by Cedric Nye
As he turned to leave, a faint sound touched his ear, and burrowed deep into his primal core. The sound that he heard was a baby's cry.
Purpose. Meaning. Life.
He felt some of the weight lift, and he focused on the sound of the baby until he had figured out from which direction the sound was coming. Once he knew which way to go, he moved with the speed of an attacking cheetah. He rushed down a hallway toward the cries, and followed the sound to a door with a sign that said "Cafeteria" on it. His rage burned bright and new for a split second before he tore the doors open and raced inside.
He spotted the baby right away. It was strapped into a car seat, which had been tossed carelessly into a corner. The seat was on its side, and the baby hung against the pinioning straps as it cried and wailed at the unjust nature of the world.
7
He stood frozen for a second as he stared at the tiny, helpless human. He recovered his wits and remembered that if he did not hurry, he was going to have almost fifty zombies to deal with. He rushed over, grabbed the car seat by its handle, and hurried back to the front of the building. When he got to the front of the community center, he saw that some of the bodies had begun to twitch with pre-zombie spasms. He hurried around to the passenger side door, opened it, and then set the baby's chair on the floor board.
“That's not how you do a goddamn car seat, Jango,” Alby screamed in his ear. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” she muttered.
Jango dragged the car seat off the floor board, and as he did so, he noticed a diagram on the side of the seat that showed how to strap it into the car. He followed the instructions and strapped the seat in backwards. When he had finished, he ran around to the driver’s-side door, climbed in, and started the engine.
“Here's your first lesson in Zompoc 101, kid. The easiest way to kill a zombie is to kill it before it becomes a zombie,” Jango said as he put the vehicle into gear. He then slowly and methodically drove the vehicle around the area where the pitched battle had taken place, all the while aiming the tires of the vehicle so they would crush the skulls of the zombies-to-be. This was too close to what he considered his own turf to allow such a large group of zombies to get a toehold.
When he had finished his gruesome work, what was left behind would have made a Hieronymus Bosch painting look like a Sunday school meeting. All of the corpses' heads had been flattened out so that they looked like real-life versions of a cartoon character who just been smacked in the head with a frying pan. The brains had burst from the skulls in fan shaped explosions that reminded him of the patterns left behind when people used to stomp on ketchup packets.
He giggled at the comparison as he drove away from the charnel house horror of the scene. At the sound of his giggle, the baby suddenly stopped crying and craned its head to peer around the edge of its seat at him.
He looked the baby, and then said, “Thank you for not crying, kid, I appreciate it.” “Because you crying that way is like ringing a dinner bell for zombies,” he concluded.
He looked at the baby and thought that it looked sick, and maybe hungry. “You look hungry, kid. When was the last time you ate?” He asked the baby.
The baby just stared at him with its green eyes. The green of the baby's eyes were, he suddenly noticed, the exact same shade of green as B's eyes.
He reached over and poked the baby with his finger to be sure that it wasn't another fragment of his tortured mind. The baby felt solid, and in response to the prod from his finger, the baby's face screwed up until it was as wrinkled as a raisin and as red as a beet. Jango cringed in the driver's seat as the baby erupted into a wailing cry that made its earlier crying seem soft and quiet in comparison.
He looked around to make sure all the windows were rolled up in the vehicle so at least the sound of the baby crying would not bring every zombie for miles around. The look on Jango's face was one of absolute horror as he contemplated existence in a zombie infested post-apocalyptic wasteland with the squealing, crying, wailing dinner bell strapped to him for the rest of his short life.
His jaws clenched and his knuckles turned white as he squeezed the steering wheel in an effort to calm himself. He looked at the baby again, and it showed no signs of stopping the horrible crying.
He stared fixedly at the baby for a moment, and then suddenly started to scream along with the baby, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Jango wailed at the top of his lungs.
The baby made a little startled jump in its car seat, and then fell silent, with a puzzled look on its little face. He knew then that the baby had to be real, because nothing that noisy and annoying could possibly have originated from inside of him.
“We have to feed it or it will not have a chance of surviving,” he said out loud.
“We have to get the baby some formula, Jango,” Alby whispered in his ear.
“Then I guess we have to hit Walmart,” he replied with a smile as he turned the vehicle onto 19th Ave., and headed toward the Walmart on Bell.
When he announced their destination, Alby and Diogenes started clamoring with excitement at the prospect of a trip to their favorite store. Before the zombie apocalypse, Walmart had been a foul hell for Jango. The teeming crowds that had stumbled around consuming goods and services had made him feel like he could not control his temper. From the moment he entered the doors of a Walmart store, until the moment he walked out, he felt like he was in a permanent red zone. He always felt like his entire body was composed of knees and elbows, and he felt an almost overwhelming urge to lash out at everyone within his reach in the hateful establishment.
The zombie apocalypse had changed all of that for him, and now he enjoyed going there and shopping at his leisure. His feelings had rubbed off on Alby and Diogenes, and they became truly excited when it was time to go shopping.
