by Chris Lowry
Perfect for jabbing. Poking. Stabbing the Z.
Zombies. We called them Z. I think I started it, but it could be something I picked up along the way and just claimed credit for it. Like Brian claiming the five hundred year old pike as his own.
“You need help,” the Boy stopped and stared over my shoulder at the eight lumbering dead as they lurched toward our wreck.
“Finish up,” I said. “Pack all we can carry.”
I hefted the pike and balanced it in my hand. It was nine feet from tip to butt, and I appreciated the distance. In zombie moves or tv shows, the characters would get close and personal with the Z and stab them with three inch folding knives. Or hatchets.
Why risk the bite? Or splatter?
They also wore tank tops and shorts, then acted surprised when they were bit.
I glanced over my shoulder at my group. Even injured, they were covered neck to boot in layers of clothing.
Z weren’t super human. They could bite, and tear and rip. But they had to reach skin first.
And despite what any show might broadcast, clothes are tough to rip through.
Not impossible, but strong enough to buy seconds, and time, especially in a fight, is a commodity that can be exploited.
Time and distance.
I levered the pole and aimed the blade at Z number one, sliced it down with a straight pop through a putrid eyeball and kept moving.
My side screamed. Or maybe it was me. If we had eaten last night, I would have thrown it up.
The Z kept coming.
Then Bem was there, and the Boy.
She shot four. He stabbed three.
In less than a minute, the rest of the Z were just as gone.
It was tough to call them dead, because that’s what we said the first time they died.
Now, they were gone.
Forever. Unless there was something about the virus we still didn’t understand.
Correction: there was everything about the virus we didn’t understand. Like how it started. What happened to the rest of the world. What was going to happen to us.
I rested between my kids, letting them hold me up for just a moment.
Then I stood up. As straight as I could, which wasn’t saying much.
They needed me. They all needed me. We were injured. Every one of us battered, bruised, bashed.
I just ignored the pain. The flush on my neck and face. The pounding in my head. Ignored it all, and focused on what to do next.
I wiped the ick off the blade on the rotten shirt of the last Z and turned back toward our crash site.
The boys worked on building packs for us to carry our meager supplies. Brian and Anna worked with the injured to get them up and ready to move.
We would be slow. Weighed down. Ripe for the picking from Z or more bandits.
And back in Florida.
One big freaking circle to find my youngest daughter.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Do you think there are others out there like us?"
We stopped to rest again. This was the forth or fifth time. I couldn’t keep count. Hell, I couldn’t count to five unless I looked at my fingers.
We were stretched out against a fence that ran alongside the road, the other side cleared pastureland.
I looked at him and tried to wiggle my eyebrows. I don't think it worked as well as I thought. Swollen brow, bruised face and all.
"There's no one out there like you."
That earned a half grin, maybe three quarters though it was hard to tell from the squinting blurring vision the world offered through puffy eyelids.
"I mean roamers. Vagabonding in the Zombie apocalypse," he said. "We don't have a home. We don’t have a safe place to rebuild. We just go."
I tried to shrug. Bits hurt.
"I know, I know," he held up placating hands as if I was going to jump up and argue about it. "We're looking for your daughter. We have a mission and then we'll set up someplace safe. But are there people out there doing what we do?"
"Roaming," I croaked.
"Yeah."
"I bet there are."
Brian sighed and settled his back against the side of the fence.
"I wonder who many people we're losing doing that. As a species, I mean."
I almost told him I didn't care. But that wasn't true.
If I didn't care, I wouldn't have helped him and Peg, Anna, or Byron and Hannah. I wouldn't have helped any of the people we met along the way.
I could have just focused on the objective of getting the job done.
Sometimes caring sucked.
"We have to rebuild sometime," he said. "We can't wander the wasteland, nomadic tribes fighting Z, fighting each other. History showed us what we should do, but this time we get to skip all the bad decisions we made before. We get a do-over."
"Still bad men," I said. Or grunted. Probably grunts of the mono-syllabic type.
He understood me though.
“They did a study once," I mused.
"Just once?"
"This one, sure, though in all the world, I bet there are hundreds of studies."
"Were."
"Were hundreds," Brian corrected. "Thousands."
