by Mark Clodi
From the crowd a younger voice yell, “Kick Tim out!” Several other people agreed loudly and Tim looked around wildly, whatever support he came with had disappeared.
Dora smiled and responded, “Oh I want to, you know I do. He doesn't work for shit, he causes problems and I really I just don't like him. But we can't.”
A chorus of “Why not?” came back at her. Dora held her hand up, “Think about it, we kick him out who finds him? Our enemies, he spills his guts to them, one way or the other and then we are all screwed.”
“Why?” called out one of the older kids.
“Because, if you haven't figured it out yet, the zombies want to keep us here.” Other calls of 'why' answered that and Dora held up her hands trying to calm everyone down, “For the love of Christ people quiet down! We think, we suspect, the zombies are keeping us here, to, well, eat.” The uproar of this was loud enough that they crowd of a hundred or so could not be calmed down. The rest of the people guarding the perimeter looked towards the meeting and wondered at the noise and what was going on.
Dora eventually gave as much detail as she could about Jeff's patrol and what they had found, pictures of the National Guardsmen at the gas station, not dressed in their uniforms and ordering zombies around. She went on to say how Jeff, Nadine, Jack and Willy were lost the night of the big fight and was about to continue when a little girl, perhaps twelve years old raised her hands up to get Dora's attention.
“What? What sweetie, Dora is talking here.”
“Willy isn't dead.” the girl said in a quiet voice.
“No dear he didn't make it.”
She shook her head violently from side to side. “No. He did make it. I talked to him two days ago.”
Dora stopped smiling and stared at the girl. “Are you sure? Where were you at when you saw him?”
“I was on the west side near the fence. Mr. Parson had to use the bathroom so he set me up to lookout and call him while he, well, you know.”
“And Willy came over to you? Alive?”
“Seemed like it, yeah. He was outside and asked me to throw him some water. So I did. I asked what he was doing and he said he was looking for Jack.”
“What? Why?”
“They made a pact. If one of them turned the other would find them and kill them. He said he wasn't coming back until he found Jack. He said Jack got bit apart that night when they got back, out in the trench. He said he pulled Jack away but they got stuck in a house. Kind of a bad house, you know, blown up. He said that they heard us fighting, but Jack was hurt really bad. They got tired from being up all night and Willy fell asleep, when he woke up Jack was gone. So he thought he turned and has been looking for him.”
“And you just thought to tell us this now?” Dora said, a little bit of anger in her voice. The girl shrank back and the rest of the crowd was busy relaying the conversation in a low murmur.
“Has anyone else seen Willy?” Dora called out.
No one raised their hands or said anything. “Well we are going to have to figure out what that is about later, but from now on if your friend gets bitten come back to town, don't stop in a blown up house. Now, back to our original discussion, if anyone thinks of anything that might help us, look up a council member and tell them okay?”
The meeting ended and the guards were changed, they got the news from other people in town and the council members all retreated to Dora's house, with Steve pulling Tim along by one arm.
As they approached Dora's house Tim screamed out, “No!” Then started kicking and fussing like a two year old denied his favorite toy.
“Goddamn it Tim, stop!” said Steve, who had already taken Tim's pistol away from him.
“No! If I go in there you will kill me!”
“Tim, we could kill you out here and no one would say anything about it.” Dora said, stepping up to him.
Realization seemed to dawn on Tim as he looked around at the leaving townspeople. None of them spared him a second glance as they walked away. Tim looked back at Dora's leering face and started sobbing as she took another step closer to him.
“Tim, you made this situation. Not me, that is politics baby, it is a deadly game.” by the time she finished her sentence her face was inches from his.
A sharp smell of urine reached her nose and she backed off in disgust as the man wet himself. Steve cried out and pushed Tim to arm's length.
“Oh for Pete's fucking sake, Tim! No one is going to kill you, you wet motherfucker!” Dora was waving her hand in front of her face. “I guess we will deal with you out here as you wanted, I was trying to spare you from any more humiliation, but I suppose you are about as low as you can get now.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Mary asked.
