Safety (One Eighteen: Migration Book 1)

by Christopher Wiig

  I didn't exactly fight back heroically, but I didn't lie down and take it either. At some point I got a hold of my knife and struck out wildly, the blade catching flesh and coming back wet with blood. Anthony Valentine screamed, falling to the ground, and he crawled away from me clutching his chest.

  Everything stopped; time dilated.

  Suddenly I was the one in charge, and things were going too quickly for them. Nobody expected Jonas Waight to fight back, and a new plan was in order. That plan?

  Run.

  At the first sign that the tide might be turning, Anthony Valentine and the other ran. Fetch and Robert Valentine stood over me grinning, but kept a safe distance. Watching.

  I crouched, holding the knife in front of me, breathing hard.

  Fetch knelt in the snow, getting eye level with me, and I spit a bloody tooth right into his face. Valentine charged but Fetch backed him off.

  In half a growl, half a whisper Fetch said "stay the fuck away from Sarah or next time you're going over the wall. That girl is not for you."

  “Keep her,” I rasped. Fetch laughed.

  They left me to bleed in the snow. Anthony Valentine's blood was bright red in the snow next to mine. Arterial.

  (I hope he fucking dies.)

  I'm not sure how long I was in the snow, just that I woke up to a prosthetic leg prodding me in the side. It was Emmett Calton, former owner of "Em's Body and Engine" and he was saying something I couldn't quite make out.

  It may have been, "Jesus, son, what the feck happened to you." Emmett has a habit of semi-swearing, which I've explained to him on several occasions is just as bad as actually swearing. It's like beeping out the "uck" in the word "fuck" on a television show, you still cursed, you just did it while sounding like a tool.

  I spit out blood and tried to say "help me" but it came out as a rasping cough. He staggered backward, going for his pistol.

  "Em, I'm alive! Don't shoot me you asshole," I coughed. The oddness of the moment hit us.

  Emmett bellowed out laughing, actually slapping his fake knee. This is why I love and hate Em. He finds humor in anything, even nearly blowing my head off.

  "You look like you've lost a fight with a pissed off bull, chief," he said, still laughing as he dragged me to my feet.

  "Yeah, well... you should see the other guy," I said, and that set him off again.

  He laughed so hard that I started laughing and we both fell over together. His prosthetic leg detached, stuck in the snow like a signpost. Then THAT got us laughing even harder.

  Em's a good guy when his pain isn't on him. A jack broke a few years back and dropped a Toyota on his leg, crushing it. "Worst part is it, wasn't even a fracking American automobile," he's fond of saying.

  (I've never asked what country made the jack.)

  He gets bouts of phantom pain in his missing leg, and he took medication for it before the world went to hell. Our pharmacy is completely out of his meds.

  Em's told me he's got a stash of meds but his shop is two miles outside of town, closer to I-29. Horace moved everyone from the outskirts to the town proper and never let anyone go back

  Em helped me back to the store, but I wouldn't let him stay. There's something about having the shit kicked out of you that makes you want to be alone. It's embarrassing, and emasculating.

  He offered me some of his whiskey, but I refused. Pain killers won't help Em, but booze does, (at least temporarily.) Taking from Em felt wrong, so I wouldn't. I sent him on his way with a box of ammo from my private stash.

  The last hour has been hell. My dressing came off during the "wail on Jonas party" and my blisters burst. I pulled as much dirt and grit out of the wound as I could, but I shudder to think of what was on those boots.

  I was tragically sober when I bit down on a leather strap as I doused my hand in boiling water. I'm not sure if that made things better or worse, but I know antibiotics aren't easy to get a hold of, even for me.

  Nothing kills like an infection.

  My hand is a mess now, burnt, boiled and with two fingers that are likely sprained, if not broken.

  I need alcohol to disinfect my hand, and I need pain killers. I know where to get them both. I'll go back to Sarah's house, just this once.

  Just for the pain killers, pay her price, and out. I'll bring some tools; something valuable. Something even she can't say no to. There's got to be something she needs other than... Don't think about it. Just go

  I suspect whatever I bring won't be nearly enough.

  Jonas Waight

  Righty

  [File Notes:]

  The toxicology report came back on Moore. He was poisoned, presumably... self-poisoned, by ingesting exactly 22 castor beans.

  I say exactly, because I saw them, lined up in tray next to Moore's opened digestive system. It was... not pretty. The medical examiner said ten would be fatal, maybe less. We're considering this suicide.

  What's peculiar is that Staff Sergeant Moore owned firearms... several of them, in fact. I didn't spend much time with him, but from what I did, I honestly feel that if he was planning suicide, he'd do it with his weapon.

  Castor bean poisoning is nasty, nasty stuff, and from the report it took him hours to die. Not to be unnecessarily graphic but he'd have been vomiting, bleeding from

  [pause]

  several orifices. Possibly hallucinating.

  I don't see this as accidental. I strolled through the community garden today to get some fresh air and try to forget the smell of the surgical theater and I passed the Castor plants.

  The castor beans are well labeled as dangerous. They don't even look appetizing in the raw; the flowers look like fuzzy little berries with a tick sucking on them.

