by JE Gurley
“So, you’re awake,” he said.
“Before I, er, passed out, you said something . . . strange.”
He nodded. “Zombies.”
“Zombies?” she repeated.
“People are dying by the millions. Thousands are coming back as zombies. You know inhuman creatures that stalk the living and devour human flesh.”
She let out a chuckle. “You’re kidding, of course. There’s no such thing as zombies. They’re just people that witch doctors hypnotize or drug or something.”
None of the others shared her bit of humor.
Mace kept his voice even as he explained. “Something in the flu virus, if it’s a flu virus at all, somehow rewires the brain. Some people die; clinically die, but come back as . . . as something possessed, something no longer human. It’s worse in the big cities on the coast. The military has written them off completely – zombie central.”
“I, I can’t believe any of this,” she answered. She stared at the men’s faces. Mace seemed convinced, but she could not accept the impossible. “How do you know this?”
“We have a short wave radio and lots of friends around the country. I’m not crazy and I’m not lying. This flu has a seventy percent mortality rate. The America we knew is crumbling. The military has stopped trying to fight the virus and has gone into a self-preservation mode. Some people are immune, like us. The military is gathering them up, hoping to use them to develop a cure or a vaccine.” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think they’re planning on using them to repopulate the world.”
She refused to believe him. “Those people in the camp?”
“The ones we saw being loaded into trucks were immune. The others, well, the army is packing up to leave, but I don’t see any more trucks waiting.”
Renda was aghast. “They can’t!”
One of the men laughed. “Lady, they can and they are. The ball-less bastards are cutting and running.”
“What do we do?”
“We watch and wait,” Mace said. “When the military is gone, we might sneak down and release the prisoners, but I don’t think it will do any good. If they’re sick, most will die and some will become zombies.”
“But I didn’t see any zombies,” she insisted, still clinging to her belief that Mace and his friends were wrong or lying.
Mace shook his head. “I didn’t name the big building the Tombs by accident. They took the dead or dying inside and killed them. ‘Euthanize’, they call it. They loaded the bodies onto trucks on pallets and hauled them like so much garbage to an open pit mine and burned them.” He inhaled deeply and wrinkled his nose. “When the wind is from the south, like now, you can smell them burning.”
Suddenly, the odd odor that had been assailing Renda’s nostrils became clear – the foul stench of burning meat. She had dismissed it earlier as a dead animal in the nearby brush. The horror of what Mace had been saying struck her like a fist in the gut. Bile rose to taint her mouth and burn her throat. She rushed out the entrance, fell to her knees in the sand and emptied the contents of her stomach. When it was empty, she dry-heaved until the muscles of her abdomen ached. The smell of vomit mingled with that of cremated flesh, becoming a taste in her mouth she could not remove. She began to sob, both at her plight and at the fate of the dead.
After a few minutes, Mace said gently, “You’d better come back inside before you’re spotted.”
She nodded and returned to the mine. One of the men handed her a bottle of water, averting his eyes to allow her a sense of privacy in the confined space. She rinsed her mouth and spat the water out before taking another gulp and swallowing. She was not fond of alcohol, drinking only the occasional beer or glass of wine with friends, but now she wished she had a stiff shot of vodka to dull her senses. If the army, the authority created to protect the populace, had become indifferent, or it appeared, hostile, to whom could they turn for protection? Between the military holding civilians hostage and the threat of flesh-eating zombies, what chance did they have? They couldn’t live in an abandoned mine forever.
She turned to Mace and found him looking at her out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be engrossed by a stone he held in his hand. “Have you made any plans for the future?”
Mace lowered his head and tossed the stone out the entrance, watching it roll down the side of the mountain. “The future. It doesn’t mean what I thought it might. These guys,” he indicated his companions with a sweep of his arm, “Are what you might call survivalists. They’ve known something like this was coming for a long time and might even be ready for it, if anyone can prepare for a zombie menace.” His quick snicker turned into a sniffle. He swiped his sleeve across his nose and continued. “I’m a hunting guide. I know guns and I know the land I don’t mind being alone, but I just never expected something like this could happen. It’s a shitty country sometimes but it’s a damn site better than any other place I know. Now it’s dissolving like a dream, a nightmare. Plans?” He looked at her. “Somehow, we survive and then we go on.”
“Go on,” she repeated. They were only two words but they held a deeper meaning to Renda. “That’s what my doctor said when she told me I had cancer. At first, it floored me. I thought my life was over. Later during treatments, I met other long-term cancer survivors and decided I wasn’t going to let the big ‘C’ ruin my life. It’s in remission now. I’m going to look at this flu, this zombie plague, like it was cancer and it’s not beating me.”
She had not told anyone else, not even her friends, as much about her struggle with breast cancer. She wondered why she was revealing her past to Mace, a stranger.
Mace smiled. “You got guts, lady.”
She returned his smile. “My gut is pretty empty now. Do you have any food?”
He nodded toward the rear of the tunnel. “Some fresh fruit and vegetables back there. Eat it before it rots. We’ll be eating canned goods soon enough.”
