by Frank Tayell
“What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower,” Helena said. She spoke loudly enough for her voice to carry. Immediately ahead of them was a woman with two young girls, both standing protectively close to the woman’s long skirt. One of the girls turned around.
“Or some toilet paper,” Helena added. “And a clean bathroom.”
The woman turned around.
“Ma’am,” Tom said, as non-threateningly as he could. She took in his clothes, the rifle on his back, the sidearm in his belt, and the gun in Helena’s hand before giving a tight smile and turning back around.
There was something archaic about the blouse she wore underneath the leather jacket a size too large. It made Tom think she’d been at work, collected the girls from school, and taken off without stopping to change.
“We were trying to get to the East Coast,” Helena said, speaking now to the girl. “To Maryland. Tom…” She gestured at him. “Has a friend there. I don’t think we’ll make it now.”
The woman turned around again. She was clearly suspicious of this attempt at conversation. So was Tom.
“Grandpa’s in California,” the girl said. “That’s where we’re going. He has oranges. It’s warm there.”
“We ran out of fuel,” the woman said through tight lips, as though begrudging the utterance of each syllable.
“Near the town?” Helena asked, gesturing toward the woods through which they’d just walked.
“No. Up the road,” the woman said gesturing up the hill. “Came downhill, saw all these people. You were coming from over there?”
“I don’t know the name of the town,” Helena began, and Tom tuned the conversation out as she gave the woman and children a sanitized version of the day’s events.
He wished Helena hadn’t struck up a conversation with them and felt guilty for it. Though he’d planned on leaving her at the airfield, he’d grown used to Helena’s company. More than that, he trusted her, and there weren’t many people on the planet about whom that could be said. The woman clearly had no one else with her to help protect the children. Helena wasn’t going to leave this family to fend for themselves. The question, then, was whether he would travel with them. How far could a child walk? How fast? He looked again at the cars.
The line shuffled forward a pace. Part of him wished it would shuffle slower, but a larger part wished it would move faster. He knew what he’d have to do next. He would have to weigh one life against another. And he knew that when they were driving down the road away from this campsite, it would be his soul that would be found criminally light.
Another group of people had started a fire, this one at the grill farthest from the group of teenagers. They didn’t look as if they had any food but, having made the decision that they weren’t traveling further this day, had opted for warmth. Or, perhaps they were wisely keeping their supplies out of sight. A few others were surreptitiously chewing on something, but they all had the look of people getting ready to leave. Many others were already doing that. Perhaps it was the food, or the realization that there was no safety in the numbers here.
“I used to live in California,” Helena said. “In L.A.”
“Grandpa says that doesn’t count as California,” one of the girls said. “Not proper California.”
Tom found he was smiling. The smile froze when there was a shout from behind him.
“Hey! No! That’s ours!”
The yell came from the teenagers. The campsite went quiet. Three men had gathered close to the barbecue pit. They were older, in their early thirties. The man he assumed was the leader had speared a hot dog on a fork. Where the other two wore leather jackets, biker boots, and denim that probably had been filthy long before the outbreak, the leader was almost smart. He had a fussily trimmed beard beneath tortoise-shell glasses, wore suede brogues, a white shirt, and a windbreaker far too thin for the time of year.
Helena nudged him. “Do you see the leather jackets?”
Tom had. There was a rocker on the back, a neatly stitched patch identical to that worn by the group of bikers that had passed them on the road before they’d reached the motel.
The man took a bite of the hot dog. “Share and share alike,” he said. He wasn’t speaking loudly, but his voice was the only sound in the expectant campsite.
“No,” the boy holding a pair of tongs said. He squared up to the man. “This is ours. You can’t—”
The man’s free hand moved like lightning. It slammed into the boy’s face. He fell, blood pouring from his broken nose.
“If you can’t hold on to it,” the man said, taking another bite, “then it belongs to anyone who can take it. Nice tents. Nice cars. I think we’ll call them ours.”
“That’s enough!” A grey-haired woman stepped down from the RV. She held a long carving knife in her hands. “This is America. We’ll not have thieving and brigandry here.” People hurried out of her way, leaving a path clear between her and the three men. “If you ask,” she said, storming along the path, “people might share. If you try to take, people will refuse. We’ll fight back. We’ll stand our ground against bullies and thieves. We might be scared of those monsters, but we’re not scared of the likes of you.”
Tom saw the biker pull the sawed-off shotgun from under his jacket, but couldn’t move in time. The man fired. The grey-haired woman crumpled into a silent, bleeding heap.
Tom had unslung the rifle, but had it only half raised when there were two shots in quick succession. The biker with the shotgun fell. The bearded man collapsed. Tom spun the rifle to point at the second biker. His hands were empty.
“Up! Put them up!” he snapped, gesturing with the barrel. The biker raised his hands.
He glanced at the ground. The biker was dead. The bearded man was clutching his thigh.
“What now?” Helena asked, coming to stand by him. There was a tremor in her voice, but the pistol was raised in a steady hand.
