About a Woman, a Zombie Chronicles Novel

by Mark Clodi

  "You pissed yourself? You?"

  "Oh don't tell me you weren't scared!"

  "Want the truth?"

  "Yes, if you think I can handle it."

  "You might not be able to. Here is the truth Dora. I was not scared, because you were not acting scared. You charged that fucking super zombie, ducked when he swiped at you and shot him through the chest twice, the bullets didn't kill it, but it did throw him on his ass and he couldn't get up fast enough before you shot him three times in the head. It is hard to be scared when you have wonder woman fighting on your side."

  Dora just stared at Paige and let out a laugh after a moment. "You mean it!" she said with a surprised look on her face.

  "I do. That is why you lead and we follow. You don't act scared, you tell people what you think of them. You are barely in control, but your snap decisions are better than the decisions I would make if I had a week to think about it. You seem to be able to judge people moments after you've met them and you come up with solutions to problems the rest of us didn't even know we had. Is your head big enough now?"

  "Oh my, yes love! You do say the sweetest things! How is Mike? Any changes?"

  "No, nothing really, uh…" Paige trailed off.

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  Dora stared at Paige, finally the younger woman flushed and looked at her hands, "Peter, he woke up downstairs in the recovery room, he started babbling, asked if the council, if you, had seen the video yet. Did you watch the video yet?"

  "What video?" Dora thought for a second, "Oh god, that video! No, no I haven't really had time, I forgot I picked the damn thing up, you know?" Dora made as if to get out of bed.

  Paige blocked her way and said, "You are resting, let me get it, where is it?"

  "Well if your God is so great it will still be in my jacket pocket, I tossed it in the tub when I came it. Careful, it is filthy."

  Paige went into the master bathroom and over to the large corner tub that had not been used since Dora moved in. The dirty black jacket was in the tub and there were spatters of blackish red blood congealed all over it.

  "Holy shit, I was with you all night, when did you get this bloody?" Paige fished around inside the jacket pockets, pulling out a loaded revolver, with the safety was off first. Slowly she engaged the safety and set the gun on the counter by the sink. Reaching in again she pulled out several different kinds of ammunition, bullets for various guns, a shotgun shell and a double bladed knife. There was nothing else in that pocket. In the other one she found a second knife struck through the lining and hanging out the bottom. The blade was streaked with blood, she decided to leave it there. "I got nothing in the jacket, are these your pants in here?" she called out to Dora.

  "Yeah, but they were too tight to put a camera in one of the pockets, did you check the inner pocket of the jacket?"

  Reaching inside the jacket she felt around for the inner pocket and came up with a taped black rectangle. "Found it. I think your jacket needs to be burned."

  "Oh, darling it is the height of fashion, 'blood streaked grime' I call it. It's simply the rage in all the Midwest right now. Yes, that does look familiar." Dora said as Paige tossed her the camera.

  Paige flipped the cylinder of the revolver opened and reloaded it with spare rounds she had taken from Dora's pockets, three of the bullets had been fired. Dora turned on the video camera the two women start watching the small screen. "Dora you didn't reload this last night." Paige scolded.

  "It was a pick up from…uh, Sally I think. I didn't check it out or clean it either. Mike would be upset, so let's just keep that between us girls now that we are all friendly and such…oh…ah Paige?" Dora asked while looking at the video on the camera screen.

  "What darling?" Paige asked in mocking imitation of Dora's own voice.

  "Come look at this and tell me what you think it is."

  Paige came over and sat on the bed beside Dora, together they both rewound and watched the first video on the recorder again.

  "Oh fuck. That's not…" said Paige.

  "Yeah, it is. You saw it too, right away. 'Oh fuck' indeed."

  Chapter 31

  The council was gathered in Dora's kitchen again, only fifteen minutes had passed since the two women had watched the video. Dora had immediately called out for all the council members to "Get your asses over here like they were on fire!" Leon looked the most rested and seemed ready to get down to business. A general, pissed, grumpy mood was the order of the morning, no one had gotten more than a few hours of sleep, all of them had bags under their eyes and coffee mugs in their hands.

