by R. J. Spears
In the corner of the room, a woman and a man huddled together a few feet from us, and a child lay across their laps, sleeping fitfully.
The only emotions that came to me from the scene was that we were all frightened and doom was imminent. That wasn’t a new feeling for us, but there whole scene seemed tinged with a sense of hopelessness.
My visions are usually cryptic, telling only pieces of the puzzle. This one was more distinct and literal, making me think more of the Ghost of Christmas Future from that famous Dicken’s book filled with ghosts. Despite this, the vision was more confusing and was nearly indecipherable from the messages that God had sent me in the past because I had no point of reference to work from. That said, the meaning usually came clear when the moment of truth came upon me. This one only filled me with dread.
My vision hovered over the scene like one of those drone cameras, slowly twisting, the crisscrossing shadows playing across those of us in the room. It came to me after a few moments that the shadow pattern was coming in like the thin bars of a jail cell, but it wasn’t a cell
Now, I was getting somewhere. We were being held against our will. Oh good. But who was holding us and what were their intentions? Was it the people that had us now? For some reason, I didn’t think so.
Of course, there were no answers, hints, or clues. Why should I expect anything different now as a participant in God’s little unfolding reality TV show giving brief teaser trailers of possible horrible futures to come? I could only guess that being held meant bad things. Very bad things.
I began to drill into the scene, looking for any clues, studying every detail, but then the focus of my vision began to zoom in, getting closer and closer to me. The view slowly fell down upon me, and I half expected it to close on my face, but it drifted past my nose and kept on descending toward the floor until it stopped, revealing my boot. It was dirty and scuffed and the laces were frayed. There were a lot of miles on those boots.
What the hell was so important about my damned boots? Thanks, God, for keeping it subtle.
In a blinding flash, the scene disappeared again, back into the infinite field of white. Something black hovered in the misty white nothingness, completely out of focus until my perspective on this endless white world shifted back to reveal that the black unfocused things were, in fact, letters.
Oh great, another one of God’s billboards. He had this habit of communicating to me in a text-like message fashion that was both frustrating and confounding. To keep with the program, He maintained his total lack of clarity.
Floating in the flat white wall were the words, “MAKE THE CALL,” in bold black lettering.
Well, He did give me more than one word this time. Usually, these text messages from God were a single mystifying word. I didn’t count myself as lucky that it was three words because the three words meant little or nothing to me.
Lightning struck again and the white seared my consciousness and was slowly replaced by a blurry dark mass moving above me like a blimp, slowly coming into focus. It was a face. Kara’s face, and her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. One of the bushman hung just over her shoulder, gun at the ready, with a perplexed look on his face.
The soundless world disappeared in a forceful sucking sound, like someone had removed the stopper that had kept out all the sound and Kara asked, “What did you see this time?”
A busman’s face appeared over Kara’s shoulder. “What do you mean -- see something?”
Kara kept her attention on me and said, “He gets visions from God.”
The bushman leaned in and said, “Are you seeing God’s visions, too?” He had a thick beard and unkempt eyebrows that seemed to match his overall bushy appearance.
“What do you mean -- too?” I asked, but my voice didn’t sound like my own.
The bushman didn’t answer, but knelt down and seemed to scrutinize me even more closely as if I were some sort of bug. I wasn’t sure I liked the heightened inspection because I wasn’t sure where it was going. A part of me thought the physical dissection might start then and there. It was that, or he might shoot me. Neither were good choices in my opinion, but my opinion rarely counted in this undead world.
“Do all you people get these visions?” he asked.
“All of us?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Naveen and Jason went down, too,” Kara said, looming over the man’s shoulder.
I craned my neck to my right and saw Brother Ed hovering over Naveen who was down in the grass. Jason was splayed out in the grass, too, just feet from Naveen, rubbing his forehead.
I started to sit up, but the bushman put out a hand to hold me down. It wasn’t a forceful gesture, but he definitely didn’t want me up. His expression, as he looked down at me, was a mix of concentration and puzzlement.
“Is your name Joel?” he asked.
“What?” I stammered out. “How did you know my --” but I was cut off.
“Donovan, we’ve got company,” one of the men in camouflage said with some concern in his voice. He was squat with a round, almost boyish face. Like the bushman hovering above me, he had a thick beard. All of the men did. It must be a fashion trend among post-apocalyptic bushman.
The bushman inspecting me rose up and looked across the field.
“Everyone down,” the bushman I assumed to be Donovan said, motioning with his hands for the group to get below grass level.
That’s when I heard them. The guttural moans and groans of the undead. It was certainly not music to my ears. I was on my back, so I had no perspective at all. I was also weaponless, making me feel helpless and exposed.
“How many, Lou?” Donovan asked in a hushed voice.
The man named Lou responded, “A lot.”
The other two men lowered themselves down into the grass and readied their weapons, barely paying attention to us. Their entire focus was on the sounds coming from over my head. Those sounds had my attention, too.
