by Ann Christy
“Yes,” I say. “And that also means that there could be other groups out there. Who knows how well they’ll operate together if they form groups? Will they stay together, fade away from the pack…”
“Or hunt in packs,” Charlie finishes for me.
“Exactly my thoughts.”
*****
Out here under the bright sun, with only a little shade thrown by the corner of a building, Carson really looks horrific. The bloating in his belly is worse already, the skin dark and stretched tight like he might blow up from the pressure inside. Actually, I’m a little worried that’s exactly what might happen. Apparently, I’m not the only one, because Charlie and Savannah are keeping a step or two back from the body as well.
I hand the others two face shields and Savannah practically snatches it from my hands. She slips the headband over her head and flips down the clear plastic in record time. Charlie isn’t quite that fast, but still quick enough.
These shields are pretty useless outside, but they were everywhere to be found when things first went bad. Even my parents had them. Even I had one. Everyone seemed to think that if you could keep someone from sneezing in your face, you’d be okay. At least, until they saw a few people getting eaten, at which point, the shields began to litter the streets. They’re too hard to keep on straight, and anything that takes attention away from running and hiding is not worth the bother.
But, at least they’ll keep Carson from getting splattered into our eyes. So, there’s that.
“Let’s get this done,” Savannah says, as if she’s girding herself for battle. “Tom and company will be back tonight if they’re on schedule. I don’t want them to walk in on this.”
I look at Carson and imagine what he’ll look like once we’re done. No, I sure don’t want them walking in on this.
“The kids are inside?” Charlie asks as he rolls out the bundle of instruments we’ll need. All of them have been boiled and cleaned to avoid contamination. The gloves and small sample vials sent in the package from Princeton are laid out on a rolling cart we liberated from the furniture warehouse stocks.
Savannah nods, slipping on a pair of those precious gloves, and says, “They’re pissed about it because it’s so hot, but they’re inside. Matt’s going to fill up one of those kiddie pools for them as a bribe. Hopefully, they’ll get clean in the process.”
I snort. “Or, at least cleaner.”
Savannah shoots me a look and a sly smile when she says, “They’re not the only ones who could use a bath. I’d love to join them.”
She’s trying. I know it. I’m not entirely ready to forgive her yet, but I’m not going to make a point of being pissed. Instead, I play along for the sake of group harmony and say, “Yeah, you do smell a little ripe.”
It’s Charlie’s turn to snort, which turns into a chuckle, so I ask, “What?”
He’s putting on his own pair of gloves to assist Savannah, but he pauses to wave in the general direction of Carson’s stinking body and says, “Only girls would think of B.O. with something that smells like him nearby.”
Of course, he’s right, so both of us laugh. It breaks a little of the tension, but it also feels wrong to laugh while standing over the body of a guy who just died, and did so in agony. Life is weird. No question about that.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” Savannah says grimly. Charlie hands her a scalpel and she presses it to the flesh of Carson’s chest, ready to make the big cut down from chest to just above his napkin-covered pubic area. I have the instructions for our sample collecting and the papers for taking notes. My part in this is the easy part, no question.
I look away as the scalpel moves.
Nine Weeks Ago - Danger on the Horizon
Tom and the others in his clearing group roll up to the warehouse complex in a big truck, the kind with dual wheels on the back axle and a flat bed with removable panels for sides. With six of them standing up in the back, weapons held in a variety of positions, they look like an invading army. But once I realize it’s them and not an actual invading army, all I can see is the truck.
I run out from the front field where I’ve been digging baby potatoes to open the gate. I wave with a huge grin on my face that I know makes me look like a kid. There are two deaders stuck to the gate because we haven’t gotten around to dispatching them today, only looping them to the gate so they can’t leave. Before I can even get there, Lizzy and Jeremy jump down from the truck and start in on them.
That process only takes a minute and I undo the loops and pipes that hold each one so that they can drag off the carcasses. All the while Tom sits grinning behind the wheel of the truck and gunning the engine a little now and then, as if to emphasize to himself that he has a working truck.
