by Joe Schlegel
From the wooden pew, however, William disagreed, “Trapper won’t understand.”
“The boy would have turned if you hadn’t acted—”
“He was in our care, that is the only fact that Trapper will concern himself with.”
Wesley nodded grimly, “William fears retribution.”
Aaron sauntered deeper into the chapel, but he halted when he roamed a dozen feet. He spun majestically on his heel, and he adopted the veneer of a comforting smile. “My brethren, our circumstances aren’t new. Every survivor has witnessed the horrors that they produce when they wander into our midst. This is a shared tragedy, it binds us together. Fear not the ignorance of the nonbelievers, for they still hold a faith in one another.”
William firmly contended, “The weight of a fresh loss affects the community deeper now, much deeper now than when they first arrived. Most of us have no blood relations left alive. Freddie was Trapper’s final blip of family, and he will not forgive us so easily.”
“I think it’s safe to say that our entire community is our family now—”
“Can we please drop the semantics and analyze this with a human filter?” His face dropped into greater annoyance and despair, “Freddie was doomed by them, and his threat was eliminated by myself and Wesley. But facts about the infection do little to sway the mind when emotion floods the heart! This is why I fear that empathy for Trapper could spark a very dangerous backlash against him and I.”
Wesley helpfully summarized, “William fears that the flock reveres Trapper so much that they could rally against us, their protectors.”
Irritably, Aaron clenched his eyes. When he re-opened them, he spoke calmly, politely, “I understand perfectly. Thank you.” He returned to William’s grim slouch, “You may be over-estimating the grand reaction. Our own people simply won’t reduce themselves to a violent mob mentality, not when each loss reverberates as heavily as you fear this one might.”
“Desperation twists the hearts and minds of everyone who doesn’t hold God in the highest esteem,” William responded darkly. “The ones whom we are Chosen to protect are not guided by Divine rationality. It’s naive to dismiss their sensibilities, dangerous to ignore them.”
“But do you really believe that outcasting yourselves is good for the community? Xenia is already crippled, and our church thin. No one benefits from such a needless loss to our numbers.”
Wesley confessed, “We don’t know what to do, we don’t know what to think. The boy’s death is unfortunate enough without knowing how Trapper or the others might react. This is more exposed than we’ve ever felt during our Mission. We’re here for spiritual guidance.”
Candle light flickered across Aaron’s face as he surveyed his pair of worried followers. A flurry of options and decisions danced around his imagination. He twirled his goatee with a finger as he thought.
“Perhaps you both should remain here tonight,” he deliberated, “and wait for the search parties to disembark at daybreak. Then, you’ll have a few hours to speak with the rest of the community, to soften the blow before Trapper and his entourage return home. State your case to everyone gathered for breakfast. Rally as much moral support as you can. When the search parties return empty-handed, your feared mob mentality will be preemptively halted.
“Will that alleviate your concerns?”
William conceded, “Mildly.”
5.
Ben and Seven
Before the infection struck, Xenians complained that they had nothing to do. They wandered to each others’ houses, they walked the streets, they sought out entertainment in another part of town, or they drove to Beavercreek and Fairborn and Yellow Springs to cure their boredom.
But once the infection decimated the population, the roads out of town looked insurmountably dangerous. The local streets supplied LESS prowling terror than venturing into an unknown situation elsewhere.
Monuments, ironically, reminded them when the area once thrived, when they weren’t burdened daily with hard-fought survival nor the persistent threat of death.
Simple pleasures like sitting in the candlelight became priceless treasures, because the next evening was never promised. Yet bedtimes often fought against the anxiety which feared the dangers that morning brought.
The sky crept ever darker. Dusk fell into evening.
Seven sat on Rhea’s bed as the sunlight within the bedroom diminished rapidly each passing minute. Her daughter scuttled under her covers.
“Why can’t we stay with the others?”
Inward, Seven sighed. She fretted any question which opened Rhea’s eyes and mind to the brutality left in the world.
“Because then the bad men might get us all at once,” she braced. Her eyes misted over as she fought helpless, regrettable tears. “If we sleep away from the others, then we will all be safer.”
“What if a bad man gets in here?”
Seven glanced quickly to the darkening window. Her bangs bounced across her forehead. She discreetly wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Well sweetheart, that means that the rest of the community won’t be infected at the same time.”
Rhea mulled the explanation, then nudged, “Logan said his mom might go west before it gets cold. Can we go with them?”
“I don’t know. We’re all trying very hard to stay in Xenia.”
“Why?”
Seven adjusted her daughter’s blankets and pulled them up to her chin. She peered into the tiny face that nearly mirrored her own.
She spoke softly, sadly, “Because this is home. This is where you were born, where I was born, where your grandmother and great-grandmother were born. If we go somewhere else, it won’t be home; it will just be some place where we stopped moving.”
“Will the bad men be there, too?”
She nodded bracingly, “I’m afraid so, sweetheart – they might.”
“Why won’t the bad men go away?”
