Then she shut up to listen to the men talking at another table about the confinement point. Shepherds were needed there stat. Three had gone AWOL and a fourth overdosed only last night. She yelled to sign her up, her heart jumping into her throat. One guy warned that it was shit work, and a debate broke out if food and water should be supplied to those zombies. The Patron Saint made them do it. In his opinion, it protected the Shepherds. Hunger made people desperate. They had nothing left to lose, so they’d do anything. Eat holes through walls and fences; take any kind of crazy risk. Supply them with food and water, they had something to lose, and they didn’t want to risk losing it. It kept them placid. Crover just wanted to bring down the cost.
Zaley was so stressed at the thought of her friends being starved in the confinement point that she let Grace Leigh take over. Grace declared that the Patron Saint was a genius the way he understood people. That explained how he got so rich in business. One day she was going to marry him, after he went through a time machine and sexied himself up a little.
On the eleventh day, Bat asked her to stay afterwards. He knew her living situation wasn’t that great. Shit, it sucked! Woses pounded on the car roof to wake her up. What about her boyfriend Chuck? She’d be straight with Bat. They were on the outs and she didn’t see that changing. She suspected that he was sneaking around with another girl, so let the whore have him. Was she sure about ditching college? She was so damn sure!
“So your parents don’t like Shepherds?” Bat asked.
“They love Shepherds!” Zaley retorted. “They’re behind you guys one hundred percent. They just want their baby girl to go to college. Got their hearts set on it. But I don’t have the money for that and my high school is closed.”
Well, maybe the Shepherds could help their little Spitfire out. Spitfire was all ears. Bat warned her that the confinement point was really shit work, unloading trucks, making food, cleaning up, but her room and board would be free. If Grace were truly interested, she would be moved to the barracks tomorrow afternoon.
Oh God, was she interested. Then she would know if they were still alive. They had to be. Her blood ran hot and cold at how her gamble had paid off. But the reward had a high probability of being very bitter indeed.
She sat in the car that night with her flickering tea light, apologizing to Jesus for mocking Him all day long, listening to the radio and praying that while she had been filing and pacing and eating doughnuts, they hadn’t been dying. It struck her suddenly that she needed Zyllevir. If they were alive (if her friends were still alive), they had to have their medication! If it wasn’t too late already! Zaley smacked herself on the forehead for not planning this out better. Pretending to be Grace Leigh was making her stupid. Now and then she got so completely in character that she actually believed what she was saying.
How was she to get her hands on Zyllevir? Pharmacies didn’t dispense it at random. Bottles weren’t sitting around the Head. She could contact Sombra C News and plead, but she wasn’t stamped or infected. They wouldn’t trust her.
She stared into the tea light to mull it over. It was two in the morning when she pulled up to a gas station pay phone and got out of the car. The quarters went into the slot and she dialed Elania’s mother. It was lucky that Zaley remembered the number. When the call was picked up, the voice was sleepy but worried. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Douglas? This is Zaley.” It sounded strange to say that instead of Grace or Spitfire. No one had called her by her real name since her friends were abducted into the back of the Shepherd van.
“Zaley!” Mrs. Douglas almost screamed. Behind her, Mr. Douglas cried, “What? It’s Zaley? Is Elania there?”
The conversation was a confused back-and-forth. The family was splitting for the harbor in Sonoma in the morning. The harassment in Cloudy Valley had gotten bad enough to force them out of their home. The Shepherds believed that Elania had killed one of their members, though it was actually Zaley herself. One crazy asshole had threatened to give one of the triplets Sombra C, just so there could be retribution in collecting him for the confinement point. Their mailbox was full of hate mail and death threats, the windows of their cars and house had been smashed with bricks, and a man had tried to lure Cormac away from the cereal aisle at Mr. Foods. Mr. Douglas had coordinated with the leadership of the Sonoma harbor to accept the family.
