by Geo Dell
The entire world was gray. Ash was falling, blocking out the sunlight. The sun was like a silver disc, barely seen, riding the horizon. As he watched, the ash began to drift in onto the carpet. He closed the door and stood staring.
His stomach had calmed down. Whatever had been the cause of that, he was grateful it was easing. He didn't feel like putting anything in it, in fact the thought alone brought back the queasiness, but left alone it seemed as though it would be fine.
The day went on. The sun seemed to slide across the horizon rather than actually rise. The rains came back hard and the winds with them. In no time the ash was washed away and the city was back, clean, fresh looking, no dead to be seen in the driving rain. Apparently they didn't like the rain either.
Although he was positive he could not sleep, he drifted into sleep later on that day, lying on Amanda Bynes' carpet, watching the rain fall in sheets and wash across the glass.
Watertown New York: March 19th
Candace's Diary
If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind who is leading us, there isn’t now. Mike does it so easily. I sometimes think he doesn't realize how much faith people put in him.
Tom surprised everyone tonight; he’s with us now. Bob, Janet and Sandy are not. They have an idea of reestablishing the Native Nation, going back to the land. It has its appeal, and it’s clear to see they are not just talking about it. They, Bob and Janet at least, have thought it out. Janet told me later on that Bob has a place in mind. He has had that place in mind for years. Years… That is how well planned it is in his mind, how serious he is about it. Never say never, but I can’t see myself there.
Mike said he doesn’t want his T.V. Back. Me either, maybe, but was it all bad? No. When he said that, I thought of an old song, Dire Straits, with a line “I want my M.T.V.” don’t ask me why that popped into my head, but it did. Must be the musician in me. My point is, it wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t. Why throw it all away? Why not get rid of the bad stuff and save the rest?
Mike said to me later, when we were alone, that he thinks that’s what Bob really wants to do, get rid of the bad stuff and keep the good stuff, and if he does really want to do that then Mike is for it. And, really, so would I be.
So, we will leave April first, Bob with us, and we may split or stay together at some point after that.
Ronnie made a point which I thought was a good one. It could be a draw on us as a people, as Bob takes some away from us. I mean, they make it sound so good, who wouldn’t want to go? Ronnie made that point later when it was just he and Patty and Mike and me. During the conversation we all had, he skated up to the same statement, but Bob didn’t like it right out there bald like it was.
Paradise? Living off the land? Living as one with Nature? Mother Nature? Doesn’t it sound good? Living in harmony with God? Almost as if it will not be work at all. No one shouting at you… Anyway, Mike made a good point too. If we go towards a way of life more like the old world, technology, we would not be attracting the same people anyway. So, what will we have lost traveling together? Maybe people we would eventually have lost anyway, and it will definitely be safer to travel together. When, and if, the split happens, we can worry about or deal with it then.
April first… If there is no snow… If it’s safe. We still have to decide where we are going, but there is time.
Donita: March 26th
The hunger was terrible, all consuming, and it came in crashing waves. The impulse to feed seemed to be the only coherent thought she had. It was hard to think around, hard to think past. There were more things changing in her, and she did not understand them all.
A few weeks ago she had been... Been? But it did no good. She could not force the memory to come. A name came, Donita... she had been Donita; she knew that, but that was all she knew. And a name was not everything she had been. She had been something else... something more, but she could not get to whatever it was that she had been. Something that did not wander through the woods. Something that was not driven by all consuming passions that she could not understand.
She turned her eyes up to the moon. It pulled at her. Something in it spoke directly to something inside of her, something deep, something she believed had always been there, but there had never been a need to address because it lived under the surface... out of her line of thought, sight... below her emotions. Now it didn't. Now it ruled everything. It was all she could do not to rush from the trees, find the smell that tempted her and consume it, eat it completely... leave nothing at all. Oh to do it... to do it...
Her eyes snapped back from the moon, and a low whine escaped her throat. Behind her, the boy made a strangled noise in his throat. She turned, gnashed her teeth and growled. The thin, skeletal boy fell back, hungry but frightened. She could feel his fear. It fed her, tempted her to taste him, but he was no food for her. She knew that much. It was a sort of instinct... drive... something inside of her. The boy was not her food. The boy was not her sustenance. He was one of her own. Corrupted. And corrupted flesh could not feed and sustain itself on corrupted flesh. Fresh flesh was needed, live flesh. Fresh human flesh, she corrected. Whatever this change she was going through was, it scattered her thoughts. It left her confused more than it did not.
The boy trembled and grinned sickly, his one good eye rolling in his head. The other eye was a ruined mass of gray pulp sagging from the socket. A great flap of skin below that socket had curled and dried, hanging from the cheek. He felt at it now carefully with his shrunken fingers. She hissed at him, and his hands fell away.
She desired human flesh. She needed it, but it didn't absolutely have to be that way.
Two nights ago it had been a rabbit. The night before that she and the boy had shared a rat. The night before that they had come upon an old woman.
