Her first concern was her little girl. Her smart little genius of a girl she had come to call her own. In her chest beat the heart of a mother, hurting, wondering if all she had done had been enough to protect her. She rose, despite her weariness, and despite her injuries, and allowed her mother’s intuition cut through the remained of the smoke that had obscured her vision.
Through the dust she saw her Fayte. She was already running to her, crying for her adoptive mother. She caught the little girl up in her arms, and hugged her with the strength that remained in her heart.
The other boys stood with Ellie, all trying to cough up the last of the dirt in their lungs and more or less take stock of how each of them all were at the end of the battle. Rhyce was the first to peer over to appraise their handiwork. The pit had caved in on itself in radical fashion. It was only half as deep it had been before, but now it was much wider. It was a wonder that they each were not dragged in from the rock slides and buried with the psycho king.
Charlie broke the embrace, but refused to let go of Fayte’s hand. She followed Rhyce’s lead, as they all did in turn, to witness the walker’s fiery and blunt end. She scanned the rocks below, searching for any movement. There were some very large boulders amongst the debris. There was nothing at all to indicate any part of the undead exposed. The last streams of sand poured over the debris in rivulets. Cross waited until the last sounds of sand ran out, marking this battle as complete.
Cross sighed. “It’s over.”
Charlie shook her head. “No.”
She released Fayte’s hand and slid down into the pit with her pipe. She managed to snag a broken tree branch on her way down. Carefully she edge herself over to the last place she spotted her adversary to be, and slammed the pipe hard into the dirt. She removed her belt and used it to tie the branch against the protruding pipe into a makeshift cross.
“Toss me a marker baby,” she signaled to Fayte. “I know you have one.” Fayte obliged. Charlie popped the top of the marker and inscribed several letters down the length of the pipe, starting from the top.
ZDRM
She gave a smile as she remembered something one of her dad's Army buddies used to do just to get a laugh out of her father when they were up all night drinking. It was Chief Warrant Officer Leo's infamous 'Leo Salute'. She lifted a right ridge-hand to her forehead, but instead of shooting it out straight, she twisted it into a middle finger down to her buried monster.
Fayte stared down where she had checkmated the king. She copied Charlie's motion, signaling her respect for her adversary. This Boogie Man had been slain and would not be coming back to give them bad dreams anymore.
“Now it’s over.”
“What does ZDRM stand for?” asked Jace.
“Zombies Don't Ride Motorcycles,” she said curtly.
“Well this one sure did,” said Rhyce.
She looked down, imagining her own stare through the rubble. She turned to face Rhyce.
“Not anymore he doesn't.”
The campfire lit up their faces with dancing shadows, diving and inserting themselves in every crease of their tired brows, their exhausted eyelids, and against their necks, even played amok within the ridges of their ears. The light show magnified their weariness, showcasing the strain mirrored in their hearts and their minds.
Charlie lifted her head, but kept her eyes trained on the fire. “I know we didn’t know those girls very well. I think I know you guys well enough. I don’t want to lose anyone else. I think we need to find a better place to hole up. Some place permanent.” She found it hard to hide her emotions on her face, so she stopped trying.
“I agree.” Jace nodded. The Junction City boys did not say as much, but murmured in agreement. The scope of the mosh pit of walkers still weighed heavy on their minds. They had been used to fighting one on one, sometimes four on one. It was beyond comprehension the number of walkers that were still out there. All lying in wait. Others still were stumbling through forests, through streets. Millions of them were still out there. Poised to make a meal out of them. No door was safe. Anywhere a live person used to be, a monster more than likely had taken its place. Save for the more remote parts of the arctic, humans have been pretty much everywhere.
Fayte hugged Byron tight, while he absentmindedly stroked her hair. His eyes darted from the fire to Charlie, perhaps seeking out some bit of wisdom. She had clearly assumed the role as leader, mostly for she had no desire to be led. She was headstrong, but strong of heart too.