  So the question becomes, why would a man kill himself in a way that nearly liquifies his internal organs when a good old fashioned pistol will do the job quicker and neater (and with no chance of becoming an AO.)

  Why 22 beans? He certainly could have taken more.

  There's a large section of castor plants... apparently the oil is fairly useful. It's times like this that I miss the Internet. Books are too slow when you're following a thread of a thought. There's no fast way to run down a theory. I have to find the right book, then I have to find the right information.

  It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, and the Internet used to clear that hay like a man with a leaf-blower.

  [Personal notes:]

  The new analyst is doing fine, though I've repeatedly denied her requests to spend more than ten minutes a day with the actual journal. I'm not purposefully trying to slow down her progress so that I can read ahead

  [pause]

  its not

  [pause]

  its not that at all.

  I just don't feel that she's ready to move forward.

  For the foreseeable future I plan to utilize her in an assistant capacity only. She's not pleased with this, but she needs to understand that I'm trying to protect her. Don't want her taking her own little stroll through the garden.

  Chapter 5:

  Pills and Paranoia

  “The past is gone.

  It went by, like dusk to dawn

  Isn't that the way...

  Everybody's got their dues in life to pay “

  Aerosmith, Dream On

  February 18th, 2008

  The world is alive.

  Today I met Sgt. William Franks, a 13-Fox forward observer for the United States Army (or what's left of them.)

  The 13-Foxes were scouts for artillery and apparently had a reputation for being a touch crazy. And I can tell you Sgt. Franks is not as impressed with Greenly as I am with Percocet. I get the impression he's holding those opinions back.

  When the Deputies delivered him to Jeb, he had the entire town line up to shake his hand, everyone but Em.

  Emmett's pain has to be bad today, nothing else could make him miss a real, honest-to-God happening in this boring town.

  Come to think of it, there was no
sign of the Valentine brothers, either. Horace and I were in the same place, so it's unlikely that Anthony died (but maybe he'll think twice about tap-dancing on my skull.)

  I made sure I was standing right next to Fetch in the greeting line, and when it was my turn I reached out to shake Sgt. Franks; hand with my abused left. Pain killers make me stupid, or brave, (or both.)

  "Jesus Christ, what happened to your hand?" Franks said as he gingerly shook two of my fingers. He must have felt some kinship because I noticed he's missing his right pinkie and ring finger.

  I smiled pointedly at Fetch and then told Sgt. Franks "I fell down the stairs."

  Franks nodded, and moved down the line.

  "You're dead" Fetch whispered, and I chuckled, tapping the revolver in my belt.

  We're all racing towards dead. I've just got a little head start.

  Franks looks like someone I might have taught, a college guy. He's young, strong, and seems to have no fear of what's out there in the world. Franks has spent the past few months in a war-zone, and it shows.

  Two prominent scars run across his cheek, along with smaller scars on his neck and hands. To be quite honest, he looks a lot more like a Russian soldier than an American, with a fur-lined long coat and holding an AK 47.

  "Doesn't jam so much," I heard him say when Jackson asked something about an “M4.” (Rifle?) He touched the spot where his missing fingers would have been.

  He's bald, but not shaved. Sgt. Franks' hair has been removed with what looks like a hunting knife, and all he has left are small patches. But he carries himself like a soldier and he seems old for his years.

  Competent.

  It was then that I noticed the stopwatch. On a thin rope around his neck he had a digital stopwatch. As he moved on I caught just a glimpse of a metal flashlight strapped into his belt.

  I'm no psychologist, but Franks doesn't strike me as insane. I was right about electronics. I've got living proof now. A good reason to get to know the man.

  After the line-up, Horace and the Deputies led him off to the Sheriff's office for what I can only assume was a debriefing of some sort. It's another good reason to get to know Sgt. Franks. I still don't trust the Greenlys, and he'll be seeing a lot of them. Maybe a third person perspective will put things into... well, that.

  I didn't get much time to myself with Franks, (since Horace and Jeb are monopolizing him,) but here are the rumors.

  1) The world isn't quite as bad off as we thought it was, but still worse off than anyone would like to imagine.

  Society is essentially broken. As far as anyone can tell the change was world wide. Some cities are still surviving, but as feudal states more than modern cities. It's not a wasteland, but it's no paradise either.

  2) Things aren't as bad as we assumed, but human interconnection and cooperation are all but nonexistent.

  The world is not connected, and because of that it's every town for themselves. The Mummer, and the Dead Things are everywhere, and have been dealt with with differing degrees of success, but any organized response was limited by the loss of nearly all communications technology. Omaha and Kansas City are supposedly still functioning. But the only “safe” place is a city in Texas called Galveston.

  It's an island connected to the mainland by one major bridge, and it's where the Army has fallen back to. They blew up every other bridge onto the island and retreated there with whatever they had. For all intents and purposes, Galveston IS the United States of America (for the time being, hopefully. There are plans to move out into greater eventually, the rest of America theoretically.)

  Everything else is untamed wilderness for all intents and purposes.

  3) There IS an army, but it's not coming.

  The 13-Foxtrots were sent out in groups of four to tell people about Galveston, but no one's coming out to lead us there. Franks is the last of his unit, and headed on into Canada after resupplying.

