Xenia, After

by Joe Schlegel

  However, her posture stiffened as they approached the old slaughter house, closer and yet still closer. They turned the corner directly across from the foul-smelling building.

  She checked behind them impulsively as they climbed the rest of the hill. Her attention fluttered to the American flag high upon its pole, only moderately worn from the changes in the Midwest seasons.

  They all mounted their bikes at the top.

  Then they coasted down into the industrial park, perched on the edge of town.

  The first left turn introduced another small incline, then the road dead-ended into a factory parking lot. Atop one of the stories-tall buildings, several camping tents budged slightly in the mid-afternoon breeze.

  Jake spotted their approach and waved his greeting. At his feet, a homemade ladder spun from dozens of spools of duct tape stretched from the roof to the ground.

  Ben led – with Seven protectively behind her daughter – onto the wide open parking lot, surrounded on most sides by thick groves of trees.

  They parked their bikes beside three others, one a child’s bike. Rhea recognized it immediately.

  She scrambled up the ladder first. Seven followed closely behind her.

  Ben swung the rifle onto his shoulder and climbed up last.

  At the top, Jake helped them all onto the roof. Thick air mattresses covered the bottoms of numerous large tents, and jugs of water sat near the openings. Folding chairs scattered around with fluffy blankets rolled up on their seats. A table occupied the middle of the roof with several chairs upturned on its top, waiting for its next turn to serve the survivors.

  Gwen sat on a lawn chair. Her son played at her feet.

  Logan spotted Rhea and abandoned his toys.

  He sprang up to his feet and ran to her.

  They happily hugged, grateful to see each other again.

  “Thank you for this,” Seven greeted Jake with a timid though appreciative voice.

  “Don’t worry about it, I ain’t turning away friends! Poor Gwen caught a little poison ivy on her ankle, and it scabbed over. I’m not taking the chance of that psycho cult going after her either, ya know? We all gotta stick together, we’re all the best of friends now, right?”

  Ben surveyed the rooftop setup, impressed. His beard waved in the breeze. “You’re oddly prepared for this.”

  “A lot of unused tents in town right now,” Jake shrugged. “Plenty of sleeping bags to choose from, no shortage of pillows. Most of you guys crash indoors, and you have no idea the kind of freedom you’re missing.”

  “And the bad men can’t get us?”

  Jake smiled reassuringly to Rhea. “Nope! They have no clue we’re even up here. And since we’re surrounded by a lot of woods in every direction, they never wander through here at all. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen one lost back this way.”

  He nodded his readiness to Ben, and they both rambled to the duct tape ladder.

  Seven rushed over and hugged Ben tightly. “Don’t be long,” she quietly pled in his ear.

  “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

  She withdrew, then lowered herself tenderly into a lawn chair. Gwen handed her a bottle of water. They both kept watch over their children.

  “While we’re gone,” Jake grimly advised, “if anyone comes snooping from any direction – human or otherwise – shoot the mother fuckers.”

  Gwen nodded to her readied AR-15, “Got it covered.”

  They descended the ladder. Just before Ben’s head dropped below the ledge, he winked supportively to Seven.

  She smiled warmly, gratefully.

  At the bottom, the mounted their bikes. They pedaled out of sight of the rooftop abode.

  Ben wondered aloud, “What if they actually admit to it all? What if they confirm everything we ask?”

  “Then I hope we shoot straighter than they do,” Jake responded.

  “You really think it’ll come down to all that?”

  “Fuck yeah, I do! Because I’ll be the one who starts shooting! It’s bad enough to kill an innocent survivor of this infection shit, but a child as well? That’s unforgivably sinful, bro; that’s our future beyond the Twenty-First Century.”

  They rode side-by-side through the industrial park, but turned away from the old slaughter house. They charged to the main road, toward the expansive grounds of the old orphanage.

  Silently, they rode in the middle of the street. The pavement jogged along for a quarter mile, bent slightly at the gas station, then to the intersection that hosted the overturned caboose. But their destination loomed much closer than all of that.

  On their left, the overgrown grass nearly stretched up to the bottom leaves of the trees. And the grounds of the orphanage rose high on the towering hill, topped with a wide cluster of buildings, administrative offices, and appendant departments, all renovated only a few years before the infection outbreak.

  But halfway up the property, on a massive, concrete dais, Aaron faced his assembled cult. He presented his back to the street far below him, and his followers gazed up at him, rapt with adoration.

  Ben and Jake turned onto the wide bridge that beautified the entrance.

  And they climbed up the winding driveway.

  The believers noticed immediately. They silently observed their approach.

  Ben and Jake squeezed their hand brakes until they stopped just beside the neat line of bicycles already leaned upon their kickstands. And they casually dismounted.

  They watched the cult watch them. Ben noticed their eyes stared intently at his bandages.

  He smirked.

  Slowly, he reached down and peeled off the gauze. Blood stuck to the inside of the fabric.

  Standing up, he cast the bandages aside proudly.

  Two of the believers sprang up from their lawn chairs, frightened. They retreated toward the concrete dais.

  A few others glanced at their nearby firearms.

