by Jacy Morris
The gunshot had drawn unwanted attention all throughout the forest. Maybe he was holed up out there; maybe he was trapped, waiting for his brother to come and save him one more time. He leaned his head against the wooden watchtower and closed his eyes. If something had happened, he would have felt it. Isn't that the way it worked in the movies? One brother dies, the other feels it. They were that close. They knew each other's secrets. Sure, Reed had more of these, but Chad felt as if they were pretty much even-steven on that one. Chad's secrets... were troublesome, more extreme compared to Reed's standard-issue fuck ups.
As the dead continued beating upon the walls, he stood in awe of how one gunshot could bring the dead tumbling out of hiding. Perhaps they hibernated when no one was around, just shut down like a laptop not in use for fifteen minutes, only to spring back to life once you pressed the spacebar.
He popped his head over the railing and scanned the faces of the dead again, hoping not to mark the face of his brother in the crowd. His brother was nowhere to be seen, and for the tenth time, he hoped his brother had found some place to hunker down. Then he went through the cycle again. I'd know if he was dead. He must be caught up somewhere. We'll see him tomorrow.
The people in the compound were looking to him now. There were too many of the dead at the walls. They would have to be dealt with. If his brother was ever going to get back into the compound, they had to do it soon. He had a vision of Reed trapped in the bough of a tree, the dead waving ineffectually at his dangling feet as he straddled a branch above them.
It was darker now. The glow of twilight had disappeared in the blink of an eye. The groans of the dead sounded even worse when there wasn't a face you could put to the sound. They sounded like wounded animals stuck in a trap. Chad had experience with that; for a time, that's all he and his brother did, sit and watch the animals they trapped as they tried to free themselves. He shook his head. No, they didn't sound like trapped animals at all. They sounded like the dead. Trapped animals had more urgency in their squeals, the type of urgency that could get your blood going, the way hearing a blood-curdling scream in real life could make the flesh on your arms do weird things. The dead had no such urgency, but the effect of their groans had the same effect. He rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms as the men lit the bonfire.
Shadows danced off the dusty trailers, and his people were there, looking up at him like a god. He knew he wasn't a god. Hell, he had been told he wasn't shit his whole damn life. But for one moment, he almost felt like he really mattered, like he was more than just a farmhand on some bastard farmer's parcel of land. He felt like someone with power, someone that people looked up to. It was intoxicating, but he didn't let it get to his head. That was Reed's forte. Damn, where the fuck is he?
He stood and placed his hands on the railing as he overlooked his people. "Alright, we got ourselves a problem. We got a lot of dead over here, and they're gettin' to be more than is safe for us to let alone. With all that ruckus they're puttin' up, I figure it's probably a good idea to put some of 'em out of their misery. Let's grab the spears and see if we can't make it a little quieter around here for the womenfolk."
Dale and Steve carried a bundle of spears out to the area around the campfire. Each man grabbed a spear while the women tended to the fire, their bellies big and round in the growing firelight. It was good that they were there. The men ought to be able to see what they were fighting for whenever they looked over their shoulders.
Chad hopped down from the watchtower and headed to the pile of spears. "Alright now," he yelled as the men geared up, "I only want one man per trailer. Can't have these roofs caving in, especially seein' as how we're only a few months away from winter. Hey, hey, hey, what do you think you're doin'?" The dark girl, Clara, had reached down to grab a spear before he even realized what was happening. Chad wrapped his rough and callused hand around her wrist and held her in place.
Clara glared at him and said, "I'm going to help."
Chad gripped her wrist and squeezed. He knew he was hurting her, but she didn't drop the spear. She was a tough one. That was for sure. "Drop it."
"I can kill them just as good as any of you."
Her words made him smile; he couldn't help it, and to be honest, it never even crossed his mind that he would piss her off with his attitude. "I doubt it," he said.
She shook free of him then, and he sniffed inward and looked away from her, thumbing his nose as he did. "But I guess if you want to earn your keep around here, we'll let you. You can be in the watchtower with me, so I can keep my eye on you."
She followed him with the spear in her hands, and, whether it was his own hubris or some defect in his brain that made him think he was God's gift to women, he imagined her checking out his backside as he strutted up to the walkway. Clara, of course, did no such thing. She concentrated on not ramming the wooden spear through Chad's back.
When they were on top of the walkway, Chad set the spear against the railing. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a set of leather work gloves. Those gloves had served him well for the last couple of years. They had mended fences, driven tractors, tossed hay bales, felt up Old Man Bronson's daughter and been covered in so much blood that they were a permanent rusty brown color. He pulled them on and wiggled his fingers until they became like a second skin.
"Usually, I got my brother up here with me."
"Yeah, where is your brother?" Clara asked as she hefted the spear in her hands.
Shit. Me and my stupid mouth. "Oh, he's around. Probably just waiting until we clear out this mess before he comes back in. He likes to wander."