Jace kept close to Charlie’s side. He had edged as near to her as he dared, enough to calm his tremors to a more manageable level, but no closer. He forced himself to be satisfied with this. Just this. For now it was enough. He would take only what she was willing to give, and only give when she decided to signal him to. He kept telling himself. It is enough.
Fayte turned her eyes up away from the fire and asked the question that needed to be asked.
“Do you think there will be more like him? A zombie with a brain.”
Charlie sighed. “God, I hope not. One was enough for me, thank you.” The very thought of more than one like him instantly made her feel smaller in her own clothes.
Jace coughed to clear his throat. “But if there is we’ll be ready for him.” He wanted it to sound confident. Rallying. He barely felt the conviction in his own words.
They all nodded silently with that. The air tensed, like a strained muscle, and seemed to snap back again to the way it was before. Albeit, just a little heavier.
“A brave sentiment. Young warriors.”
On the spot they were all up out of their seats, weapons drawn. In the space between the edges of their unclosed circle, straightaway sat a man who was not sitting there before. In fact, the sawed stump he was sitting on had not been their either.
He sat hunched over, chewing on the end of a long tobacco pipe. Jet black, it glittered against the firelight. His eyes remained fixed upon the fire, his hands extended and empty. Charlie circled him.
She pulled the butt of her shotgun up a bit higher onto her side and cocked it. Her barrel traced the outlines of the flowing trench coat he was wearing. Black as pitch, just as the pipe he puffed and puckered from. He slid his hands together and rubbed them, trying to spread the fires warmth all around his pale skin. He didn’t even bother to look up.
“12 gauge, huh? Scatter shot.” He gave a small chuckle and shook his finger at her jovially. “That’s actually a new one.” His accent was light and unmistakably British. His eyes remained transfixed upon the fire, his gaze almost drunken into the flames.
“Tell me who you are. And why I shouldn’t blow you away right now.” Charlie planted her feet, ready to deliver.
The stranger simply smiled, with teeth that seemed just a bit too long for his mouth to contain.
“I am sorry. I have forgotten to stand correctly on proper etiquette. My name is Harland. And I am not here to cause you trouble. Rather I am here to help. Well . . . in my own way. But first, I am afraid I cannot allow you to shoot me with that. That is rude, and plainly just bad form.” His voice was young. Cocky. But not overly so. He looked up for a small moment, only long enough to meet her eyes briefly and then in the next he almost solemnly returned his eyes to fire.
Charlie was sure she had not blinked. It took her a long moment to even register what had happened. There was no way to explain it. The second before he looked to the fire, she had felt it. The weight in her hands suddenly went to zero. She stared blankly at the empty space between her arms where the shotgun had rested. She still saw it within the empty space, only now it laid open on the ground, the shells stacked neatly standing up, on top of one another. She pumped her hands open and closed in disbelief.
“What the hell?”
“Yeah. That is the standard response. I almost miss it. Well, this is not the typical situation. Ah, c’est la vie.” It was obvious to everyone in the camp he was talking to himself. And in decent, yet false French accent. Satisfied, he turn
ed to address Charlie.
“Save your ammunition,” he said calmly back in his native British accent. “You cannot kill me. I have walked this Earth long before even your parent’s were born.” He produced a friendly, disarming smile.
She wanted to look over at the others to gauge their expressions, but she did not dare to pull her eyes away from him.
“Mister. I think you are full of shit.”
The stranger smiled. “Madame Charlotte. If I wanted to make this easy on myself I could merely just bend you to my will, make you believe everything I say.”
Instantly the air round the camp became a room, blurry, moving in waves like an old out of tune television picture, and a moment later snapped back to reality. Dizzy, Charlie stumbled back and caught herself from falling by cat-standing on her back foot. Harland rose to his feet and the stump faded from existence from underneath of him. The dirt underneath remain undisturbed.
