by Geo Dell
“Fucker,” she screamed into the fire lit night, “Fucker! That will teach you!”
The shed blew up with a soft Whump! And Duffy stopped screaming.
She walked back to the Jeep. Her head was pounding. Maybe, she told herself, she could leave off all of this. It really wasn't her fault. It really wasn't her fight. Maybe she could just get into that Jeep and keep heading south, let those crazy bastards settle in the woods. To hell with them.
She picked up the radio from the seat beside her. She flipped it to the on position and sat listening to the smooth static. She pressed the talk button down.
“Hey,” she said. “Hey are you guys there?”
Silence. And then...
“Lilly? Is that you Lilly?”
She didn't know the voice, or who Lilly was.
“Nooooo,” she said. Her head was killing her.
“Chloe,” she told the voice. “I don't know if you know me.”
The voice came back. “I know who you are, Chloe. What do you want?”
“You guys worried about me?” She asked.
Silence.
“Are you?” she asked again. “Because if you are, you ain't got to be. I'm going. I'm done with this, you know? I just wanted to say that,” she said.
“Chloe, we could talk about this. You could come with us,” the man's voice said.
“Nope,” Chloe said. She turned the radio off and then tossed it out onto the asphalt.
She shifted the Jeep into drive and idled her way out to the highway. Behind her, the wooden shack continued to burn.
~Donita - A mile east~
They were thirty now, and there were a half dozen laying on the ground who would be coming up out of twilight any minute. Killers, or they had been in the old world. Being dead took the killer out of you. At least at first it did. But then it came back. You forgot all the little things in the old life. You nearly forgot your name, where you had lived, what you had done. And then it changed. Every day, you got a little more back. It wasn't exactly a memory like a memory would be in the old days, like a breather would have. It was more like found knowledge. Not there one second, and then there the next. But it was clearer than the old memories she once had.
Donita didn't question whether that found knowledge was true or not. It didn't matter. Just like it wouldn't matter to these. What would matter to these was getting through the first bit of time, that time where heat still seemed like the only possible source of life, and you struggled to find it, only to realize it did nothing for you any longer at all. In fact, it could kill you.
Then the cold came upon you, found you, along with its understanding, and you were fine. You began to understand that life was just a short stop on the way to dead and that dead was just a way station to walking. And walking could be forever. Walking was not something as trifling as life. But that took time, and these killers would be nothing more than babies for a few nights.
There was a process. She had gone through it, and the others had gone through it. She supposed any walker had gone through it. Everything that had to do with life, heat, that world had to come out of you... sick it up, shit it out. It had to go. It had to go because it had nothing to do with walking. Nothing at all.
The dead used what they took in. There was no waste, so there was no need for a system to dispose of that waste. They did not heal in the same way that a breather did. There was no need for time to heal. You couldn't predict it. You weren't even precisely injured. You could lose a finger, or a leg, while you were turning and that was that. It was lost. But you could lose one after, and it was back in a short time. Or most of it. She had not lost a leg, but she had lost a few fingers. The horse had broken its neck. It didn't seem broken any longer. One of the twins had lost an ear a few nights before. It was back. Those things could be, but they did not depend on any kind of healing like the living. No.
She looked back down at the bodies where they lay. These were killers. For a few days they would be babies. Then for a few days they would get used to the gift they had been given. Then they would be killers again. They would be because that is what they were, and you could not change the basic truths of what you were whether you were a breather or dead. Death had its Jesus and Devil for that. Well, Donita thought. Satan and Jesus must be finding themselves with a little extra time on their hands just lately.
The turnings were coming faster. Where once seven would pass in to death and maybe one would rise to a walker, now seven passed into death and five came to be walkers. Soon it would be seven for seven. She knew that. And soon after that the whole world would belong to the walkers. The breathers would be done.
She let her silvered eyes pass along the bodies that lay stretched out on the ground.
She was not weak. There was a strength that came with being a walker, a strength that came to your whole body once you embraced cold. They had moved silently into the woods and taken these without a sound. They had carried them here. It had been no expenditure of energy at all.
Killers. Except one. One had not been a killer at all. But that one might not come back. If he did, she would have to watch him anyway and she really didn't want to do that. She would leave him to the twins to teach. He would learn their ways or he would learn that even in Un-Death there could be death. Permanent death. You could still get to go see Jesus if you really wanted to go.
She looked him over. The night was getting along. They would come from twilight soon.
Chapter eight
Home
~April 3~
They spent the morning locating a herd of cows and luring them back to the camp with a second pickup truck and something Bob had found called Cow Chow. There were several breeds of cows, milkers and beef cows and three bulls that seemed able to reasonably tolerate each other, and about a dozen calves in the lot as well.
“Two or three more looked ready to drop,” Bob said. “And we have about a dozen horses that are ready to drop somewhere on the way or after we get there.”
“The cows,” he continued, “are a good thing. We'd get no milkers otherwise. And these are young, if we keep them milking after they calve, they'll do fine for us. And, we'll be there long before those calves are done milking, so, we'll have fresh milk, butter, cheese,” Bob smiled.
“Are they really going to follow us?” Mike asked.