The old woman had been good. They had brought her back here, and her bones lay here still, in the weeds at the edge of the clearing behind them. She turned and gazed back past the boy into their makeshift campsite. Searching for what was left of the old woman, finding her bones where they lay at the edge of the clearing they had made. She turned back to the moon, watched it as it slid across the sky for a few moments longer, then she stood, and the boy followed her into the field. There was a town not far away. She could smell it. They would have to be careful on the way. There were others around. They fell into an easy lope, something these bodies seemed well suited to, and headed to the village to hunt.
She led the boy and herself into the small town. The town was empty, at least of people. She and the boy hunted rats for an hour or two. The rats had done well for themselves. Fat, sleek and gray, the size of a small dog. They had gorged themselves. The night made her feel alive, strong, whole. The boy followed, and they hunted, killed for the sake of killing, but it was good for the boy.
When morning came, there was not a stray cat, dog or rat left alive in the small village, and she was crazy with blood. They left the village, found an abandoned factory on the outskirts and made their way into the dark depths as the sun began to rise.
Building The Army
She awoke before full dark. One second gone, the next twilight had released her and all of her senses were fully on. It was no longer like human senses. She couldn't truly remember any longer when she had been a breather, for how long, what she had done with her days and nights... but she regretted it. She wished she had always been numbered among the superior.
She thought of it that way, the Superior Race. Because these senses, they were completely there. There was no fogginess from the sleep. None. She was alert and ready. In every way, the being she was now was far superior to the being she had been. Even though she could no longer precisely recall the being she had been, she knew it was true.
She reached over, touched the boy and he was instantly out of twilight. Together they crawled from under the machinery and out onto the factory floor.
Her eyes brought her the scent of people. Without a sound or discussion, she and the boy move
d across the factory floor and out into the bright moonlight.
The smell of a wood fire was on the air, but the fire itself was out, nothing but a low, red glow some forty yards past the factory parking lot, still choked with long dead cars and trucks. They made their way quietly.
There were four sleeping beside the fire. One of them was old, useless to her. Two were young, and one was dangerous. Female. She slept with both hands around a rifle that rested between her knees, the barrel nestled alongside her face.
Donita looked at the woman for a long time. She would like to keep her. She was strong; she could be such an asset, but she knew it was not to be. She stared for a few seconds longer, the boy behind her waiting.
She knelt beside the sleeping woman. The smell of her coming death was already a stink upon her, billowing out of her lungs and filling up the night air. Her soul knew. Her soul knew and could do nothing at all about it.
Donita reached forward slowly. One hand wrapped tightly around the top of the barrel, the other, index finger extended, found the trigger. She paused a second longer, hands in place, then in one smooth move, she jerked the rifle down, jammed it under the woman’s chin and squeezed the trigger. The top of the woman's head flew apart before her eyes were fully open. The live wire rigidness that had come into her body in that split second of time now drained away, and she sagged back to the ground, one last breath rushing from her lungs in a low moan. The children began to scream.
~
The moon moved slowly across the sky. Donita sat watching the children as they lay dead before her. Soon the power would come over them, and they would rise from death into the world of the Walkers, her world.
The boy sat waiting beside her. They had finished the woman and then the old woman. Neither would rise again.
The boy was a good soldier. The two before her, twin girls by the look, or so close to twins as for it not to matter, should be good choices too. Strong, intact. Their bodies would turn faster, as the boy's was already doing. Her own body had taken much longer, much longer before the rotting flesh had begun to change to something else, something, not exactly living tissue, but that was nourished by dead tissue. This new flesh was stronger, more resilient, self healing. Probably other things that she had not yet figured out.
The boys flesh already seemed to have made some of that change. He was completely devoted to her, unquestioning. That is what she wanted. The girls would be also. She knew that instinctively. She could smell it on them. They were meant to leave that world for this world. It was a gift really. It was so unnecessary to have to go through all the pleading and begging in the leaving of that life, she thought. This one was so much better. This one did not have an absolute end. This one could be forever. And forever could not even be measured.
April 1st A small willing army
The twins awakened from the little death just as the moon had reached the middle of the black sky. She turned her attention to them. The twins were hers... for her...
The silvery light was bright, almost daylight in its intensity. The twins did not fight the changes as she had thought they might. Their eyelids fluttered almost in unison. Black liquid eyes shone out and took in their surroundings and each other. They looked around at the darkness making not a sound and then lifted their black eyes to the moon above, when they looked back down they gazed at her frankly. Seeming to accept their fate, looking to her to guide them, their eyes large, reflecting the cold, silvery moonlight. And she realized they were not the same. One was slightly taller, a streak of silver-white in her hair falling across her forehead. She swept it aside.
Donita rose from her crouch and set off into the night at a fast walk. The twins fell in behind her, the boy bought up the rear. The twins walked obediently, quietly looking around at the trees and the woods with their newborn eyes as they followed. They reached out and linked hands as they walked, drawing closer to one another.
