by Chris Lowry
It made hunting for food and supplies more difficult.
Bem and Tyler seemed joined at the hip, so we were a quartet, with a fifth who didn't want to leave my side.
Anna.
Images of us moving in a shuffle step huddle, all connected as we hunted door to door filtered through my mind and a wry grin tickled the corner of my mouth.
"See," said Brian. "Even you think it's a bad idea."
I took a breath that was on the verge of a sigh.
"Do you want to go first?" I asked.
"Hell no I don't want to go first," he said in a whispered yell. "I don't think we should go at all."
I nodded.
"Stay here," I told the Boy.
He passed it down to Bem, Anna and the rest.
The tracks in the wood led to a hidden roadway that stretched through the forest.
Pines created a canopy of boughs along the lined and manicured road, out of place in the woods where the wild was reclaiming its rightful place in the absence of people.
Except here.
Here, everything looked tended.
I was sure there were still Z in the woods, Z over the hills and down in the dales.
We would not be free of Z for a while, I thought. But here, on this road, everything looked normal.
Before end of the world normal.
I stood up out of the shadows of the tree and started walking up the long drive toward the gate.
The crushed gravel crunched under my boots as I studied iron bars, a little surprised there were no Z bumping up against the edge trying to get in.
The absence of their moaning groans did not mean the absence of Z.
It just meant I hadn't seen them yet.
Someone saw me though.
The gate was flanked by two red brick columns that jutted up twelve feet, endcaps to a ten foot section of black bars connected to a smaller brick tower on either side.
The fence ran as far as I could see in either direction, curving to disappear into more trees.
"Good fences make good neighbors," I said out loud to mask my surprise.
Each of the columns on the fence had a security camera attached on the top and both swiveled in my direction, moving as I made the approach.
I held up a hand waist high and gave a small wave.
This was the dumb part Brian was talking about.
Too easy to get shot, too exposed.
My idea had been to walk up and test the gate, see if it was locked. He argued against it.
Looked like he was right.
I could hear the whir of the lens in the camera as it zoomed in, a high pitched mechanical sound almost forgotten in the silence since the fall.
A tiny gray speaker box next to the gate crackled to life.
"No solicitors," a man's voice said.
I grinned.
I hadn't expected that.
"Seriously," the man said. "We can't help you. Go sell crazy somewhere else."
"I'm not trying to sell you anything," I said. "I just came to borrow a cup of sugar."
He didn't get his finger off the speaker button fast enough and I heard him laugh.
Then footsteps.
Lots of them.
The road led through the gate, the gravel turning into an asphalt skirt that evolved into a blacktop road that ran a straight shot up the hill.
I couldn't see what was beyond the rise, but I could hear what was coming over it.
People. Marching.
Twelve men topped the rise. All armed.
All guns aimed at me.
I kept one hand on my hip and the other in that stupid half wave, and figured
Brian was right.
This was a bad idea.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They didn't open the gates, which was the first sign of intelligence.
The second was the group of armed guys who stepped out of the woods on both sides of us.
More guns. More aimed our way. Guess the wave didn't help.
Or maybe it did. They didn't start shooting, which I took as a good indicator.
One of the men stepped forward, gripped the iron rods of the gate in his hands and leaned his face into the bars.
"The man wants to know if you really brought sugar," he said with a half smile on his face.
I shook my head.
"Just my sweet disposition," I said. "No real sugar."
He sighed.
"That's too bad. We could have really used some sugar."
I thought they might open fire then, just pepper out bodies where we stood and then take the bus and everything in it.
Probably looking for sugar.
But they didn't.
"He'll talk to you," said the man. "Looks like you've made a long trip."
"Long strange trip," I assured him.
"Yeah," he nodded. "You'll have to leave the guns."
I wasn't too keen on leaving my weapons and walking into a strange place. Not again.
It seemed like every time we met a new group, they wanted us unarmed so they could do crap.
Like kill us. Or kidnap kids. Or religious cult sacrifices.
