by J. Rudolph
Sleep found us quickly, but my dreams were fitful, and that mini zombie I took care of earlier wandered into my dreamscape. I ran to save her over and over, and each time I reached her, she screamed and withered from a little girl into the mini zombie that I had to end over and over again. I woke with tears on my face. I saw that there was no light coming through the windows so I scooted my sleeping bag closer to Trent and curled into him. He freed his arms and wrapped them around me, and I fell back asleep in his arms.
Fishing Around
A couple of hours later, the sky was pink with pre-dawn light and birds started to sing in the trees. We stirred with the sounds, and after a moment, we decided that we should wash up and begin to work on the clearing project. God knew that there was more than enough work to be done. We opened the door and were greeted with fresh and cold morning air. We walked down to the creek to clean up and fill our water bottles. The creek was deeper than I expected. In the low light, the water looked inky-black as it moved swiftly, and at the same time, snake-like as it carved its way through the trees. Occasional dashes of silver streaked by, like little lightning bolts. It took me a minute, seeing how I was a city girl from southern California, but it finally dawned on me that the flashes were fish.
"Did anyone see fishing gear in the house?" I asked the others. It was clear by the way they were watching the water with soft expressions of awe that they too, had seen the flashes. Trent nodded.
"In the garage there were a few rods with reels," he replied. I could see a sparkle in his eyes when he answered. I wondered if he was thinking of those days as a young child from Idaho, when he went fishing all the time. His lips were curling up in the corners, slowly, like he was almost afraid to smile in the wake of everything that had happened. After a few seconds, he seemed to abandon those reservations, and smiled openly. This had the potential to be a big win for us, and we learned to take the wins when they came. Wins had been hard to come by in the last year and a half.
I ran back up to the house and dashed through the halls to reach the door that lead to the garage from the house. I swung the door open, stepped off of the raised foundation, and landed on the concrete garage floor. On the wall next to the door, there was a rack for the rods with an assortment of poles hung from it. The rack was handmade and garishly painted with the words, 'Daddy went fishing!' I grabbed a mid-length pole with an uncomplicated looking reel mounted on it. It would be ready to use with a click of a button on the bottom of the reel. I was grateful that the reel was already loaded with line so we didn't have to waste time loading it. There was a green and white worn tackle box sitting below the assorted poles, so I opened it to verify it was fishing supplies. There was an array of bait jars and hooks, as well as a bunch of other stuff that I couldn’t identify. I closed it back up and latched it before grabbing the handle, and I quickly rejoined the group with my prizes in my hands that I lifted above my head, to appreciative looks from the guys.
"Man, I haven't had fish in a while. That'd be awesome for breakfast." Tyreese chuckled. Trent shifted through the box and found a three-pronged hook on a lead line, still new in the package. He attached the hook to the line on the pole, and chose bait from a nearly empty jar.
"My best guess is this stuff works. If it didn't, he'd have stopped using it." Trent remarked as he held the open jar of rather stinky mud colored bait. Made sense to me. Trent pinched off a small chunk of the bait and pressed it on the hook. He added a floating ball to the line, and then cast the line in the water. The rest of us busied ourselves filling the water containers while he babysat the pole. It didn't take long before the red and white float dipped under the water and the reel whirled as something took the bait and swam off. Trent jerked the rod up quickly but smoothly, and started to run the reel in. After a lifetime of waiting, and with more suspense than any movie, Trent pulled a good sized fish from the water. We cheered. He reset the hook and cast into the water again. I couldn't help but to throw my arms around him in absolute joy.
"Know what we should do for the future? We should put a net across the creek. We could make the holes large enough to let little fish through but small enough to keep in the big ones." Lucas commented, with a spark in his eyes over the idea. Hunger had a way of bringing out creative solutions. "Of course, we'd better not leave it up all the time. There may be people that live downstream that have been relying on the fish, and if we stopped the flow of food with our net, I can see some very unhappy neighbors knocking on our door." I chuckled as I visualized angry villagers with torches and pitchforks as they marched to our safe house doors.
Trent pulled three more fish from the water in a really short time. A year and a half of people not interfering with the wildlife population was working in our favor. For breakfast, we cooked the fish in the fireplace over an open flame. It was the most delicious thing I had put in my mouth in a long time, and it was gone too fast. I hoped that we would have many more of these breakfasts in the future. I hoped that Drew would enjoy sitting creek-side with his dad as he learned how to fish. I hoped for a future, and the swelling emotions in my chest felt awesome.
We sat for a moment longer in front of the warm fire before we geared up to go back to clearing houses. I held on to the hope that this was the right idea; that we were moving to something real, not just another safe house while we waited for something more. I wanted this to be our last pipe dream. This had to work. It had to.
