by TW Brown
That made both women laugh. “No, I didn’t get a shot, sweetie.” Jamie scooped up Megan in her arms and gave the girl a kiss on the cheek before setting her back down.
Together, all three exited the little exam room and walked out into the hallway. The high school was its usual bustle of activity as people went about their daily routine.
“You need to head over to school,” Sophie said to Megan as a group of children walked past in the direction of the factory.
The little girl gave Sophie a hug and took about five steps before spinning around and running up to Jamie and giving her a hug as well before skipping away to join the other children.
Once the girl was gone and Jamie looked around to ensure that there would not be any ears within hearing distance of her whisper, she said, “Let’s keep this quiet for now.”
Sophie understood her friend’s reasons. Granted, it wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten pregnant. She was willing to bet that only a fraction of the people would even put it together that the child had to belong to that biker, Kevin Staley. Sadly, the apocalypse had not put an end to wild rumors and gossip. It would be out there soon enough.
“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Sophie said, locking her lips with her fingers and tossing away the imaginary key.
The two headed around the school towards what had once been the baseball field. In its place, long rows stretched out, each with signs labeling them: corn, squash, beans, tomatoes. They had about thirty different varieties of fruits and vegetables growing here. Just through some trees were the beginnings of an orchard. Beyond that was the livestock area. Things were starting to shape up nicely. If all went as planned and they had the solar grid in place next year, they might become the zombie apocalypse version of a superpower. There were already plans on the table to set up the next settlement centering on the elementary school and the nearby neighborhoods.
Things were actually moving faster than any of them had imagined. The loss of her husband was still something Sophie hadn’t dealt with, and she was actually worried that the normality that was settling in would force her to do so very soon.
“One thing at a time,” Sophie whispered.
18
Tough Choices and Dark Clouds
“We have a situation,” Bo said.
Jamie looked up from her desk where she had been studying the latest inventory reports. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. It was her last day before her turn for a shower. She could feel the oiliness of her hair leave a residue on her fingers and scowled in disgust.
“Please, because what I need now is another situation.” She closed the ledger and rubbed her tired eyes.
“Actually, this one is at our gates.”
“Another survivor or group that wants in?” Jamie stood up and strapped her weapons onto her hips. “And let me guess, they demanded to talk to whoever is in charge because their situation is special.”
“Not exactly,” Bo replied cryptically.
“I really don’t have time for this.”
“I get that, but I think you need to see to this one personally. The sentry on watch said she can’t make the call.”
“There is no call to make!” Jamie exploded, her tensions coming to a boil. Even by her best estimations, this was going to be a very lean winter. They were going to be lucky to feed their own people, much less outsiders.
“Okay, then,” Bo replied, his voice continuing to hold almost no emotion.
Together they walked out of the school. Under Sophie’s orders, Jamie could not ride one of the horses and so they had to trudge through the mud and soggy ground from the past few days of late afternoon thunder storms that had jacked the humidity up to nearly unbearable levels.
By the time they reached the section of the barricade, both Jamie and Bo were drenched with perspiration. Jamie felt like she could scrape her body off with a squeegee and come away with a Dixie cup full of moisture from her skin.
She climbed the ladder after Bo and heaved herself up onto the platform where a very nervous young lady was waiting. She stepped aside so that Jamie could look down at whoever had shown up at their walls.
In an instant, she knew why the girl on watch had struggled with enforcing the edict. The woman below looked like she might fall over if so much as a slight breeze came along. Her eyes were sunken and the tattered rags she wore did not conceal how gaunt her frame was from lack of food. Her dark hair was clumped and plastered to her head, making Jamie instantly feel guilty about her own hygienic musings of just a few moments ago.
Worse than the visage of this horribly malnourished woman were the two children who clutched at each of her hands. While not nearly as emaciated as the young woman, it was obvious that they were on the verge of collapse due to starvation.
Her heart felt like it would break and she suddenly had no saliva in her mouth. This was going to give her nightmares later.
Her mind quickly reminded her of what she knew to be the facts of the town’s food inventory as well as the best case projections from the garden. The people currently living inside the safe zone of her town were most likely going to suffer some casualties when fall and winter came.
The increased activity of the lawless gangs that roamed the countryside made it difficult to send out teams smaller than fifty. The problem with that was that they had also been forced to send those teams out with the most minimal of supplies. The logic was simple: the teams would forage to supply themselves as they went, and if they found a sizable cache of goods to take, then they could bring back what they did not consume. It was not a perfect system. But the reality was that, after one team of twenty left with a full week’s worth of rations and then never returned, the decision was made that they could no longer justify sending out food since there was no guarantee that any would be brought back for the community.
“Please,” the woman croaked after a long silence, “if you won’t let me in, then take my babies.”
