by TW Brown
They had been on the go for the better part of five months when they found a place that a faded sign identified as Hyatt Reservoir. After two days where they made a complete circuit of the massive lake, they found a hilltop that had a creek at the base.
They had found their new home. They started with a perimeter fence and cleared enough land to have a decent farm. Today marked the day they would start on the construction of their log cabin.
With winter still months away, they would have plenty of time to get in that first crop. It would be sparse as far as vegetables were concerned, but they would have no shortage of meat and fish.
He felt a little like a character from a movie he had seen when he was young. Jeremiah Johnson had been the title. There had been a scene where Jeremiah and the Native American woman had built a cabin together.
He shook his head as his mind allowed that part of the movie to play out. It had ended poorly.
“Are you just gonna stand there?”
The voice of his daughter snapped him back to reality. He gave a sheepish smile and moved down the length of the log to make the next notch.
***
Jody crawled forward on his stomach. After scanning the area with his binoculars, he handed them to Bill Pitts. For the briefest of moments, he had the sensation of just how surreal the situation was that he currently found himself.
Bill Pitts had been a hard-nosed sergeant back in the days before the world went haywire with the rise of the dead. Then he had been a deserter. And to round it off, he had been the leader of a superior force that could have wiped his little community off the face of the earth. Instead, there was an accord reached. It had met with some resistance, but in the end, it had actually proved to be a huge benefit for both communities.
Over the past decade, the two communities had come together. They had brought in over five thousand other survivors. In addition, they now had electricity using a combination of wind and solar energy.
It was a bit like the Old West; and there was a wildness to it that some found to be too much. However, the truth was that they were prospering as a community. And that was the current problem. There were those who wanted what the people of Swift-Hope had built.
The fact that they had built a corridor that allowed travel between the two small hubs as well as the ability of folks to settle along the length of that corridor only made them a larger target. There had been resistance to the idea of that expansion as well. Jody and his closest friend Danny O’ Leary had almost come to blows over it.
The plan was to clear a straight line between Hope and Swifton. They would build a barricade, as well as place towers along the length. The idea was that, if these two communities were going to co-exist, then it would be a benefit to ensure that travel between the two was not risky. Both communities began to go to work on the project. And it was actually a surprise when people began to volunteer to take residence in the watch towers that were built along the length.
These towers were each a miniature fortress. Once completed, the person or persons who volunteered to live there became part of the community security. Flags were made to send messages much like coastal warning flags.
Over the years, there had been setbacks. Twice, massive swarms of the undead had come. Both times it had been like weathering the fury of a tsunami. You could do nothing but watch the wave of undead slam into the defenses and then do everything possible to minimize the destruction when they breached the perimeter wall.
That had also been the reason for another form of security. It was clear that the undead reacted to sound. It was for that reason that they had devised a second line of defense: turrets.
Based on the design of the rook in a chess set, they had built single stone structures in a ring around their communities and the travel corridor. These had been built about a mile out and were also manned by volunteers. The incentives for taking these isolated positions were regular supply deliveries of the finest produce and meat, along with a variety of goods created by citizens of the duo-city now known as Swift-Hope.
It was the job of these outposts to not only notify the community of impending danger, but also to commence the distraction protocol. That included the lighting of a series of huge bonfires that would hopefully alter the course of an incoming swarm. Additionally, there were a series of hand-cranked sirens that were placed in a line. Once again, these would ideally serve to lure the leading edge of a large concentration of the undead on a new course.
Three days ago, a runner from Turret Eleven arrived. Turret Ten had not raised its flag in response to the regular check in that the turrets did with each other as just another layer of security as well as to help ease some of the feelings of isolation that might set in over time.
They had sent a runner to Turret Ten. That runner had not returned. This was not the first time they had faced hostiles in the form of humans. Most of the time it was a hit-and-run style of attack. Due to the size of the Swift-Hope community, there had not really been any human threat that could truly be a danger to them. Obviously, this was different.
“I see at least a dozen,” Bill said as he handed the binoculars back to Jody.
“They are either very brave or very stupid,” Jody muttered as he took another look.
These invaders had obviously taken Turret Ten. People were coming and going in and out like they had no cares in the world. A huge fire had been built and what he had to assume were the bodies of the people who had once manned the post were being burned.
However, it also looked like they had taken a prisoner. A man was in a cage that had been hoisted a good twenty feet off the ground. The man looked pretty beat up and somebody had taken a blade to his chest, making an uncountable number of slices obviously meant to entice the man to give up information.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Rafe,” Bill warned.
Jody felt his gut twist. He focused in on the face of the man and had to force his hands to relax their grip on the glasses.
“What have you gotten yourself into, Danny?” Jody whispered.
