His Name Was Zach

by Peter Martuneac

  “Is she okay?” Amber asked when Zach closed the door.

  “She’s fine. She just had a scare. She thought she saw Henry.”

  “Oh, God. That poor thing.”

  “Yeah. She’s been in the kind of shit no one should ever have to face, but she’s a good kid. She’ll be back to her old self in no time.”

  He and Amber talked for about a half hour longer. They once again discussed their feelings for each other and where they thought their relationship should be going. In the end, they decided to just play it by ear and let come what may.

  Zach was opening up the door to his apartment after he had left Amber alone when suddenly he was struck in the chest by something small and hard. “OW!” he said, putting his hand on the spot where he was hit.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Abby cried, rushing forward from the far corner of the living room. She had been shooting rocks out of her slingshot at her backpack which she had hung from the coat hanger attached to the door. She was practicing from different angles and distances and was focusing intently on her aim, trying to hit specific parts of her backpack, so she had not noticed Zach opening the door until it was too late.

  “Bug, what…what are you doing?” Zach demanded, still rubbing his chest.

  “Uh, practicing with this,” Abby said, holding up her slingshot innocently and smiling awkwardly at Zach with a look that was half apologetic but half amused.

  “Inside? Are you kidding me?”

  “I know, I know! Stupid idea. But I didn’t break anything!” Abby offered in her defense.

  “Darn near broke my collarbone though.”

  “Oh come on, don’t be a baby.”

  “Don’t be a baby?! Let me shoot you with that thing then, tough girl! Then we’ll be even,” Zach said with a laugh.

  “No way, fat chance!” Abby protested, putting the slingshot behind her back.

  “Come on, I’ve never even tried it and I made the darn thing,” Zach insisted, reaching for her slingshot.

  “No, get away from me!” Abby laughed. She turned and took a step back into the living room but Zach grabbed her in a bear hug, trying to wrench the slingshot out of her hand. But Abby squirmed away and hit Zach with an elbow in the ribs as she turned around. This quickly dissolved into a sparring match between the two in which Zach took the opportunity to teach Abby some fighting techniques, including how to put someone in an arm bar once you had gotten on top of them.

  Abby was becoming tough to beat, Zach noticed. She was strong for a teenage girl and knew more about fighting than most amateur fighters. She was quick and agile, making it hard to get a hold of her. He remembered her telling him about how she had choked out the guard back at the Air Force base, and he almost fell prey to that himself. Finally, after several minutes of fighting, both of them collapsed onto their backs. They were still chuckling as they tried to regain their breath.

  “Truce?” Abby said.

  “Truce,” Zach replied, rolling over to his side. As he started to stand up, he saw the stone that Abby had hit him with lying on the ground near him. He picked this up, set it between his thumb and forefinger, and flicked it at Abby, striking her in her side.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed, sitting up and turning around to face Zach. “You broke the truce, you butt!”

  “Yeah, but NOW we’re even,” Zach replied with his characteristic half smile; Abby stuck her tongue out at him in reply. He went back to his room to change his shirt but came back out a moment later holding the picture of his wife. “Did you move my picture, Abby?” he asked.

  “Oh. Uh, yeah, I did. I just wanted to look at it for a second. You’re not mad, are you?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that I left it on the right side of my dresser and I found it on the left,” he answered.

  “Oh, speaking of pictures!” Abby said as she jumped up and ran back to her room. She reappeared quickly and was holding something behind her back. “I can’t believe I forgot about this. I had this done yesterday. Look!”

  She handed Zach a beautiful wooden picture frame, and inside it was the photo of her and Zach that they’d taken on their first day in Little America.

  “Aw, this is wonderful!” Zach said, smiling as he looked at the picture. He then set the frame down on the coffee table, turning it so that it faced the door.

  They spent the rest of their day together, but later ate dinner with Al and Amber. They both went to bed relatively early that night as they usually did when they had work and school in the morning. As promised, Zach let Abby sleep in bed with him. She was expecting to have nightmares, or to not be able to sleep at all, but being so close to Zach and knowing that he would protect her allowed her to sleep restfully through the night.

  The next day, at around two o’clock in the afternoon, Zach received a summons to the Mayor’s office for an ‘urgent meeting’. He left the last hour of training to his assistants and quickly made his way over to the Town Hall. When he arrived in Mayor Calvin’s office soaked in sweat, he tried to apologize for his appearance but the Mayor just waved it off and asked Zach to sit.

  As Calvin sat back down behind his desk, he loosened his plain red tie a bit and undid the top button of his dress shirt. “I assume you know why I called you here, so I’ll cut right to the chase,” he said. “I talked with Henry yesterday right after you left. I told him what you told me and demanded an explanation. I spoke aggressively to put him on the defensive, hoping he’d slip. And he did. He kept contradicting himself throughout his story, and I called him on his crap.”

  Zach listened with rapt interest, hoping his poker face was as good as Abby’s. Calvin was lying. He obviously did not want anyone to know about his relation to Henry, something that he had probably been keeping a secret for a very long time out of shame. Zach wondered if he should confront the Mayor about his relation to Henry but was unsure how Calvin would react to his admitting that he had eavesdropped on him. He decided to just make this his secret.