It was a good question. Tom looked around for the other shooter. It was one of the teenagers. She stood over the boy with the bloody nose, a monstrous revolver clutched in both hands. She was slight enough that the recoil should have knocked her back a dozen feet, yet the barrel was pointing unwaveringly at the bearded man.
“Take him and go,” Tom said to the uninjured biker.
The man took one look at his injured comrade, shook his head, and started backing off into the woods. Tom said nothing. A disastrous situation had turned into a calamity, but there was a chance for order to be restored before a riot broke out. After a dozen paces, the biker turned and ran.
Tom checked that both Helena and the young woman had their weapons aimed at the bearded man before he stepped forward and picked up the shotgun by the barrel. Keeping out of the line of fire, he walked over to the boy with the bloody nose and handed him the weapon.
“You’ll want to search his pockets for shells,” Tom said. He looked at the young woman with the revolver. If she hadn’t been in charge before, she certainly was now. “Take your cars and drive,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what safety looks like anymore, but it won’t be found in a place like this.”
“What about him?” she asked, gesturing at the man on the ground.
“We should kill him,” the boy said.
“Then do it,” Tom said. “You have the shotgun. No one will stop you. No police will come. There’s no ambulance to take him to the hospital. No doctors to set his leg. No one here will care. But you will. Killing someone changes you. It begins a journey from which you can never turn back.” He met the young woman’s eyes. “The person who reaches the destination isn’t always a bad one. Death is a part of life, and self-defense an unpleasant reality.” He turned back to the boy. “Whether killing him is self-defense or murder is something you’ll have to wrestle with the rest of your life, because it’s your decision, here and now.”
The boy raised the shotgun. The young woman gave an almost inaudible sigh.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
> The boy lowered the weapon and stalked toward the cars.
“What about the RV?” a voice called from the crowd. The words broke the spell that blood had woven. There was a mumbling and shuffling as nearly a hundred covetous eyes turned toward the unclaimed vehicle.
“Was the driver alone?” Tom asked the young woman.
“Yes.”
The mumbling became a murmur that was on the verge of becoming a mob when Helena fired her gun into the air. Everything went quiet, but more dangerously so than before. Those with weapons had already drawn them.
“You,” Helena said, grabbing the arm of the woman who’d been ahead of them in line for the water pipe. “You know how to drive an RV? You’ll learn. There’s room for the children.” She looked around the campsite. “All the children. Quickly now.”
There were only six children, all told. Helena hustled them, and the adults accompanying them, into the RV.
Tom kept his eyes on the crowd. “Get in the cars,” he said quietly to the young woman. “Leave the tents. Leave everything. Get in the cars, go downhill, get away from here fast.”
There was room for him and Helena in the cars, but he knew if either of them made a move to get in, the vehicles would be rushed. There was enough civility left for the children to be given this prospect of escape, and nothing more.
“Where do we go?” the woman asked.
“Away from people,” Tom said. “More than that, I don’t know. Good luck.”
She ran to the car. It started moving before the door was even closed. The other car followed, with the RV only a hair’s breadth behind. The noise of the engines receded, until the only sound in the campsite was a general sighing of disappointment, and the moaning of the bearded man.
Tom walked to the front of the line and filled his canteen with water. Everyone in the campsite was now on their feet. It didn’t look as if anyone was planning to stay. A few of the quicker ones were moving toward the abandoned tents. Tom shook his head. The collapse had truly begun.
They headed downhill. When Helena spotted a track cutting off toward the east, he gladly followed her. Once again, safety lay in solitude, and they found that as the sun reached the horizon. They weren’t the first people to have discovered the hunting lodge. Though it was unoccupied, it had been thoroughly looted.
“We have to stay somewhere,” Helena said, picking up a frying pan from dirt-covered planks almost too crudely cut to be called floorboards.
“How far are we from the campsite? Eight miles? Less?” he asked.
“No one’s followed us,” Helena said. She sat down on a warped plastic chair and sighed in a way that suggested she had no intention of standing up again soon.
Tom walked back outside. Built in a clearing, there was no road leading to the lodge, nor was there electricity or water. He walked the perimeter. There was no well or even an outhouse. It was just a one-room cabin with cracked windows and a roof that was losing the battle to the combined forces of moss and lichen. Helena was right, they had to sleep somewhere, and the only alternative was the open woods. He went back inside and pushed the door closed.
Against the rear wall was an open fire and chimney. To the right were cupboards, a wooden table, and a few chairs. To the left were a trio of bunk beds, each against a wall, one set of which almost covered one of the windows. The sun was lost behind the trees so there wasn’t much light for it to block.
He sat down in a chair next to Helena and stretched out his legs. The feeling was marvelous. “All right, I agree,” he said. “We’ll stay here tonight.”
“And find a car tomorrow.” With a grunt of effort, she leaned forward and opened her bag. “We’ll have to. I say we eat the food rather than carrying it any further. Do you like beans?”
“Not especially.”
“Sorry,” she said, taking out two cans. “It’s beans with sausage or beans without, unless you’d prefer the crackers without either. Do you think zombies can see?”
“What? Probably. I guess they must. I’ve not really thought about it.”