***
The following is an excerpt from a journal found in an abandoned camp just outside of the ruins of Billings, Montana:
Entry One—
My name is Adam. I won’t bore you with my last name, since, if you are reading this, you would probably mispronounce it anyway. How about just Adam V.?
I am a hunter.
That opens up the question of what I hunt. Well, in the world of the dead, most of us are hunters of some sort. We hunt for food, or we hunt for a safe place to live. Some may even hunt for the lost world that lives in our memory.
I hunt the living. Don’t worry. I have a reason, and I don’t just hunt any living person. I only hunt the ones who have been brought to my attention.
As many of you know, when the dead came, it changed damn near everything. Some was actually for the better. No more Hollywood tabloids for one. Seriously, who cares about if some talentless pop star’s sister was banging the manager?
Although, now that I think about it…the manager might have made my list. I think the sister was only fourteen or fifteen and the manager was some skeezy old dude in his forties.
Some was for the worst. That first year, it seemed like every creep and playground lurker decided that it was open season on women and children. You could not run into a group of people that didn’t have at least one sad story to tell. And you always knew which one right away. They had that haunted look nine times out of ten. Most would jump out of their skin if you tapped them on the shoulder.
Zombies were not the worst problem like the old movies, books, and television shows always made you think. Nope, it was the living. As far as I am concerned, that is still the case.
Personally, I can’t be mad at zombies. That is like being mad at a great white shark or a grizzly bear. You show up in their home smelling like food and then get upset when they took a bite? Zombies are the same way. They are just doing what they do. They are the ult
imate species when it comes to equal opportunity. Rich, poor, fat, skinny. You are all the same in the milky eyes of the undead.
But when it comes to people, that is different. You are making a choice to prey on those weaker than you for your own sick gratification. That is why I must wipe you off the face of the earth. With the population being reduced like it is, a single death is equal to thousands. So, the way I see it, every single time I kill one of those useless shit bags, I am actually killing thousands of the bastards.
My actual number of official kills is eighty-nine. Five escaped, and eleven I never found. I am currently hunting number ninety. He won’t escape. I know this because I am sitting on a log, writing this journal entry while he sits five feet away, staked to the ground. His name does not matter, and I will not let him become some sort of legend by writing it here.
Words are power. They last for all time. Whether you write them or say them, once they are out there, they live for eternity.
I actually found this journal in his backpack. It belonged to a girl named Suzi McFarlane. Most of her pages had been torn out. I don’t know why, I didn’t ask. I have no idea what became of the poor girl that used to write in this book, all I do know for certain is that this guy will never do anything to anybody again.
So…why have I appointed myself the judge, jury, and executioner of these scum bags? Simple. I was a dad before the zombies came. And it wasn’t zombies that took my precious little girl away from me. Death by zombie would have been a kind mercy compared to the fate my angel suffered at the hands of Ward Thomas Wilson.
Sorry…I had to stop writing for a minute. I spent a while kicking some garbage around. I am sure you get my meaning. Then I had a good cry. Not enough years will pass that I won’t randomly break out into tears over losing my baby girl.
You might be wondering why I would use Ward Thomas Wilson’s name, and not the name of that piece of crap that is sobbing just a few feet from me as I write this entry. Easy, Ward Thomas Wilson is a name that belongs in history. He put me into motion as the man I am today. He launched me on this quest that has no apparent ending. It is Ward Thomas Wilson that has helped bring the painful deaths I have handed out to the eighty-nine souls that now burn beside him in Hell.
Entry Two—
And now there are ninety.
He cried. Actually, he cried more than most. When I told him that he had to tell me every single thing that he did to that poor boy, he thought that I was joking. When I applied that cord to his scrotum and pulled it tight, he figured out that I was entirely serious.
I always make them spill the details, because I want to make them admit to the sick shit they have done. Most of them start crying when I ask them to tell me what they might think if I were to do those things to them. The main reason I want them to say all their crimes out loud is because I like to watch their eyes. Those are the window to the soul.
His eyes were full of guilt. That is why I took them before he died. He might have continued crying…hard to tell with all the blood.
3
Geek Surprise
“I’m so sorry, Kevin,” Catie said with a sigh and the warning of tears in her voice. She leaned on him and rested her head on his shoulder.
Kevin did not know what he felt as he stood at the edge of a clearing that was being reclaimed by nature. He leaned on his walking stick and felt the months he and Catie had spent on the road sort of sink into him.
The journey had not been one that he took with any real hope; however, it was still a soul crushing experience to see what he accepted as evidence that his mother and sister had not survived.
“I want to go look inside.” Kevin started forward, but Catie grabbed his arm.
“Darling, I know this is something you needed to do, but do you really think you want to see what is in there?”
