by TW Brown
“We have come across some people that have been on the verge of starvation since this all of this began,” Kevin spoke, holding his plate out for her to see. “Tonight’s dinner was some form of mystery meat that Catie was kind enough, not to mention skilled enough, to bring us for dinner. Were it not for that, we would have been scraping the bottom of our stores barrel and still going to bed very hungry. It is going to get worse before it gets better.”
Heather still didn’t look convinced. Kevin had another thing to add, but he didn’t think that it would do any better than anything else he had said up to this point.
“The larger our group is…the slower we move. If we don’t get to our destination before spring is in full swing, it may be for nothing because we might all end up starving to death.”
Kevin could tell that Heather didn’t like his explanation. However, she seemed content to remain quiet about the subject. Everybody finished their meager meal and then then went to sleep. Since they were up in an airplane and Kevin had pulled the detachable ladder inside with them, there was no need for a watch to be posted.
In the middle of the night, Kevin woke with a start. He had been having a nightmare about his sister. She was being torn apart by zombies and asking him why he didn’t love her any more. The nightmare was even more upsetting due to the fact that the zombies were all people that he knew: Shari, Mike, Cary, Dr. Peter King, Willa, and his mom.
He jolted awake and felt Aleah’s body stir beside him. It was almost pitch black inside the plane when they had gone to bed and he had eventually fallen asleep. That is why he was puzzled by the way the entire inside of the plane seemed to be bathed in a soft blue-white light. But it wasn’t a light as much as it was a glow. Looking around, it only took him a few seconds to discover the source.
The door to the plane was wide open.
Scrambling out of the sleeping bag, Kevin already knew what he would find before it was officially confirmed. Aleah was right where she had been. When he moved a little towards the back of the plane, he could make out Catie’s small form tucked and curled in between the two rows of seats that were actually in the cabin.
All of Heather’s stuff was gone. There was no sleeping bag, no pack, and more importantly, no Heather. Hurrying to the open door, Kevin scanned the tarmac in hopes that it had been her departure that woke him. He was praying that he would spy her moving across the open ground in the silvery moonlight. No such luck.
He had no idea how long she had been gone, but he was pretty sure that he knew where she was headed. A voice in his head that he had not heard in quite a while was the first to chime in.
Just let her go. You can’t save everybody. You said it yourself, the voice of the ‘old’ Kevin urged.
He had thought that he’d put that voice to rest once and for all. Oh well…
He limped over to his sleeping bag and knelt beside Aleah. He brushed her cheek with his hand. If he were not lacking his foot, he would have considered just leaving a note and going after the girl on his own. Not for the first, and not for the last time, he cursed his limitations.
4
Nasty Surprises
“Make sure that you have all of your protective gear,” Jon said as we started loading our field packs into the back of the truck.
I had already double-checked everything, so I just tossed my pack in and climbed in behind it. This was an important run. Jake said that this was probably the last time that we could count on having a vehicle. They had managed somehow to scavenge enough diesel fuel to fill the tank and a half dozen five-gallon spares. But I guess gas goes bad over time and we were at the end of that rope. I never really thought about things like that before.
Billy,” Jon called, motioning me over. I had actually been waiting for this.
“Yeah?” I almost thought that I had managed to dodge this bullet. Here we were, loading the truck and getting ready to leave in a few minutes…and now he was finally getting to what I had to assume would be an ass chewing.
“I don’t know what has been going on while I was gone, and I have no idea what is going on between you and that girl, but if she screws up, this will be on you. I hope that you are ready for that sort of consequence.”
“Consequence?” I was not all that sure what he was getting at. And as for what was going on between me and Shelly…well that was easy. Nothing. She was like thirty years old!
“If she turns on our group or kills somebody while we are out in the field, this will be all on your shoulders. You want to be a man, be ready for the repercussions when you make a bad decision?” Jon said in a voice that made me suddenly feel like I had done something terribly wrong.
“Why would she turn on us?” I seriously have no idea where that question came from or how it got out of my mouth before I could bite my tongue. “She has been one of the few people who has been helping while you were gone…gone on a trip that you told nobody about, I might add.” Shut up, Billy!
“So who should I report to?” Jon asked. “I have been telling Dr. Zahn for a few weeks that we had to make the most of things now if this group is going to try and take that place in La Grande. She insists on waiting for one person to have a baby. You think everybody here is worth that risk?”
“Why are we so dead set on leaving what we have here?” I asked. Seriously, I had no idea where this extra backbone was coming from. A month ago I would not dare speak to Jon like this, and now I was actually questioning him.
“We have several groups ready to join us. We can actually take a city!” Jon got right in my face. “Do you want to keep simply trying to survive…or are you ready to live?”
“Why do we have to take anything?”
Seriously, hadn’t we seen enough death and fighting? A giant reset button had been pressed, but as long as we continued on the same path, we were wasting our chance. I’m not some sort of idealist. I’m eighteen for crying out loud. However, I was tired of the loss, the death, and all this power struggle crap.