As he drives through the gate, he stops just inside instead of continuing down the access road toward the parking area. As I pull the gate closed, he leans his big, shaggy head out of the driver’s side window and asks, “Hey, pretty girl! Wanna’ ride?”
He waggles his eyebrows and laughs that big, hearty laugh of his when I give him a look, but he pats the driver’s door on the outside all the same. I jump up on the side step and hold onto the mirror, while Tom wiggles the gear shift into first.
We jolt forward and the feeling of riding along, even as slowly as this, is a delight that makes me laugh loudly. The breeze makes the day feel at least twenty degrees cooler and I risk taking a hand off the mirror to wave at Charlie, Savannah, and Matt as they appear between buildings to gape at the truck.
The laugh of before is gone when I feel Tom’s hand on my arm. I turn my head, making the breeze part my hair in a way that feels delicious. His expression is serious when he says, “Roger is hurt. It’s not bad, so don’t panic, but get Savannah and her medical kit.”
I peer past him. Roger is between Tom and Rose, his face a little pale under the suntan and his lips pulled into a tight line. He meets my eyes and tries to smile.
By the time Tom pulls the truck to a squealing stop in the courtyard—well back from the laundry, which is smart because Savannah would have a small cow if that harsh black exhaust got on her clean laundry—everyone is outside and looking like they’ll burst with excitement.
I can tell from the pained expression hiding under his smile that Roger must be in real pain, so I jump down before the last squeal of the brakes, all my excitement gone just like that.
“Savannah! Get your bag! Hurry!” I yell out even though she’s only twenty feet away from me and already walking our direction. To Matt, I yell, “Get water, the newly boiled stuff.”
From behind me at the truck, I hear Tom mutter, “Well, I could have done that.”
Everyone else seems to know what to do. Savannah speeds up into a run toward the passenger side of the truck where I point her to, and Charlie takes off at a dead run toward the warehouse where we have the medical stuff, including the “go bag” Savannah keeps ready.
Gregory calls out, “I’ll get more water boiling!” and takes off for our fire pit. Gloria pulls the kids to her and turns them around, urging them toward the home warehouse with strong arms and a few garbled words.
Rose, Tom, and Savannah ease Roger down from the truck, waving back all the other helping hands that will just get in their way. When I see him, my hands go up to my mouth involuntarily, holding in the gasp that wants to force its way out of me. From the hips down, Roger is covered in blood, his bandages now nothing more than wide swaths of red where blood has leaked through.
He winces as his legs straighten, but he grits his teeth and gets through it. He’s standing on his own, though leaning heavily on Tom and Rose to do it. When he sees me, he actually winks, though the grimace is still on his face. Then he says, “Looks worse than it is. Most of this isn’t my blood.”
At that, Tom grunts and mutters, “Asshole,” which seems an odd response until I see the concern clouding his eyes. Those two are tight, friends for a long time. They went through all this hell together, from the beginnin
g all the way up to today. I get that. I have to resist the urge to give Tom a hug, knowing I’ll just get in the way.
“Put him on the loading dock. I need the light!” Savannah orders, her voice rising into command mode. There’s a reason she’s become our de-facto doctor. She’s cool under medical pressure in a way none of the rest of us are. She walks backwards as Rose and Tom half-carry and half-lead Roger toward the raised cement loading dock, trying to see what she can as they go. She sees me walking alongside them, but doing nothing useful, and barks, “V, get the medical pallet laid out. Go!”
She means the roll of blankets and tarps we’ve kept as clean as humanly possible. It’s rolled up in a bag just inside the loading dock entrance, right where it’s handy in case of need. And now there’s need. I turn around and run toward the stairs for all I’m worth, hoping this isn’t as bad as it looks. I can’t bear the thought of losing anyone else. Not when help is so close, not when I know Princeton is working on the cure. But surely, it couldn’t be too bad or else Tom wouldn’t have laughed and asked me if I wanted a ride. Truck excitement or not, he would have been in a much bigger hurry.
