by Norman Dixon
Lyda watched the light reveal everything in the Pastor’s face; the deep-seated hate, the lie, the slight twitch of the brow, oh Father who aren’t going to Heaven. She wasn’t fooled by his games. They’d shared many a long conversation on the same subject. Each, the Doctor and the Pastor, knew where the other’s thoughts were at the moment. There was only one major difference though . . . Lyda hated them more because she had to give up her only son to the grace of God, not three days removed from the warmth and safety of her very own belly. The last of Steven’s line cradled in her arms, oh how she could smell him still.
“You can go." She knew she was out of line, but the memory was far more threatening than the Pastor could ever hope to be.
“Very well. I will be in the chapel, praying. May the light of the Lord shine on you and this little boy." The Pastor left without another word.
As the door closed Lyda lost her cool. She collapsed to the floor, dropped the scalpel, and curled up in a tight ball. The inside of the helmet fogged up with tears and heat and snot. A low moan escaped her trembling lips. The pain came on the spiked cocktail of recent memory that traveled from her brain to her now barren womb, a dead place, a dry and forgotten land where nary a sign of life would spring ever again.
She was at the gates with young Jake, named after Steven’s father, cradled in her arms. Steven had been dead nearly two months and the last reminder of him cried in her arms. All of the Settlement’s inhabitants stood stone silent at her back. The ghost of Ma and Pa Crannen, too, stood with them, an unseen reminder of the way of the Settlement. They had succumbed to injuries they sustained while out west. Injured or not, they rewrote their own established rules and changed the Settlement’s, and Lyda’s life forever. They had returned, changed everything, and then passed into God’s land, leaving a beguiled Settlement, and two teenage twins shocked in their wake.
Their ghostly voices echoed in her head in the present and in memory, “The Settlement can only sustain one new life every winter and that is all. It is by the will of God that we see this through. That means any child born beyond the first of that winter must be put in the hands of the Lord. They are to be put beyond the fence.”
She remembered clearly the hypocrisy of the Settlement. Only one new child per year and it was her year, her turn, it was Steven shinning down from Heaven . . . and then it was not. Suddenly Ma and Pa Crannen returned from an expedition with not one, not two, but five babies. And just as sudden the rules no longer applied to them. They told her that these children were to be taken in and cared for because the Lord demanded it of them, the Lord demanded sacrifice. But it seemed that sacrificial demand rested solely on her shoulders.
She wanted to run away, to take Jake and make a new home for them far away from sacrifice, and the will of the Lord, but she knew the gravity of her situation, and she knew the shrewd, one-sided will of God, honor thy mother and father, she had to obey, as bad as the world is, as wrong as the world is, Hell, she’d been taught, was much worse. And it was with that thought, that ideal, she accepted their words, and God’s demand, and she was going to join the elite rank of mother’s who left their children beyond the fence. But unlike them her pregnancy was not a lapse in judgment—it was her turn.
Lyda’s feet were concrete blocks. She clutched Jake close to her racing heart, the heat of her body melting the slow-falling snowflakes before they even touched her skin. The Settlement silent at her back, she dragged her feet ever forward, praying for the love of God, and hating him in the same breath.
Grim-faced guards looked away from her as they rolled the massive rusty fence back. The creaking metalwork, the wailing moans of those grief stricken mothers that walked this path before her. By God, what kind of world have you wrought? She thought angrily. She froze as little Jake buried his cold nose in her breast, a shudder tore her apart then. She still notes the moment as the instant her soul died, murdered really, like little Jake, with complete faith in the word of the Lord and Settlement. She walked through the open gate.
The bodies of the children never lingered more than a night at most, but it was time enough for the cold to steal the life from their innocent throats, time enough to be dragged away as food. However, the Creepers were never a part of the dragging, they steered well clear, strangely so, or perhaps not, perhaps the Creepers were even more ashamed of the Settlement’s mothers than they were of themselves. Either way, the innocent newborns were never welcomed into Heaven by the rotten teeth of the walking dead. The weather and the carrion feeders were their chariots to the afterlife.