“I think so. The calves will have to go into a trailer. No way could they keep up, but I saw one back at that equipment place, and once the calves go into the trailers the mothers will stay with us. We will have to stop a few times a day to let them nurse, but, well, I hope we're not traveling more than a few days, so we'll make the best of it.” He thought a moment, “We will lose a few though. They'll wander off, but we'll keep the feed truck ahead, and the others behind it, cows and horses right in between, there's only the road, they'll go right down it. Same with the forest, straight lines, like a road. The trouble will come when we get to open land. They'll naturally want to graze, cows and horses both, but I thought a couple of those Jeeps, the small ones, we can pretty much herd them like that,” He paused for a second or two and then continued once more.
“We have seven drivers. We have three big trucks, and we need one of the pickups for feed. So we'll find us three Jeeps, or something small, four wheel drive, that will be us,” Bob finished.
They found a Jeep dealership on the opposite side of the little town. The smell of smoke and charred meat hung in the air. They all wondered if they were about to meet up with other travelers, but they came across no one as they drew closer to the smoke that hung in the air.
A shed behind the dealership was a smoking ruins, but one skeletal arm protruding from under a piece of rusted tin roof told its own story. Ronnie found the radio where Chloe had thrown it to the pavement. Everyone was uneasy.
They had spoken about the radio call most of the early morning into sunrise and had decided to take it at face value. For whatever reason, she didn't want a fight, and that was something they
could accept.
“This is mine,” Ronnie said. He pointed to the side of the radio case where a bullet had grazed the plastic, cracking it. “That happened during the shootout, the one that probably got Jeff,” he finished thoughtfully.
“This is where she called from then,” Mike said, stating what was obvious to all of them. He looked at the radio. Smears of maroon and a small bloody hand print decorated the back of the plastic case.
“Not mine,” Ronnie said, although it was obvious.
Mike looked over to the smoking shed. “I guess we will never know exactly what happened here, but I'd say she got tired of being pushed,” he said.
Ronnie nodded.
They spent the better part of two hours searching through the wrecked show room until they found the keyboard. The keyboard, Ronnie explained was where the salesmen picked up and returned the keys. It had to be close to the front of the show room yet not right in direct sight of customers. The mechanics and body shop guys would need access to it to.
Ronnie had spent two summers working as a body-man at a small dealership in Mobile when he had still been in high school back in Pritchard.
They found the board in a small hallway that lead back to the garage area. They took the keys to several smaller Jeeps and out of those found three that fit their needs. Cloth tops, bigger tires, heavy duty off road versions.
No one spoke much, the smell on the air, the puzzle of what might have happened, the silence over what seemed like the entire world. They picked up the chickens on the way back.
The farm store had a large poultry barn in the back. They backed up the big trailer they had selected for the calves, partially filled the inside with caged chickens and headed back to the camp ground where the others were waiting.
Candace had collected thirty eggs and found six piglets out behind the barn. It was a mystery to her what they had been feeding on, but they we're healthy and fat. She brought them to Bob.
“Those are not just little pigs,” Bob told her as she loaded them in their own cages into the back of one of the Jeeps. “Those babies will be full blown hogs come fall.”
“Good,” Candace smiled. “But how did they manage to stay alive?”
Bob laughed. “You probably don't want to know,” he told her.
“Well I wouldn't have asked...”
Bob held up one hand. “You're right. The chickens, most likely. Maybe some grain if they were able to get into the feed store.”
“Pigs eat chickens?”
“Pigs will eat just about anything that doesn't eat them,” Bob said solemnly. Candace didn't look like she was quite so thrilled about eating pork in the fall.
“Huh,” was all she said as she turned away and went back to packing things into one truck or another.
~
By the time they made it back to the camp it was early afternoon. Candace made a lunch with some help from David. Eggs, spam and pancakes.
“Eat it like a sandwich,” Ronnie told Mike as he came to get his own.
“They're good,” Candace said around a mouthful.
Everybody dug in. The clearing fell silent for a while as they ate. Their thoughts were on the next bit of time, and wondering still about what had happened to the bodies, including Jeff.
No one had said it, but it seemed obvious that Chloe could not have taken the bodies. The thought of how she may have lifted them, taken them away, had been cast in doubt from the first. How could she have carried them? And why? But, knowing that she had probably run into problems of her own threw all of it in doubt. Where were the bodies? Shouldn't they have been there? Was the body in the burned shed one of their missing bodies?
They wondered as they ate. Mike and Ronnie had talked a little about it in private, but no one wanted to speak about it in the light of day, where things like living dead just didn't make any kind of sense at all.
After they finished lunch, they shifted things around. The chickens and the piglets went on the back of one of the flatbeds. They loaded the calves and two foals onto the open stake sided trailer and started out down the logging trail.
~On the Trail~
There were three big trucks with one Jeep in front of them. The pickup with the trailer in back of them, followed by some concerned cows and a small herd of horses. The remaining two Jeeps brought up the rear.
On the narrow logging trail there was nothing much to do. The cows and horses were more than willing to follow along behind the trucks.
