by TW Brown
Catie made a sound of appreciation as she made her way up the ladder. Once they were all on the roof, the ladder was immediately pulled back up. A trap door was opened and led to another climb down. Inside, she confirmed her suspicions that this had been a garage. Besides the two lift racks, there was the distinct smell that greeted you in every garage. She was a little surprised that it lingered so many years later, but she supposed that perhaps it had worked itself into the very fiber of the building. Jess led them to one of the bays and Catie was amazed to discover another trap door in the floor.
They climbed down a series of rungs mounted into the concrete wall and arrived in a small chamber made all the more claustrophobic with the arrival of Jess, Catie, and Braden.
Two men were sitting at a desk and both looked up as soon as Jess arrived. They stood and greeted the woman with a crisp salute.
“This is the woman, commander?” one of the two men asked with a dubious expression on his face.
“I’d be careful if I were you,” Jess warned. “I don’t think she would have a problem kicking your ass…pregnant or not.”
Catie hid her smile. And then something dawned on her. She turned to Jess. “Commander?”
“I hated the sound of president,” Jess replied with a shrug.
“So you are the person running things here?”
“It isn’t a dictatorship, but I do have the final say.”
Catie instantly had a new and increased appreciation for this woman. Not only was she seemingly very smart, but she also led from the front. After all, Catie had encountered her outside the walls of this community. Which brought up the question…
“What were you doing outside your gates when I ran into you?” Catie asked, not really expecting an answer, but deciding that a closed mouth did not get fed and an unasked question did not get answered.
“We managed to break one of the people in Cherish Brandini’s group a few days ago. They told us about the main body of their army. I had to see for myself and I didn’t trust anybody else to go see what these people had moving in our direction.”
Once again, that was something that Catie could understand. In any other circumstance, she felt that she and this Jessie Springfield would have been friends. It was still possible for such a thing to happen, but it would take a lot more time and effort. Neither were things that Catie had a surplus of at the moment. It didn’t help any that the last thing Catie knew about the army was that they were set on wiping out the immune. That immediately put them on the side with Jess and the ideology to which her people subscribed.
“Okay, something just flitted across your face, and it didn’t look pleasant,” Jess said, moving over and taking a seat at the big desk that sat against the far wall; the men took up a position on either side of her and came to parade rest, eyes forward and no longer examining Catie. (At least not openly.)
Catie considered her answer and finally decided that she did not have the energy to play cat-and-mouse games. Also, if Brandini was a sign that Erin’s army was still together and on the move in this direction, that took everything that she had laid out in the past several days and threw it into a blender.
Catie started spilling everything, at least as to how it pertained to Cherish and the army headed this direction. More than once, Braden tried to get her to stop talking. Catie had shrugged him off until he had finally exploded.
“Are you trying to get these people to wipe us out right now?” he hollered.
“I don’t believe that to be the case,” Catie said calmly. Through it all, Jess remained quiet, her hands folded on the desk before her like an attentive student on the first day of school.
At last, Braden stomped over to a corner and folded his arms across his chest. She could understand why he was upset; after all, she was basically telling this person that an army larger than probably all the communities in the area combined (including Montague Village before it had been eliminated) was coming this direction. They were basically seeking the same agenda that was so predominant in the current culture.
When she finally finished with her narrative, Catie waited for whatever direction Jess decided to go. Maybe this was for the best, she thought. As much as she fantasized about bringing Kevin’s child into the world and raising him or her, did she really want to bring a helpless baby into this sort of world where zombies were becoming the least of the worries as a severe division was forming between those who knew they were immune and those who had no idea?
“I think you and I need the room,” Jess finally announced. She rose to her feet and motioned for her two men to escort Braden up the ladder.
Catie gave him a reassuring smile as he shot her a worried look on his way up. When the hatch closed, Catie turned to the woman.
“So what’s the verdict?”
Jess seemed to be considering her words carefully. At last she dropped her gaze and stared at the floor. Catie felt her stomach drop. Despite thinking that it might be nice for everything to just end not more than a few minutes ago, she now realized that, yes, she did want to bring this baby into the world. She only had a second or two in which to wonder if maybe she was more than a little hormonal before Jess spoke.
“My sister was immune,” Jess finally said. “Early on, when all this madness began, she was the first person I knew to survive an attack. She took it upon herself from that point forward to be the one to go out and scavenge for food and supplies. Her logic was sound…if something got her and inflicted a little damage, it would suck, but it was not fatal. Then, one time, she just didn’t come back. I never knew what happened to her and the three people that she went out with that day, but I knew my sister well enough to know that she was not one for taking chances. She was the opposite of me before the zombies. In fact, she never saw a single one of my fights. Not ladylike as far as she was concerned, and she admitted to me that she feared how seeing me get hit or possibly bleed would cause her to faint.