I pulled myself up to a sitting position and snuck a quick peek over the grass. There was a large stand of trees about seventy fives yards off to the east. Forms moved among the dark shadows, ambling and shuffling along in only that way zombies can. Bless their souls. Although I’m not sure if they do have souls.
Maybe that was something to ponder at another less deadly time. I had a feeling though that time wasn’t arriving any time soon, if it ever came at all.
More and more forms filled any of the places light streaming through the trees, nearly blotting it out. The rising sun silhouetted them perfectly as the dark horde headed our way. In another context, it could have been pretty enough to be on a Hallmark card, but, well, there were the zombies. Nothing spoils pretty like zombies.
“Where’d they all come from?” I asked.
The one called Donovan turned to me and said, “There was a huge firefight off to the south. They’ve been streaming in ever since.”
“Yeah, we know about that,” Kara replied.
“What?” Donovan asked, his curiosity was piqued.
“We had an...altercation with some folks and then the military showed up with big guns. Everything went boom for a while,” I said.
“Which side are you on?”
“We’re on the run. Does that tell you anything?” I asked.
Lou stepped our way and said “Donovan, they’re getting closer.”
Donovan whipped around and gazed across the top of the grass. The zombies were getting closer, coming out of the trees in all their undead splendor. Just like in the past, they came in various ranges of decomposition and completeness. Or incompleteness. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Some had arms missing, some looked chewed on and worn, as if a giant dog had used them as a play toy. Also, as usual, their lovely fragrance was present, although thankfully muted by distance.
The most troubling issue with the presence was their numbers. It was a small herd, possibly numbering fifty or more.
“Let’s get on the move,”
Donovan said to his crew, making me feel like we were about to be left behind.
“What about us?” I asked.
“You need to come along,” Donovan replied and added, “if you want to live.” He stepped away from me and gathered with his crew. They started speaking in hushed tones, practically ignoring us.
“Yeah, I don’t think we want to stay here since you have all our weapons,” I said, trying to get his attention.
“We can make it on our own,” Brother Ed said sliding in next to me.
“I don’t really want to try it,” I said.
“We don’t know these people,” Brother Ed whispered next to my ear. “They took us by gunpoint.”
He did have a point, but something told me that I should trust these people to some degree. Plus, we were weaponless with a small horde of zombies heading our way.
“I think we need to follow them, at least,” I said to Brother Ed. “They know the territory.”
“There’s more to them than meets the eye,” Kara said.
Brother Ed shook his head, but I could see him weighing the options. It only took him fifteen seconds to see we had no other real option. “Okay, but we need to break away from them as soon as we can.”
“The men are leaving,” Naveen said over my shoulder. When I turned to look, I saw the two bushman about twenty yards away walking on their haunches, nearly invisible in the tall grass moving away from the oncoming horde. Their camouflaged buddies weren’t quite as invisible, but were gaining ground as they sped along in the grass.
I noticed Donovan bring out a walkie-talkie. He looked back at us and spoke into it for a moment, then put it away. He motioned for us to follow him, but started to stride away from us, moving through the waist high grass not checking to make sure we did, indeed, follow.
The zombies were closing fast, the lead ones broke out of the tree line and were quickly pressing through the grass, shambling and shuffling our way on a direct collision course. Up until then, they didn’t know we were there, but there was no way that was going to last.
I broke the impasse and said, “We can’t stay here.” And I started off after the bushman and his buddies. Kara followed and Jason and Naveen took my lead. Brother Ed knew he was the odd man out and, while he didn’t like it, he joined our merry band.
Once again, we were on the run from zombies. Good times. Good times.
Chapter 8
Reconnaissance
His hips hurt like hell. At seventy eight, whose hips didn’t hurt, along with the knees, feet, and back? And what old guy didn’t have to get up and pee at least two to three times a night?
The mile and half trip through the woods in the middle of the night didn’t make any of his aches feel any better and he did have to stop once to pee. It was the damn prostate. There were no pharmacies in the zombie apocalypse, so there were no miracle drugs to keep the damn thing from expanding.
Getting old was hell. Getting old after zombies had brought society to its knees made it doubly so.
The old women told him not to go and that he was the only one to protect them at the farm, but he had to know what had happened at the Manor. Joel and the others had set out two days earlier and there had been no word from them. And there would be no word, because Joel had smashed the walkie-talkie. (Not a smart move in his wise and humble opinion.) That also meant that there was no way to communicate with the people at the Manor.
It had eaten at him. The not knowing. He had watched, along with the others, as the helicopters discovered the convoy headed east and then forced it back to the Manor. He had heard (via the walkie-talkie) the Colonel who had taken over the Manor and he knew that the man was up to no good. You could just tell it. Plus he felt that there were bigger forces at work. Unseen forces.
Old Man Shultzy, as the young people called him, was a complainer. He was self-aware, though. He knew that about himself, but he had also made it work for him. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and a few things were thrown his way after he complained. Why mess with success, he thought.
