by Mark Clodi
“What is it?” he asked, a look of bewilderment on his face.
Max shook his head slowly and tried to stop laughing. Amelia stepped over to them, “Are you going to let them argue like that?”
This caused Max to laugh harder, but Stewart just reached in and unlocked the rear doors to the cruiser. Quick as a shot Seth was out and yelling at his brother about the rules. Amelia turned to go intervene and Stewart stopped her, “Hold up honey, let them work this one out.”
The other kids, not used to adults standing by and watching a yelling match, looked ill at ease and nervous, except for Cory who walked, barefoot, over to the cruiser and hopped up onto its hood, where he continued to play his video game and ignore the world.
Seth was shouting up at his brother and eventually the inevitable happened, Kenny swung one arm up and over his head and pounded a fist down on Seth's head, the younger boy ended up on his butt in the middle of the road, crying. Kenny had not hit his younger brother with anything near full force, the adults who were watching had noticed how slow his hand moved. The dog was confused by this fighting and took shelter, of all places, behind Stewart's legs, where it growled out at everyone. Stewart turned to Max with a look of 'just my fucking luck' on her face which set him off laughing again, even Tom let out an involuntary chuckle as the scene continued to unfold.
Amelia stormed over to stand between the boys and yelled at them both, “Stop it you two! Stop it right now! Kenny apologize for hitting your brother!”
Kenny looked down at his stocking feet, shuffled around a little and said, “Not going to, he was mean and yelling and Max said the rules changed.”
“The rules did not change! They never change!” screamed Seth from a prone position on the road.
“The rules say to listen to adults and do what they say. Unless they want to touch you in the bathing suit area or want you to touch them there. Then you have to scream and run away. I listened to the rules, and Max changed the rules. He can change the rules because he is an adult and he wasn't trying to touch my bathing suit area.”
“He is not the adult who changes the rules, only mom and dad can change the rules! That is what they meant!”
Kenny shook his head, “No. That is not what they said. Remember when I hit that ball in Mrs. Peterson's yard and she said I couldn't just come and get it? She said to stay out of her yard and mom and dad said to listen to her, because she was an adult and I had to do what she said. So is Max. And Amelia.”
“Amelia just told you to say 'sorry' to me! You didn't do that!” Seth rose to his feet behind Amelia.
“A bigger rule is not to lie. I am not sorry. I am telling the truth. I am not going to lie. You should say sorry for hurting my feelings!”
“What?! No!” Seth flung himself at his brother and started kicking and punching him. Kenny stoically took the blows the nine year old dished out, until a high kick caught him in the testicles and caused him to double over. Seth pulled his foot back to deliver a kick to the young man's face when he was pushed aside by Amelia, who looked over at the trio of adults still standing by the car doing nothing.
“Really, a little help here? It isn't too much to ask, is it?”
“I don't have kids. Max?” said Stewart.
Sighing, Max brushed the tears of laughter from his eyes and went over to where the brothers were arguing. Using a daddy voice he had developed over the course of ten years with his older son he said, “Seth, Kenny, stop this right now.”
“You're not my dad!” Seth screamed, trying to break out of Amelia's grasp.
“You okay Kenny?”
“My jewels hurt. He kicked 'em real good, like squashed 'em flat. I think he got both of them.” Kenny said, still bent over.
“Seth you need to calm down. Amelia take him over to the squad car for a timeout. Stop fighting and go with her. I will be over there to talk to you in a minute.”
Amelia took Seth over to the car, he struggled until Stewart threatened him using her much more impressive 'police officer' voice, then he silently sobbed and got into the back of the car. Stewart locked the doors so he couldn't get out. The three adults moved away from the vehicle to give him a chance to calm down.
“Why did you let him out?” Amelia asked, “He could have just stayed there yelling, and things wouldn't have gotten physical.”
“You have an older brother?”
Amelia nodded.
“Would you have yelled at him like that?”
Amelia shook her head, “No, I liked my older brother. But if I had he would have pounded me flat too.”
“I think this little fight of theirs had been a long time coming, the stress of this situation just made it happen now. I thought I should facilitate it and get it over with before we moved through a zombie infested town.”
“Or we could have all sat down and talked about it a little.”
“That might have worked, this was quicker. I pretty much guarantee Seth isn't going to yell at his brother like that anymore once he calms down and thinks about things. The guy has a hundred pounds and ten years on him, no way a shrimp like Seth is going to beat him down. That kick in the balls, that was his last gasp, Kenny won't fall for it twice, even if he is retarded.”
“Developmentally disabled.”
“That too.” Stewart agreed, “Call it what you want, I like the shorter words. The thing is, I have been watching and 'ole Seth here is not the biggest toe on the foot in terms of brains either.”
Amelia nodded, “I can see that. You think he is a special needs kid too?”
“A bit touched to put it nicely. Borderline autistic. With all the rules he seems to be able to quote from I think that is it. I'm no doctor, so I don't l know for sure. I don't even know how to proceed. I think the boys will be okay, but it is a lot for them to assimilate. From what I do know autistic people and change don't mix real well.”
