by David Smith
Finally, he released my hand and gestured toward the door. “Welcome to Magnolia Ridge."
Chapter 10: Magnolia Ridge
Day 1
It’s sometime after midnight. There’s no clock in the room we’re in but I can tell it’s early morning because there’s a different guard outside the window than when we went to bed. He’s got an assault rifle, an M4 just like Dad’s. I suppose this is what they do when new people come, a cooling off period, not so much for our rest as for their peace of mind, a chance to get to know us before they turn us out into the general population.
Stephanie is sleeping soundly. Beth, not so much. She keeps jerking in her sleep, her face contorting into various frowns. I imagine she’s dreaming of Mom. I can’t imagine what she must’ve seen yesterday, at least Dad was killed before he was eaten.
Day 2
Another day without leaving this little room. Stephanie won’t stop complaining. I’m dealing with it pretty well but Beth whispered to me that the only reason she hasn’t choked her to death was that she didn’t want to have to smell her rotting corpse. I told her that was kind of harsh and she recanted, saying she just doesn’t want to hurt our chances of staying here. I told her I wasn’t sure staying here would be such a good thing anyway. We are all starting to feel a little like prisoners and with every passing hour in here, I feel more like the Captain is deciding our fate.
Maybe it’s just because it’s not home or because I feel like I’m betraying Dad by taking charity from murderers. Or maybe it’s that handshake earlier and that politically fake smile he gave and his non-verbal interrogation. I pray that I’m just being paranoid.
Day 4
I dozed off just before sunset yesterday morning and when I awoke, the pencil I was using was gone. Luckily, they didn’t bother looking under my mattress to find the couple of pages from the days before.
Last night was probably the first that I was actually tired enough to get some sleep if it had not been for Stephanie crawling in bed with me. She said she was cold but from the moment she laid her head on my chest and threw one arm and leg over me till we woke up, I laid awake, sweating worse than I did all those years in the bunker with no air.
Despite the numbness in my fingers, the aching in my shoulder and the sweat, I enjoyed every moment of it. I’ve never felt so connected with anyone. Even with all her complaining and near parasitic uselessness, it made me feel that despite losing Mom and Dad, and no matter what happened today, for that moment, everything was okay.
They let us out this morning. The guy that came to give us the guided tour was beyond big, over six feet tall, probably 280 pounds and not at ounce of fat. He was black as night and his skin shined like a polished boot. His teeth were white as nothing I’d ever seen and gleamed when he smiled. The first thing he did was to give my pencil back and explain that they don’t let newcomers have anything that could be used as a weapon until after the cooling off period and that it must have been left in the room by accident. His voice was deep and hollow and it sounded like he was talking down a well. Pretty nice guy by the name of Kwame Jackson.
Every room in the house had been converted into individual family sleeping rooms except for five of them. There are four shower rooms in the house, two at each end, males upstairs and females downstairs. These rooms had taken the most time and manpower to construct, the original plumbing having been converted and split and the stalls built. But to use the toilet you have to go outside. That also creates the need for one of the work details, burning waste.
The fifth and final room is the Captain's. The man told us that the Captain is available any time but we have to go through a chain of command to keep from having a line of people outside the door.
The house is powered by one diesel generator and an array of solar panels on the roof, which explains why they only use either the lights or the window mounted air conditioning units, never both at the same time. All the food comes from either the fields, the recon teams or the hunters. These are three of the other work details.
One of the first things I noticed when we stepped outside was that there were a lot of men standing around with guns, talking, laughing and generally cutting up but not one out in the fields.
There is even a laundry service here. There are large plastic barrels with stainless steel funnels on top, all over the compound to collect rainwater so the availability of showers, laundry or anything else to do with water is based on supply, drinking water taking priority over all others. There was a hard rain the day we arrived and I noticed the laundry tubs were already dry. As we walked the compound, he explained the work details, in detail.
He said that burning waste is usually for punishment but is one of the most important jobs. If they don’t get rid of it, it would pile up and cause disease.
Dad would always just take it outside and dump it in the woods. He said it would keep the dead away, cover our scent. What I didn’t understand was why they didn’t use it to fertilize the crops.
There’s laundry duty and field work, planting, harvesting and tending to the crops, all done by hand. I wonder why the women were the ones doing both of these jobs and not the men. Not being sexist, just don’t understand why they’re the only ones doing them.
We walked out to the fence on the far side of the fields next and there were ten men and women with gloves and face masks, picking up bodies and piling them onto the back of a truck while the guards watched, holding swords now instead of guns. These were the cleanup crew. The big man told us that the bodies were to be hauled off a few miles north and dumped. I asked why they had swords and he said it was because guns would draw more in and it was the best way to kill without a gun. Bigger cutting surface than an ax for a more effective and efficient kill.
One lone infected wandered up while we were standing there, one of its arms missing all the way up to the shoulder and it dragging the same leg as it limped. One of the men with a sword calmly walked over to it and chopped halfway through its neck with one swipe and it fell like a sack of potatoes. He immediately wiped the blade off and pulled a stone from his pocket and ran it down the edge a few times. “Only thing about a sword,” the big man told us, “the bones quickly foul the edge.”
Walking back to the house, he told us about the three other jobs.
The hunters go in groups of three, on foot. They take guns but aren’t allowed to shoot within two miles of the house.
The guards keep watch from the catwalks and have to pass a marksmanship test before being placed. They only fire if there are walkers either inside the fences or if there is a threat of the fences coming down and there are too many dead for the cleanup crew to handle.
Recon is the most important and most versatile group. They go out for supplies and while they’re out, check for herds of dead in the area. They also escort a fuel truck down to New Orleans. They cover a lot of ground to make sure the people here can maintain the quality of life they have. At this point, Beth told him that’s what she wanted to do. With a condescending laugh, he explained to her as nicely as he could that recon was for men only. There is a strenuous training period and it was also too dangerous to risk the lives of the women. He said it was a sad truth in the modern world, as it were, that it’s okay to have more women than men but that having an overpopulation of men was counterproductive. I don’t think she caught on to his meaning the way I did, and went on mumbling to me about how she could do anything the men could do. I told her the reason she couldn't go out was that there was one thing she could do that we couldn't. She didn't get it.
He overheard her, which was probably the point of the mumbling, and promised to give her that marksmanship test and if she did well, to let her be a guard. That appeased her for the time being but I knew I had not heard the last of it.
I know now we won’t be able to stay long. It’s only a matter of time before the girls are considered old enough to be used for propagation. So I told him I wanted to be on recon. I figured it would be a good w
ay to scout out other locations. He smiled and told me that I wasn’t what they were looking for, that I was too young, too inexperienced, that only the strongest and toughest could be on recon but since they had just lost five he would give me a chance. Maybe it would help if I told him that it was me who took out five of his toughest. Maybe not.
Day 5
We slept in a different room last night, the three of us, with a Dad, a Mom and a little boy. The Dad is a tall, thin man, close to fifty years old and the Mom is half his age and the more attractive one by far. The boy is around eight and looks just like the mother.
The man got up before everyone else, put on a pair of wire frame glasses and started getting dressed. This is when I noticed Stephanie was not in her bed. I didn’t know who this man was so I waited until he kissed his wife and son goodbye and left, before getting up myself and going to find her.
I went out through the sheet of plywood that serves as a door and toward the stairs. As I reached the bottom I found her turning the corner. When she looked up and saw me she seemed startled. I told her that she shouldn’t be walking around by herself and she said she wasn’t. She said she was helping with breakfast, then shoved past me and up the stairs back toward the room. I found the kitchen and there were three women cooking as the sunrise was just starting to light the room through the big window along the back of the house.
I asked if they had seen her, pretending that I had not just passed her on the stairs. They said she came in for just a second, saying she was hungry and they told her it would be ready at seven so I walked out the back door and out toward the field.
It was a beautiful sunrise, just a few thin, pink clouds at the horizon, rays of light cutting through the tall pines on the other side of the road, the dew from the night evaporating and rising in a haze from the corn. I looked to the roof and one of the guards was staring down at me from the balcony along the roofline, his hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. I stared back at him for a moment then nodded, an awkward good morning. He was a dark-skinned man with dark hair and eyes and a tattoo covering most of his right arm, almost faded and blended into his dark skin by years of being out in the sun.
Without returning the gesture, he turned and went his way, patrolling form one end of the house to the other. Suddenly I heard a gruff voice from behind me.
"That’s Perez.” Captain said from the back door. “Don’t mind him. He doesn’t say much and he’s skeptical of any newcomers. Not very personable, but a good quality to have in a guard.”
I just kept looking up, watching him walk to the other end of the house where another guard was sleeping with his feet propped up on the handrail. He kicked the bottom of his chair and gestured to him with a nod of his head. The man got up and went in through the open window of the third floor dormer.
"Come on in, get some chow. Gonna be a long day.” The Captain said. He was right but it wasn’t as bad as what I had gotten used to over the last week.
After breakfast, Beth and I were taken out of the compound in the back of an old military deuce and a half. The numbers were faded but I could still read, on the bumper, the numbers 857 on one side and 63 on the other. I climbed into the back and reached out with one hand to help Beth up as she could barely reach the handle on the end of the bench. Ignoring my hand, she jumped up on one leg to grab the handle and pull herself up and in and two of the men smiled at each other, one shaking his head. The truck had a canvas cover over the entire back and they secured the rear flap, rolled up and open, with rubber straps. The truck was full of para-military looking men so we had to sit up at the front where all I could see was the road, rolling out behind us.
We rode for about an hour, the roar of the truck drowning out the voices of the few who spoke to each other to the point that their lips were moving but nothing was coming out. It made me drowsy and I had a dream as we rode.