  "What is the big news that couldn't wait for this afternoon?" asked Freddy without his usual smile.

  "Freddie, you think I would get you up here for bullshit? After the night we just lived through?"

  Freddie looked down, and mumble, "You? Maybe…"

  "I didn't. Paige? Play the first one."

  Page had her laptop sitting on the counter; she had transferred all the video files to it and had them paused and ready to play.

  The video image was of low resolution, still they knew immediately what they were seeing. An army truck. The truck was sitting beside a QuickStop gas station between the fuel pumps and the store windows. The video had panned around a little showing a street sign and some houses that Dora recognized.

  "This is to the north west, just a few blocks over past the bombed area." The video continued to linger on the truck until two men appeared around the front of it, one looked around at the surrounding buildings and they all heard a low voice that the camera barely picked up. They could not make out what it was saying. Dora volunteered, "I think it is Jeff. I think he is saying 'Don't see me. Don't see me.'"

  The man, a white guy with broad shoulders paused looking straight at the camera for a moment. The other man just as tall and muscular stayed at the font of the truck. Dora gestured and Paige paused the video, then zoomed in on the face, it was distorted, but clear.

  Leon was the first to see it, "That's Sargent Waller!"

  Beaming Dora said, "Yes. Everyone agree?" Sargent Waller was the army national guardsmen who rode shotgun on the truck that delivered supplies to the group every week and dropped off any kids the army had found.

  "Yeah it is him." said Freddie, "Zoom back a bit to the other guy." Paige zoomed out and he continued, "But what the hell is he doing over there? And he isn't in uniform. Is that…I recognize that other guy too. Miller or something? He drives the trucks once in a while?"

  "Watch, it gets better." Dora said she gestured and Paige played the movie again.

  The video showed Waller getting the keys out of his truck and going back inside the building then the video abruptly stopped. Paige cued up the second video snippet and the audience resumed watching.

  The second video was shot from the same location except the scene was much darker. After a moment the back door opened bathing the alley in artificial white light. One of the twin blond girls came out into the alley by the dumpster. Following her was Waller and a third man they all recognized after a moment as one of the soldiers who frequently visited on the supply truck. The three zombies went to a dumpster and Waller unlocked a padlock on the top of it then pushed the lid up. Reaching inside he pulled an adult man out of it, the man was naked and shivering in the cool evening air. Waller lifted the guy with one hand, as if he were lifting a loaf of bread. With contemptuous ease he tossed the man to the ground between the girl and the other 'soldier', the man did not even try to get up. The little girl grabbed the naked man by one ankle and started to drag him into the rear door of the gas station while the unnamed soldier laughed. When the man's hands reached the door sill he tried to hold on, but with a quick tug from the inside his fingers were pulled off the doorway and he disappeared. A moment later there was a brief scream. Waller was still outside, and once again his gaze seemed to find the camera lens, he stared for a moment and then went back into the building, returning the alley to darkness.

>   The next video on the player showed the alley again from a slightly different perspective, the camera was moving a little, like it was being operated by unsteady hands. There was a shadowy form visible on the screen in the starlight. The camera zoomed in clumsily, showing sky and then ground before getting back on a wiry man approaching the dumpster.

  "That is Jeff." Paige said, for anyone who could not figure that out themselves.

  Jeff made it to the dumpster, he had his short double barreled shot gun in one hand and was keeping it aimed at the door, with his offhand he carefully examined the lock on the dumpster. After a moment he tilted the lock back down and it looked like he was talking to someone inside the dumpster. The back door abruptly opened, bathing the area in light, quick as a cat Jeff dodged to the side and put the dumpster between himself and the doorway. No one came outside at first, then there was a shadow and a naked dirty zombie shuffled slowly out of the building. When it was at the doorway it was kicked from behind and went sprawling onto the dirty pavement. It struggled to get up briefly revealing a terrible tear near the top of its left leg, a cut so deep that it looked like a paperback book could be shoved inside of it. There was no blood, none dripping out of the wound and none obvious down the leg or on the zombie's belly. The zombie stood and looked back into the room, where one of the little girls appeared at the doorway, she was swinging it shut and called out to the zombie, something the video camera did not catch.