She led them out of the scrub and into the deep woods. The tall trees marching away in even rows. Absolute silence fell as they walked. The predators recognized them and left them alone. A small rabbit stopped, sniffed the air, and began to shake with its fear, frozen in the path of the walkers. Donita skirted it, but stopped and turned to see what the twins would do. The twins stopped when Donita stopped and looked down at the rabbit frozen on the pathway.
They moved forward slowly, unlinked their hands and squatted beside the trembling rabbit. The shorter one reached out one hand and began to stroke the soft fur of the rabbit. The other, with the streak of silver-white hair still fallen across her forehead, dangled her own hands between her thighs and watched, but she made no move to pet the rabbit or stop the other from doing so. The silence seemed to deepen. The time to crawl. The rabbit seemed to tremble less, leaning into the girls hand as she stroked the fur.
Donita almost didn't catch the movement. It was so fast. The other girl's hands flew from between her thighs and in one movement closed around the rabbit's throat, pulled it into the air and then flipped it backwards with a fast snap, breaking its neck. She threw the bundle of fur back to the ground at the other girl's feet. The rabbit's feet kicked hard once... twice.. and then stopped. A thin trickle of blood flowed from one side of its pink nose. The smaller girl cocked her head to one side, raised her eyes to look at her sister briefly, then looked back down at the rabbit where it lay on the ground by her feet. She extended one hand, touched the blood that ran from the rabbit's nose and then brought that finger to her blue tinged lips to taste it.
Her eyes closed, and her body began to shake. Her twin leaned forward and rested one hand on her shoulder, a barely audible whisper coming from her lips. Words spoken strongly, but there was no air in her lungs to move across her vocal chords.
I love you, floated on the dark forest air.
Her eyes opened and locked with her sister's. The red smear of blood on her blue-tinged lips seemed astonishingly bright in the moonlight. She looked down at the rabbit once more and then stood from her crouch, took her sisters hand and turned back to Donita. Donita held her eyes with her own for a moment and then turned and began once more to make her way through the rows of tall trees, the three children following quietly behind.
On The Road From Watertown
They had left Watertown before April 1st. Mike, Candace, Bob, Janet, Patty, Ronnie, and several more that had joined with them in Watertown.
They had fled before an onslaught from the living. Gangs that sought to take over what was left of the small northern city. They had all sat down together and decided what to do, and as a group, they had decided after two days of being caught in the middle of the fighting between the North side of the city and the South side, that it was not their war. They were simply in the middle of the two groups that wanted to take over the small city. It was better to leave before it became personal and they were forced into it. They had taken in more survivors before they had left, and then gathered more on the road. They were a sizable force in their own right, growing as they traveled across the country.
What little evidence there was of the dead, most of them refused to believe in. They had heard the stories on the radio, they found evidence of the dead as they traveled, but they had still not encountered the dead directly, and so refused to believe.
They had stopped to modify the trucks they had taken in Watertown to better deal with the conditions of the roads, and then continued on looking for Bob's ideal location for the new Nation he so believed in, driving across what was left of Pennsylvania and then turning south, down into Tennessee and Kentucky.
As they had traveled, a funny thing had happened, the rest of them had become interested in Bob's idea of a New Nation, and then become invested in it. It made sense. The outside world was falling apart faster and faster, the evidence was right in front of them. A safe place seemed like heaven to all of them.
By April first they had reached a small park in Kentucky where Bob believed he could find his way deeper into the forever wild lands
beyond the borders of the old park, using centuries old logging trails. But they had been followed by the same people that had caused them to flee back in Watertown, and the show down had come, even though they had tried to avoid it.
The gun battle had lasted through the night, and they had destroyed the group that had followed and tried to enslave them. They had taken in some of them captive too, people the gang had enslaved earlier. In the morning they had counted up the dead and missing on both sides, and Mike had sent most of the others down the trail to find the new Nation Bob believed was there. Mike and several of the others had stayed behind to take care of their own dead and to finish collecting the things they needed. They had vowed to catch up to them on the trail, or to find their way back in to where they settled as soon as they could.
In Watertown, they had not had to deal with the dead. They had not known about the dead until they had found themselves confronted with the reality of the dead rising to life, on the road. Even then, some were not convinced. They had not actually seen the dead, only nests where they had been, and so they could not believe in something they had not actually seen.
They still did not find the living dead in the light of this day, but the results were before them. As they looked for their dead, and the ones they believed should be there from the attackers, they could not find them. They were gone.
They searched long into the morning, but eventually, Mike called it quits. The few bodies they found, those that had been shot in the head, by design or accident, where found and buried. Mike felt they could do little else. They left the small campground and struck out in search of the remaining supplies they needed, before they too would start down the trail on their way into the heart of the wilderness and the new Nation Bob believed would be founded there.
April 2nd
Donita
She was moving town to town. It was so easy with more help. The boy was far stronger than any human man, and the twins more than capable of taking down a full grown man. They seemed so fragile, so defenseless, innocent. She sent them forward, and they easily took breathers with nearly no fight.