by Brown, TW
“Good. It should always be a struggle to take the life of a living person. If that ever becomes too easy, then you might want to consider the possibility that the next life that needs taking is your own.” She saw his eyes widen and his mouth opened, but Catie fixed him with her own look that was equal parts compassion and command. “Killing is not something you should ever take lightly. So if you feel bad right now, that’s okay.”
“Do you feel bad?” the fresh faced guard asked.
“Jeez, Trevor, what do you think?” the other scolded.
“Let her answer, Jimmy.”
Catie eyed the two young men for a moment. She took a deep breath and then searched herself for the truth. That was the problem; in the past couple of days, her truth had shifted. She was still trying to pin it down.
“I feel bad that I had to take a life.” She once more fixed first one of the young men and then the other with her gaze, trying her best to ensure that she got her point across. “But killing Clarence was a mercy. He would have suffered otherwise. There was no need for him to endure that slow change.
“Also, Clarence is a soldier in this new world. Soldiers die. That has been the truth for an eternity. That does not mean we don’t mourn their loss, but it is something that they face each day knowing of the possibility that it may be their last. In the Old World, I think too many people forgot that simple truth.”
Catie recalled a few times right after all of that terrible madness of September 11, 2001 before she had enlisted; she recalled an instance in particular when she saw a man in uniform get off the bus as it stopped in her town on its journey to wherever. People started clapping. Sadly, that sentiment of appreciation faded just like anything else. But until the day she had signed those papers for herself, she always made it point if she crossed paths with one of the men or women in uniform to walk right up to them and say “thank you.”
“Now, I want both of you to go find something to wrap the body in so it can be disposed of properly,” Catie said with a sigh that was partially coming off the adrenaline of the situation and partially from a deep fatigue that threatened to never release its hold on her soul.
Catie turned and made her way outside. She reached the street and decided to take a walk around before returning to Elliot. Eventually she passed a massive building that showed signs of a great deal of life. Despite most of the exterior sign having fallen off over the years, she still recognized the remnants of a Marriott logo. Unlike the other buildings, this one looked like the bottom three floors had been cleared. None of the windows remained on those levels. Armed individuals could be seen roaming the length of the open floors. One actually waved at Catie as she stood looking up at the building. A large section of the sidewalk in front of the building was heavily stained as if perhaps some great battle had taken place.
“Thinking about staking your own quarters?” a voice said from behind her.
Catie had mixed feelings about not immediately reaching for her weapon. She had let some of her guard down; or perhaps it was an effect of being tired and a shade wrung out. Still, she turned to face the owner of the voice.
“What are you doing out here, Marty?” Catie asked.
“Melvin is more of a book guy than I am. He was walking around in a daze with drool coming out of his mouth as he roamed the aisles at the library,” the big man said with an easy smile. “Just passed one of the boys that you traumatized and he said that you headed this way.”
“There are some surprisingly naïve people here for as open as this place is.” Catie turned back to the hotel-turned-housing complex. “For all their freedom, they are very isolated from what is out there.”
“Maybe they prefer to kill zombies. Maybe they are not the boogeymen that Dean has been preaching.”
“That is fine until you consider the kidnappings.”
“How do you figure?”
“They are snatching kids from their families,” Catie pointed out the obvious.
“I hear that some of those kidnappings have been arranged. There were a lot of parents not happy with things at Montague. They wanted their kids to have a shot at a better life. Pretty normal stuff if you ask me.”
“Are you telling me that these kidnappings are simple relocations?” Catie turned back to the large man and planted her hands on her hips.
“Not all of them,” Marty said with a shake of his head, “but well over half. And where do you think they are getting their information?”
Catie opened her mouth and then shut it with a snap. That fact had never once raised itself as a question in her mind. She had assumed that it might be the bracers that the immune wore. Yet, even with markers to identify the immune, a kidnapping has to be targeted in advance for what was going on here.
“Okay,” Catie finally pushed that bit aside, “let’s say I give you that one. But here is my big question. You know what Elliot has planned for the people at Montague, right?” Marty nodded. “And are you okay with that? We would be killing innocent women and children.”
“And do you think that they will just line up voluntarily and take the shot?”
“So we infect people on purpose? You can paint it with any pretty color you like, but genocide is still genocide. We would be exterminating people for no other reason than they are not like us.”
“Or we can live under their heel? This takes the ‘what if’ out of the question. The more we can get on our side, the more people we have in place to stand against these communities that hunt us down, the ones that would just as easily kill us without any of the debate that you and I are having.”
“And that makes them the bad guys? Will we ever be able to call ourselves good or righteous after we commit this act?” Catie had to struggle to keep the tears at bay. Her emotions were all bubbling to the surface again.
“You have been alive too long to think that way,” Marty muttered with obvious discomfort; whether it was the topic or the fact that he could see Catie’s emotions seething just below the surface, she didn’t know. “It is as simple as survival. I’m glad that you are struggling with this. That sort of brings me to my next point.”