They weren’t going to be the only ones in the harbor who didn’t have their infected relative with them. Every inch of their belongings would be gone through to make sure they weren’t covert Shepherds sneaking in. Even the boys’ things would be searched, and everyone patted down from head to toe including the puppy. The harbor had demanded Elania’s medical records for the assurance that there was a family member with Sombra C. Being searched and handing over medical records wasn’t anything when the alternative was what was currently going on in Cloudy Valley.
Mr. Douglas wanted to storm up to San Francisco and remove Elania from the confinement point personally, but that was going to get him shot. They didn’t even know if she was still alive in there. All they could do was let Zaley slip inside and see what there was to see. He didn’t like that either, Zaley putting herself in danger. She was just a seventeen-year-old girl. If the world went his way, he would blast in to get his daughter out and stuff both Elania and Zaley in the car with the triplets to get north. Tears came to Zaley’s eyes. She blinked them away and wished that the world went his way as well. She could help out with the boys and take lessons in Hebrew, so she had a clue of what Elania was saying when she prayed.
She fed quarters into the phone as they wrangled over what to do about the Zyllevir. After getting nowhere on it, Mrs. Douglas said, “We are giving this to God. Tomorrow I will go to the temple and ask the rabbi for help. He’s assisting Sombra C families as much as he can, and he vouched for us with the harbor. Zaley, hold tight and take good care of yourself. Stay safe and call back. We will get you Zyllevir somehow.”
The following afternoon, Zaley was moved to the confinement point. Her car was left in a Golden Gate parking lot reserved for Shepherds, and a golf cart carried her through a spider web of trails through the park. Soon they came to a trio of buildings, where she was dropped off outside the barracks. It was a long, single-story wood structure that gave the impression of being hastily constructed. The Shepherds walking around were young, some younger than she. No one wore wedding rings and half of them looked stoned. It smelled awful. Something was rotting.
Corbin came to mind and stopped her heart for a moment. His smile, his dark hair, the way he made her laugh when nothing to her perspective was funny . . . she breathed deeply to calm herself and gagged.
A woman named Coral (was it actually Coral or short for Coral Reef? Zaley didn’t inquire) showed her around the barracks and opened the door to Zaley’s new room. It was small, containing a twin bed and a dresser, a window and an air freshener. The restrooms were communal. Motioning to the tiny size of the room, Coral gave an apologetic shrug. These were shitty places to stay. Zaley said it was gorgeous after living in a car and she hugged the woman even though she had had nothing to do with Zaley being assigned here. What a beautiful heart Coral had. Praise Jesus.
Coral gave her more instructions. Spitfire was due to start in deliveries the next day to replace the overdosed Lycan. Breakfast was in the canteen at seven, lunch at noon, and dinner at six. And absolutely do not wander! The barracks were very close to the confinement point. Everyone looked the same from high in the watchtowers. The guards had shot people who wandered, mistaking them each time for a zombie that had gotten over the fence. No less than three Shepherds had died that way. All of them were drunk and took wrong turns to the barracks.
Walking over to the canteen for dinner, Zaley looked up to the high fence and the two watchtowers in view. The fence was covered in tarps and hid most of the hill. That was how close she was, and when she was in the canteen having her meal, she was even closer. The canteen’s kitchen butted up to the fence s
o someone could serve food to the zombies on the other side. The zombies got the shit food; the Shepherds got fantastic meals. As fantastic as they could be when the world was spiraling down into anarchy. The salad bar was fresh, the jugs of cereal were loaded, and everything from the hot bar was simple but decent. She was invited to a tableful of Shepherds when she had loaded up her tray and sat with them to learn about this place.
The four of them gave animal names. A morbidly obese blonde girl who wore pink makeup called herself Kitten in a cutesy, high-pitched voice, and a black girl named Terrier could barely keep her eyes open. The thin, vaguely Middle Eastern Meerkat was the oldest of the group at twenty-four, and a spray tanned muscle house was bizarrely referred to as Daddy Long Legs. As Kitten and Meerkat caught Zaley up to speed, she wondered why someone as fit as Daddy Long Legs hadn’t been posted to the Golden Gate Bridge.