Lyda’s hands shook unmercifully, her tears icy rivers of a mother’s greatest deceit. She placed young Jake on the grass, kissed his brow, listened to her soul’s final plea, and then she looked to the Lord, as she turned her back on her own child. She walked towards the blank faces of the Settlement, those shocked, slack-jawed vacant eyes, and a few, a select few, a dirty group, stared at her with a deep understanding. She nodded to those few, in the action, saying, some day.
The crowd broke apart, busying themselves with anything that would take their minds off of how truly hopeless they were. No one bothered Lyda, how could they? How did one approach a mother after such an act? There is only one answer to that question, you didn’t. And so Lyda stood, back to Jake, wracked with grief as her child, the only remnant of her beloved husband, wailed with the power of all the world’s lungs.
Jake’s accusatory cries banged on the eardrums of every inhabitant of the Settlement, banged on the eardrums of God himself, even. As the baby carried the tune of unspoken guilt into the dusk and beyond, Lyda fell to her knees and wailed along with him. To this day she does not know how long they cried together.
She opened her eyes, returned to the present, and was ashamed at what she returned to. She was better than this, stronger than this, she was soulless now. Taking a deep breath she got to her feet and picked up her instruments.
Ryan’s good arm twitched in the throes of a dream. His skin was horribly pale.
Lyda leaned in close to Ryan’s ear and whispered, “I hate you.”
With an even hand she cut into the young flesh and busied herself with the business of removing the boy’s arm. And she did so with a smile.
CHAPTER 5
Bobby could sense his brother’s presence on the other side of the slim bathroom door, about the only thing the thin wood was good for, was simple privacy, but so help you if you had a ripper, the entire barracks would catch a whiff and hear you jamming it out. He wasn’t ripping one out; the shit had long since been frightened out of his body. He studied the bite in the small mirror. He had to stand on tip-toe just to catch a good glimpse of it.
“Everything okay, Bob-O?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, Pete. Just . . . my stomach hurts, feels like I gotta’ tear one.”
Bobby wished Peter would go away, but he knew his brothers well, and Pete was the most persistent of them all. Maybe it was his red hair and freckles that made him so, as if he had to make up for them somehow. The Settlement boys were always teasing him about those features, but he just pestered them with questions. He constantly asked, and never took a simple no for an answer. Bobby had to think quickly to keep Peter at bay.
“Yeah, I bet, but why did you guys leave? What did you do? What happened? We were real worried about you guys. And you missed Paul knocking the ever loving hell out of the fat Clarendon kid, socked him good, right on the chin, you could see the rolls of fat shake from the shock of it.”
Bobby laughed at that. “Be a minute, Pete, just gonna wash up."
He ran the faucet and splashed the cold well-water on his face. It shocked him back into reality. Using his fingertips he poked and pulled at the flesh around the wound. It was crusted with blood, ringed with red, and a slight yellowish color on the outmost edge. He wanted to take his pocket knife out and cut the flesh away, but it wouldn’t be worth the pain, he’d be dead soon anyway. He opted instead to flush it with pure, clean mountain water. The coldness o
f it caused his skin to tighten, sending a shiver up his back.
He wet a bit of toilet paper and rubbed away the caked on blood. The sink sloshed with pink water, swirling poison, creeping death back into the water system, but somewhere on the other end, Bobby knew, many filters and purifiers would annihilate the Fection, preventing it from spreading further. Many throughout the world, when the Fection first hit, were not so lucky, for poorly filtered water delivery systems served as mass arties of unintended death.
The wound finally clean, he looked down at it. It wasn’t so bad, as far as wounds went, it was small, slightly bruised and red, but other than the fact that it was enough to kill him, it was alright. He rummaged through the small silver case under the sink, which served as the first aid kit for the barracks, and found a roll of gauze and some tape. He fashioned a bandage and patted his stomach. Now all he had to do was smile, be himself, and wait for death. No problem, he thought, and then the truth of it overwhelmed him.