The Walmart on Bell and 19th Ave. was well within what he considered his turf. He had marked his territory by setting booby-traps all over the supercenter in an effort to keep looters and drifters from depleting the resources within. It was there that he had found his enormous store of beef jerky. The store must have ordered it just before the Z-Virus took hold, because they had six pallets of several different kinds of beef jerky in the back of the store. The store had not been looted, because the Z-Virus struck with such vicious suddenness that people had not had a chance to prepare.
He knew that they were bound to find some kind of baby food or baby formula in the huge store.
When they reached the store, he drove the vehicle around to the back, and parked it near a featureless steel door that was marked as a service entry. The door was located right beside the bays that had been used to service people's automobiles before the zombies had come along.
He took a long hard look around to make sure that they were completely alone before he shut off the vehicle.
He pocketed the keys, and then turned to the baby and said, “Look, kid, we're going to get you some food, and some clothes, but you have got to be quiet. Do you understand?” The way that he was staring at the baby, who could not have been more than six months old, it seemed as though he really expected an answer.
The baby stared back at him with those guileless green eyes, and then the baby's eyes spoke out loud to him, “I trust you, please keep me safe.”
He stared at the baby for a moment longer, and then shook his head and climbed out of the vehicle. He walked around the front of the SUV and removed the baby, seat and all from its perch on the passenger seat.
“We're going to shit-can this ride, kid, because it belonged to twisted shit eating piss whistles, and we can do better,” he told the baby as he reached into a hidden pocket on the inside of his thick Kevlar shirt and removed a small key ring on a woven lanyard.
Using one of the keys, he unlocked the steel door, and opened it about three inches. “I have to set you down for a second, kid, so don't freak out or anything, okay?”
With one hand, he held the door steady while he used his other hand to reach inside and unhook a wire
that was attached to the back of the door. Once he had unhooked the wire, he took a deep breath, opened up the door, grabbed the baby, went inside, and then shut and locked the door behind them.
8
When the door was closed and locked, he reattached the wire with a clip to a small eye bolt on the back of the door. The wire, at the other end, was attached to what looked like a Rube Goldberg style booby-trap. The wire was strung through an eye bolt above the door, and then it continued on for about ten feet into the huge storage bay at the back of the store. It was attached to a pin, which, when pulled, would allow a dowel rod with a ten pound weight attached to each end to drop. The dowel rod in turn had six separate wires which were strung through eye bolts on a heavy steel table, and then looped around the triggers of six single-shot shotguns which were clamped to the table with C clamps. Three of the shotguns were loaded with double ought buckshot, and three shotguns were loaded with slugs. All six of them were aimed directly at the door. Jango had made sure that every entry way to what he considered his store was wired to cause maximum damage to anyone attempting to loot the place.
The entire store had become a death trap full of dead falls, homemade mines, and all other manner of improvised traps. He believed in protecting what was his.
“Here's your next lesson, kid, so listen up,” he said to the baby as he held the car seat up so that he and the baby were eye to eye. “You never let anyone take your shit or else everyone will think they can take your shit away from you. Protect what is yours, and when you have to fight, you never, ever, make half of a war. Burn them down, and salt the ground.”
He lowered the car seat so that it hung by his side as he moved quickly and confidently through the pitch black store. He headed straight for the baby section.
As he walked, he found himself marveling at his ability to see in the dark. He was glad that the Z-Virus had not afflicted him with the poor vision and milky white orbs that belonged to the zombies. It had ended up doing the opposite in his case; he was now capable of making out shapes in near pitch black conditions, and he was able to navigate through even the most Stygian darkness.
When he finally reached the huge baby section, he was rewarded with everything a person with a baby could need. There were huge cases of baby formula, diapers, baby bottles, and every kind of clothing imaginable.
“Wow, kid, they have everything here. We'll get you fixed up fast.” He said exuberantly. “First things first, though, kid. I don't know if you know this or not, but you smell like shit. I'm going to have to change your diaper, and that seems like a personal thing, but it has to happen. I'm just letting you know in advance.”
He looked at the baby, made a rough guess at its weight, and then chose the appropriate sized diapers. He then grabbed a couple of different balms and baby lotions, a fresh pack of onesies, and a thick, luxurious looking baby blanket.
He looked back at the baby, and said, “This is where it gets a little dicey, kid, because I don't know if you're a boy or a girl. I'm seriously not comfortable with changing a strange kids diaper.” He hurriedly added, “I'm not saying you are strange, you are just a stranger to me. Does that make sense?” He finished lamely.
Jango, who had managed to carve a solitary existence from the zombie filled post-apocalyptic world, found himself almost paralyzed at the thought of changing the baby's diaper.
“Oh, for Christ's sake, Jango,” Alby said in an exasperated tone, “I'll change that poor baby's diaper. That little thing will starve to death before you make up your mind.”
He felt a huge sense of relief as he stepped back so that Alby could take care of the baby.
“Get that little headlamp out for me, would you, honey?” Alby asked Jango as she unstrapped the baby from the car seat.
Jango removed his backpack and rooted around until he found the little LED lamp that was attached to a head strap. He put the headlamp on, and put his backpack back on. He depressed the little button on the headlamp, and the bright light drove the darkness away, and illuminated a huge area of the store.