None of the four were watchtower guards. There were six watchtowers stationed around the confinement point, and there needed to be twice that amount. To work up there, one had to pass shooting courses. Not that Spitfire would want to be on a watchtower anyway! All they did was stand for an eight-hour shift. Sometimes a guard got bored and shot a zombie in the confinement point for something to do, but this was frowned upon. If that zombie was trying to get out, it was fine. But just walking around in there, all that guard did was freak people out in the barracks, canteen, and office for no reason. A gun blasted right then and they all jumped. It was deafeningly loud in the canteen. Kitten said, “See what I mean?”
Corbin. Zaley could have just heard the blast that ended his life.
More guards walked the path that went in a ring around the confinement point. That was even less interesting than being a watchtower guard. All of the four at the table had gotten stuck with path guard duty several times a week. The most important part of being a path guard was staying on the path. The watchtower guards couldn’t see the ground all that clearly. They expected heads on the path going back and forth; they shot at movement in the trees and shrubs between the path and the confinement point fence. If Zaley had reason to go off the path, she needed to blow a whistle so the nearest watchtower guard knew she was down there. One blow of the whistle meant going off the path, two blows of the whistle meant returning to it and there was no problem. Three blows alerted everyone to a problem.
“You good at blowing?” Meerkat asked with a leer.
Zaley hated guys like this; Grace loved them. Throwing him a wink, she said, “I don’t get complaints from my boyfriend.” Oh, she would have to maintain her imaginary baby feelings boyfriend Chuck here. Meerkat was checking her out.
Kitten released a naughty giggle and said coyly, “What happens in the barracks stays in the barracks!” Grace laughed along with everyone else; Zaley planned to lock her door and window.
Most confinement point jobs were rotated every three days, kitchen to janitorial to office work to path guard to delivery, or some variant thereof. Not zombie delivery, which was the raiders’ task, but food and supplies deliveries. Some days no deliveries were coming when a Shepherd was assigned to it, and he or she got the day off. Just head down the path to the parking lot and clear out, and don’t come back so drunk or high as to be stupid. An intoxicated idiot named Pitbull had decided to climb over the fence and shoot the zombies inside just the other week. The watchtower guard took off the top of his head, thinking he was a zombie climbing out. Plans to electrify the fence were in the works; the problem was that no one wanted to set the tarps on fire.
Pit bull. She missed Bleu Cheese. It had always been very sweet to Zaley how Corbin was so unabashedly in love with his goofy dog. Guys mostly tried to out-cool each other in the hallways and Corbin stood among them proffering pictures of his puppy for everyone to coo over. Isn’t she cute?
No, she had to be Spitfire now. She smiled encouragingly to her tablemates for more information.
The guys had rooms down one hallway and the girls down another in the barracks. So many of them were in relationships that Zaley was advised to get used to sharing the girls’ restrooms with guys. The five of them finished up their meals and took their trays to the counter, where a girl swept them into the kitchen.
Then they walked to the barracks, Terrier saying dopily that every night was Fun Night. The girl was on something with a gaze that distant. It became clear on the walk why Daddy Long Legs was here at the confinement point and not the Golden Gate Bridge. His legs were prostheses from the knees down. He mumbled that he’d been in a motorcycle accident five years ago when he was seventeen.
Zaley went along with them to the rec room. Beer bottles and billiard balls were clinking, the television was playing, and the sofas were draped with people. They were smoking up or blissed out on pain medication. Pills passed from hand to hand. A girl who called herself the Easter Bunny had a basket packed with bottles. Speed you up, cool you down, smooth you out, she had it all and it was free. Terrier went over for a visit.
Porn magazines were on the coffee tables. They had come from the homes of Sombra Cs brought to the confinement point. Everyone was terrified of getting infected, but it didn’t stop the raiders from stealing magazines around a Sombra C’s home, or the confinement point guards from leafing through them. It was absurd. A lot of the pills in the Easter Bunny’s basket and the bottles of wine in the racks around the room had come from Sombra C homes, too. There were thousands of DVDs in a mountain range of stacks by the television, everything from Learning Greek to Syerra’s Sluthouse IV.
