by Tim Yingling
The residential became downtown. Most of the businesses in this part of town had become run down and ran out by the bigger business district on the east side of town. Some of the businesses still stayed afloat, but that was mostly because of the people who owned those businesses. It was the same with how I believed that Kieran and Kevin took over the town.
You see, Kieran and Kevin were the type of people in a small town who could get away with anything. When I lived in town I was just like them, but I moved (Owen stayed and Bobby was already in college) and my last name kind of lost its power. But the point still stands. They lived in the town for so long, their relatives were as much a part of the name as the two of them. Although, I didn’t see their relatives anywhere as we traveled through the town.
Kevin used to be in the military as well. He didn’t last too long, though. He was dishonorably discharged from the Air Force for dealing. For the longest time, everyone thought he was dealing drugs in town. Nobody could “prove” it. There was the assumption he used his last name to his advantage.
Then word came out that Kieran began to deal with Kevin. It didn’t seem unfathomable in the long run. Owen had told me how the two of them lived outside their means. Kieran was a school teacher and Kevin worked odd jobs, but the two of them always had brand new vehicles and were able to always keep their extremely nice houses well up to date with the latest attractions. Owen had also said how he brought the brothers in on more than one occasion for questioning but were let go by his chief of police. It all comes back to them having the right last name.
Although, I can’t help but think that if I had stayed I probably would have gone down the same path as these two. No matter how hard I would have tried to make sure that myself or my best friend wouldn’t have gone down that path we most likely would have.
My thought process was broken by a sudden turn to the right. I looked up to see we were still in the downtown area, but we were heading north now. There was a lot of things north on that main street, but there was only one thing that caught people’s eye as you traveled it.
The high school at the end of Main Street was the thing in town that brought the people. The sports were among the best in the state which led to the school getting better teachers to help the students more. And from what I remember of the few visits I had back to the town before I joined the military, Kieran and Kevin still liked to relive their glory days from high school. It made perfect sense that we would be traveling to the school. But what they were going to show me on the football field was one thing I wasn’t expecting.
We had to turn left and then make an immediate right to go behind the school. As we came to the back I looked around. What I saw stopped my heart for a second. When it restarted, the anger was inside me. Now, I couldn’t see out of my right eye because of how red it was. What they did was unspeakable.
It dawned on me that something was missing in town. I should have noticed it a long time before but I haven’t. There were no zombies at all in Pilgrim. The surviving residents had taken it upon themselves to lock all the zombies up on the football field. Although, I would most likely say that Kieran had decided on doing it this way. For what purpose is beyond me.
The former people mulled around on the reinforced fenced football field. There had to be at least two hundred zombies bumping into each other, even though there was plenty of room for them to move around aimlessly without hitting another. That’s not even the thing that stopped my heart.
It looked as if Kevin and Kieran were farming the dead. Could this be the thing that Danielle was so aggravated about? Personally, I didn’t think so. There had to be more to it than a simple farm of the local populace.
“What did you do here?” I asked, not taking my eye off the field. I could see from the reflection in the window that my grimace had come back. It seemed to be as if it was going to be set in stone for the foreseeable future.
“All in due time,” Kevin said with a smirk in his voice. “All in due time.”
“I’m not fucking talking to you, ass.” I didn’t turn to address him. “Now tell me what you are doing here.”
Kieran turned right to go into the school parking lot. “As Kevin said, all in due time. You must be patient. The answers will come.”
He turned left to be in front of the main entrance to the field and parked. Kieran and Kevin got out quickly. Kevin moved faster so he could open my door for me. As I got out, he stepped back to ready my rifle. I took a quick glance at the weapons and then back up to Kevin.
“You know I’m going to get those back, right?”
He smiled his disrespectful way before saying, “Never in my life will you get them back.”
I smirked back at him. “Exactly.”
I turned as Kevin’s smile turned into astonishment. He couldn’t believe that I would still be defiant even though I had guns on me. He didn’t understand my resiliency. None of them did. And that would be their downfall.
I walked around the truck as my group piled out of the van next to us. They joined me to be guided to the fence. And then I stopped dead in my tracks as my heart stopped to a new site.
It was Owen who broke my paralysis by placing a hand on my shoulder.
“You should keep moving. Don’t let them see that this affects you,” he whispered in my good ear.
I whirled on him. There was no way he could mean that. But when I saw his face, I could tell that he didn’t. He said what he said for a reason. I just had to play along for a minute or two.
“What the fuck do you mean ‘don’t let this affect me?’” I yelled in his face. “Of course this is going to affect me.” I pointed at the two closest zombies inside the fence, the only two that would get my blood boiling like it was. Thankfully there was only two and not three. “That used to be my wife and son. I don’t see Claire crawling around anywhere in there, so where is she?”
Kieran had to speak up a bit from behind me. My yelling had gotten the zombies into one of their screaming fits.
“Right now, the importance of where your daughter is is not that important. What is important is how you will function knowing that your wife and son have died?”
