by R. J. Spears
This clandestine meeting was being convened in one of the communal rooms on the second floor. There were a handful of people in the room with Paige and Russell. Russell was only there because he cared about Paige. They were an unlikely pair. She was almost thirty, and he was barely eighteen. She was prone to anger and impulsiveness while he was controlled and cautious. So very cautious. The traumatic events in town had brought them together, so they remained a couple, at least for the time being, but the threads of their bond were beginning to fray as she wound herself up into a near frenzy every day, demanding some sort of action.
A palpable level of ambivalence rippled among the group. Most had friends or relatives who stayed with the church after the group split up. All held onto some glimmer of hope that their people at the church had survived the attack and the subsequent fire that had consumed it.
“Ben, your brother was still at the church,” she said, pointing at a skinny older guy with salt and pepper hair. “How can you just sit there?”
“Russell said that you were the only survivor,” Ben said, but his voice quavered in doubt.
“In my estimation, Paige was the only survivor,” Russell said. “We checked the area twice. If anyone else had made it, I’m sure that we would have found him.”
“But you can’t be absolutely sure,” she said, “and so we need to go check it out again.”
“The leadership team said, No,” Ben said.
“No, no,” she cut in and said. “They said, ‘Not now,’ but the more time we waste, the worse the chances for any survivors.”
“But Russell said there weren’t any other survivors,” a woman with a mousey face said.
“Then why are you here?” Paige asked, locking eyes on the woman and then moving her intense stare onto the next person and then the next. “You’re here because you have a relative or close friend at the church: a nephew, an uncle, or maybe a sister. You’re here because you have hope, just like I have hope, that there are people we love and care about waiting for us to come help them.”
“What about the man and his army that attacked the church?” Ben asked.
“He’s dead,” Paige replied quickly. “He died when the bus burned.”
“But you said he had other people with him,” Ben said, “and you said they were controlling the zombies.”
“They were,” Russell said, stepping up beside Paige, “with some sort of remote control devices attached directly to the zombies’ brains. We don’t know how many human soldiers there were, but they were well armed.”
Russell hated taking the wind out of Paige’s sails, and he knew he would pay for it later, but he had to let everyone know the possible reality. They were safe now. Going in search of people who were most likely dead put them at risk.
Wayne, a broad-shouldered man with a bushy black beard, added, “My sister was there with her husband, and I miss them both terribly. It tore me up to leave them there. I’d be in favor of going on a team to check it out.”
Paige’s face brightened with hope.
“But we need to wait until things calm down here some,” he added. “Maybe we can get the leadership team on board in time.”
“But time is running out!” Paige said, her voice rising.
“I’m sorry, miss, but that’s how I feel,” Wayne said.
Paige’s handsome face twisted into a grimace of frustration as she wheeled away from him and kicked out a foot, catching a small trashcan and sending it sailing across the room.
Russell saw that this could get ugly and stepped close to Paige, putting his good arm around her. She shrugged him off and stormed out of the room.
He turned back to the group and said, “I’m sorry folks. As you can see, she’s very upset. She lost everyone at the church.” He walked out of the room to find her, and the group dispersed quietly, carrying out as much trouble as they had when they entered.
Chapter 5
Fly Over
“It’s back,” Henry shouted as he bolted into the dining room. At fifteen, he had trouble railing in his youthful exuberance. People turned their heads and looked in his direction with perplexed expressions on their faces. I was one of those people.
“What’s back?” Brandon asked.
“The drone,” Henry said as if that had been the dumbest question ever asked.
That got everyone’s attention. People jumped out of their seats and started for the doors, knocking into each other in their haste to be the first one outside.
I jumped up on my table and shouted, “WAIT! Do not go outside.”
It was if I had canceled Christmas. They stopped in their tracks, but everyone looked at me as if I had taken a dump in their Cheerios.
“These drones are not a good thing,” I said as people milled around impatiently, their bodies leaning toward the doors into the courtyard.
“What do you mean?” Steve Hampton asked.
“Everyone, please come back into the room,” I said in a loud, and, hopefully, commanding voice. “I want to tell you why we can’t trust that drone, but please give me just a minute.”
To my surprise, they reluctantly and slowly shuffled back into the room, but in their eyes, I could see the irresistible pull of the drone. It meant someone was out there. Someone was watching. Someone who might be able to help.
I stepped away from the crowd to the side of the room, and Brandon followed me. I pulled out my walkie-talkie. It took a couple of exchanges, but the guards on the front towers reported that the drone had buzzed overhead three times, slowing on each pass. I asked if they thought it was taking any photos or video, but they weren’t sure.
“What do you think?” I asked Brandon.
“Sure as shit they are,” he said. “It’s a recon, just like the other times. Billings’ last report was from here.”