“I think that she ran into some bad people. Zombies aren’t that smart and are easy to predict. People? Not so much. I told myself that maybe this sort of thing was genetic, and if she was immune, then it was very likely that I was also. My brother beat me to the punch and intentionally went out and got himself bitten by one of those freaking things.” Jess paused and took a deep breath. “I put him down the next day.”
Catie squeezed her eyes shut and ran her hands through her hair. She understood the pain that was coming out so very clear in this woman’s voice.
“Six months later I woke up to discover that my boyfriend would be the next to go down.” Jess paused and a nasty look flashed across her features for just a split second. “I woke him up for the afternoon meal. He’d had the evening watch. At least, that was where he was supposed to be. But when he opened his eyes and I saw the tracers, I was stunned. I jerked the blankets back and he didn’t have a scratch on him. I asked him if he’d had any walkers that he had to deal with during his watch and he said that he hadn’t and why did I ask.”
Once more, Jess was quiet, and Catie didn’t really need to hear the details of the story to figure it out. People could turn a number of ways without being bitten.
“At the time, we didn’t know much. We had a few people in our community that survived the bite. Nobody really gave it any thought as far as being able to catch it from each other. The next few weeks were like reliving the early days when AIDS had us so scared that we were almost afraid to touch each other. He swore all the way up to the point when I jammed that spike into his temple that he hadn’t done anything. Funny coincidence, the day after the word got out and started to spread about my late boyfriend, one of the girls that we knew to be immune just up and vanished.”
“So you are judging every other immune person by that individual’s actions?” Catie said, not caring if it sounded harsh or even a bit sarcastic.
“I came to terms with the decision to exclude any immune citizens using that raw emotion, yes,” Jess said with a nod. “Eventually, it just
became the way things were and nobody thought anything of it.”
“You do see the flaw in that logic, don’t you?”
Catie would hate to think that her admiration of this woman was misplaced, but if she still held those beliefs, then she was not worth two shits as far as Catie was concerned. She stared at Jess who was studying her hands at the moment.
“I saw it years ago,” Jess whispered. “But by then, it was too late.”
“It’s never too late!” Catie snapped. “That is an excuse and you know it.”
“Do you have any idea how much blood is on my hands if I reverse my stance now?”
“No more or less if you don’t. The only difference is that you can stop adding to it now, or have it continue to grow until you eventually drown in it.” When Jess gave her a look to continue, Catie chose her words with as much care as she was able considering the circumstances. “We are in a barbaric world now. All the social norms of the past are dead and most would get you killed these days. We make the new rules as we go, and it will be these choices that determine if we endure. The zombies might not be falling over any time soon, but they are wearing down and gathering in numbers that would actually allow us to turn the tide if we came together. They don’t think or react with any sense or reason. If we turned our attention to the largest herds and torched them or something, we could reclaim the world. But if we keep taking shots at each other, eventually there won’t be any people alive to reclaim the planet. But if we set our differences aside long enough to deal with the real problem, then the immune and those who don’t know could live apart but maintain some sort of symbiotic relationship.”
Jess was silent for a moment before speaking. When she did, there was a cautious tone to her voice. “Once the zombies are gone, then the immune would still have an upper hand. They would be walking weapons.”
“That is just the sort of Old World thinking that will keep us from ever surviving,” Catie snapped. “What would they possibly have to gain from doing anything? And we are not far enough along for any of the children of two immunes to be tested or anything to see if the infection remains, or just the ability to resist it. We have so much we don’t know, but we won’t live long enough to find out if we keep taking each other down.”
Jess considered Catie’s words for a moment and then leaned back in her chair. “Every movement has to start somewhere, right?” Catie nodded slightly. “And if you and I can make peace and then get the other remaining community to step in line, we can present a united front that might make that army turn around. They have us in numbers, but most of us living in this area have been doing so for a long time. If we have to mount a campaign of guerrilla warfare against these people, I bet they break. They might be open to listening to us and perhaps joining in to help settle the area, or, they may just decide to go pick a fight with somebody weaker and less able to defend themselves. From my experience, that is usually the way of the bully. If you punch them in the nose, they usually go from snarling beast to the Cowardly Lion in a flash.”
“Kevin would have loved meeting you,” Catie said wistfully. “He was always making movie and pop culture references. He was afraid the next generations would forget and hated when he would make some reference only to receive blank stares from the younger folks who didn’t get it.”
“Yeah, I have said things every so often and gotten nothing back but blank stares. I told a kid to use the Force when he was trying to move some crates and he told me he couldn’t push any harder without hurting his back.”
The two women stared at each other for a few seconds and then burst out laughing. Catie had a real head of steam going when the baby kicked a bit harder than usual.
“Oh!” she squeaked, her laughter stopping suddenly, her hands immediately going to her belly.
“What!” Jess jumped up and rushed to Catie. “Are you okay?”
