So it's been going on since the start, I thought. How many people know about it? Have they all known since the start? She's been making a fool of me, and everyone has been playing along!
“That's about enough of that,” I said in a steady voice, advancing on them. They both turned to me with shock and fear in their eyes. Felicity quickly pulled her hands free, a guilty look crossing her face.
“Xander! It's not what you...,” Jamie began.
“Save it,” I cut him off. “We're going to handle this like men from here on out. Men don't sneak around like cowards. They face each other head-on.”
“You're making a big mistake,” Felicity warned me.
“I took on a zombie army before,” I laughed. “I think I can handle your little boyfriend here.”
Jamie held his hands up to me, palms out.
“I'm not sure what you think is happening,” Jamie said, “but nothing is going on between your wife and me. We're just friends, man. We work together.”
I stepped forward and swung at his head with my fist. Jamie narrowly ducked under the swing. I heard Felicity scream.
“XANDER, NO!”
The anger is making you sloppy, I thought. Pull it together.
I pushed into Jamie with my right shoulder, setting him off balance. I could see his face close up, the fear and confusion hardening into hate.
Good, I thought darkly. Let's do this thing for real. It's no fun if you don't fight back.
Jamie balled up his fist and swung. I stepped past him, and he lurched forward. I brought my elbow down into his arm. He teetered off balance, pitching forward. I used my free hand to rabbit punch the back of his head, sending him face down into the dirt. He came up coughing with a mouthful of sand. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. A rush of dark pride washed through me, as I saw him lying helpless on the ground. The fight was already over, and it had barely started. I'd easily conquered him.
“Don't hurt him!” Felicity yelled, running forward to help Jamie.
The feeling of false pride began to flag and I felt a stitch of humiliation again, mixed with embarrassment at what I'd done. I didn't understand why it bothered me in the moment. I knew I was totally right to do what I'd done. Surely no one would question that!
“It's okay,” Jamie said, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He looked up at me as he spit out a handful of dust. “You win, tough guy. Hope that makes you feel better.” Jamie got up and walked off with his head held high. Felicity turned an evil glare on me. Without a word, she walked off in the opposite direction.
Winning has never felt so hollow and empty, I thought as I watched her walk away.
Chapter Four
I sat in our trailer oiling my blade for hours, replaying it all in my head.
I did the right thing, I thought. I stood up for my marriage and myself. So why do I feel so terrible?
The sun began to set, and Felicity still hadn't returned. I wasn't worried about her safety, far from it. Aside from the highly unusual events of that morning, the colony was probably the safest place I'd lived since the Z Day. The perimeters had drop boxes: metal cages hewn into the earth that you could jump into and swing shut behind you if you were being chased by a zom. They came with ration kits, water, and flares for signaling the others.
It's hard to say how many lives those drop boxes saved in the first few months before the three-stage entry was installed at the edges of the colony. The very first night Felicity and I arrived in Freedom Town there had been a scare – three adult biters had made it in past the barbed wire, in search of fresh meat near the south entrance. An alarm sounded and there was screaming and pandemonium, with people darting back and forth trying to figure out what to do. Many of the colony's women picked up small children and ran for the drop boxes, locking themselves in. The light from the flares drew in the undead, and the men made short work of them. The women refused to come out until the encampment was searched and cleared. The row of flares gave off a beautiful arc of raw pink color as they blended with the low-level morning fog. By the next morning, the camp was dead quiet again as the doors were swung open. The coast was clear. Not a single infected soul remained. The women emerged still clutching their children close to them.
We had such high hopes back then, I thought. This was going to be the start of a new life for us. We were so close then, so happy. What went wrong?
The next day at a colony-wide meeting we came up with the idea of creating battle stations: two story structures that could be quickly scaled by able-bodied humans, filled with arms and supplies. Zombies lack the coordination needed to climb. I'd heard stories about them making it up stairs, but they couldn't scale a fence. Instead, they gathered around walls and fences and used the force of their bodies to knock them over. Each battle station avoided that problem by digging a twenty-foot moat around the base, with swinging ropes hanging over the sides for living people to ferry themselves to safety. It would take a massive horde the size of several towns worth of people to fill the moat and allow the rest of the biters to gather at the base. As far as I knew, I was the only one who had ever seen hordes that size working together. I didn't bring it up during the meeting.
If that happens, I remember thinking, we are all done for. The only thing left to do will be to take out as many of them as we can. Only the people locked in the drop boxes will survive, and then only until their rations run out. At that point they'll become snack boxes for the hungry dead, sort of like Lunchables.
The original sketches resembled tree houses more than anything else, but the final product turned out to be much more like the flat frame of a suburban model house. Tanner, an amiable construction worker in his late twenties with a grizzly beard and a perma-grin, had been placed in charge of assembling them. He drew up a series of plans that spaced the stations evenly near the colony's boundary. That way they served not only the purpose of being a refuge to escape an attack, and a fully equipped battle station that allowed a person to survive up to three days with rations while raining down death, but also became a lookout for hordes or any other nefarious activities that seemed to flourish unbidden beyond the gates of our alluring settlement.
