The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  Never did she go straight to the sofa either. Austin sat down on it as she took note of where Adelfo was in anticipation of a problem. Then she went to the children sprinkled around the room to say good night, especially the ones who had come here without parents or older siblings. It was for the same reason she was friendly with Casper and said prayers and pretended to be Austin’s girlfriend. Everything was deliberate, every move she made, in order to maintain control.

  Those children without family all had a foster parent looking out for them here. Jerry kept Clarissa close during the days, and an old married couple was caring for a two-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl that had been shoved solo through the gate on the South Bridge on different days. Garbage delivered to the trash heap. Those were the only times Casper cried, when he was carrying those tiny, frightened children up the steps to the lodge.

  The noise was picking up outside, hoots and hollers as feral Sombra Cs came out of hiding. For weeks, Austin had been afraid of it. Tonight he heard them for his brethren. Would he hoot like an owl? Chatter like a monkey? Howl or grunt or scream? Be totally silent? Some of those people might be in a pack that he would join. One last group of friends. Or maybe he would be alone.

  The virus was laughing in all four of them. They were starting the Sombra C descent downhill, all of them in separate cars. Austin got up and went to the fire, where he squeezed Corbin’s shoulder. Corbin jerked to shake it off, and then he saw who it was. He placed his hand over Austin’s and squeezed back.

  Within a group of women and girls along the wall was Elania. A baby was in her arms and she was singing a lullaby so the mom could visit the restroom. Austin nodded to her, and she nodded back. She hadn’t totally reduced. Of the four of them, she was doing the best. He just hated to see her new reflex of looking around to mark the men.

  Then he went back to the sofa. Clarissa was dozing beside it and he patted her head. “Good night, Clarissa.”

  “Good night . . . Au . . . Austin.” Concern was in her eyes at the hesitation. “I’m good. I . . . promise.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I know,” Austin said. “Do I get a hug good night?” Of course he got a hug. She was a very affectionate child, beautiful and big-hearted and innocent, and her parents had to be hysterical out there in the world to have lost their daughter. God had spared her one cruelty in the kings. All she had known were adults in confinement who protected her. Adults. Austin and Micah were hardly that. But weeks here had rendered them ancient.

  When Micah came over, Clarissa held out her arms for another hug, and a kiss, too. Austin lay down on his side. The cushions just sank and sank like nothing was behind or beneath them. The stained sides faced down. Austin didn’t want to think about what had happened on this sofa with the kings. It bugged him every night. He closed his eyes, listening to Micah’s whispered knock-knock joke and Clarissa’s giggle. She hadn’t lost her sense of humor, but it had taken her longer to get today’s joke than the one from yesterday. She whispered that she wanted her mom and dad, and Micah crooned, “I know, I know,” and rocked her back and forth.

  “What if they come tonight?” Clarissa whispered about the ferals.

  “Then they come,” Micah said. “Austin and I will block the doors. Do you see how big my muscles are? Do you see Austin’s? Pinch my arm, Clarissa. It’s made of rock.”

  “How’d you get so strong?”

  “I hold up the world,” Micah said. It was a joke to the little girl, and deadly serious to Austin.

  In time, Micah lay down alongside him. What she dreamed at night, he did not know. She couldn’t even answer the question. That was outside the borders of her world.

  “Jubilee,” he whispered into her back. She no longer told him to shut up about that. That was how detached she had become from herself, from them, from the world. The sharpest thorn in her side had lost its point. All she existed for was the game, the one she played to keep them alive and whole. But the virus was winning in the long run.

  Kissing her shoulder, Austin whispered, “I love you.”

  Silence. It stretched out longer and longer, and he felt her trying to find words to respond without deliberation and manipulation. It wasn’t her virus bursting out of its shell to proliferate at will and eat away her words. It was trying to remember a language that they hadn’t spoken in weeks. In this lawless place, his lawless little sister of the heart was the only law there was.