“Shoot him, just get it over with.” said Steve.
“No, he is a scared pain in the ass, but we can't shoot him. He hasn't killed anybody.” said Alex.
“An eye for an eye, huh Alex?” said Dora, “Still I am not in favor of killing him either. Despite what you might think Tim. Why don't we just confine him, keep him out of the way and decide later. It has been a long day and I am tired.”
“Where should I put him?” asked Steve.
“Good question.” Dora thought for a minute then said, “Oh perfect! We still have handcuffs you got off those cops we found right?” Steve nodded, he had four sets of handcuffs. “Then rig something up next door at Nina's place, Tim can sleep there. Bring him a plate of food, some water and a sleeping bag or blankets. He'll be fine.” Turning towards Tim she said, “I...we, the town, can't afford any more distractions, so you will stay there chained to your failed building to think about things. Got it? Until then just think, for once, think about what you can do to get back in our good graces. Here is a hint; it involves pulling your own weight.”
Steve took Tim away mumbling about getting him a change clothes and finding a chain somewhere.
The next morning Dora woke up refreshed, she had slept twelve hours and everything was quiet. Getting to her feet she went to Paige's room, but the woman was not there. Going down the stairs Dora saw her sitting at the kitchen table reading a book with a cup of coffee in front of her.
“Good morning!” Dora mumbled as Paige looked up from her reading.
“'Morning Dora. Guess what?”
“Good god, do I have to guess before I have had some coffee?” Dora said as she grabbed a mug by the sink.
“No it’s good news!” Dora didn't venture any guesses, so Paige continued, “There were no attacks last night.”
Dora stopped, her cup halfway filled. “So. Steve was right then?”
“It looks like he might have been. Oh, that ziplock bag by the sink...” Paige pointed at the counter and Dora picked up a small sized plastic bag full of pills, “Yeah that one, Mary says to take them all with breakfast, maybe only a little toast. They are prenatal vitamins.”
“Brilliant. Breakfast. Ugh!”
“It is almost nine! You slept a long time, you feeling sick?”
“Not yet.” Dora busied herself making up a couple of pieces of toast, she held up the sliced bread and said, “Who cut the bread?”
“Alex was over, he cut it nice and even. I think Mary made that loaf. It is funny how you miss the simple things isn't it? Like bread, evenly sliced, full of preservatives, bread that was soft even after a week of sitting in your cupboard.”
“I think I miss butter more than evenly sliced bread.” Dora dropped the slices into the toaster, which turned on when she pressed the lever down. “The power is on! Hurray! Why?”
“Why not? We are leaving in a few days, we can afford to run the power for a while. Leon checked our supplies of diesel and that is one thing we shouldn't have to worry too much about bringing with us, so he fired up the generators and plans to leave them running.”
“So any line on the buses yet?”
“They were waiting for you. Get this, there is a bus dealer not too far from here, Midwest Bus Sales. The
y sell school buses, we were going to hit up a school, but this is about as far so why not go to the source. Steve is ready to go when you are, he would have left already, but Mary told him to let you sleep, you needed it.”
“I can sleep all I want when we get out of here.” After pouring a cup of coffee Dora doctored it up with sugar and powdered creamer, neither of which were in short supply. Grabbing her toast she had just made it to the table when Steve came in.
“Good, you are up. Paige tell you the news?”
“No attacks last night, suspicious huh?” said Dora grinning.
“We needed the break. I think three quarters of the people here finally got more than six hours sleep at one time. We are going to a bus sales place, did Paige tell you that too?”
Dora nodded and crunched through her dry toast.
“There is peanut butter.” Paige said.
Dora shook her head from side to side. “This is fine. You feed Tim yet?”
“Yeah, took care of it first thing.”
“Too bad, I wanted to spit in his coffee. He wouldn't have noticed.”
Paige shrugged, “That is why I fed him first thing. You would have over salted his eggs or put hot peppers in his coffee. I thought it would be better to remove that temptation. Don't forget your vitamins.”
