by Lowry, Chris
“I've got a headache,” said Byron as he stepped out to join us. “The blast rang my bell. Some of the kids got sick from the gas.”
“Gas?”
“I shoved a barrel of chlorine and a barrel of ammonia down into the tunnel. It makes a toxic combination.”
“You probably saved our lives,” I told him.
He might have blushed. It was hard to tell in the half light. But he shrugged and ducked his head, a kid not used to much praise. I wondered what had made him the way he was. So close to my son's age too, but I didn't think he had ever made plans to defend his school from attack.
“You saved mine too,” he said. “We probably shouldn't keep score on something like that.”
“You're right,” said Brian.
Byron watched the two of us for a moment.
“He lived though. That guy who said he was after you. Is he going to quit?”
I tried to shake my head, but it sent my balance on vacation somewhere and I stumbled. Brian shoved his shoulder under mine and held me up.
“You need to rest.”
“I need to eat. We all need to eat, something besides soup. We ran into an old guy here, the pastor of that church,” I pointed to the white clapboard across the street. “He's set up in the store downtown. Rows of food and medicine too.”
“We'll go get it,” said Byron.
I held up a hand and he waited for me to catch my breath as the stars stopped spinning.
“Might be better to roll up in the bus with a bunch of little kids. Jamal killed a couple of Z on the street when he picked us up and the pastor wasn't too happy about it.”
“Z?” Byron rolled it across his tongue for a taste. “I call them Zombies, but I like Z better.”
“It's a Z world now,” I told him. “A Z battlefield.”
He nodded.
“I wish I would have thought a little farther ahead than just locking down in the school.”
“You lived this long.”
“Most of us,” he sighed. “I just want to protect my people. My kids.”
“We're in it together now,” Brian told him.
Byron's eyes flashed a little at that. I was going to ask him about it, but he turned back toward the bus as kids began to stir inside. I put it on my list of things to talk to him about later. Byron was used to being in charge, Brian was the leader of our group most of the time. I didn't need them in a power struggle if we were going to survive.
Anna took Byron's place as she wiped sleep from her eyes.
She faked a smile.
“Kind of look like Frankenstein now?” I asked.
“You look a little like hamburger,” she said.
“Frankenstein was the doctor,” said Brian. “Not the monster.”
A Z lumbered up out of the woods, noticed us and changed trajectory to come at us.
“I left my pike on the bus,” Brian sighed.
“Take my knife,” I said without thinking, reaching for it.
Stars exploded as something lashed me across the back with a whip made of fire. I tumbled to a knee and barely held myself up. Anna grabbed my arm and lifted me on one side, Brian on the other.
“You lost your knife,” she told me. “And your rifle is broken.”
“Dang,” I grunted. “That hurt.”
She led me back toward the bus, Brian hopped in, got his pike and took care of the Z with a quick poke to the head. He wiped the blade on the grime encrusted clothes it was wearing.
“Doc Harper,” Anna said.
She was right. The pastor had pointed him out to us.
Byron called his guards down from the roof and Anna helped me on the bus, Peg started it up and we drove slowly up the street toward the downtown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There was a fog that drifted around town like a thick pall of blue gray smoke. It smashed against the windshield and parted, hiding the sides of the road as they slowly cruised up the street.
I silently hoped we wouldn't hit a Z and piss of the pastor, wondered if he would understand how difficult it was to see the road.
But we didn't see a Z after the first one, not until we passed the cemetery and could see downtown.
The fog was less thick here, and I could see it was smoke not fog curling out of the embers of the burned down block of main street. The discount store was gone, soot and smouldering rubble now, the buildings around it burned as well.
Dead Z littered the street, dozens of them and one body that didn't quite look like the rest sprawled across from where the store had once stood.
The pastor.
He had an extra hole above his eyes, staring lifeless at the lingering smoke and up into the sky as dawn broke full and orange sunlight raced past us.
Peg stopped the bus in the street.
“Was that it?” she asked.
Anna nodded.
“Do we keep going?” Brian asked.
Peg shook her head no.
“We're running low on fuel.”
“And the kids need to eat,” Hannah added.
“So do you,” Anna turned her eyes toward me. “Where are we going to get medicine?”
I looked at Byron. He looked back at me. His plans were landlocked behind the fence at his school. This was new territory for him and it showed in his eyes, his stance. He stood next to Hannah, her hand seeking his as if by instinct and the two of them gripped tight and stared at me together.
Peg stopped the bus, but when I lifted out of the seat where Anna planted me I stumbled. It felt like we were still moving.
“Bring your men,” I told Byron and his chest puffed up. His men. His squad.
I turned to Hannah.
“Get the kids off the bus and keep them in the green space in front of the courthouse,” I breathed through a lash of white hot fire. “Keep them close, use the older ones to stand guard. No one runs off.”
She nodded.