What people didn’t know about Old Man Shultzy was that he was a lot tougher than anyone gave him credit. Even with the complaints.
He was no Clint Eastwood - tougher than a junkyard dog, but he had been toughened in the crucible that was the Korean War. He knew that “They” wanted it to be called Korean Conflict, but he had been there and it had been a damned war.
He had been an eighteen year old, green behind the ears, soldier at Chosin, freezing his ass off, when the Chinese surrounded him and his buddies. They had to not only fight off the horde of Chinese soldiers, but then had to battle their way in a desperate retreat to the south. He had seen a lot of his friends die in that frozen hell hole, but he had survived.
He had also survived on his own during those first few weeks of the zombie outbreak. They had tried to get at him while he was holed up in his house, but he had taught those undead bastards a thing or two. He could still shoot a gun and still knew how to use a bayonet. More than a few of those undead things went down with a new hole in its head.
The dampness of the early morning air seeped into his achy joints, but he held his position just of the south of the Manor, laying on the ground just inside the tree line. He had been there for nearly an hour waiting for the dawn light to give him a better perspective on the place. Along with the other aging body parts, his eyes weren’t the greatest. A little light would help.
When the sun finally broke over the horizon It did help, but he didn’t like what he was seeing. The field was full of dead zombies in various states of decomposition and destruction. They lay among the crops that the folks had diligently toiled at planting. His sense memory hit hard and his mouth watered thinking of the corn on the cob that the people had enjoyed early in the summer. That seemed like a century ago. Now, more than half the corn plants were broken and ruined. The zombie corpses didn’t make the corn any more appetizing.
It looked like something had mauled the zombies, eaten them, and spit them out. He knew this had to be the attack helicopters. They were nasty little things.
Besides the rotting zombies, there wasn’t a lot to like. He didn’t have the greatest vantage on the front of the Manor, but he could see how the fire had ravaged the place. He also didn’t like the soldiers positioned in strategic places around the complex, guarding the grounds against invaders, but also keeping anyone inside from venturing out. The way they were situated, the place looked a lot like a prison.
He brought his scope back up to his eye and scanned the top right corner of the back building. He watched as two soldiers met and spoke for a moment, then one of them broke off and disappeared out of view, while the other took up vigil.
He had been a marksman back in Korea and done his share of hunting over the years and had always bagged the most deer during the annual hunting parties. The idea of taking one of them out tickled at the back of his thoughts, but he didn’t feel like he knew enough about the setup yet. Plus there would be the issue of escape. He was spry, but if they sent one of those choppers up in the sky looking for him, he wasn’t sure if he could get away.
Also, if he shot, he’d be sinking himself in the deep shit, and if he did that, he’d better be damn well prepared for it. Going off half-assed would put him in it and he wasn’t sure if he was prepared for that sort of commitment. At least, not yet.
Instead, he watched for twenty minutes more and saw a jeep do a perimeter patrol, but it seemed pro-forma. The two soldiers in the jeep didn’t really work too hard to see anything. It was more like they were out for a joy ride.
These soldiers weren’t too good, in his opinion. If they had been good, they would have spotted him. The problem is that there was one of him and two to three dozen of them.
But what did all this mean? And what did he gain by knowing?
He knew that getting into the place undetected was impossible. He also guessed that getting out would be equally impossible.
He also wondered if any of hi
s friends inside would have any weapons? He was pretty sure the only people with the weapons on the inside were the soldiers.
For Old Man Schultzy, it came down to how he could help the people inside and he would need some time to think about that. He had the weapons. Greg had placed a small cache of arms at the old farm just as a precaution.
That Greg had been a smart one. Too bad he’s dead, Old Man Schultzy thought. Greg had considered all the contingencies. Too few people did that.
The problem was that the old farm was three miles away and the only people he had on his side were two geriatric women and a thirteen year old girl. That wasn’t much of an army.
He watched for another thirty minutes then heard his hip pop like a gunshot as he pushed himself off the ground. It was a wonder that none of the soldiers heard it, too, he thought, but he was too far away. He flexed his legs, getting the blood flowing again, and gingerly got to his feet and stood behind a tree, eyeing the complex. There just seemed to be no easy way inside.
The sun was fully up now and he worried just how vigilant the soldiers would be in daylight. He would be no good to the people inside if he were captured and brought inside with them.
He readied himself for the mile and a half walk back to the old pick-up truck he had stashed under a thick canopy of trees. As he walked, he considered how a little guerilla warfare might just stir things up. He only hoped his seventy-eight-year old body was up to it.
Chapter 9
Day of Discovery
Russell and Maggie moved cautiously along, ducking under charred and broken boards while also avoiding open cracks in the floor. Water dripped through jagged fissures in the ceiling. They weren’t close enough to the front of the building to see any sunlight, though.
The only thing they had in their hands were shovels and flashlights. The soldiers wouldn’t let them have anything more.