Shore Haven (Short Story 4): Welcome To Edge Burrow

by Reynolds, Jennifer

  After only a brief pause at seeing me, most went right to work. One or two rushed out of the arena. I didn’t know if those workers thought I was a zombie or if they went to find someone in charge to let them know I was still there.

  Those that remained stayed clear of me. The crew was probably afraid of what I might do. I must have looked frightful covered in gore. I knew I was in a bit of shock. I was also grieving and planning.

  My gut had told me from the second I’d met the people from Edge Burrow that something was wrong with them or the town. Going through my version of Thunderdome and seeing the look in Dominic’s eyes as Eleanor and I fought each other, told me all I needed about what I was getting into when I left the arena. I could only guess at what those women who left the school with us were going through.

  As I held Eleanor, I began to plot ways to get myself out of the town. I wondered if I could take anyone else who wanted out with me. Would any of them want to leave? Some of the men wouldn’t. If the battle in the arena was any indication, Dominic had more than a few men as crazy as he was, and none of them seemed to regard women as anything more than property.

  At some point, I began slowly rocking. I visualized killing Dominic in so many ways. Each new vision put a bigger and bigger smile on my face.

  No matter what I did, I couldn’t leave Edge Burrow the way it was—not for long, at least. Dominic and anyone else who thought like him needed to die. I hated the killing more people with so few of us left, but our world wouldn’t survive much longer with people like him in it.

  I understood the need to want the strongest to survive, but pitting us together like that was for his amusement and nothing more. I also thought the fight was about thinning out what he might consider the strongest women. Why else would he have us fight to the death? Of the women at the school, the three of us were the healthiest and the most capable of defending ourselves. Why would you needlessly kill those who are the most useful to you unless you wanted the meek and not the strong?

  Of course, that was just an assumption. The women guarding the school were strong. And at the time, I didn’t know what he’d done with the others. For all I knew, when he left me sitting there, he could have gone to another arena to watch them kill each other. I didn’t think that was the case, but I couldn’t know for sure.

  “Get up,” someone said, pulling me from my thoughts while tugging on my arm.

  I jerked from the person and snarled at them. “What?”

  “Get up. These people need to get to the bodies you’re sitting on,” Charlotte said, backing away from me, but motioning for me to stand. “Ug. You stink.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, though I did rise. I tried taking Eleanor with me, but one of the men, who were part of the cleanup crew, stepped forward to take her.

  “And just what will you do with her body?” Charlotte asked me, apparently not fazed by my words.

  “Bury her.”

  “That’s what they plan to do. Let the man do his job.”

  “No, they aren’t. Your people are going to throw Eleanor into a pit with all the rest. Like she was nobody. She deserves better.”

  “We all deserve better, but there are too many bodies these days to worry about burying them individually.”

  “Well, you’d have two less to worry with if you people weren’t fucking crazy,” I said, handing the woman I’d barely known to the man.

  I couldn’t keep arguing with them. There was no point. Dominic’s people weren’t going to let me bury Eleanor.

  “We,” Charlotte said, pointing between herself and the people picking up bodies, “don’t make the rules.”

  “No, you just follow them like good little lap dogs. Dominic is just one man. He isn’t God. When someone out of their fucking mind tells you to do something stupid, you tell them to fuck off and go on about your business. If they keep on being crazy, you put them down,” I said, passing by her.

  I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew it was away from those assholes. I passed through the gates I’d entered and headed toward the trailer we’d spent that short time inside. I’d planned to bypass it and keep walking, but Charlotte grabbed me and pulled me to the home’s open door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I snapped, trying to jerk away from her.

  “Come into the trailer and get cleaned up,” she said a bit too loudly.

  I opened my mouth to argue, but her demeanor made me curious, so I followed.

  “There are fresh towels, toiletries, and clothes in the back bedroom and bathroom,” Charlotte said.

  Before I could reply, she turned away from me to look out one of the windows facing the arena.

  I’d made my feelings about Dominic and his people abundantly clear to all inside. Chances were, someone had already run to tell him what I’d said. Soon Dominic would have someone watching me, possibly gunning to kill me if I made one wrong move. The way Charlotte was acting, told me my assumption might not be too far off the mark.

  I kicked my shoes off at the door and partially disrobed (keeping my weapons on me, of course) as to not track blood and body parts through the small home. Charlotte slid a large trash can toward me to dump my things inside. I tried to touch as little as I could as I made my way to the bathroom. I got into the shower in the clothes I still had on to try to wash what I could down the drain. I had to drop some of the things stuck to me into the toilet because they were too big the shower drain.

  Thirty minutes later, I was clean, wrapped in a thick housecoat, and sitting on the edge of the bed, thinking about my next move. My weapons lay shining and pristine next to me. I wanted nothing more than to take them and rampage through town, but that was stupid and reactionary.