Brian, Anna, and Peg followed me off the bus. We stood to one side while Byron assembled his squad of six teenage boys in a ragged line and Hannah escorted the twenty or so others off the bus. They were quiet, and orderly, scared wide eyes staring at the fallen Z corpses scattered in the street.
“Take this one back to the car and get the supplies,” I told her.
Her eyes lit up. She had forgotten about our stash of SPAM and food pilfered from the pastor's residence. Anna stood on her toes and kissed me on the cheek, then motioned for the one they called Tyler to follow her. He was the scout Byron had used, and I thought that a good choice.
I reached out and put a hand on Brian's shoulder to steady myself.
“It's a small town, but there's got to be a gas station. Go find it, and get fuel for the bus. Check the garage for cans for extra, in case we need it.”
I turned to Byron.
“Can you trade her the pike for a weapon.”
Byron grinned like a hero playing war.
“Pike. Z. You come up with the greatest names.”
He nodded to the kid beside him to trade, then sent him to guard Hannah and the children along with one other teen.
“I made up pike,” Brian muttered.
“I didn’t think you wanted to tell him about your D & D days.”
“Can he spell D & D?”
“Ask him.”
“You going to be okay here?” Brian asked.
“I'm just sitting on the steps waiting,” I told him. “Watch for Z. This may be all, but I don't want you to be surprised.”
He nodded goodbye and climbed back in the bus after Peg.
Byron waited until they had driven away.
“What about us?”
“Anna went to get food for all of us,” I explained. “Just one meal though, maybe two. I need you and your men to hunt. Go house to house and grab everything we can eat, use. Take bags and packs from the house to carry it.”
“Skip the details,” he told me. “We cleaned out all the houses around the school so we know what to do.”
“I just meant save your energy,” he sulked.
“No,” I sighed. “Just caught me in a pain wave. You know what you're doing. Knock for Z first, and lure them out. Raid the medicine cabinets and take it all.”
He nodded, the smile back on his face. Pain he could understand, and it salved his fragile pride.
He blew a kiss to Hannah who returned it, and broke his group into three sets of two. They took off at a run that made me envious of youth and suddenly I was in the middle of the street alone.
I looked at Hannah watching the kids like a brooding hen, Harriet hovering behind her with eyes only toward her daughter. Two teens stood on either end of the green space, half their attention out, half their attention on the children, tiny smiles on their smooth cheeked faces.
The kids were laughing, running in the grass, playing in the morning sun.
It could have been lifted from a story book, except for the stench of Z, the smell of burnt wood, and food and maybe even sadness hanging over the dead town like a pall.
I shuffled around and faced the road we had ridden in on. I was watching for Anna to return, but then remembered I had the keys in my pocket. And I forgot to tell them to check the locks on the church doors.
I took two painful steps forward and realized I didn't have a gun. I didn't have a rifle, or knife or pistol. Nothing to fight with if a Z showed up.
Or the General.
I glared at the eastern horizon and stood there, transfixed. I didn't notice Hannah move next to me, but I felt her hands on my wrist. She lifted it to her shoulder and placed it there to hold me steady.
“Thank you for coming for me,” she said.
It might have been a whisper but I was still hard of hearing.
“You've got to stop getting kidnapped,” I tried for a joke. She gave a tiny laugh, more of a charity than anything.
“He's coming for us isn't he?”
“He's coming for me.” I told her.
I didn't say if he got me, he might let them go. I didn't let on that I was thinking of standing in the middle of that road until the General showed up and tried to buy the others time to get away. I wasn't sure how bad off I was, but I felt pretty broken. I might be too much of a burden, especially as fever hit. I could feel the aches and chills starting.
She put her hand over mine.
“I want you to kill them,” she said. “Kill them all. Nobody lives. Everybody dies.”
I shivered then, and she felt it, but whether it was the fever or her words neither of us could tell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Anna came back almost at a dead run. For a moment adrenaline surged as I thought she was being chased, but she wasn't. She was only worried about me, about putting food into the stomach that turned to knots and did flips at the thought of it.
“Feed a fever,” I muttered.
“What?” said Hannah as she lifted away her hand.
But I didn't answer. I watched Anna slide a stop followed shortly by the boy and she led me over to the courtyard where she played the role of cook and nursemaid.
She made the boy, whose name was Jacob, build a small fire from a flame in the smouldering store and a game she made the children play called pick up sticks. She sharpened some sticks into spears and cut the SPAM into chunks that could fit on the end like hot dogs roasted over a campfire.
Hannah made cooking a game, watching close as the children dipped their meat speared sticks into and over the tiny flame. The smell of cooking filled the courtyard and my stomach decided the rumble tumble roll it had been playing was done and my mouth was filled with saliva.
“Feed a fever,” I muttered again.
Anna smoothed back the hair from my head.
“Fever,” she confirmed.
She cooked for me and broke off little pieces and when I didn't lift my hands to feed myself, she put them in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed, never tasting anything so good as that except for the last time we cooked Spam together.