Kevin turned to Catie and brushed a lock of her hair from her face. She had that look in her eyes that he knew so well. It was a look of fierce protection. While he was certainly able to fend for himself, Catie had been at his back more times than he could remember over the years.
The two of them had never intended for their relationship to blossom into what it had become—into what it was today. The funny thing was that he had Aleah to thank for the whole thing. He shook his head to clear it. Now was not the time for daydreaming.
“I need to go in there for my own peace and closure.” Kevin unshouldered his backpack, placed it on the ground beside Catie’s, and started forward, not bothering to look back. He knew without a doubt that Catie would be there at his side.
Reaching the dilapidated cabin, Kevin gave the door a nudge. Not surprisingly, it fell over with a loud clatter. Stepping over it, Kevin entered what had been his family’s vacation retreat. He had actually hated the place. As a teen, Kevin had been much more comfortable at his desk staring into his computer screen versus out in the wilderness doing things like fishing, splitting wood, and paddling a canoe on the lake just over the next ridge.
The inside was a shambles. It was thick with spider webs and something furry scuttled away and into the shadows in response to his sudden arrival. Still, even with the toll of time, it was clear that things had gone poorly for his mother and sister. One of the windows was gone, which, considering the amount of time that had passed, could be attributed to anything. However, the dark stain that was easily seen on the sill indicated otherwise.
Of course, there were even more obvious signs. At least five bodies had been picked clean, the bones scattered about. He could not tell if any might be his mother or sister. The skulls all had the typical trauma one would expect. One had a nasty split made by an axe most likely. Three had holes made by a small caliber weapon, and one had been decimated with little left besides the lower jaw. That one might have been his mother.
Kevin took in what he could and made an assumption. He knew that it was absolute fantasy to think he had the ability to reconstruct the events that had happened here over a decade ago, but he needed to do it in order to close the book.
In his mind, the zombies had come. His mother had done all she could once she accepted that they were what he had tried to tell her they were. It was just not enough. When they had broken in, she fought until she only had a single bullet in the pistol and one shell in the shotgun. After taking care of his sister, she had used the shotgun to end her own life to avoid becoming one of the walking dead.
“So this was your family’s cabin?” Catie remained on the small porch, her eyes scanning the area, always alert. “I bet you hated it,” Catie laughed, trying to lighten the mood.
“With a passion.”
Kevin backed out of the doorway and turned to look at what had been his first proof that his mother and sister made it here. His mother’s car was slowly becoming part of the landscape as vines and moss practically obscured it from view.
“What now?” Catie called as Kevin poked around in the lump that had once been a car.
“I guess we go back?”
“So you are okay?”
Kevin seemed to think about it for a few moments before nodding his head. “I didn’t expect to find them alive. Now I won’t have to wonder anymore.”
“I am sorry, Kevin.” Catie walked over and wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her head against his back.
“Seems kinda silly now,” Kevin finally said as the sounds of some distant thunder rolled through the foothills.
“Why?” Catie gripped Kevin’s arms and spun him to face her. “You have carried this burden for so long, and now you at least know—”
“That I sent them to their deaths?”
Catie had been prepared for this part of the argument. She knew that it would be his initial reaction to try and take the blame.
“You could not save the world, Kevin. But look at how many people that you have saved? And those people are having babies…living the best life they can in this new world. Most of them would not have made it without you.”
“But�
�” Kevin began, only to be silenced by Catie’s finger on his lips.
“We move on and vow to try and do better,” Catie parroted one of Kevin’s many mantras back to him.
“So, do we head back?”
Catie had been ready for that question as well. While it was true that Aleah had been the one largely responsible for her and Kevin becoming a couple, she was not blind. She saw the looks that passed between the two when they met. And in a walled town with a population of less than two thousand, it was almost impossible for them not to cross paths daily.
“I was thinking we could try something new. You have done all you can back home. Maybe it is time that some other people benefitted from that amazing mind of yours.” Catie made it a point to wriggle up against him as she spoke.
She knew every one of Kevin’s weaknesses, and she was not above using them all in this instance. She wanted the two of them to start a real life together. One without Aleah’s shadow cast over them.
Just as she predicted, she could feel his body react to hers. He looked down into her eyes and gazed into them with love. It was more than she ever dreamed could be possible. Hell, at one point, her luck with men had been so obviously bad, she had considered switching to women.
Kevin’s hands moved down her sides and around to cup her buttocks. She threw her head back as he kissed down the side of her neck, pausing to nip playfully on her earlobe before working his way down. A soft moan escaped her lips as his teeth scraped along her collar bone.
***
“That little village we passed the day before yesterday looked kind of nice,” Catie said, staring up at the dark storm clouds that threatened rain any moment.
“I guess we can take a look,” Kevin agreed. “But we best get out of the open and set up camp before this storm hits. It looks like it will be a nasty one.”