Billings was a spy from the military who tried to infiltrate our ranks, but he wasn’t the first one. A guy by the name of Dave Hackett had come into our midst when we were in town. We figured all this out when we found a satellite phone that Billings had been using to communicate back with his base, and then we compared it with the phone Hackett had been using and discovered that they both had been calling the same number. Hackett had been killed when a rogue military unit attacked us at the church. Billings, on the other hand, put us in a real pickle. What should we do with a suspected spy? That had been answered when he tried to escape, and we had killed him. That just made things even more interesting, but not interesting in a good way. Not-winning-the-lottery interesting. Not bumping- into-an-old-girlfriend-at-a-party interesting. No, this was the type of interesting in the old world that would get you sent to prison, but in this world would most likely get you dead.
Brandon added, “They’d have to be looking for him here.”
“Do you think they’ll send troops?”
“Who knows? Maybe. Maybe they won’t see anything and move on.”
The natives grew restless in the room as the murmur of conversation rose in intensity. There was no putting them off any longer. I moved back into the room, asking myself what Greg would do. At that point, I had no idea, but I just knew whatever he did, he’d do it better than I could.
The crowd grew quiet, and all eyes came to me.
“The guards just reported that the drone flew over and maybe took some pictures of us.” The crowd began to buzz again, but I raised my hands in the air to quiet them. “As you know, we had a spy try to infiltrate our ranks not too long ago. His purpose was not clear, but we know he was with the military, and we also know he was looking for Jason Carter.”
“Why was he looking for this Jason boy?” Mrs. Hatcher asked, putting on her traditional look of indignation. I wondered if she worked on that expression at night.
“We think because he is immune,” Doc Wilson spoke up. “Someone with an immunity could be of immense value.”
“Then why don’t we contact the military and tell them where he is?” Steve Hampton asked.
“We’ve b
een over this,” I said. “Jason is staying with us. The military killed his family, and I’m certain they’d kill anyone that kept them from him -- that would mean us. So, he’s staying.”
“I say he is a danger to us all and needs to go. I’d like to see that put to a vote,” Brother Ed said, and I could see him trying to turn the tide of the conversation. “It shouldn’t be your decree that keeps him here.” A vocal minority grumbled words of agreement.
Leadership has its privilege, and Brother Ed was going to use his. There was no avoiding it, so I decided to call his bluff. Two could play this game.
“Okay, let’s do just that,” I said looking around the room unblinkingly. “I call for a public vote of the leadership team about whether Jason Carter stays with us or is turned over to the military.”
I decided to play my ultimate trump card and see if it got me anywhere. “I ask you, what if Jason were your son? What if he were your brother? How would you feel if the military took one of the people you cared about and did something terrible to him?” I stopped and let that sink in and could see the expressions on people’s faces softening.
“From the stories he told me, the military was experimenting on him without any consent or permission, and he fully expected that he would die. He saw others like him being experimented on and killed. He feared for his life each and every day. They killed his family when they tried to rescue him. What do you think about that?”
I let that question hang in the air for a moment. “That is what we were faced with. Did you want that decision in your hands? We,” I said and spread my hands out to the leadership team, “did what we had to do, when we had to do it. Would I do it differently today? There’s so much I would do differently, but there are no second chances. Not now, not ever. We are doing the best we can. I will let you know that I will do everything I can to protect all of you. Everything we did...everything Greg did was in the best interest of this community.”
I let that sink in for a moment, the continued. “After trying to fill his shoes for only a week, I can tell you that the decisions to be made aren’t always easy ones. I’m so grateful for the support of this team. And I am grateful for the support of this community.
“Now, we have a decision to make.”
I looked into the crowd, making sure I made direct eye contact with as many people as I could. A few of them fidgeted in their seats. Many looked down when my stare fell on them. I could see Mrs. Hatcher poised, ready to shoot her hand up, but she could tell from the inactivity of the others that the tide was rushing away from her.
While the people didn’t want to go public with their sentiments, it didn’t mean they didn’t have them. It came down to making the hard choice, and no one was ready to put himself or his convictions on the line that day. I wondered how long that would last?
“Okay, the decision has been made for Jason to stay with us,” I said as I spread my arms wide to encompass the leadership team. You could place any amount of clichés here. ‘It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.’ ‘The tension was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.’ Whatever was happening, I could only tell you that my heart was in my throat and my palms were sweating.
“Okay, now that that is settled, we have several ways to go with this, but I’m going to cut through all that. I’m going to ask the leadership team to vote on whether Jason stays with us. Raise your hand if you want Jason to stay.”
I started the vote and raised my hand. Kara didn’t hesitate and shot her hand up, her face showing a fierce determination. Doc Wilson’s was next and despite his normal clinical remoteness, I sensed a stony resolve emanating from him. Travis and Brandon followed. The lone dissenter was Brother Ed. His normally dour expression seemed to intensify as his eyes darkened, but he remained quiet and reserved.
No one in the crowd jumped up and demanded a recount, but Mrs. Hatcher’s stare burned with a silent fire so intense I was afraid I might combust at any second. She kept her mouth shut. I thought I saw her nod her head just a little, but couldn’t tell for sure. I looked back to Brother Ed, and he was meeting her stare. Who knew what those two thought or schemed?