Catie had to sniff hard to continue holding back the tears. She looked up at Marty and saw something now in his eyes that suddenly helped her regain her composure.
“What?” she asked once she cleared her throat and was confident in her ability to speak without her voice cracking or sounding strangled.
“Elliot is way too gung ho for this. He wants to just hit these people and damn the consequences. He shows no reservation for what we are about to do.”
Catie let that hang between them for a moment. She actually looked around; almost like she was afraid that somebody might overhear them. Since the closest person was two stories above their heads and not paying them the slightest bit of attention as he or she walked the edge of the cleared out hotel floor, it was highly unlikely that anybody could discern anything they were saying.
Still, when she spoke, Catie made it a point to lower her voice and keep her lips from moving as much as she was able. “Just what exactly are you saying?”
“I am saying that he either needs to be neutralized or eliminated.” Marty’s eyes showed almost no emotion as he spoke. This was simple fact for him, and it was obvious. “If he won’t step aside willingly, then we kill him. You are the one who put this plan into motion. It is too late to change it now.”
“Wait!” Catie fought to keep from raising her hands for added emphasis. “We just got here. We are either guests or prisoners depending on how you look at it. There are a good number of people here. Do you really think we can just kill their leader and take over with nobody raising a fuss?”
“You were out for a while. I haven’t slept since we got here. I have walked around and seen these people for myself. Most of them are drones. They have either managed to escape being hunted and are just happy to be alive, or they are kids that have been snatched up. In any case, you saw it for yourself today. These people a
re not fighters. There is a core group of about ten that do all of the nasty work. We might have trouble with them, but other than that, this place is like a Hollywood set. If you look behind that curtain, you will see it is mostly smoke and mirrors. Why else do you think that they haven’t launched an actual assault on Montague? They don’t have the manpower. This place is built for defense.”
Catie looked around. She readjusted her appraisal of this area. She had absolutely noticed that this place was big on holding a defensible position; but until this moment, she had not considered that it might be simply because they were not combat ready. Seriously, this far into the zombie apocalypse she just did not see how any culture could survive without having a certain degree of warlike ability.
Was this some sort of post-apocalyptic Athens? A society capable of functioning, but not adept in the fighting skills so necessary in this world of lawless chaos? And perhaps the whole Beastie Boy thing was nothing more than an image. Once again, she was looking at a Wizard of Oz sort of scheme. As long as nobody peeked behind the curtain, then those in the surrounding area were kept at bay by a façade maintained by a select few.
“Are you certain that I should remove Elliot from power and take over?” Catie asked softly, her mind whirling with the possibilities.
“I think my brother and I are as bad of a choice as Elliot. We would let this place go to our heads. Pretty soon I am sitting on some throne made of skulls having naked serving girls feeding me grapes or some shit.”
Catie stifled a laugh. “Given this a lot of thought, have you?”
“Probably more than is healthy,” the big man admitted with a shrug. “I was a huge fan of the classic Conan movie. I always wanted to be like Ah-nold. That would be me, only, he was sort of the good guy in that movie. I would be what happened a few years later. That ending image of him on that throne? My brother said that the books were even better, but I enjoyed the version my mind came up with over having somebody ruin it for me with words and stuff.”
“We will have to have a talk someday about how you need to expand your mind, but for now, I have to think on this.” Catie headed for the former Marriott. While she saw activity scattered about in a few of the downtown Chattanooga buildings, this one had more than the others by far. If this was indeed the truest example of the citizens of this community, then she needed to take the pulse.
Marty fell in at her side and Catie stopped him. “I am going on my own little fact finding mission. Having you along would probably taint the results.” The big man cocked his head to the side in obvious confusion. “A woman by herself can get people to talk in ways that somebody like you might not. This place looks like the residential area. It will give me the truest read.”
“So where do you want me to go?”
Catie explained in minimal detail about Clarence and how she wanted his body disposed of. Also, since he was going to be in the area, see what he might be able to find out about the jail. Many of the best revolutions came on the backs of released prisoners who felt that they had nothing else to fight for except their lives. Then he needed to go tell Melvin that the plan was a go.
Once Marty was headed back towards the TVA building that had been converted into a jail (or at least had that as one of the functions), Catie headed to the massive gate that secured the residential building. She was directed to the side where a rope ladder was in place and soon found herself in the stairwell. When she reached the first floor that was actually occupied—the fifth—she was almost run over by two children between the ages of seven and ten (she could not really tell) who exploded from a doorway in a rather spirited game of tag that was more of a tackle version.
“You cheated, Stephanie!” the smaller of the two hollered as he picked himself up from being shouldered rather hard into the left-hand wall.
“Did not, Danny the dummy!” the girl, Stephanie apparently, crowed as she skipped backwards down the hall and darted down the first intersection and disappeared from sight with little Danny doing his best to give chase.
