by TW Brown
“I need to talk to my people, but I think this could be good for all of us.”
During our brief encounter and the introductions, I’d been able to scan the rest of the faces of his group. There were almost as many women as men. And while I’d met plenty of women who were not very pleasant, I had to at least try and hold onto a shred of my hope in humanity. If this group was co-ed, then I had to hope that they would be a good choice in allies.
I made my way over to Marshawn. I could hear Tracy and Alex fall in as we all gathered together in a group.
“Should we talk to Darya and Maggie?” I asked once everybody gathered in close. I glanced down and noticed that Michael didn’t appear to be paying attention which didn’t strike me as unusual at all.
“Umm…where’s Todd?” Marshawn asked, ignoring my question.
In all the activity, he’d already slipped from my thoughts. In my mind, I guess I saw him as already dead. What did that say about me and what I was becoming?
“He got infected,” Alex answered.
I noticed that she hadn’t made any effort to explain how. I guess she was leaving that for me.
“Jesus,” the man breathed.
I wasn’t sure if his reaction was due to her matter-of-fact tone about the loss of one of our people, or if it was in sympathy to Maggie…and, of course, Todd. Looking at the sadness in his eyes, I was going to go with the latter.
I felt Michael squeeze my hand and I squeezed his back. “So, what do we do? Do we bring these people in? Do we wait and have this conversation with Maggie and Darya?” I pressed the issue as I shot a glance over at the other group that were now watching us with open curiosity.
“I think they will go with whatever,” Marshawn said. “Maggie will probably be more focused on just having lost her brother.”
“Yeah…about that,” I started. Michael was squeezing my hand tighter now.
I glanced down and noticed he was staring past Tracy. I could tell he wasn’t just avoiding eye contact. He was looking at something. Just as I tried to get a look myself, Chewie stood up and took two very deliberate steps that placed her almost directly in front of the boy.
“What the hell, Evan?” Tracy had looked over her shoulder, did a double-take, and then spun back to face me. “You didn’t put him down?”
Coming up the road was Todd. It was clear from his slow, awkward steps that he was no longer one of the living. He was passing under a tight cluster of branches, so he was heavily shrouded in shadows, but I already knew.
The group gathered around the van all craned their necks to see what it was that had our interest. Right away, a couple of them started over to intercept the approaching zombie.
“Stop!” I shouted. My voice might’ve sounded a bit harsh, but I’d had to really force that word out through the pinhole that my throat had become. “He was one of ours. I got him.”
Pulling my machete, I approached the zombie that had once been Todd Burns. His eyes locked on me and his mouth opened in a moan as his hands came up, reaching for me.
His eyes were filmed over, but his face, despite its deathly pallor, still showed that he’d been crying. That made it all the more gut-wrenching as I stopped and allowed him to close the last few yards before I grabbed his shoulder to pull him forward while I plunged my knife into his eye socket.
12
Anger and Flashbacks
“You sonovabitch!” Maggie shrieked, hurling herself at me, almost managing to break free from Alex’s hold on her.
“I really am sorry,” I said sincerely as I took a reflexive step back when the girl tried to take another swing at me.
“You let him die. You insisted that he come when you knew he wasn’t ready. I should’ve been the one out there. I could’ve taken care of myself.”
“Your brother did it to himself!” Alex snapped as she jerked the younger girl around, holding her firmly by the upper arms and giving her a fierce shake. “He wouldn’t listen…he did what he wanted and not what he was being told to do.”
“He was just a kid!” Maggie insisted.
“What? A year younger than you?” Alex retorted. “I got news for ya… you’re both just kids. If he couldn’t follow simple directions, how long do you really think he would’ve lasted? He shot Marshawn, remember? And from what I heard when you ripped him a new one, he wasn’t supposed to do that. He was going to get all of us killed. The fact that the only person who died was him is lucky on our part.”
“Fuck you!” Maggie spat, throwing her head forward as if to head-butt Alex.
“He chopped a cat in half just because!” I said, doing my best not to totally lose my temper at this point.
That had been another thing I’d noticed in the zombie fiction that had been so popular until it became real. There seemed to be a mandatory rule that a kid had to be constantly causing trouble. Not listening. Thinking they knew better. You know…basically being a teenager. Only, in this environment, it was literally life-and death when they acted out. He’d certainly been doing his best to live up to that stereotype and it cost him his life. Now, it seemed that his sister was going to try and not only defend his actions, but blame me specifically for his death.
“Did we come at a bad time?” Drew asked quietly.
I glanced over and saw a variety of expressions on the faces of the people who were supposed to be our new additions. They ranged from embarrassed to apathetic. This was certainly not much of a welcome mat; nor was it any way to convince these people that they were joining with the right group.
“The way I see it, you have two choices,” I said, facing Maggie after I gave a quick shake of my head to Drew. “You can calm down and understand that we didn’t do anything to intentionally endanger your brother, or you can go.”
