by TW Brown
2
Vignettes XXXVII
Vix adjusted the strap and cinched it through the buckle. The padded suit that she would be wearing under the actual armor almost seemed sufficient in itself. She glanced over at Harold who was already half done with donning his set of chainmail. He seemed to know what he was doing and was actually helping Gemma with hers as she suited up.
She smiled as she watched. Gemma was absolutely clueless to the way that Harold gawked at her every time she was not paying attention. He was developing a strong crush on the girl. That would need to be watched. Nothing could make a bloke act the fool quite like the desire to impress a girl.
It took a while, but at last, all three of them were in their new armor. Vix stepped in front of the mirror and flipped up her visor. She blinked her eyes at what she saw.
“This is not a fashion that would have caught on before,” she said with a snicker.
“Not very flattering to the figure,” Gemma added as she came up beside Vix and took a look at her own reflection.
“The comics and video games always had the women looking so…hot.” Harold joined them and put a hand on each woman’s shoulder. It took him a moment to register the glares staring back at him. “I-I-I didn’t mean…umm…what I was trying to say…oh bloody hell!”
“Shut up, Harold,” the pair said in unison, shrugging his hands off their shoulders.
Vix walked over to the busted open wooden crate and looked through the possibilities. Her eyes locked onto a curved blade that looked like it might come from Aladdin or some similar movie. She picked it up and was delighted that it was not too heavy to wield. She took a few practice slashes at the air and nodded in satisfaction.
Gemma settled on a pair of blades that were little more than daggers and a slender iron mace with a knobbed head. She fastened the blades to her waist and held the mace at her side. Harold had chosen an enormous sword. It was the dazzling weapon he had first laid eyes on when they first broke in to the room. While certainly not the actual fabled Excalibur, the weapon was impressive in its size as well as its beauty. The blade had intricate scroll work done and the pommel was made to look like the crenelated turret of a castle chess piece.
Vix had picked it up when nobody seemed to be paying any attention. Just lifting it was a chore. She could not imagine actually swinging the weapon. He carried that monstrosity on his back, the pommel sticking up over his left shoulder. On his hip he carried a shorter sword. By shorter, that meant that the blade was only about three feet long.
“So, not that I am anxious to do anything crazy,” Gemma spoke once they were all done suiting up in their gear, “but what now?”
“I would guess that there are two dozen sets of assorted suits of armor,” Vix said. “Also, there are all of these weapons that are ready to use. Now we see if we can find any other survivors and build our own stronghold.”
“And where will we be doing that?” Harold asked, hearing something in Vix’s voice that made him just a bit nervous.
“Where else?” Vix said with a shrug.
“You can’t be serious,” Gemma scoffed.
“That is lunacy!” Harold added. “And what makes you think that somebody else has not already thought of that…or that it might even be some place that we could get inside?”
Vix relayed what she had seen when they were running from a particular zombie horde. The looks on Harold and Gemma’s faces did not change from the obvious doubt they both expressed verbally.
“So you saw a few of the bearskins and a couple of dogs,” Harold finally spoke after a moment of silence. “That hardly means that the palace is vacant. Besides, I have been in London this entire time. You don’t think I looked? That place was hell on earth. The zoms were meters deep all the way around the walls. The noise and the stench was enough to tell me that it would be folly to even consider trying to get inside that place.”
“When was the last time that you went to the palace?” Vix asked.
Harold counted on his fingers as he mumbled to himself. At last he seemed satisfied. “About seventeen weeks…so just over four months ago if I remember correctly.”
“You don’t think that things could have changed since then?” Vix asked.
“Of course, but still—” he began.
“Then we go,” Vix snapped. “If the area is still a shambles, then we make our way out of town. It is not like we can’t find another castle in all of England.”
“And you propose that we simply walk about in these bloody suits through the streets of London, and perhaps to the countryside?” Harold argued.
“Not at all. But I do say that we go out and clear this place. We are in the heart of the city. If I remember proper, then we just have a jog over to St. Paul’s and then follow A4 until it leads to the palace gates.”
“I could not jog down the hallway in this,” Gemma moaned. Vix shot her a withering look.
“We cannot be the only souls left alive in all of London!” Vix insisted. “If we can clear this place and block off at least one section and start finding others, I think we can make this work.”
“I have an idea,” Harold offered. “I understand what you are saying, but what if we could find a lorry and I could get it working? We load up all of these suits and make a run for the Thames. We could hop a boat and make for the sea.”
Vix thought it over. She had not really thought beyond getting here and finding the suits of armor. She had hoped that, perhaps along the way, she and Gemma might find a few kindred souls to share in the adventure. So far, it had been one young man, still a boy really. She looked over at Gemma who continued to fuss and fidget with her gear; obviously thinking that she might somehow find a way to make all this metal somewhat comfortable.
“Perhaps—” Vix began, but Harold cut her off, his voice heavy with excitement.