“So you think his, their, parent's left them because of it?”
“I suspect that. They are a handful.”
Pointing at Riley who was on Stewart's heels, Amelia said, “Well it looks like the dog likes you now.”
“Fucking dog. I would shoot it if those boys wouldn't fall apart about it.”
Riley growled up at Stewart, but then stopped and cast her gaze at the field across the road. Following the dog's point of vision Stewart saw a zombie climbing the embankment on the other side of the highway.
“Zombie!” she yelled out, pulling out her pistol.
Max pulled Kenny to the other side of the minivan and shut the doors on that side, “You okay buddy?”
“Sure.”
“How are your jewels doing?”
“Hurt. Smashed 'em flat. Gonna bleed when I pee.”
“What did you say?”
“Pee blood. Hurts that bad.”
“How do you know that?”
Kenny stood upright and looked west at the clouds.
“Kenny? Have you been hurt there before?”
“Don't want to talk about it.”
“Fuck.”
“Don't swear. Please don't swear! It is against God!”
“Sorry. I am sorry. Kenny I know Seth was being mean to you and I know you didn't hit him as hard as you could have. But I don't want you to hit him again, okay?”
“I probably won't.”
“Promise?”
“I promise I probably won't hit Seth again.”
“Good enough. Did you and Seth go to school?”
“I used to, until high school, then I couldn't any more. Seth came then too.”
“Did Seth go to school?”
Kenny shook his head, “No it was summer.”
“Well before summer was he in school.”
“A little. He didn't like it much. He liked to watch television. And play with Riley and me.”
“Oh, okay. Did anyone ever talk to you about how Seth acts? About him yelling?”
“He has issues.”
“He didn't have any medicine o
r anything did he?”
“Yeah, for his issues.”
Max groaned, then asked, “You didn't have any medicine you had to take did you?”
“No. I am just not that smart. Seth has the issues.”
“Okay Kenny, I am going to talk with Seth and get him calmed down, then we will get to Tom's mom and dad's farm to go to bed.”
“Okay. Tell Seth not to kick me in the jewels, that really hurt.”
“I will.”
Then Stewart's cry of “Zombie!” rang out and Max found himself lifting a shotgun he didn't even remember bringing with him.
“Hop in the back seat Kenny! Nick, Cory, Erin and Jessica, get in the van now!” Max called out as he came around to where Tom and Stewart were watching a zombie climb the embankment to the road. Another head appeared, then another, and another, soon dozens of the walking dead were shambling up and over the road towards them.
“Drive away?” asked Stewart.
“Yeah, no point in tackling this bunch. At least it looks clear on our side.” Max said.
“Okay Tom and I will lead and keep moving until we get to Tom's place, unless something changes.”
“What about Seth?”
“What about him?”
“He okay?”
“No Seth is definitely not 'okay'. I think he is autistic.”
“Kenny says Seth took medicine every day.”
“Fucking great. We should have checked that this morning before we left.”
Max shrugged his shoulders, “We didn't know. We can talk about what to do tonight. Looks like the dog likes you now.”
“Yeah, great. Probably just wants to see what my other leg tastes like. Let's get moving before we have to fight our way out of here.”
The four adults quickly moved back to their vehicles and hopped in. The foot odor in the van was still strong, but no one was suggesting they stay any longer. Putting his foot on the gas the minivan surged forward after the police cruiser into North Platte.
Chapter 12
The army believed in getting the men up early in the morning. Bill was not, by nature an early riser, so in this instance, his son John did better with getting up at five in the morning than he did. They had sent Will home with details of what had happened to them, along with both of their baggies of personal gear. The army took them with nothing and gave them every single piece of equipment and clothing they now had. 'Street Clothing' was confiscated and, if the rumors were true, burned. The zombies were coming, and the army did not have time to deal with deserters or six week long training programs. Team building was also secondary. Bill and John ended up in the same squad because they wanted to be in the same squad, along with them were eight other men from their town, including old Ruben Olson, who had been on the town council. The old man could not keep up with the younger men when it came to physical activity, but he could still fire a gun, which was all they needed. Plus the old coot had been in the army before and had seen some time in combat. Ruben, of all of them, knew how to game the system. When the squad was too tired to do things, Ruben had a breakdown and everyone had to stop. Ruben got them extra rations by 'forgetting' where he had put his, he pulled a couple other older men into the squad against at least two other men's protests and these men too, helped the squad out as a whole. The trio of old guys wheezed and moaned just enough that the officers had pulled the younger men aside one by one to tell them to look out for the old men. Once the entire squad knew what was going on, a process that took all of two days, everyone pitched in to make things look good for the brass, just good enough to get them out of kitchen patrol, the worst of the night watches and refurbishing rifles taken out of storage.
Training was to last ten days, with the possibility of it being cut short by three if the situation warranted it. The army was not pulling them in as regular troops, but as Iowa National Guard Militia. The 'militia' part was new, passed by legislation to indicate a streamlined training period that emphasized getting troops to the fronts as soon as possible. Of course the impossible job of the trainers was to make the groups of unruly men and boys follow orders without questioning them. This was key to functioning as an army and not as an armed mob. So far the complaining and 'mob' mentality was ruling the day.
The third evening the sergeants got together and had a meeting, leaving the corporals in charge of the squads. Bill didn't know what was going on, but as a corporal he suddenly found himself in command of the squad, he kindly suggest they use his reign to get some extra sack time and the squad heartily agreed, they had been woken up at three am for simulated 'night attacks' the previous morning and could use the rest. An hour into the squad wide nap the door to the nineteen fifties tent swung open and a group of twelve sergeants came in and woke them up. Their sergeant Mike Wilkes, stood at the back of the group, by the door, looking outside periodically. Another sergeant from a different platoon entirely stepped up with a laptop computer. He looked around at the half asleep men, all of whom had jumped up and stood at the foot of their beds when the door swung shut and said, “Alright soldiers. I expect to have less trouble with you than with some of the other squads. corporal, gather your men around so they can watch this.”
“Come on men, you heard the sergeant, let's take a look!” the men all moved forward to stand in front of the computer screen. The sergeant sat it on a stool and gestured for the men to sit down.
“We have some preliminary feedback from army units that have taken some 'volunteers' in with them at the front. This is out east. These men had three days training and were thrown at the front lines. Look what happens when they don't obey orders.”
What happened was a group of men, probably two platoons from what Bill could see, ran into a bunch of zombies. At first everything was going well for the humans, the zombies were being mowed down like wheat. Then the camera panned to the right flank where a non commissioned officer was telling the men to keep firing, but one man's rifle had jammed and he got scared and turned to flee. The sergeant ordered him to stop and return to his weapon, to hold the line. The man fled, his squad mates, still well back from the advancing zombies and still with plenty of firepower, started getting nervous. The sergeant sent the corporal after the lone man and ordered the others to pick up the pace.
The squad next to the one on the end saw two men running back and one of them immediately bolted, despite being ordered to hold the line. The camera panned back out to the approaching undead, there were still a lot of them, hundreds, but with the rate they were being hit the remaining soldiers could have handled them easily. Easily if the humans hadn't ran away. In the end half the soldiers there, about forty, were overrun because the other half had fled. The camera man was on some sort of vehicle and had filmed until the very end, firing his pistol as the zombies brought him down. The footage was graphic and violent, but nothing the men had not seen before in the course of their training. The short clip ended and the nameless sergeant pointed his finger at John and barked, “What happened here soldier?”
“Uh, the men ran away when they should have stayed?”
Bill cringed, he had learned that the sergeants hated nothing more than an answer that was phrased as a question, this one went easy on his boy and responded, “Is that an answer or a question? I asked what happened? Use your head man, this could be you out there!'
“The men disobeyed orders to hold the line and ran away. This resulted in high casualties that could have been avoided if they had just done what they were told to do.”
“Better. More mistakes than that were made here. You!” the sergeant pointed at a middle aged man name Gene, “What else went wrong?'
“When half the men left the officers didn't pull the rest of the men back.”
“Very good. You!” Ruben was the next target, “What would you have done if you were in command and the men started to run away?”
“Me? Well the non-comms tried to hold too much line, I think if they would have stepped back about fifty feet and re-formed into a tig
hter formation they could have still won.”
“Very good. Finally you!” the sergeant pointed at Bill, “Why are we showing you this?”
Bill thought for a moment, then said “Because you don't want to die and you don't want us to die. Following orders saves lives.”
The sergeant laughed, “What's your name corporal?”
“Bill Carson.”
“Mike, you got a thinker in this one, watch him close! Following orders is paramount to success. You might not always understand why you are ordered to do what you have to do, but you need to do it. When the situation changes, becomes more challenging than expected, we have to change with it, sometimes quickly. There were mistakes made here, first and worst, were the men running away, if that could have been stopped this would just be more news footage of our success. Second was a lack of flexibility of the commander in charge to pull back his troops and re-group or, yes, retreat. We lost forty men out there and these are men we needed too, men who should have followed orders, so that hurts even more. Do you know what happened to the first man who ran away?”
The squad shook their heads, but all of them felt a tightening in their stomachs.
“He was executed as an example to the other men in his squad. His weapon failed him and he failed his squad by not being able to clear a simple jam. And forty men died. Make that forty-one. We are not here to make your lives miserable, we are here to teach you to operate your rifles, follow orders and stay alive. Why are we doing this now corporal Carson?”
“There has been some grumbling in the ranks lately. Complaints about food and training.”
“And the legality of our drafting you to serve. There have also been squads that haven't been pulling their weight, using various members to get out of their share of the duties assigned to them and we can't have that. Everyone needs to do their best, not just the younger, more fit for duty squads. Your group has more than its share of old men, but you are not the only ones suffering with old soldiers. We have seven more days of training and I plan to use them to their fullest. You will go out and fight the enemy, you will beat them and you will return home to your lives as quickly as you make it happen. There are no more activities planned for the evening, your squad needs to think about what I have said and get some extra sack time. Carson, come with us outside.”