Before we took on the houses, we decided we needed to clear out the school. There was a possibility that the town had set up the school as a rally point. We needed to face what was there. As it turned out, the school was completely empty. The doors were chained shut, but with a snip of the bolt covers, the doors sailed open. We were a little concerned that this was a morgue or maybe a place that zombies were trapped in, but there was nothing; just classrooms that were cleared out for the upcoming summer vacation. Chairs were piled on desks so summer maintenance could come through to clean the rooms for the next batch of ready learners. That, at least, was a pleasant discovery.
There were more vacant houses on the next street over from yesterday's grouping. More of these houses looked like people left in a hurry. Scattered cans of food were in kitchens that must have fallen out of people's arms. Medical supplies were stripped from medicine cabinets. I had to wonder what happened. I let my over-active imagination take over, and could envision that a horde of zombies swept through the town and the houses on the edge must have fallen first. I could see the residents of the houses on the inside of town evacuating in a panic. I wondered if the people that lived on the inside of town heard their neighbors screaming when they left. I wondered how far they were able to run. How many of them got away? Did any of them escape?
Fish. It was time to think about fish. And water. Thinking about how much better things were going to be was a better use of my time, and needed to stay in the front of my head. I made myself think about the playground and the auto shop, and best of all, in how much less work we were facing with every vacant house we came across.
Despite the many houses we came across that were empty, there were houses that weren't. Some of the houses were just suicides. The thought of labeling these bodies as 'just suicides' made me feel like I was a sick person for being dismissive over a dead person, or even worse, that maybe I was a terrible person for being grateful that the bodies were all the way dead. It made sense if you thought about it, why one would prefer a suicide to a zombie if you had to encounter a previous resident. Suicides didn't stand up and try to eat you, suicides just decomposed like normal. Even still, it was a life that ended in deep emotional pain, and I shouldn't feel grateful that it was easier to deal with, but I did.
We cleared the streets faster than the day before, since there were fewer zombies to deal with, and found ourselves closer to the heart of the town as we continued methodically going house by house, street by street. We finished with the bulk of the residential areas by the end of the day, and decided to call it a nigh
t and pick up the clearing project the next day. Like a bunch of kids, we wanted to go fishing. It was all we could talk about as we worked, and everyone had a fish story to tell. My favorite fishing story was a toss between going deep sea fishing and the stocked trout pond where I once took Trent where the fish would gobble bait-less hooks. Trent talked about going fishing in Idaho when he was a kid. Tyreese talked about going fishing off of a pier in the ocean and how the sea gulls stalked the area, waiting for a free meal whenever someone dropped their bait or gutted the fish that were caught.
We spent the last wisp of daylight sitting on the creek bank with poles in our hands. In one of the houses we found a box of canned colas that we put in the water to become cooler, and after a bit, the cans were chilled enough to be pleasant to drink, even if they did have a somewhat stale flavor. For a moment, we were feeling like normal people who were living in the old days. I had a flash of guilt for enjoying myself when the rest of the group was still at the Idaho house. I quieted that nagging thought by reminding myself that it wouldn't be long before the rest would be joining us.
"Tomorrow's got potential for being a huge pain in the ass, you know that, right?" Tyreese asked quietly. I turned to look at Ty, resting my cheek on my hand as I faced him.
"Yeah. It probably will." I gave him a weak half smile. "It's nothing that we haven't dealt with before, I know, but it never does make it any easier, does it?"
Lucas sighed. "Part of me wants to put a wall around the rest of it and call it a done deal, just seal that area off brick by brick. It's not as though there are more zombies than we have ever seen, though in our drive-by tour of the area, I did see several stuck in the medical building through the windows. We are likely to make a lot of noise going in the buildings and when we do, if there are any locals wandering in the area, they are sure to hear the ruckus, and if they hear the ruckus, they are going to come and see what's for dinner."
"Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, now won't we?" Trent said, heaviness hung on every word. "This is our best chance, the best shot ever. If we don't take this right here, right now, we are saying that we are fine living like rats in a nest in Idaho. We are bumper to bumper in that house and I don't know about you, but I am tired of living like that. I want a chance at being able to feel normal, to live in a house with my wife and son, and have neighbors like you guys, but go home at the end of the day instead of just to another room. I want to be able to breathe again and walk down the street to a café and grab a coffee. I want to set up a workshop and go to work again making things. I want for my mom to be able to bake stuff that we grew in a nice large space so there is more of it. I want for your wife, Ty, to be able to have the ultimate garden. I want these fruit trees that people planted in their back yards to be a part of something that sustains the group. I want there to be reasons to keep going, because I am so tired of this little life we have been living. I am tired of drawing straws and hoping to be able to get past the wood plank fence. I want for all of the kids to go to sleep safe in their beds and not hear the sounds of the incessant moans from the dead carried on the wind. I don't want to hear the sounds of them scraping their fingernails against the fence. When we take the town entirely, we will be able to have all those things." Trent exhaled forcefully, and looked exasperated.