Jamie wanted to be sick. The reality was that the woman would be more welcome than her two children. One looked to be three or four. The other perhaps six. In both cases, they were truthfully little more than a drain on supplies with no return. Besides what it would take to nurse them back to anything close to healthy, they would use resources and provide nothing for the community.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie forced herself to speak. “We just can’t allow anybody to come inside.”
“Can you spare a little food at least?” the woman pleaded. “It’s been so long…” Almost on cue, the children began to wail at the mention of the word food.
“I’m sorry,” was all that Jamie could say in response. She turned to walk away.
“You can’t leave us out here…the zombies…and they aren’t even the worst thing,” the woman croaked. “You don’t know what I’ve seen.”
“You would be surprised.” Jamie whispered.
“We’re not leaving!” the woman wailed. “I will stand here and scream until every zombie for a hundred miles is pawing at your walls.”
“If she doesn’t leave, shoot her,” Jamie said, turning to go.
“No.” Jamie was just stepping down the ladder when a very soft voice spoke.
“Excuse me?” she asked, climbing back up.
“I won’t do it.” The sentry grew bolder with each word and her voice grew louder as she gained confidence.
“It wasn’t a request,” Jamie snapped.” Maybe you forgot about the standing orders. We will not be allowing anybody inside.”
“Then you kill her.” The sentry shoved her crossbow at Jamie.
“Perhaps you would like to join her,” Jamie said between clenched teeth. “I just finished the inventory, and we are going to be very tight on supplies. Tossing you out reduces the consumption by one more mouth.”
“Jamie,” Bo cautioned.
“No, we are not in any shape to take in others, and I don’t think some of the people truly understand that. It isn’t that I would not love to hel
p. You don’t think my heart is breaking for this woman and her children? But we are facing our first winter in a few months and risk losing some of us due to hunger.” Jamie paused and then turned to the sentry. “It is to the point where I don’t believe that I will make it to term with the baby I am carrying. I don’t like it, but I have come to accept that reality.”
The sentry stared back at Jamie. The woman didn’t speak, but her eyes flitted between her belly which still showed no indication of the life growing inside her and then down to the children standing at their barricade.
“I can’t do it,” she said plainly.
Jamie felt her anger fade. She mentally stepped back and looked at the situation and what she was asking. At last, she reached out her hand. There was no need for an explanation. The sentry unslung her crossbow and handed it to Jamie.
“Now, I am going to ask you to go.” Jamie turned her focus back to the woman below who had grown silent while she observed the situation unfold over her head. “I am sorry about your problem, and I truly wish that there was something I could do to help. The reality is that there is not. You have three people to feed. I have almost three thousand. I imagine we will be starving and the day will come when I look back and envy you.”
“Envy me?” the woman barked. “I am out here in this hell with two babies, no food, and you dare to say that you envy me!”
Once more, the children began to wail. The noise was loud and grating. In the bushes across the clearing that they were still actually in the process of knocking back to increase visibility, a rustling came. A moment later, three zombies emerged. The woman saw Jamie’s gaze shift and she turned around to see the horrible creatures stagger out and orient on her and the children.
“I can take them out, but you and the children need to run,” Jamie called down.
The woman spun back to face her, her expression one of absolute bitter fury and hate. “If you can so easily sentence us to death, then maybe you should be forced to watch. I’m not leaving. Either give us something or I will stand here and scream until I bring every zombie down on you and your people.”
“I can’t,” Jamie said with a sigh.
The zombies were drawing closer and now there was more movement from the left and the right of their position. Bo brought his crossbow up and took down the closest zombie as it drew to within about twenty yards of the woman and her children.
“We can’t run anymore!” the woman cried. “Don’t you understand, you heartless bitch?”
“I understand that I have a responsibility to the people here. I am sorry. You have no idea—”
“NO!” the woman shrieked. “You don’t get to apologize and try to make yourself feel better.”
The zombies continued to draw even closer, and Bo was lining up another shot. Jamie turned to him and put her hand on his arm. When he looked at her, she saw the tears starting to brim and she cursed herself for not crying as well. She knew that they could probably kill zombies for the next several minutes, but it was not going to do anything more than delay the inevitable. Maybe if the woman saw that there really was no other choice, perhaps she would run.
Liar, the voice in her head spat. She knew that voice was being honest. This woman was not capable of running anymore. It was visibly apparent that she had reached the end.
Jamie forced herself to consider their suffering and how it was now her responsibility to end it. She was the one who had called for this edict. She was also the one who was very aware of their own grim situation when it came to their supplies.
Currently there were eleven women pregnant that she was aware of, and it was Sophie’s opinion that they would be lucky if half of them carried to term based on Jamie’s food assessment. That meant the child inside her currently had about a fifty percent chance of being born.
“You need to run,” Jamie pleaded again.
