At Eddie’s request we drove over to Foster’s Garage to check on Bobby and Jr. They were alright and had pulled the ladder up behind them. This stop proved to be a mistake because it brought Bobby and Jr. to the attention of some of the zombies. Before they could surround the bus again, I was driving headlong to hell to get out of there. Later, we’d find out that Bobby and Jr. used the ladder to cross from the roof of Foster’s Garage over to the roof of the next building, which was a long building that faced Broadway for most of a block. Traveling along the rooftops, they made their way to the back of the last building and lowered their ladder over the side of that building, escaping through the streets and alleys unnoticed.
Once we hit Ninth Street, I sped as fast as I dared on the icy roads, almost turning us over as I made the turn onto Center Street. I wasn’t going that fast, either. But we made it. I parked the bus crossways across the north side of the Center Street Bridge and we all poured out of the bus. A quick check of everyone showed that nobody was bitten or hurt, thank God. We sprinted across the bridge and halfway across, we heard “Hi-Oh,” the cry the S.O.L. used to call to one another. Over on the Louisiana Street Bridge were the ten other S.O.L. kids who’d split off from us that morning. They were just now coming to help us. We all met up on the south side service road that lines I-630 after crawling over the cars we’d parked on the bridges. As a group that scattered out over several blocks, we followed the road and gathered in the Mount Holly Cemetery, where we cut across on our way to escorting Shaun and Andrew back to their home.
We found the splinter group from this morning already out in the graveyard, where we thought it was safe to talk in a larger group. They’d gone to the alarm house and to their surprise the number of zombies had grown even without the alarm going off. One of the kids reported that there were about thirty zombies there, all of them staring at the house. They decided to use caution and started killing them off one at a time, starting from the back of the cluster and working their way in. The delay for them came when lookouts kept spotting more zombies coming to the house. They had to stop and wait for the new zombies to come to a stop and stare at the house. Then starting from the back, they began killing all over again.
An odd thing seemed to be part of the zombies’ group behavior: the longer the zombies stared at the house, the more oblivious they were to things going on around them. So ten minutes after they stopped in front of the house, the kids were able to walk right up to a zombie undetected and kill it. But that brought the other zombies out of their trance and they’d all have to go back to hiding. Once they ran away the zombies all turned back to the house and started staring at it again.
We decided that we were going to have to figure this one out in the morning. We got Shaun and Andrew back to their house and to my surprise, with all the things that went wrong today, they offered to help us again with the next big thing we were going to do. Eddie, trying to be a true leader, asked them if they’d join us for dinner tonight. But Andrew said, “No, thank you, I think we’ve had enough adventuring for the day.” They went into the house and we moved on to Trinity Episcopal Church.
It was a meager dinner of canned cheese spread on stale crackers and Spam that we ate that night. While we ate, we talked about all the things that went wrong and how to do them better next time. I didn’t really say much; it was mostly my girl and Donny who were going over things with the “troops.” Eddie and I stepped into another smaller room and started talking.
The room looked like a small office. There was a square table against one wall with two plastic-backed chairs on either side and some booklets still scattered around the top. The walls were decorated sparsely with cardboard printed caricatures of baby ostriches, bunnies, and orangutans in diapers. The back wall had a set of cabinets that reminded me of a doctor’s office.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you,” Eddie began, “is because, well, I was thinking.” He broke off. I sat down in one of the plastic-backed chairs wondering where this was going.
“You know I’m their leader,” he finally continued after a long time trying to gather his thoughts.
“I think you’re a very good leader.”
“Thanks.” He beamed. “I don’t always do so well. We need something else. We need help.”
“It looks like you got a lot of things pretty well under control here. Everyone’s protected, cared for at least as best as you can under the circumstances. You have an army. The place is clean, so you have discipline, and you’re friends with Ashley, who I don’t think will let any of you get sick if she can help it.”
“I don’t always know what I’m doing.”
“What are you asking me?”
“Would you guys like to move in? Take over? We can give you your own room. We can. . .”
I cut him off by raising my hand. Now I couldn’t tell him I’d been thinking about how I could take over from the moment I first met them. How I could see they were starving for adult supervision. How even now Donny and the rest were listening to my girl about how to improve their fighting tactics. I couldn’t tell Eddie that by default of being an adult they were all looking up to, I was already in charge. Honestly, I had to think of the future here; not the immediate future, but the long-range future. Sure, I could use these kids to do all the things I needed to get done to reclaim some semblance of the world we knew. But where would that leave them in the long run? I had to think bigger than that, especially now that he was making this offer to me. I had to think about how I’d leave this place for them to survive in for years to come. Dylan’s words from my dream last night rang through my head: “Even George Washington had a continental army he didn’t know how to use.” I knew my long silence was killing Eddie and the words he expected me to say were killing him because I wasn’t saying them. I wasn’t saying anything. All this was springing around in my brain for what seemed like an eternity to me, so it must have seemed longer to him. Finally I said, “No.” Crestfallen, stunned, crushed; none of those words come close to the expression of lost hope that covered his face. His lips quivered and I wasn’t sure if he was on the verge of tears or trying to decide if he was going to say “but” or “why.”