Resuming her journey down the corridor, she glanced into the still open door on her right where the children had burst from to discover a toddler making unsteady steps for the open door without a stitch of clothing. The little girl was almost to the door when a young woman rushed around the corner.
“Sarah Jean, get you—” the woman’s voice choked off abruptly when she saw Catie standing there. “Oh, sorry.”
Without another word, the woman grabbed the child into her arms and shut the door with a slam that reverberated up the now vacant hallway. Catie considered knocking on the door to tell the stranger about the two that had gotten away and then decided against it.
By the time that she had made a full circuit of the floor, she had only encountered one other person. A man who looked to be in his forties exited one room and walked past her in the hall, giving a polite but brief nod of acknowledgement as he passed. She had mostly the same experience on the next three floors minus the two children and their spirited little chase. She had no reason to expect anything different when she opened the door to the ninth floor.
“Can I help you, hun?” an elderly lady said from her doorway—the first door on the right as she entered.
“I’m just sort of taking a tour.” Catie tried to paste on her most harmless and friendly smile.
“You are just sort of scaring the crap out of everybody,” the woman retorted.
“Excuse me?”
“You have prowled each floor below this one, pausing to look into any open door that you pass and generally putting folks in a tizzy.”
Catie made it a point to look at this woman instead of trying to see past her into the room beyond. Easily the oldest woman that Catie had seen in a long while, she honestly would not be surprised if this person claimed to be a hundred years old. Her dark skin was laced with wrinkles that looked more like crevices. She was wearing a simple white frock with short sleeves and her bare arms were showing the effects of a lost battle with gravity as the flesh hung down and actually swayed when the woman made a point of folding her hands in her lap. She was in a wheel chair, her bare feet resting in the foot plates with some of the most hideous yellowed toenails that Catie had ever seen.
“Drink it all in, Tootsie Roll,” the woman cackled. “You might be a pretty thing today, but we all end up like this sooner or later.”
“Sorry,” Catie apologized when she realized that she had gone from observing to openly gawking at this woman.
“Psshah!” the woman made a dismissive wave of her hand. “You part of them folks was brought in late last night?”
“Yes,” Catie admitted.
“How come you are the only one scoping out for a room? The rest not survive the needle?”
“No, there are others. I guess I am just the first one to be interested in where I might be calling home.”
“Don’t normally see newcomers allowed to just mosey about by themselves.” The old woman leaned back in her wheel chair and gave Catie a full up and down appraisal of her own. “And you look like you belong more with the ruffians than you do here in the general housing. But what do I know? I’m just an old woman.” Suddenly, her face lit up in a toothless smile and she smacked her lips together and gave her forehead a light slap with one hand. “Where the blazes are my manners? My name is Abagail Jones.”
The hand that took Catie’s and shook it was cool and the skin was as dry as it looked. Still, despite her age, Abagail’s grip was plenty firm.
“Catie Dreon, pleased to meet you.”
“Yeah…we’ll see about that,” the old woman cackled and pushed back from the door and into her apartment.
Catie looked around. It did not seem that much different than any hotel, although she doubted the Marriott would ever allow the furniture and linens to fall into such disrepair. The window was open and let in a nice breeze as well as plenty of sunlight. There was also a crossbow on the table with a case beside it that she had to imagine contained bolts f
or the crossbow.
There was a little portable grill on the table as well, and something wrapped in what looked like aluminum foil was on it at the moment. When Catie got closer she could smell something laced with garlic.
“Just sittin’ down for my lunch. It ain’t much, but I seldom eat it all anyways.” The woman rolled over and removed the foil pouch with her bare hands and opened it to reveal some sort of fish.
Catie sat down and allowed the conversation to flow wherever Abagail took it. She heard exactly what she was hoping to hear and thanked the gods that, just this once, Abagail Jones proved to be a movie stereotype: the “town” gossip. It seemed that there was very little that this woman did not know when it came to the personal lives of the tenants of this building. Even better, she enjoyed sitting at her window at all hours of the night to see people coming and going on various errands.
She is right out of the movies, Kevin, Catie thought as she nibbled at the dry, bland fish while sipping tepid water.
“…and those three boys weren’t carrying nothin’ but a few metal garbage can lids, but with the ruckus they was makin’, you’d a thought there were fifty men in armor stomping down the street,” Abagail finished this last tale with her dry cackle and a clap of her hands.
“So you say the last herd came through about three weeks ago and those three re-directed it straight through your own town on the way to one of the other communities nearby?” Catie was pretty sure she had heard it all correctly, but she just wanted to be certain.
“Folks been terrified to set foot in the downtown area since this whole thing began. Lotta bad thing happened, not too many folks that was in this area managed to survive. This is hiding in plain sight. None of them other communities send people out to these parts, and we make sure to lead a few hundred of them things through town every so often just to make it look like they are still around. Truth is, ain’t been many of them in these parts since after about the first year or so.” Abagail’s voice grew distant. There was a haunted quality to it now, and Catie knew the woman was reliving some past horrors.