by Brown, TW
***
“Not bad at all,” Jon said as he scanned the sheet of paper I had used to write how I thought we should form up for the trip. “I see you learned from that run with Winters and his goons. Nice job having pickets off the road and using the ridges to help protect our side from attack.”
I was pleased. Not just with myself for the job I had done, but also how it seemed that Jon took notice. At some point, our relationship had taken a nasty hit. But the thing was, I really respected him. He knew what he was doing out in the field. I think it was a lot of feeling like I was some sort of pawn in this battle he and Dr. Zahn seemed to be locked in over the leadership of the group.
“I also notice that you put Shelly on point,” Jon said. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I could tell he was waiting for me to say something.
“I figured that you would not be okay with her in the rear. I also knew you would not want her out on the side perimeter where you could not see her,” I explained. “If she is out front, then you can keep an eye on her.” I let my explanation hang for a second before adding, “Although I think it is ridiculous. She has done nothing but help since she joined up with us.”
“Listen, Billy,” Jon turned to face me. He didn’t look angry, but there was a severe quality to his voice that I was definitely picking up on. “This is a different game. The world has changed and you can never drop your guard, even for a second. A mistake now costs you your life…if you’re lucky. Most likely, it costs you the lives of those around you as well as your own. You have to treat every person as a possible threat.”
“I get that,” I said.
Looking around, I realized that we were alone for the most part and this was my chance to get my point out without it having to be in front of everybody where he might feel that I was challenging him.
“The thing is, you have something that has been eating at you since Steve died. You have been hard and cold. Now, maybe I was just far enough out of the loop that I was missing out and you have always been this way, but I don’t think so.” I fought everything in my nature not to make an audible gulping noise when I swallowed to try and get moisture to my throat which had gone strangely dry.
“You have been one of those people that I looked up to…until recently. Now, it seems as if you are always looking at everybody like they are the enemy. You even talk bad to Dr. Zahn.” I decided to pause and see if he had anything to say. Nope, he was just staring at me with an expression that became more like a stone statue by the second.
“You don’t…you can’t understand. You’re just a—”
I knew what he was going to say. He was going to call me a kid or a child or something along those lines. I was on a roll and decided that I could make my stand here, or I could let things continue the way they had been lately.
“I’m not a kid!” I hissed. “You can’t call it both ways, Jon. It has been you all along telling me how much I can do. It is you who tells me that I would have been a hell of a Marine. I might be young, but I haven’t been a kid for a long time. I have been out on point, run scouting missions, gone foraging. Hell, I even had to survive on my own for a while when a run I went on while I was at Serenity Base got ambushed and things went bad.”
“I just about let somebody come in and snare this entire group.” Jon’s voice had dropped to a whisper and he was no longer making eye contact. “I dropped my guard when Winters and his people showed up. I did this right on the heels of losing Steve, Jesus, and the others.”
“How is all of what has happened your fault? I don’t get you so-called adults. I have sat back and watched you all take blame for everything that goes wrong. Dr. Zahn and the whole thing with Teresa. Steve used to beat himself up on a daily basis every single time something went even a little bit wrong.” I was starting to see a definite pattern with the older folks. “I got news for all of you, none of us could have ever done anything to plan for this sort of situation. We are all making our choices on the fly.”
“You don’t—” he began, but I wasn’t hearing it.
“Understand?” I snapped, cutting him off. “How do you figure? I have been part of this group since before you came along. I have been just as wrapped up with keeping people safe. I was there when some folks might have wanted to get rid of Thalia because she was having nightmares and kept screaming in her sleep, which in turn would bring the zombies down on us.
“I joined the patrols when we were at Serenity and helped bring in survivors. I survived on my own out there for a while even.” He didn’t need to know that I basically hooked up with Ian shortly after our patrol got ambushed. The fact was that I had survived out there. “I did what you guys wanted when we were in La Grande, and I’ve kept your secret.”
That last line was one that I delivered in a voice that was barely above a whisper. I still had trouble with that whole scene. I didn’t want my discomfort with what he and Jake had done used against me.
“So don’t start telling me what I do and don’t understand. You all have said it enough, maybe you should listen to your own words…this ain’t the old world any more. Things are different. I feel the loss and am hit by guilt and failure just like the rest of you when things go badly. Jamie was my best friend and hung himself. You don’t think that I ask myself every single day if there was something that I could have said or done?” I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. The last thing that I wanted to do was start crying.
“Listen…” Jon started, but his voice trailed off.
I could tell that he was trying to put something into words, but then…I saw it. Tears were welling in his eyes. They had that shiny look to them and I was pretty sure that it was a battle he would lose in a few seconds. I did what I would want him to do for me if the situation were reversed.
I turned and walked away.
***
“Billy!” a voice called from the porch of the cabin.
I turned to see a very pregnant Melissa trying to make her way down the stairs. I slung my weapon over my shoulder and rushed up to see what she needed.
“Can you help me carry a bag down to the cart?” she asked sheepishly. “I tried to pick it up and the baby started a soccer game in my uterus.”