  “So I exiled him, Zach. I did this because I believe you and Abby, and I want him to pay for what he did. But a formal trial would have been disastrous without evidence. So, regrettably, I played the role of dictator. I gave him until last night to leave on his own free will, so he did. The gate guards last night reported that he left the north gate with a large pack, and I’ve instructed the Town Guard to arrest him on sight.”

  “Yes, I heard them talking about that. So Henry is gone now? For good?”

  Calvin smiled, made the ‘peace’ sign with his hands, and said, “Gone like the sixties, man. He will never return. You and your daughter are safe.”

  Zach breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thank you for believing us, sir.”

  “Well, it was hard to believe at first. I just couldn’t imagine my own n- excuse me, one of my own citizens doing such a horrible thing. But between you and me…” Calvin motioned for Zach to lean forward as he did the same, and then whispered, “I’d heard about this Henry fellow a long time ago. He was a councilman in my town and was accused of molesting a teenage girl not much older than Abby. In the end, he was acquitted because of a lack of evidence, but the whole thing was very suspicious.”

  Knowing the whole story, Zach decided to push the Mayor a bit. “Suspicious? You mean that someone tampered with the evidence?” He watched Calvin, looking for signs of guilt or discomfort. The Mayor was apparently well practiced at hiding his guilt, but Zach still noticed him shift in his seat, leaning back to put a bit of distance between himself and Zach.

  “That’s what some people said. I don’t know why anyone would help a monster like Henry though. As far as I’m concerned, whoever did…he’s just as guilty.”

  “Well, Henry is paying the piper now. You’re the one who executed justice on him, so I guess that makes up for whoever let him off the hook the last time,” Zach said, wanting to soothe the Mayor’s conscience a bit. “Thank you again, I really can’t tell you how much this means to Abby and I.”

/>   “Think nothing of it, Zach. We’re happy to have you two here in our town. Diane tells me that Abby is already very popular at school and that she’s on the dance team. And speaking of Abby,” Calvin said as he checked his watch, “I suppose you want to go see her at school. I believe they’ll be done for the day in about thirty minutes.”

  “I do, yes,” Zach said as he stood up and shook the Mayor’s hand, noting that Calvin’s palm was sweaty. He then left the Town Hall and headed home to shower and change into fresh clothes before going to Abby’s school. It was Monday, so she had dance practice immediately after school, but he figured he would have time to talk with her. He arrived just as the students had been released for the day, and he saw them streaming out of the front doors. He made his way inside the building and headed for the classrooms.

  He spotted Abby about halfway down the main hallway, leaning against the wall and talking to a boy standing next to her. “She said his name is Luke,” Zach thought, remembering the boy’s face. Abby was smiling as she spoke to him, and Zach wondered if she liked the boy a bit more than she told him.

  “Hey Bug,” Zach said as he walked up next to Abby.

  “Hey Zach!” Abby said. “Did you forget that I have dance today?”

  “No, but I’d like to talk to you in private for a second.”

  “Okay. See you in a minute, Luke,” Abby said as she and Zach walked over to a deserted corner of the hall.

  “So…this Luke guy,” Zach said with a casual grin.

  Abby blushed a bit and said, “We’re just friends, Zach. We have a lot in common. He and I are the two captains for the dance team, you know.”

  “Yeah, I remember you mentioned that. Well, as long as he’s nice to you and treats you as well as you deserve, I don’t mind if you two like each other.”

  Abby could feel her face turning very red, and so quickly said, “So what do we need to talk about?”

  “I talked to Mayor Calvin just now. Henry is gone. He left last night with a big pack of supplies and the Town Guard received orders to arrest him on sight.”

  Abby’s smile took up half her face and her eyes lit up. “Then it’s over. We can finally stop worrying,” she said.

  “It sure is,” Zach said. “Well, I’ll let you get to your practice now. Have fun with Luke,” he said, teasing her. Abby smiled as she blushed again and hit Zach in the arm playfully, and then she turned to head towards the girls’ bathroom so she could change her clothes. For the rest of the day, she could not stop smiling. Finally, that long and terrible chapter of her life had been closed. Henry was gone, and she was ready to move on with her life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A few weeks later, on Thursday the twenty-seventh of August, Zach received another summons to see Mayor Calvin. He had just gotten home from work and was waiting for Abby’s dance practice to be over when the message came, so he quickly showered and changed before heading off to the Town Hall. When he arrived in the Mayor’s office, Calvin was sitting behind his desk, furiously scrawling out some kind of message on a sheet of paper.

  “Zach, thank you for coming over so quickly,” the Mayor said.

  “Of course. What’s the issue, sir?” Zach asked.

  As Calvin spoke, he slowly undid his yellow tie and then tossed it on his desk, looking disgusted. “Less than an hour ago, our HAM radio operators picked up a distress call. Apparently, there exists a small settlement to the east of us that we were unaware of. And just this morning, this settlement was overrun by zombies. According to the man who sent out the distress call, they numbered in the hundreds.”

