by Brown, TW
I quickly shared what I had heard in the conversation between Randy and Suzi with Cricket. He listened intently, occasionally pinching his lower lip as he did so. Neither Nat nor Rodrigo seemed all that interested and were busy trying to tend to Rodrigo’s injuries. Kayla had collapsed on the ground and was little more than a lump in the grass as the shadows swallowed her.
“You need to let your people know what is going on,” Cricket finally said after a few very long moments of silence.
“You’re coming with us, right?” I asked.
“Sorry, girly,” the man said with a shake of his head. “My place is here. I got a good group of folks still willing to fight for our home.”
“Have them come,” I insisted. “Our people would welcome you all.”
“I am sure they would.” Cricket reached over and ruffled my hair. “But this is our home just like that place up in the hills is yours.”
He had no idea that the entire community was packing and preparing to run. I had not understood that response then and I certainly didn’t now. Especially seeing how Cricket and his people were willing to stay and fight. Perhaps the newest developments would convince my people to stay put. After all, the army we feared was fractured. I don’t believe they could come up against us in their current condition and do any real damage.
I watched as the horsemen rode into the shadows and finally vanished. I wondered where they might be heading. I also wondered what they had done to Suzi. Suddenly, I was torn. A moment ago, all I wanted to do was get home and tell everybody what was happening as well as what had become of Jackson. I wanted to ask Dr. Zahn if she remembered a Suzi McFarlane. I wanted to ask Billy Haynes again why these people would be looking for him; and this time, I would not be dismissed or brushed off.
Only…I was already down here. I would be kicking myself all the way home if I didn’t at least try to find out what became of the woman I had assumed to be the boss of this army. Commander Suzi McFarlane needed to be found before I just turned and ran home.
I looked over at Kayla who I could now hear snoring softly in the grass. I had pushed her hard and part of me felt bad. She had stuck by my side throughout this ordeal and maybe I could learn to actually like her. She wasn’t a bad person.
Was I?
“Will you guys take care of my friend?” I asked Cricket after pulling him aside and far enough away so that it would be unlikely that Kayla might hear.
“Where do you think you are going, girly?” Cricket was kind enough to keep his voice down as well, but I heard the urgency and maybe even a hint of disapproval.
“I need to find out a few things before I head home. Kayla is hurt. She would follow me anyways, so I need to go now while she is asleep.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe, but I would not be able to feel good about myself if I went home right now when I am so close to where some of the actual answers might be.”
“The key to that phrase is the word ‘might’ just in case you weren’t aware, girly.”
“Yeah, well, I need to do this. I am sick of being in the middle of everything but not feeling like I know anything that is happening around me.” Sure, it was probably only proving the point that I was immature and still prone to acting in a childish manner, but maybe if I could do something real and tangible, then just perhaps folks would take me seriously. Hell, maybe I would be able to take myself seriously.
“I’ll do it, but I don’t think that young lady is going to be very happy. She was a spunky one and awfully devoted to you. Her feelings will be hurt that you left her behind.”
“She’s injured. If she came, she might not be able to make it back.”
“You mean she will slow you down,” Cricket pointed out.
“That is only part of it,” I tried to defend myself.
“Just be careful, girly,” Cricket warned. “This valley hasn’t been like this in a long time. It is like the ugly beginning all over again. We got soldiers, bad guys, and a shitload of zombies tossed in for good measure.”
I gave the man a hug. At first he seemed to hesitate. Then, very gradually, he hugged me back. When I pulled away, the man made no attempt to hide the fact that he was welling up just a bit.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I have a feeling this will be the last time I see you. Something in my gut tells me that this is goodbye.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I know I sure didn’t plan on dying any time soon. I popped up on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. Without dragging this on any further, I turned and jogged off into the shadows.
***
I watched the female zombie as she just crouched there and burrowed her face into the writhing figure on the ground. It had been a while since I had heard “the scream” that was unique to a person being eaten alive. I hadn’t missed it and would have been happy if I never heard it again. Coming up to a hunched over stance, I stayed low and moved in as fast as I could, coming in with a fierce stab into the back of the head of the zombie. It ceased its eating and just sprawled across the body it had been devouring.
I yanked it away and found myself staring into the eyes of a man in his early twenties…maybe. He was a mess; besides the fact that some of his insides were heaped up beside him and spilling from the awful rip in his belly, he had apparently gotten sick on himself during the attack. Sure, there was also the acrid stink of feces and the coppery taint of blood, but to have it mixed in with the vomit that still dribbled down his chin and pooled on his throat with some of the blood, and this guy was worse off than anybody I had seen in a long time.
“P-p-please help me,” the man croaked.