#
I awoke in the first room they had kept us in, to the sound of heavy breathing. I looked to my left and Stephanie was being raped in the bed on the other side of the room. I could see a man’s back and her legs on either side of him. I tried to help her but as I crossed the room, my legs wouldn’t move or my feet were stuck to the floor. As I struggled to move across the room, it occurred to me that it wasn’t rape, the way she was pulling at his back and not pushing him away. I was determined to stop it, none the less, but when I made it to them all I found in my hands were empty, sweat soaked sheets. I somehow knew they were somewhere else in the house and set out to find them.
I opened the door to the hallway and it took me outside instead. I was standing in the front yard, by the dried up fountain. Everyone was running in different directions, in panic. Suddenly, Beth grabbed my arm. She said we needed to get out, that the perimeter had been breached. We ran through the criss-crossing crowd to the front gate, struggling not to be knocked down and trampled in the chaos. The gate was closed and covered in vines.
I dug and tore through them until I found a button. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a horde of dead coming around the corner of the house. The people didn’t run from them but continued running in every direction as if they didn’t even see them. The dead started into the crowd, grabbing people and falling to the ground with them, tearing into them with their teeth, pulling them apart, slaughtering them and fighting over their parts.
I turned to the vine covered gate and pressed the button, mounted on the brick pillar, and nothing happened. I looked at the mob of dead, working their way closer to us through the crowd. I pressed it again and again with no reaction until I noticed on the other side of the gate, the Captain standing calmly with the button is his hand, watching the slaughter. Looking down again, the brick pillar was blank as if there had never been anything mounted there. I took Beth by the hand and we skirted around the dying congregation, now all lying and writhing on the ground as the dead fed on them. At the corner of the house, we ran into Dad and Mom. They were both half-eaten, Mom much worse than Dad. The only thing holding her together was a few spindly sinews. She was disfigured to the point that the only reason I knew it was her was because it was a dream and in dreams, there are things you know and don’t know why. She pointed out into the fields and Dad spoke.
"They had to get in somewhere.” Was all he said and I grabbed Beth by the hand and we ran out into the corn. Dozens more dead were in the rows of corn stalks, dragging their feet toward the house, but we seemed to be invisible to them. We ran down one row, seeing the dead going in the other direction up the rows next to us, only inches away, until we came near one that blocked our path, ten feet away. We skipped over a row and kept going toward the end of the field, slipping by unnoticed. We did this several times, the rows of corn seeming to go on forever, passing the same dozen or so dead, over and over.
Finally, Beth stopped running, saying we were going in circles. But how could we be? We hadn’t changed direction even once except to skip to different rows, but they all went the same way. At this point, I was no longer scared, just perplexed.
"There!” She said and when I looked, there, in the same direction we had been going all along, was the end of the corn and an opening in the fence almost thirty feet wide. I dared not take my eyes off of it as we sprinted the last thirty feet for fear it would vanish. Instead, there was a flash of light and when I opened my eyes, Stephanie was standing in the gap in the fence. I got to her, intending to grab her and run away from the compound, but stopped in my tracks, my own decision but against my will in a way that only happens in dreams.
I told her we had to leave and she just stared at me blankly. I told her again, then begged and pleaded but she only stared, as if her mind was completely gone. Finally, as the dead were drawing closer from behind, I gave up on her in spite of myself and made the choice to go without her. I looked over my shoulder at the, more than a dozen, pursuing dead and when I turned to run, she was somehow blocking the entire thirty foot gap in the fence.
I tried to push past her but she was immovabl
e. I tried to run around her and no matter how far I ran, when I turned, she was in front of me still. Beth was screaming at me to leave. I told her to run past her on the left while I went right, so that she could at least get away but she wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t go without me but rather, she didn’t realize she could go without me going first or didn’t even realize she was really there, like she was just a force, a part of my own mind, driving me to do what I needed to. But it was too late. The dead had reached us from all sides. They tore into Beth as she screamed. I could feel the pressure of their jaws, the pulling of my skin from the muscle beneath. Screaming in pain, I looked up at Stephanie. One was biting her throat, another, her arm, another her leg, their arms wrapped around and hands clawing at her body. As the teeth of the one at her throat tore open her carotid artery and the first fan of blood spewed out, she threw her head back in what appeared to be release, mouth open, eyes rolling back, laughing and gurgling up blood.
Suddenly, I was looking past her and at the edge of the woods, across the road, stood a girl with long, black hair. She had her back to us and was standing on the other side of the ditch behind some tall grass and thick underbrush.
"Quick, come this way." She said and I recognized her voice from the dream before.
Suddenly, I was running through the woods behind her. It was just she and I.
"Wait," she said. "Where are we going?"
"Does it matter?" I replied.
"Not as long as I'm with you. But I'm so excited, I just want to know."
"It's a surprise." I told her.
"Can I have a hint?" She asked, still running ahead of me, leading me.
"No, because you'd guess it for sure."
"Yeah, we are synchronous like that." She said. It must've been a word I read somewhere and stuffed away in my subconscious.