"Can I finish?"
"Probably not, but give it a go," he said.
"It was how fast the flu virus spread, before. They put some oil or fluid on a person's hand, then followed with a black light. It spread to a hundred people just on her way home from work. She would touch, they would touch," I demonstrated. "Pretty soon, it was everywhere."
"You think that's how Captain Z spreads?"
"Captain Z? Is that what you want to go with?"
He shrugged.
"I'm trying it on for size."
I shook my head. Starbursts coalesced at the corner of my vision.
"It should be more menacing," I said. "Captain Z sounds like a breakfast cereal."
"I'll keep trying."
"Do that."
"But the spread?"
"There were two stories going around the compound. Safe havens and a cure."
"Rumors," I said. "From who?"
"From whom?"
"That's what I'm asking you?"
“Do you think that wall was a safe haven?” he brought up the one we had seen north of Georgia outside the refugee camp.
“I don’t know if anywhere is safe,” I answered true.
He nodded.
We needed to get moving again. Needed to find transportation. Needed to find a safe place to sleep for one more night.
Needed to find her, and then we could sleep for days.
“Nobody move,” a voice called out behind us from the other side of the wire fence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I moved. It was a half turn to see who was making the threat.
"Do you want to die?"
That was the question the man asked me on the other end of a hunting rifle.
I crossed half of America and back again to hunt for my kids, and now some ranch owner in the middle of Florida wants to know if I want to die.
Want? What's that?
"I don't," I said.
"That's good," he said with a smile. It didn't touch his eyes, just crinkled the wrinkles around his mouth.
Like he had practiced it a lot to share on a public face, but there was no way in hell he meant it.
"Get up," he didn't offer a hand to help.
I stood up on the edge of the road, put almost everything ounce of will in not groaning, and dusted my hands off on my pants.
"You're covered up good," he said, eyes appraising. "Says something about you."
"I'm an open book," I answered.
That earned a real chuckle.
"That I doubt."
"I'm a simple man. Simple man has simple questions."
"Doubt that more than the first one," the white haired man answered.
His eyes roamed over the rest of us.
“You look like crap,” he said.
&nb
sp; His face was a map of wrinkles, thin hair brushed back from a broad forehead. He wore pants tucked into working cowboy boots, long sleeves covered up his skin, a long machete on one hip, pistol on the other.
“We’ve been better,” I said.
“What are you doing out here?” the rifle held steady in thick hands.
“Just passing through,” I told him.
He nodded up the road.
“More of the dead up there,” he said. “A lot more.”
“Lot where we came from too.”
He took that in and nodded.
“You’re bleeding.”
I glanced down. Blood soaked through the bandages wrapped around my waist. It brought it to mind and the pain flared up, a white hot poker jabbing me, stealing my breath, making the world wobble.
“I’m not beat the worst,” I said.
His eyes rested on Peg, covered in blood. Anna, the same. All of us, scraped, beat up and blood soaked.
“I’ve got a barn you can sleep in,” he said. “You get caught out here after dark and get bit, you might turn into my problem.”
He pointed up the road.
“There’s a gate in the fence half a mile,” he said. “Meet me there.”
The tall man started walking on his side of the fence in the direction he indicated.
“What do we do?” Brian asked.
I stared at our group.
“We sleep in the barn,” I said.
They had to help the others up. It was all I could do to stay standing on my own.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
There are people you meet in life who are transitory. It's easy to tell by the way they impact on your day.
Like the guy in line at the bank who smiles and says hi, or the woman walking her dog who waves as you pass by.
The action done and forgotten, leaving only a good feeling and a memory of kindness.
Then there are the permanent kind of figures, those who make such a dramatic impact that, no matter how short the time they spend with you is, it is easy to recall them years later.
I wasn't sure if we had years in the new Z world left, but the man at the fence was that kind of fellow.
Before, he may have been called larger than life. A giant of a man, six six and in cowboy boots even taller. His former frame may have held four hundred pounds, but the zombie diet took care of those pesky lbs.
It left a lot of skin though. He had the look of a football player gone to seed, without the round belly or layers that normally accompany it. Instead, it was loose skin.