Tanner was a regular worker bee. A skilled taskmaster with an easy disposition, he whistled a merry tune while pitching in on every aspect of production. He could be seen in his colorful rainbow tie-dye, offering assistance and encouragement to all the volunteers. While many of Freedom Town’s patchwork quilt of residents were often dour and sullen, Tanner was rarely less than cheerful. At first I thought perhaps he had managed to escape tragedy before arriving in camp, but Felicity blew that theory out of the water one night after dinner.
“He lost everything,” Felicity said in between bites of jack rabbit stew. “He was doing construction in Nevada when it happened. He was the foreman of a huge crew that was building tract homes in some enormous new suburb outside Paradise Valley. He got a call before the phone lines went down, jumped right in his truck, and took off for his home in Sacramento. His sister and her husband had just had their first child. They were visiting him, and so were his parents. He came home to a gruesome site. His wife, his two sons, his entire family... all dead.”
“What!” I recoiled in horror as an unbidden shiver danced icily down my spine, making the hair on my arms stand straight up.
“The whole house was covered in blood and guts,” Felicity continued. “His parents had already turned. He had to put them down. Then he put a bullet in the heads of his wife and kids, you know, just to be sure.”
“That is…horrible,” I stammered. “I can't even imagine. As much as I miss them, there are days I am glad that my parents were both gone before all of this insanity started up. I'm not sure I would be able to kill them myself.”
“I know what you mean,” Felicity agreed, turning toward me in bed. “Xander, you have to promise me if I am ever bitten that you will make sure I'm not coming back, that you will be that strong.”
“I don't ev
en want to think about it,” I gasped.
“But that's the point,” she argued. “Whether you want to think about it or not, it might happen one day. That's what makes things so screwed up. I need to know you won't let me hurt other people, that you won't let me suffer.”
“I am not going to let anything happen to y…,” I countered, but she cut me off mid-sentence.
“I know you don't want anything to happen, but you can't control everything,” she insisted. “That's why I need your word.”
“If you are ever bitten by a zombie I will not stop until you have been turned back to normal,” I swore. “Just like I was. Or did you forget that there is a working cure out there?”
“But what if…,” she started in again, but I cut her off this time.
“No buts,” I said fiercely. “I'm not losing you, Felicity Jane Macnamara. Ever. You got that?”
She smiled and kissed me.
“Yes sir,” she cooed. We made out like the newlyweds we were, but I couldn't get the image of what Tanner went through out of my head. I'd see him around camp and wonder what terrible thoughts he harbored behind that passive smile.
Every survivor here has their own unique tale of how they’d made it this far, I reminded myself. Every one of them has seen or done terrible things to have made it this far. There are no exceptions. This we all have in common.
I had really wanted to talk to Felicity before I went out for the night on patrol. We'd never fought like this before. I wasn't sure what to expect.
Your marriage is over for sure, I thought. For all you know, she is with him right now. They're probably planning how they're going to tell you without provoking another incident.
I shook my head violently to clear my thoughts.
“Get focused,” I barked at myself. “You can't afford to be distracted, not tonight, not if you're going to survive.”
The mini pep talk worked for the moment, bringing me back to reality. I knew it was time to go. I got up and zipped up my jacket, heading out to the south gate at a brisk pace, hoping to avoid Felicity seeing me leave. I was worried she might try to follow me. I didn't want to have a fight in public. I was the highest-ranking soldier in Freedom Town. I couldn't allow anything to undermine my authority. The last thing I needed was the civilian population of the colony gossiping about me having trouble in my own marriage.
Too late for that, the little voice in the back of my head chided. Word is bound to have gotten around that I had attacked Jamie Friendly. Would they know why? Did everyone already know?
“That's worry enough for tomorrow,” I reminded myself as I passed out of Freedom Town and saluted the guard on duty.
“Stay safe,” he shouted down to me. “Watch your back.”
“You too,” I said, locking eyes with him. There was something else in his eyes. Was it about the fight, or what Andrew had done? Or was it something else altogether?
“Let's hope it's a quiet night,” I yelled back to him. “Keep your eyes peeled and don't fall asleep.”
He nodded, then looked away. I turned and walked head first and confident into the dark of night. Outside the walls of the sanctuary things took a sharp turn for the worse almost immediately. A movie set designer working on an apocalypse film could barely have dreamed up things so amazing and awful.
Spielberg couldn't have planned a better end of the world, I thought.
I zipped up my military jacket, covering most of my neck, but I still felt cold – like some kind of creeping dread was settling into my legs and turning them into frozen concrete.
Funny, I thought. Barstow is a desert, which makes you think it would be hot all the time. Instead, it's been mostly freezing ever since we got here. Unbearably hot at points true, but always in the middle of the day, then biting cold at night.
Thinking about the pun I'd just made caused me to let out a dry chuckle. Biting. Good one. The thought of my crawler dream with Sam made me involuntarily shiver, and then check my legs. They looked to be in perfect working order.
Keep it together man, I thought.
