by Brown, TW
“Which one?” Suzi asked.
“Whichever one looks like he is closest to pissing himself.”
Letting the tent flap fall, Wanda gave the woman a brief smile. “You are free to go. If you choose to stay, then you will be expected to work. I think you heard the long version of that speech yesterday. And if Sonny or any other man gives you any trouble…come see me. However, if you stay…you will work and work hard. If you are not able to pull your weight, you will either work the brothel or be exiled. Do you have any questions?”
The woman shook her head vigorously.
“Then get out.”
Once she was gone, Major Beers took a seat behind her desk. She checked her gloves and placed her pistol in front of her. The fact that it only contained two rounds—one of which Major Beers had reserved in the event that she was about to die at the hands and mouths of the undead—was unimportant. One thing that she had learned in these first few months was the importance of appearance.
“Major,” a voice called from outside the tent.
“Enter.”
“We have a problem,” the soldier said as he stepped inside the tent and habitually removed his hat and came to attention, eyes staring at an imaginary spot a foot above the major’s head.
“At ease, Sergeant Barrie. What is the problem?”
“We have a large herd of walkers coming from the west.”
“So put the defenses on alert.”
“Major…it may not be that simple.” The soldier broke protocol and looked directly into Major Beers’ eyes. “Estimates have the numbers at over five hundred thousand.”
Major Beers felt a queasy feeling in her stomach. She glanced at the pistol that she had just placed on her desk. With a tired sigh, she holstered the weapon and rose to her feet. As she exited the tent, Suzi was arriving with the two men she’d been sent for.
Without breaking stride, Major Beers drew her weapon and shot the closer of the two men in the forehead. She’d be damned if she would give up her last bullet on a day like this.
8
Geek Reality
“Kevin!” a voice called. “This way…run!”
Grabbing Valarie’s hand firmly, Kevin pushed himself as hard as he could towards the automotive barrier. He risked a glance over his shoulder. There were at least fifty zombies within twenty yards of them. He had no idea how they’d gained so much ground, but as he tried to push himself the last bit to what looked like sanctuary, his legs simply refused to give him any more.
He could hardly walk another step. In fact, he began to wonder if he would make it or if he would die within an arm’s length of possible safety. Tears actually began to fill his eyes as the frustration over how his body was now starting to betray him just as it looked like he might finally be able to rest.
“Hit the ground!” a voice yelled.
Kevin continued on, ignoring the call. He could see a line of dark images just ahead, but what he could not see through those tears were the assorted bows and crossbows being brought up by a dozen soldiers. He feared that if he stopped moving, if he threw himself to the ground, that he might lack the strength to get back up.
One of the dark figures broke away from the line and came bounding at Kevin and Valarie. Voices called out and shouted warnings, but the figure continued.
“You made it!” the shadowy form shouted.
Kevin knew the voice, but all of a sudden he was just so exhausted that he could not make any connections. Something was pulling at the tail of his coat. Turning, Kevin did not have to time to react. Valarie fell into him and sent them both tumbling to the ground.
The sounds of hissing and whistling registered in Kevin’s consciousness just before the world went black.
***
Kevin blinked and looked around. A jumble of memories swirled in his mind, but he could no more grasp any of them and make sense of one as he could a single mote of dust swirling in the air. Looking around, he saw that he was in what looked like an RV.
“Welcome back,” a sweet voice whispered in his ear.
Kevin turned to find Aleah looking down at him with a smile. His relief at seeing her lasted only as long as it took for him to see the hollow look of exhaustion in her eyes. Coupled with being bloodshot and dark smudges under each one that were so prominent that they could be mistaken for serious bruising.
“Where are we?” Kevin tried to sit up, but a woozy feeling came in a rush and threatened to turn to some rather intense vomiting if he did not lie back down.
“We found Willa’s group. We are just east of Newark in the weirdest fortification I think has ever been created.” Aleah grabbed a plastic cup and held it up to Kevin’s lips. “Here, drink this. It’s warm water. The doc was pretty concerned about if you would make it for a while. She says that she has never seen somebody with a core temperature as low as yours.”
“Valarie,” Kevin gasped after a sip of the lukewarm liquid.
“She is in another RV. They have her pretty heavily sedated.” Kevin was still struggling to get his brain back online, but he heard something in Aleah’s voice that caused a few warning bells to jingle.
“How is she?”
“Let’s worry about getting you back to good before you start diving in to save the world again, shall we?” a voice said from the other side of an accordion-like divider that was shoved aside.
“Hey, Doctor Thompson,” Aleah said, standing up and moving back to allow the new arrival a place beside Kevin’s bed.
The woman opened a small notebook and jotted something down. She went through several standard routines like looking into his eyes and checking his pulse. Every time that Kevin tried to speak, she shushed him. Kevin took the time to give this stranger a closer look.
Doctor Thompson was very short, he doubted she could officially claim five feet as her height. She had short blonde hair that was showing streaks of white. Her eyes were an ice blue that did not seem to miss a thing and unless he was mistaken, he saw the hint of a tattoo peeking out from under her short-sleeved scrub top.
