Xenia, After

by Joe Schlegel

  Still, not a soul worked out his responsibility for a single disappearance from within their shared community in time to stop his evil from crippling their inner-support.

  He walked among the survivors, shared meals with the survivors, even offered comforting words to grieving family and friends. None of it seemed fake in the moment, nothing ever hinted to deception – just a vague anger smeared beneath his grin.

  We’re left with speculation alone as to which disappearances became his own abducted victims.

  Unknown to their loved ones, so many cried out from the other side of town...

  Rarely since the outbreak could Xenia add to their dwindling numbers. Yet everyone feared to discover their own loved ones inside Maddox’s compound.

  * * *

  The sky dimmed light gray with an overcast of thin clouds. But the rescue party hardly noticed.

  They rode together up Detroit hill, crested the top, coasted past the baseball fields, and cautiously approached the shallow ridge.

  Conrad, Jake, and Trapper led the others, their rifles raised and at alert.

  Struggling by the roadside beside the transportation department, one of them hobbled and struggled on broken feet.

  Trapper executed it as they approached. His bullets dropped it quickly.

  The rescue party dismounted their bikes, and they held both their hands to their guns. They crept onto the gravel parking lot, alert in all directions.

  Jake fired several rounds and dropped another straggler with broken, bloody feet.

  Others dispersed out gradually, and they combed the transportation department’s lot. They ignored Maddox’s remains, more intent on hunting for survivors.

  Deeper into the compound, Jake stalked. The collage of tattoos on both arms and legs scarcely budged as he traversed the hostile arena.

  Several followed his lead.

  He paced around the garage, swung out around the propane tank, and treaded further, unafraid.

  Two large, round buildings stood opposite one another, facing off from either side of the dirt and gravel path. One sat locked up and secure, the other wide open yet dark.

  Jake peered into the opened building.

  Shackled to the wall, Oliver slouched into a sobbing mess. Four lie motionless within the reach of his restraints. “Thank Jesus,” he wept. “Oh, thank you, Jesus!”

  Jake’s gun sagged weakly as he surveyed the torture room, the sloppy fire pit, the cast-iron skillet, and the wall-mounted manacles.

  Several of the rescue team filed in around him. They tenderly consoled the weary captive and frantically searched for the keys to his restraints.

  Jake left the door.

  He crossed the path to the other round building.

  With an angry boot, he kicked the door. It flew open wide – sunlight bathed four more prisoners. Another sloppy fire pit sat in the middle of them all.

  As more of the rescue team rushed in around him to tend to the captives, he trekked further into the compound.

  Jake searched the corners of the lot, vigilant to guard his fellow survivors from even the most random of sudden attacks. He checked every man-sized opening of the tree lines that wrapped around the compound and hunted for well-worn paths, trampled grass.

  Dismayed, he stumbled upon one which hadn’t been overgrown.

  He found cages only a few dozen feet within the trees. But every contained prisoner had recently turned. Most decayed beyond the ability to stir behind their bars, barely able to draw a ragged breath--

  A high-pitched, shrill noise barely echoed from the baseball fields, a security unit’s banshee song, he recognized.

  Jake returned to the center of the compound.

  He appraised the city trucks parked all around him, some under carports while others sat out to weather the seasons unprotected. But no uptick in movement drew the ire of his trigger finger.

  Just scarcely over the tree tops, a flare tumbled to the height of its arc. It fizzled out as it fell back to the earth, but the smoke trail unmistakably marked the presence of at least one more of them.

  Perforated gunfire from the baseball fields immediately followed, the bass of its percussion absorbed by the trees between the properties.

  Someone else approached, Jake discerned shrewdly.

  A woman rushed from a round building. She descended on Maddox’s shirtless corpse.

  Victoriously, she pried a large key ring from his tiny jean shorts.

  She sprinted back into the building to free the dead man’s prisoners.

  Jake walked toward the offices just as Mohammad emerged through the back door.

  Mohammad inspected his fistful of ignition keys, all tagged with their truck numbers. He rushed across the gravel to the nearest of the trucks scattered around the lot.

  Inside the office building, Jake watched members of the rescue party race around as they searched and hunted for anything useable as tourniquets and braces.

  They pillaged first aid kits and rushed them from captive to captive.

  Jake peered reluctantly down the hallway. In a room with only a mattress, Hanna held another woman protectively. Shell-shocked and malnourished, both women had stared invitingly at death for weeks.

  A shouting voice called from outside, “Do not do this!”

  Urgently, Jake darted to a window. Aaron rode onto the compound on his single-speed bicycle, with David close in tow.

  “Leave them all be! Retreat from this place immediately!”

  Outside, a woman raced from the garage. She fixed an angry glare on the pair of newcomers and hissed loudly, “Shut the hell up! What’s wrong with you?”

  “You cannot remove those who are infected,” Aaron protested.

  “We’re checking for bite marks—”

  “That may not be good enough!” He dismounted his bike, and David followed his example.

  Aaron advanced menacingly toward the woman, his own expression deranged from appalled disbelief. His pointed goatee twisted angrily.

