by R. J. Spears
After seeing the explosion from Jo’s team, even from miles away, Henry and Ellen put the home base team in motion, marshaling all the Manor’s refugees into trucks and heading them east. They made it a good ten miles before someone spotted a black outline in the sky accompanied by the sounds of helicopter blades. That spooked the group, and Henry and Ellen decided to play it safe and diverted off-course to find the next best place to shelter for their ragtag band of survivors. That turned out to be a modern multi-school complex located off one of the country roads they were traveling on. They parked the trucks in among the school busses and herded their group inside. It wasn’t ideal, but they did find some provisions in the school cafeteria, which made a few of the people happy.
Henry saw its shortcoming quickly, the main one being that it had no basement, leaving them vulnerable and exposed. In the end, he had to concede it was the best they could do.
He knew he had to take what he could and focus on the task at hand.
The voice appeared through the crackles, hisses, and pops just over a minute ago. He was listening so intently it was if all his other senses had been turned off and he was just an ear listening, trying to will the signal to clear up for him to be able to hear.
The only thing they had going for them was the fact that there wasn’t hardly any interference from other broadcasts, because all the television and radio stations were off the air. The cell phone network was a relic of the past. The airwaves were clearer than they had been for two centuries.
Something garbled and indistinct pushed through the static, but it was different from the other noises, and it seemed to have a pattern to it that differentiated it from the pops and hisses. He had to concede it could be someone hundreds of miles away with a HAM radio, or worse, the military and they were going to know it was him and track them down. That sent a tremor of fear through his body, but he knew they needed to hear something, anything, from the away team.
Desperate, he jumped from the windowsill and raced across the hallway to get to the east side of the school with Ellen in close pursuit.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice raising at the end of the question. “Was it the others?”
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “It was something, and I think it was a voice.”
“But was it them?” Ellen asked insistently.
Henry pushed through a door into a classroom. School desks were sprawled across the floor, and several were broken in pieces, obviously, after being tossed across the room. A wide trail of blood led from the room to the doorway, but it was nearly dried up and lightly crackled under their feet as Henry and Ellen navigated through the overturned desks. As soon as Henry made it to the window, he reached for the handle and slammed it upward. It flew up and banged the top of the window frame with a resounding thud.
In the quiet of the empty school, it was like someone had set a bomb off. Henry knew he had better be more careful because they were not alone in the town. The dead walked the street, and they were hungry.
Once again, Henry leaned out the window. This time is was at ground level, unlike the other classroom where the ground sloped away onto the playground. He pushed the walkie-talkie to his ear, and once again, he heard static.
He decided to brave another burst and pressed the talk button as he leaned out the window again and said, “Away team, this is home base one. Can you hear me?”
Henry pressed the walkie-talkie’s speaker up to his ear, and Ellen leaned in close as they both listened. The static played with them, drifting up in an electric whine then falling down to an ocean wave sound, rolling and splashing seemingly endlessly.
The garbled noise came again, sounding like someone speaking through a waterfall, while someone made a continuing shushing sound in the background. It bounced up and down in a recognizable pattern and went on for about fifteen seconds.
Henry looked out and saw a two-story storage building directly across from them. He dropped the walkie-talkie from his ear and said, “Let’s move to the front of the room.”
They pushed through some desks, and once they made it to the front of the classroom, Henry opened the window, only this time more gently. Instead of slamming it open, the window gently bumped the top of the frame. With the walkie-talkie back in position, he spoke again, “This is home base. Away team, is that you?”
A squelching noise came from the speaker for a moment, then it was followed by a voice. It was full of static and very weak, but it said, “This is the away team.”
It was Jo. Something inside Ellen melted with relief, and Henry relaxed slightly.
“Did you make it to the safe zone?” Jo said, her words barely distinguishable.
“No,” Henry replied. “We are located halfway between our last location and our final destination.”
They had agreed on some code words just in case the military was listening. The safe zone was the cave and the final destination was Athens, Ohio, where they hoped they could find some sort of sanctuary among the buildings of Ohio University’s campus.
“Vultures forced us to find a safe location,” he said. Vultures were code for military helicopters. He felt sort of silly using these code words, but he would rather be safe than sorry. “Your distraction gave us just enough time to make it here.”
“Are you safe now?” Jo asked, her voice pitching up in the whining static then bottoming out and sounding deep and ominous as a result of the terrible connection.
“Yes, for the most part,” Henry responded. “We have a few provisions, but we can’t get far enough underground to hide from the vultures. How is everyone on the away team?”
“We are good enough. We have an extra member. A young girl stowaway.”
“Madison?” Henry asked.
“Yes, she’s with us now.” This time, Jo’s voice was almost impossible to hear as the capricious airwaves started to drift away from them on the night air.
“What should we do?” Henry asked.
“Hold still for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. We will do what we can to create a diversion.” The static rolled in, and the last part of what Jo said was almost washed away.