“I could do this. But will not. I am promise bound not to do so. Even in your disbelief, methinks you are leaning toward believing me.
Charlie shook it off, her face serious trying to hide her panic. “How do you know my name?”
“I am what you call a knower of things. I know all your names.” His words came out sweetly, but gave always nothing. All sugar, nothing nutritive. A gentle tug on his trench coat gave him pause. He turned slowly and feigned not seeing the little girl. He pretended to be surprised when he was “forced” to look down. His look was a touch condescending. Fayte met his eyes without fear and a measure of courage all her own. She stared into them and around them. Studied the curves of his mouth, the movement of his ears when he spoke.
“Tell me that you are here to help us and not hurt us.”
Harland gave a bow, lowering himself to her level, without breaking eye contact. “I give you my gentleman’s word.”
Fayte kept scanning his face. Searching for tells. Searching for truth, for conscience. She looked back up to Charlie and smiled.
“He’s a friend,” she said simply.
Charlie shook her head in disbelief. Her knees already weak from the zombie run, finally gave out. Jace was already there at her elbow and caught her. He pulled the chair up and sat her in it. When she had caught her breath brought her head up to face to this well-dressed fellow. Too well-dressed to be a survivor in these last days of the human race. Truly, this man was something different. Something else.
Harland stood and paced the camp in a tight circle, pausing only a moment giving each member of the patch-work clan their moment before moving on to the next. He began with Fayte.
“Fayte. You are smart for your age.” Then he leaned down and whispered into her ear. “Perhaps a little too smart.” He smiled, even as her expression changed just a little too late to hide her surprise.
He stepped noiselessly to Bryon. “Big. Strong. Byron.” He smiled and leaned in, but not to whisper. He got in real close and took a long inhale through his nose, closing his eyes. By the time he opened them, it was his face that contorted into a puzzled look. “Tsk. Tsk.” He giggled. “Gots some nice sized secrets locked up inside that quiet head o’yours, eh?” His accent had switched effortlessly to a mocking Scottish, which was startlingly too close to the mark to be faked. He had been there. Bryon returned with a look of mirrored confusion.
He shot a glance to the skinny girl hiding behind Byron. “Ahh, and here we have the Ellie girl. Much like the Alice of the stories. Blonde. Petite. Honestly a waif of human being. You hold about the same value as bait in this new world, eh? Tell me little Alice. How do you like zombie wonderland so far? Hmm?”
“Back off, weirdo. That’s my sister you are crossing the line with!” Jace had already risen to take his place between the two.” His words were on firm, unmoving ground.
“And you! Even as you are, you would dare put yourself in front of me? Face death just to protect your little sister?”
Jace screwed his face up into a block of stone.
“In a heartbeat.”
Harland closed his eyes at this. He seems to wallow in these last words. It was if they had a flavor all their own that called attention to his palate. When he opened them again, Jace remained standing there, eye to eye, holding his ground. Harland stared intently into Jace’s face, and in one burning moment came a flash of familiarity. Only for an instant did this flash of recognition play about on his face before he wiped it away and turned to face the whole group.
“Despite yourself having a snowball’s chance of rolling and making it over hell’s welcome mat,” he laughed, “and beating me? Well, I respect that.”
Jace was shuddering on the inside. Something about the way this intruder had said the word ‘death’ rung a chord of familiarity within him that was more than unsettling.
“Well, I guess I should just come out with it. The world as you have known it is gone to be sure. But even before this…wretched disease did away with most of your people, the world held its secrets. I and my kind were one of those secrets.”
“What secrets?” Charlie leaned up to listen.
Harland cupped his hands together to keep himself from speaking with them. He abhorred this annoying habit. It failed to be comfortable and he released his annoyance with a heavy shrug.
“There was a time, when my kind used to hide among you. Seems like forever ago now. But time has never passed quite so uncomfortably as is does now for me.” Was it her imagination, or were his teeth even longer than they were a moment ago?