“You’ve been out there, Billy, you’ve seen what is going on. There is no order, and if we want safety and the ability to live in peace with some sense of normalcy, then we are going to have to carve it out for ourselves. Funny thing is, your little girlfriend already knows this—”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I snapped, cutting Jon off for what I am pretty sure is the first time ever. “But she is a person and just wants the chance to live, as you put it, without dirty looks and people blaming her for everything.”
Jon wasn’t the only person who kept a cold shoulder towards Shelly. From the way Melissa acted, you would think that Shelly had been the person to actually kill Steve. I didn’t get it. Sure, she had been part of that group, but did anybody know who did what exactly? She was paying for everything that happened that day.
“How long you two been hooking up?” Jon asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Hooking up!” I sputtered. “I’m not hooking up with anybody. I just think that we should treat people based on who they are now…not something from the past.”
“The past!” Jon exploded. “It wasn’t years ago that she was part of a group of raiders that hit our home and caused the deaths of several people.”
“And she told us her side of it…and since she came back after being let go,” I made sure to emphasize that bit, “she has helped in every aspect of life here including security, including keeping everybody safe.”
“All I’m saying is that if something goes wrong out there where there is even less margin for error as there is here at the cabin, she could cause a lot of damage. If that happens, it is on your head.”
Jon walked away signaling an end to our little conversation. I had not said a word about the reason why Shelly wanted to come…how she was hoping to not return with us. How she hoping to find a group of others who are immune just like her and stay with them. Of course I also had kept the fact that she was immune to the bite a secret as well. I figured it was her business. The fact that she had share
d it with me was one thing, but she was now the second person that I knew who was keeping that same secret.
And since Jon had not bothered to share the fact that Jake was immune with anybody—especially Dr. Zahn—I felt obliged to keep Shelly’s secret. I wasn’t sure why, but I had a feeling that this was some good old fashioned pre-apocalypse paranoia.
Eventually everybody was loaded up that would be making this trip. It would consist of Jon and Jake, obviously. In addition to me, there was Shelly, and Jamal Lockett. The others were all from some of the new arrivals and were the first to step forward when Jon said he had an important but dangerous mission that he needed volunteers for; Jerri Pierce—Jerri was easily in her thirties and complained at least twenty times a day about not being able to smoke anymore; Erik Herd—he was what we used to refer to as a “nerd” or a “geek” back in the high school days that seem a lifetime ago. And Carol Wills—easily the last person that you would expect to step forward.
Here is the thing about Ms. Wills. She has to be at least sixty. She apparently decided to take a do-over in life. I’ve heard bits and pieces of her story, which she loves to tell to whoever is sitting beside her at dinner. Her husband apparently was some sort of adventure junkie who decided to sail around the world about ten years ago; I guess he didn’t make it. Anyways, she had all this gear and was about to have a huge garage sale when she found an envelope with what was supposed to be her anniversary present that year: skydiving lessons. It seems that her husband had tried to get her to partake in his adventures every year to no avail.
Did I fail to mention the fact that they were wealthy and owned a really successful local restaurant chain? I knew of the place enough to know that my family could have never afforded to actually eat there.
Anyways, she decided to honor her husband by using the certificate. She got hooked and became an adrenaline junkie. Pretty soon she was learning martial arts stuff and I guess even sponsored some cage fighter with the stipulation that he train her!
Now, I have never seen her in action, but her group that she arrived with vouches for the fact that she is a certified bad ass. I guess I will find out for myself soon enough.
And that is the group that rolled out in the truck. I stared out the back as we left and waved at Thalia as she jogged along behind us until we reached the end of the parking lot.
Seeing the group all standing out front of the cabin as we rounded the corner, I wondered if Jon realized that we were not just surviving here. We were living. We were building a community. Sure we’d suffered a setback, but we also rebounded. And pretty soon, we would be welcoming a new life to the group. What about that does not constitute living?
***
Looking down into the small town that nobody knew the name of, the train sat there beckoning. Of course, there were several hundred zombies down there as well.
“We pull this off and we can basically march into La Grande. Everybody there will fall in with us. Maybe out of fear at first, but eventually they will come to see that it was the right choice,” Jon announced to the group.
“But what is keeping the undead down there?” Jamal asked the question we were all thinking.
Zombies have no real focus. Except for those creepy child-zombies, they seemed to act on the last thing to get their attention. This was simply not typical zombie behavior. A terrible thought came to me. What if they were somehow learning or changing? Nothing good could come from something like that.
“We just don’t know,” Jon answered. “In fact, when we found this little gold mine, I had Jake go down to the far side of town where the remains of a makeshift barricade sits across the only road on that end. The hope was to lure them that way while I went in to take a look.
“They reacted typically at first. Jake pounded on a big piece of sheet metal and they started to wander off to investigate. I moved in and had just opened the rear car when Jake started banging out S-O-S. I jumped out of the car and was ready to rush to his aid when I came face-to-face with a walker. The entire herd was coming back!”