  The quarantine and military zones I’d visited in those first days of the outbreak fell after I left them, even the one in the Alabama territories, according to one of the women I’d met in the school. I thought that facility could hold out against anything. Those were the only places I knew to go to tell anyone in authority about what Dominic was doing in Edge Burrow, but I had to tell someone. Someone had to stop him.

  Our world, our people needed to start coming together, but not like that. God only knew what else was happening inside the town.

  Which was why I should accept my place in it, I told myself.

  There was no one to tell, no police, no military, just me and anyone else like me who was willing to help. The problem there was getting people to open up to me enough to feel them out about where they stood. We weren’t too far into the apocalypse. Most of the people in Edge Burrow couldn’t have done too much that they couldn’t come back to sanity.

  “Are you almost done in there?” Charlotte asked, knocking on the door.

  “Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute,” I called back.

  I finished drying off and dressed before snatching up my weapons.

  When I entered the living room area, I was surprised to find Jasmine sitting on the sofa. Charlotte stood by the kitchen sink, looking nervous.

  “You knew,” I said to Jasmine.

  “I did,” she answered.

  “You told Eleanor, but not me.”

  “Correct.”

  “She killed herself for it.”

  “Eleanor sacrificed herself to get you inside Edge Burrow because I knew you wouldn’t kill either one of them. Of the three of them, you are the strongest, and the one we need inside.”

  “Why not just tell the other two and let them escape?”

  “I tell the women I find out in the world,” Jasmine said, looking to Charlotte.

  “I tell when I’m alone. I was with others. Nan had already opened her big mouth. What was I supposed to do?”

  “I wasn’t with all of you the entire time. You could’ve told me on the drive up here,” I said.

  “You would’ve still come,” Jasmine said.

  I sighed, then nodded. The woman was right.

  “If Eleanor and Dakota had escaped, Dominic would have sent men out to fi
nd and kill them. Either way, they’d be dead. We didn’t find them to begin with, so we had no chance of telling them what was happening in Edge Burrow.

  “You could have told us at the school,” I said.

  “Too risky. Some of the women on guard there are loyal. He also has other guards that we don’t see watching the place. Dominic keeps close tabs on the women, and most men brought to Edge Burrow. If we tell once a woman is inside, we run the risk of them telling others and word getting back to Dominic. I took a chance with Eleanor. A chance that paid off, but one that could have very easily ended in all of our deaths. Dominic only allows certain types of men and women into Edge Burrow. We got lucky.”

  “Men who are rapists, murderers, and those who feel they should dominate…men like that?” I asked.

  Jasmine nodded.

  “And women who are submissive,” I added.

  “Mostly. Dominic does need fighters, so he keeps some men and women who aren’t that type, because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have people.”

  “There have to be more sane people than not in town. Why don’t you fight back? Take him out?”

  “We’re working on it. That’s why you’re here. You could be an asset to us in that fight. The other two couldn’t have been.”

  “Eleanor…”

  “Both were strong, but you have a determination to live and not let this new world break you. Those women didn’t. Not like you.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “You would have come in here guns blazing and gotten yourself killed, which is why it was a good thing Charlotte didn’t tell you from the beginning.”

  I couldn’t argue with her. That’s what I would have done.

  “So, what do I do now?”

  “For today. Play nice and stop bad mouthing King Dominic. Go to your new home. We’ll talk again soon.”

  I nodded. I’d play nice. That meant I wouldn’t, at that moment, ask what was up with all the “King” bullshit.

  8.

  Barely ten minutes after Jasmine left the trailer, someone else banged on the flimsy door, startling Charlotte and I. Charlotte opened it, trying not to look nervous as she did so. Two men, with guns strapped to their hips, and a woman, with a rifle over her shoulder, stood on the small porch.

  “Is she ready?” the woman asked, sounding doubtful that they would be taking me to town even though I was in plain view of the open door.

  “She is,” Charlotte said.

  The woman looked past Charlotte to me.

  I nodded.

  She watched my face for a long moment.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s go.”

  I stood, donned my bag and weapons, and followed Charlotte out of the trailer. No one spoke to me. We crawled into a large S.U.V. and drove the rest of the way into Edge Burrow in silence.

  On the side of town that we entered from, a few people were working on erecting a metal wall around the city. Most of the people lived near the coastline facing Liberty Island. However, they were planning for a higher population, not that they had a small one.

  Their numbers surprised me. The city wasn’t bustling by any means. There weren’t enough survivors for that, but I’d counted nearly fifty people in the town by that point. Fifty people that had most likely done what I had to do to become a member. I wanted to be disgusted by them and hate them, but I could understand the need to do anything to survive.

  The driver of our S.U.V pulled in front of a small house with cream siding. Only Charlotte and I exited the vehicle. Or so I thought. Later, I discovered that two of the other occupants must’ve gotten out or returned because they were guarding the house and watching me.

  Someone had cleaned the home well enough and stocked it with necessities and food for a few days. A few days was all I was going to need. I wasn’t staying there long, not with that sociopath or one of his minions in charge.