I hated how those words felt as they fell from my mouth. I knew damn good and well I sounded a bit like a dick. I remembered back to that time Carl had basically said that having Selina and Michael were nothing more than a liability. I’d had some pretty nasty thoughts about him. The problem was, there were times when I’d realized that there was truth in his words. Not that I would even consider abandoning Michael at this point, but at least I was starting to understand his sentiment.
“Who do you think you are to tell me that I would have to leave.” Maggie strained against Alex’s grip as she spat verbal venom my direction. “My brother and I were here first.”
“Then go back into the woods where you were hiding when we arrived,” Alex said in a whisper as she leaned forward, her mouth almost brushing Maggie’s ear. “See how long you survive.”
This was getting out of hand. I needed to stop things before it cost another person their life. Besides, I believed very strongly that we would need every single person we could scrounge up if we were going to stand a chance. It might seem neat to be some sort of loner with nobody to be responsible for, but in this new world, there was safety in numbers…pure and simple.
“Can I say something?” Drew stepped forward and a few of his people glanced at him with concerned expressions etched clearly on their faces.
I gave him a nod after looking around at my own people and seeing no reaction at all. I didn’t see how he could make things worse.
“How are we not talking more about the fact that it seems this kid was infected by a cat?” Drew looked around at us all, his face an open expression of confusion and wonder. “You did say that was his only injury, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded to Alex, indicating she could let go of Maggie.
The girl jerked her arms free and then took a step my direction. “I want to see him.”
“I’ll take her,” Marshawn offered.
The two walked out of our camp and I turned back to Drew. “We can’t actually be certain that he was infected by a cat’s scratch.”
“Duh-nuh-duhnt-duhnt-duh-nuh…” One man began doing a poor impersonation of a guitar with his mouth, but I knew what song he was trying to convey and I thought it was in bad taste
at the moment considering the circumstances.
“Can it, Marty,” Drew snapped.
I glanced at the man who’d just been scolded. He looked to be maybe in his forties or fifties. He had a green stocking cap with an ugly orange stripe around the base, but greasy locks of gray hair jutted from beneath. The man’s face had the deep crevices of a lifetime smoker and his eyes, while blue in color, had a dull appearance. I guessed him to be just a shade under six feet, and maybe a hundred and sixty pounds.
“Cat Scratch Fever, man…get it?” the man said with a scowl that revealed teeth that were almost brown.
“Yeah, clever, but now is not the time,” Drew said with a tone that made me believe he’d had to hold conversations like this with the man on numerous occasions.
I saw more than a couple of eye rolls from others in the group. I also noticed that the man was standing just apart from everybody else. It was subtle, but now that I was really looking, it seemed apparent.
“Look, I know that whole scene looked bad,” I started, trying to get things back on track in regard to these people joining up with us, “but in all fairness, she did just lose her brother.”
“No, I get it.” Drew made a wave with one hand as if to dismiss the whole thing. “But can I ask what I might be missing. Did I hear that her brother shot that one fella?”
“When we first arrived,” I said. “Fortunately, the bullet passed straight through. Marshawn is healing up fine.”
“Wow,” Drew gasped. “You guys are sure taking that in stride. I don’t think I would’ve been as cool with it. And passed straight through? Am I missing something? Seriously…the dude was shot. The fact that the bullet went all the way through him doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to just be…okay with it.”
“It’s complicated. The situation and all when we—” I found myself starting to explain.
“Hey, whatever, man,” Drew said, again waving me off. “It ain’t like shit is normal these days. You don’t owe us a damn thing.”
I found myself liking this guy. While others might’ve seen his attitude as ambivalent, I saw it as…accommodating. He wasn’t jumping on random bits of information and casting judgement.
“I still say we need to keep an eye on her,” Alex muttered. “If she stays, she might just be biding her time until she finds an opportunity to do something terrible.”
I had to admit, I’d been having those exact same thoughts. After all, how many times had I seen that exact situation play out in a show?
“She just lost her brother, for crying out loud.” Darya stomped into the middle of the group, hands on hips, and anger casting death rays from her eyes.
“Yeah…find me somebody who hasn’t lost a friend or family member.” Alex spun on the woman. “Does that mean we need to start watching you? After all, didn’t you just lose your kid? And if memory serves me, weren’t you trying to blame Evan, too?”
“Can we not do this now?” I stepped between the women.
“Wow, sounds like our camp every night,” Drew said with a chuckle in his voice.
“I was just gonna say the same thing,” a woman quipped. She turned to the others in the group, her gaze seeming to pass right over the man who’d made the “Cat Scratch Fever” reference. “See how stupid we sound?”
She stood there for a moment and then spun to face me. Her face was beet red. She opened and shut her mouth a few times before she could manage to stammer, “I-I-I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just meaning—”
“I get it,” I said with a smile that I hope she read as sincere. “But back to the main issue, we would like to welcome you to our little encampment if you’ll stay. I honestly believe that this location is a good choice. Also, from what we saw, coming through the town of Estacada, which is just up the road and down the hill, they are holding out pretty decently in all this. They could be a buffer for things coming from that direction.”