When it’s all laid out, they get Roger down onto it with only a few grunts and pain-filled sounds. He actually sounds more pained when Savannah starts cutting off his jeans, saying, “Aww, these are my favorite!”
“Hush,” she answers, her scissors sliding along his jeans quickly, but carefully. “I couldn’t have gotten the stains out anyway.”
True to his word, most of the blood falls away with the jeans, but there are a series of gashes going down one of his calves that are deep and artificially straight. They aren’t spurting or any of that business, but they well with blood immediately when Savannah dabs at a part of his calf with one of her boiled cloths.
“How did you do this? Metal?” she asks. I know she’s worried about tetanus. By now, anyone who was vaccinated more than a couple of years before the world died will be losing protection from that disease. She’s terrified of it, constantly yelling at the kids when they touch rusty metal and telling them horror stories so they’ll be afraid of rust. No matter how many times we tell her that tetanus lives in dirt, she’s still weird about rusty metal.
“Yeah, barbed wire, but it was the zinc-coated stuff,” he says, because most of us understand the danger of tetanus. When Savannah glances up at him from under her brow, he adds, “Minimal corrosion.”
She looks relieved, but as soon as she lifts a great, big bottle of vodka out of the medical bag, Roger looks anything but relieved. “Dang, this is gonna hurt.”
*****
I do my best to be helpful, but I’m distracted by everyone clustered in the central courtyard and talking. There’s lots of gesticulating, serious expressions, and pointing into the distance going on, but very few words are loud enough for me to hear. It’s driving me crazy.
Finally, Rose—a woman that came with Tom that I still don’t know very well because she almost never talks—eases me aside after Savannah has to get my attention for the umpteenth time. She smiles nicely, but her hand on my arm is firm. Roger is snoring peacefully while Savannah stitches his legs. After his squealing when she started in, she finally relented and gave him ketamine. He’s actually smiling in his sleep.
“Go on,” Savannah says, not looking up from her task.
I sort of feel bad, but I’m too curious to protest. I back away and hustle over to the group standing in the shade of the awnings we erected in the courtyard. It’s where we do laundry or anything else that requires being outside for any length of time. We’d fry otherwise.
When I get there, I stop long enough to wash my hands and arms, which are covered in blood and germs I don’t even want to think about. Charlie is standing to the side, listening to Tom talk with Gregory, Matt, and a few others. I stare at him until he looks over and sees me, then nod him over while I soap up my hands one more time.
He jogs over, and my heart thumps hard at the sight. He makes a face at the sight of the water in my bucket and asks, “How is Roger?”
“Out like a light and tripping on ketamine,” I answer and roll my eyes.
“He’s lucky,” Charlie says, handing me a clean towel from the lines strung nearby. “Lucky he’s not dead, not that he’s tripping on ketamine, I mean.”
I think of Roger’s slightly drooly expression right before his head hit the pillow and laugh. Then I think of his legs and my laughter dies. As I dry my hands, I say, “He didn’t say much except that he got caught on some barbed wire while he was scoping out a subdivision. He said we should get the rest from Tom. I’m assuming that’s what all the serious talk is over here.”
Charlie ushers me off to the side with a hand at the small of my back. We stand under the shady overhang on one of the warehouses, well away from the discussions still going on. He listens at the door for a moment and it’s only then that I realize he brought us this way so that he could check on Emily. That realization makes me want to kiss him, right here in public. But I don’t. Instead, I say, “Tell me everything. An accident with some barbed wire doesn’t cause this much need to talk.”
He sighs and says, “Right. So, you know that subdivision that Tom and his guys told us about in the post office?”
I nod because I do. It had been a shock to hear it, really. It’s not like we couldn’t guess there were other people around, because of course, there are survivors hidden all over the place. But he’d told us that on the far edge of town there was a group of at least fifty people tucked away in a subdivision that seemed to be doing well. They’d watched extensively, thinking that might be our group, so he had a lot of information to share.