I don’t know what was sadder; the obvious pain that he was experiencing, or the fact that his eyes were not showing any sign of the tracers. I tried to tell myself that I just couldn’t see them because it was night time. Unfortunately, my brain new better. He was sprawled in a perfect pool of moonlight and his face was lit as if a torch were being held to it.
I did the only thing I could think of to help the guy. I brought my crossbow up and shot him in the face. I tried to block out the fact that he started to yelp something to the effect of “No, no! Please!” just as I fired. I am pretty sure that will stay with me for a while. I am telling myself that I gave him mercy, but that is not doing much to help the twisting feeling in my gut.
The closer I got to where I’d last seen Suzi, the worse it got. Twice I had to flop down in a ditch and crawl into the drainage pipe. It was during the second such occurrence that I realized I was being rather careless. I was willingly crawling into a place where I could not even see my hand in front of my face if I went just a little too far.
The next time I had to hide (this being due to a dozen men and women moving as a group down a street and seeming to kill anything that moved), I scurried up into a bushy pine tree. If I only climbed up a couple of feet, I was still well hidden and the tree didn’t bend or sag from my weight.
At last, I came to an area that started to look familiar. It turned out that I didn’t have to look too hard to find Commander Suzi McFarlane. Apparently Randy and his crew were not taking any chances and had decapitated the woman and planted her head on a post sitting in the middle of an open space with a sign posted on that same post that announced her identity. Under her name was another scrawled message. They had used a piece of torn cloth and scrawled the message in what I had to assume to be blood; it read simply: BITCH.
That seemed rather petty and juvenile, but then again, from my brief encounter with Randy (he was what Billy would call a total douche) I guess I should not have expected anything different. Her body was a few feet away and part of me was actually surprised that it did not look as if they had done anything other than kill Suzi. The headless corpse was still fully clothed and seemed intact. I searched the pockets but did not find anything.
It seemed that this little trip had been all for nothing. A low moan from behind me made me turn. Standing a few feet away
were six zombies. These all looked relatively new and even in the waning light of the moon I could see the glisten of wetness on a few of them that stood as testament to that likelihood. While I could easily jog away and ditch this group, I did not want them dictating my course and waded in to take them out.
The first couple went down easy, but by the time I brought my blade up to jam into the side of the head of the third zombie, I was discovering that the ones not yet dispatched were so close that I was in danger of being grabbed by one or more of the remaining zombies before I could finish them off. In short, this was one of those times that presented a perfect example of why you aren’t supposed to go out into the wilderness by yourself.
A cold hand brushed my forehead, knocking my field hat off as I ducked. Another hand grabbed my collar and I dropped to the ground out of reflex. I was able to kick one of the zombies in the ankles and knock it over. Unfortunately, the other one pounced (or just sort of flopped) on top of me. The third and final zombie remaining was not visible, and that was the one I was most worried about. Not being able to see it had me whipping my head around while simultaneously grabbing the one on top of me by the throat and shoving its head up so I could thrust my blade under the chin and into its brain pan.
I shoved that one off of me, momentarily losing my knife in the process. I grabbed the blade on my right hip (always wear at least three is the norm according to the field training I went through back at Platypus Creek) and hopped over the one I’d just ended. In one swift thrust, I took down the other one before it could make it to its feet.
That left one.
This zombie had been an elderly man. I had to guess him to be in his sixties at least. Apparently my concerns for this one had been misplaced. He had gotten his leg stuck in the mud of the nearby creek. More accurately, he had gotten his prosthetic leg stuck and lost it. Now the zombie was crawling on his belly and not making much headway in the thick muck. I didn’t bother and quickly retrieved the one knife I’d lost in the fray before moving on.
With Suzi dead, I figured that there would be a lot of questions I would never get answered now. One of the biggest that I think will haunt me forever is the story with Hunter. I had been so gullible and believed that he was trying to help me. Of course, seeing the world through those eyes, I had also assumed that Suzi was evil. Now I did not know who was good, who was bad, and if I could trust anybody.
The only thing that I had managed to do on this run was endanger Kayla. (Although, in my defense, she did come after me and refused to return back home when I told her to go.) Oh…and I could confirm that Jackson was dead.
At the very least, I needed to have something concrete to return home with so that Billy did not figuratively skin me alive. That left the army. If I could actually confirm that they were basically shattered, then that would at least be something. Of course then there would be the whole thing about people being pissed for having packed for nothing, but that was small potatoes by comparison.
Staying in the shadows as much as possible and skirting the increasing number of zombies that were wandering about, I veered towards a small bluff that would allow me to look out over where the camp had been situated according to my last recollection. I don’t know what I expected; I do know that it was not at all close to what greeted me.
There were fires burning everywhere. Not the campfires of before, but instead I could see tents and carts all burning. Some of the zombies were ablaze to varying degrees and only adding to the chaos. Very little of the movement that I saw down there was of the living variety.
