by James, Guy
There would likely be enough people crowding around it so he wouldn’t have to see the wares at her stall, but he was sure to see the townspeople and other traders popping the crawlies into their mouths, crunching, and chewing and having a grand time of it while he tried to keep the meager contents of his belly in place.
It is what it is, Alan thought, recalling the mantra that had been popular among lawyers before the outbreak, often called upon when faced with an insurmountable obstacle, of pre-outbreak proportions, that is, which often meant someone else getting the deal other than your company, or a point or two on your term sheet not passing muster with the other side.
Well, now it really fucking is what it is, he mouthed. Settling into his seat and finally growing calmer, he took in that he was now sitting in the most formal proceeding that post-outbreak life had to offer. And even though no one there was wearing a suit, that didn’t stop them from discussing matters of life and death, matters that touched and concerned their own lives, the lives of their few children, and the fleeting possibility of keeping the human species on the map for another decade.
35
As if taking a cue from Alan’s ‘It is what it is,’ self-talk, Tom started the meeting.
“I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about the bunkers,” Tom said.
There was a collective groan from the people seated in the nave. It was impressively well-timed, and that was unsurprising because they’d had plenty of practice.
“That’s all we ever talk about,” muttered Ridley Bevins, a fifty-something, former Division II basketball coach.
“Let Nell and Rad pick that back up at the next meeting,” said Jill Glinnor, from the back pew. She was in her late thirties, keen on Bevins—who was sitting next to her—and a former public relations specialist. In a more former, former, she’d been a high school cheerleader, and all things basketball and football had a way of loosening her up. She’d claimed Bevins for herself, and word was she was pregnant, what with all the bulk she’d been wearing lately, which wasn’t like her at all.
And pray to God that she is, was the general sentiment, because someone had to do it, and most of New Crozet was getting way past replicating age, and then what? What was the point of working so hard at making a future possible, if there would be no offspring to live in it and pass down the post-apocalyptic torch, the survivors’ legacy?
“We can all use a break from that talk,” she said, “and from them.”
Tom sighed. “We all know how Nell and Rad can be—they’ve got a lot of fire in their bellies—but they do have a point. Now might be the right time to talk about it, without them. I thought we could try to have a balanced discussion and see if there were resources we could shift around to actually working on it, to finishing, if there were resources who were willing to be shifted.”
“We do have to finish the bunkers, and then make them bigger,” Larry Knapp said, drawing out the words much too long. He would have shouted, but it was all he could manage right now to keep the words from jumbling into one another. “There ain’t enough room in what you people planned, even if we ever do finish building ’em. Everyone here’s got too happy. Too com…com…”
He was going for ‘complacent’ but settled on ‘comfortable.’ When he found it, the word spilled out of his mouth in a relief-infused slur.
“Comfortable. It’s gonna change again. The virus is gonna change and find a new way in and we’ll be left out in the cold.”
And damn well fucked, he thought, but he didn’t say it, because he didn’t want another talking-to from Tom about being polite at the town meetings. He’d had his fill of those already from that self-righteous prick.
Knapp grinned quite inappropriately and added, slowly and as if it were the last verse in a mocking rhyme, “And it’s gonna get us.”
Fuck, I didn’t want to say that, he thought. But it felt good. Damned good.
“What’s the point?” Molly Samuels, a forty-something, former secretary, said, her high-pitched voice making Alan’s ears prick up. “Of the bunkers or any of this talk? If the virus changes or the zombies get in and we have to hide in the bunkers, we’re done for at that point, we’re just waiting to run out of food and die. Forget the bunkers. We should grow more food and make more weapons so we can fight them off when they come. We’ve been hiding long enough. We’ve got to get ready to fight again.”
“Hiding is what’s keeping us alive,” Knapp retorted, giving a fresh coat of animus to the scowl he’d put on when Molly first spoke up. “We can’t fight them off. When it comes to strength and fighting they always win. They’re near invisi—invincible. We gotta figure out new ways to hide. We have to use our minds, overcome them with our int-a-leck.” He tapped on the side of his head with a finger. “int-a-leck.”