  Tonight he wanted to dream that they were birds, everyone going over the fence and flying over the road, on and on to home. Though Micah never said anything in reply, she pulled his arm over her chest.

  Elania

  They called her serene when she was demolished.

  That was the best word to describe herself on this second, impossible day without the anti-virals freezing her infection. She stood on the old bloodstains while in line for breakfast, unenthusiastic about leading morning services afterwards and wishing she didn’t see over and over how the drops of blood had flown from the switchblade. Every time Elania came to the bridge, her mind replayed it. The heckling, the fighting, the breaking of the railing, how the blood had spilled when Austin stabbed a man who came down the stairs to help his friends deal with Micah. Kill that bitch.

  The blood had leaked down the man’s gut beneath the splintered point of the pole, Austin yanking it out and kicking him away. Austin had done this. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Her movie partner, her pretend boyfriend of many months, her friend . . . Micah rose from the water, a phoenix born over the dead king, and how many classes had they shared? How many ice cream cones? How many rides in the V-6 and sleepovers and giggling conversations about crappy teachers?

  They were being redefined. The new definition of Micah stormed up those steps to the lodge to kill the kings, and Elania had gone after her to . . . help or watch? What had been on her mind? Only that she couldn’t let Micah go up there on her own, and the thought hadn’t carried too far past that point. She’d followed after Micah for years, into classes and their SATs, on the Gray King Nature Path. It had been very natural to go up those stairs in her wake. Micah always seemed to know where she was going, whereas Elania had to think about it for a lot longer. Micah acted; Elania analyzed.

  She had also followed because she didn’t want to be alone down there. The boys were with her, yet Micah had the switchblade. And she’d used it. There had been no fear within her upon the bridge. Sending down the guy who’d been practically molesting Elania just with his voice and then two other men, Micah was drenched in water as she wounded a fourth, and still fearless when charging up the steps. So Elania went after her. She hadn’t known what else to do.

  They were waiting outside the lodge, six men and one woman. The bleeding messenger was nowhere to be seen, nor was Ruthie the child pimp. The seven adults standing there weren’t going to cede ground to a teenaged girl with a switchblade. A few were holding sticks for clubs, and the others were just laughing about this ludicrous challenge. This was their place, their rules within the fence. Their mouths started running about tits and ass and tight pussies, what they planned to do to Micah until it killed her, and suddenly Elania’s hand gripped more tightly on her pole from the bridge railing. She was frightened, she was angry, and when Micah charged them, she did not do so alone. Pure instinct carried Elania along, the boys at her sides and others coming up the stairs to run at their heels.

  She was going to die, so what the hell? That had been the insouciant thought at the periphery of her mind. What did it matter if she died in this fight or in the not-so-distant future from her virus? The only thing that she was not going to do was live on the hill day after day in danger from these perverts. That one was off the table. Micah throwing down the gauntlet gave Elania strength. It was as infectious to the soul as the virus they harbored in their bodies, passing from Micah to Elania to the boys to strangers. No. So she ran, her feet striking into the earth and the earth striking back. She focused in on the snarly-haired woman at the edge of t
he pack.

  A woman being involved in this fixated her. Elania expected that a small percentage of guys were going to have problems when it came to sex. Slip roofies in drinks on dates, lurk in alleys or restrooms, pretend no meant yes or they hadn’t heard it, it was a sad truth that some sick, pathetic guys were always going to do bad things, but a woman? Elania felt betrayed. She shouldn’t have to be afraid of women, too.

  The woman raised a stick in warning. Then she turned tail to flee. Elania gave pursuit for a few meters, the woman going pell-mell into the trees, and went back to the wild fight behind her. Dozens upon dozens of people had come up the steps to take part, men and women and teenagers, all brandishing sticks and fists and shouts. Children watched in terror from the steps. One of the six men was on the ground, crawling with poles stuck out of his back like the quills of a porcupine. He was screaming. The people in a circle around him were screaming even louder and he crumpled in a flurry of kicks.

