by Mark Clodi
“No, not really, but the food is better, candy bars get old after a while.”
Dora was back with the last of the bacon when Paige came in, she moved over and spooned up some eggs for herself, taking a handful of bacon too. “No one is missing. Everyone is okay. Alex has them loading the buses now and watching the fence. He went to the front gate to try and flag down Jake.”
Making up a large plate of food, Dora handed it to Paige who said, “Thanks, I already have a bowl.”
“Good for you! This is for our prisoner; you may remember him, next door in Nina's back yard? I wouldn't want him saying we violated the Geneva conventions by not feeding him or something.”
“Shit.” Paige said, a piece of burnt bacon halfway to her mouth.
Dora looked at her for a second and said, “You didn't check on Tim did you?”
“No.” Paige took the plate, grabbed the keys to the handcuffs and headed into Dora's back yard. Dora turned the remaining bacon off and grabbed up a shotgun to follow the other woman out. Paige went up to the break they had created in the wall between the houses and cautiously looked into the other yard.
“Tim?” she called cautiously.
The sleeping back moved.
“Breakfast time Tim, you hungry?”
Tim's head emerged from the sleeping bag. Dora walked up to the opening in the wall, while Paige got closer to the form on the ground.
Tim didn't look good, his hair was matted to his head, his eyes were barely focused and as his head emerged from the sleeping bag Paige recoiled. She set the plate of food down on the floor of the great hall and said, “What the hell happened to you?”
Tim pulled the sleeping bag to his waist and pulled on a jacket that he had been using as a pillow. “I was finally brave, for once.” He said this more to Dora than Paige. “I made my own deal with the devil.”
“Oh shit.” Dora said softly to herself, Tim didn't appear to hear her, he looked at both of them and then grabbed for the plate of food.
“Tim, what happened? We know someone told one of the super zombie about our plans, was it you?”
Tim's hand paused halfway to his mouth, he swallowed slowly and then said, “You left me out here with no protection. They walked right in here and got to me. What was I supposed to do?”
“I don't know.” said Dora, “Something brave?”
“She was going to kill me.”
“I'm going to...” started Dora only to be cut off as Paige said again, “Tim what did you tell them? Who was here? Tell us what happened.”
“You have to promise not to let Dora kill me.” Tim said to Paige.
“Why would she listen to me?”
“You're lovers, you have sway with her.”
Dora let out a harsh laugh that turned into a full-fledged fit, Paige just put her hand to her mouth and blushed red, before saying, “Tim, we’re not lovers. I am not interested in Dora that way.”
“You lying whore! Everyone knows you share a bed with her! And she sleeps with Mike too.”
Somehow being disparaged by Tim didn't bother Dora in the slightest, in fact it made her laugh more and she was laughing so hard she couldn't speak. Paige turned around and looked at her, scowling, “You’re not helping! Go back in the house if you can't control yourself Dora!”
Dora wheezed for a moment, before she pulled herself together enough to say, “I am sorry. I am sorry you lying whore!” Then she started laughing again, she managed to get through the hole in the wall between the back yards before she had to sit down again. Mary came out of the house and found her there laughing so hard she was crying.
“Dora?” Mary asked with concern, “Is everything okay?”
Behind Mary, Willy appeared, wrapped in the thin blanket he looked like a little lost waif from a British remake of ‘Oliver Twist’. “I...I’m fine, Tim, he just cracks me up sometimes.”
“I couldn't tell if you were laughing or crying. What’s happened?” asked Mary, in one hand she still had the wet rag she had been cleaning Willy with, in the other she was carrying an ugly looking revolver.
“It was Tim. He’s the one who sold us out to the zombies. They came here last night, got through our watchers and he told them everything, isn't that right, Tim?” this last was called over her shoulder through the wall where Tim was greedily shoving the last of the eggs into his mouth.
Mary went into the yard, followed closely by Willy, who Dora saw was also carrying a pistol; instincts ran deep with the humans who were still alive. The two of them stepped over to stand next to Paige, where Dora joined them after she finally got herself under control.
“So Tim, tell me again, with clear words, how you were brave?” asked Dora.
Paige stepped off to one side of the man, moving back slightly too. She had the handcuff keys dangling from one hand.
Tim looked at Paige and Mary and said, “You have to promise you won't let Dora or anyone on the council shoot me, or I am not saying anything!”
“Tim, no one is going to shoot you, the damage is done, we just want to know what you told them.” said Mary.
“Promise!”
“Tim, I won't shoot you unless you don't tell me what the fuck you did.” said Dora, raising the shotgun and pointing it at the man.
“No you can't shoot me at all, you promise me.” Tim said again to the other women.
Paige shook her head, “No, I don't think so. I can't promise that. I don't have any control of her.”
“I can't either, I don't want Dora to shoot you. Please don't shoot him Dora, but I can't make a promise I know I can't keep.”
Tim started to cry, bowing his head down to his chest he wept like an infant, muttering about how unfair everything was.