In spite of her lingering nausea, she was feeling pangs of hunger. She had eaten only one meal the previous day, half a ham sandwich with potato chips, a bit of salad and coffee. In the new world into which she had awoken as if from some pleasant dream into a nightmare reality, meals might become scarce. She found the box of produce sitting on top of a stack of ammo crates, chose an apple, a couple of stalks of celery and found a secluded spot a few yards away from the entrance, but still not in the total darkness deeper in the mine. While nibbling the apple, she tried to remember the faces of the people in the FEMA compound with her and found she could remember no one except Mace, and oddly, the blonde woman crying as the soldiers tore her son from her arms and wheeled him into the Tombs. If the woman had known the fate awaiting her child, she would have thrown herself on the soldiers without mercy, ripping through the sterile suits that lent them the illusion of anonymity, exposing them to the same disease running rampant through the country.
She could find no salt for the celery and didn’t want to disturb the others, who seemed to be holding some kind of conference from which they had excluded her. Gradually, her hunger pangs subsided. She glanced at the food supplies and hoped they didn’t expect her to assume a woman’s delegated responsibility of chief cook and bottle washer. She owed them her life, but she was not about to spend the remainder of it as a servant to three hermits in a cave. She decided to stem any problems before they arose. She interrupted the conclave.
“Gentlemen, as one of your little group, I want to be included in any plans you might be making.”
One of the men smirked at her from his crouched position. “This is man talk. We’re deciding what to do.”
She glared at him and kicked sand in his face. He sputtered and leaped up, fists clenched. She did not back down, leaning forward until her face was inches from his. She could see grains of sand in his eyes. He was bigger than she was and she knew he could probably fell her with one blow, but she was determined to fight if necessary. Before her cancer, she had worked out every day, even taking up boxing for the exercise m
ore than for the sport. Her biceps were still firm beneath her sleeves.
“Back down, Will,” Mace said.
After a few seconds, during which Renda was not sure Will would heed Mace’s advice, Will turned away and sat down. She stared at Craig, the man who had helped them escape, until he grinned sheepishly.
“You’re right,” Mace said to her. “This concerns you. Can you shoot?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll teach you. I’ll take you deeper into the mine where no one will hear the shots. Tomorrow night, Craig and Will are going to scout the camp when there’s no moon.”
She didn’t relish the idea of going deeper into the bat-filled cave, but she understood the need for secrecy. “Okay. They scout the camp. What then?”
“If they can, they’ll release everyone.”
“And afterwards?”
Mace smiled. “Then we survive.”
“Here?”
“No. This was just a short-term hideout in case the military started going door-to-door searching for registered gun owners. We’ll have to find a better place, easily defendable, with good water; maybe someplace outside the city.”
“I thought all you survivalists had compounds or forts or something for just such an emergency.”
Mace laughed. Craig grinned. “I have a two-bedroom trailer in Painted Rock. Craig has a condo in Marana and Will’s house is in Dove Mountain, near the Ritz Carlton golf course. We’re hunters, not real survivalists, at least not the kind you’re thinking of. We know of a few true survivalists, but they’re not very sociable. In fact, they would probably shoot first and ask questions later. To them, this is probably the end of the world that they’ve been waiting for and it’s every man and woman, for themselfself.”
“I see. What about me? Why did you choose me out of everyone in the camp?”
Mace nodded slowly as if expecting the question. “You looked like a caged animal, angry and determined. The others were just waiting. I decided you had the personality and the drive it would take to get through this. I guess I could have left you, but your face would have haunted me. As for you,” he shrugged. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to live. I survived cancer. I won’t let this . . .” she held out her hands, “this disaster get to me.”
“Good enough. You can stay with us, or strike out on your own, after I teach you how to shoot. No expectations here.” He smiled. “Did you think I chose you to help me repopulate the world?”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“Well, you are cute, but I got too much on my mind right now.”
“Good enough,” she said, mimicking his answer. She spotted movement in the distance on the desert floor and pointed it out to Mace. “Is that a person?”
He picked up the binoculars, focused on the movement and handed the glasses to her. She accepted them with a questioning look and put them to her eyes. The figure was a man, but he moved peculiarly, with quick and sporadic bursts of speed. She watched with curiosity as he lunged forward and fell to the ground. He stood holding a hare, wriggling in his hands. He raised the still struggling hare to his mouth and bit into it. The hare stopped moving. The man turned toward her and she could see the blood running down his chin as his mouth moved, chewing. His eyes were the color of blood. She saw no humanity there, just animal hunger. The human-like creature tore into its meal, while glancing around furtively, as if afraid someone would try to snatch it from him. It consumed everything but the bones. Its meal complete, the creature continued walking.
She lowered the binoculars and stared at Mace. He simply nodded.
“It, it was a zombie,” she said, finally comprehending the reality of the situation.
“They’re everywhere,” he replied. “You can see why they’re dangerous.”
“He… it… was fast.”
“Like an animal.”
Craig raised his rifle, but Mace stopped him. “Don’t waste a bullet.” He looked up. “Besides, an army patrol might hear the shot.”
“Damn,” Craig replied, as he reluctantly lowered his rifle. “I had a good shot at him.”