It wasn't too abnormal. He just looked like a big boy going hungry.
If I could have bottled that up, I would have made a fortune before the world collapsed.
"Hey, do you wanna lose fifty pounds? Try the zombie diet. Half starvation, half running for your life. Act now and we'll throw in a bottle of scummy pond water to ease your thirst!"
The info-mercials would have done it for millions after midnight.
"Welcome to the Bar-T," he said as he unlocked the gate and swung it open to let us pass.
His voice matched his frame, like a man used to bellowing orders at cowpokes, crackers and cattle, now gone soft and raspy in this silent new world.
"Howdy," said Brian, trying out his cowboy accent.
"You're lucky," said the ranch man. "I was running the fences on this side of the property today. Otherwise," he left it out there.
I looked at the dirt road that led across a cattle grate, the swinging metal bar fence the only thing to prevent Z or marauders from crossing.
Tyler pointed his hand to the left toward a hillock further back on the property and the ranch man nodded in appreciation.
“You’ve got a sniper on that hill.”
"Good eye," he appraised the boy.
"He's got sunlight glinting off his scope or binoculars," Tyler told him. "I spotted him from the trees. Tell him to pull back into the shadows or someone else might take the shot first."
The ranch man's eyes went wider at this, and he fished a tiny walkie talkie off his belt next to a wood handled six gun revolver.
He issued orders into the speaker and waited, watched Tyler as the boy stared at the sniper's nest.
When the boy nodded, the ranch man hooked the walkie talkie back to his belt and smiled.
"Thanks for not shooting him," he said.
"Thanks for not shooting us," Brian answered back.
The tall man’s eyes drifted over us, noting the injured and lame.
“Looks like you met trouble?”
His hazel eyes squinted under the brim of his hat, hand hovering on the belt next to his pistol.
He was a tough looking old bird, a throwback to a lost generation. Wrinkled skin turned leathery under the sun, big hands hooked in a permanent curl brought on by years of abuse or arthritis. Or both.
“We’re alive,” Brian chirped. “Some more than others.”
He said it in a light hearted voice, but there was something in the set of his chin. The tall man nodded, a message passed between them.
Yeah, we may have seen trouble, but we’re here, and trouble’s not. No need to say it out loud. The rancher got it.
The ranch man's eyes continued to rove over us, appraising, studying.
They stopped on mine and froze. I don’t play poker but it was a tell if I’ve ever seen one.
"Huh," he stated.
"Huh?" I asked.
"You're him?"
I could feel the others turn their eyes toward me, a couple of oh crap looks.
"I guess that depends on which him you're talking about," I shifted to one leg.
"I almost missed it," he said, eyes tracing the rough outline of my face. "A lot more scars, and the bruises don't help."
I racked my brain, trying to decide if I knew him. How I knew him.
Did we run together before? He didn't look much like a runner, but a lot of long distance guys were back of the pack runners. Slow and steady, big bodies moving toward a personal goal to finish a race, instead of racing to the finish.
Or maybe I knew him through work, or a presentation.
I'm good with faces, most of the time. But a couple of explosions and knocks on the noggin may have jarred a few things loose inside the gray matter.
"She's got a picture of you on her dresser," he said. "She said you would come."
And then I couldn't breathe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There are some things I’ve shared about the Z world. Horrible things I’ve done. Doubts about my abilities as a father. My failures.
The list is long.
But I won’t talk about the reunion.
The rancher said his name was Meroni, and led the stumbling lot of us back toward his ranch.
We followed the crushed shell road over two hills and nestled in a small shallow valley was a two story farmhouse and the promised barn, plus a couple of other buildings.
There were people there. Hanging clothes. Working a garden. Tending cattle.
The house and barn were inside another fence, a second layer that looked added, and sturdy. Another line of defense in case the Z got through.
Meroni slowed his pace to match ours, or maybe that was just the speed of old age.
We made the gate and people started to line up at our approach.
Watching. Waiting.
He bade us enter and we did. One of the men who had been working with a cow, moved past us, nodded and closed the gate.
Meroni took us toward the front porch, and called out her name.
She stepped out of the kitchen and I started crying.
And when she saw me, she flew across the yard at a speed that would make Mercury blush.