  “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” Charlotte asked.

  “Do you think you need to?” I asked in return.

  She looked out the window for a long moment before saying, “I probably shouldn’t. Dominic might think we’re up to something after the way you behaved in the arena.”

  “Scared of being overthrown, is he?”

  “Not really. Dominic doesn’t think anyone will try, let alone succeed if they did, but he knows that not everyone is on board with the way he does things, not right now anyway. Let the world disintegrate a bit more, and he’ll have plenty of people just like him in town.”

  “We can’t allow that. You know that, right?”

  She didn’t respond to my statement.

  “I didn’t see any children on our way here. Does he keep them somewhere else?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject and to get a starting point on where to look for my son.

  “There aren’t any?” Charlotte said with a tremor in her voice.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why, but we haven’t found any children. The youngest person here is about nineteen or twenty, and she’s the woman in the medical wing at the school. I don’t think she’ll make it.”

  “I… I…” I was at a loss for words.

  Charlotte was as well. After a long moment, she simply said, “Goodnight,” and left.

  “What’s wrong with this place?” I asked no one. “How could there be no children.”

  I put my bag in the house’s only bedroom and made sure to lock every window and door before settling in for the night. Sleep took a long time coming. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Eleanor or Dominic or Jeremiah. Had the plague killed all of the kids? Someone younger than twenty had to have survived. Didn’t they?

  Before that train of thought could send me into hysterical tears, I forced my mind to focus on ideas on killing Dominic. I didn’t know enough about my surroundings to formulate a plan aside from what to do once I was upon Dominic. And that was if I was allowed to have my weapons on me when near him. I needed to know his routine, where he lived, how many guards were with him at any time, etc.

  I fell asleep as making my mental list.

  The next day the woman who was in the S.U.V the day before woke me early. She had breakfast and orders to show me the town and my job. I grumbled at her for waking me. My body ached. I wasn’t in bad shape, but I was too old to do that much fighting at once.

  I didn’t take my time getting dressed. The woman didn’t appear happy to be my chauffeur, and I didn’t want to piss her off any more than I already had.

  The city wasn’t anything special compared to life before the dead rose, but it was a sight to see in light of recent events. The town was clear of the dead, both zombies and corpses. The woman showed me the training fields, which weren’t in the arena as I would’ve assumed. Maybe their advanced training went on there. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to talk or think about that place.

  The woman—she never told me her name, so I didn’t know what to call her—drove me by the gardens and greenhouses. Most of the workers there were women. She showed me the two town diners where I could go to get most of my meals, and the grocery store where I could use vouchers to pick up food if I didn’t want to eat with the townsfolk.

  She didn’t show me where Dominic and his guards resided. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want anyone knowing I knew the man’s name, let alone that I was slightly curious as to where he was. I also didn’t ask her to confirm what Charlotte said about there not being any children. I didn’t want anyone taking my question back to Dominic. I didn’t need him wondering if I was looking for someone. I did keep my eye out for my son or any other child, but I saw no one that wasn’t an adult.

  We neared the end of our tour at the maze that ran along the south side of Edge Burrow and led to the bridge that took you to Liberty. The size and complexity of the structure was the only thing that made the town stand out from most of the others I’d passed through over the last few months.

  The shipping containers that lined the shoreline o
n the other side of the maze were our last stop around noon that day. The woman wouldn’t allow me to spend more than a moment or two at any given location.

  I could hear the moans of the dead inside the boxes before we even reached the containers, and the sound was almost deafening.

  “Why are you stockpiling the turned?” I asked the woman once we’d pulled to a stop in front of lines upon lines of containers.

  “That’s privileged information. All you need to know is that it’s your job to make sure the zombies stay inside those containers,” she said, motioning for me to exit the vehicle.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, looking from her to the contained zombies.

  I only reluctantly got out of the S.U.V.

  “You heard me. You’ll be working here. Your job is to walk up and down these containers every day and make sure the locks and doors stay secure and that none of those creatures escape. If they do, try to herd them back into the crate, but kill them if you have to.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Not even a little.”

  And she wasn’t.

  “Someone will be back around five this afternoon to pick you up,” she said, getting back into the vehicle and driving away.

  The woman left me there with no further instructions or other weapons than the ones I had on me and no vehicle.

  “Well, fuck you too,” I said to the retreating S.U.V.

  The town’s people had packed the containers tightly together. The metal cages still shook, rocked, and bulged from the number of creatures inside trying to get to me. Their movements got worse when I got close.

  I didn’t know what else to do but do as she said and walk the line of shipping containers. I could handle the closed ones, but the barred ones used for cattle would be a problem. Those I’d have to watch the closest, as every so often an industrious creature tried and at times succeeded to slip between the bars. Thankfully, by the time it did, its body was so broken that it was an easy kill, which gave me the idea to spend most of my time in Edge Burrow, killing as many of the undead as I could.