“They will soon. Close your eyes, love, and rest your mind,” she leaned across the covers and kissed her daughter’s forehead, “because we have more work to do in the morning. If you need either of us, we’re right downstairs, okay?”
Rhea nodded. As her mother stood from the bed, she unresistingly closed her eyes.
Seven paced to the doorway, but she checked back to behold her preschool duplicate lay peacefully on the pillow. Reluctantly, she exited the room.
She wandered along a dark hallway. Her fingertips ran along the wallpaper to keep her direction on course.
Bare walls spotted with exposed nails and hooks hinted to the family portraits which once sprawled throughout the home. But all their smiling faces vanished once the apocalyptic squatters took over the house. The remaining survivors mourned too many of their own friends and family members to also uphold memorials to the previous homeowners, strangers.
Seven carefully descended the dark staircase with her hand on the wall-mounted rail. More nails and hooks served as a needless reminders that she squatted somewhere other than home. A home, but not her own.
Multiple blankets covered each first floor window and rendered them all perfectly opaque. Duct tape sealed the seams to keep out wandering eyes and keep in the candle light.
She followed the flickering oranges and yellows to the kitchen.
Ben sat at the dinner table amid a small collection of foraged candles. He looked over his long beard to the orderly collection before him, several rifles stripped down to their individual components. Deep, dancing shadows camouflaged the engineered components into a vague collage of unsettling machinery, in Seven’s opinion.
He lifted his attention to the meek gait of the petite woman.
“Rhea went down easily tonight,” he observed.
“She had a few questions. But I think she’s gradually feeling safer sleeping on her own again.”
“The house is all locked up and secure. I’m sure that helps.”
Ben stabbed a slim cleaning patch with a jog, then eased it down through the barrel
with a brass rod. He examined the patch in the candlelight and spied no flecks of off-colored dirt.
Satisfied, he laid the barrel back on the tabletop.
He busily picked the next part from the dancing shadows on the table. His motions clipped with rigid practice, and he held his posture with a powerful sense of duty.
Seven, however, uncovered no special knowledge or wisdom about firearms from just a study of the varied designs and shapes of the disassembled rifle. Target practice and reloading remained the extent of her training.
She saddled onto a cushioned chair near Ben – she brushed her bangs aside anxiously, yet they bounced back into place.
“Rhea adores you,” she softly confessed. “You make her feel safe.”
Seven waited only a moment for a response, for any sign that his emotional guard had started to recede. Then she confessed even softer than before, “You make me feel safe too, Ben. You’ve made it possible for Rhea and I to survive this world. I don’t know what either of us would have done if not for you.”
Avoiding eye contact and any incidental trace of subtext, he responded vaguely, bracingly, “We all have to band together; it’s too dangerous to go at it alone. And our community is so small now, it’s just simply not possible to lose anyone else.”
“Are you nervous about tomorrow morning?”
“Regrettably, no. I’ve been on enough of these search parties that I know what to expect – unfortunately.” He stabbed another cleaning patch on the end of the brass rod.
Seven studied his profile in the candle light. She fished for any inkling of an accessible emotion, anything to draw out the man who nearly vanished from his own eyes. “That’s what I mean, though. Most of the time, those who are lost aren’t ever found. Not everybody in the search parties return to us. It risks the safety of so many more people just for the dwindling hope of saving so few.”
He rose from his chair just high enough to lift the rod at the end of the barrel. He patiently worked the jog and patch along the rifling.
“Everyone who has returned continues to return,” he sloppily dismissed, “including me. Experience is making professionals out of us, so much so that many of the teams have been able to nearly always avoid action. These search parties aren’t as perilous as they once were, I promise.”
Her gaze momentarily drifted to one of the dozen candle flames as she, indeed, worried. The mere mention of the word – the tangible reminder that such an emotion existed – threatened to ebb her momentary peace.
And yet her mood hardly faltered. Just his presence helped repel the demon of anxiety.
Seven looked back to Ben again. “Rhea heard that people are thinking about migrating out toward California.”
“A few are considering the risk,” he confirmed heavily and inspected the cleaning patch. “They think trying to survive through an Ohio February without heat is riskier than traveling across the country. Most just want to move on, in as many ways as possible – mentally, emotionally, physically, geographically.”
She deflated noticeably in the bouncing candle light.
Reflexively, she scooted her chair a few millimeters closer to Ben. “What do you think?”
Gravely – somberly – he speculated, “I think that we can’t outrun the apocalypse. Death is here, and it’s everywhere else, too. The West Coast will have all its own problems that the Midwest doesn’t, like a lack of drinkable water. And all the roads and cities and mountains and rogues along the way won’t allow for an effortless journey. There’s no telling what’s waiting in other towns, or across any expanse of countryside.”
“So you’re staying in Xenia?”
Her words rushed past her lips, much faster than she had intended. The desperate hope which she fought to restrain underscored each anxious syllable.
Finally, Ben laid the rifle barrel and brass rod down onto the table top. And finally, he turned to face her.