  Corbin was down in the dirt, a stick being cracked over his back. Rolling frantically, he lifted his leg and nailed the man attacking him square in the crotch. Another man was surrounded by a group of women, who were smacking and jabbing him with poles. One was yelling, “How do you like it, asshole? Dance, dickhead, dance!”

  It was a melee around Micah and Austin. When one man grabbed Micah’s head in his hands, intending to break her neck, Elania sank the point of her pole into his back. She did it hard, every ounce of strength she had, the way she had had to strike the feral Sombra C in the tree the night before.

  The punch of it penetrating his flesh had a twin, and that was Austin pushing his through the stomach of another man. Covered in blood, Micah got up and launched herself at another one with a savage scream. Elania jerked her pole from the man’s back as he shrieked and flailed. Then she sank it in a second time, afraid he would refuse to die, that he might still turn around and try to assault her. No guy had ever, ever touched Elania against her will, and she was desperate to keep it that way. Her body, her home, and her pole sank into the man even when he was still. She had unearthed a bottomless well of rage that she had no idea existed within her, and with no end to it, she stabbed him until the others forced her to stop. When she looked up, it was as a hunter for her next target. No one was left. The six men hadn’t had a chance against the fifty there.

  She never wanted to remember that day, but that was what she found in her mind every time she came to the bridge. Her brain was at a loss about how to file it away, so it was always on top of her mental basket. The whole of the confinement point was in that basket, waiting to be sorted into a cabinet that didn’t exist.

  There had been more sick assholes on the hill than the ones who remained to fight at the lodge. Some tried to sneak through the doors once the lodge was won and the sun was setting. They were refused admittance. Elania was part of the group to block them. That well of rage was still there inside her, open and gaping and ready to boil over. No one was touching her! She was sleeping in the lodge tonight, not in a tree under siege by zombies, and it wasn’t going to be at the price of her body. That was what she had learned from watching Micah run to what likely could have been her death. Their autonomy was worth fighting for.

  It was terrible to hear people, especially the children, saying, he touched me, he made me do stuff, I don’t want him in here. One guy argued that he hadn’t done all that much. He’d just gotten to the confinement point three days ago. He hadn’t known it was wrong! Everyone else was doing it. He was sorry. He begged for a second chance and Elania shouted, “No!” He looked over her head to Micah, who was standing between two terribly beaten men that had come the same day as the pleading pervert and tried to stop the kings themselves.

  Expressionlessly, Micah said, “I think you have me mixed up with the American justice system. In this lodge, it’s a one-strike and you’re out policy with sex crimes. So get the fuck out and die painfully.”

  Elania and Austin drove him away with the stained points of their poles. The man grabbed the end of Elania’s and she screamed in anger, holding onto the pole with everything she had as Austin cracked him on the back of the skull with his. The snarly-haired woman was lurking around the trees, her eyes on the sorting. Elania glared at her ferociously, and she went away without trying.

  The man they had driven off came back and snatched the last boy coming inside the great room to use him as collateral to gain entrance. Micah shut the doors and left them both out there. The lurch and wandering eyes of the boy testified to a high viral load, but it had still torn Elania’s heart to shreds to hear him scream.

  The man hadn’t expected Micah to do that. He smacked the kid around and shouted that he wouldn’t stop until he was allowed in. Micah stood before the doors with her arms crossed over her chest, unyielding. Wanting to save the screaming boy, Elania suggested quietly, “We can tie him up or something-”

  “No,” Micah said. “It will stop.”

  And it did. In time. On each of the four occasions Elania woke that night, Micah was sitting up on her sofa to watch over the sleeping forms, or walking through the great room. Escorting frightened women to the restroom and guarding it to make sure no one followed in with ill intentions; tending the fire and rushing to the doors when a feral or expelled perverts beat on them; taking a child from one of the beaten guys about to fall apart from his Sombra C and promising to find someone to take care of the girl. She had gone up these steps as a high school student and led everyone down them to breakfast as a ruler. Some people thought she was in her twenties or even thirties. Her presence commanded so much respect that they didn’t believe their own eyes.

