Badlands Trilogy (Novella): Redemption In the Badlands

by Jarrett, Brian J.

  “What happened exactly?” Dan asked. “As long as you want to tell me.”

  “I don’t want to as much as I think I need to.”

  “I’m happy to listen.”

  “They made me go to a shrink, but I stonewalled that guy. I already knew enough of their tricks. And I refused to go to the chaplain or priest or whatever that guy was called. I met him once, and he was a self-righteous asshole.” She looked Dan in the eye. “I asked you yesterday what the worst thing is you’ve ever done. Remember that?”

  Dan nodded.

  “The worst thing I ever did? I killed a priest.”

  “You mean like in cold blood?”

  “Some people said it was. They said a lot of things. But I know it was justice. The guy had it coming. You can’t let people get away with doing bad things, Dan. You just can’t.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He did stuff to my boy. Bad things. I’d heard of things like this, but not at our church, you know? That stuff happened somewhere else. But that’s where I was wrong, you see? Dead wrong, because it happened right under my nose.”

  Lilly leaned forward, meeting Dan’s eyes with an intensity he’d not see before from her. “He took my little boy’s innocence, Dan. He stole something from him that he could never get back again. He violated him.”

  “That’s terrible,” Dan said, but the words sounded small coming out of his mouth.

  Lilly leaned back in the chair. “I lost my shit. I admit that. I tried the system, and the courts failed us. They failed my boy. My sweet, sweet boy. The church brass shipped the asshole who raped my son off to another parish so he could do it all over again to somebody else’s baby. You see why I couldn’t let that happen, don’t you?”

  Dan nodded.

  “Even though they tried to sweep it under the rug, even as they tried to hide him in plain sight, I found him. It took some digging, but he turned up. So I followed him. And there, sitting in my car outside his new church, I watched him shake people’s hands on their way out after mass. I watched him smile and nod, pretending he wasn’t a monster.

  “I saw a young couple with a little boy around my son’s age come out of the church. The mother held the little boy’s hand. You know, the way a parent protects their child? You hold their hand to keep them from running out into the street or being snatched away by a predator. But there she stood, with the world’s worst predator standing only two feet from her and she had no fucking clue.

  “But that wasn’t the worst part, Dan. The worst part came when the bastard touched the boy. Just a touch on the cheek that nobody would think anything of, but my skin crawled because I knew. I knew what that motherfucker did. That’s when I decided I had to do something. The church and the system might have failed, but I wasn’t about to fail my son too.”

  Lilly stared at the empty bowl on the table, absently touching the rim with her index finger. Dan listened quietly.

  “Do you know how easy it is to kill someone, Dan? Let me tell you, it’s easy, especially when they don’t see it coming.” Lilly looked up from the bowl, her eyes misty. “So you tell me…is that your definition of cold blood?”

  Dan considered the question. “You know he was guilty? I mean, for sure?”

  Lilly nodded. “They weren’t able to keep things quiet after I killed the guy. More victims came forward. Lots of them. Turned out he had a long string of churches in his past. A parade of little kids everywhere he went. And then they found the pictures, and it was open and shut.”

  Dan nodded.

  “They gave me three years. Involuntary manslaughter. My lawyer argued I was so distraught that I didn’t know what I was doing when I shot him in the back of the head. I went along with it, but I never believed it. I think I knew what I was doing.” She gave him a sad sort of grin. “But crazy people don’t know they’re crazy, right? So maybe I was insane after all. Maybe I still am.”

  “You’re not crazy,” Dan said.

  “I was two years into my sentence when the virus hit. People were dying all around me, and I couldn’t get a single goddamn phone call to see if my family was okay. I wasn’t sick yet, but I knew I was going to die in that cell one way or another. But then one of the guards I knew—a house of a woman named Nia—she let me out of my cell. Nia was sick by then, but not completely gone yet. She knew what I’d done. I guess you could say she was a supporter. She let me go and somehow I made it out of that prison.”

  “Did you try to find your family?”

  “The house was empty. No word on where they might have gone.”

  Dan nodded.

  “The last time I talked to Timmy it was through a telephone behind a plexiglass window. I couldn’t even hug my boy. I don’t regret killing that son of a bitch priest, but I regret not being able to hug my boy before he died.”

  Silence ensued, thick and dark, punctuated sporadically by the screams of the carriers locked away in Dan’s pen.

  Lilly broke the silence with a macabre chuckle. “The prison chaplain told me that I needed to forgive the man who did this to my son. Can you believe it? A man rapes two dozen children, and I’m supposed to forgive him? I told that guy to go fuck himself.”

  Dan took a drink, collecting his thoughts. “I think the guy got what was coming to him. You served justice. You followed your heart. Whether or not he’s forgiven is between him and God.”

  Lilly met Dan’s eyes. “You’re just saying that so I don’t lock you back up again.”

  “I’m not saying I’m advocating murder, but I’m saying that justice was served.”

  “I thought your god was a god of love.”

  “He’s also a god of wrath.”

  “How ironic is it that the thing you feel guilty about wasn’t even your fault, and yet I don’t regret killing that monster. What does that say about me?”