Bobby fell to the floor, knees to his chin, hands clasped over his head and he began to cry.
“Bob-O, you okay?”
“Go away!”
The door rattled and looked as if it would give in to Pete’s banging but it held, shaking and nearly cracking, it held.
“But . . .”
“Please, I’ll be okay. I just need time." The word tasted sour on his tongue, rotten, slow death rolling through the syllable. He needed the one thing he no longer had the luxury of, and as he sat, huddled on the floor of the bathroom, he realized the fickle nature of time, the harsh sting of its bite, and yet, he could not resist it as he did the Folks, he could not escape it as he and Ryan had escaped the Settlement, and he could not defeat it. He was beholden to its will and now he was completely at its mercy. He just hoped he wouldn’t turn during dinner and bite one of his brothers. Bobby didn’t give a shit about the Settlement boys, but he’d curse his own soul for all eternity if he was the end of one of his own.
The door flew open and Bobby was greeted by the tall, lanky silhouette of Paul, the slyest of his brothers.
“Quit yer crying, Bobby, least you get to keep yer arm. Ryan won’t be as lucky.”
Paul grabbed Bobby by the arms and lifted him to his feet. He rubbed away the tears, patted Bobby’s cheeks. “See, nothing to worry about. You got one little cut I see and nothing else. No bites, no worries, as the soldiers used to say.”
Bobby’s stomach sloshed something awful but he straightened up. He took his blood covered clothes, threw them away, and ran to his footlocker for a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He put the shirt on first, wanting to put as much distance between the bite and visibility as possible. He couldn’t afford to have the bandage slip off and reveal his secret. His brothers wouldn’t question it, but someone else might.
His brothers sat around the small table at the far end of the barracks playing spades. Bryan ran his thick fingers through his sandy brown hair. He shuffled a deck of red-backed cards, dealing them out.
“In next hand, Bobby?" Bryan asked without looking, ever watchful of the deck. For what he lacked in the physical department he more than made up for with brains. He beat so many kids at cards that his footlocker was overflowing with candy, most of it well past its expiration date, but nobody cared anymore, candy was candy. They got it for being good or achieving good results in school. Even though he paid for it in physical class he seemed not to care.
“Yeah." Bobby slid into the empty seat at the table.
“Atta’ boy, Bobby.”
His brothers were good like that. Taking a crazy situation and not making it worse. How many terrible punishments had they gotten through with each other? Too many, Bobby thought. The four of them had forgotten all about his little episode and tried their best to diffuse the situation, and they were doing a damn fine job of it. But Bobby’s inner turmoil knew no bounds, he freaked out inside, squirmed in his seat to hide it from his brothers. It wasn’t long before their questions started, and he did well to answer them, keeping nothing from them with the exception of his little secret.
* * * * *
Ol’ Randy leaned against the low brick building that served as the Folks’ lounge. It was a bank back before the world went mad, one of the few structures that survived the initial onslaught, an aging reminder of the past, a reminder of things as they should be, a proper thing to build their little piece of heaven around, a normal thing.
Ol’ Randy kicked at the steel drum in front of him, sending a shower of orange sparks into the chill night air. He cracked his massive knuckles and rubbed his hands together over the fire as he watched Lyda leave the infirmary. She scuttled towards him like a bony crab. He’d been watching the building for hours, polishing off nearly two bottles in that span. The ache in his muscles from an earlier class on hand-to-hand combat washed away. Truth be told, Ol’ Randy was more of a gossip hound than the loose-mouthed women of the Settlement, and while he honestly wanted to know how the boy made out, he really wanted to see Lyda. There was a worry for that one lodged in the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. He waved her over.
Lyda zipped up her shiny black camping vest, and dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans, trying her best to fend off the cold.