“I meant, if we light a fire, are they more likely to come?” she asked.
“Ah.” He looked at the can, and then at the door swinging open in the slight breeze. “I’m not eating them cold.”
Standing was a real effort. Dragging the nearest set of bunk beds to block the door was almost beyond him. Helena used the last of her energy to break a chair into kindling.
It was in his search for accelerant that he found the newspaper. “Dated ten years ago,” he said passing it to Helena for her to use to start the fire. “I guess that’s the last time someone came here.”
“Probably.”
“No road either,” he said, collapsing back into the chair. “Or maybe there’s one nearby.”
“Maybe. Or the owners parked in the lot by that campsite and hiked here.” Her attention was almost entirely on the flames she coaxed around a broken chair leg. Satisfied the fire had taken, she sat up. “No water to wash those pans. Cook it in the can?”
It was hot, but each mouthful only reminded him of the meals he’d once eaten, the restaurants he’d visited, and the five-star meals he’d left unfinished.
“Those bikers,” Helena said. “The two at the campsite, they were part of the group who passed us on the road, weren’t they?”
“I think so. Or part of the same outfit.”
“So we’ve traveled a lot of distance, all to get not very far. We did the right thing, didn’t we? I mean, it was the only thing we could do.”
“The children got away,” he said. “We did what we could, and that was more than most. We should take it in turns to sleep. I’ll take the first watch. I’ve some thinking to do.”
She didn’t argue. Huddled in the mildewed, mud-splattered jacket, he let the flames burn low. He wasn’t so much lost in his thoughts as trying to prod them to life in his empty mind. It was slowly dawning how much of the world was lost, and how little of it he’d ever appreciated.
He thought it was nearing midnight when he heard the noise outside. He stood, grabbing the rifle. The sound came again. Footsteps? Possibly. Getting nearer?
“Hey. Who’s that?” he called softly.
The feet stopped. He waited. The footsteps came again, this time receding back into the forest. He went back to the chair, more awake than before.
Chapter 3 - Unwelcome in Providence
February 28th, Centre County, Pennsylvania
Tom shivered awake to a dark and freezing cabin. Helena was wrapped in her coat, staring disconsolately at the cold fire.
“The lighter’s broken and I’ve used up the matches,” she said. “And the tablet’s out of power. I needed the light. There was a sound outside.”
“You should have woken me,” he said, pulling himself to his feet.
“I wasn’t exactly being quiet,” she said. “Whatever was out there went away. I don’t think it was zombies. Maybe a bear or something.”
He opened the door. Shadows stretched in the pre-dawn light. He attempted to distinguish between the sounds of the forest and those of anything more sinister. Everything sounded sinister. A little way from the cabin was a footprint that was neither his nor Helena’s, but was very human. It was the only trace of their nocturnal visitors. He pulled his coat up tight around his neck, and they walked away from the cabin.
Insects chirruped. Birds called. The sky brightened, and he began to relax.
“You’re smiling,” Helena said.
“I didn’t mean to be,” he said.
“Why? What’s funny?”
“Nothing. It was more of a realization. Zombies don’t set ambushes. They won’t stalk us through the woods. I’m re-evaluating our chances of staying alive.”
“You were right. That’s not funny.” Helena took a sudden detour up the slope that lay to their left. “Look,” she said, gesturing toward the horizon.”
“What?”
“The dawn. Look at the dawn. It was the best thing abo
ut living on a boat. Well,” she added, “the best thing after the low rent. I used to wake up every morning to see the sun rise over New York. It was magical, a light show to which I was the only spectator. It’s the little things like that we have to enjoy now. These brief moments stolen from time. The ones we can remember when there’s nothing but darkness.” She walked down the slope. “I think there’s a road,” she added. “About two miles that way and downhill, there’s a line in the tree canopy.”
It was a two-lane road with recently repaired potholes, and a complete absence of people. After a mile, they came to an abandoned car. On the verge were the remains of a small fire. As Helena checked the car’s fuel tank, Tom bent down to touch the ashes. They were cold.
“Empty,” she said. “They drove this far and ran out of fuel.”
“So they would have stayed the night here and lit the fire for company, or perhaps to dissuade company,” he said. “In the morning, they started walking. The question is whether that was this morning or some other.” There was no way of knowing.
After another mile, they came to the field. Razor wire stretched across it, gleaming in the early morning light. Sometimes it was on the very edge of the road; in other places it looped back and forth across the fields. It was another two miles before they saw the town. From the decaying smokestacks, it had once been a place of industry. Now it was a fortress. His first thought was of Powell, but on the side of a shipping container, dumped across an access road, was a painted sign. “Water and food, this way.” Underneath was an arrow. Following it, after half a mile, they came to another, wider road. It was similarly blocked by containers. On the roof, two people sat in folding chairs. In front of the container was a table. Littering the ground around it was a carpet of discarded cups, plates, and other travelers’ discarded detritus. On the container itself was the message: Refugee Centre. Providence. Five Miles.
“Don’t think I can recall a place called Providence in this part of Pennsylvania,” he said. The two sentries on the roof of the container had stood up.