When our meal was finished, Jake and I stood up to leave. The sheriff hadn’t bothered to show up, so I figured she was okay with whatever happened. The rest of the customers watched as we stood up, and as we were leaving, we ran into a beautiful redhead, wearing a uniform and a badge.
“Well, well. The collectors, right?” Her tone was very belligerent, and I knew that was going to cause problems, especially with Jake. Her name badge read ‘Brooks’, her very blue eyes stared hard at Jake and myself. “Heard there were a couple of you in town. Here’s a warning so we know where we stand right away. Your kind isn’t welcome here, and if I catch you breaking into any building, be it private or public, I may decide to forego the necessity of due process and just handle you myself.” I had no doubt she would, too, but only if Jake and I were unarmed, and we were never fully unarmed.
Jake’s tone was low and deliberate, just as it always is when he’s about to unload on someone.
“Listen carefully, as I hate to repeat myself, Brooks,” Jake said. “We have never broken into any building that wasn’t in a grey or black zone, and in those areas, no one lives to protest. This is why we are asked to go into them. No one else will. We have never stolen anything; we have never kept anything we were sent to get. There are unscrupulous collectors out there, but we aren’t them. And before you think you can handle us, Brooks, keep in mind we’ve made over thirty runs into the city itself, and we’re still here.”
There was low murmuring as Jake relayed that information, and I could see Officer Brooks rethinking her position. It was one thing to bluster and threaten young punks and goofy teens. It was another completely when the person you were trying to push was someone who willingly went into the worst of the zombie zones and came back out alive. That person would likely take your threat and shove it down your throat.
Brooks didn’t back down, and showed remarkable stupidity. “You’ve been warned.” She stuck out a finger and poked Jake in the chest, emphasizing her point by jabbing him with each word. “I catch you, I deal with you.”
Jake, who isn’t known for his temperament, grabbed her hand and twisted it inward, causing a gasp of pain to come from Officer Brooks’ startled face. She tried to reach across her body for her firearm, but Jake just stepped back, increasing pressure on her wrist, eliciting a cry of pain as Brooks went down to one knee. Jake took a step around the downed officer’s leg and brought her hand up behind her head.
Several men stood up to offer help, but I whipped out my pistol and clarified the situation. “She started it, gents. It’s a private affair.” The look on my face left nothing to the imagination. I would not hesitate to shoot.
Officer Brooks was game. In a burst of energy, she brought her hand over her head, twisting herself so she could strike at Jake’s crotch. Jake was ready, and brought the hand he still held straight up. With his other hand, he pushed her elbow, putting the woman’s face down onto a chair. I could hear her heavy breathing, and I knew we could probably never come back to this place.
Jake brought his head down to the officer’s. “Nice move. But the one who taught you that was my mother. And she taught me more.” Jake released Brooks’ hand and let her get up. Officer Brooks was sweating, and slowly brought her arm and wrist around to massage them both.
“You’re Sarah’s son? Then you’re…”
Jake cut her off. “I’m Jake. Just Jake. Nothing more.” The darkness behind Jake’s eyes did not allow for elaboration. “You didn’t know.”
“You must be Aaron.” Brooks had turned to me.
I shook my head. “Not the time. We’ll get out of your hair.”
Jake nodded and we headed for the door. I kept my gun out but pointed down, just in case.
“Wait!” Officer Brooks held up a hand.
Jake sighed. “What now? An insult you forgot earlier?”
Brooks’ face darkened, but I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger.
“Where is this outbreak, or potential outbreak? You can’t drop that and walk away.”
Jake shook his head. “Watch me.”
With that, we were out the door.
Chapter 22
We spent the night in an abandoned café off of route 30. Jake and I were both in foul moods, so we didn’t bother to talk much at all. I knew Jake had a lot of things on his mind, and the encounter with Officer Brooks didn’t help to make things better. During the night, I woke to see Jake standing at the window of the café, just looking out. I almost asked him then what was wrong, but figured he would tell me in his way.
In the morning, we pulled out, and Jake seemed almost back to his normal self. I could tell he was still out of sorts, but there was something in him today, something that was driving him. I knew I would never be able to get it out of him, so I figured I would do what our father did when he wanted us to confess something or to tell him what was on our minds.
I just sat back, stayed quiet, and listened. We turned up a side road, and drove north. The road was just called 80th Avenue, and it would through a couple of subdivisions. Many of the homes had been burned down, and large swaths of land had been cleared for farming. Big hills surrounded the farms, and from experience I knew those hills were actually debris piles that had been reclaimed by nature. If you dug into them, you’d find all kinds of stuff.
We turned down a long driveway and headed towards what looked like a school. It had been long abandoned, but it seemed like a decent place, still. The windows were intact, although the caulking around them was cracking. In a few years and another hard winter, and this place would begin the long slide into oblivion.
Jake pulled into the parking lot, being careful not to bump into the dividers that lay hidden under foliage. I had no idea why we were here, but since I wasn’t driving, I was pretty much just an observer.
