by Chris Lowry
"And I'll say it again! Come on Funny Guy, let's get a drink."
He led us to a large house set back on a hill that overlooked the Garden and the rest of the neighborhood. The trees had been clear cut around the once beautiful home, the bushes ripped out, the flower gardens trampled.
"I like to be able to see," he noticed when I looked around at the damage.
"Are you a whiskey man? You look like the kind of guy who drinks Bourbon."
He didn't wait for an answer.
"Phil," he screamed out as he led us through the living room and into a room at the back of the home.
There were people in the room, dozens of them, lounging, drinking. Some played cards, some played with each other.
But all had the look of minions about them.
Not the cartoon one eyed pranksters employed by certain world dominating guru's, but of the more nefarious variety.
Like a biker gang without bikes.
"Phil!" the Mayor screamed again through the door. "get us a couple of drinks.
He shut the door behind him, but didn't latch it.
I let my eyes roam around the room as Phil hustled in, two glasses balanced in his right hand.
"My right-hand man," the Mayor cooed as Phil delivered a glass to him, then me.
"I thought he was your admin."
"Phil does what I tell him, don't you Phil?"
"Yes sir."
The Mayor took a sip and watched me over the rim of his glass.
"In fact, Phil would kill you if I told him to do it. Wouldn't you Phil?"
It was Phil's turn to look me up and down. He shrugged his muscular shoulders underneath the seer sucker suit.
"I'd try to," he said.
But he sounded like he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
The Mayor giggled.
"That Phil is an astute hombre, don't you think? Guess he's wondering, what's a guy like you doing in a place like this?"
The eyeballs all over me again. Calculating. Assessing.
"The thing is, I am too."
It was my turn to take a drink and buy time. But I didn't watch either of them over the edge of my glass.
I wasn't too worried about Phil, but the Mayor might take it as a challenge. I liked my head right where it was, thank you very much.
I let my eyes roam around the room instead and stopped on a picture as I choked on the whiskey.
"There it is," the Mayor smiled in triumph.
The smile faded into a growl, all pretense of host and friendship gone.
He set the glass down, pulled a Glock 19 from a holster in the small of his back and aimed it at my head.
"Start talking Funny Guy. How do you know my wife?"
I held up both hands, almost spilling the drink as I juggled the glass.
It probably wouldn't do much good, but I wanted him to see me make the effort.
"Which one?" I nodded toward the pictures.
There were two of them in frames on the mantle over the cold fireplace.
One of the Mayor and Mags, his arm around her shoulder. The other of the Mayor between Mel and Mags, arms around both of them, all three touching heads and smiling at the camera in unmistakable joy.
Ghosts from a different time.
"What?"
He clicked off the safety.
Phil stood in the corner hyperventilating, but I couldn't tell if it was joy or panic.
"There are two women in the pictures," I explained. "Which one is your wife?"
"That bitch sent you to kill me, didn't she?"
He tilted the gun and pulled the trigger. It sent a bullet through the wall, the explosion cracking around the empty office.
Someone in the living room screamed and didn't stop.
"Phil, go see what that noise is about. You," he said to me. "Start talking."
He used the gun to point at the picture of him and Mags.
"My wife."
The barrel moved to Mel and shoved the frame off the floor where it smashed, spraying glass on the hearth.
"Her sister."
The gun drifted back to my face and pointed at the end of my nose.
"Three seconds," the Mayor warned. "Go."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I got more than three.
Phil shoved the door open and leaned against the frame.
"You shot Chuckie," he shouted over the wailing still coming from the other room.
"Patch him up!" the Mayor screamed.
"He's dead."
"Then cut off his head and put it in the Garden."
Phil rushed to comply. The wailing rose to ear bursting level before the Mayor walked over and kicked the door shut. We could still hear the crying, but it was muted to a tolerable level.
"Where were we?" he twirled the pistol around his finger.
"That's right, you were about to tell me how you know my wife and her sister."
Damn.
He noticed I reacted to Mel too.
"Are those bitches colluding?"
I shook my head no.
"She sent me to get people."
"People? Do I look like the kind of guy that steal's people?"
I thought about the garden and kept my mouth shut.
Mags had sent me to kill him. I knew it now, even if she hadn't put it to voice.
I was going to do it anyway, because I didn't like a world with the Mayor in it. One less risk for them to face.
Just not now.
He had a gun. I didn't.
Then he scratched his head with the tip of the barrel and I thought he might do the favor for me.
"Just talk, huh?"
"That's what she said."
"Phil!"
We listened to Phil clop across the living room and open the door.
"You bellowed?"
"Phil! We just lost Chuck and now this guy might be trying to kill me. This is no time for Jokes."