"Whoa, buddy, soliloquy much?" Lucas laughed. "I'm not saying we shouldn't do this. If I was, I wouldn't be here at all. What I am saying is that we shouldn't take this lightly. We are about to open a can of worms here, and I want to keep our heads in the game of how real this is. We have had it easy these last two days. Each threat was contained behind doors and each threat was manageable with our knives, quietly. Sure, when we start to work on the town's heart, most of those will be contained as well, but what about those that turned and were too dumb to wander off? What about the numbers we might run into where we need our guns? What if those that did wander off come back? We've made some noises over the last couple of days, what about those that heard our sounds? Who knows how far those noises were carried on the wind now that the world has gone silent? We're sitting here fishing while the sun goes down, like we are in denial over the threat just down the road. I just think we need to take a moment and recognize the reality of what we are about to be facing. We are going to have to be more careful than we have been in a long time. I worry that we have become lazy, complacent in our dealing with the dead. Tomorrow has the potential of being very, very dangerous, or we would have started there, wouldn't we? We plan on using the heart of the town as our central operations area, but we started on the edges. Why? Because we knew that the outskirts was a safer route. We haven't dealt with any of the gathering buildings except the school, even though we see that there are a ton of those types of buildings there. It's not a picnic, clearing these things out. It's definitely not safe. That's where our brains need to be, on the seriousness of this all."
When Lucas finished his speech we sat without a word. The only sounds in the now night were of crickets chirping and the babbling of the creek. We took a few minutes for everything to sink in.
"Let's turn in. I'm hungry and tired." Lucas said with a sigh. We all murmured our agreements. I stood up slowly, dusting the dirt and leaves off of my backside, and began to collect the fishing gear I had been using. We fished four more cans of cola from the cold creek and left the remaining cans in the water to keep them cool for the next day. We had several fish as a reward for our efforts, and they would make for an excellent dinner and if we paid attention, breakfast as well.
We went to bed with our heads and bellies full. Trent's speech intertwined with the concerns that Lucas voiced. I realized that we had become a bit arrogant in our dealing with the zombies in this town. A whack here, a squish there, all being done behind doors that were opened and closed in a controlled setting. We knew that there would be more zombies in town and when we opened the doors, they would spill out all around us. It was definitely nothing to take lightly.
My dreams that night were filled with tidal waves of the dead overtaking us like a Hollywood movie. Over and over they took me away from my family on waves of bobbing heads and hands until there were no living people around me, and I was all alone with the dead. In the morning I woke up with sweat and tears on my face.
The Business District
I was stiff when I finally tried to roll out of my sleeping bag. I could hear the others rustling around in the room as they cleaned themselves up, preparing for the day, and I grudgingly had to join them in the land of the awake. At least I wasn't being pulled out of great dreams; I was just being pulled out of sleep. I felt the exertion of the last many days of body lifting and zombie slaying in every muscle of my body. I stumbled into the bathroom where I plugged the sink basin and poured some water into it. I splashed some water on my face and looked up in the mirror. I hardly recognized the image in front of me. Dark circles hung out under my eyes, and not all of it was dirt. I looked as tired as I felt, and a lot of work was still in store for the day. Part of me was looking forward to being done with the clearing job so I could go back to Idaho, partly to be back on the duties that didn't involve hoisting dead carcasses around and part to have a bed again. Sure, I could have been sleeping in the bed here, it wasn't like the home owner was coming back to claim it, but I still couldn't make it alright to snuggle in just yet. That would probably come later, once we really felt like we took the town, but for now, I felt like a guest traveling through. While staring at my reflection, I gave myself a mental pep talk, reminding myself that the big picture was what mattered here; the resources available. One of my favorite things about this place was that it had a medical center and there were things that wouldn't have been looted, like exam tables, and there was that possibility that there were other supplies there that people wouldn't take. There was such a question mark that hung over that one building alone that would be a part of our town. There was the mercantile as well, and an unknown quantity of supplies there. When we settled in, we were goi
ng to spread out and have a place to trade things like clothes that the kids had outgrown, and to put the supplies that the former homeowners had left behind. We would be able to feel like regular people shopping for stuff. We could set up the fire department again and know that if there was a structure fire or something that we would have something more going for us than a bucket brigade. We were going to have a little café to have town dinners in. We were going to be able to have a sliver of the before life and we were going to be able to do it as a community. It was not going to be like it was in Heartsvale, where everyone operated under the thumb of a loon with henchmen. It crossed my mind that I had a hippie commune idea in my head, but it was the way we worked. Everyone was a leader of certain aspects of our life.
This was going to be fine. We could handle clearing out a few buildings.
I finished washing up and put on my clothes. It was cooler this morning than it had been, so I went to locate a jacket. I was lucky to find a leather one close to my size. I liked leather jackets, they were more durable than wool and, I imagined, more bite resistant. I realized that I had seen several leather jackets while looking for zombies, almost like it was a requirement for living in Montana. I wandered back to the living room where I put on my boots and laced them tight.