“How come we’re here?” I asked as Jake stopped the truck. He got out without answering and started walking towards the building. Not having anything else to do and unable to get answers from the dashboard, I got out and followed Jake.
At the front of the building, Jake just stopped and looked around. I caught up to him and looked around myself. The building was in good shape, someone could actually move in here and save it with little trouble, but if no one did, in a few years it would start to decay and crumble. The windows were tinted, but if I looked close, I could see boards and curtains covering the lower floors. The upper floors had no need of such protection. We walked around the building, I noted the plywood on the south doors, and the wood in the windows of an oddly shaped room attached to the back of the building. Across the field, up near what used to be a baseball field, was a large patch of dirt where nothing grew. It was very strange, but not as strange as the collection of crosses which made up a small graveyard on another side yard.
We completed our tour and wound up back in the front. Jake and I hadn’t spoken the whole time, and I got the impression he wanted me to see everything before he gave his reasons for stopping here.
“Do you know what this place is?” Jake said, with a small smile on his face.
“Without any other clues, I’m going to say this is a school, and one that was used in the past as a safe place when the zombies first appeared.” I said, figuring to be about eighty percent right.
“On the surface, you’re right,” Jake said. “But it’s more than that. Uncle Tommy told me about this place.”
Our Uncle Tommy was a great one for stories and for training. He was your average, quiet guy, but unbelievably steady in the face of just about anything. He rarely got riled up, and was a source of good humor when his best friend Duncan was around. I was curious now as to the connection of this place to our uncle.
“What is this place, then?” I asked.
Jake looked almost wistful. “This is where Dad and our uncles made their stand. This is where they fought back for the first time. According to Uncle Tommy, they fought off nearly a thousand zombies here. And that was on the first day.”
&
nbsp; I had to admit I was stunned. Not because I didn’t believe it could be done, but because I suddenly had the sneaking suspicion the stories about our father might actually be true. Dad never talked about what he had done during the War on the Zombies. He always said it didn’t matter, just worry about today and tomorrow, not yesterday. Everything we had ever heard about what he and his crew had done, we always got from secondhand sources. However, we always suspected those stories were elaborated to make good telling. I never thought they might have happened for real.
“Damn.” I wasn’t going to win marks for eloquence anytime soon, but it summed up everything I was feeling pretty well.
“Yeah.” Jake must have been in the same contest. “Let’s get moving. There’s another place I want to see.”
“Where?”
“On our way to the capital, don’t worry.” Jake had decided to be mysterious, which I would allow for this little adventure. If it made him less of a grouch, I was all for trips down memory lane. On the other hand, I was a little perturbed that Jake knew about this and had kept it to himself. In addition, I think I was mad at my uncles for talking to Jake and not to me.
We drove up 80th Avenue and as we passed by a condo complex, Jake pointed out that Dad had moved everyone there to get them out of the school.
“Why? The school seems like a perfectly good place to stay safe,” I argued, not seeing the point of trying to re-establish a safe haven when one already existed.
“I asked that same question, and Uncle Tommy said Dad wanted people to be somewhere familiar, somewhere they could live, not just be alive. It was the thing that kept him going, all those years back,” Jake said.
“Rumor has it you were the thing that kept him going,” I said, wondering what kind of reaction I would get. While Jake apparently had spoken to our uncles, I had some questions I had answered by our mother.
Jake stiffened slightly. “Yeah, well not anymore, it seems.” He stopped talking after that and I regretted my words. I think Jake was taking our father’s absence much harder than I had previously thought.
Chapter 23
We travelled up the main route towards the capital, stopping briefly to fill up our tank with gas. We saw many signs of life around here, people who went back to their homes after several years, and others who took up residences that were no longer claimed. Many homes had been burned down, and the result was a lot of open space for small farms and orchards. The one benefit of the apocalypse was the shift in thinking from ‘all about me’ to ‘we’re in this together.’ The sad part was it took nearly the extinction of the human race to realize it.
We passed by the big mall in the middle of Orlan, and it was a sad sight to see. A few years ago, teenagers had taken over the big mall, mostly teens who had been orphaned by the Zombie War. At last unofficial count there had been nearly three hundred living there, enjoying themselves and pretty much doing as they pleased. One winter, though, the roof collapsed, killing two hundred of them, and scattering the rest. Jake and I had been part of the search for survivors, and I will never forget pulling those bodies out of the rubble, especially the little ones, for several of the teens had had children. I remember Jake had openly wept for the babies. That was the last time I had actually seen him cry.
Past the mall, things spread out a bit, but Jake took a turn in the opposite direction of the capitol.
“Another trip down memory lane?” I asked dryly.
“This one is for both of us,” Jake said.
“How so?” This was different and I let my tone show it.
“I went into Dad’s room last month,” Jake said.
In a way, I was mad, but my curiosity overcame my anger. “All right, if you force me, I’ll ask. What did you find?” We had stayed out of dad’s room ever since we found the note that told us he was gone. At first, it was out of anger, but then it became a sign of respect. Lately, though, it was becoming an obsession, as our father was gone longer and longer.