  Jake swung the M16 rifle from his back and aimed just over Aaron’s head. He scanned the cult, watchful for any abrupt or unusual movement.

  Yet everyone just stared back at the automatic gun in his hands.

  Ben raised his voice to broadcast to the group, “Wesley and William tried to harm Rhea today, just a couple hours ago. They insisted that a shard of freshly-broken glass carried the infection. It was their goal to shoot a little girl without any proof that she might turn. Is this something you’re teaching up here?”

  The believers remained silent. They attentively studied him, lest he turned mid-sentence.

  Behind them, Aaron responded, “Surely you’re not suggesting that I advocated for the death of a child! That is grossly absurd!” His twisted goatee twitched indignantly.

  “David recruited me to keep an eye on Lily. She scraped her knee, and he was convinced that she too carried the infection.” Ben searched the assembled faces, “Where is David now?”

  He counted off the wart of Edward, the skeletal features of Emily, the receding hairline of George, the thin mustache of Parrish, the lavender circles beneath the eyes of Perceival, and the pompadour atop Vanora. All of them wore polo shirts of muted colors.

  Aaron dismissed him with a lofty shrug and a condescending eye roll. “He didn’t show for today’s benediction. It’s not uncommon for anyone to miss a few services.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Sometimes our duties to the community prevent us from attending every day. Deaver, too, is attending to duties elsewhere, as are William and Wesley—”

  “Where is Freddie?”

  “I have no earthly idea, Ben. This is all quite unwarranted—”

  “STEP AWAY FROM THAT RIFLE!!”

  Jake suddenly, pointedly aimed his M16 into the small crowd. They all winced and recoiled from the barrel’s aim and the man’s shout.

  Emily threw her skeletal arms up, fearful, halted only a few inches from her own Ruger 10/22.

  “This is your only chance to let this end peacefully,” Jake warned.


  Aaron flustered angrily, “You barge onto HOLY GROUNDS and hold us at gunpoint! Then you hurl RIDICULOUS accusations about our mission, which we partake in the LORD’S NAME! If your goal isn’t to execute us where we stand, then lower your blasted weapon!”

  Jake scanned the cult again.

  “No,” he calmly answered.

  Ben prodded, “By our count, four members of your little group here expressed the same conspiracy—”

  “We’re all fearful of turning into them,” Aaron protested. “Our faith is merely a vessel—”

  “Only your people seem to think that an innocuous scratch is a death sentence!”

  He responded bluntly, aggressively, and with all pompous disregard previously absent from his tone, “The community understands the dangers of their saliva and their blood, but none of us can be certain how long the infection remains active once it’s fallen onto a blade of grass! Maybe it dies within moments. Or maybe we’re wrong about the stopping power of Ohio’s Winter chill, and the infection remains on that blade of grass even through Springtime! That means that stubborn little droplet is far from innocuous! For this reason, I teach only faith, and caution, and reverence for our new stations in life!”

  “That philosophy sounds like a slippery slope into paranoia,” Ben spoke with disdain.

  Aaron composed himself with an arrogant smile. “Caution is far from paranoia, Ben.”

  “Which is what makes me doubt that you’re preaching any caution up here.”

  The two men stared down each other. They searched the other for even the remotest glimmer of retreat.

  Neither man found any.

  “We seek only to serve the community and God’s Will. Is it not enough that we shoulder the responsibility of disposing their bodies to spare you such carnage?”

  “Ask Freddie.”

  “Jake, Ben,” Aaron spread his arms out to encompass the believers before him, “we have nothing to do with any of that. This is a precarious altercation you’ve placed us in, and someone is bound to accidentally get hurt. Please, my neighbors, we mustn’t reduce ourselves to coarse insurrection.”

  Without another word, Ben paced back to his bike. He left his blood-matted bandages on the ground, near the believers’ line of bikes.

  Jake tossed the M16 over his shoulder.

  They mounted their bikes, and they coasted back down the hill and toward the bridge. At the end of the driveway, they turned into the middle of the road and pedaled toward town.

  The cult watched them as they left.

  Aaron drew their attention back up to him, “What a glorious test, my Lord! How wondrous is Your faith in us!”

  He grinned mischievously as his cult shuffled back to their lawn chairs.

  “God has seen it fit to let the flock wander into the middle of our Holy affairs. It appears that we must, if for only a short time, shoulder a much greater burden.”

  The followers settled and raptly faced up to their spiritual leader.

  He grumbled angrily, “Their simple-minded ignorance rejected my wise counsel at the transportation department earlier today, and now they’re poised to reject our righteous protection. They’re scared, and they feel cornered. They held us at gun point regarding mere suspicions.”

  Aaron paused only to scan his faithful group with a mad twinkle in his eyes.

  “The unenlightened threats from the flock must not deter us from our Holy charge! More tasks must be completed to purify them safely. David is tending to that mission now, but the need to expand our efforts has – unfortunately – just arisen.”

  He keenly appraised their faces. Edward’s wart, Emily’s skeletal features, George’s receding hairline, Parrish’s thin mustache, Perceival’s lavender circles, Vanora’s pompadour.