  Paige paused the video, went back a few frames and turned up the volume, "I had the volume turned down, there is a lot of breathing. We can stomach it for a moment so you can listen to this."

  The video resumed from where the door opened and they could hear some rapid breathing from someone behind the camera. It was so fast that is almost sounded like a dog panting, the door opened and laughter was heard, then "Welcome to the Army! Time for patrol duty." followed by more laughter, as the zombie was pushed down they could hear it scrabbling on the ground, flesh slapping on concrete. As one half of the wonder twins shut the door they heard, "Let me know if you find anything, go."

  The video showed the zombie start to shuffle around the dumpster and head towards the front, abruptly it stopped and faced the deep shadow beside the dumpster where the watchers knew Jeff was hiding. It started towards the shadow and Jeff lurched suddenly into view. He moved with an unbelievable grace and he clubbed the zombie back, then twisted past it and swept one of its legs out from under the thing, the zombie whirled around and fell next to the dumpster as Jeff sped off into the night.

  The video stopped again and Paige went on to the next one. The screen stayed dark and they heard Jeff say, "I told you to go if anything like that happened." His voice was an angry whisper.

  "I know." came the quiet reply of a young boy or girl.

  "You stuck around. I ain't mad. You have the camera?"

  "Can we go now?"

  "We better… Oh you left it on."

  A loud bang sounded and the camera came up in a blur to focus on the back door again. The light silhouetted a shadowy form making a bee line towards the camera holder and someone from the doorway called out, "Where the fuck are you going? I told you to go the other way, towards the town idiot!" The male super zombie caught up with the slow zombie and spun it around, pointing it towards the wasteland.

  "What?" The super said, "C'me here!" The slow zombie was jerked around until it was face to face with the super now recognizable as Sargent Waller. The camera was still zoomed in, so it was hard to tell how far away from the zombies the person filming them was. The view was good, even if the faces were cast in shadows by the light from the doorway.

  The super zombie was staring intently into the other's eyes, like it was reading something.

  "Some sort of mind reading." They heard Jeff whisper, "Get this to Dora. Nadine, take it, get it to Dora!"

  "Jeff, no! Jeff!" the small voice trailed off, the view of the camera was shadowed out for the briefest of seconds as it struggled to auto focus on what was going on. Jeff sprinted forward, his shotgun aimed out in front of him. Waller was not facing towards Jeff, he was looking more towards the bombed out ruins. Jeff took advantage of this and came in behind the man, in full view of the slow zombie. As Jeff ran up the super zombie lifted the slow zombie completely off the ground and spun him around in an arc designed to hit anyone approaching him from behind. Jeff was quicker. He slid under the swinging body and to the base of Waller's feet, where he pushed his shotgun up towards the zombies head and fired with both barrels. The camera jumped at the noise and when it returned to survey the scene only the slow zombie and Jeff were moving. Fuller was on his back sideways to the camera angle, it was hard to tell, but it looked like his head was missing. The doorway immediately filled with shadowy shapes and dull pistol shots rang out. The duct taped barrel was visible in the upper corner of the camera and bucked each time the small hand holding it fired. The noise was surprisingly faint.

  "Fuck!" Jeff screamed drawing his own pistol, he didn't bother to reload the shotgun, but transferred it to his off hand as he charged forward towards the door. "Go! Go! Go!"

  The pistol fired until Jeff got in the way of the shots, then the camera was stuffed into a pocket. It was not turned off, however and recorded the frantic flight of Nadine running from the gas station.

