bright, and he can help you figure out all the shit we gave you. He just needs a few weeks of light duty, and he’ll be fine. He’s a good boy, and I don’t wanna see him scrapped. We got about ten to scrap, but he’s the best.”
“We have room there with Rudy and the girl and kid.”
“And one more I wanna save from scrap, Lieutenant Rodriguez. She was bitten on the finger, and I chopped it off at once and burned it. I took the whole finger and was going for the hand if I needed to, but it worked. It’s been a full week, and she’s clean and not infected. We got it fast enough, but let me say, it was like lightning. I chopped it clean off fast, and it was hardly a bite with only one tooth barely scratching the skin, but you don’t take chances; you act fast. Keep this machete. Here take it.” Conners unstrapped his case and handed the machete and case to Norman.
“Thanks. We can take her if you’re positive.”
“Yeah, we tested her; she’s not infected. And take care of her?” Make sure she’s okay? She knows medical shit, so she’ll help. You really watch over her? Cause here, they’ll scrap her, and I’ll never see her again; when they scrap, they get ‘em all and send them into a suicide mission to get a job done and not lose a valuable soldier, yanno. You take care of Maria?” Conner’s feelings showed as he said this. She was sweet on the Lieutenant.
“I’ll take care of all of them, Sir. We hope to see you one day.”
“Yep. Stay out of the cities cause they’re gonna burn, and be smart and careful, and get another vehicle soon so that you have two and you can have more supplies.”
“Will do.” Norman shook hands with the Major. Do me one tiny favor more? He whispered it, and the Major smiled. And nodded with understanding.
He pulled away and headed south with two more people in the van and an overload of survival gear that was stuffed into every spot possible: under feet and in laps, and something that Peri said she was going to organize and get out of their way. Maria and Sarg helped her, and they quickly had everything more manageable.
They were a half mile away, sitting on the road while the rest got organized, and Norman stared out the side mirror, waiting. In a few minutes he heard a helicopter, and it tipped its wings
to the van before flying over the lodge.
Incandescent light exploded upwards, and great balls of white and orange light followed as the entire mountain was washed with fire and explosions that leveled every building, took up water from the lake and swimming pools in steam, shredded every board and every bone, crushed every skull, and vaporized blood and skin, leaving nothing but charred remains, unidentifiable. It was a patch of charred rubble or would be when the fire finished cleansing the remains of the lodge and everyone there.
Norman flipped on the radio. “I repeat, Martial Law has been declared. If you are attacked, stab or hit the offender in the brain or if a family member is infected, lock him away. Stay tuned to hear your rescue centers tell you where you are to go immediately. In Hope, Arkansas, you are to go….” Norman turned the news off.
“What now?” Peri asked.
“Now, we become soldiers in this war, and we survive, or we give up. I plan to make it.”
“Hoorah,” Sarg called out.
Peri sighed and said, “Your dates really suck, Norm.”
He grinned, “Yea, Sorry. This date is all about finding another vehicle and a safe place.”
“Pretty romantic,” Peri quipped.
“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Norman quoted Friedrich Nietzsche. “We are going to be a team in this fight, and we are going to make it. And you, Baby, are with me. In fact, like Fred said, “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
Norman drove south.
Peri smiled and rubbed his arm and said, “Amor Fati – ‘Love Your Fate.’ I can quote Nietzsche as well.” She thought and knew how to tell him she was all in and would be with him, “greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously! Love is not consolation. It is light.”
(November 2013)