“I think we’d like that.” Drew looked around at his people as if to get a consensus vote of approval.
I watched as one person after the next gave a short, curt nod. And just that fast, we’d bolstered our numbers to near twenty. That meant more people to divide the watch duty with, more people to hunt, fish, and build.
It also meant more people to be responsible for. Supplies were already stretched thin. We needed to make a serious run. Perhaps that van would come in handy.
I looked around at the camp and realized that Alex was nowhere to be seen. If she’d have gone after Maggie for whatever reason, she would’ve had to walk past us all. That meant she had to have headed into the woods in the direction of the river.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to the group as I headed in the only direction I believed that she could’ve gone without me noticing.
Sure enough, I hadn’t gone far when I spotted her sitting on a rock by the bank of the Clackamas River. She was staring out at the water and made no acknowledgment of my arrival when I reached her.
I stood there for a while as I waited for her to say something. I was uncertain as to what had set her off like this. Again, I didn’t know her well, but this behavior seemed out of character.
“I had to kill my own mom,” Alex finally spoke, breaking the silence that existed except for the almost hypnotic and soothing noises of the flowing water.
I didn’t think she was wanting any input at this point, so I kept my mouth shut and waited. She slid off the giant stone, picked up a flat rock, and threw it side-arm so that it skipped a few times across the water’s surface before vanishing into the depths that looked black under the overcast sky.
I waited for her to reveal to me whatever it was that was weighing so heavily upon her. In my fairly limited experience, I’d discovered that speaking is the last thing a woman wants from a guy if she is going to share something.
“We’d been totally on our own for about three days by now…”
***
“…the last group to go looking for supplies had never come back. I had no idea if they were killed, or just decided to bail on my mom and me.”
Alex wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and knelt beside the river. She dipped her gloved hand in it and then began tracing patterns on the surface of a large flat stone as she continued.
“By now, my mom was so sick. She could hardly sit up she was so weak. I had to do everything for her, and her hand looked horrible…and smelled worse. I’d gone from house to house in the neighborhood to try and find leftover antibiotics, but nothing seemed to work.
“I tried all kinds of creams and sprays. I scrubbed at the wound, but she wasn’t getting any better. I knew there was nothing else I could do besides make a run at that medical center.
“When I got there, I knew somebody had been here because of all the dead zombies. Inside, it was even more obvious. What really made my day was that somebody had already busted into the pharmacy. That saved me a lot of time and trouble.
“I headed back after finding several bottles of penicillin just sitting on a counter. It looked like somebody had grabbed them, then forgot them.
“As soon as I had what I came for, I took off. It was when I was headed home that I heard all the commotion. I saw you as it turns out, trying to get away from a few zombies or something. I had a clean shot on the leader and just did what I hoped somebody would do for me if I was in a tough situation.” Alex glanced up at me and gave a weak smile. “I was almost hoping that you were one of the folks that had gone for supplies, and that you were maybe coming back with the others. I know…silly, but I had a tough time believing that those people had just up and bailed.”
“You were a huge help that day. If not for you, I might’ve ended up having no choice but to just run and hope that the herd coming up the hill didn’t decide to swarm our location. I didn’t have the time to deal with the zombies because of that bastard, Brandon Cook,” I explained.
“Anyways, I got over the fence and hurried to the house I’d been hiding in with my m
om. Until she’d gotten so bad that she couldn’t walk, we were moving to a new spot every night just so that nobody would know where we were in case somebody was watching the place.
“We’d heard a few break-ins, and since I was all alone and had to sleep some time, I just felt it was the best way to go. Plus, there were still quite a few zombies wandering around inside the walls. I didn’t want them to trap us in any one spot.”
“Why didn’t you and the others you were with just empty the place out?” I asked what I thought was a smart question.
“That was because of some of the people who’d been in our original group. This one idiot convinced everybody else that they would help keep up the appearance that nobody was staying here. He said that there weren’t so many that we couldn’t take them down if we had to,” Alex explained.
“That’s a stupid leap of logic,” I sniffed.
“Yeah, and I wanted to take them down, but with my mom sick and needing me, plus the fact that I was by myself, I couldn’t do it. Not all alone.” Alex stood and moved into a lone ray of sun that had found its way through a broken patch of the overhanging clouds.
“I got to the house and gave my mom the penicillin that I’d found. Within minutes, she started getting violently ill. She turned all red, and started puking her guts out. I had to figure that she was allergic. I had found some ipecac in this same house’s medicine cabinet. I figured it was because they had four kids judging by the picture hanging in the living room. I ran and grabbed it, making my mom drink some just to be certain that she heaved up all the penicillin.
“For the next couple of days, I gave her lots of fluids. I found a case of Ramen noodles and used the flavor packets in water to make a broth she could drink. I thought she was getting better. She was still too sick to move, which is why I went next door to raid the pantry. I had a big suitcase with wheels to transport the food.