I turned to him. The pain in my head was growing as I looked out the corner of my eye. “What are you talking about?”
Kieran smiled as he stepped forward. “Like I said before. I need more people to help me out. I need good soldiers and you are probably amongst the best I can get right now. You will sit at my left hand and share in the decision making. And I am offering jobs to the rest of your group as well.” He held his arms up to them as if offering them the world. “You all will be taken care of if you side with us.”
I looked to Owen then back to Kieran. “And if we don’t side with you?”
“Well,” he began but stopped abruptly. A fence holder gave a small squeak. We all turned to look where it came from. It was giving, but there was no way it was going to break anytime soon. He turned back to me to finish his statement, but he moved closer still to finish it off. “If you decide not to join me, then I’m afraid you will get no privileges in this town. You will be forced to scrounge for anything you want. You will not ever get the first pick of any new food that we get. None of your words will ever be taken into consideration. Essentially, you will become the poor people of the town. You know, the vagabonds of the old days when the first big plague started.”
I ran a hand down the right side of my face. The shock of seeing my wife and son in the fence and the fact that he was acting like a dictator was starting to get to me. He had taken a once great town and completely flipped it on its axis.
He wanted me to agree right then and there, but I couldn’t.
“If you remember anything about me, Kieran,” I said, “then you should remember that there is no way I will agree to any of this. Hannah left me a message about a month ago saying something along the lines that he is going crazy and is killing everyone. So, tell me, did you kill my wife and son?”
The smile never faltered
. “I didn’t.”
The answer was enough for me. I looked past Kieran to his brother holding the same smile. Kieran did remember who I was and he wouldn’t do anything to my family out of fear of what I would do to him. But Kevin, on the other hand, was nothing but an idiot. He should have known what was going to happen to him, but he didn’t. And Kieran should have known that I blame him just as well. Both of them sealed their fate by bringing me here.
Before I could say anything else, Kieran spoke up again. “You all don’t have to answer right now. We will meet back here in twenty-four hours from right now to hear your answer. In the meantime, Jeff and Owen will stay with you to make sure that you don’t go anywhere. We have plenty of room in this town for you, but for the time being just so we can keep you all together, you will stay at the old folk’s home. Every last room in there is available.”
I looked at the faces of my group, and that does include Owen. He hadn’t done anything as of yet, but everyone saw him as part of us. Their faces all said the same thing. We hadn’t even been in the town for a matter of a full day, but Kieran had managed to piss every last one of us off enough to want to kill him.
That was everyone except one.
Sara stepped forward. “You don’t need twenty-four hours for myself or my daughter. We will join you right now.”
Kieran was about to say something, but I spoke before he could.
“You speak only for yourself. You will not speak for Debbie anymore.”
Kieran stood back to allow the fight to commence. What most of us, myself included, didn’t know is that there wasn’t going to be a fight over Debbie. Sara looked from Debbie to me and back to Debbie.
“If you stay with your father I can’t guarantee your safety, sweetheart,” Sara said. She tried to make her voice soothing. It just came out sounding more shrill than anything. “These men here mean business and your father is not going to let them complete their business. All it will do will cause more death to happen. Mostly on that side of the line.”
Sara pointed just beyond my feet. Everyone who traveled with me besides Sara was behind me. Owen was even there. I looked at Kieran’s nodding head. He seemed to think that he was going to be able to stop me. It seemed the drugs he did throughout his life had made him dumber.
“Sara,” Kieran said putting a hand on her shoulder, “let them go. They will find out that there are consequences for standing up to us. Once one of them sees the downfall, the others will jump ship. You see, all they have to do is look at the football field to understand they shouldn’t stand up to us. About seventy-five percent of the people in that fence decided they wanted to fight us, and what happened to them is their fault. If Byron wants to fight us, the football field will be his only destination.” He turned to Jeff and his cronies. “Take them to the shelter and keep an eye on them until we get there tomorrow at this time.”
Jeff nodded. Kieran turned back to my group and nodded himself. He walked off being followed by Kevin and Sara.
Before Kevin got into the passenger seat I said, “By the morning’s dawn, I am going to get my weapons back.”
He didn’t reply. Kieran said something to Kevin before he could. I couldn’t hear what Kieran said, but it was enough for Kevin to want to get into the truck.
They drove off at a reasonable pace. There was no need to speed anywhere. They owned the town like they always wanted to, although they used the outbreak as the cause. In the long run, I can agree with what they did. They consolidated the neighboring towns, making it so there is a strong community. But their actions are the things that I don’t agree with. I’m sure Hannah was one of the people to stand up to them. Sammy was put in there just because of Hannah. That’s the way I saw it. Kieran would probably see it in a different light, even though that light was about to die out.
Once their truck was out of sight, I turned to face Jeff. He raised his weapon and said, “Get in the fucking van.”
I didn’t move. My group took my lead and stood their ground.
He repeated himself.
We still didn’t move.
“God-damn-it, fucking move.”
“Why don’t you come over here and make me?”
“What did you say to me?” A quiver had entered his voice now.