“I saw a white panel number as we came in. It was parked in the loading dock. All we need to do is fight our way up and to the rear and I bet I can get her running. The biggest question will be the petrol. It goes bad over time and that might be a problem.”
“We can worry about that when the time comes,” Vix said.
“So…I take it we are leaving again?” Gemma huffed.
***
The dream was the same as he’d had the past several nights. He had reached the back yard of the house he’d left Frank and Donna. It was clear, but he could see plenty of activity in the front. Through the open curtains, he could see dark shadows moving through the house.
He climbed the fence with April and the others on his heels. Opening the sliding glass door, he was immediately assaulted with the smells and the sounds of the deaders that had come through the busted plate glass window in the living room.
He dropped the first couple and then moved for the front door. If they were going to have any chance at all, the gate had to be shut. To her credit, April stuck to his side, killing just as quickly and efficiently as he did.
Closing the gate was easy once they moved the bodies out of the way. April produced a length of chain and they secured the gate as best they could. Once that was finished, it was a matter of finishing off the rest of the zombies that were milling about.
When they moved down the stairs, Juan froze. Still attached to the posts where he’d left them were the squirming corpses of Frank and Donna. They both strained uselessly to get at the living souls that had come into view.
“Jesus,” Kip breathed. “Who the hell did this to Frank and Donna?”
He turned back to Juan with wide eyes. The other young man did not seem as concerned with that at the moment. He went to each and plunged his blade into their eye socket. His eyes began to scan the boxes of supplies. Eventually, his gaze came back to Juan.
“Does not make sense,” he said in his thick accent. “If somebody came here and did this, why did they not take all of these supplies?”
Juan noticed that April had moved over behind the one talking. She gave the appearance of just
peeking in the boxes, but her eyes continued to dart back and forth between him and the two young men.
“Why tie them up and then leave all of this stuff?” Kip said as he flipped open box after box. “Even if whoever did this got spooked by the incoming zombies, they would have grabbed at least a couple of things.”
He picked up a pristine looking Springfield .30-06 with a scope. There was a band around the stock with several cartridges at the ready, their brass casings glittering in the light of the lantern.
“Nobody would have just left this here…” Kip’s voice trailed off and he turned to face Juan. His back was now completely to April. “When you left them…is there something—”
A solid crack to the back of the skull ended his question abruptly. Kip collapsed and a pool of blood was already beginning to spread around his head like a liquid halo.
“April!” Juan gasped.
The young man whose name Juan still did not recall had amazing reflexes and was already running for the door. April’s thrown axe caught him behind the left knee with a nasty crunch. The head had not embedded itself, but the weight and the force of the throw had been enough to buckle the man’s leg.
“Don’t just stand there, Juan!” April barked.
Juan jumped into action on reflex. Before he even had the chance to weigh his options, he had scooped up the axe and brought it down with a crunch on the back of the man’s head.
He spun to confront the woman, his chest heaving, the surging adrenaline causing his hands to start to tremble. She was staring at him in the light of the lantern, but the shadows hid her eyes from view. Instead, all he saw were two black and soulless orbs. (In the nightmare, they swirled with a malevolent fire.)
“What did you do?” Juan gasped.
“Protecting our interest,” April retorted. “Like it or not, you are the person leading our little community. For some reason that I cannot begin to understand…folks like you.”
“But not you,” Juan said it as a statement of fact.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Juan always woke right around then in the nightmare. This time was no different. He sat bolt upright and looked around in the darkness. Mackenzie stirred briefly beside him but continued to sleep peacefully.
Easing out of the bed, Juan walked into the living room and sat in the rocking chair that faced the huge picture window. The curtains were open and the night was clear. The world was bathed in a silvery glow that should have felt calm and peaceful. It did nothing to ease the turmoil swirling inside Juan. He would be leaving tomorrow and expected to return with the three people that were supposedly still back at Donna’s house.
A snuffling noise brought him back to the moment. A large dark shape was padding over to him. Juan reached down and ran his hands through the thick, soft fur.
“Hey, Tigah,” he whispered.
A wet tongue slopped his hand in response. The Newfoundland puppy forced his head onto Juan’s lap and rested it there. Juan scratched the dog behind the ears and smiled despite all the stress and strain that was roiling within him as the dull thud of a foot tapping the floor started slow and then picked up its tempo.
“Found the right spot, huh?” Juan whispered.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Mackenzie’s voice made Juan jump.
Tigah pushed away and waddled over to the doorway where Mackenzie stood. The silver light of the moon hit her face perfectly. To Juan, she was an angel. That was part of the problem. She was wonderful…and he was a street thug and petty criminal with a history that she knew very little about. She hadn’t asked any questions, and he had not offered any information.
For the longest time, he had believed that perhaps the end of civilization was his chance to remake himself into the man he’d always wished he could be. Recent events told him very clearly that he could not.
“Well?” Mackenzie prompted after Juan’s silence had stretched on for too long. “You should be getting your rest. You have another trip to make and you need to be alert.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Juan admitted. She didn’t need to know why.