  He doesn't expect to ever get back, he's just going to keep on going until he goes down. That's the oath he swore, and after meeting him I believe he's going to keep it.

  I've got so many questions for him.

  Is there a government? If so, who's in charge. Is there a plan?

  We aren't alone. We're just in the wilderness.

  I want to leave more than ever. A real city is out there and there's no question it could accommodate all of Greenly. Safety, not just survival. Some sort of “future.”

  Maybe.

  I'm not even sure it would be that hard if it was all of us, and we were watching each other's backs. We could do it safely if we just moved as one long caravan. Hell, they did it in the middle ages on the silk road, and they were headed all the way to Asia - we're just going to the Lone Star State.

  Just the barest skeleton of a plan has started growing in my mind. With Alex, Wendell Caroline and myself, along with Franks' knowledge of the outside world, we might have half a chance.

  The majority of the Dead Things have got to be months old, perhaps frozen and thawed a half-dozen times. It won't be like the summer, when they were fast and numerous.

  They'll move slower now, and there will be fewer of them. There've got to be whole stretches of empty countryside that have hardly any left at all. If there are cities out there that are safe along the way, we'll even have places to resupply. This doesn't seem that hard. I'm just not in the right state of mind to figure it all out.

  I know the plan is there, deep in the recesses of my mind. I can feel it forming, growing like a newborn. I can't get to it yet, not with my mind addled by Percocet and ignorance. But it's growing.

  I need to feed it with information. Books on survival, maps, atlases... fuck, Farmers Almanacs. Anything. Who knows what could be important, so it's best to just stockpile.

  And I need Franks. He knows the things I can't look up. Real experience. Horace will be done with him soon, and he'll be more approachable.

  Jeb and Horace have got to teach him to play by Greenly's rules before they'll release him into the wild but when he does I'll be waiting. I only need a few hours.

  I'm very good at asking questions.

  Ah, the pills. I suppose I should explain them. I've been so excited with the new arrival, that I got sidetracked. They do wonders for the pain but are definitely not good for keeping a solid train of thought going.

  My visit to Sarah's house this morning was barely noticed, (and I mean just barely.) I spent the night rolling in my cot, unable to sleep, but unwilling to move.

  My body ached, and my hand burned so bad I wanted to cut the damn thing off. I drank my entire stash of moonshine (for selling and for drinking,) using it to wash down three aspirin I'd been saving, but all that did was dull the pain.

  I now understand why prisoners give in to torture. Hurt a man just right then dangle a little relief, and he'll jump at it. Or at least, I did.

  I wrestled with myself all night, promising that in just another hour the pain would go away and I wouldn't have to go back to that house. Wouldn't have to get tangled up with Sarah.

  It didn't.

  It was just before daybreak when I gave in. I loaded my Dad's old Smith and Wesson J-Frame revolver and staggered out the back door into the snow, aiming it at unseen assailants. Paranoid.

  Like a thief I crept along The Barricade, my back to the wall, Willy Fetch with that fucking bat laughing at me from every shadow; every tiny noise the Valentine brothers sneaking up on me from behind.

  I had to stop at one point, just to get the paranoia under control. I was honestly afraid I was going to shoot someone, I was so on edge. Someone who didn't deserve it.

  I kept my mind busy, keeping my feet moving. I started making lists. Prime Numbers. The Presidents. Sengoku Generals. Roman Emperors. Confuse my brain. Don't focus on how fucked things are. Distract your mind.

  Left foot forward - "One, Washington, Yorimoto, Augustus"

  Right foot forward- "Three, Adams, Nobunaga, fuck... Tiberius"

  Left foot forward- "Four..
. fuck, no... five, Jefferson, Mitsuhide.... Caligula."

  That ten minute stroll to her house took me half an hour, and I'm glad it did. Fetch was leaving, arrogant and proud, and I nearly stepped out of the alley and shot him dead. One in the chest, one in the head, and one more in the head to keep him down. That's how he'd do me.

  He was carrying some sort of canister, like a watering can, and my mind twitched a bit when I saw it, stopping me from firing. That and a number of other things, but the can threw me.

  I was stuck in place trying to follow the thinnest sliver of a thought, but I couldn't get mind around it. By the time I gave up, he was thirty feet down the street, whistling.

  I let him go.

  Sarah was at the door when I arrived, makeup retouched, in a new silk robe. She acted like she'd been waiting for me.

  "Oh you poor thing," she cooed, "Come inside, mama will take care of you."

  She slipped her arm under mine and helped me stagger inside. A sharp whistle came from the kitchen and I aimed the revolver reflexively, but she forced my hand back down to my side.

  "It's just the tea, silly,”Sarah said. “Now lay down and let me bring you a cup."

  I said no, but I didn't struggle as she helped me to stretch out on a pile of cushions in the living-room. The bath was warming again, I could smell the scented oils, and I knew how good that would feel. But I needed to get in and out. In here was nicer than out there, but just as dangerous. Maybe more dangerous.

  I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of "No tea. Pills. I can pay." I dumped out my pack, boxes of ammunition and tools spilling onto her table.