Tren was not able to sit still any longer. His steeled himself and interrupted.
“What is all this nonsense? This dude is clearly some psycho escapee.” He reached back for a pole from his misassembled tent.
“Sit”, Harland commanded. His voice was quiet, silky. It barreled straight into Tren and Tren alone. In its resonance was comfort. It was tranquilizing, but not to the point of debilitating. Tren quietly sat back down into his seat as he was told. It was only then, in his attempt to stay pleasant enough to ward
Harland realized his little speech was not going nearly as well as he hoped. Hope was one thing, and his experience in these matters showed an often recurring precedent. It was painfully obvious a hasty retreat was in order to let all of the information and the shock sink it before proceeding any further.
“Look. Long story short. Your world is and has been a lot stranger than you are yet ready to realize. And your little battle with this so called ‘Zombie King’ is far from over. He yet lives.”
The whole of their faces responded with shock and defeat. The Junction City Boy twins summed it up quickly and loudly in unison. “No way! We saw him crushed! We saw him torn to shreds!”
“Did you?” Harland posed. “Is that what you saw? Or did your eyes betray the truth?”
“How can you possibly know that he still lives?” Charlie whispered weakly.
Harland entertained a long pause why chewing again on the edge of his pipe.
“The taint of his still living yet undead flesh still fills my nose.” And before Charlie could raise another interruption, “An undead knows its own.”
He turned and allowed the firelight to draw a line and clothe him in silhouette. The light dimmed as if obeying his body language.
“I did not lie, when I told you I was your ally. But that being said, you must know. I am as undead as the fellow you buried with so much rock and dust. Not the same, but similar. For a bit we thought they were us. Until we tried to approach them. Perhaps they could even be called kin to us. A kind of backwoods cousin.”
The silence and wide eyes fed him with satisfaction. From experience he knew which of his own words had worn out his welcome. With that, he raised two fingers to his forehead in salute, and the wind seemed to push the very molecules of his being apart. And for a moment they hovered, rendering him ghostly and translucent.
“But before I leave consider this. All the good people of the world turned. They died. And then they came back. Rotten and bloodthirsty . . .” Th
at last word itself seemed to roll all too easily off of his tongue. “But all of you. You lived. In all the chaos, did any of you bother to wonder why?”
Harland scanned the group. “Leave here now. Get as far away from this pile of rubble and soon as you can.” His voice had dropped all pretense. It was dark and foreboding. Most of all it was commanding, resolute.
“Be seeing you soon.” His voice echoed with an eerie vibrato, and then he was gone. The air rushed into the vacuum that remained causing everyone’s ears to pop.
Everyone in the camp grabbed for their ears and tried to console themselves all at once. All except for Byron who just looked at everyone like he had missed out on something. The last one who needed the joke explained to him.
“Owweee.” Fayte muttered. “That hurt.”
“Come’ere punkin.” And with that the little girl leapt from Byron’s lap and into Charlie’s.
“And I thought the ZK was creepy. Anybody else got permanent goose bumps?” Tren thought breaking the silence would cut the tension a bit. It did not even in the slightest. No one would be sleeping the sleep of the dead tonight.
Jace stood and started pacing. He scratched at his scruffy chin, deep in thought. Finally he turned and faced the group. “He’s right though. Why are we alive? I mean, why isn’t this zombie virus turning us into freaks?”
Callen threw his hands up in disgust. “You’re worried about that? I’m more worried about how we are going to keep all of those freaks from taking a chunk out of us. Besides who’s to say this vampire freak isn’t gonna bleed us dry.”
“Yeah. I am. There has got to be some reason. Seriously, why us? Just us?” He stopped and looked at the space where Harland last stood. Something nagged at his psyche. It pained him that he could not quite put a finger on what it was. The instant he resigned to file it away, attempted to forget about it, it seized his brain and would not let go. A growing realization stirred in his head, followed by a stern denial.
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