“What’s your drink?” Meerkat asked as their little group played pool. Zaley was just watching and cheering them on. Her shot-up arm made it too hard to play.
A character in a book she’d once read drank margaritas on the rocks with extra salt. Other than that, she knew jack squat about drinks. “Margaritas. You got a bar hiding in this room?”
He laughed and put his arm over her shoulders. “No, we got Fun Nights out on the town. There are a zillion places to go, bars and restaurants and clubs. Some of them let us drink and eat and dance for free.”
Her instinct was to move away, but that would not be Grace’s instinct. Right now she was Grace, so what would Grace do? Grace would lean against him. Grace would tell him that she was taking names of cute guys for when she broke up for good with baby feelings Chuck. Grace would praise Jesus apropos of absolutely nothing. Grace would get distracted by the porn movie on the television and yell, “What the fuck? No guy has a dick that big and no girl would fuck him if he did!” So Zaley was Grace.
Later on, she scrubbed hard in the shower. It had been the first shower she’d seen in ages, and she also wanted to get that guy’s touch out of her skin. Corbin was the only boy she wanted touching her. If he wasn’t alive, then she didn’t think she would ever let another guy get close to her. If they were all dead in there, she wouldn’t know what to do. There would be nothing left for her in the world.
In the morning, she showed up for Report and was sent to deliveries. The gangly guy in charge was named Wasp, and he wasn’t happy about Zaley. He looked her up and down and wanted to know where the rest of her was. Why did the Head keep sending him such woses? Why did all of the good ones go to the bridge? She did her damnedest to please him, rolling dollies packed with food into the kitchen, taking toilet paper and paper towels and new air fresheners to the barracks. Her arm hated her for it. It was tempting to bum a pain pill from the Easter Bunny, but she couldn’t. Those pills reduced her mental activity to the speed of Grace Leigh, and she had to stay keen. Not to mention what it did to her in the bathroom department, a memory still painfully raw. Some of the drugged out ones on the sofas had been sharing containers of organic dried prunes to keep the disposal system firing on all cylinders. One said the prunes were healthier than corn syrup laxatives. It would be even healthier just not to swallow the contents of the Easter Bunny’s basket.
Jobs were about to rotate so she only had that one day on delivery. She moved to afternoon/evening shift path guard
and paced the trail between two watchtowers for hours. As it grew dark, it chilled her to hear the sounds from the other side of the fence, the animal hooting and chattering, the all-too-human screaming. None of the voices she recognized. It was all she could do not to cry.
After her second shift on path guard, she got caught up in a group of Shepherds leaving the park for a Fun Night. They went to the nearby dance club Bonko’s, all of them getting in without paying the cover charge or having to show identification. The mood was jubilant. A squad of T-BACS had gone down in a firefight on the bridge, and a high school in Ohio was bombed by several of its own students in retaliation for a Sombra C Support Club that two seniors started. One hundred dead, an untold number of wounded, and Grace said, “Serves them right for starting that club!” They had brought it upon themselves. Meerkat got her a margarita to celebrate. She took a sip and went out to dance. Her drink disappeared on its own, someone helping himself to the untended glass as she had hoped.
The club was full of strobe lights and thrashing forms. The Shepherds she had come with grew so hammered that she made her escape unnoticed. Taking off her Shepherd vest outside, she rolled it up, tucked it under her arm, and walked down the block in search of a gas station with a pay phone. Then she called Elania’s mother and got the voicemail. But the message was for her. “RGM, pick up your package at UU25.”
UU25. That stood for Unitarian Universalist. There had to be a UU church in the area, perhaps on 25th street. She dialed information and got the address, although she still had no idea where on 25th that was. Tomorrow when she wasn’t working, she’d visit the library and use the Internet for directions.
She walked back to the park. A handful of people were in the rec room, popping pills and drinking. They waved and called for Spitfire to stop in. Leopard looked comatose on the sofa. A guy had his hand on her thigh. The girl was a pill fiend who went off to a different bed every night. Whether it was truly consensual sex was anyone’s guess. The girl was barely cognizant.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 90