A little more than I what needed to hear, but I nodded and ducked inside to go fetch the bag. When I got to Melissa’s sleeping area in the back, I was not surprised to find that it was still set up for her and Steve. There was a big duffel bag sitting beside the air mattress.
“Kinda surprising how much stuff we have accumulated while running for our lives,” I joked as I slung the heavier than expected bag up and over my shoulder.
“Some of the stuff should have been thrown away, but I just…” Melissa’s voice trailed off and I didn’t have to see her face to know that she was fighting back tears.
I headed towards the front of the cabin where everybody else had their stuff packed, stacked, and ready to roll out of here. As I came into the large entryway, I heard screaming. I dropped the bag and burst through the door that separated the back where most of us had our beds and the reception area of the visitor’s center-turned-dormitory.
“…voy a matar!” Thalia hissed as she stood over the prone and crying figure of Misty.
“Whoa!” I vaulted the desk and ran down the length of the table where we had all once eaten together.
Thalia spun around on me, and for just a moment, I thought that she might take a swing. I slowed to a walk, but I continued to close the distance.
“What’s the problem?” I asked, while simultaneously looking around for just one adult. Funny how they were never around when you needed one.
“She was talking bad about my daddy,” Thalia said through teeth clenched so tight that I wondered how they did not simply shatter.
“Misty?” I gave her what I hoped was a stern look. Also, I was trying to see how much of an ass kicking Thalia had dished out this time.
The girl remained silent, but I saw enough in her expression
to know that Thalia was probably telling the truth. Still, that did not mean she could just beat this other girl down. I tried to channel my mother for a minute.
“Thalia, what have you been told about beating up Misty? Would you like it if somebody did that to you every time that you said something they didn’t like?” I know it was pretty lame, but for crying out loud, I am absolutely not a parent.
“She said that my daddy prob’ly deserved what he got,” Thalia said like that was absolutely the only justification that she needed.
“Misty?” I gave her the raised eyebrow that my mom always used on me when I had done something wrong.
My mom had this magic power. She could simply say your name in the form of a question and raise one eyebrow just enough. You could not help yourself. Before you knew it, you were not only telling on yourself for whatever misdeed that she was currently trying to get to the bottom of, but you would tell about stuff from weeks earlier that you didn’t get caught at.
The girl started to sniff. Her eyes immediately went to the floor and I knew that Thalia was telling me the truth. I still did not get the whole dynamic between these two. It had started almost the moment that Misty was brought to our camp. The weird thing about that is that Thalia has always been so eager and excited on those few occasions when we brought children into our fold.
“She wouldn’t stop staring at me,” Misty blurted.
Ah, to be a child again. Here we are, packing up for a journey that will take at least a week at the pace we will have to move, and these two are fighting over “regular” kid stuff. It is almost like they are oblivious to the world and the situation around them. They are living in this exact moment. The past is just that, and the present just does not show up on their radar.
“Thalia?” I turned my attention to her and used the same arched eyebrow.
Nothing.
She stared back at me like she was waiting for the rest of the question. I kept my face frozen for another several seconds, but she still just kept looking at me like she was waiting for me to do or say something.
“Were you staring at Misty?” I finally asked.
She at least had the decency to look abashed. She gave a very slight nod that could have just as easily been mistaken for a shrug or shake. I knelt down between the two of them and took their hands in mine.
“We have a long trip coming up. It is going to be dangerous and we need to help one another and work together. This will require cooperation. Do you both know what that word means?” I looked from one to the other expectantly and was relieved when I got nods from both. “Now, I don’t want to have to spend my time on this trip walking between you two girls. I need to be up front keeping my eyes open. I can’t watch you two and keep an eye out for zombies at the same time.”
There are times when you say something and are struck by how it sounds. I try to envision what my thoughts would have been if I ever considered just as recently as last year that a sentence like that was going to come out of my mouth. Now, it is the way of the world.
“Can I walk with you when we leave?” Thalia asked.
“This isn’t like before, sweetie,” I said with a shake of my head. “We have too many people and that means that we have to move differently.”
I could already tell by the look on her face that I was not making any sense to her. We had travelled as a group back when Steve was alive. Of course there had been far fewer people in our little band. The truth now was simply that we would have to move much more cautiously. We had to be ready for zombies, but we were also getting ready to march in and take something. We were, for lack of a better term, invaders.
Sure, the former occupants of the place we had our sights set on were all dead (as far as we knew), but there was no telling if anybody else had made the move yet to claim the place. We were a small army and we were about to go take something that may or may not belong to somebody else. Plus, don’t even get me started on how that camp came to be empty in the first place.
“But I like it here,” Thalia insisted. “And ever since stupid Misty came, all the bad things have happened. Why can’t she just go to this place by herself?”
I hoped that my open mouth went unnoticed. Is this what the growing animosity between these two girls is about? Is Thalia holding Misty to blame for the stuff that has gone down in the last several weeks? I shot a look at Misty. I guess I expected her to be angry or outraged at such a claim. Instead, she was just standing there, glaring at Thalia pretty much the same as she had been since I stepped in between them.