If Clara thought anything untoward about his comments, she kept it to herself. Chad turned back towards the campfire and called over his shoulder, "Hey, Belle, you wanna get that doctor out here? It might help to have her around if anyone gets hurt." A large woman with thighs that reminded him of an elephant rose from around the campfire. She called to another woman, and they set off to roust Joan from her trailer. With those wheels set in motion, he turned around to Clara and said, "Now don't go just stabbin' around. You do that and you're liable to get that spear ripped right out of your hands. You gotta tease 'em a little bit, make 'em want ya some."
He leaned over the railing and looked into the eyes of a dead woman. She looked up at him, her arms raised as if she would catch Chad if he leaped down from the watchtower. "When you get 'em like that, that's what you want. Then you take your spear, and aim for the eye, ya see?" He held his spear up in front of him, both hands wrapped around the shaft. He took aim, and then drove the spear downward. The point entered the dead thing's eye socket, and it crumpled to the ground, sliding off the end of the spear.
"Now you try," he said.
Clara raised her own spear above her head and waited for an opportunity to present itself, but the dead creature below her kept clawing at the wall. "You gotta get its attention. Wave an arm at it. Make it think it's gonna get some dinner."
Clara looked doubtfully at Chad, but then she let her spear drop to the side. She leaned over the railing and dangled her hand just out of reach of the dead thing. It looked up at her, and it had all the hunger in the world on its face.
"There you go," he said. "It's ready." Clara stepped back and raised her spear. She drove it downwards, and it glanced off the creature's cheekbone.
"Nope, not good enough. You gotta be quicker than that."
She brought the spear back again, raised it up high, and then plunged it downward again.
"Yeah! There you go, girl! Just like that!" Clara's spear had punctured the orbital bone of a raggedy woman. It slumped to the ground, sliding easily off the spear. "Now when you do that, make sure you hold on good to that spear. Sometimes, they don't just go limp like that. Sometimes they buck and spasm, and they can rip that damn spear right out of your hands. We run out of spears and we're up shit creek without a paddle."
Clara looked at him. He could see the determination on her face. It reminded him of Dez... a
t least, how Dez used to be. He liked that look. He liked it a lot. Reed could have Joan, but this one was his. After that, they worked in silence. There must have been thirty or forty shamblers out there. It was the most they had ever seen, but their defenses had held up.
"Where the hell are they all coming from?" he wondered aloud to himself. If Clara knew, she didn't answer.
With each of Clara's kills, he congratulated her and encouraged her, secretly hoping that he was winning her over the way one might tame a wild dog. When the last thing was dead, he stood back and let his spear rest on the wooden boards of the watchtower. He pulled his gloves from his hands and reached into his shirt pocket. He pulled a pack of cigarettes free. He had pulled them from the shirt pocket of one of the dead after he had put a bullet through its head, so there was some dried gore on the package, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and he had no issue sucking down the smokes of a dead man.
"You want one?" he asked.
She wiped sweat from her brow, and in the quiet of the compound, he could see a fire in her eyes. She had the fever, the fever of killing. He had seen that look in his brother. He doubted he had the same look in his eye. He derived no pleasure from killing the dead. "Yeah, I'll take one," she said.
He lit the cigarette and put it to his lips. He took a long drag, and then passed it to Clara. "Ain't enough for me to just be giving these away, but I'll share it with ya." He marked the disappointment on her face, but she took it anyway. They stood that way in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth. When it was done, they jumped down from the watchtower. A chill had fallen upon the compound, the type of cold that made you want to crawl under your blankets all the way, head and all.
He noticed Clara's hands. The skin was shredded from the rough wood of the spear. "You ought to have your friend look at your hands. You don't want to get an infection. Not a lot of antibiotics goin' around, ya know?" Clara nodded, and he watched as she headed on over to Joan and sat next to her.
They looked glorious there by the firelight, two angels sitting in the orange glow. He stood and walked away from the light, a plan burning in his heart.
****
The interior of the camper was cold, but he heard the raspy breathing of the man he had thrown into the campfire just two days before. He walked through the gloom of the camper, resisting the urge to turn the light on.
"I'm sorry about this pal, I really am." Chad put his hand to the man's head. He was burning up. Chances were that the man would die from his wounds, but chances were things that he didn't take anymore. It was too dangerous.
He stood there in the dark, wondering what he should do. He didn't want to do it; he had never liked to kill anything. See 'em hurt, oh yeah, that's just good fun. But to actually kill something that was still alive, let alone a man... he had no stomach for it. Now if Reed were here, that would be a different story. But Reed wasn't here. He was holed up in a rundown house somewhere, probably doing things to the pregnant woman that he didn't really want to know about. He knew about Dez and Reed. Hell, he had put him up to it basically, in the hopes that maybe Dez would move on from him and find some spark of who she used to be, but she was even worse after Reed fucked her.
He knew he and Dez were done, or else he wouldn't even be in here. He wouldn't be standing over this poor bastard wondering if he should kill the man first and then stab him in the brain, or just stab him in the brain right off and get the whole thing over with. Decisions, decisions. In the end, he decided to smother the man.
He pulled the pillow from behind his head, and he placed it over the man's face, pressing down firmly, but not firm enough to crush anything. The man's arms shot out, clawing at him, and Chad suppressed a giggle. Had the man merely been sleeping? Well, how about that for a stroke of luck? The bastard could have awoken at any moment and ruined all of his scheming.
Chad stood that way for several moments, and then he slowly backed away from the dead man on the bed. He would let them find him; it was their right.
****
Joan tended to the wounds on Clara's hands, but her mind was elsewhere. Her mind was on Lou. Just before the large lady and her friend had come to carry her out, he had stirred. His eyes were damaged beyond all repair. He would be blind for the rest of his life. This was a certainty.
When Lou had groaned in pain, she had said, "I'm here."
"Who is it?" Lou had moaned.
"It's Joan."
He smiled then. It had broken her heart, to see this man, this great man knocked so low. He was suffering, but still he was able to smile. His hand pawed the air, and she grabbed it, squeezing his hand.
"Did you kill them?"
"Kill who?"
"The man that did this to me?"
Joan shook her head, tears forming in her eyes. But Lou couldn't see it. "No, we're still in the compound."
His face became grave. He squeezed her hand. "You have to get out of here. This place is no good."
Lou had fallen asleep then. As she digested his words, a large pregnant woman and her friend barged into the trailer. They had that look on their faces that women immediately recognized, that of the tortured and spiteful. They didn't like Joan because she wasn't like them. She didn't have the face of a pig and the limbs of an elephant. Despite the fact that Joan had no intention of staying here now, she knew that these women saw her as a threat. She could see it in the gruff manner in which they spoke to her. She could see it in the looks on their faces. They were threatened by her, and they would do anything they could to take her down a peg. That she was on the lowest rung on the ladder didn't matter to them; they would want her off the damn thing completely. They had lived their whole lives as balls of insecurity, and now, with the world the way it was, they had become important... simply because of what was between their legs. Now with Joan and Clara in the picture, they felt their importance diminishing, and for this, Joan would have to pay.
"Come on, princess. It's time to do some work," the larger one said. She had a face like a trailer park queen, fashioned through years of eating McDonald's and drinking Coors Light. She was beautiful in her own way, Joan decided, like one of those velvet Elvis paintings or the unnatural sheen of melted Velveeta.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Chad wants you out there in case anyone gets hurt." With that, the large lady and her friend came and lifted her out of bed. She thought about protesting, but these women could manhandle her in the condition that she was in, and there was nothing she could do about it.
They carried her from the trailer, Joan's arms looped over their shoulders while the larger lady supported her broken leg. It still hurt like a motherfucker, and Joan thought then and there that she could easily kill the two of them if it meant getting the materials to make a proper cast for her broken leg.
They carried her down the stairs and out to the campfire. They placed her in an ancient Adirondack chair. It creaked under her weight, and the larger woman, Belle they called her, brought her a stool to keep her leg in an elevated position.
"Comfortable, princess?" Belle asked this with no warmth, no derision, no judgment. She was just doing her job. Joan nodded her head. All around her men were moving, climbing ladders that led to the tops of the trailers. They had spears in their hands, and battery-operated lamps glowed a brilliant white as they set them upon poles on top of the trailers, freeing their hands up for killing.
It seemed all Joan could do was wait. In the mean time, Belle and her friend tended to the campfire, dropping logs in occasionally, and it suddenly struck Joan... this is as close to camping as I'll ever be. She had never been a particularly outdoorsy person. Most of her outdoor activity had consisted of a jog here and there through local parks, and while these jaunts could technically count as being immersed in nature, she had never been more than a mile from buildings and civilization. The illuminated undersides of trees disappeared into an impenetrable darkness, and she suddenly felt small.
"So you're a doctor, eh?" the othe
r woman asked her. Belle shot her a look that said, "Don't talk to the prisoners," but if the other woman saw it, she didn't react.
"I was a doctor," she said conversationally, seeing no advantage in giving the two ladies even more of a reason to hate her. "What about you?"
"I was a waitress. Nowhere fancy. Applebee's."
Joan just shook her head. What else could she do? Applebee's? Not much to talk about there. "What was your name again?"
"Theresa," the woman replied.
"I'm Belle," the large woman said begrudgingly.
"I'm Joan," she said with a smile that only an idiot couldn't see was fake. Neither Theresa nor Belle seemed to notice. "So how did you guys wind up here?"
"See that guy up there?" Theresa asked. Joan turned and looked at the top of one of the trailers. A man in a plaid shirt plunged a spear downward. When it came back, it shone wet in the lamplight.
"Yeah," Joan said.
"That's my brother, Keith. He lived in the trailer park where Chad and Reed lived. When things started going down, the people in the trailer park didn't know what to do. But Chad knew. He got the bright idea of getting all the trailers mobile and dragging them out here."
"The roads weren't all clogged up?"
"Plenty of road around here, Joan. You just gotta know the right ones. The highways are fucked, but there are more than enough logging roads to get from here all the way to the coast. You just gotta know the right way," Belle said, as if she had just imparted a trade secret.
Theresa added, "My brother was a logger. He knows the way, but it was still slow going. Trailers aren't so easy to move, especially not up logging roads, but we did it."