If anything had gone wrong he’d have known. Her strides, though shortened from the chill, were confident, purposeful, a satisfied woman, but her face wore the expression of a woman haunted by many ghosts, too many to count, too many to forget, as if death itself seeped from her pores. As she drew closer to the fire her eyes were visible to him, red, raw, swollen and distraught. He did not greet her with words, only a slight nod, and a pass of the bottle of strong whiskey he had been keeping warm for just this moment.
She accepted the bottle, tilted it towards him, then drank deeply, smacked her lips as she wiped some spillage from the corner of her mouth.
“Hell of a day, Lyda?" There was no need to ask about the welfare of young Ryan for, Ol’ Randy trained ’em better than that and knew, as well as he knew God above watched over all, that the boy had made it through.
“Just fine, Randal, just fine." Lyda took another swig then passed the bottle back to Ol’ Randy.
Ol’ Randy raised his eyebrows at her tone; on edge, not her usual self.
“The kid’s vitals are steady in case you were wondering, but he’s not out of the woods yet.”
“Ain’t no Creeper gon’ take one of my boys.”
“You don’t know that yet . . . there is still a chance of the Fection spreading." She took the bottle again with a shaking hand.
“Not the Fection, nor the Creepers I’m worried ‘bout, dear, not worried ‘bout them at all. Lord knows we’ve all suffered long with them walking the earth, but as bad as they are, I ain’t worried ‘bout them being the end of me, or one of my boys. I’m worried ‘bout you. I don’t like the way you handled him today, Lyda, not one bit, regardless of what you think his presence may have caused.”
“Can the righteous shit, Randy, and all day I thought you wanted some fucking company, eyeing my infirmary. You can be a real asshole sometimes, Randy." She did not look at him even as she insulted him.
“Got that devil tongue on ya’ woman. Sometimes you ain’t right, Lyda, ain’t right at all.”
“We all have our demons, Randy." She eyed him sharply, twin streams of icy breath rolled from her nostrils.
“That we do, but we all don’t showcase ’em in public . . . the demons are better left for the dark, alone time . . . better left between you and God, and that’s it."
Randy leaned a little closer to the fire. The shivering in his bones became more intense the longer he stared at the woman. She actually scared him more than anything he’d ever encountered on the battlefield, and Lord knows he’d seen plenty, enough to last a thousand winters, or more. The careful calculation with which she chose her words, the unspoken motives moving behind her deep blue eyes, the callous disregard for her own soul, made him fear her ever so much. Randy could almost visua
lize her desperate, hateful thoughts just by looking at her, and he looked away, quickly, sickened by the ideas that nursed in her cesspool of a mind.
“Save it for the sermon, oh Heavenly Father!" Lyda offered the bottle to Randy again, but snatched it away, to his surprise, before turning back towards the infirmary.
“The Lord never forgets, Lyda. And neither do I.”
She flipped him off over her shoulder.
“If she had her way, friend, those boys would’ve been dead long ago. It amazes me that fear of imaginary savior keeps that kind of hatred at bay.”
Randy turned to face the owner of the pronounced Russian accent. “Well if it ain’t my fav-o-rite proud commie. I’d offer ya a drink but the little lady ran off with it." He shrugged with empty hands.
Ecky pulled a strange cigarette out of his pocket. It looked as if it had been rolled in used notebook paper. Even in the low light of the fire Ol’ Randy could make out basic arithmetic written in a young one’s simple penmanship. He furrowed his brows at the grinning Russian.
“What?" Ecky returned the look. “You take what you can get, my friend. No more rolling papers, but plenty of tobacco coming through trade groups. Last trip out to get parts for generator I used cardboard, wasn’t so good, but not too bad, you know?”
“To each ‘is own.”
Ecky smoked silently, enjoying the warm, harsh smoke in his lungs, and the cold of the outdoors.
“She ain’t right.”
Ecky knocked the ash into the can and said, “All bark, no bite that one. She would love it,” his eyes narrowed on the infirmary, “to kill the boy, to kill them all, but she fears God, like you. Won’t happen for fear of unknown . . . still scary thought, rest of boys will pay too, it is a shame really. But we play hand that is dealt to us.”