by Brown, TW
“Huh?”
“Over in Afghanistan, the locals knew better than to go heads up with us—”
“Wait,” Kevin interrupted. “You were in the war?”
“Did you think I just borrowed these clothes?” Willa quipped.
“No…yeah…” Kevin was at a loss. Yes, he knew that she had been in the US Army, but he had never even once considered that she might have been in combat. “So you like…got into firefights and all that crap?”
“Yeah,” Willa said with a chill in her tone. “I did all that crap.”
Kevin shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and wonder. When he’d first met Willa and her band of female fighters, he was given the impression that some of them were actual soldiers, but that many were simply individuals who had joined the group for a “safety in numbers” sense of security. The last thing that had ever crossed his mind was that he was running side-by-side with an actual combat veteran.
“Hey,” Kevin rolled on his side and faced her, “I’m sorry. I have this problem where I don’t think. I say things that sound one way in my head and come out of my mouth in an entirely different fashion.”
“If we’re gonna do this, we do it my way.” Willa dismissed Kevin’s apology. She’d spent years having to prove herself to her male counterparts. She’d long since decided that she didn’t have to prove a damn thing to anybody other than herself.
Kevin listened intently as Willa laid out the plan. A few times, he had to ask her to explain certain aspects or clarify exactly what she expected from him. The hardest part now was the waiting. One of the first things that she had insisted upon is more reconnaissance of the grounds. Also, she was insistent upon making at least one solo run over the country club wall by herself. When Kevin asked why he couldn’t go, she asked him how many actual covert ops not involving a video game console he had made in his life. That had ended the discussion.
As nightfall came and more snow began to fall in large, fluffy flakes, Kevin sat in the house he and Willa had chosen as their base of operations. From the second floor window he could see a faint glow in the direction of the country club.
Less than two miles away from his friends…and Valarie. He would not fail them. He would not fail her. He had a chance to redeem himself for failing his sister. He would not be able to undo what had been done, but he could do something for somebody who needed him.
On the street below, a lone zombie stumbled into view. It struggled through the snow. When it reached the tracks made by him and Willa, it paused. Kevin leaned forward. He almost expected the thing to pick up their trail and come to the door. Instead, it continued on its course, struggling to stay on its feet as it moved down the dark street and was eventually swallowed in shadows.
***
Kevin moved down the side of the house. He and Willa had been preparing for Willa’s first run when they heard a series of short, sharp whistles. There was no doubt in either of their minds that some of the individuals who had taken the country club were out in the area.
Willa had pulled Kevin up and told him very clearly, “This changes everything.”
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“We do nothing,” Willa said with a shake of her head. “You will stay put, and I will go out and assess the situation.
That had been a while ago, and he was getting antsy. He told himself that he was just taking a peek. The neighborhood was quiet now. There was no movement, and except for the occasional gust that whipped up some of the surface snow and made little snow devils, all was quiet.
He hadn’t heard a sound since Willa had taken off, leaving him feeling rather useless. The problem was, he wasn’t useless. He had survived this long because he spent his life—or most of it since his teen years—preparing for the most unlikely scenario imaginable.
Not even he had really thought something like this could or would ever happen. Seriously. Zombies? But he, Mike, Cary, and Darrin had been certain that they would endure just such an event. They would find a location far away from the main populations and erect a compound. They would set up a farm and add solar and wind power to their little grid. They would be kings among men and the women would all come and beg to be let in. They would all be beautiful and beholden to their saviors.
“What a load of crap,” he hissed.
Speaking of which…so was staying in the shadows beside this house. He needed to be out there doing something. He wasn’t entirely sure what; but he needed to be acting instead of waiting. He moved to the driveway and crouched by the bumper of the snow-covered car that would eventually rot in that very spot.
Nothing.
Nobody jumped out of the shadows and captured him. Nobody fired off a weapon or hollered out that he’d been spotted.
He crept alongside the vehicle towards the end of the driveway. From the rear bumper he scanned the cul-de-sac. Empty. To his left would be the highway and just across that, the country club. Something dark was sprawled in the snow just to his right. It was definitely a dead body. The question he was unable to answer was if it had been living or dead; was it one of the people who had taken his home, or was it Willa.
He tried to remember exactly what she’d been wearing when they split up and was embarrassed to realize that he hadn’t been paying attention. After all, why would he? This was such a simple thing. How could he have been so careless? He was making stupid mistakes and forgetting obvious things and couldn’t tell if it was the cold, the exhaustion, the hunger, or the combination of all the above.
He considered his possibilities and decided that he would observe from this position for a few minutes. To him, that was even more proof that Willa was overlooking his usefulness. He knew not to rush out into the open.
Almost on cue, three men appeared, coming around from behind the house across the street and two down to the right. It took him a few seconds to realize that he recognized one of the men.