  But then Jake rushed from the back of the office building. As he charged the confrontation, his tattoos intimidated Aaron into a meeker posture.

  David stepped up beside his leader, however, and offered his strong, silent support.

  “Keep your goddamn voice down,” Jake seethed and stopped beside the woman. “These people have been through enough Hell without having to hear your scream a bunch of reckless bullshit—”

  “We don’t know who’s truly infected, and we won’t know the truth for a few days! AT LEAST! They must ALL remain quarantined – here!”

  “They cannot stay in this godforsaken hellhole!”

  “If we move them closer to town, and they turn and get one of us—”

  “We’ll make sure no one was bitten!”

  “That isn’t good enough,” Aaron exploded. “The infection is all around us! It’s on everything they’ve touched! If any of us have been exposed—”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Jake insisted.

  A diesel truck started, and the low rumble of the mighty engine caused Aaron to flinch.

  Even as he attempted to compose himself, he descended further into dismay. “You’re starting their motors, too? Have you lost all sense of occasion? That will attract even more of them!”

  “Considering that those within earshot of the generators and gunfire are all dead,” Jake fired back, “we won’t get much activity for a few hours.”

  “Any activity is too much! Listen to me – any sounds of civilization is too risky!”

  The engine died. And Mohammad scrambled to check the next truck with the rest of his ignition keys.

  From around the sizable garage, Oliver crossed the parking lot, his arms thrown over the shoulders of two others.

  Then the back door of the offices opened. Conrad and Hanna helped another captive limp from her wretched chamber.

  Mohammad successfully started another truck, listened to the diesel for a moment, then promptly killed it. He rushed to the nex
t one.

  Aaron checked the road behind him, anxious for unwanted company. He backtracked several steps from the compound, from those helping them.

  He muttered, alarmed, “You don’t understand the evil that you’re inviting within our midst.”

  “We’ve been living with this evil for a few nightmarish months,” Jake countered with a dire growl. “We understand what’s going on and what’s at stake perfectly fine! The survivors of this disgusting place will rest somewhere safe tonight.”

  More of Maddox’s prisoners emerged out into the afternoon, and they all squinted beneath the bright gray skies.

  They gradually converged on the trucks.

  Aaron retreated to his bike, accompanied step for step by David.

  “This is dangerous, this is ill-advised!”

  “We hear you,” Jake dismissed, “we just don’t care.”

  He turned and marched back into the compound as Mohammad started another truck.

  The rescue party loaded the survivors inside the cabs, or onto the beds. Some laid down on blankets and pillows. Others sat upright and clutched the dirty fenders. They boarded where ever they could safely hold on during the trip.

  Bikes lay discarded, left to be picked up sometime later.

  Conrad climbed into the first truck’s cab. He called out, “Everyone ready?”

  He turned the key that dangled from the ignition. The diesel engine fired up again.

  The other two trucks started, too.

  They all crept from their spaces.

  With Conrad in the lead, the caravan rolled to the end of the parking lot. They passed Aaron and David without a second look.

  The trucks turned right onto Detroit Street, accelerated over the shallow ridge, then crept closer to town.

  Aaron watched with mortal dismay, “They’re carrying the infection deep within their midst. This will be a catastrophe.”

  Conrad drove down the center of Detroit Street. Any obstacle he couldn’t weave around, he revved the diesel truck just loud enough to gently push aside cars, trucks, trailers, and vans.

  The caravan followed him down the hill. It wound along the curved course, careful to trace the lead truck’s route.

  It veered around the overturned caboose.

  And it skirted the generators in the middle of town.

  Finally, the caravan turned nimbly onto the narrow street behind the courthouse.

  Conrad braked to a stop in front of the library. He killed the engine immediately.

  The rest of the caravan followed suit.

  Around them all, the lack of the diesel rumbling echoed eerily. Nearby nature waited for a few beats, then rose back to its normal clatter.

  Everyone descended from the trucks. The rescue party scrambled to help Maddox’s captives to the ground, yet they vigilantly watched the sidewalks and building corners. Their adrenaline lingered from the afternoon’s skirmishes.

  Several more community members emerged from within the library, led by Ruth. They jogged to the end of the entrance rotunda.

  “We have the cots set up,” Ruth informed the party. “Got the candles lit and the bandages ready! Let’s get everyone inside and washed up, hm?”

  With arms thrown over shoulders for support, everyone herded up the library’s front walk to its open, glass doors. Many of the captives cried silently, too overwhelmed by emotion to even mutter.

  Ruth led through the lobby and into the conference room on the right.

  Conrad lowered a shaking, shocked woman down on a cot beside a candle. Her beaten, bloody features flickered hauntingly. Dry sweat stained by dry blood crusted upon her oily skin. Fresh bruises swelled while older ones darkened.

  Her tears gently washed the filth from her cheek.

  He stood up as a volunteer moved to tend to her injuries. And he looked around at the nearly dozen others who lowered bracingly onto their own cots. All had been assumed lost and dead for several weeks.

  Giving the volunteers space to work on the victims, Conrad exited the conference room.

  Jake huddled in the lobby with Ben, whose bandaged legs and arms covered the wounds from the bike wreck.