He was in better form than usual, slurring only some of his words, and even those only partially. He did have a thing for saying ‘int-a-leck,’ even though most of those who were even remotely close to him were pretty sure he knew that the word was ‘intellect.’
Larry Knapp was by no means a stupid man, his petty, callous, crude, and disagreeable nature notwithstanding.
“And we’re not even hiding, here,” he cried out, putting an unusual amount of emphasis on the last word. “We’re in plain damned sight the way I see it. They know where we are. But we don’t know where they are!” He thrust his finger up into the air as if he were skewering something with it. Feeling that he’d made his point, and quite literally having done so in jabbing his finger at the ceiling, he settled back into his chair to bask in triumph.
“It’s an interesting idea,” Corks said, scratching at an inflamed bite on the side of his face just under his sideburn while trying to keep the derision out of his tone, “which we’ve talked to death already. How much longer can we beat this dead horse? We don’t have the capacity to do it, Knapp, even if we moved people away from farming and got all the materials, and the space, remember the space.
“There isn’t even enough room for the facilities we’ve started on. Where would we dig the rest out? And what would the point be, anyway? We have to farm outside, above ground, regardless. We can’t live underground. People can’t, shouldn’t, live underground.”
Feeling like his ears were beginning to wilt on account of this talk, Alan shifted uncomfortably in his seat. But, let them talk and get it out of their systems, he thought.
That was largely what these meetings were for, anyway. Still, his demeanor slipped a little, and he groaned not inaudibly. Senna patted his hand and then squeezed it, as if to say, ‘There, there, only a few more minutes and then we get to go home and play.’
Virginia is for lovers indeed. They’d been proving right the old slogan, appropriately coined in 1969, ever since they’d met.
36
Knapp was chagrined, but not put off entirely. In fact, Corks’s words had reminded him of another point, which he’d forgotten to make earlier, inept as the workings of his mind seemed to be at the moment, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why the gears in his head were rusty in their turning.
“It’s not just the zombies,” Knapp said, stabbing his forefinger upward again as if to say this was the real coup de grâce, except that his finger wouldn’t say that because his mind didn’t know what that was, so he rotated his finger and thrust it farther upward, as if to make the point that he was replacing his previous argument with this one, and, in his mind, he was. He began to nod enthusiastically and look around the room for support. Some of the townspeople were now rolling their eyes, but a few were nodding in agreement.
“He’s right,” someone said.
“Yeah,” blurted another supporter.
Tom sighed inwardly.
“Right or not, let him speak his piece,” someone else said. “Fair is fair.”
Tom shrugged. “Of course, go ahead Knapp, but don’t take all day.”
Bolstered, Knapp got to his feet, tottering ever so slightly.
&n
bsp; “Like I was saying,” Knapp said, “it’s not just the zombies.” He raised a hand to his mouth and belched. “It’s also the others out there that we should be worrying our pretty, happy heads about. The others who want to get in here and…”
Looking around, he saw by the looks of the townspeople around him that some of them were enthralled by his sermon. This made him brave enough to rise up on his tippy toes and speak louder, and he even eased the mental clamps he was trying to hold on the slur of his tongue.
“Steal our children,” he said. The words seemed to have flown from his mouth too quickly and suddenly he felt tired and unsure, afraid even. Still, he kept at it. “You know who I mean. You know damn well who. The…Fleshers.”
“Sit back down, Knapp,” Chase Ham whispered softly but firmly, resisting the urge to tug the man back down by his unkempt shirttails.
As corpulent as his name suggested, how Chase Ham the Ham-ster managed to stay so fat when there was so little food, no one was sure, but someone always seemed to find a way to do it. In the case of New Crozet, he was that someone. He certainly couldn’t chase anything down, except for a stationary ham, perhaps, and if he’d ever been capable of chasing, he’d evidently eaten all the ham he’d caught up with, and hence lost all chasing abilities.