  Dan shrugged. “You regret the thing that matters most, the time away from your kid. Maybe you’re not supposed to feel regret about killing the priest.”

  Lilly looked at him, shaking her head. “You’re not like any preacher I’ve ever known, Dan.”

  “Times have changed,” Dan replied. “Faith’s gotta change with them.”

  “And what about forgiveness for me, Dan? What about that?”

  Dan leaned forward and looked her in the eye. “That’s between you and God and nobody else.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Despite Dan’s behavior over the past few days, Lilly locked him inside his classroom jail cell again, just for safe keeping. He’d proven himself useful and agreeable as of late. That was good because she only needed another week or two until she’d be ready to get moving again. After she took a healthy cache of supplies and his pistol, of course. She almost felt bad about stealing from him, but the world demanded certain things from people these days. Besides, he had it to spare.

  In the meantime, she had something else to do. She needed to see just what in the hell was going on in that pen of his.

  His ideas around the carriers were eccentric, but didn’t appear to be malicious. She needed to know for sure, though. And there was something else she needed to know. Because if the carriers in Dan’s pen had begun changing the way she’d seen some of the others change…well, something would have to be done about that.

  So after locking Dan inside the room with a fresh pitcher of water, Lilly gathered up Dan’s keys and pistol before heading outside. After a survey of the grounds had proved clear, she headed off toward the old football arena. She didn’t like the look of the makeshift ladder leading to the top of the observation booth, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter if she wanted to catch a glimpse of what the arena held.

  The sun shone overhead now as it descended toward the horizon. Early afternoon, by the looks of things. Plenty of daylight left. She hurried across the grounds under the warm sun, feeling stronger than she had in weeks. A dose of antibiotics and a few square meals a day did a body good.

  She reached the ladder a
nd paused at the bottom, looking up. Her constitution nearly failed her; that platform was damn high. But the cries, and shrieks, and moans coming from behind the walls of the arena drew her attention, compelling her to grip the ladder and take that first rung.

  It wobbled too much as she climbed, but it had held Dan’s weight the previous day so she hoped like hell it would sustain her for this climb. She got halfway up the ladder when she made the mistake of looking down. A mild case of vertigo overwhelmed her, forcing her to clutch the ladder tightly, closing her eyes until it passed. She almost backed down then, but curiosity got the better of her again, propelling her up the rest of the way.

  The most frightening part came at the top when she had to transfer off the ladder and onto the roof of the observation booth. With her heart pounding in her chest, she lay down on the rooftop, flattening her body to lower her center of gravity and provide the most traction. A slip now meant certain death.

  She made it onto the rooftop, remaining on her belly. No way was she standing this high up and risking another bout of vertigo. She still couldn’t see into the arena yet, so she belly-crawled toward the roof’s edge to get a look, the gritty shingles scraping against her elbows and forearms.

  At the roof’s edge, she got her first look at the inhabitants of Dan’s pen.

  The smell was bad up here. The bodies littering the ground inside the arena walls explained that. Half of the carriers lay dead or dying, while dozens more wandered around aimlessly, screaming random gibberish while slamming themselves against the walls in a feeble attempt to escape.

  Lilly thought of Jason and Timmy as she watched the dregs of humanity peter out before her. Had her loving husband and beautiful little boy come to this? The thought broke her heart. Jason, who’d stuck by her through the long trial and after the guilty verdict. Jason, who’d proposed to her in a Denny’s restaurant over a plate of pancakes with a gleam in his eye. Jason, whose smile infected any room he walked into.

  And Timmy, her sweet, sweet baby boy…

  She wondered if maybe not knowing the fate of her family was better in the long run. She could then still indulge in the fantasy that they’d somehow been immune, that they’d escaped the pandemonium of the outbreak and were living off the land somewhere in a national forest, safe and sound. Sometimes, especially as she lay awake at night, that fantasy called to her; its beautiful lie hidden behind a paper-thin shroud of desperate hope.

  As she watched the pitiful remains of humanity struggle on, she saw them. Hundreds of silky-gray cocoons, scattered about like a child’s discarded marbles.

  She’d seen the things that came out of them.

  And she knew what she needed to do to stop it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The public school building Dan now occupied had once been called Elkview Middle School, back when a building’s name meant something. Back when the world taught its children because they needed to be prepared for the future. Now all anyone had was the present; the here and now of staying alive to face a bleak and short life.

  Lilly explored the rooms of the building, traveling down quiet hallways and opening random doors, peering inside defunct classrooms and mildewy closets. Most of the rooms were filled only with empty desks, moldering books, and random trash. Some of the windows had been smashed, allowing birds and other animals to make their home inside.

  Unremarkable, all of them, until she arrived at the classroom of Mr. Daniels. The civics teacher, based on the plaque outside his door. Unlike the other classrooms, the desks in this room had been lined up neatly, as if the room still waited with baited breath for its next batch of students to arrive.