The people—whoever they were—had taken the back section of a subdivision, built a double ring of chain link fences, and then topped it with V posts absolutely covered in barbed and razor wire. They even have a system very like ours for getting rid of deaders at their fences. He said they had turned every lawn into a garden and that there were further lawns outside their fences that looked to be covered with grain crops like corn, oats, and similar things.
After the shock of hearing it, I sort of liked the idea of a tribe living in the suburbs like that. The thought even crossed my mind that we should run over and ask to be taken in. But, that was a momentary thought. Aside from the issue of Emily and the other in-betweeners, there’s a part of me that flinches from simply becoming a member of someone else’s group. The concept of becoming just another body to obey rules doesn’t fit me anymore. It’s a suit of clothes I’ve long since discarded.
That doesn’t mean I want anything bad to happen to them, however. And Roger getting hurt, the serious talking under the awnings, and the look on Charlie’s face all hint to me that something bad must have happened.
“Raiders?” I ask.
He shrugs at that, his brows knitted. “That’s what the discussion is mostly about out there. Something came for them, but it’s not entirely clear what happened.”
“But they’re dead? Captured? What?”
“Dead once, not anymore. That’s the weird part,” he says. “Something came through and shot everyone, but it looks like everyone was shot in the chest on purpose. They’re stuck inside the fences. Roger was trying to scope it out when some in-betweeners spotted him and made for the fence where he was. That’s how he got hurt. That got the natives all riled up, so Tom’s group had to cut and run. That’s also how they got the truck.”
“They stole the suburb tribe’s truck?” I ask, still not quite clear as to what’s going on.
He shakes his head. “No, whoever attacked them left it behind. And there were tracks all over the place, widely spaced tires like a Humvee. They said some of the dead—as in truly dead—bodies inside the fence were wearing partial military uniforms too.”
It finally sinks in what the option is other than raiders: military. “Oh, no. Do you think it’s the relief squad or whatever it was that Tom was talking about?”
“I don’t know,”
Charlie says. “Neither does anyone else. That’s why all the talking. It’s a distinct possibility. But why would any military group shoot a bunch of people in the chests and turn them into in-betweeners on purpose? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. I mean, if they wanted to make in-betweeners, why leave them trapped inside a fence? Why not just kill people with a head shot or chop off their heads or something. I can’t think why they would do it.”
Just then I hear Emily calling my name from inside the warehouse. She has that tone in her voice that she gets when something unsettles her. Maybe she can smell all the people outside or something. Most of the new group have never met her, with the exception of Tom, Lizzy, and Karen. All of them know she’s here and what we’re up to, of course, but I like to limit her exposure. Showing her to people feels a little too much like she’s a sideshow. And I know she doesn’t like it either.
I lean into the door and call, “I’m coming, Emily. Give me a second.”
Charlie smiles at me in that way he does and tucks a strand of my unpleasantly dirty hair behind my ear. “She doesn’t understand time. You better go.”
I smile back then look around to see if anyone is watching. I don’t see anyone looking our way—but I’m sure someone will see anyway—so I get up on my tip-toes and give Charlie a quick kiss. “You go and find out more information while I take care of her. Okay?”
The look in Charlie’s eyes says he wants a better kiss than that, and pretty much everyone we know in this world is standing nearby, so I back up a step and dart through the door before he can make good on the promise in his eyes.
Today – Body of Proof
“Can’t say I’m sorry that’s over,” Savannah says as she washes herself for the third time. We’re both stripped and standing behind a tarp while we use liberal amounts of our precious water to scrub down. I can hear the splashes of water hitting the concrete as Charlie does the same thing behind another tarp. I’ve positioned myself on the far side of our tarp so that I can be as far from him as possible. Just the idea of both of us having our clothes off in such close proximity makes me feel guilty for some reason, like I’m doing something wrong.