Paul James and his daughter had just joined their little group shortly after they’d found Valarie. Right after that run, Kevin had returned to discover Erin’s baby near death from a respiratory illness or some such malady. He’d turned around and gone right back out to search this very neighborhood for medication and stumbled upon the father and daughter. Initially, he had been cautious, but it just seemed like a dad doing his best to care for his little girl.
Oh my God! Kevin thought, and had to stifle a gasp. This was his fault! He had brought Paul and his daughter back to their home—back to the country club.
He watched the men stop in the middle of the vacant driveway to discuss something. From this far away, it was impossible to hear anything that was being said, but he didn’t need to hear to know that they were arguing. Also, it was obviously two against one and Paul was on the short end.
Kevin tried to press himself as close the wheel of the car he was using for cover as possible. He heard the buzz of angry voices, but could still not decipher anything being said.
And he wasn’t alone.
A pair of zombies came stumbling into view from the direction of the highway. They made slow and steady progress through the snow towards the men. At first, he thought they were not aware, but then Paul pointed and made huge gestures with his arms. The other two men looked, but they simply shrugged and resumed laying into the agitated man.
Kevin took the time to study the approaching undead. Both looked old. They were coated in a layer of frost and the man on the left had a long rip down one side that exposed the ribs underneath. That rip looked like the edges would shatter if struck. Kevin marveled at how the zombies remained mobile. Their food source had undeniably shrunk, yet they remained. A normal human body would have liquefied and rotted away to next to nothing by now. Then there was the cold. They did not generate any warmth. So why were they not frozen?
The three men turned to deal with the approaching threat. Kevin knew what was about to happen. Paul wasn’t paying attention to the other two men. He never saw them as they dropped back. That is wh
y he also did not see them bring their bats up and swing at the backs of his knees.
Even from this far away, Kevin heard the crack. When Paul screamed out, the zombies almost seemed to forget about the other two men. As one, the pair fell on the injured man and began to claw and bite.
Paul tried to crawl, but his legs were ruined. One zombie had found purchase on his back. At first there were the repeated cries of “No!” But it soon turned to pleading, begging, pleas for God…and finally that certain sound made by somebody who is literally being torn open and forced to watch themselves be fed upon.
Kevin had turned away long before that.
Once the screaming stopped, he chanced to take a look. He watched as the two men began to walk away. As they passed, each took a single swing at the zombies still hunched over and feeding. They were actually laughing as they picked up their packs that he had not noticed until now sitting beside a hedge that looked like a car had driven through it at some point.
They were just crossing the highway when the one on the left stopped suddenly. He turned to his friend and his hands came up like he was going to hug the other man. It took Kevin a few seconds to notice the shaft of a crossbow bolt jutting out of the man’s chest. By that time, the second man was staggering back a few steps. He fell to his knees and face planted. Kevin had spotted the bolt sticking out of this one’s head much quicker.
Looking around, he was not surprised to see Willa come out from behind a large conical-shaped pine tree that looked as if it would only take a few more snowflakes to send it toppling to the ground.
“I told you to stay put,” Willa barked, thrusting her weapon against a mailbox post, drawing the string back, and securing it with the lever. She stomped over to the downed men and yanked the one bolt sticking out of the second man’s head after planting her boot on the face; with little apparent effort, she yanked it free and dropped it into place. Turning, Willa fired from only a few feet away as what was left of Paul sat up. Kevin winced as the bolt struck the forehead and apparently had enough energy left to come out the other side. Still, he had gotten enough of a glimpse to see that the man’s lower lip had been pulled down below the chin, a hairy piece of meat dangled, and Kevin could still see it swaying in his mind’s eye.
“If you want to have any chance of saving your friends…you need to do exactly what I say.” Willa stepped right up to Kevin and thrust her face at his until they were so close you couldn’t slide a credit card between the space separating their noses.
“I just came out to see what was going on,” Kevin insisted.
“No, you were coming out into the open where anybody who knows anything about watching for people could see you.”
“Just because—”
“These people are military!” Willa snapped.
“What? Because they happened to be dressed in fatigues? I dressed as Spiderman one year for Halloween…that didn’t make me him.”
“No, because I know them.” Willa shoved Kevin back. “And you better pray that your friends didn’t give them any crap when they came in and took over. The commander of this outfit is Timothy McVeigh crazy. She was a reservist that was being investigated by the feds before everything went sideways. She is a militant extremist who believes that the New World Order was due and she was the person to make it happen.”
“You have a lot of knowledge on a bunch of people we haven’t even met yet,” Kevin retorted, but his heart wasn’t really into it.
He’d had his fill of the militant types. It had been one such man, Charlton Shaw, who had shot his friend and taken some of his travelling companions. He couldn’t imagine having to—
“Wait…” Kevin ran his hand over his face as if he could wipe it clean of whatever had hampered his ability to hear. “Did you say ‘she’?”
“Yep,” Willa confirmed. “She.”
“So how do you know this…person?”
