by Rudolph, J.
After we cleared up the dinner mess we gathered the bedding out of the bus and set up to shut down for the night. No one wanted to read or play cards like we did in our usual routine. Matt made sure that his boys were comfortable and would mind their aunt and uncle before he went to set up for the night in the SUV. Tyreese got his family as comfortable as he could. Trent, Drew, and I went to the bus early to stand guard and have some quiet time.
It was cold that night with the snow all around outside. We piled the blankets high and settled in. Drew pulled out an MP3 player that ran on regular batteries and plugged it into a small speaker to break the silence. We snuggled together listening to the random music selection and finally fell asleep. I woke up several times in the night, sure that there was someone standing outside but never was able to prove that anyone had been there. My dreams were littered with the feeling of intense fear.
Brother Michael
Brother Michael came to visit while we were eating breakfast. He was a frightening man but not in the physical sense. I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly. He brought Bart and the man who took us to this store, who finally introduced himself as Roy. They stood as silent sentries to Brother Michael.
Brother Michael began his story with a wide smile. "Well, I should begin with the before. I was just a man who lived near by, and worked at the local plant that processed emergency preparedness kits that included food rations. In the weeks before the virus hit threshold I had been visited by a glorious angel who shone with a stunning light. He told me that the seal had been broken on the plagues of Armageddon. He said that they were upon us and that we had to be ready. I spent the next while working to bypass the security systems of my employer to make reentry easy. We were going to need the bounty that was in there. At first, I have to admit to feeling a bit guilty, but God had placed me in this job to prepare for the apocalypse.
"The day that threshold hit, I was the picture of calm and people were drawn to me and the protection of the Lord. I know that the foreknowledge and the access I had to the plant made people feel safer. I prayed for ways to help the people stay safe from the demons, and with the angel's help I was directed to take the shipping containers from the plant and place them around the town blocking the roads. When we ran out of them we had people go out onto the freeway to gather more. At first we took in any survivor that wanted to be granted access to the town and built groups to do God's work in eradicating the diseased ones. We were giving and we spread the word to everyone about God's love. I was visited by angels in my dreams repeatedly and the angels told me when people were stealing from the group. The angel showed me how to identify and strike down the thieves that dared steal from the group and God."
Brother Michael was sincere in his conviction that there was a spiritual war at hand, that the dead were proof that hell was full. He truly believed that there was a larger war at hand and that God had opened up a direct line with him and used him as a messenger.
He took a breath and had a look that said the next part was a difficult trial on him. "A little bit later the angel came to me and told me that if people were to survive that I was responsible for making sure that the genetic line that made it easy for the angels to talk to me be continued in my offspring. As a result there are a few women that are carrying my babies." My initial response was oh, that's convenient, but as I kept listening, the way he was speaking wasn't laced with the lustful getting away with something tone that other religious leaders had. David Koresh, for example, had the same calling that Brother Michael claimed but had the look in his eyes that said that he was the king of the world and it was good to be the king. Brother Michael acted almost burdened by this responsibility.
Brother Michael had all the hallmarks of being a paranoid schizophrenic that happened to have his psychotic break at the just perfect timing. Had the angelic visions and the tampering with the security system at his job occurred just six months prior to threshold he would have been either thrown in jail or pumped so full of Haldol that he couldn't remember his own name. As it happened, the coincidental timing made him a prophet.
This made Brother Michael a very scary man.
People were desperate for a shred of hope in this town. It was a bit before the word got out that Michael had gotten into the supplies and was offering them the chance to survive. People wanted to feel safe after delivery trucks brought the virus through the pass and many were lost. People died and hope was gone. The people were so desperate to cling to something that made them feel like they would be okay and Brother Michael was that lifeline. They would follow him into the grave. Brother Michael was the answer to many prayers that had gone out since the dead took over the world.
The people under his direction did succeed in doing awesome things. They figured out wind power to keep the lights on.
Before winter came, they planted gardens and canned the vegetables to make sure they had some variety in the winter. They kept animals for milk and meat. Water was routed from streams into a series of ponds and irrigation canals for varied purposes. As a whole, the hope that Brother Michael gave them unified them. His paranoia, though, made them frighteningly distrustful. That distrust lead to justification of mob violence, as the bodies along the interstate attested to.
I wondered to myself if there was any truth to the looting claim. Did he just have a hallucination that certain people were out to get him or was there really a problem? I'd never know. I wondered if all these people were really on board with the whole angel thing or did they just not want to be left out of the safe walls or strung up on billboards. It was another question I could never ask about.
I realized I was tuning out the continued speech that Brother Michael was giving. I looked over at the others to try to gauge their reactions to the whole thing. Tyreese and Tanya were the ones I was most interested in because they were fairly religious folk. The expression they wore was a polite one, but the underlying one that shone in their eyes screamed that this guy was an absolute loon. That look was echoed in the eyes of everyone else as well.
