DEAD: Reborn

by TW Brown

  Now that the explosions had subsided, the sounds of the noisemakers could be heard once again. There would be five more sets along each wall that would go off at different times. This would ensure that zombies would move for each side that had been breached. Also, in the unlikely event that anybody from within came out or somehow managed to disable one set of noisemakers, there would eventually be another.

  Ducking down again, Kevin almost stepped on the crawler that was making its way through the overgrown field that was providing such excellent cover for his strike force. Stepping over it, Kevin moved and waited to see if it would turn for him. When it did, he took the time to end it for good. He had hoped that the constant noise would draw it to the target, but apparently the close proximity of a potential meal was too great for a zombie to resist.

  As Kevin neared the road, he heard the first of ‘the screams’ that indicated the zombies were inside the barricade. It did not matter how big and bad you thought you were, being torn apart and eaten alive made even the biggest badass scream and shriek in a register that was almost painful to the human ear.

  As he reached the road, Aleah popped up from the ditch on the far side. She was sweaty and dirty, but at the moment, she was the best and most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. He suddenly realized how perilous her part had been. To run through unknown terrain and get the attention of a herd of zombies that numbered close to ten thousand if you believed Catie’s estimate—and having seen for himself, he had no reason to doubt her numbers—and then lead them on a chase where she needed to stay within their field of vision until they were close enough…and then escape and find a place to hide. What had he been thinking when he chose her for that part of the mission?

  “Where are the rest of the kids?” Aleah asked with genuine concern.

  “Huh?” At first Kevin did not know what she could be talking about, then he realized that they were supposed to be with him. “When whatever went off inside that place began, they were getting scared. I had Deanna hustle them back to the rally point. She has a good head on her shoulders. I have no doubts that she will get them there okay.”

  “But I thought the groups were supposed to stick together…‘no matter what’ I believe was the phrase that you used on numerous occasions.”

  Kevin gave her a shrug and started up the road to the old brown farm house that had been chosen as their rally point. All teams were supposed to make for that once they had done their job.

  Kevin arrived to discover Deanna and the two boys sitting on a rusted out tractor that poked from the tall grass. Once he got close, he said in a very stern voice, “I realize that guns are becoming less frequent these days as what was once thought to be an infinite supply of bullets is running out, but anybody with a scoped rifle could have picked you off from a couple hundred yards. And the thing is, you would not even hear the shot. From that distance, the bullet would hit you before the sound made it to your ears.”

  All of the kids paled; even Deanna. Aleah shot him a nasty look, but he chose to pretend that he didn’t see it. These kids needed to learn. It was better by far if it came from a few words out of his mouth versus some of the alternatives.

  Within a few minutes, Catie and Sean both arrived with their respective groups in tow. Catie seemed to be taking in everything at once and immediately turned up the heat on Kevin’s level of alertness. Sean, in contrast, was smiling like a kid who just came down on Christmas morning and discovered every single thing he wanted was under the tree.

  Deciding that he didn’t want to rile everybody else up, he waved Catie over to the side while the children all clustered around Sean talking about how “amazing” and “awesome” and a multitude of other adjectives to describe their reaction to this operation were bandied about.

  “What’s up?” Kevin whispered.

  “Did you hear all that stuff going down just before we hit them? Do you think they had some other prisoners in there?” Catie asked.

  “I didn’t…until just now. But seriously, groups like that are usually run by a bunch of knuckleheads. How they have even survived this long is one of life’s unexplained mysteries.”

  “No, something was wrong in there. I heard bits of some of the stuff being said, I couldn’t make sense of it, but there was something going on.”

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? We did what we came to do, and it can’t be undone. We need to get back to the others. Hanging around here with zombies running out of munchies is not the best choice.”

  Kevin turned back to the others and got everybody moving. Catie stayed put for a moment, her eyes locked on the rising plumes of smoke from the fairgrounds. She could not shake the feeling that there was something there that they missed.

  “Catie, let’s go!” Kevin hissed.

  The group headed back to the cemetery where Heather and the other children were waiting. Catie wasn’t the only one who kept looking over their shoulder. Kevin had heard things beyond that barricade as well. He had dismissed it then as just being hyper-aware from the rush of adrenaline that had flooded his system. But when Catie had said something, it had planted a seed of doubt.

  ***

  “So we leave in the morning,” Kevin announced.

  All of the children were gathered around, most just sitting on the ground. Some were paying attention, but most of them did not look like they could care less if he were to just up and go right this minute.

  “Any of you that want to come will be welcome, but I am not going to lie…the trip will be long and hard. And once we arrive, there will be a lot of work to do.”

  Kevin looked around to see if there might be any questions. When it was clear that was not to be the case, Kevin shrugged and walked away leaving Heather, Catie and Aleah behind. He had to take care of a few things.