Jake smiled at me. “Not much. He left a box for me and some instructions. There was a box for you, as well. And before you ask, no I didn’t look. You can when we get back.”
“What did yours say?” I asked, very anxious now to get home.
“That’s for me to know, as yours is for you. But there was something for both of us, and this little side trip is part of it,” Jake said. “Ah, here it is.”
We turned down a road and went into a little valley, crossing some railroad tracks and heading up a hill. Jake turned the truck into another subdivision, and by this time, I was thoroughly confused as to the reason for this trip.
The truck wound through a living community, with several homes occupied and many people out and about. That was the front of the subdivision. When we crossed another street, it was as if someone had turned off a switch. There wasn’t any children playing about, there weren’t any people going about their daily chores, not a single house looked occupied. Some of the homes looked to have been looted, and many others were just dilapidated husks, waiting for that one severe storm to finally bring them down.
At the end of the street, we pulled into the driveway of a modest, two story home. It had a brick first floor and a second floor covered in grey siding. It looked to be perfectly normal, except for the unkempt grass and bushes around the house. The first floor windows were nearly obscured by evergreen bushes that had gone unchecked, and the lilies around the drain spout were out of control to the point they covered half the side yard. The neighbors’ yards weren’t in any better shape, and the tall trees by the sides and front of the house could use some serious pruning.
“This it?” I asked. “Where are we?”
Jake smiled that little annoying smile of his. “Hang on, I’ll let you know. It took me a week to find a map that would lead me to this place.”
I could believe that. Maps were somewhat scarce, and a good set of roadmaps were hard to come by. Maps that showed details of streets were even rarer. Once upon a time, people just turned on their computers or phones and were able to get directions with little effort. We had landline phones these days, and I had heard there was some progress with cell towers, whatever those were. But no maps to be had.
Jake and I walked around the house, passing through the tall gate for the fenced back yard. In the back, we were a little surprised at what looked to be an incomplete porch. Some projects never got finished.
Looking in the windows, we couldn’t see much. The windows were slightly higher than normal, and there seemed to be boards covering the windows. That was interesting. I wondered what we would find when we went inside.
Circling back to the front, Jake and I stood on the front porch. I tried the door, and was unsurprised to find it locked. I was about to pull a small crowbar out of my pack when Jake surprised the hell out of me by producing a key.
Jake looked at me and shrugged. “It was with the note.” He tried the key, and with a little wiggling, the old lock gave up the fight and relented. Jake pushed the door open and waited a second. When we didn’t hear anything, we went inside.
The house was very neat and tidy, sparsely furnished but tasteful. The wood floors and furniture had a layer of dust, but looked undisturbed after all these years. We walked carefully, making sure we didn’t kick up too much dust. The air was stale and musty, and not easy to breathe.
In the kitchen, we found a lot of interesting stuff. Several maps were laid out on the table, and the counter had a lot of supplies that looked as if they had been fussed over, and then left, for whatever reason. Jake went over to the casement windows above the sink and opened them. Since the front door was open, the wind rushed through the house, taking all the stale air out and replacing it with sweet-smelling air.
Problem was that wind stirred up the dust, and we were coughing and choking for a few minutes while the dust cleared out.
“Glad you did that?” I coughed at Jake.
“Not really,” He coughed back.
“Mind if I hazard a guess?�
� I asked.
“About what?”
“This used to be Dad’s house, before things went south all over,” I said.
Jake nodded. “In the note he left me, he gave me the address and the key, saying when I felt I was ready I could go take a look.” Jake looked around. “Not sure what I was supposed to be ready for, though.”
“Well, let’s look around. Maybe we’ll find what he’s talking about,” I said. We agreed to split up, and I went upstairs while Jake went downstairs. I had noticed the windows of the first floor had been boarded up, and I realized that the wood was from the deck. Pretty smart thinking, there. Upstairs, the windows were left alone, except for the blinds, which were down and angled to let in light, but nothing could see in from the street. I was gaining respect for my father as he dealt with the undead when they first arrived.
In a room that could only be a baby’s, I checked the closets and found nothing of interest. A couple of side rooms had nothing either, save for a desk and a guest bed. The master bedroom was cozy, but dusty. I wasn’t going to open the window and cause a dust storm, thank you.
Finding nothing except some clothing, I headed back downstairs. I could hear Jake coming up from the basement, and I would guess he had found nothing either. The house was very utilitarian, and everything of use in an evacuation had been taken.
It wasn’t until I reached the landing at the bottom of the stairs that I saw it. Had I not gone upstairs, we would have passed it right on by. I didn’t see it as I went up, and we didn’t see it when we came in, but it was there, nonetheless.
It was a picture of a family, taken by someone who liked close ups. I recognized my dad, and the baby in the picture had to be Jake, since it had his eyes and features. But the woman threw me for a loop. I looked long and hard at the picture, taking it off the wall and examining it in better light. I wiped off the dust, but it didn’t change the truth of what I was seeing.
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