“So, Mister Dreon, you are the person that I have heard so much about these past few weeks.”
“Weeks?” Kevin managed. It suddenly felt as if his throat had dried up and sealed itself shut.
“I take it you have not been awake for very long?”
“He actually just opened his eyes less than five minutes before you showed up, Doc,” Aleah said from the doorway.
A frown creased the doctor’s face. Kevin caught the briefest of glimpses down at his feet. He was about to ask a question when the doctor spoke.
“Mister Dreon, you did a remarkable job getting here. Quite honestly, I have no idea how you survived. However, the human body has its limitations.” Kevin immediately heard the voice of Clint Eastwood. “You suffered some pretty severe frostbite. I did all that I could, but I am afraid that you lost a few toes.”
How many is a few?” Kevin felt silly asking, but at the moment, it was the only question that came to mind.
“Seven.” The doctor glanced at Aleah with a raised eyebrow. She shook her head. “And most of your left foot.”
Kevin felt the world swim for a moment. He felt a tangled mess of emotions that he could not unravel. Almost on cue, he felt a tickle from his left foot.
“Who put you up to this?” Kevin grabbed the blankets and pulled them off. With a ‘Ta-da’ gesture he swept his hand down at his feet and lifted his left leg in order to demonstrate that his foot was just fine thank you. Only, what he saw was a massive white blob and a lot of Ace bandages.
His face fell as the realization of the doctor’s words sunk in. He glanced over at Aleah and saw the tears. Great, he thought, pity…just what I need.
“Actually,” Doctor Thompson placed a hand on Kevin’s chest to coax him back to lying down, “you are not the only person who had to go under my knife.”
“What?” Kevin tried to sit up again, but the doctor, for as small as she appeared, was incredibly strong�
�at least in comparison to Kevin in his current state.
“Heather lost two fingers on her left hand and Matt…” Aleah’s voice faded. Tears filled her eyes. Kevin tasted bile building in the back of his throat.
“Miss Godwin is fine,” Doctor Thompson spoke up. “She lost a few fingers and seems to be recovering fine.”
Aleah shot the look and the doctor seemed to weigh it for a moment. Kevin felt dread seizing his heart. Had they done something to her because she is immune? And what about Matt?
“Matt had to be put down,” Aleah finally said after a nod from the doctor.
“Was he bit?” Kevin knew it had to be more than that. As harsh as it seemed, this was a part of the new reality. The shock of losing people had been numbed by the inundation that each and every one of them experienced. At least that is how Kevin saw things.
“Actually, no…” Doctor Thompson placed a hand on Aleah’s arm now and indicated that she would be the bearer of bad news. “It seems that Heather and the young man were engaged in a sexual relationship. Miss Godwin was pregnant unbeknownst to us when we operated and lost the baby the same evening. However, the young man slipped into a coma and turned the next day while in isolation. I examined him myself prior and know for a fact that he displayed no evidence of being bitten or scratched. The best guess we have is that the zombie virus, or whatever the hell it became classified as by the folks at CDC, is transmittable by blood.”
“We already figured that out…sorta,” Kevin whispered.
He felt a wave of dread hit him hard. That whole situation with Mike turning despite not being bit replayed in his head. How could he have not thought that whole situation through?
You always think you know it all and have all the answers, don’t you? the voice in his head said with obvious derision.
“Heather is really broken up about this,” Aleah said from behind the doctor. “She kept saying something about she should have known after Mike? Does that make any sense?”
Kevin winced. Is that what he sounded like? Thinking that he should have known? How could they have known anything? The reality of this new world was coming fast and hard.
“I think we should let you get some rest.” The doctor stood and produced a syringe out of thin air like a magician—at least that was what Kevin was thinking as she administered the medication via piggyback at the junction of the tube running from his hand to the bag suspended overhead.
Just that quick, Kevin felt the room begin to spin and his eyelids were suddenly much more sensitive to gravity. His final thoughts were that he still had not received a very complete update on Valarie. That brought on troubled dreams.
***
“Kevin?” a voice whispered in the darkness.
“Yeah?” For just a moment, his mind kept him blissfully ignorant. For that single instance, the zombie apocalypse did not exist. He took a deep cleansing breath and yawned.
Then it slammed into his brain with the ferocity of a head-on collision. The pain, the screams, the misery…the death and loss. Just that quick, the icy grip of reality clutched his heart.
“How are you feeling?” the voice whispered in the darkness.
“Woozy…and my foot itches…only…” His voice began a strangled sob. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and then a head lay on his chest.
Together in the darkness, Kevin and Heather wept. Neither tried to tell the other that things would “be okay” or any other hollow words that people seemed compelled to say when they really had no words that could offer comfort of any substance.
“It is all my fault,” Heather finally said, sitting up and scrubbing at her face.
“You could not have possibly known.” Kevin reached around until he found her hands. He squeezed them tight. “This is not like anything we ever saw in movies or on television. Nothing in any of the books that I read concocted any scenarios like this.”
“This ain’t the movies,” Heather said with a sniff as she recited Kevin’s mantra.