  The snarly-haired woman never showed at breakfast, nor did Ruthie or the expelled kings. Elania hoped whatever had happened to them out in the night hurt. If one of the triplets ever spoke to a woman the way those men had spoken to Elania, she would never have anything to do with that brother again. She wouldn’t visit his house or talk on the phone or make nice at family events in front of the relatives. They were done. But she couldn’t imagine her brothers being such sick shits. Had her even-tempered, easy-going father been here, he would have stabbed the kings himself for treating his baby girl so badly. The fence would have done that to him.

  For a day she had drawn uneven stacks of X’s in the dirt with a stick in her depression, and it wasn’t until Austin asked why she was drawing the fence that she realized what it was. She looked into his gentle eyes and couldn’t shake the image of how roughly he had killed. How were they turning into these other people? It wasn’t like Elania was untouched by this either, that they were changing and she was not. You couldn’t live here and go unchanged.

  It was the fence. They were certain people on one side of it and different people on the other side. She wanted to hold on to a measure of who she was out there, and that wasn’t a person who drew X’s while other people were hurting. She reached out and ten hands reached back, and from then on, she was surrounded. All she had to do was say hello, her name was Elania, and she was so sorry to see the other person here. The other person returned the sentiment. They talked about God and Sombra C, families and who they were before the hill. However, usually their conversations began with the Shepherds. It was the easiest place to start.

  I thought they were a joke.

  Had Elania a dollar for every time she’d heard those words, she would have a fat wad of cash. So many people at the confinement point had looked at the Shepherds in their earlier days and written them off as loons having their moment in the sunlight. Their fifteen minutes, and those always passed. You just had to wait them out, as painful and annoying as they were.

  It wasn’t a humorous joke, although the sight was occasionally funny in a pathetic way. Most of the people last summer and autumn hadn’t known anyone with Sombra C in their community, yet these stupid people in vests and patches were marching up and down the streets to watch out for zombie attacks. Harassing people in turtlenecks, stopping traffic and getting busted by
cops for doing so. They were just nuisances, self-made commandos who liked to act important. It was their father-in-law who had chased away all of his adult children and grandchildren with his temper, leaving him alone and angry to brood. It was their second cousin who passed from job to job, marriage to marriage, religion to religion, therapist to therapist, always searching for something she never found. It was those lazy young adult kids across the street, Tabitha and Frederick who bummed around all day while their parents worked. They’d always gotten whatever they wanted as kids and their parents couldn’t figure out why they were so unmotivated now.

  These were Shepherds.

  Sure, sometimes Shepherds made bona fide rescues. A couple of squads actually held to the original mission of the Shepherds in Colorado, to assist the police force when Sombra C was raging unchecked. It was really respectable for those people to volunteer their time in that way. But the rest of them were just sort of sad and weird.

  Everyone mentioned a different point in time for when he or she realized that the Shepherds were not a joke. Then the conversation shifted to the dead boys of Squay or more local incidents that Elania had never heard of, and she was surprised when the old retired plumber named Merv said, “You know when it was for me? That kids’ party somewhere south of here. I don’t remember the name of the city. It happened last Christmas. These cullers attacked a legit confinement point and drove feral Sombra Cs right into that party. The feral ones infected tons of the kids and the cullers shot even more. I couldn’t turn off the television. I’ve got grandkids that age. I’d kept expecting these fools to knock it off, even with the elections and everything else going so crazy. Something about that party . . . those poor kids in there dancing and just having a good time . . . that was when I knew we were way beyond knocking it off. These people, Shepherds, cullers, they were batshit crazy, excuse my language, and they weren’t going to stop.”