“You’re drifting,” Henry said in a pleading tone. In desperation, he pushed the walkie-talkie hard onto his ear as if that act could bring the signal back.
He became so engrossed in hearing the signal, he didn’t hear the sound of someone or something in the bushes just outside the window.
A snarling sound broke through their concentration, and both Ellen and Henry jerked their attention to look out the window just in time to see a large male zombie lurch through the shrubs towards the open window. Ellen saw the zombie first and yelled Henry’s name as she flew into action.
She grabbed Henry’s arm, jerking him back inside in a violent whipping motion. Henry flew off-balance, and he lost his grip on the walkie-talkie. It slipped from his hand, banged hard against the floor, and then it slid into an overturned desk before it came to rest on the far wall of the classroom in several pieces. Henry ended up on all fours.
The zombie launched itself at the window, hitting the sill hard with its chest and extending its arms inside, trying to grab any of the tasty humans.
“Mom!” Henry shouted. “The radio”
Ellen didn’t care about the radio at that moment. She reached down, picked up one of the school desks, and whirled around with it in both hands, swinging it like a battle axe toward the zombie. The legs and bottom of the desk slammed into the zombie’s head and chest, knocking it backwards. It stumbled into the shrubs outside the window and fell to all fours, but it got back to its feet and came back at the window with a vengeance.
Ellen looked over its shoulder and saw two more coming their way. The original arrival frantically reached inside the window, flailing its arms, trying to get a piece of what it had lost. After several attempts, it must have found a bush or something outside the window to step up on, and in a couple seconds, it nearly had its torso through the window. Ellen wasn’t
sure, but it looked like its sheer inertia would have it tumbling into the room at any moment.
Better to deal with it before that happened, she thought. She pulled out her pistol and shot the zombie in forehead. A spray of blackish goo painted the window as the thing fell backwards and out of view.
“They know we’re in here now,” she said.
The other two zombies paid no attention to the more completely moribund colleague and came at the window, moaning and grunting that way the undead do, wanting the same thing the original one wanted -- food.
Chapter 22
The Meet-Up
I stood in the middle of the street, alone, thinking this was a very bad idea. In fact, it could just get me killed and for nothing. Of course, staying inside could get us all killed, so it was worth the risk.
Since I made it into the street, there had been no movement in the area. All the men had pulled back and disappeared like vapor. The voice had gone silent.
A spot in the center of my chest tingled expectantly, awaiting the first bullet. To pass the time and to look cool, calm, and collected, I began to whistle. It wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t have a melody, and it took some control to keep it from warbling because I was nervous but didn’t want to show it. One of the rules of the school yard was to never look scared. Why that still mattered, I couldn’t tell you, but since the world had stripped away everything else, you had to have something, didn’t you?
I finally got tired of waiting. “Anyone there?” I asked, my voice echoing off the houses.
“I’m here,” the voice spoke again, and I turned to see a woman standing off to my left, next to the corner of a house. She wore a leather jacket, dirty jeans, and a gray, ribbed knit beanie. What I could see of her hair hanging down from the beanie was dirty blonde. On each hand, she wore leather gloves with the fingers cut off. She was definitely cultivating a look. Someone might call it “Urban Badass.” Whatever you called it, she was pulling it off. To complete the ensemble, she held a very large handgun, which was a bit disconcerting since my weapon was concealed and not easily accessible.
Awkward silence hung in the air for several seconds. I’m not good with awkward silences, so I decided to fill it. “Hey, good to see you.”
Boy, was that stupid.
She must have felt the same awkwardness, because she waved at me, only she used the gun, which made it a little ominous. Whatever she meant by it, it didn’t make me feel any less anxious.
Something moved out of the corner my eye, and I saw a shadow move along the side of a house to my right -- a shadow with a rifle.
She must have seen my body tense up because she shouted, “Hank, you need to stay back!” The intensity of her command almost made me jump.
I sensed reluctance in the shadow -- if that is possible -- but it retreated after a few seconds.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “Not everyone here is as chill as I am.” She put on a little smile at the end of the sentence and walked several steps out of the shadows of the house, cutting the gap between us down to fifteen feet.
“Yeah, chill is good,” I replied, not feeling very chill at all.
“You’ve been in town for a couple days, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, we have someone injured, and we were letting them get in some rest.”
“How badly are they hurt?”
“Bad enough to need some rest but not too bad,” I replied, lying, but just a little. “We have a doctor with us, and he is treating her.”
Her expression shifted for a moment, but she said, “How much time do you need?”
“Why do you ask? Is there someone else wanting to move in?”
A small grin came to her face, but then she said, “We have people in our group who don’t like outsiders in our territory. We’ve had some bad experiences with others. A biker gang from the south came upon one of foraging parties, and it didn’t turn out well for us. A couple of our people were badly hurt.”
“Oh yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about the biker gang anymore.”