“Thalia, you can’t blame Misty for what has been going on,” I said.
The problem was, I really could not think of a good reason to give her as to why. Was it any different than the pair of socks that I wore all football season as my “lucky” socks? This was nothing more than coincidence, but to Thalia, all the bad that we had experienced in the past several weeks coincided with Misty’s arrival, therefore, she had to be the cause.
“I bet we wouldn’t be moving if Daddy Steve were here,” Thalia sniffed.
Okay, I thought, on that I have to agree. For one, I am pretty sure that there was no way he would have allowed Jon and Jake to do what they had done down in La Grande. However, Steve is not with us anymore and this entire group, which is now more than four times the size it was when he was alive, is sort of flapping whichever way the breeze takes us on any given day. I guess I was hoping that, once we get to La Grande and settle it, things will calm down into something like it used to be.
“Can I tell you something about this new home?” I fixed on something that I had seen in my short visit. Thalia nodded her head. I noticed that Misty did as well. “This place has a great big park with a playground.”
“Just like Serenity?” Thalia asked with obvious interest.
“Yep,” I answered with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
If I could sell her on this, maybe things would settle down for these two while we were on the road. Honestly, once we got to La Grande, there was so much room that these two could go for days without seeing each other.
“But…” I let that word hang in the air as I gathered up all my “inner-mom” channeling that I could muster, “…if you two can’t behave, well I just don’t see how you will be allowed to go to the park when we get there.”
I think I actually spotted a pair of halos appear over both girls’ heads. They both hit me with their best smiles and widest eyes that sparkled with innocence.
“I’ll behave,” they both said in unison.
Crisis averted, I headed back to the stairs where Melissa was waiting right beside her bags. A few others, most notably, Sunshine, Shelly, and Cheryl, stood in a group as well. They were all looking at me in a way that I was not comfortable with at all. I felt sort of like a bug under a microscope. It didn’t help that they all had nearly identical looks on their faces.
“You handled that well, Billy,” Melissa broke the silence as I edged around the gaggle of onlookers that did not seem to care that they were standing between me and Melissa’s bags.
“Thanks,” I said, not sure what else to say. I did my best to ignore the women who were still obviously staring as I grabbed the bag, hoisted it over my shoulder, and headed for one of the carts.
I didn’t dare look back when I heard giggling and whispering. If I lacked a basic understanding of children, I was probably in even worse shape when it came to women. All that extra room in La Grande was looking better every minute.
***
“I spotted at least five up past that second ridge and another dozen at least that are on our tail.” Jake had a drawn a very detailed map in the dust beside the road where we had currently stopped so that all the water containers could be filled from a waterfall.
“But if they have been so close for the past day, why are they keeping their distance?” I asked.
“It could be anything,” Jake said with a shrug. “They might be trying to see if we are bad guys. We do have quite
a few women in our group as well as eight to ten kids. They could be seeing if we are treating them bad. Or…they could just be sizing us up to see if we are easy prey.”
“So no middle ground?” I quipped.
“I’m just offering both ends of the dog,” Jake said with his easy drawl. I noticed Carol smirk briefly.
“Maybe we should send somebody to try and make contact with them,” a short, skinny man with an accent that I could not place spoke up.
“That is an option,” Jake said, but I could tell he was dismissing it.
“If they are keeping their distance, I don’t see what the big deal is,” Sunshine said. “Are we really going to be that group that treats everybody like they are the enemy? And I for one think that it is a very good idea to send somebody to try and speak with them. It beats not knowing.”
“If they were interested in talking to us, I think they would have made some attempt,” Jon said sternly. I saw the look on Sunshine’s face and knew that he was not scoring any points with his girlfriend.
The conversation continued, but I zoned out on it as I began to form a plan in my head. I sorted through it and came up with all the arguments that I figured might come once I let this particular cat out of the bag. If this worked, just maybe it would solve a few of my problems as of late. Of course, if it failed, then I would probably end up dead…in which case, all of my problems would be solved in a manner of speaking.
“Let me try to approach them,” I spoke up as soon as I realized that there was a moment of silence.
Everybody looked at me, but each with a different kind of expression on their faces. Jon was stone, he wasn’t giving up anything; Sunshine looked confused; Jake had just a slight grin; Carol was nodding and seemed to be in agreement; the skinny guy was looking at me like I’d just interrupted the adults during an important conversation. That was the exact look I was hoping to capitalize upon.
“Look,” I explained once it was clear that nobody was going to respond to my statement, “I am the perfect choice. We don’t want to send one of the women, these could be bad folks and a woman might not come away from it in good shape. Jon and Jake are great for the job, but they could be seen as a threat if these people are on the fence…or, if we lose one, it really makes a dent in our armor. We don’t send one of the new people because we do not know them well enough.” The skinny guy made a rude remark. It was in a foreign language, but I knew a put down when I heard one. “I am just a kid…at least as far as somebody taking me based on my appearance would be concerned.”