“Look, you’re their leader. They chose you.” I pointed at him for emphasis. “You might invite me in to take over, but do you think they’ll accept me as a leader because I’m an adult? No. They’re all very proud of what you guys have built here without adults. You might need adults, you might want adults, but you just can’t point to me and say to them ‘he’s the leader.’ They won’t accept it. They won’t accept me or her or anyone.”
“But—”
“If this were true, then why isn’t Ashley your leader? Did you offer the job to her?’
“No.”
“But you offered it to me. Eddie, I want the job, but I can’t take it. I can use you guys to do all the things that need to be done to secure this area and rebuild this community. With all your people, I could do it in half the time, if not sooner.”
“Then why not lead us?”
“You were there right beside me today. What went wrong?”
“A herd of zombies came from down the street and caught us.”
“No, man, I screwed up. What’s the first rule about survival in a zombie world like ours?” He stared at me blankly. “Come on, man, you know this, it’s silence. You have to keep quiet or they come. How much noise was I making letting that diesel truck and all the other cars sit running? Without those engines, how quiet is this city? I made a big mistake today and it almost got us all killed.”
“But it was a smart idea closing those bridges and ramps. We’d have never thought of that.”
“I’m not saying I expect you to be Peter Pan’s Lost Boys here, Eddie. I’ve never been through a zombie apocalypse either. I’m making this all up as I go along. Sometimes I feel like I’ve almost gotten myself killed every day. You want me to put all of you in that kind of danger every day? I’ll make a deal with you. You stay her
e in charge of these guys. We’ll help you with everything we can. If you need advice on anything, you know where we live. And we can work together, a coalition government, on big problems.”
“A coalition government?”
“One person who has power is a king. A person who takes power is a dictator. One person in power is never a good thing for the people under him because greed eventually steps in. Two groups of people in cooperation make a partnership and can achieve a common goal, or they can bitch and fight like an old married couple. Two groups of people working together are a coalition. If we work together we can accomplish great things and everyone is happy. Look at the Founding Fathers, they overthrew a king.”
“But out of the two groups someone has to take the lead. If we form a coalition government, will you take the lead?”
“Like a president?”
“Yeah.”
And with that, I abdicated my throne as the king of an empty city and put our future in the hands of a fourteen-year-old boy who hadn’t even started shaving yet. I’d have to teach him how to do it since he didn’t know how, and until he was ready I’d became the president of Misfit Island. We shook hands and I wasn’t sure how I felt about this, but at least I now had allies. I immediately thought of Shaun and Andrew and grandpa holed up in their house and Ashley and all those we hadn’t met yet and how they’d feel about my plans of grooming this kid to be the next president of our new government. It’s a poetic thing to say, but another thing entirely when “a child shall lead them” is the truth. From my dream John’s words rang in my head: “He’s too naive, you’re going to have to spell it out for him.” I thought in the dream they were talking about me. I wished I could remember more of it.
They’d invited us to spend the night in the church with them and I wanted to take them up on the offer just for the warmth of the building. They didn’t have any heat on in there, but with all the bodies massed in one room it was a warm place. But I was vetoed on that; she said she wanted to sleep in her own bed tonight. I thought we were going to go back to the tent, but she wanted to go to the base house, so we trekked off to there. That night we slept in a comfortable bed with a ton of quilts over us as the breeze blew in through the broken window. As she readied for bed in the bathroom, I explained what Eddie and I had decided to do for a government. She just nodded or said “humm” in response.
“Donny asked me to teach the kids to fight,” she said as she crawled into bed.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him that I didn’t know the first thing about military tactics,” she said, settling in against me under the covers. “He said he thought I knew more than you did.”
I was shocked at Donny’s accusation. I’d read all those damned books at the library about tactics and defenses. I’d fortified our roof.
“Not so much a better tactician. He thinks I’m a better fighter than you are.” Her argument had me there; she was a better fighter than I was. I was just stuck being interim president. In moments, she was sleeping beside me as I finished up this entry. I wish that Dylan and Stager were around for real so I could bounce my ideas off them. It’s lonely at the top, especially when there are so few of you around.
ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 23
ZWD: Dec. 19.
My first official act as interim president was to pee. Right after my cabinet meeting with a nine-year-old about his algebra homework. Why, just yesterday I was king.
I woke up in an empty bed hugging a pillow. At first, I just thought she’d gotten up to go to the bathroom because I heard movement in the room, so I rolled over on my side and dozed back off to sleep. Then I heard paper shuffling and a sound I couldn’t identify.
When I opened my eyes there on the floor sat Jr. with a book and a legal pad across his lap. He was holding down the legal pad with his right hand like it was going to run away and with this left hand he was frantically erasing most of the page.
“What are you doing, Jr.?” I asked through my pillow.
“Algebra,” he said as he kept erasing. It was going to be one of those conversations, first thing in the morning to boot.
“Jr., why are you doing algebra in my bedroom?” I prodded on.
“I was waiting for you to get up, so I was doing my homework.”
“You have homework?”
“Yep, Mrs. Greenbaum is pretty strict about the homework.”
“Who’s Mrs. Greenbaum again?”
“Mrs. Greenbaum is our teacher. We bring her into the church once a week to teach us. Donny takes a squad and goes and gets her.”
“So you guys have school?”
“Oh yes, Bobby insisted.”
“Good for her. Now back to my original question. What are you doing here in my bedroom, Jr., besides waiting for me to wake up?”
“Welp, the Commander sent me over here to get you, but with strict orders to let you sleep. So, while you were sleeping, I was getting in my homework.”
“Very noble of you, sticking with the homework. Who’s the Commander?”
“Your wife.”
“Oh, I didn’t know she was the Commander.”
“We had to give her some rank. Donny’s the general, so what’s above that? Commander.”
“You're right. It all makes perfect sense now that I’m confused and awake,” I said as I sat up.
“So are you really the intern president now?” Jr. asked as I went to the bathroom.
“You mean interim president? I guess so.” And thus, my first official meeting as interim president was with a nine-year-old about homework, and my first official act as interim president was to pee.
“What do you know about simplification?” he asked.
“I know a little, what’s up?”
“What do you do when you can’t reduce numbers down to nothing else in a fraction?” I walked over to where he sat on the floor and looked at the problem.
“Add those two together,” I said, pointing. He smacked his forehead as if he suddenly remembered.
“That’s right, that’s right,” he muttered as I reached for my jeans. Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance as I smelled the sweater I was going to wear today.
“Is it raining again?”
“Snowing when I came in,” he said, his head bent over the problem on his papers.
“So, where’s the commander?”
“She’s with Donny over at that house with all the zombies around it. She sent me over to get you,“ he said, looking up from his papers. “Are you the interim president or the sheriff? Cause she said I should come over here and get the sheriff, but to let you sleep because you deserved it.”
“I guess I’m both,” I said, pulling on my shoes. “Where’s your family, Jr.?” It was a question I regretted asking as soon as the words left my mouth.
This efficient kid who was doing homework during a zombie crisis for a moment slumped over and said, “I-630.” He didn’t have to offer more information.
“So tell me why is my wife the Commander at the house with all the zombies around it?”
“The zombies are doing weird things over there,” he offered. “So when Donny saw it he sent me to get her and she sent me to get you.”
“How many times have you been in this house?”
“Twice, today.”
“You’ve been in here more?”
“Yep. You almost caught me one day. But I’m fast like the Flash.”
“You eat yet, Flash?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I haven’t. Meet me downstairs.” Jr. gathered his stuff and went downstairs. I couldn’t very well chastise him for breaking into the house several times on us. Today, it was kind of a necessary skill to have.
Getting the cars in place accelerated my to-do list considerably, and as Jr. pointed out I was interim president, which added a host of other priorities to my to-do list. I had to think about it for a moment. I sat there on the edge of the bed going over the list, trying to decide where
to go to next when more thunder rumbled outside. As a survivor, food was priority one; as president safety was priority one. The to-do list became overwhelming to think about, but then one word popped into my head: “delegate.” I’d have to learn to delegate these projects to people and simply oversee them, or I’d kill myself trying to get everything done. As it was now, just thinking about everything I needed to do made my chest tight and I was starting to hyperventilate.
At the kitchen table, Jr. was working on another problem while I searched for something to eat. I found a package of beef jerky and canned pears. While I spooned them into a bowl I looked at his new problem.
“You can’t do that because that number is prime,” I said. He nodded his head and corrected his mistake, then looked at me. His thin lips and bowl haircut reminded me of Alfalfa, but without the freckles.
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