by Lowry, Chris
“You’ve got a sniper on that hill.”
"Good eye," he appraised the boy.
"He's got sunlight glinting off his scope or binoculars," Tyler told him. "I spotted him from the trees. Tell him to pull back into the shadows or someone else might take the shot first."
The ranch man's eyes went wider at this, and he fished a tiny walkie talkie off his belt next to a wood handled six gun revolver.
He issued orders into the speaker and waited, watched Tyler as the boy stared at the sniper's nest.
When the boy nodded, the ranch man hooked the walkie talkie back to his belt and smiled.
"Thanks for not shooting him," he said.
"Thanks for not shooting us," Brian answered back.
The tall man’s eyes drifted over us, noting the injured and lame.
“Looks like you met trouble?”
His hazel eyes squinted under the brim of his hat, hand hovering on the belt next to his pistol.
He was a tough looking old bird, a throwback to a lost generation. Wrinkled skin turned leathery under the sun, big hands hooked in a permanent curl brought on by years of abuse or arthritis. Or both.
“We’re alive,” Brian chirped. “Some more than others.”
He said it in a light hearted voice, but there was something in the set of his chin. The tall man nodded, a message passed between them.
Yeah, we may have seen trouble, but we’re here, and trouble’s not. No need to say it out loud. The rancher got it.
The ranch man's eyes continued to rove over us, appraising, studying.
They stopped on mine and froze. I don’t play poker but it was a tell if I’ve ever seen one.
"Huh," he stated.
"Huh?" I asked.
"You're him?"
I could feel the others turn their eyes toward me, a couple of oh crap looks.
"I guess that depends on which him you're talking about," I shifted to one leg.
"I almost missed it," he said, eyes tracing the rough outline of my face. "A lot more scars, and the bruises don't help."
I racked my brain, trying to decide if I knew him. How I knew him.
Did we run together before? He didn't look much like a runner, but a lot of long distance guys were back of the pack runners. Slow and steady, big bodies moving toward a personal goal to finish a race, instead of racing to the finish.
Or maybe I knew him through work, or a presentation.
I'm good with faces, most of the time. But a couple of explosions and knocks on the noggin may have jarred a few things loose inside the gray matter.
"She's got a picture of you on her dresser," he said. "She said you would come."
And then I couldn't breathe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There are some things I’ve shared about the Z world. Horrible things I’ve done. Doubts about my abilities as a father. My failures.
The list is long.
But I won’t talk about the reunion.
The rancher said his name was Meroni, and led the stumbling lot of us back toward his ranch.
We followed the crushed shell road over two hills and nestled in a small shallow valley was a two story farmhouse and the promised barn, plus a couple of other buildings.
There were people there. Hanging clothes. Working a garden. Tending cattle.
The house and barn were inside another fence, a second layer that looked added, and sturdy. Another line of defense in case the Z got through.
Meroni slowed his pace to match ours, or maybe that was just the speed of old age.
We made the gate and people started to line up at our approach.
Watching. Waiting.
He bade us enter and we did. One of the men who had been working with a cow, moved past us, nodded and closed the gate.
Meroni took us toward the front porch, and called out her name.
She stepped out of the kitchen and I started crying.
And when she saw me, she flew across the yard at a speed that would make Mercury blush.
She hit me in the chest, wrapped her arms around me and the four of us fell in a sobbing heap on the edge of a shell road in the middle of a Florida farm.
And it’s mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I woke up later.
Turns out, reunions make me faint. Or blood loss and pushing across country, killing Z and anyone who stood in my way.
I woke up in the barn on a cot.
A saline bag nailed to a post by the bed, needle clipped into my arm.
Bem, the Boy and Bis sat on the floor beside me, not talking, just staring.
I tried to sit up, but the Boy pushed me back down.
“They had antibiotics,” said Bem.
“You did it,” said Bis, eyes wide in wonder. “You said you would, and you did.”
“For us too,” said the Boy.
My three children, sitting on the floor beside me after a zombie apocalypse.
I tried to say something and couldn’t get past the lump in my throat.
“He’s probably thirsty,” said the Boy.
Bis unscrewed the cap to a water bottle and held it to my lips.