Renda looked at Craig, comprehending his eagerness. He had already written the creatures off as just another animal. To him, killing zombies was a sport like shooting deer. Mace still seemed to think of them as humans. He watched the departing zombie with a trace of sorrow in his eyes.
* * * *
After a few hours firing at a target pinned to a wooden crate, Renda passed Mace’s inspection. At first, even with the military-grade, triple-flanged rubber earplugs, the sound in the close confines of the tunnel were almost deafening. Her ears were still ringing.
“You’ll never make a sniper,” he said with a smile, “but you can hit the target. You’ve got potential.”
Mace’s smile of approval made her feel warm inside. His hands as they had touched her arms, positioning them with the rifle, had sent chills through her arms. He was older than the men she usually dated, though Mace certainly retained his vigor and looks. She didn’t know if she was drawn to him because he had saved her life or because she felt she owed him something. She thought his touch lingered a few moments longer than necessary, but she was glad he didn’t put her emotions to the test. He was all business.
“I have a good teacher,” she said.
His smile faded. “You’ve got to remember, we won’t be shooting game. These are, or were, human beings. You have to drive that thought from your mind. They’re animals now and they will kill you and eat you.”
She shuddered.
“Good,” he said, noticing her reaction to his words. “You understand.”
“You . . . don’t think they can be brought back, do you; you know, maybe a cure or something?”
Mace’s contemplative stare made her uncomfortable. In the soft glow of the lantern, his eyes seemed to look right through her, stripping her naked until only her bare thoughts were showing.
“No, they’re animals. Nothing more.”
Renda watched as Mace gathered their guns and ammo. He treated them carefully, with the reverence a gun enthusiast gives a weapon, slinging one over each shoulder, rather than just grabbing them and bundling them together. His respect for his weapons spilled over into his outlook at life. He harbored no hatred for zombies. He simply regretted what they had become, and what their presence meant to the future. On the other hand, he could not disguise his hatred for the military and how in his estimation, they had betrayed their purpose.
On the walk back, Renda looked at the rocky walls of the mineshaft wondered if anyone had ever discovered gold. She knew Arizona had produced gold and silver years back. The famous Lost Dutchman’s mine in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix had drawn gold prospectors since the 1800s. Now, it was mostly copper the large mining companies sought. Or was, she corrected herself. She doubted much mining was occurring now.
Will and Craig looked up at them when they returned. She noticed a quick knowing glance pass between the two, but they said nothing. If they want to think Mace and I have been going at it, let them. Of the three men, only Mace had bothered to talk to her, though both men’s eyes lingered on her a little longer than she liked. She didn’t know if they resented her presence, but she didn’t really care. She wasn’t leaving, not yet. She had known men like them. Her job as a waitress while she took night classes at Pima County Community College had exposed her to men who unabashedly stared at her ass or still firm tits, leering like God’s gift to women. Most were pathetic losers who couldn’t buy a piece of ass in a whorehouse with a bag of gold. She giggled at the thought and Craig frowned at her. She returned his expression.
“Choppers have been busy,” he said to Mace. “I think they’ve abandoned the camp.”
“Good,” Mace replied.
“There’ll be some zombies in the camp,” Craig continued.
“Free as many as you can.”
Craig glanced at Renda. “Should we bring them back here
?”
Mace didn’t miss the reference. “No,” he snapped. “Set them free and send them on their way. Tell them to find a safe place and hide out for a few days.”
“They’ll turn if they’re sick.”
Renda waited to see how Mace would reply. He walked over to his backpack and removed a machete. “Give this to one of the least squeamish and tell them to cut off the head of anyone who dies.”
Craig nodded. “What if they don’t believe me?”
Mace sighed. “If there are zombies in the camp, they’ll believe.” He looked at Renda. “You think we should bring them back here, don’t you?”
“They are going to die out there without help,” she said. She knew it would be too risky to bring infected people back to the mine. Mace was testing her.
“Some will, but they have to learn to stand on their own. Of the bunch, maybe someone will step up and take charge.”
“If they don’t?”
“Then they will all die,” he agreed, “but we can’t help them. We don’t have the provisions or the resources.”
“You could at least tell them where they can go.”
“All right. Craig, send them to the high school. There should be enough food to last them for a while. It’s fairly secure, at least against zombies. If the army finds them . . .” He shrugged.
She knew what he meant. If the army returned, anyone wearing a gray coverall would be an easy target. She looked down at her own dirty gray coverall. “Do any of you have a shirt and pants I can borrow?”
Mace glanced at Will, bigger than her but closest to her size. Will shrugged, dug through a duffel bag and handed Mace a pair of jeans, a blue t-shirt and a camouflaged, pullover hooded parka. “Here,” Mace said, handing them to Renda. “Pants will be too long, but you can roll ‘em up.”
She accepted the clothing. “Thanks.” Retreating deeper into the tunnel out of sight, she changed clothes. The pants were too big in the waist but a belt held them up. Any of the men’s shoes would have been too big. Her cloth shoes, worn out from her journey across the desert, would have to do until she could find shoes that fit. She imagined she looked like a refugee from a hurricane or some disaster, wearing cast off clothing. Then she realized that was exactly what she was, a refugee.