Somehow, it seemed as if the entire army had imploded on itself. Dawn was slowly breaking, and as the sun washed over the scene, I got an even better eyeful of what had gone down. There could be no doubt that many of the dead were due to a battle. There were areas strewn with groups of bodies without a zombie in the bunch.
I was conflicted. Part of me was really happy that I would be able to return to Platypus Creek and tell them that we were not going to have to worry about this military-based threat. However, there was still a part of me that was very sad. In my opinion, this degree of human death was as tragic as the loss of Island City and La Grande. We needed to stop doing this to each other.
I got up and turned back towards La Grande. I would try to find Cricket and see if Kayla was able to travel. Since the sun was up, it was now easy to go wide any time I came up on any groups of the undead. That last little encounter had reminded me that I wasn’t all that when it came to being a zombie killer. Sure, I could handle myself okay, but doing so alone was always a bit riskier, so why put myself willingly into that situation?
I eventually reached the spot where I had left Cricket, Nat, Rodrigo, and Kayla. I was a little surprised to discover that it was empty. Looking around, a few things started to make themselves known to me. For one, the area was pretty well trampled for just the few people that had been here. That was when my eyes seemed to finally register the first identifiable horse print in the ground.
Looking around, the area now took on a much darker and foreboding feeling. Dark splatters on the grass jumped out at me and a few spots had stains where it looked like somebody had bled a great deal. The only positive aspect to this was that it was not hard to see which way the people who had attacked Cricket and the others had gone. An easy to follow trail led to the north. At least that was the general direction I was already headed.
***
Crawling on my belly, I got as close as I dared. The horses were all grazing in some nearby grass and did not seem to mind or even really notice my presence. I didn’t push my luck and kept a respectful distance from the animals as I took a position to get a better look.
Sure enough, Randy was here, but he had a few more followers than I realized or even believed possible considering he was such a jerk. If forced to guess, I think there might be about fifty or so men and women wandering around the camp that they had set up in a bunch of dilapidated old buildings that had turned to rust in many places and even fallen down in others. A few feet away from where I had positioned myself were the remnants of an old sign announcing this place as something called the Boise Particleboard Plant. There was a bunch of other stuff written on the sign, but it was mostly shot up and too difficult to read. Also, I really didn’t know what particleboard might be and at the moment I decided that I didn’t really care.
It did not take long for me to find Cricket, Nat, and Kayla. They were all tied to what remained of some sort of tractor or large piece of machinery. I quickly realized that I did not see Rodrigo in the bunch. I felt that I could probably guess his fate. He had either succumbed to his injuries, or Randy and his group decided they did not want to bother with somebody so injured and had finished the job. I did find it interesting that Kayla was sporting what looked like fairly new and clean bandages.
As I tried to gain as much information as possible, another thought struck me: Why were they camped out and apparently settling in so early? After about twenty minutes later I had what I imagine to be the answer.
I was in the process of deciding whether I’d seen enough and should maybe head for Platypus Creek for help when a sound that I felt before I actually heard made itself known. I poked my head up enough to get a look back towards the southwest and spied a group of people approaching on horseback. Another dozen men and women were coming to join this main group.
That was still not too many for us to be able to handle, but I was now worried about how many other smaller groups were riding this way to join Randy. Looking up at the sky, I figured there to be at least a good nine or ten hours of daylight left. It would not hurt anything for me to stick around until nightfall. I was guessing that any other groups of Randy’s people out there would probably arrive by that time. Also, I would have a much easier chance of slipping away unnoticed.
***
By the time darkness had completely reclaimed the area, five more groups of varying sizes had arrived. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty men
and women in this group. They were very well armed. A few of the groups arrived with more prisoners that were bound and secured with Cricket and the others. I also noticed that they separated the male prisoners from the females. The other thing very glaring in its absence was the presence of children.
The stories of the early days very seldom involve children. Besides being unable to defend themselves, children were also considered an unnecessary drain on resources by some and an outright detriment to the chances of survival by others. Our group was one of the rare ones according to what I have been told.
These days, children are a vital necessity for keeping a community infused with life. This group’s lack of children is a red flag as far as I am concerned. To me, that is a sign that they are not planning on settling down any time soon. In this world, that points towards one thing: raiders.
As I observed the arrivals I made it a point to check on Kayla every so often during the day. The last time I saw her before it became too dark, she was with a group of six other women. They had just been given what I had to assume was their evening meal. One of the women threw hers back at the guard that had handed out the bowls of whatever was being served. That earned her a series of punches and kicks until a few other members of Randy’s people came over and pulled the man away.
I was able to see as Kayla eventually scooted over by the beaten woman and looked to be trying to tend to her. Once again I was struck by how badly I’d misjudged Kayla Brockhouse. Nothing would make me happier than returning and rescuing her from these bastards.