I took two big swallows and let the third swish around in my mouth before taking it down too.
Anna and Tyler stood at the door to the barn, like sentinels standing watch.
"Tell me what happened," I managed to croak.
And so, she did.
"Kai was bit by another kid in the camp, because that's what toddlers do," said Bis, her voice becoming sullen and business like.
There was a rhythm to her speech, like she was telling the story of someone else instead of events she had actually witnessed.
But I knew she witnessed them, lived through them, and it broke my heart.
“Kai got sick, and bit Mom," here her voice caught on a squeak. But she swallowed down a lump and kept going. "Mom got sick and attacked Paul. But he got me out. He got me away."
I nodded. Her stepfather had been in her life since she was three, probably considered him his own daughter. His need to protect her would almost be stronger than mine.
Possibly more, since he was there to do it.
"We got out of the camp, and got away," she said. "We met with some other survivors, a small group. He died saving us. The zombies got him too."
She reached up and wiped a tear from her face and my heart lurched, ached for her. She had seen so much. They all had.
And the little voice inside my head told me it was my fault. I should have been there. Should have found them faster, or never been far away in the first place.
I tried to argue against it, the voices that picked and worried at the edge of my doubts, the ones that spoke the loudest and highlighted every mistake I made.
It was a long list.
I let it roll over me, bathed in the depth of the misfortune my dumb decisions have caused. Then it receded, a wave of regret washing out, and all I was left with was a grip on the rock that was now.
She was here. Bem was here. The Boy was here. And I wasn't going anywhere.
The regret kept washing away, receding and I stayed on the rock of now. Clung to it with a death grip, but deep breathes helped. Now, I focused.
"I'm sorry," I said to her and expected a look full of condemnation and anger.
I got it.
"They're dead," she said. Like it was my fault.
"Our mom too," said Bem.
"And Dustin," the Boy added.
We could have gone around the group in front of a campfire and listed all the lost. Everyone there had lost a loved one, more than one.
Except me.
I was alone before the Z pocalypse started, and the three people I cared most about in the world sat beside me.
I hadn't lost anyone. I waited for the group to realize this, and hate me for it. But no one ever did.
Maybe they were wondering who we would lose next, I suppose.
I vowed we wouldn't lose anyone, then realized just h
ow stupid that prayer was. In this new world, it was a foregone conclusion. Not everyone could make it.
So, I vowed to just try harder so they could.
Brian moved into my field of vision.
“Back from the dead,” he joked, then stammered.
“Bad taste,” I croaked.
“That’s why the Z won’t eat me.”
He glanced at the cots lined up to the end of the barn.
“They’re really helping us here,” he said.
“Doctor?”
“Medic,” Bis answered for him. “Army. Plus medicine.”
“They gave you vet quality stuff,” said Bem. “But it works.”
I looked at the clean bandage around my mid-section, shifted. Everything still hurt. Everything ached. But it would go away.
“He said you could stay,” Bis said. “You’ll need to work. We all do. But it’s safe here.”
“He needs to rest,” Anna interrupted.
“No,” I said as they started to move away. “I’m fine. I’m good. Just stay.”
They settled back to the floor and sat with me until I passed out again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"We hear things," Meroni picked a long green weed, stripped it of the leaves and stuck the juicy end into the corner of his mouth. "You heard about the wall?"
His eyebrows lifted as he asked the question in that way people have when they're curious and searching.
We were lined up on the fence with him, the interior fence looking out over a pasture. Brian stood on one side of me, the old man on the other.
My side still hurt, a dull throb that settled inside and pulsed with every beat of my heart.
But my heart was beating, the sun was shining on my face, and my children were sitting on the edge of the porch behind me.
Together.
It was a good day, despite the bruise, despite the pain.
"We saw it," said Brian. "From a distance."
"So it's real," the old man leaned back on his boot heels and chewed on the end of the stalk in his mouth. "I wondered. People make up a lot of things if they think a good story will get them a meal or a safe place to stay."
"There are a half mile of Z pounding against it," said Brian with a shudder.
The memory of it was terrible. We were a mile away, staring through binoculars and the sounds of the dead carried on the wind. They surged in a relentless tide against the thick stone barrier that stretched as far as we could see to the North, and curved away from us to stretch into the sea.