“She was the commander of one of the recalled units assigned to us. Early on, when things went so bad so fast, she snuck away with her unit. We kept following reports of an Army unit running around the area, hitting civilians. They would arrive and be seen as a signal of hope and relief. Folks would drop their defenses and welcome this unit in with open arms in most cases.”
Willa paused. Her eyes took on a far away quality like she was staring at something in the distance. Kevin chose to remain quiet. Obviously she was fighting with some serious emotions. There had to be a lot more to the story, and Kevin could tell that she wanted to get it out…off her chest.
“We caught up with the unit just west of Columbus. We had been following the fires. They were burning out civilians who had managed to set up fortresses or barricaded camps and confiscating their supplies. At first we thought that they might be killing all the civilians, but in Columbus, we found our first survivor…a girl of about nineteen.”
Kevin spotted a few more walkers heading their way. Apparently all the commotion had drawn some attention. Willa, in contrast, seemed not to notice. She’d gone to a very dark place in her memory. Nothing in the real world was registering. He thought he saw tears welling up.
“They put out an offer to the citizens once they’d been allowed inside,” she continued after a deep breath. “Anybody who wanted to join them would receive the ‘protection of the United States Army’ according to this young girl. Those who refused were taken in their sleep the first night. I guess that they didn’t want to waste any bullets, so they would simply throw the people out of their own compound and then fire a flare to attract zombies. The people who were thrown out could either try and defend themselves, or they could run.
“No time was wasted. All the supplies were rounded up the next morning. Everything that had any use, all the food, tools…whatever…all taken by this band of looters operating under the banner of the United States Army.”
“Sounds bad,” Kevin said after Willa had taken another pause for several seconds. “But why would people let them in? I have yet to see one movie or read a zombie book where the government was any help. Most of the time—”
“Not everybody in the world watched those movies, Kevin,” Willa interrupted. “Despite the small percentage of crazy conspiracy theorists and anti-government types, most people rely on the powers that be when disaster strikes.”
“Yeah…I guess,” Kevin said with a shake of his head.
“Anyway,” Willa continued, “I was on the trail of this renegade group for almost two months…always a step behind them. They were scouring Columbus and cleaning out everything and everybody. When we arrived at the airport, we finally thought we had them. We sent a person in to mediate with them…see if they would talk…they sent back her head.”
“That seems kinda harsh,” Kevin gasped.
“My sister-in-law.”
Now it clicked for him. The rest of the story was irrelevant at this point. This would be as personal for Willa as it was for him. The fact that time had passed was not important. But if that was the case, why had she been so hesitant.
“So she killed your sister-in-law and sent her head back,” Kevin said by way of prompting her to continue.
“No,” Willa turned to Kevin with tears in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, “the woman running that outfit is my sister-in-law.”
Kevin was just about to take down the first of the dozen or so zombies that were now making slow progress towards him and Willa. His swing missed its mark and dug into the shoulder of the zombie. He shoved the creature away and drew his belt knife.
“You want to run that by me again?”
“Major Wanda Beers is my sister-in-law and she is a power hungry megalomaniac.”
Kevin plunged his knife into the temple of the zombie. What were the odds? he wondered.
“So how many people?” he asked as he looked around to determine which of the zombies would be the next closest threat. “Is this an army…are we talking a couple hundred?”
He felt the dread grow in his gut. If that was in f
act the case, he had absolutely no chance. The problem he faced was that he positively refused to leave Aleah, Heather, and Valarie. He felt only the slightest tinge of guilt over not really being all that concerned about Matt, Shari or Erin, but he couldn’t really force himself to feel anything.
“Actually, I have no idea how many of them there are.” Willa admitted. “Who knows how many individuals they have conscripted…or how many they have lost.”
Kevin trudged through the snow towards an elderly woman missing both arms. He had become very adept at not seeing any of these things as people. They were just pests. He felt nothing more than he would if he swatted a mosquito or stepped on a bug.
“So what is your plan?” Kevin asked.
Willa seemed to think very seriously for a few moments. That gave Kevin enough time to take down the remaining zombies. He actually went all the way out to the highway for the last one and noticed that there were several dark shapes in contrast to the dazzling white snow that were heading their way.
“I think I know how we can do this,” Willa said from directly behind him, causing Kevin to drop his knife in the snow as he was wiping it off on his latest kill.
***
Kevin sat beside the wall. On the other side, the country club and his friends waited. No, Kevin thought, it isn’t just a country club, it’s my home.
This situation wasn’t anything like Shaw and The Basket. Sure, they had executed his friend in cold blood, but when they kidnapped the Bergman women, he had only known them for a very short time. What he had with Ruth had been a crush…nothing more.
His mind turned to Aleah. He was not entirely sure how it had happened, but the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen was in love with him. One thing that he was sure of was that he knew that he hadn’t ever felt this way about anybody before. He’d be damned if he was going to let some crazy militant take the tiny bit of pleasure that he’d managed to find in a miserable world and keep it from him.
“…much longer and I’m gonna kill that brat myself,” a male voice grumbled.