Jody, however was listening with rapt attention. That freaked me out.
I understood Jody was on a thin thread lately. She hadn't felt secure since that night in the complex. I hoped that time in the bus would help but we didn't have enough time together to reconnect. She was grasping at straws just like the others of the town, falling for his secure offering. I understood the why in Jody's attention; I just couldn't understand how quickly she was sucked into the whole mess.
I shook at this. No one seemed to have noticed the body language that Jody was displaying right then. Well, no one in our group. Brother Michael did.
Adjustments
Brother Michael looked at everyone in the group with a sweeping glance, measuring what sort of impact he had made on everyone before he stood back up from where he sat during his story. He smiled his charismatic smile before he said his goodbyes, placing his hand on Jody's shoulder before he left. Jody gave him a warm smile in return. I noticed he seemed to avoid Tyreese's family though he was polite from a distance. I wonder if there was a vibe that Brother Michael was picking up on that said Tyreese and his family were not buying into the story. Bart stayed back for a moment, his cold and calculating eyes measured everything that Brother Michael had appraised as worth something for himself. He had a look on his face that said to me that even if Brother Michael was happy with us he definitely was not and would not be taking his eyes off of us for a moment. I wondered if they were playing the good cop bad cop game with us.
"One of the ladies will be by later to bring you lunch. You are to stay here." He gave everyone a long look before he started to turn to the door.
"Wait!" Matt called out. "When are we going to be left to go on our way?" Bart glared at him in response.
"You are all restricted to your area. Any attempt to leave will be considered a hostile move. My advice would be to shut up and follow our rules. You are not on the list for free movement." With that, he sto
rmed out, slamming the door behind him. Everyone looked at one another thinking that this was not shaping up to be a great situation. No one was impressed with how the turn of events were going. It hurt to be so close to getting out of this state and into Idaho to be dead in the water. Utah seemed to exist just to suck our energy dry.
Matt picked up a mostly empty water bottle and hurled it across the room to the kitchen where it struck a couple pans with a loud clatter. "This is not what I signed up for!" He screamed, his hurt and anger over losing Merideth collided with the feeling of being trapped. He kicked at the block wall then slumped down to the ground.
"I thought he was nice." Jody said quietly. "He knew things ahead of time. He saved people. Could you imagine if we had someone like that in the complex? We would have known that there was trouble coming our way well before the marauders ever showed up. We could have been more prepared." We all stared at her with disbelief. There was no way she could actually believe this for a moment. I was dumbfounded.
"Mom? What are you talking about?" Erin looked at Jody like she had never seen her mother before. Her tone was incredulous. "He can't see the future any more than the rest of us. I bet all those people on that show about preparing for the end of the world had a direct line with God as well now? He was a nutter then and is a nutter now." Erin scoffed at Jody. "You can't be serious! Joey would be so disappointed in you right now. He died to save you and this is how you act? Like a depressed kid? Then you disrespect him by listening to this assho..."
Erin's speech was cut short when the flat of Jody's hand struck Erin across the face with a sickening smack that rocked Erin's head.
"I do not deserve to be spoken to like this. I am your mother and I have had enough of your mouth." Jody stared Erin in the eyes with a deep, hard glare. The whites of Erin's eyes turned a bright pink as tears invaded them. She wore a look of defiance and hurt, her trust in her mom betrayed. Erin spun around and walked away from her mom, crossing the small room to be as far away as she could possibly be in such a confined environment. Her sniffles gave away the brave face she had put on as she cried as softly as possible. Liam and Abigail had witnessed the whole thing. They stood rooted to their spot not knowing who they should go to as they looked back and forth to their mom and their sister. Liam made the first move, he walked over to his sister and wrapped his arms around her. They stood off to the side together quietly when Abigail joined them. Jody crossed her arms over her chest and stomped off in a huff. She acted like she believed she was the victim in this. Erin had been harsh, but I didn't think that she was completely out of line in her anger at her mom.
Erin had earned the respect of her siblings since everything happened that last night in the complex. Jody had withdrawn so much in her postpartum depression and grief that she had not really been there for her family since that night their brother was born. Erin had been the one to keep them all together and watched over them. It wasn't really until that moment did I realize how much they had grown together through their shared pain of not only losing their father figure but their mom as well. I didn't know what to say to either of them so for right now I decided this was best left between their family. One of the big problems in this close knit group was that there was no privacy in family spats. It was hard to know when you needed to get involved and when you didn't.