“Tim” Dora said firmly, “If you don't start taking we don't have any use for you. How about if I promise you I won't shoot you? Would that work?”
“No! Promise them! Promise them you won't shoot me, you wouldn't lie to them! Promise them you won't have anyone else shoot me either!”
Dora shrugged her shoulders, thinking of what she could do to Tim if she needed to, there were other ways for him to die, after all, finally she looked at Mary and Paige and in a clear voice she said, “Paige, lover, Mary, my good friend, I promise not to shoot Tim or have anyone else shoot him either.” Turning back to Tim she asked, “So what did you do?” Dora lowered the gun and pointed the barrel at an angle away from the man.
“I had to tell them. The little girl was here, you call them the wonder twins. She came to me last night when everyone was sleeping. I had to tell her or she was going to kill me. But I didn't tell her the truth about everything. They have names you know, she was called, Andi. She was not right...not right in the head, not stupid, but more like damaged, like mentally ill. She kept repeating 'Sam Waller says' this and 'Jim Tiller says' that. It was crazy.”
“It was just one then, not a whole group of them? So what did you lie to Andi about?”
“As much as I could, she had this way of rolling her eyes whenever I tried to tell her something that wasn't totally true, it was like she could see through me.”
“Well, honestly Tim...” began Dora before Mary elbowed her in the ribs.
“So I couldn't deceive her very much. I lied about when we were leaving, I told them we needed to fill the buses with diesel today and we were leaving tomorrow. I told her that we couldn’t leave today, no matter what because we had people who were too hurt to move and we needed that fuel.”
“Well, that’s good really, if she bought it.” Dora's eyes narrowed, “You told them everything else? That we knew about them keeping us here, knew there were no Iowan's close by?”
Tim nodded once curtly.
“You fucking douche. I mean I knew you were a cowardly little shitbag, but to sell us out so fast? Why? All we ever wanted from you was for you to do your share; that was it. There’s little room for 'I' in this new world, the place works together, fights together and dies or lives together and I do not u
nderstand how you could still manage to fuck us over chained to a goddamn post in Nina's yard!” Dora raised her shotgun and pointed it in Tim's direction.
“You promised!” screamed Tim.
Dora paused, her voice took on an icy tone, “You told them everything. Giving them bad information only helps us a little. You told them everything. I cannot believe it. I should have shot you a long time ago, you fucking prick.” slowly, hands trembling, Dora lowered the shotgun and said, “Paige I think...”
The gunshot rang out in the silence of the morning, it was followed by two more shots, all three of which hit Tim in the upper chest. Mary knocked Willy's arm up and the fourth shot struck the stone wall on the far side of Nina’s yard. She wrestled the gun from his small hand and pushed him to the ground where he let go of his blanket and stared back up at Mary defiantly.
Chapter 38
“Oh Willy! What have you done?” Mary said rhetorically as her hands automatically engaged the safety of his pistol. She tossed the gun to Paige and rushed forward to Tim, who was not moving on the ground. Dora was still reeling, she did not know how to react to what had just happened, she wanted to pick Willy up and give him a big hug and a fist bump for doing what she had wanted to do. However, she had not meant for him to be the one pulling the trigger.
“What kind of world do we live in when thirteen year olds can kill unarmed men chained to a post?” Dora muttered to herself as she held out her hand to the boy on the ground to help him up. She got him on his feet and looked him in the eyes, he was a skinny, shivering boy standing barefoot with his overlarge boxers riding low over hips too narrow to hold them up, there was no hint of fear or regret in his eyes. Dora reached down and pulled up his underwear up, saying, “You might want to hold onto those.” She bent over and picked up the blanket off the ground, it was wet from the dew on the grass, but she put it around his shoulders anyway and hugged him close, whispering, “Everything will be okay, don't you worry hon, everything will be fine.”
“I did the right thing.” Willy said with confidence.
Dora held him out at arms-length, “Willy you did the right thing, the thing that needed to be done. But you didn't do it the right way.”
He looked confused for a moment before the confidence came back, “No, you were going to do it the old way, everything is different now. Jeff says, well said, that if we followed the old rules we would all be overrun by zeds, that is why he liked you so much. He said we have to rely on our instincts and risk making a bad decision rather than making no decision at all. No decision can kill you just as fast as a bad decision.”
“You know I think I should have gotten to know Jeff better.”
“He knew all sorts of stuff. Tim was an idiot, he was a, um, traitor? Yeah, a traitor to us. You promised not to kill him. Paige and Mary promised. I didn't promise. I knew I couldn't let you break a promise, that’s all we have now, our word. So I did what you needed to do but couldn't; we worked together.”
“Fuck.” Dora said, flabbergasted at the boy's logic.
“He’s dead.” said Mary on her knees by Tim's side. She sat back on her behind and rotated to look at Willy and Dora. “What the heck do we do now?”
Concerned voices came from inside Dora's house, several men appeared at her back door asking what the shots were and if everything was alright. Nina's back door finally opened to and the slender woman weaved her way through the piles of construction materials towards the partially built building.