"Sorry sir."
Phil raised his eyebrows and appraised me with a sniff.
"Want me to kill him?"
"Not yet," the Mayor answered.
"He wants to talk. Take him to talk."
Phil studied me a little more.
"Are you sure?"
But the Mayor ignored him, lost in the pictures on the mantle.
"Come on," Phil sighed.
I followed him out of the door. We skirted a giant bloodstain on the hardwood floor.
"Do you know who you want to talk to?" he asked. "The Mayor looked pretty upset."
"Just point me in the direction of new arrivals," I told him. "I'll sort it out."
So, he did.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Phil stalked down the road almost daring me to try and keep up. I was trying to read his body language. The hunched and knotted shoulders, the stomping on the ground.
It helped that he was muttering curse words under his breath.
"Why aren't you in charge around here?"
"I'm the man behind the man in charge,” he said.
Sometimes that’s not enough.
“I’m just from the outside,” I told him. I wasn’t sure if I should take a chance. Phil might turn on me, might be more loyal to the Mayor than I was guessing.
“His sister,” I said to his back. “She radioed you?”
He froze mid-step.
“You didn’t tell him that?”
He whipped around, his long thin hands snatched at my shirt and yanked me closer to him.
“Did you tell him that?”
I let him hold me for a moment.
“I didn’t.”
He let out a breath, but didn’t release me.
“If he knew, he’d kill us both.”
That’s what I figured.
“Is he crazy?”
I tried to connect with the Admin.
“Aren’t we all?”
Another nod from me.
“You could put him in the Garden?” It came out like a suggestion from me. Just testing the water.
P
hil held up his fake left hand.
“Do you know why I have this? Or why I don’t have mine anymore?”
“Zombies?”
“The Mayor. Decided he didn’t like my hand on his sister-in-law’s shoulder. That’s it. Just for touching her.”
“What would he have taken if you touched his wife?”
Phil turned his eyes to gaze in the direction of the garden.
“There are a few men in there who just looked at her the wrong way,” he turned his eyes back to me and I watched them turn to ice.
“There are rules. We have rules to keep us safe.”
“You could be the rule maker,” I told him.
I reached up and removed his hands from my shirt and stepped back.
"You won't find much help here,” said Phil.
"I see plenty of people here."
Truth be told, I had only seen a few. But it was a big town that hinted at people, lots of people watching from behind curtains and closed windows.
"But we're not like you,” Phil continued. "We're-"
He almost said peaceful.
I could see the word forming on his lip, but he stopped before it came out.
Phil wanted to keep ruling, and would so long as the Mayor let him. I could tell by the look on his face.
He was the man in charge. The man behind the man in charge, and like the guy behind the curtain in Oz, maybe Phil thought he could pull strings to make things happen.
Which meant I had to be careful.
“I don't suppose there's anything to be done about it?”
“No, that's not quite right. I suppose something can be done, if only someone will stand up to do it.”
Phil lacked the southern accent I was used to hearing.
He was from one of those places where the accent had been linguistically evolved out of the voice, no twang, no flavor. Iowa or Kansas or someplace in the middle before it went too far West.
Trapped here when the Z came.
"Just trying to survive," he smiled. "We do what we can to survive."
Never has a truer statement been shared.
That's all the world was about now. Surviving.
"I meant you're not from around here."
"I was at a symposium. Can you believe the luck?"
He shrugged and let a sad smile linger on the edge of his lips. That smile had loss in it, and things left to mystery.
Maybe Phil was a dad like me.
Maybe he wondered what happened to his kids, his wife, his town.
The life he had back then, gone now, and replaced as he acted as some sort of administrator for a biker gang.
There was the difference.
I went after my kids. Crossed half the country to do it.
Phil didn't.
I think he hated me for it.
They called him a "nice guy."
The world ate nice guys for breakfast.
I used to be called a nice guy.
But really, I was a great chameleon.
Being nice meant less hassle, because people liked to argue about their opinions.
As if their thoughts on how to properly prepare a vanilla latte meant much in the world.
As if their analysis of some tv show was going to make a difference.
Opinions like assholes. All over the place and stinking it up.
Before.
Now it felt like the same.
People were of the opinion that their rights to survive superseded everyone else's. It created a caste system for bullies.
To lord it over the weak and those who couldn't protect themselves. Couldn't defend themselves.
"What kind of symposium?" I asked and watched him from the corner of my eye.
Nice guy or not, Phil was up to doing bad things.
Or allowing the bad things to happen.
There was an old saying attributed to Winston Churchill and Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, depending on the meme of the day.
All it took for evil to flourish was for good men to do nothing.
Phil was a good man, good at doing nothing.
That must have made me a bad guy.