  One of his top priorities was to dispose of that bad crate of dynamite. It wasn’t that he did not think Sean was a smart, responsible kid, but he was still just that: a kid. All he had to do was decide one day that he could “probably” handle that unstable dynamite with the proper care and end up blowing himself to bits.

  Just before he climbed the fence, he glanced back at the crowd. Heather was laughing and smiling. Aleah was holding a little boy or girl—the kid was simply too dirty to be able to tell—and acting amazed at whatever it was that the child was telling her. Catie had separated herself from the group and had climbed up on the stone entrance to the crypt area. She was still looking back in the direction where the black cloud from the fires burning at the fairgrounds continued to rise high in the sky.

  Kevin imagined that the fire would probably spread and burn for at least a few days. Given that the nearby fields had never been trimmed back or cut away from the wall, they would be fast fuel. Fortunately, things were not too dry. Otherwise, it was very possible that the fire could actually make life difficult for these kids. Glancing skyward, he saw one more ally coming their way. A long line of dark clouds were bearing down on them from the west. He could see the rain bands already.

  Kevin continued heading to where the dynamite had been hidden. There was a large farm with a few silos on the property. The dynamite had been hidden in one of those silos.

  He limped along and noticed that a few lone walkers could be seen. They were all headed in the general direction of the fairgrounds…unless they spied him, then they changed course. Kevin drew his machete. There had not been any zombies here when they had come that first time. He would need to be a bit more careful.

  Perhaps I should have brought somebody with me, Kevin thought as he waited for one of the nearby zombies to come within range of his blade.

  This particular zombie had been a big guy. He was easily over six and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds. His coveralls were just rags now. The body was riddled with bullet holes, and it looked as if he’d taken a shotgun blast to the face, but at a distance where all it had managed to do was pepper him.

  Kevin was about to swing and take this one d
own when he heard a mewling cry from right behind him. The start caused his swing to come down wrong, and the machete buried itself in the shoulder of the big zombie. It shattered collar bone and almost severed the arm, but that did nothing to dissuade the zombie from its intended meal: Kevin.

  Having no other choice, Kevin dove. As he did, he saw what had made that sound: a child.

  Crawling out from under some rotting sheets of plywood was a little boy of no more than five or six. His once blond hair was matted and a filthy brownish color. A bite had taken away most of his nose and his left arm was gone about midway between the elbow and shoulder. The stump was jagged and ugly looking. Only the waistband from his underwear remained. Everything else had been ripped away. Or possibly even rotted, Kevin thought as he looked at what had to be the filthiest zombie he had ever seen. But he did not have time to really analyze it much further.

  Billy-Bob Zombie was tottering his way. If it toppled and fell on him, he would be totally helpless. Kevin rolled and went to his hip where he kept his emergency hand ax. He scooted away on his butt until he felt he was far enough away to get to his feet.

  He steadied himself just in time and swung down as hard as he could. The ax went deep into the forehead of the massive zombie. It fell and tore the weapon away from his grip, wrenching his wrist. He could not bite back the yelp of pain.

  Shaking it off as quickly as it came, Kevin knew he was not out of the woods yet. He reached for the machete that still jutted from the huge shoulder of the downed zombie and spun to face—

  Nothing.

  The child was gone.

  10

  Pain and Suffering

  Moving through the woods, I started to doubt my sanity in volunteering for this mission. For one, I had my field pack on. Not that I haven’t carried a thirty pound pack for literally hundreds of miles by now…but this was a constant and steady uphill trek. Add in the fact that I was in my protective gear, and that it was uncommonly warm and sunny, and I was melted Jell-O.

  I pulled up on top of a rocky outcrop and popped open my canteen. The water was just on the cool side of lukewarm. So far, there had been absolutely no sign of zombies. However, I also saw nothing to indicate that I was getting any closer to the people who had been following us. I was starting to wonder if maybe they had gotten spooked or something.

  “When you finished working on your tan, why don’t you come with me?” a voice whispered almost in my ear.

  I jumped and went for my gun. By the time I could remember how to work my hands properly and managed to get untangled from the shoulder harness that the M4 dangled from, I was staring into three spear points.

  “Just keep your hands away from that weapon and you come away without a new set of holes to try and breathe through,” a man’s voice came from one of the black silhouettes. The sun was keeping me from getting a look at their faces.

  “Maybe we should take that from him,” another man’s voice said.

  “Would you want to be running around without a weapon these days, Ed?” the first man’s voice asked.

  “Naw…guess not,” Ed, the owner of the second voice, replied.

  “Besides, if he is from that group down at the rest area, I imagine that he is here to talk?” the female voice that had whispered in my ear spoke.

  “My name is Billy Haynes.” I figured that it might help if I started with the formal introductions. “Yes, I am from that group.”

  “Little young to be the leader,” Ed snorted. “They send the most disposable?”

  “Knock it off, Ed,” the woman said with what sounded like authority in her voice. “My name is Katrina, the guy with the breath to match his attitude is Ed, and the ugly one is Hank.”