“Yes mother.”
“Vitamins? Maybe we all should start taking some? It has been awhile since we had any veggies or fruit that wasn't from a can or dried.”
“Doctor's orders for her.” said Paige hooking her thumb in Dora's direction, “She is too stressed right now and needs to take better care of herself.”
Dora didn't say anything else, but was surprised that Paige and Mary had kept the fact that she was pregnant from everyone else. She finished up her meal and went with Steve out to the others who were waiting for them. There were three vehicles, two full sized pickup trucks and Dora's suburban. There were a couple of juniors coming along with them, plus a couple of the older teens and eight adult men and women.
Steven tossed Dora her keys for the suburban, “You're driving, but Bob is leading in the white pickup, I am driving the black one, we all have walkie-talkies on channel seventeen to keep in touch. The only planned trips are to the bus sales, to a gas station to fill everything up and finally, if we can, to get some motorcycles. The bus sales place is farthest away, we should pass the motorcycle place on our way to it and then we have to go another four miles or so to find the buses. If we get the buses, we come back the same way, only we stop by and load up any motorcycles worth taking.”
Dora hopped into the suburban and realized this was only about the third time she had driven it. After z-day they had never done more than pull it out of the garage, for the daily running around they used Paige's car or one of the nicer sedans of the neighborhood. If they went out foraging they had used vans and pickup trucks, but never the suburban. Both pickups had barrels and gas cans in the beds, even Dora's vehicle had a bunch of smaller gas cans in the back. There was also some hosing that she recognized as the portable pump Alex had put together to siphon gas out of the in ground storage tanks at the gas stations. No doubt there were crowbars and other equipment to get the gas station tanks opened tucked away somewhere too. Everyone was well armed with shotguns tending to be the weapon of choice and baseball bats as back up weapons.
Pulling over to the first set of gates on the east side of the houses the group slowly drove out. Steve led the group at a cautious pace, the streets were fairly clear the way they were going and they made it to highway thirty two with no problems. The highway did not have exits or on ramps, it was more like a four lane street in this section of town and it was not clear. Bob was a decent driver and there was a reason he was in the lead; the truck he was driving had the front end reinforced with some welded on metal piping. He could not ram vehicles out of the way, but he could gently shove them and one of the boys with him knew how to disengage parking brakes and put the cars they might need to move into neutral so they would roll easier. It was the wrecks that would cause them the most problem and it looked like there would be plenty of them to deal with.
Dora turned to Ken, a swarthy middle aged man with black hair and a full Islamic beard, “So Ken, you know how to drive a bus?”
“Yeah, I did it for a few years before landing a better job in sales.” despite his middle eastern appearance his voice had a Midwestern twang to it that just didn't fit his image. “I know I can drive anything we find, it won't be too hard, most of them are automatics anyway, so I will just show the other drivers how to disengage the air brakes and put the things in gear and we will be back before you know it.”
“Sounds good to me. I think I will stick with this though. Anyone see any zeds?”
A chorus of 'no' answered her, “How suspicious, don't you all think?”
“I was going to ask you about that.” Ken said, “We heard rumors there were no attacks last night, is it true?”
“Yes. It seems to confirm what we thought. How does it feel to find out you were just part of the herd, Ken?”
The man snorted derisively, “How long did they think we would fall for it?”
“Forever, I guess, eventually they might have come clean, told us they would keep the others away in return for one sacrifice a week or something. Who knows what they were thinking?”
“And all those people they brought back with them? To safety?”
“Dead, we figure. I wouldn't have kept them alive and making them into zombies would be too risky, we might start seeing those who fled show up in the ranks of those attacking us. So they probably just put them down after they ate them.”
Ken said a short prayer in another language, prompting Dora to say, “Yo there Ishmal speaka the English please!”
“Just a prayer in the holy language. A fatwa on the ones who did this.”
“Nice, Jihad against the zombies huh? Kind of overkill really as we all want to take them out anyway.”
Ken nodded, “It can't hurt.”