“I am sure that they are fine.” Mackenzie came and placed a hand on Juan’s shoulder. Tigah followed and put his head back in Juan’s lap. “April seems pretty smart. She won’t do anything foolish or risky until you arrive.”
Juan felt his insides twist. You have no idea, he thought. Once he was certain that he had control of his voice, he spoke. “Just so many things that can go wrong out there. All it takes is one screw up.”
“And yet you keep returning.” Mackenzie knelt in front of Juan and took both his hands in hers. “You need to listen to your own words. We have plenty now. Also, there are other people who can make these trips.”
“After this one,” Juan insisted, suddenly nervous that she might put her foot down. “I know exactly where everything is. This is not a search operation, just a pick up and come home.”
Mackenzie seemed satisfied with that response, if not a little relieved. The moonlight was proving to be a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that he could clearly see her face; the curse was that he could see her swallowing his lie. For perhaps the first time in his life, his conscience was wreaking havoc on his soul.
“You go in, grab them, and then come home?” Mackenzie’s voice had that tone that was seeking reassurance.
“That’s it,” Juan said with a nod and a squeeze of her hands.
Of course, that was a lie. He knew it. But he had to play this scene through…like it or not.
***
Moab, Utah—“Climb, Cynthia!” Glenn screamed. He could do nothing but watch in horror as his wife started up the rope.
“Dammit, Glenn,” a female voice hissed in his ear, “I told you not to scream…you’re just bringing more of them!”
Glenn dismissed that voice—if he even heard it—as his sole focus was the woman at the base of the tree who was just now kicking the closest zombie in the face before continuing her ascent. The voice belonged to his sister-in-law, Melissa “Mel” Bird.
Glenn’s wife Cynthia was the sister of Mel’s husband, Kyle Bird. They had been on vacation in Chicago when the first reports of the “strange virus” began to spread. It had been his wife Cynthia who had made the joke about zombies.
“Like one of mom’s weird books,” she had said as they sat huddled in front of the television in their room at the Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago.
Kyle had not seen the humor in his sister’s comment. He had left the room and vanished for the better part of two hours. When he returned, he told everybody to grab their things. As soon as the questions began, he held up one hand to silence the room. Even Baby Xander, all of eighteen months old at the time, went silent. At a shade under six-and-a-half feet tall, he seldom had trouble getting people’s attention when he wanted it. The fact that he seldom wanted it made his demand for it that much more powerful.
“This city is going nuts,” Kyle said in his soft, even voice. “I snagged us an RV and we are leaving.”
That is exactly what they did. For the first few days, it was not that terrible. Since then, none of them could remember a day passing when they were not terrified, hungry, or scared.
They made it as far as Utah when they had to finally abandon the RV. A band of lunatics had chased them for almost a hundred miles. Of course the idiots had been on motorcycles. Glenn had been behind the wheel and after sideswiping almost a dozen of the pursuing motorcycles, the gang gave up. Once they put another hundred miles between them, they ditched the rig and headed up into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Stopping along the way, they gathered any supplies that they could find. The hardest was scavenging things for the baby. The adults could force themselves to eat anything…but Xander was a bit more particular and seemed to prefer to starve than eat anything that did not pass whatever taste test he put it through with that first tentative bite.
The winter was spent in the foothills of the m
ajestic Rockies. None of them wanted to risk trying to make it to the Pacific where they would attempt to work their way south and home to Palm Springs, California until the spring. It had been rough, but they survived.
Once they were confident that the weather was not too bad, they got moving. They had reached some suburb, not even sure of what state they were in, when they were caught in a nasty storm. Luckily, they happened upon what amounted to the most amazing and luxurious treehouse any of them had ever seen. The thing was built to resemble a castle turret and was connected to three others by rope bridges. Each was two stories high and furnished!
They had only intended to stay until the storm passed, but when Mel discovered a nearby home with a stocked pantry, they had killed off the few walkers and started to empty the place out. As was their usual luck, it had seemed fine until the last trip. From out of nowhere, what had to be over a thousand of the walking dead began to funnel through the yards and streets of this affluent neighborhood. (Herds were the reason they had chosen the treehouses over regular houses, they had been forced to abandon and run too many times over the past year.)
Mel had stayed behind with Baby Xander while Kyle, Cynthia and Glenn had gone to retrieve the massive haul. At some point, the three of them had split up in hopes that they could evade the zombies and get back to the treehouse without bringing the monsters to their current abode. Glenn had to be restrained to keep from going back down when he arrived and discovered that Cynthia was not back yet.
At last she had appeared…with at least fifty walkers on her heel. And she was limping. The bag of supplies was gone and she was clutching her left leg. Glenn could see a dark stain until she was almost directly underneath and began her climb.
Please don’t be bit, he thought in silent prayer.
At last, she made it to the landing. Kyle reached down and pulled his sister up with what seemed like no effort. However, when he set her down and all three adults saw the dark stain of blood in her thigh, Mel and Kyle took an involuntary step back. Only Glenn moved forward.