Alby hummed as she stripped the baby's soiled clothing off, and then removed its swollen, malodorous diaper. The baby's diaper had been so full of feces and urine that the waste had squeezed out at the waistband and thighs. The baby was smeared with feces from the top of its belly down to its knees.
Alby gently and thoroughly cleaned the baby with wet wipes. When she had cleaned the mess enough to discern the baby's gender, she exclaimed, “Congratulations, Jango, it's a girl!”
“What the fuck?” He muttered to himself.
At the revelation that the baby was a girl, his thoughts kicked into overdrive. He knew that the Savage Garden that the world had become was too harsh a place for a baby to survive. Survival in this world had become a Darwinian endurance trial that most adults were incapable of living through. What chance, then, did this little baby have of surviving? It seemed to him that it would be a far more tender mercy to kill the baby gently and quietly, rather than leaving it to face whatever terrible fate awaited it in the blood drenched crucible of pain that the world had become.
Long-term plans for the baby had not occurred to Jango while she was still a genderless thing in his mind. Now that her gender was revealed, she had ceased to be an "it" and he was forced to consider every aspect of the situation in which he found himself.
He immediately discarded the idea of killing the baby because he knew that he was incapable of such an atrocious act. He also discarded the idea of simply abandoning the baby, because that would be the same as simply killing it out right. There were, as far as he could ascertain, only two options available as far as the baby was concerned. He figured that he could either keep the baby, or find it a good home.
He took a moment to consider the possibility of keeping the baby, but quickly thought better of it. He was, after all, a staunch realist who had no illusions about the stability of his own mental health. He knew that even in the best case scenario, the child's soft psyche would be irreparably damaged by his madness. How could he raise a child?
“It takes a village to raise a child,” he said out loud.
Alby had finished changing the baby's diaper, and had dressed her in a onesie and a pink dress. The naked albino woman looked up at him and said, “Isn't she just the most beautiful thing, Jango?”
“We can't keep her, Alby, you know that,” he replied sadly.
“I know, but I sure wish that things could be different,” she whispered as she rocked the baby in her arms.
“If things were different, we wouldn't be who we are, and that baby would be in a stew pot right now,” he told her gently. “As fucked up as things are, I think that we are what we are meant to be. Wishing and dreaming has never changed reality, only force and action can do that; and we are both of those things. We will find that baby a safe place to live, with good people, and lots of love.”
“What about taking her to Vanessa?” Diogenes rasped, with a tinge of hope in his words.
Diogenes had had a soft spot for not only Vanessa, but for many of the people that they had come across since the world had gone to the zombies. He was the most sentimental of their personalities, and he became attached to people easily.
Jango looked at the giant dog in the wash of light from the headlamp and said, “That's actually a great idea, Diogenes.”
The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. Who better to care for and raise this baby than that Amazonian group of women that Vanessa had joined up with back in Anthem? He felt almost lighthearted as he made the decision to take the baby to Anthem, and leave her in the capable hands of Vanessa.
“Alright then,” Jango exclaimed, “we'll get this baby fed, and then start loading up on some baby gear. We can head out before first light. We’ll spend the night here.”
Staying indoors was a luxury that he did not often indulge in, and truthfully, being indoors made him uncomfortable. The only reason that he had decided to stay inside the store
was that he was afraid that the baby would start crying in the middle of the night. If they were outside, the baby’s cries would, indeed, be a dinner bell to the sensitive ears of any zombies within range of the sound. He knew that under normal circumstances, he could escape and evade the hunting packs of jacks and goobers that unceasingly roved through the city in search of meat. With the baby, though, his survivability would be drastically decreased, and his chances of fighting off even one of the fast-moving jacks while holding the baby would be pretty close to zero.
He selected a can of formula from the shelf, shook it, opened it, and then poured it into a brand-new baby bottle. Alby had placed the baby in a brand-new deluxe car seat that could be tilted to several different angles, and also had a kind of drop-down tray table with attached toys. Jango put the nipple of the bottle in the baby's mouth, and the baby instinctively grabbed the bottle and began suckling noisily as she sought to assuage her hunger. He had a good idea that the baby had not eaten in quite some time, probably not since before she had been sold to the cannibals.
Jango clicked the carrying handle in place on the car seat, and headed toward the garden department, which was located back near the automobile service area where he had first entered the store. Once there, he located the wheelbarrows and wagons. He chose the largest and toughest looking wagon, and towed it back to the baby section.
The wagon was made of heavy, expanded steel mesh with twelve inch high removable sides made of the same material. The tires were large, knobby, and made of solid rubber that looked durable. He stacked several cases of formula on the back of the wagon, a box of diapers, some random clothing, and some baby bottles. Lastly, he padded the remaining area of the large wagon with the thickest and softest blankets that he could find.
Once he had finished, he placed the baby's car seat on top of the blankets, and towed the wagon toward the freezer aisle which was only about fifty feet away from where the baby section was located. When he was still about twenty feet away from the freezer aisle, he stopped, and told the baby, “You stay here, I'll be right back.”