About an hour after the men had left, a young lady in a modest blue dress showed up pulling a small cart behind her. It had several bottles of water in it and a box of something wrapped in brown paper. She passed them out to everyone. While she delivered the small packages to everyone, which were sandwiches, to everyone I studied her. She had shoulder length brown hair and warm brown eyes. She had a soft voice with a gentle laugh that drew you in to a sense of security. She was no more than 17 years old, but carried herself as though she was a grown woman. She had seen a great deal since this all happened and it showed in the true maturity in her eyes. She sat with us while we ate and asked us questions about what we were like. She wanted to know what we did in our lives before the zombies hit and what we had done since then to survive. She asked questions about what life was like out there and I didn't have the heart to tell her that there was a lot of horribleness. I left it at this was a very nice and secure place and that they couldn't ask for any more safety from the outside. She seemed quite happy with this answer. We all spoke easily around her, talking about how we had secured the complex back in the day. Erin introduced her baby brother to her and they talked about how cool it was to help deliver him.
The rest of us were a little tighter with our information. We weren't sure if the others had sent this easy going girl our way with the intent of gathering as much information as possible on the rest of us. We were worried that if they knew about our variety of skill sets that they would justify keeping us prisoners to serve their collective. I wished that I would have thought ahead to warn everyone to keep quiet on as much as possible but there was nothing I could do about that now. After we all finished eating and the general conversation grew stale the girl left us.
No one came back for us the rest of the day. We were left wondering what was going to be done to us. Trent found a way onto the roof and several of us went up there to try to learn more about where we were. From that vantage point we were able to get a better view on this compound. We stood on the roof staring over the city with our coats pulled tight around us, and we saw how the town had been shut down to protect the residents and serve the interests of the people who were doing well. We could see the shipping container walls that ran along the south side of the city that was turned into a compound and over to the west. We saw where the freeway cut through the town, cleared of all abandoned cars. We knew that the streets were cleared of snow on our path to the store, but as it turned out every last street was cleared as were the sidewalks making the entire town available to be driven through, though no cars were driving down them. A couple streets down, laughing children were playing on their bikes, riding in loops. Snowmen were erected in some yards standing guard over the houses with crooked stick arms and rock faces giving stone smiles. Some stores were open and we could see a few residents going between them. Some would go into the shops with some items tucked under their arms and leaving with different ones. For all intent purposes it seemed that the people were actually happy. There was trade going on and people were walking with their heads high and safe. For a second, it would have been easy to forget that the world right outside these walls was changed into a never ending nightmare, it was like they had been spared that fate. I could understand how they all held Brother Michael up on a pedestal. He made sure they were fed and helped them drive the fear of the undead out. He made them safe. This town made me sad, partly because it was a version of what I wanted to see happen when we got to Idaho, I wanted to take an area and zombie proof it so everyone who lived there could begin again. I wanted to give the kids a safe place to play on bikes and build snowmen. I wanted all of this, and had we not been on a path that had an end goal, maybe I'd want to stay here. I wondered if we had come inside these walls and gushed, if when Brother Michael came if we went on that we wanted to stay put, if the rules would have been as strict on us, if the flight risk we posed on them would be a non issue. I didn't understand the point though of keeping those that didn't want to be there as though they were in jail. In the old world the jail system was often regarded as a resource drain and wasn't that what we were by being here? It was their food we were eating, their fuel we used for the stove and the heater and their water we washed in.
After checking out the way the people lived and reflecting on the security measures in place to make movement through this town so safe, I paid more attention to the walls that gave them the opportunity to live this way. In several spots, mostly at major roads, there were double stacked shipping containers. In the other spots, there was only a single layer of these containers, which was still an excellent barrier. Every ten containers there was a double stack of containers and a shack wa
s put up to serve as a guard tower. Each shack was occupied by at least two men with guns. The one that was closest to us had more guards in it, some keeping an eye on our building exclusively. I waved at them which had the desired effect of throwing them off. One gave a hesitant wave back, while a couple others looked like they were suddenly busy. We definitely weren't going anywhere quick with the guards watching over us.
The next morning Bart and Roy came back. We were told that we were going to be getting to work today, that no one freeloads in this town, that freeloaders were prosecuted as looters. We were directed to specific areas that told me indeed they had listened carefully to the stories that were shared. Matt and Lucas were going to report to the heavy equipment yard, Trent was told to show up at the cabinet shop which was the central location that woodwork jobs were assigned and I was sent to the medical center. It freaked me out to be separated from my group, though the guys with the guns didn't leave any indication that this was an optional assignment. Each of us were taken to our areas by the guys with the guns. They didn't have to say the obvious, that they were prepared to use those guns if anyone tried anything.
I left Drew with Tanya. I kept thinking over and over that these guys were most likely there to be intimidating and if they were in the habit of murdering people for no reason then there would be an uprising. I tried very hard to not think of the dangling bodies as I tried to hold on to this idea. I was about 99% sure that everything would be fine.
Jody was pulled aside by Bart and they spoke quietly together. They left together and Jody had a huge smile on her face when they left. I bet that Brother Michael had asked to speak with her by herself. I worried that she would tell him more than she should but had to let it go, there was nothing I could do about the private meeting.