I had to admit, that was some freaky behavior for a zombie. The one thing that we had always been able to rely on was the fact that they were predictable. They reacted to the newest stimuli which was something that we were always able to use to our advantage.
“How come you didn’t say anything about the tanks?” Jerri asked as she studied the train with her binoculars. “Those would be awesome!”
“No fuel,” Jake said. “The little we were able to salvage was enough for the truck. Those tanks would gobble that down in no time.”
“Where do you think this train was headed,” Shelly asked.
“If I had to guess,” Jon brought his own binoculars back up and resumed scanning the length of the train, “I would say Fort Lewis up towards Seattle.”
“So if those things came back so quick,” Carol joined in on the discussion, “then how did you get a truck, all those supplies, as well as so much fuel?”
“In short bursts,” Jon answered without taking his eyes off the train below. “They still reacted to the noise, but only temporary. Funny thing is…we thought initially that something must have happened that we were not aware of to bring them back. It wasn’t until Jake repeated the action that we realized something was off. Each time, the zombies wandered away, but they would turn around and come back…almost like they were on a tether, because it was very consistent.”
“I marked it,” Jake spoke up. Everybody looked his way and he acted all embarrassed. He wasn’t fooling me, though. I had learned that the soft-spoken good-old-boy he pretended to be was a front. “They were pretty consistent with where they would stop pursuing and just return to the train.”
“So they seem concentrated around those four cars,” I pointed out, using my ability to state the obvious to lead into my next question. “So why didn’t you guys just stick to the cars in the rear and make the big score?”
“Because,” Jon gave me a harsh look, I don’t think that he cared much for me challenging him in any way, “they have no problem coming down the length of the train to pursue a living target. They just won’t go far, and they always return to those cars. Plus, a few of the ones up close to those cars they seem so fixated on don’t budge. It’s like they don’t care about anything except what is in those few cars.”
“And not a sound,” Carol spoke up again. “I think we can rule out that there is anybody inside. If there were, we would be hearing some sort of racket. Plus, I’m sure that had anybody actually been inside, they would have heard you boys making your fuss and called out to you for help.”
“So we need to take these things down. With the bunch of us, we should be able to make short work of them, but I think you can agree that there are definitely too many for just two people.” The whole time he spoke, Jon kept glaring at me.
Did he think I was some sort of threat? Or was it something more? Was he hiding something? He had been acting different ever since that whole thing with Steve dying. And now, with Jon and Dr. Zahn at odds with each other, it was almost like they were two politicians trying to win some sort of election. They spent a lot of time talking bad about each other when the other was not present. Of course they were all smiles around each other when members of our little community were watching, but I had seen a few of their encounters when they thought that they were alone. It was not pretty.
Seeing what I had witnessed between them made me realize that Steve was really the glue that held us together. He was our voice of reason. He didn’t have an agenda, and when it got right down to it, he didn’t want to be anybody’s boss. That was probably what made him such a great choice. That begged the question: Why do adults feel that there always has to be somebody in charge? Why can’t we just work together and decide as a whole what is best for the majority? Just let everybody do their own thing, and if something important comes up, put it to a vote.
“Are you listening?” Jon snapped his fingers in front of my face making me jump.<
br />
“Sorry…” I stammered.
“So, if I circle around with Erik, Jamal and Jerri, you wait for the signal and we hit them from both sides,” Jon continued after shooting me just another in a string of annoyed looks.
I had a grandmother like that; she never had a good thing to say about anything or anybody. It got to the point you just learned to ignore her and go about your business.
Jake made a sound that I assumed to be an affirmative and started down the hill and towards the front of the train. Jon took his group and went to the rear—which was closer to where the zombies were all clustered. I just could not shake the odd feeling that something was definitely wrong here. All those zombies gathered around the last few cars, and even more peculiar, they seemed to have no interest in the caboose. It was definitely something in those few cars.
I followed along with Jake, Shelly, and Carol. I could not get over how well that old lady moved through the woods. She was like a ninja despite being so—
“Everybody freeze!” Jake hissed, raising a hand.
I froze, but not before stepping on a pencil-thick twig that made a snap I am pretty sure was heard by everything in a ten mile radius. I looked up and saw Jake’s disgust, Shelly’s annoyance, and Carol’s…pity? Great, now action-figure granny is giving me the stink-eye.
Up ahead were about twenty walkers. They were coming down the same hill as us just a bit further to the west. Until I rang the dinner bell, it looked like they might have been heading for the train. A glance down at the main herd showed that my noise had done nothing more than get a few of them to look our way, but they weren’t coming to investigate…and some were already turning back to the train and reaching for it like kids at an ice cream truck.
The four of us quickly fanned out. I realized just as we moved in that I had not actually seen Carol in the field before. I guess I was about to discover if all the talk that I had heard up to this point was just a bunch of hype.