  Then Aaron continued with a dire gravel in his voice, “We must operate further from God’s light, further into the shadows of this town. We must slink about these neighborhoods to ensure the surviving Xenians remain healthy and unafflicted.”

  His expression seethed.

  “And they shall find us to be uncompromising neighbors in the deepest, darkest corners of night! Their charred bodies will litter our stealthy wake! They will suffer genocide for their trespass in our town! The future of this community relies on our success!”

  The seated believers cast disconcerted looks to one another.

  Aaron laughed softly, confidently, “Rest assured, because I am. We shall navigate Hell together.”

  21.

  Aaron Serves His Crusade

  David dismounted from his mountain bike.

  He checked back down Main Street, toward the courthouse. The road sat empty. No one noticed him.

  Timidly, he stalked up to Ben and Seven’s two-story house. Three bikes sat by the porch – one a child’s bike and two adults’, one obviously for a woman’s.

  David peered down the street one more time, and he surveyed all around him.

  Then he withdrew a pistol from the small of his back. He turned off the safety.

  He reached for the door knob.

  It turned in his hand and opened.

  David slid slowly into the doorway, his gun held down at his side, finger on the trigger. He inspected the empty living room, partially lit despite the thick blankets on the windows.

  Gently, he closed the door.

  David stalked into Ben’s kitchen—

  He froze, surprised. At the dining room table, Conrad sat in wait. A nearly empty beer beside him on the table.

  “Hello,” the town moderator greeted, and an ominous frost coated his voice.

  David nonchalantly swung his gun back to hide behind his leg. He eyed the unexpected man suspiciously. “I didn’t see your bike outside, just the three.”

  “Nah, I carried mine upstairs.”

  “Is that where Ben and Seven are?”

  Conrad shook his bald head. “Nope, everyone is gone.”

  “But their bikes are out front.”

  “Nah, they all took different ones when they left.”

  David peered curiously back into the living room, then returned his searching, defensive gaze to the kitchen.

  “Why would they swap bikes?”

  “Their old ones are scattered about Detroit hill. I snagged a few extras from our communal cache, set ‘em outside to make it look like they were home. And here you come prowling, sneaking in uninvited. Why are you here?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  Conrad rose from the dining room chair. “Ben says you were suspicious of Lily,” he spoke with the even tone of a town official, “says you suspected an innocent wound—”

  “Their disease is hardly innocent. She would have turned and killed everyone around her.”

  “The wound wasn’t caused by them.”

  “Their sickness is all around us,” David insisted. “It’s only too easy for an open wound to become infected.”

  “Is that what happened to Freddie?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But I do know that, in Rhea, you are protecting a dangerous child. I’m sorry for yet another tragic loss, yet she can’t take anyone with her, most especially the mother. Xenia may need to repopulate next Spring, and she’d be the perfect vessel for my own seed...”

  Conrad barreled on, “Where’s Lily? It’s been hours since anyone has heard from her, and only hours since you hurled your accusation.”

  Yet David only stared blankly.

  He remained silent.

  Slumping slightly from further despair, the Shawnee moderator demanded, “Why go to such an irrevocable extreme? Aaron called for quarantining the victims at the transportation department, why wouldn’t that be an option in Rhea’s case? And for Seven? Ben?”

  “Civilization has been decimated to within a fraction of its size, and you ask WHY? Because we can never truly know. Some people can resist the infection much longer than others. No one knows how. Who’s to say that it can’t incubate for days or even weeks insid
e the human body? A quarantine is wishful thinking, at best. For a small cut that you want to deem ‘innocent,’ you risk us all? No. We cannot allow emotional attachment to blind us to danger.”

  “How many others have there been?”

  David answered dismissively, avoidingly, “The entire known world has been ravaged by the infection—”

  “No— How many has your group executed in this town? How much larger would our community be if not for your group’s actions?”

  He glared fiercely in wait.

  In a fiendish display, David melted his righteous pretense into bland, annoyed disinterest. He answered just as passively, “They would have turned anyway. We prevented them from taking more with them—”

  “HOW MANY?”

  “A few, but never more than was necessary, never an innocent. And always for the protection of Xenia—”

  Conrad looked suddenly over David’s shoulder.

  His face sprang up into surprise and fear, “BEN, NO!”

  David spun around quickly and raised his pistol—

  But no one charged from the empty living room.

  He turned his head back toward the kitchen just in time to catch a shadow move.

  Conrad lunged.

  And he kicked into David’s back.

  He flailed, and they both tumbled to the floor.

  David tried to roll over, to aim the pistol up at his attacker.

  Conrad leapt onto his broad back and pinned the gun to the ground with both hands.

  He shimmied up David’s thick arms.

  Then he swung his knee up into his jaw.

  David’s head rocked backward and blood splashed from his gums.

  Conrad wrenched the pistol from his grip.

  He pounded the metal down into the man’s face. Blood stained his polo shirt.

  David writhed on the floor as Conrad pushed himself up to his feet.

  “Oh man, you’re bleeding,” he mocked callously. “I sure hope you’re not infected.” Conrad leveled the sights of the pistol to David’s barrel chest. “But I guess there’s no point in waiting to find out, is there?”

  He unloaded the whole clip, then dropped the gun.