  I made a show of putting my arms out to the sides to indicate that I was not making a move for my gun, and I stood up. They trio stepped back a few feet, presumably to give me some room.

  “I came up to see if you were following us out of curiosity or if you actually had a reason.” I figure Jon or Jake would say something with much more authority, but it was all that came to mind. It was at that moment that I realized I had not made any plans for what I would say once I finally encountered somebody from this group.

  “And you just came on your own?” Hank asked.

  Now that I got a good look at him, I had to smile. The guy had those disgusting “pretty boy” good looks like a Brad Pitt or Leonardo Dicaprio, but the post-apocalyptic world was doing its best to curb them. There was some pretty scraggly growth on his face. That only made the fact that you could tell he was a pretty boy worse. He had eyes that were bluer than any girl I’d known, and teeth that were television commercial white. I do not think I had ever seen teeth that white before, now that I think about it.

  Of course that brought on something else that I was not prepared for; all of a sudden, I was very self-conscious about how I must look…and smell. That was made worse by the fact that all three of them seemed to be making an effort not to wrinkle their noses at me. Man, we’d only been on the road for a couple of days. Was I that bad? And what’s more…how were they staying so clean?

  “Well?” Ed urged. I realized that I was probably just standing there with my mouth open like an idiot while these thoughts went through my mind.

  “We had a meeting and I volunteered to go.” That was all they needed, and I was being generous giving them that much.

  “Well we saw that you have a handful of kids,” Katrina resumed control of the conversation. “Also, there were what appeared to be a few dozen women.”

  “Which means that you guys might not be like some of the animals that we have observed…or dealt with.” When Hank said that, I heard something in his voice like I am used to hearing from Jon and Jake. I guess the pretty boy was also a possible bad ass.

  “Couldn’t believe some of the stuff we’ve seen,” Ed said as he leaned back against a tree and began making a show of cleaning under his nails with a knife that was ridiculously large. It was a wonder he didn’t cut part of his finger off.

  “Yeah…I can.” I guess it was my turn to start posturing. But I was not going to waste a bunch of time on nonsense. Either they were interested in joining us, or they weren’t. “We just took out some guys who had some sort of medical experiment thingy that they wanted to do on one of the ladies in our group that is pregnant.”

  As soon as I said the words, I wanted to bite my tongue off. I had just given them some pretty major information. Maybe Jon was right…maybe I was still just a kid. The look on the woman’s face was nothing short of stunned.

  “How far along is she?” Katrina asked. I had already said too much and just stared back at her. “Look, we have had three pregnancies…and none of them lasted to term. And one…” Her voice trailed off and I noticed both men had suddenly started finding very interesting things to examine on the ground.

  I weighed out the choices. The need to keep information close to the vest versus the fact that these folks were seemingly being very open and out front warred briefly.

  “She is ready to pop,” I said. “In fact, we almost delayed our trip a couple of days because it is likely that she will probably have this baby while we are on the road.”

  “You guys were up at that campground,” Katrina made it a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “You already knew about us, though.”

  I had a hunch and decided to play on it. After all, the worst that could happen was that I would be wrong, and that happens several times a day anyways, so no biggie.

  “We scouted you just before that last big storm came. We were headed that way when we heard what sounded like a pretty nasty gunfight taking place,” Hank spoke up. “Since we didn’t know who was on what side, we chose to fall back and wait. We were about to send a scout up to look around when that storm hit. For the last one of the season, it had quite a load to drop. We would have starved if that warm front hadn’t come through and brought rain to wash some of it away. We were actually
stranded in a double-wide…the bunch of us.”

  “And how many is a bunch?” I asked.

  “Well, seeing as how we already have at least an approximate of your numbers, that seems like fair information to trade,” Ed joined in the conversation. “We have twenty-three men and women…” He got a look on his face that looked like real sadness; the kind that hurts physically. “No children.”

  Something told me that they’d had at least one, and that the loss was still fresh enough to be painful. I stayed quiet, not because I was trying to draw out any information, just simply because I didn’t know what to say at that exact moment.

  “It was just a cut…” Ed whispered. “But it kept getting worse and pretty soon started to smell awful. We did our best to keep it clean…we just didn’t have anything. Not like you can just pop in to the Rite Aid for some anti-bacterial ointment these days. One day, she just didn’t open her eyes…wouldn’t wake up. Hell, we didn’t even have a thermometer to take her temperature…” His voice choked off and he began to cry. He didn’t try to hide it or anything, he just started crying.

  Hank and Katrina both moved in and put their arms around Ed. If I had to guess, I would say that he had some sort of personal relation to this girl…maybe a daughter, sister, or niece. Hank and Katrina both looked sad, but Ed was in pain. His hurt was much deeper.

  I waited until he recovered. It took a few minutes and I didn’t really know what to say or do, so I just stood there. It wasn’t like I could step in like his friends and offer any sort of condolences.