“The baby either wanted to join in on the happiness or I woke him or her up and it wasn’t appreciated,” Catie replied with a blush. A few seconds later, another thought came and she added a frown to her red face. “Or maybe the baby just didn’t know what laughter is. I can’t recall the last time I had a really good laugh. Cries? Had plenty of those. Tirades and tantrums, a few. Laughing? Not so much.”
“It has become a rarity,” Jess agreed.
The two remained quiet for a few minutes. Catie continued to clutch her belly, but nothing else happened, and Jess seemed afraid to let the moment end. At last, Catie sighed. “So, what do we do now?”
“I guess we address the masses.”
“When?”
“Since we have no idea how long before that army arrives at our walls—” Jess began.
“If it arrives,” Catie piped up hopefully.
“Yeah, I think we both know the odds on whether or not we will get lucky. I don’t know about you, but luck is something I haven’t seen much of in the past several years.”
“You’re still alive.”
“And the jury is still out on whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.”
“I was thinking something along those lines just a little while ago. I came to the quick conclusion that living is preferable to the alternative.”
“Yes,” Jess gave a wave of her hand that motioned Catie for the ladder, “well, we can discuss all of that after we get through this. Let’s go tell my people right now. Afterwards, I will send a team to escort you and your man back through so you can pull the zombies away.”
The women emerged to find both of Jess’s men engaged in a game of darts with Braden. As soon as he saw Catie, he hurled all three of the darts he was holding at the board and rushed over.
“So?” he finally said expectantly.
Catie smiled.
***
“Nobody will be forced to stay here once this is over. In fact, if you want to run now, then feel free to pack your stuff and go for it as soon as the zombies are gone. I can’t promise things will go well if we have to fight these people.” Jess was standing on the roof of a small concrete building that used to be the public restrooms for the park where everybody had been called to gather. “And none of you will be thought of poorly.”
The gathering had been going on for about twenty minutes. The first thing that Jess did was explain the situation as it stood. She wove bits of her own backstory as a reminder at times after she would offer up a bit about Catie’s overall plan as well as her proposal to always have a spot should anybody discover he or she was one of the immune. Once she had given her spiel, she put it to a vote. It was far from unanimous, but it was obvious enough that the majority of the citizens under her leadership were perhaps ready to usher in a new era. Considering the fact that five of their own had shown the immunity due to the events over the past several hours as they fought to repel the hordes at their gates, it probably made the choice much easier for those who might have been on the fence as recently as a few days ago.
“My people will be instructed not to harm you as you pass through,” Catie added.
It had been agreed that using the downtown area of Chattanooga for any sort of retreat option was the best choice if a fight was forced and they fared poorly. It stood to reason that it would also be the best place for any who decided not to stay. Surprisingly, nobody took the offer to go when that question was asked a moment later.
With that settled, Catie was ready to return to her people. Jess had a detachment summoned and they waited at the edge of the park. The day had raced past and was well beyond the noon hour according to how the sun was now slipping into the western horizon.
“While you’re gone, we will see if we can get any more information from the prisoners,” Jess eventually broke the silence.
Catie nodded, but she heard something else in the woman’s voice that made her turn and face Jess with a raised eyebrow. When the woman remained quiet, Catie motioned with her hand that the woman needed to speak what was on her mind.
“I just can’t recall the last time I trusted
somebody,” Jess admitted. “If you turn on us and take off, I will feel really stupid.”
“I tell ya what,” Catie perked up, an evil gleam in her eye. “I will leave my boy Braden here with you as collateral.”
“What!” the young man barked.
Fifteen minutes later, Catie was emerging right where she told her people to watch for her. The other three Beasties were gathered around, each of them craning their necks to look for their friend.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Catie said as she bid farewell to her escorts as they quickly pulled the manhole cover shut with a clang, “one way or another, this all ends here within the next few days.”
12
Hard Lessons
After I watched the fire burn for a few minutes and made my peace with what I had done, I continued up the hill. There was only one big lazy bend that I needed to round before the bus would be in view. It was quiet, so I moved to the side of the road where I could walk along the edge near the drop-off just in case I needed to disappear in a hurry.
Quiet can be as much a friend as it can be an enemy. Not knowing how things went had me at a serious disadvantage. The closer I got to the apex of the corner, the more nervous I became. I started thinking that if my guys had won, then I should be hearing something. They would have made their way up to let the second line know it was okay. That would mean people would be celebrating.
Once I was right at the corner where the next few steps would reveal the bus, I ducked into the tall grass and scrub brush that was encroaching ever closer to the old highway that would probably be entirely broken up and washed away by the time I was Billy’s age. Getting down on my stomach to minimize the chance of being seen, I crawled the last bit and had to move some low hanging branches out of the way in order to see.
There was the old bus, right where it always was for as long as I could remember. What I didn’t see was Timmy. I thought maybe he might be hiding behind the sand bags, but if the fight was over, then that would not be necessary. He certainly would not have just run home or retreated with the front line people without telling them about me and where I’d gone…would he?