Heck, the man might even want to make me go hunt up some sugar if he wanted it that bad.
I reached down with one hand and lifted the pistol up by the barrel.
I didn't drop it on the ground. Just leaned down and placed it on its side.
I could hear the click and clatter of metal on asphalt at the others did the same behind me.
Now that we were unarmed, the gatekeeper cracked a full on smile. He twirled his finger and two guys detached from the line behind him. They went to the side of the fence, unfastened two padlocks and rolled the gate back wide enough to admit a body.
"All of you," the gatekeeper said.
I didn't look back, but I wish I had told Bem and the Boy to stay on the bus.
Fat lot of good it would have done me, surrounded like we were.
I started walking in through the gate heard the shuffle of feet behind me as others followed.
"You in charge?" the gatekeeper fell in stride beside me and kept walking up the road.
I shook my head and made a motion over my shoulder.
"He is," I said, indicating Brian. "I just do what he says."
He dropped back two steps, and Brian stepped up to meet him.
Keeping me in earshot, which I thought made Brian a smart cookie.
"Stroud," he said, introducing himself.
"Brian."
"We'll trade stories later," Stroud said. "If the Ambassador decides you can stay."
"And if he decides we can't?" Brian asked.
"I bring you back to the gate, you get on your bus and keep going."
Brian nodded. That sounded a lot better than, we kill you and keep all your crap, which I expected.
I planned for it anyway. Not that it would do much good against their guns, not here on the road, with men marching on both sides of us.
"Ambassador?" Brian asked.
"Yeah, he was a bigshot in DC before...this," said Stroud. "You'll see."
We topped a shallow rise and I almost stumbled.
The community looked like something that belonged on a postcard, and certainly not in a post apocalyptic Z world.
The men didn't let me appreciate the view much.
They kept marching and I heard Brian and Stroud step behind me, a sign I should keep going too.
So I did.
The road rolled on a slight decline toward a small creek.
An ornate bridge spanned the creek and led into a grid of row houses built around a common square.
It was more than a planned community, it was a planned oasis, a pocket neighborhood built in the middle of the woods by developers helping people escape the city before the fall.
Designed to imitate a kind of life that only existed in movies, each home was narrow and tall, a mix of three and four story constructions that towered over the narrow street.
&nbs
p; Alleyways ran behind each row of houses for cars, since the streets were little more than cobblestone pathways that separated the front porches with some green space.
It was serene, with women and children gathered on the porches to watch us pass.
The serenity started to get creepy when they didn't say anything, just watched as we walked by.
It wasn't much of a parade.
We didn't throw candy, or beads, and even though I thought a marching band might help, we didn't have one of those either.
Just walking between the rows of houses toward a building off the center of the square.
I couldn't say what it had been in the past life. It had windows on three sides that let it overlook the square, and a wrap around porch on each of the three floors.
There were chairs on the porch, all the way around, and a mix of different type and style.
It looked like a meeting place now, and one that was used with frequency.
"Stop," Stroud said.
I did at the bottom of the five steps that led up to the deep porch and double wooden doors leading inside the community building.
They opened and a man stepped out.
His iron gray hair was swept back from a broad thick forehead, nose lined with purpled veins.
Blue eyes glared from under a heavy brow, fierce.
They stared along the line of us as we bunched up at the foot of the stairs.
They settled on Stroud, who gave a slight head nod to Brian.
The man pursed his lips and nodded. Then moved his eyes to me.
"Sugar, dah?" he grinned, large wolfish smile spreading across his features.
He held up a hand and beckoned me forward.
"Come, come," he bellowed. "I am Ambassador."
I waited for Brian to move.
"He's talking to you," said Stroud.
I nodded.
That's what I get for talking.
CHAPTER TWENTY
"I was an Ambassador from Russia," he said.
He sloshed vodka into a lowball glass and used the bottom of the bottle to slide it across the mahogany desktop toward me.
He filled a second tumbler to the rim and claimed that as his own.
"Is this happening there too?"
I took a sip.