It reminded me of my grandfather and how he used to take my brother and I to some land he owned in the woods growing up.
Our job was to clear it, playing another game of pick up sticks, and he would build a fire to roast a can of Spam. We would eat it with yellow mustard and store brand root beer.
It was one of my favorite memories and one I hoped to share with my kids, then I remembered that I never had, and maybe now I never would.
Maybe the food made me feel stronger.
Anna fed me a whole can, and then another despite my protests to save it. I ate it all.
Maybe it was the rage.
Hannah was right. The madman was going to keep chasing me. We had to stop him. I had to stop him.
And I wasn't about to go down in some noble gesture just to save some strangers. I was going to do what Hannah asked, and live to see my kids. Maybe it wouldn't be Spam, maybe it would be vienna sausage or even potted meat on crackers, two other items always in my grandfather's possession. I didn't enjoy those as much as a kid, but could appreciate the convenience now, if not the flavor. And any canned meat was now a delicacy.
Brian and Peg returned and they had Byron and his squad inside the truck. They had found four hunting rifles with ammunition, food enough for two dozen people for several days, and medicine.
Anna took it from them and she and Brian took turns playing doctor, rubbing salve, and monkey blood and an expired bottle of bactine onto the sores. Anna packed the cuts with petroleum jelly after a good dousing with water, then hydrogen peroxide, then alcohol which hurt more than the burn ever did. She stitched the gashes closed and wrapped them in gauze.
I looked at my shirts, and was glad I had on a couple of layers when the grenade went off. It probably saved me from worse even though the backs were ripped, torn, and gone from most of them.
Byron passed me two work shirts, big rather than small and I was glad they weren't on my skin tight. The kid was thinking ahead.
After our breakfast, I sent the children away and gathered the others around me again.
“You did good,” I told them.
We were fed, and fueled, with supplies to last until we found the next town, and a couple of weapons to keep us safe.
“Now for the bad.”
And I told them.
I told them the madman was coming. I told them he wanted me, and just me, and that he wasn't going to give up. I told them about moving ahead, and sticking to a set route, and about staying behind to buy them time.
“How will we get away?” Anna asked.
We. Not you. Her mind made up.
I showed her the car keys on the key ring I forgot to give her.
“You're the getaway driver.”
“It will be better if more of us stay,” said Byron. “More bullets.”
But I shook my head and told them about the rest of the plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
We planned on them coming from the east, the direction of the school and they didn't disappoint. They followed the same route we had, learned by checking for tipped cans on a branch.
I would have set Tyler to scout further out, but didn't want to double back to pick him up after it was all over. I might not even be able to double back.
Brian loaded all the kids in the bus, and offered again to stay.
“Keep everyone safe,” I told him, standing straighter on my own now.
He nodded.
“Catch up fast.”
We didn't shake hands this time, some little gesture that meant more in the past than it did now, and he didn't punch me in the shoulder or clap my back because he knew it would hurt too much.
He just stepped up into the door and Peg drove off.
“What if this doesn't work?” Anna stood next to the sedan.
“It will,” I told her, but I wondered myself.
The hardest part would be getting away.
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“Do you want me to wait with you?”
Tyler or another scout could have given us a heads up and we could set up in the time we had remaining, but without the advance notice, it was a waiting game. Once we saw or heard the trucks, it might be too late to get into position.
“It's going to take me time to get in place,” I told her.
She put a hand on my cheek, and leaned in to kiss me. My lips were dry, but hers were soft and moist and tender. She lingered for just a moment, and then pulled away. Sometime during the kiss my hand had grabbed hers and I held it a second longer before letting her go.
She climbed in the car, started it up and moved to the end of the intersection two blocks away. I watched her do a k turn so she was facing out, parked in the middle of the road and remembered I forgot to remind her to keep the windows rolled up. The car would get stuffy but better some stale hot air, than fetid Z breath sneaking up on you.
But we hadn't seen any Z besides the bodies in the street, not this morning.
As if the town were empty and only the ghosts remained.
I waved, waited for her to wave back and went over to the courthouse.
Cuthbert was the county seat and the structure befitted it. Three stories tall, it towered over the landscape only just larger than the second Baptist church across the street from the first, and only then because of a cupola and bell tower. Up here I could see the bells had been removed and replaced by tornado sirens, a necessity in tornado alley of mid Georgia.
I moved to the solid balustrade that circled around the second level roof.
Byron's boys had gathered ladders for me once I asked, a long aluminum extension one that shook and threatened to teeter as I tediously pulled up rung by rung. The second, a six-foot step ladder that led to my perch behind the stone wall.
From here I could see the yellow church and the white one, and the road beyond and I set up two rifles.
I went over how it would play out in my head and thought I should have asked for someone to stay and reload for me. Then thoughts of the Alamo and how rickety the ladder would be with two of us trying to slide down at the same time, and worrying about them running the two blocks to the car.