And ever since the Z showed up, I was really good at it
"We don't rock the boat," said Phil.
"This boat is sinking," I told him.
"We've managed to survive."
"Your luck is going to run out."
I could have told him more. That guy is crazy. It's just a matter of time. He's going to get you killed.
Or kill you all himself.
But I was in sales before the Z.
Part of that was about reading a room. Knowing when to push, and when to pull back.
Phil was like a lot of people who believe in false ideas and ideals. People will tell themselves huge lies, just so they learn to live with something.
It's why so many folks stay at jobs they hate, or in marriages with people they can't stand.
Like cooking a frog.
The heat is turned up so slowly that the frog doesn't even know it's been cooked until it's too late.
People put up with enough, and the body adapts. Their mental will changes too, and they build a tolerance for crap.
From their loved ones, from their bosses, from the world around them.
It's all learned behavior.
Maybe that's why I've never been in a successful long-term relationship.
I learned to not put up with crap.
Being treated like crap or the lies people tell themselves that is a bunch of crap.
Phil wasn't going to stop believing.
And he wasn't going to change his mind.
Further talk would be pointless, a waste of breath.
"It's working," he told me.
I wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.
"I just want to talk to them."
He nodded his head, but his voice wasn't full of much hope.
"They won't go."
"He won't let them?"
"He would, if they asked. But they won't ask. They know how good we have it here."
He made a motion with one arm taking in the whole of the walled city of Livingston.
They had it okay.
Not good.
But better than some.
Better than Mags place, I imagined, though my limited experience with it was them trying to kill me, so I could have been biased.
"Food," Phil continued. "Clean water. Safety."
Really, it was all anyone could ask for in the post apocalypse zombie world.
Then why did it feel so dangerous?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“This is them.”
Phil pointed me toward a house, an old Victorian style two story with clapboard shingles and a wide porch that carried around the side of the house.
I guess he expected me to knock because the Mayor’s second in command kept walking, intent on some other business.
I wondered for a moment if it was to go tell.
If it was, I wouldn’t have much time.
Just a quick speak and run.
Or a fight if it came to that.
If people wanted to leave, I wasn’t going to stand by and let them be held captive.
Especially since bringing them back would set my kid’s free.
He stopped talking as a teen ran up, sucking wind, wild eyes searching our faces as if deciding what he could say before settling on Phil.
"They're back."
I thought Phil was laid back.
But he looked panicked as he shot a look at me and ran after the boy.
I debated for a moment and took off after him.
I chased down Phil as he raced for the courtyard on the inside of the gate.
The run did me good.
I could feel the anger ratchet down from volcano to out of control wildfire.
The sound of an engine filled the courtyard.
It was a different gate, another entrance.
This was one was wide enough for cars to
get in and out in a roundabout way.
Two guys got out of a black van idling in front of the closing gate behind them.
"Who let them in?" Phil shouted as he angled toward them.
"Who was gonna keep us out little man?" the driver smirked.
He wasn't too far from his teenage years, lean cheeks that might have filled out if the zombie Armageddon hadn't turned the food chain sideways.
And a greasy, stringy ponytail dripping down his back, tobacco stained teeth in a ferocious fake grin.
“Go get my brother,” he ordered Phil.
“Get out.”
Ponytail rounded on Phil and went forehead to chin with him. It was impressive for a little guy to stand up to the tall square crow like that, even if it looked like the start of a bad Laurel and Hardy routine.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“He doesn’t want you here right now.”
I watched the exchange from too close.
Because they saw me and knew I was new.
Ponytail tilted his head to glare at me.
“But he’s letting new people in.”
Phil watched the top of his slick head.
“He’s just passing through.”
The driver idled over to stand next to me.
“Is that true, stranger? You just passing through?”
He was in my bubble. Even before the fall, I was very careful of who I let into my personal space.
I travelled to other countries several times and was amazed at the lack of boundaries when it came to getting close to people. Maybe it was an American upbringing, the wide open spaces I dreamed of out West, or maybe I had the type of personality that just didn’t let too many people get too close to me, but I had an unwritten rule.
Two feet was good.
Eighteen inches was borderline intimate, unless we were in the act of getting intimate or sharing secret plans to storm the castle.
Putting the crossed arms on your chest against my biceps and bumping to establish some sort of apex dominance slid right over into the “this is making me very uncomfortable and angry” territory.
“You don’t know me,” I tried not to growl.
Failed.
I should have said, “Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.”
That probably would have failed too.
The driver snarled a grin and bumped me with his arms.
He was built like a middle weight golden gloves contender, ropy muscle and redneck tan. Trucker hat pushed back on a receding hairline, yellow teeth overlarge in his mouth.