The vote was done, and one disaster was averted. There were only a thousand more to go.
Chapter 6
Military Intelligence
“They don’t think we can see them because they’ve stayed inside.” The Colonel said as he stood over the drone control console, watching the drone glide over the countryside like a ghost. The drone turned, and the Manor came into view.
“Not too smart,” an extra-large man wearing army fatigues said. “Haven’t heard of thermal imaging?” The man’s name was Jones. His skin was dark brown, and his head was shaved, catching a gleam of the dim lights in the room. He was the Colonel’s second in command and a solidly built soldier with broad shoulders and an overdeveloped upper body from lifting weights.
“Switch back to thermal,” the Colonel said. His was the voice of confident command.
The drone pilot reached forward, switched a toggle, and a thermal view of the Manor appeared. The screen displayed a vibrant swatch of colors, ranging from dark blue, to purple, to magenta, to bright oranges, and yellows. Yellow bloomed from the interior of the Manor, the obvious heat signature of an inhabited building. Small specks of orange and yellow moved at the fringes of the building, the telltale signs of living, breathing humans. The drone glided over the buildings and across the countryside as quiet as an owl.
“Do you want to make another pass over the buildings?” Jones asked the Colonel.
The drone pilot looked up from his seat at ‘the stick.’ He sat in the center of an array of video monitors displaying different views from the drone. His right hand firmly held the control joystick, making minor adjustments that sent the drone into a gentle turn, banking it over a shallow valley.
“We have enough over them,” the Colonel said as he rubbed his chin. “Keep going in that direction. We need to see the neighboring vicinity.”
The pilot redirected his full attention to the task at hand.
“Do you think they have something to hide?” Jones asked.
“We lost Hackett south of there, and Billings’ last report was from there,” the Colonel responded.
“So, do we send in a team?”
“Let me sleep on it. We don’t want to lose any more men needlessly, but we need to find Carter. We need him back.”
Chapter 7
Out of the Ashes
His skin itched and burned all the time. It was like a swarm of fire ants were crawling over him, biting and tickling him at the same time. It took everything in him to resist clawing at the burn wounds, but he resisted. He had to dig deep, though. Very deep.
At least what was left of his foot had finally stopped aching. There were times that he still felt his toes. He even wiggled them. He knew that was the phantom limb effect, but it was when he awoke in the middle of the night that he felt them the most. Then the cold hard reality that a grenade had blasted away those toes hit him, and he felt a slow simmering anger start to work on his psyche.
“Rex,” he croaked out, his voice still hoarse, even after three weeks. He heard no movement, so he called again, which made his throat burn. He moved his fingers over his chest control panel, but was surprised when he only found an empty hole where the control button for Rex once sat. Then he remembered. He’d have to call his second-in-command the old fashioned way.
“Rex!” His throat felt like someone had jammed a wire brush down it.
A few seconds later, Rex’s over large and meaty head filled his field of vision.
“What took you so long?” Anthony asked, his voice a raspy whisper.
“I was training the new recruits,” Rex said. “That new one, Maggie, is a feisty bitch.”
“Help me up,” Anthony said.
Rex leaned down, and more gently than most people would expect, lifted Anthony to a sitting position.
Anthony’s burned skinned felt like some
one had doused him in gasoline and set him on fire again, but he only grimaced, biting back the pain.
Anthony had worked with Rex to modify a seat on the bus so that he could recline when they were in the field training. Rex had urged him to stay back at their base, but Anthony had insisted on being a part of the training sessions. He did very little, but it kept him in the game and distracted him somewhat from the pain.
“How are the other new recruits?” Anthony asked as he looked out the windows to watch them work to master control over the small groups of zombies. Rex had broken the three new recruits down into separate areas in the field. They all worked with full knowledge that at any moment, and with any slight mistake, they could receive a “corrective” jolt from their control collars. You only needed to be shocked once to remember that, and they had all experienced ‘the lightning’ as Anthony called it. Some more than others.
The new woman, Maggie, was working with Roy. She was a handsome woman, around thirty, whom they found roaming the streets, foraging for food. She had come into town from one of the outlying communities.
The teenage boy, Ryan, whom they had taken from the department store just before the skirmish that had turned south for Anthony, was working with Rex, but was now on his own. The boy was acquitting himself well with no one watching over him. He drove the zombies in his control like a herd of sheep, zig-zagging them across the field. Anthony guessed his skill with the controls came as a by-product from playing video games before the Outbreak. The last one was a tall beanpole of a man. His name was Norman. He was unique because he had shown up at their base, asking to be taken in. (This was a first.) While he was a bit slow on the uptake, he was totally compliant, taking punishment without complaint and eager to please. His limited intelligence restricted his usage as a full asset, but Anthony figured he could become fodder for the zombies if the need came to that. Norman was paired with Felix who had been a part of the team since Anthony had “recruited” him.