I knew better than anyone that all it took was a single moment of not being totally present, not being totally mindful, and you were a goner. That's what had happened to Andrew. That's why I was out doing night patrols, instead of working out my fight with Felicity and spending the night cuddled up with her someplace safe.
That may never happen again, I thought with sadness. Who would I be without her? What would be left to fight for?
I made a full pass along the south-facing wall of Freedom Town, then came back up along the westward facing fences and trenches. For the most part it was uneventful. There was nothing west of us for miles and miles, other than the base in Mojave. I could make out the thin lights at the edge of the desert horizon, but they seemed a million miles away. When trouble came they would be too far away to rely on. We'd be on our own and they'd be nothing more than backup if we were pinned down by a siege.
It's like they planned it this way, I thought, kicking over some loose rocks with the toe of my boot. It's like they wanted us to draw the heavy fire so they could swoop in fresh and prepared, and be our saviors when the time came.
Only it never happened. For the most part Freedom Town was an undiscovered oasis, a desert paradise in the middle of nowhere, like a mirage. We hadn't gotten a single visitor from Lancaster, Palmdale, or California City since I had been put in charge. Victorville was to the south, and further down was the edge of the Los Angeles basin.
They might as well be wastelands, I thought. Black holes that no light or life escaped from.
If people did make it north they stuck to the roads and went right past us. Once a group of survivalists from Rancho Cucamonga accidentally made it up to the gates of Freedom Town in a dust colored station wagon loaded down with supplies under a tarp strapped to the top. The back looked like it was crammed full of gas and water. They'd been running from someone or something, but wouldn't tell us what. Areas outside military control were lawless badlands where anything could happen. Rule of law was a long-forgotten fantasy. Outside, it was kill or be killed. I'd seen it firsthand before making it to Hueneme.
We'd offered to take them in, but all they wanted were directions toward Barstow. The only woman with them, a dowdy-looking redhead with freckled skin and a big cauliflower nose, glanced longingly at our camp. She looked bone tired. She whispered something in her man's ear that led to him asking about overnight lodging. When it was explained that we'd have to search the vehicle and take a rations tax if they stayed with us, as well as submit to a code of conduct, the man threw his head back to the sky and let out a hearty, sardonic chuckle. He looked like an out of season, demented shopping mall Santa.
“Never mind,” he said, waving his people back to their barely functioning vehicle. “It ain't worth it. There are things out here worse than you can imagine, kid, but none as terrible as having to sit through being lectured about rules by a child in a uniform. We’ll take our chances outside.”
That's what you think, I muttered to myself. Obviously you've never met the cannibal scavengers of Paradise City!
Their car made some crazy noises, loose belts whining and hard knocks visibly shaking the vehicle’s frame, before sputtering off toward Barstow. I never saw them again.
The real trouble always seemed to come from the east, from the direction of Barstow and the Alpha camps that lay in between. Barstow was completely under the control of the Unity Gang. It was made up of bikers and gang bangers who'd joined forces after Z Day to rain down terror and mayhem on those of us who managed to survive. They controlled most of Northern California and all the way down to Santa Barbara, where they were cut off by a rival biker gang called Sons of the Golden Dawn. The Sons blocked them from spreading south by cutting off the narrow corridor by the ocean that led to Ventura and Los Angeles. Unity Gang then fanned out, taking everything they could get from out East all the way to Vegas, where they coupled with the biggest known biker gang in the wo
rld at that point – the Warriors. Warriors and Unity Gang were two sides of a terrible coin. They were cut from the same cloth in every way – ruthless and cunning, they lacked morals and knew no mercy, not even for their own kind. They both dealt in drugs, child trafficking, zombie fighting, moonshine, extortion, mayhem, and murder for sport. They immediately loved one another like long lost kin.
The Alphas, on the other hand, were a wandering tribe of nomads living in and around the Barstow desert area. Mostly scavengers, they survived by attacking weaker convoys and hijacking travelers on the road. They were often referred to as Desert Hillbillies.
They ought to call themselves The Crazies, I thought with a smirk. Every last one of them is a raging psychopath who will turn on you at the drop of a hat!
Alphas were about as unpredictable a group of people as you'd ever meet. They didn't have a single leader telling them what to do. Instead each tribe did as it saw fit, and they met at random intervals in different locations for Tribal Council meetings, where the leaders of each group of scavengers often drank and fought with one another to settle old grudges. A soldier back on base at Edwards had told me about it right after Felicity and I had arrived. He'd been taken hostage by them the first week he'd been here, after shipping out from a working base in Colorado. He'd managed to escape, but was so shaken by what he'd seen, he was unable to speak about it for weeks. Lying in the dark one night, he whispered to me about how they lived like wild animals and were just as hostile. He said he never knew what they might to do him or when it was going to happen. When I asked him why he thought he was still alive, he didn't hesitate to explain.
“They were planning on eating me,” he said with a loud gulp. “They would have too if they didn't catch that kid instead. It was terrible. I heard them take him out screaming and wailing, and I never saw him again. I escaped later that night when they were drunk. One of the Alphas had partially untied me when they planned on taking me out back and butchering me. I bit at the rope until my gums bled, and managed to pull free.”
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