  "I have not shifted through the rest of this so far." Paige said, "I fast forwarded until I got to some video again, this is the last of it on the camera." She fast forwarded it until she came to a point where the camera was pulled out of the pocket, the starlight provided only a slightly less dark blur on the screen. The camera angle twisted and spun as it sailed through the air, before it passed over something the watchers actually recognized, the sand bags around the trench by the wasteland.

  It landed hard and the screen went to static before it was picked up and a familiar voice said, "What is this?" The camera showed Peter's face in the darkness, beside him a flashlight turned on and then everyone in the trench was visible, Peter, Willy, Jack and an older woman named Sharon.

  "It's Jeff's camera! Something threw his camera in!" Jack said.

  "Turn off the fucking light!" Sharon said, the boy did that immediately, "I am calling Dora. You guys get your guns, keep an eye out."

  "I think it is still on. How do I turn it off?" asked Peter

  "Press this." answered one of the other boys and the video stopped.

  The council sat in silence for a moment. Leon lifted his mug towards his mouth, stopped partway, his jaw moved, his lips started to form words, then he shook his head slightly and took a drink instead.

  "Speechless? Me too." Dora said, "How long since we heard from anyone in the military who was not Fuller?"

  "Since after the horde broke over us." Alex answered.

  "Never a fly by or a helicopter evacuation for our severely wounded. Just load them onto the truck and send them away with Fuller and the crew. I guess we know where they went now, huh?"

  "No. This can't be." Mary whispered, "Why?"

  "Farming has always been popular in Kansas. I guess they just want to continue the tradition. Face it Mary, we are the next crop." Dora said, "We need to get out of here. Do we have enough vehicles to carry everyone?"

  "Dora, where will we go?" asked Alex.

  "East, to the front lines. We break through and we join the Iowans."

  "But Dora, we have been getting news from Fuller, he lied about who they were, he could have lied about the front lines too, for all we know he lied about everything. We could be it." Alex said.

  "It?"

  "It. As in, the only people left. We haven't had a television signal for weeks, no radio signals, nothing, everyone else could be dead."

  The group thought about this in silence for some time before Dora said, "So we better send a scouting group out to find and make contact with the Iowans, if they are still around. If not…then what do we do?"

  The council members tossed around a few ideas before agreeing to send out three sc
outing groups to try and find the front lines and get more information. They also agreed it would be best not to tell the rest of the town about what was going on, if they were in a more traditional war, Steve had argued, what their soldiers didn't know could not be tortured out of them. Steve also had more plans for when the 'National Guard' came by the next time and the council readily agreed to do things his way.

  Finally just as everyone got up to leave Steve stopped them and said, "Well isn't anyone going to address the elephant in the room?"

  "What elephant?" asked Leon.

  Dora let out one of her classic snorts, as everyone else looked confused, she stared at Steven and spoke to everyone else, "Him."

  One by one the others stopped and stared at Steven too.

  "He came from the guard, he could be one of them, this was before we strip searched everyone, Steve, good ole Steve-O, he might be a zombie too. An agent in our midst to sow discord among us. So how about it Steve, you a zombie?"

  Steve smiled, "So you were thinking about it. What was your plan? Were you just going to watch me for a while, then jump me if I did something you thought was suspect?"

  "Me? Now I am not that deceptive, am I?" Dora nodded and conceded the point, Leon and Mary slowly edged away from Steve, causing Dora to laugh, "Please people! Do you think he would even bring the subject up if he were a zombie?"

  "I might, to dissuade suspicion."

  "So what do we do? Strip search? Normally I could totally get into that, but you are married and I have been under the weather lately. So it wouldn't do anything for me. I doubt your wife would appreciate it either. So how do we tell you are who you appear to be?"

  Steve rolled back the long sleeve over his left hand, "Cut me. Every one of them we killed bled that foul black shit; my blood will be red and alive, I promise you that."