  “This was Maddox’s doing,” Conrad mumbled, his demeanor weighed down with remorse. “All these people, and who knows how many more...”

  Ben included him into the conversation, “It’s Aaron’s cult, damn near every one of them. They’ve fucking snapped. Wesley and William swore that Rhea was infected, even pulled a gun on Seven to get at her. They were ready to take Rhea’s life over an innocent cut! David is damn near royalty in that congregation, and he voiced some concern about Lily’s scraped knee when we came back from our search. Has anyone seen or heard from her in a few hours?”

  “Freddie was with Wesley and William,” Jake pointed out, “and now he’s missing. None of the search teams found any sign of him, not even his bike. Is this what happened to him? Did they dispose of Freddie like one of them? And Aaron repeated the same paranoid bullshit before we left Maddox’s place. He wanted to keep everyone there under quarantine even though none of them had bite marks.”

  Conrad absorbed the duel reports, and his posture sank as he recalled, “George preached about the infection when we searched the west part of town. He belongs to that congregation too, right?” He shook his head, and he fought to entertain even the slightest hint of skepticism. “This can’t be real. It must be the misguided ideology of only a few of them, right?”

  “We intend to figure that out,” Jake declared and nodded to Ben. “They have a nightly sermon, right? They’ll all be assembled together up by the old orphanage?”

  “You two intend to crash a church service?”

  Ben shrugged acceptingly. “The whole cult will be there. What better time to get some very serious answers to some very sick questions?”

  “Wait – this needs to be dealt with immediately, I agree. But I can’t support a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of situation.”

  “That’s not what we mean,” Ben reassured. “Their meeting is simply the best time to ask some direct questions about ...their beliefs.”

  The moderator volleyed his attention between the two men, their grimaces set with bleak resolve.

  He rubbed his face despairingly, torn between belief and the need to clutch to doubt. “This can’t be for real, this can’t be happening within our town! They suffer just as much as we do when our community shrinks! How could they benefit from thinning all our chances for survival?”

  “What more proof do you need to figure out the truth, because I’m sure you’ll get it soon,” Ben reasoned with a dire bite to his voice. “Their actions can’t fly under the radar anymore, not with our ranks depleted to such drastic levels. Do we wait around for Aaron’s cult to make another attempt on Rhea?”

  “You’re injured, too.” Conrad motioned to the bandages on his legs and arms. “If you truly believe that she’s in danger, then you can’t go home, either. And what about Seven?”

  Jake smirked. “That’s already been taken care of. They’ll relocate to my turf. Everyone will be safe – perfectly safe and perfectly relaxed.”

  “So that means your place will be empty?”

  “Yep,” Ben confirmed simply.

  “Then I want to stake it out, hunker down for a while. If any mother fucker comes sneaking around...” He paused. And he wrestled with the prospect he feared to voice aloud, “If this revelation is true...”

  Still, his voice refused to utter the words of his sneaking fears.

  “The place is all yours. There might even be a few more beers left on the kitchen counter, help yourself.”

  “If this is true,” Conrad declared, “we’ll have to tell Trapper of the suspicions about Freddie.”

  Ben acknowledged solemnly, “He’s taking the disappearance extremely hard. I pretty much expect him to lock himself up at the bar for the next few nights.”

  “He’ll get plenty of company, I’m sure. These first few days after the disappeara
nce of a child, it rips and tears at everyone’s insides. And the fact that Trapper might be joining the rest of us without any blood family remaining? Jesus, this town is going to grieve even harder.”

  “Before any of that,” Jake addressed Ben, “we have to find some answers.”

  He responded, “You ready to crash a sermon?”

  20.

  Jake and Ben Go to Church

  Spread out to the corners of town, the survivors sought refuge and safety to relax and sleep. Many squatted in unassuming homes, others barricaded themselves into two-story businesses. Lands deeds and rental agreements meant nothing to the desperate squatters.

  Nobody remained nomadic, however. A familiar home, a comfortable roost, a guarded temple – the survivors found more practicality in tried-and-true fortifications.

  And as Winter loomed from the end of the calendar, more preparations were needed to brave the cold, the snow, the ice, and the arctic void.

  Gray coated the blue sky, still light for the middle afternoon, though ever darker.

  Seven limped slightly as she walked a new bike along a hilly back road. She kept a protective eye on her daughter at her side, yet she also stared wearily at the old slaughter house as they approached it.

  “I don’t like getting this close,” she whispered aloud. “They’re attracted to the decayed pigs and the stench. They could be lurking anywhere nearby.”

  Ben readied his rifle with one hand, and he walked a new bike with the other. “This is literally the safest route. We can’t be seen along the main road. If any of the cult enters or leaves the old orphanage, they’ll spot us. I can’t risk being outgunned with you two in the line of fire.”

  “It’s okay, Mommy! Ben is ready! See?” Rhea smiled and flashed her pearly white baby teeth. Ben turned from his solemn vigil long enough to offer her an encouraging wink.

  She smiled wider, then spun around, content to watch the road in front of them.

  Seven witnessed the exchange. A maternal smile fleetingly melted her worries.