“I didn’t make a statement, dumbass. I asked a question. Shall I ask again?”
His body twitched. Sweat popped on his forehead. Granted, it was a little hot out, but not enough to make him sweat just standing there.
“P-please do-do,” he stammered out.
I took a step forward and altered my question a little.
“Why don’t you let your balls drop and make me get in the van?”
Jeff made one dire mistake. He shifted his eyes to his left, away from his trigger finger. He was looking to see if his men were moving to help him. They hadn’t moved since we arrived. But now they wanted to even though it was too late.
I swung my left hand at the barrel of the shotgun, putting enough force behind my swing to make sure the gun would travel enough distance to miss not only myself but the members of my group standing behind me. What I wanted to do was get the shotgun fully around to where it would be aiming at the other two. Sadly, it didn’t make it that far, but it did make it far enough to miss everyone.
The goons were as equally as slow as the movement of the barrel. Owen and Tayvon weren’t though. They rushed the two guys so quick they looked like some of the zombies from the b rated movies. The two goons were disarmed and subdued so fast that Jeff still didn’t know what was happening even after I clocked him on the side of the face.
All of this happened in a matter of about a second. The goons’ pistols were turned on them; Jeff fell to the ground with a raspberry already welling on the side of his face; and my team was moving in to secure the recently relinquished weapons (just an assault rifle and three other pistols, one of which belonged to Owen in the first place) and secure a cordon on the area if anyone decided to show up.
I turned the shotgun on Jeff. He finally surveyed the area to see that he had failed in his mission.
“I want you to get up slowly and move to the gate,” I said to him. I already noticed the gate was electronically sealed. Someone must have put that in since the outbreak. There was no way that the officials of the Pilgrim School District would allow such a thing to happen in the first place.
Jeff stayed where he was. “Go fuck yourself, salrge.”
I grimaced at his attempt of disrespect towards me. “Were you trying to discourage me in some way?”
The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He wanted me to do something to him with the shotgun. He wanted there to be more than one shot. If there was more then people would come running to see what the hub-bub was all about. Little too Jeff’s mind, I had better plans for him.
I directed my question to Owen. “Do you know the code to gate?”
Owen didn’t turn from the goon he was guarding to answer me. “Yeah. All of Kieran’s guys do in case they come across any zombies.”
“Well that makes no sense to me,” I said out loud. I didn’t want to say it in my head, just for the ones that were thinking I did. “But anyway, move those two over to the van.”
Owen and Tayvon didn’t question me. Jeff did though.
“Why do you want me to move to the gate?”
Phil moved from his survey spot to Jeff. In a not-so-gentle manner, Phil made Jeff get to his feet. Let’s just say that if Jeff didn’t have a little extra skin on his person then his right nipple would most likely be detached from his body.
When Phil talked it sounded like one of the most dangerous people I have ever heard. And I have heard my fair share. Tom is one of them in the most recent weeks. Phil honestly scared me when he talked to Jeff.
“You need to understand that we are through playing fuck-fuck games here, Jeff,” Phil began. Needless to say, that wasn’t the scary part. “And that’s just the least of it. The most you need to unde
rstand is that I am through with all the killing. I will tough it out for the next day or two or however long Sarge has it in his mind that we will fight your bosses for, but I’m pretty sure that he intends to end it in the next forty-eight hours.” I did. “For now, I just want to lay low until I can hear out Sarge’s plan. Right now, you are impeding that process. So, here’s how this will play out every time you don’t do as one of us say to do.”
Jeff looked at Phil with strongly intent eyes. I didn’t look at anyone else besides Phil, but I’m pretty sure that everyone else was doing the same thing.
“I’m going to walk over to your two man-servants and make some sort of cut. It may be a minor cut with my knife” – Phil produced a switchblade of six inches in the Garmin type – “or I may just cut off a digit. Once I’m done with the digits –”
“You can stop there,” Jeff said. “I get your point. But you might as well just kill me, because I am not going to give you anything that you need to know.”
Before I could say anything, Owen cut in.
“Byron doesn’t want you to move to the gate so he can get information out of you, dipshit.”
Jeff looked to Owen with confusion. He then moved to Phil with the same look. “Then what does he want from me.”
Phil laughed a little before he answered. Surprisingly, the laugh was the worst part. “He just wants to kill you.”
When Jeff’s eyes locked with my right eye I couldn’t help but see pure fear in them. He was honestly scared for his life. The several times I put him in his place over the span of us knowing each other didn’t compare to the look he gave me just then.
“It’s true Jeff,” I said. “I can get whatever information I want from Owen. Like who was the mother fucker who killed Hannah and Sammy –”
“It was Kevin. Will that spare my life?”
“Your poor attempt at redemption is not impressive.” Jeff dropped his eyes from me. “But there is also the fact that you attacked me with no reason to do so.”
Jeff put his hands out to ward off any attack that may come in the next few moments. “And I am truly sorry for that. I just had to try to reestablish my dominance with the people who worked under me.”