  Lying slumped over the desk at the front of the room, Lilly found the late Mr. Daniels’ remains. The corpse had gone mostly to skeleton by now; still dressed in rotting khakis, a blue shirt, and a red tie. Mr. Daniels’ desiccated face peered back at her with eyeless sockets, a massive bullet hole in the skull.

  She could almost see the scene play out in her head. Accepting that the end of the world had come, Mr. Daniels returned to the place he loved. He arranged the chairs, before taking a seat at his desk. Then, gazing one final time over a classroom that would never be filled again, he pulled the trigger and shut out the lights for good.

  It was almost romantic.

  Almost.

  Lilly decided to leave Mr. Daniels where he lay, but not without retrieving his pistol first. She gently closed the classroom door and continued her search; the new pistol tucked in her back pocket.

  She searched on. Ten minutes later, she found what she’d been looking for, locked away inside of a maintenance closet.

  Not only did she find six cans of kerosene for the heaters Dan kept in the teachers’ lounge, but she also discovered three rifles and two pistols of matching type, along with a crate full of rounds. A quick check matched up the bullets to the guns. After some mental math, she figured there must have been several hundred rounds between them all.

  “Pastor Dan, you sly son of a bitch,” she muttered. “God helps those who help themselves, eh?”

  She found a cart in one of the other classrooms; one of those Rubbermaid types with two shelves and four casters attached to the bottom. Damn near every school she’d ever been to had one. Elkview Middle was no exception.

  She loaded the guns, the ammunition, and three cans of kerosene onto the cart before beginning the trek back down to the teachers’ lounge.

  Her mind wandered as she walked, but a plan was already taking shape.

  * * *

  It took three precarious trips up the ladder to transfer the rifle and ammunition onto the observation booth’s rooftop. By now the sun had begun to sink toward the horizon, promising nightfall within a few hours. Three, maybe four hours tops. It would have to be enough time; she wasn’t about to wait another night.

  She made her final trip up the ladder with the rifle hanging from her shoulder. She’d gotten good at the climbing part of this by now. Practice made perfect, or in this case, good enough.

  After reaching the rooftop for the third time, she gently placed the rifle on the roof before shimmying onto the rough surface on her belly. Picking up the gun, she loaded its magazine with as many rounds as it would hold before scooting toward the roof’s edge.

  Below, the carriers that could walk ambled about, their screams carried upward on the evening wind. Lilly looked down upon them and, for the first time in a long while, saw the humanity in them that Dan did. For so long she’d seen them as animals; predators to be both feared and scorned. But now, gazing upon the ragged remains of humanity, she saw them as the victims they were.

  Using the roof’s edge as a rifle rest, Lilly trained the scope’s crosshairs on a random female carrier. In the scope’s magnification, Lilly could see her in wicked detail. Filthy, blonde hair draped down her back. A gore-covered t-shirt still clung to her emaciated body, though little of the material remained. Long fingernails sprouted from her fingertips like claws.

  And the eyes…wild and insane.

  Lilly pulled the trigger, and the back of the woman’s head exploded in a slurry of blood and brains before she dropped hard to the overgrown football field. A flock of small birds took to the air, leaving behind their perch on defunct power lines. The others in the pen shrieked at the sound of the gunshot, discharging together in a cacophonous frenzy.

  Lilly thought that if she had to listen to that sound for much longer, she might go insane.

  She sighted in on another member of the walking dead below, pulling the trigger. The rifle kicked, leaving a tingle in her shoulder as the sound of the discharged round echoed throughout the ruins surrounding her. The deadwalker collapsed to the ground, twitching twice before becoming motionless.

  The sound of gunfire and screams filled the air as the evening wore on until eventually nothing could be heard but the whispering breeze upon the land.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Dan heard the shot ring out, muffled as it was through
the closed windows. He went to the window, searching for the source of the gunfire, his heart racing.

  He heard another shot and his stomach flip-flopped. The shooting sounded close. Too close. He’d feared an attack ever since he arrived. The previous tenants had left a decent collection of firearms and ammunition behind that he might use to defend his home, but there was no way he could get to it now.

  He ran to the door and began to pound on it with closed fists. “Lilly!” he cried. “Open up! Lilly!”

  He pushed his head against the inset window, scanning the hallway.

  “Lilly!” he yelled. “Lilly!”

  Lilly didn’t show.

  But the shots kept coming.

  * * *

  The gunfire kept up for a half-hour or so before eventually falling silent. Dan had given up on calling for Lilly well before then. Likely she was dead, or she’d run off and left him there to die. Either way, it didn’t bode well.

  He almost regretted ever getting involved with her, but the more he thought about it, the firmer he grew in his conviction that he’d do it all again. Because the right thing was the right thing, and sometimes doing the right thing wasn’t the easiest thing.

  He went back to the sealed window and peered outside. Black smoke rose up from the visible portion of the arena, taking to the air in dark clouds, blown about by the evening winds.

  He noticed the quiet, loud in its conviction.

  She couldn’t have.

  “Lilly!” he cried, running back to the door. He pounded the solid oak with clenched fists.

  “Lilly!”

  “Lilly!”

  But no one came, leaving Dan to helplessly watch the plumes of smoke dissipate in the pale blue sky.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine