by Tim Waggoner
When it was her turn to be served, she picked up a brown-plastic tray, and slid it along the silver metal rods attached in front of the glass-covered serving stations like a long chrome shelf. When she’d been in high school, the stations had been filled with warm food—pizza had been her favorite, with fish sticks a close second. But they were cold and empty now. The people behind the counter—two women and one man, all three Council members, showing that they could pitch in like anyone else—handed prepackaged food to the diners as they filed past. Tonight’s repast consisted of a snack-sized bag of chips, a container of sugar-free pudding (a choice of vanilla, chocolate or swirled), a can of tuna or chicken (opened, of course), and a Styrofoam bowl of trail mix which—as a treat—included some M&M’s. No drink. People would serve themselves from buckets of water placed on one of the tables, ladling the H2O into their cups.
Kate missed eating warm food, but the smell of cooking—especially cooking meat—drew zombies like male dogs to a bitch in heat. The damned things would hang around for days, walking around the outside of the school and moaning. Sometimes they’d disperse on their own, and sometimes the sentries were forced to pick them off one by one. It was easier and safer not to cook in the first place.
She got her food, put it on her tray, filled her mug at one of the water buckets and then chose one of the round tables to sit at—one toward the back of the cafeteria, away from the others. She ate, not really tasting anything, just chewing and swallowing, a machine taking in necessary fuel.
Most of the survivors took turns working in the cafeteria, but as a Ranger, Kate was excused from that duty. It was her job to leave the safety of the high school, go out into the town and risk her life to do whatever needed doing. Most of the time, that meant finding and bringing back vital supplies such as food, water, medicine, tools and clothing. It had been she, along with Nicholas, who had procured most of the supplies for tonight’s meal. She also searched for things that, while not absolutely necessary for sustaining life, made living in the post-Blacktide world more bearable: books, cards, toys, candy, coffee, cigarettes and, of course, condoms. Once, she’d even been asked by one of the women in the high school to bring back a dildo for her if she could. Black, preferably. It had taken Kate almost a month, but eventually she’d found one. She’d been tempted to keep it for herself, but it was a little too anatomically accurate for her taste. She preferred her sex toys to be less masculine. Not that she had anything against men. She just didn’t enjoy sleeping with them.
Kate thought of herself not so much as a Ranger—a term that Joe had come up with and the Council had adopted—but as a Fetch. After all, it was her job to fetch this and fetch that, as if she were some kind of specially trained dog employed by the military to carry supplies through a high-risk battle zone. And when the danger became personal, so personal that it got right up in her face and tried to bite it off, Kate the Fetch became Kate Sure-Shot, putting bullets through brains and making Lockwood a safer place to live, one dead zombie at a time.
Supplies weren’t the only things she fetched, though. Today she’d had to fetch Marie. Again.
Speaking of Marie, Kate didn’t see her. She didn’t see Nicholas, either, but that wasn’t a surprise. He almost never ate dinner, especially not if he’d gone out during the day. Dealing with zombies spoiled his appetite, he claimed, although she’d never seen any signs of squeamishness in him while they’d been on patrol. Whatever atrocities they encountered outside—and they encountered plenty—Nicholas never so much as batted an eye at any of them. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. People had different ways of dealing with stress and trauma.
But Marie usually showed up for meals. The fact that she hadn’t been here for lunch was what had started Joe to worrying, and Kate saw him now, sitting at a table with a sentry and a Council member, but ignoring their conversation while he kept looking at the cafeteria entrance. Joe had been the one to ask Kate if she’d go out and look for Marie earlier. It was obvious to Kate that he had a major crush on the girl, but if Marie was aware of it, she’d never given any sign. Whether that meant Marie was oblivious or uninterested, Kate wasn’t sure, but if she had to guess, she’d choose the latter. Not everyone changed what they were looking for in a romantic partner just because pickings were slim. Look at her; she wasn’t going to suddenly start being interested in men because there weren’t any other gay women around.
Marie came into the cafeteria, and Kate saw Joe smile as she walked by his table. She almost expected him to wave and call out Marie’s name to catch her attention, but he managed to restrain himself, and Marie walked past without looking in his direction. His smile fell as he watched her go. And then, as if he’d become aware he was being watched, his gaze turned to Kate, and she acknowledged him with a nod. He looked at her for a moment, as if trying to gauge whether she’d seen Marie blow him off. Finally, he nodded back, lowered his gaze and returned his attention to his meager meal.
Watching this minidrama unfold cheered Kate a bit. She found it reassuring to know that even after the end of the world, some things were still the same, even if one of those things was unrequited love.
Kate was finished eating by the time Marie approached her table. Her tray had two containers of pudding on it—one chocolate, one vanilla—and nothing else.
“I don’t eat much meat,” she said by way of explanation. Without waiting for an invitation, she sat down next to Kate. Kate was surprised. Marie had never sat with her before. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever seeing Marie sit with anyone before. Like Kate, she tended to keep to herself.
Kate considered excusing herself and leaving. After all, she was done with her food, such as it was. But she remained sitting, curious to see what Marie wanted.
She opened her vanilla pudding first, picked up her plastic spoon and took a bite. She frowned as she swallowed.
“Has kind of a weird aftertaste,” she said.
“I think it’s the stuff that makes it sugar-free,” Kate said.
Marie nodded slowly, as if she’d said something worthy of deep consideration. She took another bite, swallowed again.
“I appreciate you coming to get me today. I was fine on my own, but you took a risk going out, and you did it for me, so…thanks.” She took a third spoonful of pudding, swallowed. “Of course, if you’d gotten yourself killed, it would’ve been your own fault for being dumb enough to chase after a crazy bitch like me.”
Kate couldn’t help smiling at that. “You’re welcome.”
Marie finished her vanilla pudding and went to work on her chocolate. “I like chocolate better, so I save it for dessert,” she said.
As Marie ate, Kate was aware of Joe watching her with an intensity that she found more than a little disturbing. She wondered if Marie was aware of it. When it came to zombies, she didn’t miss a trick, but she wasn’t as perceptive when it came to living folks.
When Marie finished the last bite of her pudding, she wiped her mouth with the single paper napkin she’d been given, and then turned to Kate.
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Kate said. “Okay how?”
“The male zombie in the park today was your brother. It’s not easy to see one of your family like that.” A pause. “I know.”
In the world after Blacktide, it was considered impolite to pry about someone’s past, especially when it came to how their family and friends had died. In far too many instances, those who’d survived had only done so because they’d killed loved ones who’d tried to eat them. Current protocol dictated that you sit quietly and give the speaker the opportunity to share more information if he or she wished.
Marie said nothing more, though, and Kate knew the issue was closed, at least for now.
“I’m all right.” Kate intended to leave it at that, but she surprised herself when she kept talking. “After the first few days of Blacktide, I knew David hadn’t survived . If he had, he would’ve ended up here with
us.” Aside from the Dempsey family outside town, there were no other groups of survivors in Lockwood—at least none that anyone knew of. “I tried to find his body once I started working as a Fetch—I mean, a Ranger. I checked his apartment, the house he used to share with his ex, the restaurant where he worked. I didn’t find so much as a sign of him.”
“Even if he had died, I doubt you’d have found his body,” Marie said.
She didn’t explain further, but she didn’t need to. One good thing about zombies—while they preferred live meat and would always go for it first, they’d eat whatever they could get their hands on, including dead flesh. In the months since Blacktide had swept through Lockwood, the zombies had done a good job of removing the town’s carrion. All of it—dead humans, dead zombies and dead animals. Meat was meat, as far as they were concerned. And when they had time to work on a corpse, they kept at it until the carcass was picked clean. After that, they’d break the bones to get at the marrow inside. As a result, while there were a lot of disjointed skeleton pieces scattered throughout the town, there was no spoiled and rotting meat, and therefore no problems with vermin or disease. In many ways, zombies were like bottom feeders in a fish tank, keeping the aquarium clean by eating what no one else wanted. But it also meant no remains of dead relatives were left to be found, which in turn meant no closure for the survivors.
“For a while I was afraid he’d become a zombie,” Kate said. “I even used to dream about running across him during a supply run. I’d stand there, frozen, unable to do anything. He’d attack me, grab hold of my shoulders and sink his teeth in my throat. And after that, everything went black. But as the months passed without seeing him, the dream came less frequently, until finally I stopped having it. I figured David must be dead, that if he had become a zombie, I’d have seen him by now.”
“From what I could tell, you didn’t seem all that surprised to see him,” Marie said.
“That’s because deep down I guess I never really believed he was dead. Not all the way, I mean. We’re fraternal twins, and we’ve always been able to…I don’t know. Feel each other’s presence, I guess you could say. We couldn’t read each other’s minds, exactly, although we could usually make a pretty good guess at what the other was thinking. But we could always tell when the other was close by. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I could feel that David was out there somewhere. I guess that’s why I kept an eye out for him all this time, even though I told myself he was dead.”
Marie leaned forward, her gaze intense. “Can you feel him now?”
“I’m not some kind of trained animal that performs tricks on command,” Kate snapped. “And I don’t particularly want to become a new, interesting subject for you to study.”
“I admit I’m fascinated by the idea that a human and a zombie might share some kind of connection, but that’s not the reason I asked if you could sense your brother. You tried to k—I mean, put him down, but he got away. You want him to be at rest, right?”
Kate and David had been raised Catholic, although neither of them had been much for church in their adult years. Kate wasn’t sure whether she believed in the concept of an immortal soul, let alone a paradise for it to spend eternity in, watched over by a benevolent, loving God. Any God that allowed something like Blacktide to occur wasn’t worth worshipping as far as she was concerned, and she wasn’t alone in this belief. Few survivors espoused any sort of religious faith these days. But there was no denying that the creature David had become shared the same body as her brother, although it had been changed a great deal. And she thought some shred of his personality might remain. How else to explain why he hadn’t tried to attack her in the park? Either way, soul or no soul, paradise or oblivion, she would free her brother from the nightmare existence he was living if she could. And by doing so, maybe she’d find a bit of peace for herself, if only a little.
“Yes,” she said, “I do.”