At least that’s how the townspeople joked about it when they talked about him behind his back as they turned him through the New Crozet gossip mill, as it were, squeezing the lard from him, which, one would hope, would taste faintly of bacon. He knew he was fat, and he was a good sport about it, too, always encouraging the kids in a half-joking way that they needed to fatten themselves up, because who knew when the food would run out. Unfortunately, it was a real concern, and one they all tried not to dwell on.
Thank God for my slow metabolism, he thought, I can live on my God-given reserves for months if it came to it, and he hoped to God it wouldn’t.
“Maybe crawl back in that bottle,” Ned Klefeker added, and his wife, Irene, gave him a reproachful look, which he didn’t turn to look at, although he knew it was there.
A few chuckles tussled their way through the stuffy gathering, blowing some of the tension out of the air.
Grinning mildly, Amanda Fortelberry squeezed her cane with two arthritic hands. This was turning out to be a much more exciting town meeting than she’d expected. When Knapp was on, he never failed to deliver, and boy was he showing promise right now.
“Come on Larry,” she said in a low voice and hoping for a show, “get on with it.”
A few of the townspeople close to her heard what she said, and though Knapp didn’t, he went on as if he had, his resolve growing.
“We have to be ready for them!” he shouted. “They know where we are. They know where all the towns are, and they’re just out there, waiting for us to slip up, to go out there or let them in through some weak place in the fence. So they can have us. So they can eat us!
“All we do is farm and dawdle and chitter chatter while we eat Nell’s roasted bugs or Senna’s peaches—and they are glorious, Senna—but, be all that as it may be, we have to be ready to fight them! Have no doubt that we’re square in their sights, in the cross hairs, and they’re coming for us. Dare I say it, they’re coming for us now.” The last word he uttered was low and ominous, delivered far better than Knapp himself had expected. A half-grin of satisfaction crawled onto his face.
“Oh my,” Amanda Fortelberry said, quite pleased, and this time it was loud enough for everyone to hear.
When Tom Preston’s and the Stucky woman’s disapproving glances found her—the Stucky woman’s was part disapproval and part perplexity—Amanda was all the more satisfied. She sat straighter, and returned Tom’s and the Stucky woman’s looks with one of her own, the equivalent of a raise.
I see your perimeter rules, and I raise you the bunker policy.
This was proving to be an enjoyable meeting after all. Nothing like small, post-apocalyptic town politics.
“Oh my indeed, Mrs. Fortelberry,” Knapp said. “Oh my is right. We have to do something now. We already waited too long and it’s only by luck that we’ve gotten away with it all these years. And I don’t care how hidden y’all think we are. We ain’t that hidden at all.” His eyes lit up with inspiration and he licked his lips.
“Think of it this way,” he said, his eyes scanning the room as he turned all the way around so he could see everyone, “think of it, as an investment, and invest…in our safety and the safety...of your children.” Now this truly was a sermon, and they were captivated gosh darn it.
Maybe, he thought, he’d missed his true calling, and now, in the old church’s piety, he was finally finding his way. Images of lambs and flocks appeared in his mind, together with shepherd’s crooks and something about not straying from the flock or the crook or something to that effect. He’d never paid much attention in church on the few occasions when his parents had forced him to go when he was a child, and now he wished that he’d been more attentive, because the moment seemed ripe to insert a relevant Bible verse, or a vague reference to one, at least. He could manage neither.
Instead, Knapp turned his hands palms upward and shaped his face into a belligerently wide-eyed glare, as if to say, ‘Do you get it now, stupid?’
They didn’t.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. They did understand the risk he was describing. They’d encountered the people he was speaking of before—not all firsthand, of course, but hearsay was more than enough when it came to meetings with the Fleshers and other outlaws.