"Like that everywhere?" Meroni asked.
Brian shrugged.
"We don't know. What we saw, though."
The old man nodded.
"I've caught 'em on the barbed wire round here," he told us. "Four strands on fence post stretches around my whole acreage."
"It holds?" Brian asked.
Meroni shrugged.
"My family has been keeping cattle here for almost a hundred years," he said. "I had big city dreams and got away from it all, but it was here when I retired. That's when the real work began. There's always something that wants inside the fence to get the cattle. Rustlers. Panthers. Wolves at one time, though they were hunted out of Florida. Even a gator every so often. The fence keeps most of 'em out. If they get through, I got the fence around the homestead."
He nodded his head toward the white house with the wrap around porch and the barn beside it. A second pole fence circled it like a barricade.
"We ride the outer fence every other day," Meroni said. "Check for breaks. Shore it up if we need."
I wanted to tell him to shore it all up. String up six more strands of barbed wire until it was a solid wall of flesh ripping wire. Then double it again.
Anything to keep my kids safe now that we were all together again.
But I held my tongue.
"I'll ride with you," I offered.
He nodded thanks, took the weed from his mouth and tossed it to one side of the road.
"I'll check on supper," he told us.
We watched him walk off, a bowlegged ramble older men seemed to acquire after time on horseback. He may have been a city slicker in his youth, but retirement must have been ten years behind him. Ten years on a broad back mare could make a person walk like that.
"You don't ride horses," Bem said from behind me.
I turned to see Bem, the Boy and Bis lined up shoulder to shoulder, all touching as if to reassure themselves they were really there.
My heart lurched in joy and fear. They were safe. They were here. It was all worth it. Every scar, every hurt, every person who stood in my way, gone, shot and not quite forgotten. Worth it.
"I could be a cowboy," I said. "Yee haw."
"I think it's yippi-kay-yay," the Boy smirked.
"You forgot the MF," Bis added.
"Language," I scolded with a smile. "I'm going to help out."
"We could help too," said the Boy.
"Help me by staying here," I stopped short of telling them to sit on the porch and wait.
Teens and pre-teens were not so good at sitting still and waiting for their parent to return from the wild.
"What are we going to do?" Bem asked.
"Chores," said Bis. "I'll show you."
She had spent her time as a ranch hand for months.
Bem asked the million dollar question as Brian walked up.
"Are we going to stay here?"
Bis nodded, before I could answer, but didn't say anything out loud.
The truth was, I hadn't decided.
And they were looking to me to decide. That weight was mine, somehow.
But there was too much to learn here still. Too much to see. About Meroni. About the world around us on the middle edge of Florida, tucked between the Space Coast and Orlando.
Part of the reason I wanted to ride with the man tomorrow was to learn more.
"I'll tell you when I know," I promised.
"It's safe," said Bis.
Safe was important. Especially for here and what she went through. What they all went through.
If it was true, we would stay.
If I could make it safer, I would.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Meroni put me on the back of a plodding mare as we saddled up and started riding the fence as the sun broke the morning horizon.
“Sometimes its better to walk,” he told me without looking back. “We’re going further today to check the outer perimeter.”
I didn’t answer because there was no need.
The horses picked their way through the knee high grass, leaving tracks in the dew that looked like scratch marks, a darker green.
“Glad you volunteered,” he said.
We saw our first Z walking next to the fence. His horse nickered and blew a raspberry through its lips at the sight.
The Z turned, saw our movement and bounced into the wire.
Meroni pulled his machete, angled his horse close and swiped off the top of the Z’s head.
He wiped the blade against his pants leg at the boot and slid the tool back in the sheath at his belt.
“Saves you from asking me out here on my own.”
He glanced back then, snorted and nodded.
“I’m too old to do much beating around the bush.”
The man had twenty years on me, maybe more. And he’s built a safe place in an insane world.
Plus, he’d kept my daughter safe.
“I appreciate that,” I told him.
“I don’t mind patching your people up,” he said. “I don’t mind you joining and staying on.”
I heard a but coming.
“That one, Brian. You said he was in charge.”
“He is.”