He met her troubled, worried gaze with all the comfort he could project. “As long as it’s feasible to stay, yes.”
“What happens if it’s not ...feasible?”
“I’m not going to desert you two,” he assured.
But the comment rang heartbreakingly sour to her ear, “Have you thought about it? Deserting us, I mean?”
“Never – not even once. If it ever came down to it, I would first find a community large enough for you and Rhea to live comfortably. But that’s not on the radar, and neither is me just disappearing down the road. I’m doing everything I can to keep your home here.”
He swept his hand over the table top of rifle parts that flickered in the candle light, “That’s what all this is about.”
She nodded grimly.
“I know.” She hung her head. The fear of losing Ben resonated sharply at the forefront of her emotional torrent, of her maelstrom of thoughts.
Wooden legs scraped the tile as he scooted a little closer to her.
His voice softened to a whisper, and his face twisted with aching misery, “You want more from me, I know you do. But what you’re asking ...I just can’t yet. I can still hear all their voices and their laughter, and I see their faces clearly in my mind. My friends, my family ...everyone. It all still hurts too much for me to consider... to try... anything, you know, like that...”
Seven peered comfortingly into his eyes, and she unconsciously leaned forward another couple inches. “No, Ben, I get it. Truly, I do. It’s all still so fresh for many of us, too. You have done so much for Rhea and I, more than I could ever repay you for.”
She warmly yet delicately placed her hand on his.
“So if you ever feel your defenses start to slip,” she implored, “please trust me enough to take care of you. It’s okay to depend on someone else, even if it’s only for a few hours.”
Ben’s posture slumped, burdened by his own tortured feelings and memories.
“Thank you,” he earnestly reply.
He squeezed her hand.
Then he pulled her toward him.
Seven’s heart raced. She parted her lips to prepare for the kiss—
Instead, Ben pulled her into a supportive hug. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight.
She hugged him back, timidly happy.
Just before she lowered her head on his shoulder, just before the anxious fringes of her desires melted in his embrace, he shifted back into his chair.
“I should finish up,” he grunted.
Seven nodded. Her voice cracked, “Yes, of course.”
She cleared her throat. Her composure slid neatly into place, though a little bluer than when she had descended the stairs.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Rhea,” she confessed, her voice somewhat stronger, though not at all louder, “but I found some beer in a fridge today. It’s warm, but it hasn’t seen the sun in months, so it’s definitely not skunky. Would you like one?”
He smiled. She easily read the mixture of nostalgia, amusement, and relief above and around his long, bushy beard.
“Fuck yeah, I want a beer.”
6.
Maddox
With a hand sickle that swung from his grip and his Remington 870 shotgun balanced in his other hand, Maddox trudged angrily into a large, round building. The diagonal dachshund on his too-small t-shirt warped and wobbled overtop his protrusive gut.
Spit dribbled down his lip as he raged, “I’m outnumbered by a bunch of coon lovers!”
He slammed the door shut with his foot, then he propped the shotgun against the door jamb.
One of them screamed and shrieked, startled by its tormentor’s sudden return.
It flailed at the end of its shackles, bolted to the wall. Beneath the decayed flesh, it once lived and breathed as a healthy, middle-aged Hispanic man.
“Yes, wake them up,” Maddox bellowed. “Wake them all up!”
A multitude of other chains rattled from deeper inside the high-domed, round room. Yet no one else uttered a peep.
Maddox s
lid a locking barricade in place to bar the world from unwanted intrusions. He pivoted from the door to behold all of his prisoners, each shackled to the round wall. Chains short enough to keep them from reaching one another forced them to sit in audience to all his devious, malevolent preoccupations, yet only one living captive had turned.
Despite their squalid imprisonment, meat filled out their frames – all except one woman. Everyone except for her ate more than enough to stave off starvation.
Tapping the hand sickle against his muscular, bare thigh, he marched to a sloppily-built fire pit made of cinder blocks in the center. It simmered faintly, with a cast iron skillet perched on the edge.
“Stand at attention,” he barked, “every last one of you!”
None of his shackled prisoners stood.
They recoiled from him.
Maddox’s hungry gaze panned around them, one by one, “Which of you will it be tonight?”
It screeched and babbled and reached out for him. Its chain rattled as the links pulled tight with each wild grasp.
He smirked over his shoulder, then he whirled his bulbous gut around and sauntered over it.
“You already chose to be disqualified, spick! You’re not going to undo our little dispute from last night. It’s someone else’s turn to decide!”
Yet it shrieked louder still, desperate for the food that approached it within only a few feet of its decaying fingertips.
“No, you already chose! It’s too late now! Shut the fuck up!”
He swung the hand sickle toward its face.
The curved blade pierced its cheek. It splattered dark red blood as it shrieked.
Maddox pulled it closer to him.
Its body stretched at the length of the chained manacle on its ankle.
“Your Mexican filth has almost been extinguished from my home,” he hissed. “I will cleanse Greene County!”
It screeched and yanked back against the handheld sickle.
The blade sliced its cheek clean through the corner of its mouth.