Marie nodded approval. “Then maybe you can use your twin powers to track him down and finish the job. Otherwise, it could be weeks or months before you stumble across him again—if you ever do.”
The thought of tracking David like that hadn’t occurred to Kate, but now that the notion was in her mind, she knew she’d have hell’s own time shaking it.
“I suppose you’re not advocating that I go hunting him on my own.”
Marie smiled. “They don’t call me the Zombie Whisperer for nothing, you know.”
While being a Ranger—and what a juvenile title that was—carried its share of risk, it also had its advantages, Nicholas had found. Chief among them was getting the chance to pocket some of the supplies he found in deserted businesses and abandoned homes. Liquor was good, although often the bottles were too large to conceal from whomever his partner was—Kate, usually. Pills were better. Xanax, Percocet, Adderall, Vicodin, Ativan and Valium were at the top of his personal shopping list.
He had no use for them himself. He didn’t enjoy artificial stimulants of any sort, even something as mild as caffeine. He needed to remain in control at all times. He’d been a chameleon since childhood, wearing a carefully crafted disguise of normality so no one would guess what he truly was inside. It was a disguise he couldn’t afford to let slip, especially now. In a world of predators, everyone’s survival instincts had been honed to a razor-sharp edge. It made hiding in plain sight far more challenging but that was all right. He rather enjoyed the game.
The pills were for barter. Two of them were all it took to get Pat Holland to look the other way whenever Nicholas snuck out of the high school. Pat always made sure to get sentry duty on the east side of the main building, the same side where the groundskeeper’s shed was located. Pat worked seven days a week—no weekends off in the postapocalypse—but the Council assigned him to different shifts. Today he worked from noon to nine, so if Nicholas wanted to spend some time in the shed, he had to do it now. He preferred to go when it was full dark out, but unless he wanted to wait until tomorrow, he had no choice. And he hated waiting, hated it like fucking poison.
Everyone was in the cafeteria eating, and since all the ground floor windows were boarded up, no one would see him. And if someone was still on one of the higher floors and looked out at the wrong time, the shadows of dusk should conceal him well enough. But even if someone did see him, it wouldn’t matter. It was his job to go outside. Any witness would assume he had a good reason to venture out. And he did, although he knew none of his fellow survivors would understand it.
He’d fashioned his own personal exit soon after moving into the high school. It had been simple enough: he selected an office on the north side of the first floor, one that had belonged to a guidance counselor. It was small and most of the space was taken up with the desk and several filing cabinets filled with student records and college catalogues, but it had a window.
While the others worked in groups to barricade classroom windows, he’d volunteered to do the smaller offices. No one had wanted that job. While smaller offices meant fewer windows for zombies to break through, less space meant less room for someone with a rifle to stand guard while you worked. Nicholas took his chances, carrying a sledgehammer for protection and locking the door behind him in case a zombie managed to get inside. He created what looked like a wooden barrier for the window, but in truth, it was nothing but a simple covering that he could easily remove.
Whenever he went outside, he made sure to close the window behind him, and just in case a particularly bright zombie came by and figured out the window could be opened from the outside, he made sure to lock the office door before he left. And since he’d found a spare key in the desk, he kept the outer office door locked all the time, not only as an extra precaution against zombie intrusion, but to keep his fellow survivors from going in and discovering what he’d done.
His “secret window” had worked well for months, and—thanks to the cooperation of the drug-addicted Mr. Holland—he’d had no trouble coming and going as he wished. And he didn�
�t expect tonight to be any different.
He walked down the hallway to the office and, when he was certain no one was around, he unlocked the door, stepped inside, and then closed and locked it behind him. Even though it was dark inside, he hadn’t brought a flashlight. He didn’t want to chance any light being visible beneath the door. And once he was outside, a flashlight would be too dangerous to use. Not only might the beam catch someone’s attention if they happened to look out a window at the wrong time, the light would be sure to attract any zombies in the area. In the post-apocalyptic world, if you had to travel at night, the best way to do so was fast, silent and unnoticed.
He opened one of the bottom desk drawers and removed the gym bag he’d stowed within. He unzipped the bag and removed a black hoodie, black sweats and black gloves, along with a hammer. He took off his shoes and jeans, donned the clothes, put his pants inside the bag, returned it to the drawer and closed it. He put his shoes back on, made sure the laces were cinched tight, picked up the hammer, and then went over to the window. He removed the false barricade, placed it gently on the floor and looked out the window. There was still enough light outside to see by, and the coast was clear. No zombies roaming around in search of dinner. He unlocked the window and pushed. He kept the hinges well oiled and it opened without making any noise. He climbed through the opening and once he was through, he closed the window behind him. He scanned the area for zombies one more time, and, not seeing any, he began jogging in the direction of the shed, hammer gripped in his right hand.
He was careful to keep his breathing even, his pace measured and his footfalls light. Too much noise would be bad, as would too much sweat. Zombies hunted by sound and scent as well as sight, perhaps more so. The temperature had dropped since Kate and he returned from their search-and-rescue mission, such as it was, and the air had a bite to it now. Nicholas noted the chill without really feeling it. He didn’t feel anything unless he wanted to.