They made slow time, but just before nightfall they came to a wide, shallow stream that meandered through a small, grassy field. They scattered feed, put the colts and calves out with their mothers and began to set up camp.
The cows and horses chose opposite ends of the field.
“Those cows are fighting,” David said, pointing at a couple of bulls that had separated themselves from the rest.
Bob laughed, “More than a few horses as well,” he said.
David raised his eyebrows.
“Mating season,” Candace said.
David flashed red, “Are they dangerous?” he asked.
“I wouldn't get near them,” Bob said.
“You're probably okay,” Ronnie said, “Now if you were a cow or a horse...” He lifted his eyes back to the field and let the comment trail off. Everybody laughed, David included.
After dinner, Candace, Mike and Ronnie looked over the chickens and the piglets, watered them and gave the chickens some grain. The piglets kept nuzzling Candace's hands. “What should I feed them?” she asked.
“Well, like I said a pig will eat anything,” Bob said, “Including each other. Feed them the scraps from dinner and some Cow Chow, make sure they have lots of water. They'll be fine.”
She nodded. “How far?” She asked Bob, “I had about 30 miles.”
“Same as me,” Bob agreed. “We might get twice that, but we'd lose too many animals. Most likely came too fast this afternoon. Tomorrow we'll slow down, be lucky to make thirty for the whole day. Probably less.” He thought a moment. “Really doesn't matter now though. We're on our way,” he smiled.
~
He came awake in the darkness and lay looking up at the silvery moon far over head.
His mind was clouded, but seemed to be clearing. For a second there... For a second there he had forgotten who he was, or... or what was going on.
He tried to move, but his body seemed excessively heavy. That was okay though. They would come for him. They would realize he had not made it to the top of the hill. They would come back and... He tried to pull a breath and the panic set in. He bolted upright, the weight of his body suddenly not an issue, still struggling to pull a breath, but his lungs would not comply. His hands came up to his neck and then fell away slowly. His neck was a ruined mass of flesh. He had taken a bullet there, he reasoned. Taken a bullet there, but it hadn't killed him... yet, his mind supplied. But you can't breathe!
That set the panic on fire within him. He lunged to his feet, prepared to run up the hill, but the hill was gone. The camp ground was gone. He was standing in a dense forest. Others stood around him, silent, seemingly waiting on him... or with him, his mind reasoned.
He tried to speak. “Hey... I'm hurt bad. Help me!” And he did speak the words, but not a sound came out of his mouth. He had no air to drive the words, and that brought him back to the panic. No breath. No breath meant no life. No life was death. He didn't want that. He had been...
He had been going up the hill? Going down the hill? He couldn't remember. The... the attack had come. The attack had come and he was... must have been wounded... gravely wounded. And if he didn't breath soon, it would turn into something even worse. He had to breath. He had to breath soon or...
She stepped into his line of sight. The bones in her face were close to the surface, pushing at the taut skin there. Her skin was greenish-gray, or maybe it was a trick of the moonlight. Her silvered eyes held his own. Her long black hair was a tangled ruin.
The skin of the r
est of her body was pale white. Unbelievably white. So white, translucent, that he could see the spidery trails of purple-blue capillaries, veins rising and touching the surface of her skin and then plunging deep into her body, under the skin and muscle... pulsing... seeming to be alive, although she seemed as dead as anything dead that he had ever seen.
As a kid, he had happened into a vacant lot one morning on the way to school. He had seen something over in the weeds that ran along the fence line of the lot next door. There he had looked down upon the body of a bum who had either died during one of the recent cold nights or had been murdered and dumped there. His face had looked like this one before him. Gray, too pale, the bone structure too close to the surface. The skin looking more like wax than skin. Just like this... this... whatever this was.
Jeff sank back down to the ground on his knees. The cold moonlight shone down, the others still silent and standing around him.
~
They listened to the radio, and even called a few times themselves, but they heard no reply. They split up the posts, built the fire up, banked it, and those not on post turned in.
Candace lay alone in her sleeping bag, looking up at the deep black of the star filled night. She wondered about where they would end up, followed by how much she wanted a baby, how much she loved Mike. She thought maybe she should write in her journal. Somewhere in there she fell asleep and woke later to Mike's gentle touch, waking her to turn the post over to her.
She rose, kissed him softly, took the cup of coffee he offered and walked off into the night.
~April 3rd - Mike's journal~
This must look like the craziest caravan anyone has ever seen. Pigs, cows, chickens, horses and people all moving down this logging trail that hasn't been used since who knows when.
We have seven trucks, so everyone is a driver. I thought the big trucks would be the worst, but I have to admit, once we loaded them down, they were much easier to drive. And they are loaded down with every farm implement we could find, and more than that, every thing we could think or thought that we would need. Several cast iron, wood fired cooking stoves in pieces, with instructions I hope. Several more wood burning stoves. Steel buildings, seed and grain, two electric generating windmill kits, and one that will work with stream or river power. We could not find any solar panels for Tim, so those will have to do, or he will have to wait until we come out again. Bob thinks next spring, but he says it could be as soon as this fall. We also packed in trees to plant, saplings of fruit trees, vine cuttings and so much more I just lost count.