The woman looked up at her with eyes that had gone almost as flat and empty as those of the zombie. She opened her mouth and screamed. This caused the children beside her to wail even louder as they looked with horror from their mother to the approaching and growing horde of walking dead. There were now over twenty that had emerged from the brush and oriented on the trio.
“Jamie,” Bo whispered, trying to pull his arm free and raise his crossbow as the nearest walking dead was now only a few stumbling steps away from being able to reach out and grab one of the three.
“No,” Jamie insisted and forced his arm down.
“You’re insane,” the sentry breathed and retreated to the ladder that would take her down and allow her to run back to the school.
“I am trying to keep us alive,” Jamie insisted. She spun on the woman and glared down at her. “If you are so outraged, then perhaps you would like to trade places with her.”
The sentry pushed away from the ladder and turned, running back towards the school. The sound of Bo’s crossbow being fired caused her to spin back to the situation at hand.
“I told you no,” she snapped as another zombie fell to the ground. “How many more can you take down? Ten? Twelve? Then what?”
“Can you really do this?” Bo shot back, stepping close to her and glaring down with a face that was growing purple with bottled anger.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes you do. We can find a way.”
“And where do we draw the line? Do we let people in based on cute? Is it just women with children, or any woman? What about a group of teenagers? Where do we cut it off?”
Bo stared at her; his mouth opened twice and then snapped shut. Jamie reached out and placed her hand on his arm but he jerked away. Just then, the woman shrieked; but this was not a scream just for screaming’s sake. This was the scream that anybody who had heard before knew it for what it was.
Jamie turned as the woman struggled feebly while a zombie latched on to her shoulder and ripped away a chunk of meat. The children both just continued to stand as if frozen to the spot. One had its mouth open in a scream that was being drowned out by that of the woman. The other looked to have simply shut down and was standing there with an open mouth that emitted no sound.
Jamie brought the crossbow to her shoulder and sighted in on the back of the woman’s head. She took a deep breath, held it, and then fired. The bolt went into the top of the woman’s skull and silenced her scream.
She reloaded as fast as she could, but did not have it done fast enough as another zombie fell in the screaming child, dragging it to the ground. The zombie covered the child and made it impossible for her to get a shot off in order to end the suffering. She swung to the child that still stood in shocked silence. Tears finally filled her eyes and blurred her vision as she tightened her finger on the trigger.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then squeezed.
The child toppled, dying in silence. Bo stepped up beside her and fired down into the back of the head of the zombie that was crouched over the mewling child. It collapsed, effectively pinning the little one underneath. Jamie had her crossbow reloaded and looked down to see the child’s arm struggling to get free from under the body. At last, a head poked out. She fired and a relative silence fell. The only sounds now were those of the moans and groans of the approaching undead.
She had no idea how long they stood there as the zombies continued to come, attracted by the sounds and now simply moving in the last direction they’d been drawn.
She was still staring down at the dead body of the silent child when there was a distant rumble from the west. It continued to grow, and then she felt the ground shift from a tremor.
“Earthquake?” she asked, turning to Bo in confusion.
The man was staring towards the direction of the setting sun. His eyes were wide and a look of amazement was warring with one of fear. She moved a bit and saw a large cloud rising into the sky.
“What…” her voice trailed off as the direction caused a bell to ring in her head.
“Oconee Nuclear Power Station,” Bo said so
ftly.
Together they watched the cloud grow larger and start to flatten out at the top. It was positively massive and just the sight of it sent a feeling of dread into Jamie’s gut. Could it be that all they’d done, all they’d fought to secure was for naught? This was no simple fire, and there was little use in denying where this had to be coming from. Jamie spun around and threw up as her body simply refused to find any way to process what she was seeing.
“Do we run?” she finally asked after wiping her mouth.
“Where?” Bo continued to stare west at the dark and still growing harbinger of doom.
Looking around, Jamie saw that many of the zombies had turned around and were now plodding off in the direction of the distant blast. She had a fleeting moment of hope until she remembered that Greenville sat to their east. That probably meant that all those zombies were now trudging right for them. She stared down at the corpse of the woman with the crossbow bolt jutting from the back of her head.
“You got off easy,” she whispered.
Dip your toes into a world that is perhaps more frightening than any zombie apocalypse…
Enjoy a sneak peek at—
UnCivil War: A Modern Day Race War in the United States
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Prologue
“We, the jury, find the defendant, Samuel James Anderson…not guilty of Manslaughter in the first degree,” the young foreman read from the index card in his slightly trembling left hand.
A moment of silence hung in the courtroom; then, like an avalanche on a snowy mountainside, the sound built to a tremendous roar. On one side, officers of the Seattle Police Department cheered and slapped each other on the backs. There were smiles all around. On the other, members of the African-American community glared, scowled, and cried out their protests at the injustice. Another one of their own had been shot and killed by a police officer…who would apparently get away scot-free.