  “Good God,” Zach muttered. He could only imagine how terrifying such a large group of those things would be.

  “The people in the settlement actually destroyed the horde, but they survived by the skin of their teeth. Only eight people are still alive, three of them children, and their stores of food and water are almost completely empty. Some panicked fool accidentally started a fire when the zombies attacked. So I offered to send a search and rescue party out to these people with the objective of bringing them back here safely.”

  “And you want me in that party?”

  “I want you leading the party. You’re one of the most competent men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing, Zach, and I need someone I can trust to lead this expedition.”

  Zach thought for a second and then said, “How many people are you sending?”

  “How many do you think you’ll need?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Very well, you’ll get your fourteen.”

  “How far away is this place?”

  The Mayor opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a folded-up map. He spread it out on his desk, revealing it to be a map of the United States of America. On it, there was a curving red line. It started up in northwestern Montana, curved south-east to around the eastern borders of Wyoming and Colorado, then curved back west, ending on the border of Arizona and New Mexico. On the left side of this line was written ‘SAFE ZONE’, and ‘THE WILD’ was written on the right. There were several blue dots, about nine or ten, scattered over the Wild, each representing a known settlement.

  “This is us,” Calvin said, pointing at one of the blue dots. He then moved his finger to the right and tapped a second blue dot. “This is the settlement that you’re gonna be going to. It’s about a hundred miles to the east.”

  Zach winced noticeably. That was a long way to go, but somebody had to do it. “So when are we leaving?” he asked.

  “At dawn. I’ll be informing the fourteen men going with you immediately, so you don’t have to worry about that. Be outside the Town Hall at 0500 tomorrow with a pack to carry supplies in and whatever weapons and personal supplies you think you might need, but try to travel light.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Thank you for doing this, Zach,” the Mayor said as he rose and shook Zach’s hand. “I don’t want to send you back out into the Wild so soon after having come to us, but I’ll feel a lot better knowing that you’re in charge of the expedition.”

  “I understand, sir,” Zach said as he turned to leave. He did not want to go on this journey either, but it was clear that Calvin put a lot of faith in him, and he did not want to let the Mayor down. He left the Town Hall, but instead of going home he first went towards the medical center where Amber worked. It was only a minute’s walk from the Town Hall, and he entered the single glass door to find the small building mostly empty.

  The medical center was nothing more than a converted outlet store with hospital beds, curtains drawn around them, chairs and couches, and several supply closets. Amber was on duty right now with one other woman who looked to be about her age and an older man.

  “Hi Zach! Need something?” Amber asked when Zach stepped into the main room.

  “I just wanted to talk to you outside for a minute, if that’s possible,” Zach answered.

  “Sure. We’re not really doing anything right now,” Amber said as she followed Zach out the door.

  “So what’s up?” she asked.

  “I had a meeting with the Mayor just now,” Zach said with a grim look, “and he wants me to lead a search and rescue party that’s going out into the Wild tomorrow.”

  Amber looked confused. “Search and rescue? What are you talking about?”

  “There’s another settlement not far to the east of here that was attacked and nearly destroyed by zombies this morning. There’s only eight survivors and the Mayor is sending me and fourteen others to escort them back here to safety.”

  Amber put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “But you just got here! Why does it have to be you going?”

  “Calvin wants me to lead this expedition. He says that he trusts me more than anyone else to get the job done right.”

  Amber shook her head again but said nothing. She stared off to the left, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. She did not want Zach to leave; if he left, he might never come back. This terrible thought took ro
ot in Amber’s mind before she could stop it and it showed her all kinds of terrible things. It showed her images of Zach lying on the ground, bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds, or Zach being overwhelmed by zombies, or Zach becoming lost out in the middle of nowhere, slowly starving to death.

  “Zach, I-” she started to say, but a sudden sob escaped her and she covered her mouth with her hand as a tear rolled down the gentle curve of her cheek. She wiped the tear away as her cheeks reddened in embarrassment of what she thought was a pitiful, unnecessary display of emotion.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Are you okay?” Zach asked looking concerned. He had figured that Amber would be upset, but he had not expected her to shed tears over his departure.

  “Yeah, I’m fine, just…just come back safely, okay?”

  Zach kissed her and said, “I will. This should only take a week, maybe ten days. So it won’t be too long.”

  “Have you told Abby yet?”

  “No, not yet. I came straight here from the Mayor’s office. And speaking of Abby-”

  “I’ll take care of her while you’re gone.”

  Zach smiled and said, “Thanks. You can let her stay in my apartment, she can generally handle herself, but just check in on her once or twice a day.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll see you tonight when you get off work, then.”

  “Okay.”

  Zach kissed Amber again and then left her to go home. The sun was starting to sink into the western horizon by the time he walked in through the door of his apartment. The days were definitely starting to get shorter, Zach noted.

  He returned to his apartment to find Abby lying on her stomach on the living room floor with her bare feet up in the air behind her, her ankles crossed. She was resting her chin in one hand and had a pen in the other as she stared down at a crossword in a book of puzzles that she had gotten from school.

  “Eight-letter word for ‘Rhodes’ Wonder’,” she said without looking up.