“I am just glad that you are okay.” Kevin sat up a little and moved over so that Heather could sit beside him more comfortably. “So what happened after we split? I take it this is Willa’s group?”
“We got lucky…at least that is what we keep being told. It seems that there are four herds moving east…big ones. The scout teams say that it is just a matter of time before those groups converge. I guess we moved right down an alley of sorts. A mile north or south would have put us directly in their path. Considering the number of close calls we had I guess they are right.
“That night was crazy. We found a trailer park and managed to scrounge up some clothes. A lot of it was moldy and gross, but it beat the alternative. Matt kept pushing us, saying that we had to hurry. I guess he knew that he was sick. When morning came, he was wearing dark sunglasses, so none of us knew a thing.
“Believe it or not, Erin was quiet the whole time. She didn’t gripe or complain. Of course she is also the one who came out of this the best. She was bundled up pretty good and other than some ugly sores and parts that will never probably recover their feeling, she came out unscathed. The rest of us lost at least a couple of digits.”
Kevin realized that he had not given Aleah a good examination. He had been too foggy and as soon as the doctor arrived, she had moved into the background.
“So I hear you can only count to eight now,” Kevin said in a weak attempt at humor. He was actually surprised when Heather chuckled.
She held up her hands. His eyes had slowly become accustomed to the darkness, but he was confused. He counted ten fingers. Then she reached over and grabbed the middle and index finger of her right hand and twisted. She was wearing gloves.
“Aleah told me that you…” Heather’s voice faded when she felt Kevin’s body tense.
“Yeah. I lost a foot, plus a couple of toes on my other foot. It is weird, because I keep feeling things where the foot should be. In fact, the worst is when it starts to itch.”
“That’s kind of spooky,” Heather said.
There was a long silence. Both had things swirling in their heads. But neither knew what to say or where to begin. Finally, Kevin broke.
“I’m sorry about your…baby.”
“To be honest, I felt sad, but the more terrible part was when I felt relieved. I can’t imagine trying to worry about a baby right now. That thing would be a living zombie dinner bell. It’s not like you can just tell a baby to be quiet until the zombies are gone.”
“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “That would be a definite problem, but we would deal with it. We have with everything else, right.”
Heather was silent for a few minutes. When she spoke, her voice sounded strained and almost afraid.
“We need to talk about Valarie.”
“What about her?” Kevin could feel the apprehension coming off Heather.
“There is talk…some of the people here are saying some of the same stuff that those others were saying.”
“What!” Kevin exploded.
“Not the name calling. Nobody is saying anything mean. It’s just that she keeps having these outbursts. She starts screaming and throwing a fit for reasons that nobody can figure out. Some of the people are saying that she should be…”
Heather went quiet. Kevin waited, but after a few minutes of agonizing and tense silence, he finally had to prompt her to speak. “Should be what?”
“They think she should be put down…out of her misery.”
“She’s not a dog!”
“Nobody is saying that, but she has problems that none of us can deal with. Even the doctor says that she has a lot more going on than just the Down’s thing. She says that there is some delusional stuff. She used much bigger words, but the bottom line is that she says Valarie is hearing voices and seeing things that just are not there,” Heather explained.
“So it is okay to just put her down? Killing her is the answer?” Kevin struggled to keep his voice quiet, but his anger was running hot.
“She ha
s brought zombies sniffing around our location twice in the short time that she has been here. She starts screaming for no reason and the only way they have been able to shut her up is to…make her unconscious.” There was a long pause before Heather finished that sentence. Kevin had the feeling that medication was not the method being used.
Flinging his covers off, he gasped at the blast of cold air on his skin. He wanted desperately to dress and go check on the girl, but in the darkness, he had no idea where his clothing might be. He was not about to go out in the flimsy pajamas they had him in now. And then the realization of his missing foot piled on.
He could not simply “get up” and do anything. For one, there were no crutches or so much as a cane. Mobility was a thing of the past. That was when a new aspect of his reality bloomed in his mind. He was a cripple. If trouble came, he would be a liability. His life expectancy had just taken a serious nosedive.
Kevin let Heather tuck him back into his bed. He tried his best to hold back the tears, but the seriousness of his injury and the magnitude of that loss became instantly clear. Kevin was no longer capable of taking care of himself; much less being able to take care of others. He had fought and scratched and struggled to bring Valarie back; and for what?
“You should get some rest,” Heather whispered and kissed his forehead.
He sank down on the bed, but sleep was no longer an option. His mind whirled and spun with the terrible possibilities. As the dawn came, and the first tendrils of light began to creep through the miniscule creases in the blinds, Kevin had played through every possible scenario in his mind that he could dredge up. Each time, it ended the same way: his inability lead to his death and those around him.
***
“This is not really open to a vote or for any sort of discussion,” Aleah snapped.
Even though they were arguing over a very serious matter, Kevin could not take his eyes away from the bandage on Aleah’s left and right hand. And then there was her face. Both cheeks were still a nasty purplish-black. The skin was cracked, creased, and raw looking. The tip of her nose was solid black and looked as if it would fall off the moment you touched it. In fact, if she sneezed, he would have a difficult time not ducking.