“Why do you say that?” She asked.
“Well, they’re all dead or close to it.”
Where she was relaxed a moment ago, her posture changed and her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
How to play this? I could attempt to inflate our threat level and act like we had done it, but I had no idea how long they had been watching us. If they had a good headcount of our group, they’d know we didn’t have numbers to take on a huge biker gang, unless we were all Chuck Norris badasses. Which we weren’t.
“We had an encounter with them and then a military helicopter showed up and pretty much wrecked the biker gang and its compound.”
“What does the military helicopter have to do with you?”
“Not much, other than they showed up, shot the shit out of the place, and we got the hell out of there.” I was hoping all these lies didn’t stack up too high and work against us somehow.
“We had a foraging crew on the south side of Circleville, and they heard the commotion and went to check it out from a safe distance. It was all over by the time they got close enough to see anything. What did happen?”
I decided to go with the less is more tactic. “Like I said, we happened to be there. The helicopter showed up, and we got out of there after they shot the place up.”
“Why would the military do that, and what were you doing there?” she asked.
“Maybe they don’t like biker gangs. As to why we were there, we were being held against our will, if you want to know the truth.”
“So, the biker gang was holding you hostage. The helicopter showed up, and you used the distraction to escape. Is that it?”
The lady could read between the lines. “Basically. The bikers were not nice people. They hurt someone I cared about. I’m not sad to see them gone.”
“Did the military come there to rescue you?”
“No, they did not, but it worked that way, and I’m good with that.” The truth was too complicated, and I decided holding things back was the better move at that point. I was getting leery of twenty questions and decided to change the course of the conversation. “So, is it good for us to stay another day, or do we need to hit the bricks?”
She looked over her shoulder and then took three more steps in my direction. “It’s okay with me, but I don’t speak for everyone in my group. Some of them want you gone yesterday, but you don’t seem to be a threat.” She paused for a moment and then asked, “Are you a threat?”
Again, I was back at how to play this. If I said we were a threat, then who knew where this would go? If I said we weren’t, then they just might try to take us.
“Here’s the deal,” I finally said. “We offer no hostility to you and your group. That said, we have seen a lot of action, watched too many people die, some of them at our hands, and we know our way around a fire fight. If pushed, we will push back.” I hoped I didn’t oversell it, but the truth be told, if they came at us, we would make some of their people hurt.
“Okay, I hear that.”
“So, what’s the next step?” I asked.
“I take this back to my people, and we see what they say.”
“I have to tell you this, then. I don’t like this. We may just leave now, and if you get in our way, it won’t be pretty, because I’m not waiting for some blue ribbon fact finding committee to come to some executive decision and you come back locked and loaded.”
She put her hands up in a gesture of surrender and said, “Okay, okay, I got you. Loud and clear. Here’s the lowdown. I’m confident I can get them to decide to let you stay.”
“How confident?”
“Not a hundred percent but close.” She paused, looked over her shoulder, and then back to me and pitched her voice low. “Hank, the one who approached earlier. He’s not happy about you being here, but he’s nearly a lone voice. Once I get the majority in line, he’ll go along, happy or not.”
“Okay, but don�
�t make us wait.”
She kept her hands up and backed away from me. After a few steps, she turned and disappeared around the corner of the beige-colored house, leaving me alone and exposed in the street.
My eyes darted from house to house, waiting for some more shadows with guns to appear, but none did. Still, the wait seemed like an hour when I’m sure it was only minutes. Two or three at the longest.
There’s this quote attributed to Albert Einstein. It supposedly goes like this: An hour with a pretty girl feels like a minute, while a minute on a hot stove feels like an hour.
That’s how I felt. Only there were no pretty girls, just hot stoves.
She came back around the corner of the house, and I could see some color in her cheeks, and her mouth seemed tight, like she had been emotional about something.
I asked, “Everything go alright?”
Her expression changed, and the tightness seemed to lift. “Yes, yes, everything is fine. You’re welcome to stay another twenty-four to forty-eight hours. As you can see, we are reasonable people.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Her eyes narrowed some. “What?”
“What’s your name? I mean, we can’t just be the guy from the house and the woman outside.”
She took in a deep breath and then let it out as if sharing her name might cost her something. “Jenelle.”
“I’m Joel. So, what’s next?”
“Well, we’d like to meet your crew, if that’s alright.”
Hmmmm, interesting. I would have thought they would have just gone their separate ways, and I certainly wasn’t expecting a meet and greet, but I wasn’t sure refusing a friendly offer was in our best interest.
“Just you?” I asked.
“Me and two of my people.”
She had to play it safe, too, I guess. “Sure, come on in.”
She swiveled just a little and called out, “Hank, Owen, come on out. We’re going into meet the team. Bring the pack along.”
The pack? That didn’t seem good, but I had a wait and see attitude going at the moment as I edged my hand to my hip to make a grab for my gun if the need arose.