“Are you really Muslim?”
“Are you really an atheist?”
“Touché Mohammad. Let’s leave religion alone, okay? I won't kick you in the ass when you are on the prayer mat three times a day and you won't issue any Fatwas against my ass? Agreed?”
Ken laughed and said, “Agreed. I am not a very good Muslim.”
“That’s okay; I’m not a very good atheist.” This prompted a general round of laughter from the car.
They traveled about ten miles west before coming across “Mark's Motorcycles”, it was on the right in a good location with a decent sized cross street, the windows of the show room had been smashed in, but there were still motorcycles inside and the building was long and low, promising more out of site. It looked like the place sold on and off road motorcycles and that they could get what they needed from them on the way back. There were more zombies shuffling around this part of town, no doubt the group from Doraville was out of the area controlled by the other group of zombies.
Everything still went smoothly until they got up to highway seven, both lanes of traffic were jammed with wrecks. Highway thirty two was squeezed under another highway and between the rail road on one side and the embankment on the other there was no room to pass the jammed together vehicles. The wrecks had burned too, the tires and even paint were burned off all of the vehicles leaving only skeletal sheet metal frames. Moving the vehicles would take time. The truck drivers had pulled to one side of the road to discuss what to do.
“Go up the on ramp to highway seven there and then cross the median and take the off ramp down on the other side of this mess.” said Bob.
“Sure we can get by that way, but what about bringing the buses back?” countered Steve. “Maybe spending a few hours clearing this would save us six hours with the buses coming back. I don’t think they would make it across a grassy median.”
“What if there are guardrails?” asked Dora.
Both men laughed at that, “No pro
blem, we brought the torches with us.” said Bob.
“No, that is what I mean, why bother going through the median if there isn't an emergency crossing somewhere close, just go up, find a spot where the roads are close and cut through the guardrails.” said Dora patiently.
The men shut up and then Steve nodded, “Yeah, that would work. And would only take us a half an hour.”
“See? You keep me around for a reason, let’s go up onto seven Bob and see what is there, with luck we won't have to do anything but drive.”
They drove their vehicles back to the on ramp and their luck held, there was an emergency turn around about a quarter of a mile down highway 7. Bob guided them through the median and headed back to highway thirty two, where there were a couple of parked cars in his way across the road. These were arranged end to end across the road, put there on purpose and were just a little too narrow to navigate through. Cautiously the boy named Seth hopped out of the truck and approached them, he got down on his stomach and looked for feet behind the vehicles, then tip toed to the first car and peered inside. He sprang back as a zombie hit the inside window hard enough to crack it. A greasy black stain was left on the inside window as the thing backed off and then slammed the glass again. Seth looked back at the truck and then pointed behind them.
Dora looked in the side mirror and saw a line of undead shambling up over the embankment on the western side of the highway. “Shit, horde alert people!”
Ken turned his head and looked at the oncoming mob. “See any fast ones?”
A gunshot rang out and they all craned their heads around to see Seth put a second shot into the zombie in the car blocking the way. He checked the car out, then reached in and released the emergency brake after a couple of seconds.
The black pickup gently moved against the front side of the car and started pushing forward. Seth ran around the back of the truck climbed into the bed on top of the gas cans, aiming his pistol at the oncoming mob. Ken lowered his window, as did Jane in the back seat, both aimed their weapons at the mob, but did not fire. At the front of the line the black truck had pushed the car around until it was at an angle facing the way they wanted to go, then it reversed into a slow zombie and re-aligned to bump the back of the car, as it started forward a faster zombie ran up and jumped into the bed of the pickup. Seth was ready for it and fired point blank towards the zombie's head. His shot hit it in the lower jaw and passed through the thing's neck, not slowing it in the least. It landed on the boy and continued to roll sideways carrying him out of the pickup and to the pavement below. Seth fell hard and his pistol skidded away, stopping under the slowly rolling car in front of them. As he watched the car's tire rolled up against his gun and stopped, wedging it under the tire.