Russian vodka served cold is like liquid marble that heats up in the throat and sears a path to the stomach.
It tasted good.
"Drinks? Ja. There are many who drink there," he slurped down half the glass and winked at me.
"Perhaps you mean the dead problem."
"Z," I told him.
"Z?" he rolled it around on his tongue and let it rest there, as if he were trying it on for size and taste. "For zombie, no?"
I nodded.
"Z is for zombie," I said.
But in my head, I heard Cookie Monster from Sesame Street singing C is for cookie and couldn't add it's good enough for me to the end of my sentence.
"Is good," he washed it down. "The drink and the word."
I watched him start to pour again and figured this was a waste of time. The ambassador from Russia was a bust.
But he stopped pouring at the halfway mark, and I could only see a little regret it in his eye.
"Is happening there too, yes," he said.
He held the glass but didn't drink.
"The radio communicated the loss of Moscow before we lost touch."
Big city gone, I thought. It would be the same anywhere the plague hit.
I watched the news before it went off the air, and since I was in Orlando at the time, I paid close attention to the cities there. Almost thirty million people in the peninsula.
Only so many ways out.
Miami was lost. Jacksonville. Orlando. Tampa. All gone, just like Atlanta, DC., New York.
Now Moscow.
"What else have you heard?"
He shrugged and the shawl on his shoulders touched the top of his ears.
"Is all the same," he said. "But we are here."
He toasted the air and took a small sip.
"We are alive," he continued. "And this is enough, I think."
I set the glass down with most of the contents intact and moved to the window. The house looked out on several others, and a community park that now served as a garden.
"We have been here since after the beginning," he said. "The walls were there. We just closed the gates."
He moved to stand beside me. I could feel his heavy presence next to me, the weight of the community hanging on him like the ever-present smell of vodka seeping through his pores.
The community might be safe, but there was a cost to keep it that way.
"What are you not saying?" I asked in a low voice.
"I say everything," the Ambassador answered. "You hear nothing."
I waited to see if my gut kicked off alarm bells, but nothing.
Since the Z plague, my instinct for self-preservation had turned me into a radar about danger.
But it wasn't going off now.
Just me and a tired old man staring out of the window.
"I do not know why I am still alive," he sighed. "But here I am. I think, perhaps, doing this good deed will help relations between our countries, if they were still around."
He smiled a sad smile and shared it with me.
"I think it's always been different for people," I told him. "I went to Europe when I was in college. Backpacked around for awhile. People hated America, but loved Americans, especially if we tried to butcher their native tongue."
"This is like same in Russia," the Ambassador said. "We hate America. But love the people who come to visit."
"Guess we're not going to Russia anymore," I said.
It took effort to keep the sadness out of my voice. He didn't have that luxury.
"I am not going home again."
I ignored the small sob and stared through the window to give him a moment to compose.
It didn't take him as long as I expected.
"This is home now," he sniffed. "It is good home."
I nodded.
“Are you here to see if you wish it to be your home?” he asked.
The blurry eyes weren’t so out of focus now, watching me, waiting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The garden beyond the building looked good. A small pond stocked with fish, three boys sitting on the bank with cane poles in hand just behind it. A chore now instead of a past time.
Fish and veggies and whatever they could scavenge.
He settled into one of the chairs and invited me to sit beside him.
"It looks like a good place," I told him.
The tour had carried us through town, up and down narrow walk streets. People worked or sat and watched us.
Not scared. Just curious.
“We have been watching you,” he said.
“The kid in the woods.”
He laughed.
“Was no kid,” the Ambassador said. “Was Gregory.”
As if I would know him by name.
He pointed.
A small guy walked down the street, away from us.
“He still looks like a kid.”
“Is specialty of his,” the Ambassador told me. “Slight frame. Can move fast, if he likes.”
“Yeah, he disappeared into the woods when I went looking.”
“Another trick,” he waved it away.
“Were we supposed to follow him here?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“What do you want from us?”
“Why must I want anything?”