But, they were all tired of talking about it, exhausted in fact, and most were feeling much too cheery what with the market coming the next day, to want to bother with such depressing talk.
“What is it with you always trying to get people riled up?” Corks said.
“I only speak the truth,” Knapp said. He clasped his hands together in a gesture of prayer, his fingers interlaced, all innocent-like.
“Who are you kidding?” Corks said. “We have enough space underground for the children if it comes to it, and we have more than enough defenses, and some of us, the ability, to actually carry out a defense.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” Knapp shouted. “What are you accusing me of? I’m not lazy. I’ll work. I do work.”
Corks said nothing.
Knapp coughed up some phlegm, really working it up, helping it climb up his throat bit by sticky bit, then chewed the salty ooze over in his mouth, sucking on it and considering. “You think I’m just trying to scare these good folks, that I won’t do anything, that I’ll just sit on my soft, flabby ass while everyone else does the work. That what you’re saying? That I’m just trying to scare you good people into building me a house underground where I can drink and be merry under the weeds?”
Corks pressed his lips into a line, and, letting the anger get the better of his fingers, scratched too hard at one of the mosquito souvenirs on his face. The bite, which was above his temple, popped, and a spot of blood oozed from it. It crawled down the side of his face then stopped suddenly, seeming to have changed its mind.
“You’re gonna bleed out if you stay that darn angry,” Knapp said. “The skeeters have left enough holes in you for that. All the blood’ll boil right out. And I wouldn’t want that, now would I, because I need your manpower to build me a house under the trees because I’m too lazy to do it myself? Ain’t that right?”
“That’s enough,” Tom warned. “Let’s move on.”
“I said what I had to,” he blurted. “You all know it. You all know about them. It ain’t just the hallucinatings or goings-on and ramblings of some drunk. They’re out there. The zombies, the Fleshers, maybe even the damned Order of the Dead, all of them. Out there.” He pointed west, then spun all the way around. “Everywhere. And they’re hungry.”
“I said,” Tom said, his tone growing heated, “that’s enough.” He was gripping the edges of the bare lectern, but not very hard, not tightly enough to turn his knuckl
es white, but if there was more talk of the Order of the Dead, that would change.
Though they’d all heard of the Order of the Dead, most didn’t believe it existed. What kind of cannibals would act that way, and why? It had to be a myth, made up to make the outlaws look even scarier—assuming that was possible—and keep children in the settlements.
Knapp crossed his arms, making a show of how offended he wanted them to think he felt, looked around, shrugged emphatically as if to say, ‘Well, I fuckin’ tried, and y’all are still damned idiots,’ and sat back down.
Knapp frowned, shrugged two more times, and then two more times, but he was done making words. He looked down between his feet and saw a daddy longlegs exploring the tips of his shoes. He snarled at it, lifted his foot, and brought the heel of his left shoe slowly down on top of it, evoking a mild crunch.
Chase Ham, who was still sitting next to Knapp, though he’d sidled away some during the argument, whispered behind his plump palm, “Now why’d you go and do that? They’re harmless. All they do is eat flies.”
Knapp rolled his eyes. “Harmless? Harmless? Ain’t no such thing on this green and zombie-infested Earth.” He scowled and shot a dirty look at Chase, and then at his own untucked and filthy shirttails.
For some reason, that seemed to calm him. He looked up at Tom at the lectern, and for the first time in a long while at these meetings, actually began to pay some attention—as much as his booze-soaked grey matter would allow. He’d said his piece, and, once again, the damned fools hadn’t listened to a word.
They’ll have to learn the hard way, he knew, and ain’t that a damn shame?
37
After spending a few minutes reviewing the market setup for the next day, Tom called the meeting to a close, and the townspeople began to get up and make their way to the exit.
Some were dawdling, talking over the weather and crops and their predictions for the bits of news the traders would bring. Knapp was keeping to the fringes of the crowd, wiping at his nose and muttering to himself.