“I don't kno... Fuck! Mary look out!” yelled Dora.
Behind Mary, Tim's body had reanimated and was reaching for her. It latched on with one pale hand and grasped her ankle. Paige had two guns in her left hand, Willy's and the pistol she had pulled out when the first gun shots were fired, she tried to move one pistol over to her right hand to get a shot at the zombie, but ended up fumbling both of them to the ground.
For Dora, suddenly the entire world seemed to shift into slow motion, she looked around at the men coming out of her house yelling at them for help, she looked at Nina, who was moving sluggishly towards them and she looked at Willy who was smiling up at her. “You can do it too?” he asked. “Good.” then Dora found herself bringing her shotgun up, taking the ten long steps over to Tim and putting the barrel into his mouth, the mouth that Mary's ankle was being slowly jerked towards. The barrel of the gun beat the slow speed of the zombie's hand and with hardly a thought Dora pulled the trigger. She expected an immediate forceful blast, but what actually happened was like watching a movie on half speed, the gun seemed to want to fire, but it took a moment for the shot to sound out, then Dora watched as Tim's head virtually exploded, behind him onto the boards of the great hall. As quickly as it began everything stopped. Dora found herself standing by Mary shotgun in hand, looking at the ruins of Tim's head.
Paige, still reaching for one of the pistols in the grass, turned her head sideways to stare at Dora, “What the fuck Dora! How did you...?”
Willy just beamed, but turned and walked his cold little body back into Dora's house, brushing past the men who were filing out of her back door.
Mary didn't seem to realize anything was wrong, she just got up and started to thank Dora hysterically. Nina, however had a good view of everything that had happened, she made the sign of the cross before her and stopped when she was close enough to comfort Mary. Mary turned into Nina's arms readily enough, freeing Dora to think about what had just happened. Dora cast a sidelong look towards where Willy had disappeared. This brought Steve, Alex and a couple of the other men into sharp focus. Alex rushed forward to gather up a still crying Mary and Steve looked at Dora and asked, “What happened?”
“Willy shot Tim, killed him, Tim came back. He must have been infected somehow, I just shot him again.”
“Oh.”
Dora laughed, still a little shaken by what had happened, “'Oh'? That’s all you have to say?”
“Well,” Steve began carefully, “It is good you didn't kill him, that would’ve been bad, why did Willy shoot him?”
“We had just finished a little discussion where Tim explained how he sold us out to the super zombies, told them everything he knew. He tried to spin it to us that he withheld critical information. Even Willy didn't buy that.”
“Wait.” Steve said, then approached Tim's corpse. He unzipped the sleeping bags and revealed the rather pale thin body inside. Tim was nude from the waist down and his sleeping bags were soiled. He also sported a small bite on his upper left thigh. It would not have killed him right away, probably not for several days, but it was enough to infect him and make him return.
“He was bitten, it’s fresh too. Tell me what he told you.” Steve said. Dora filled him in while Alex brought Mary into the house to get cleaned up. When Dora finished Steve nodded and said, “So she scares the piss out of him last night, makes the deal and seals it with a bite, promising him, what? To make him a super when he came back? I bet you were part of the deal too, maybe he would get to munch on you. I wouldn't put it past him anyway. Then he cleans up as well as he can and goes back to sleep. Of course what the hell else could he do?”
“He could’ve kept his cake hole shut and died like a good soldier.”
“Would you?”
Dora saluted Steve with a mocking gesture of her hand and said, “Yes sir! For God and my country I will make the ultimate sacrifice!”
“So what do we do about Willy?” everyone knew Steve was talking about what to do about the boy if they made it to some sort of safety, would they turn him in or pretend he had not shot a living man in cold blood.
Dora looked only at Steve and said, “Let’s wait a couple days and decide. A lot can happen in a week.”
“Fair enough.” Steve looked up at the men and Nina, who were still standing around listening, “Alright we know what happened now, go fill everyone in while you work. Give them the short version, Tim is dead, he turned into a zombie, no need to elaborate. Keep working to get us the hell out of here this mor
ning. I will be out there in a few minutes.” The men dispersed, Nina stayed until they were gone, prompting Tim to ask, “Yes Nina?”
“Dora...she didn't tell you everything, not all of it.”
“I told the important parts.” Dora said.
“What did she miss? I thought you were inside getting ready to go? I didn't think you saw anything.”
“I didn't see Willy kill Tim. I saw Dora kill Tim when he came back. She saved Mary's life.”
“Not to put too fine of a point on it, but this isn't anything unusual for Dora. Hell if we had medals I would pin a few on her myself, she has saved many of us over the last month.”
Nina shook her head, “No, that’s not what I am talking about.” she looked at Dora intently, “What happened? I saw it, don't say you didn't do something.”
“What?” Steve asked with some confusion, looking from one woman to the other.
“She moved too fast Steve. She moved like one of them. Dora has to be a super zombie, nothing moves that fast.”
“What?” Steve took a step back from both of the women. “What’s she talking about Dora?”
“Everything got slow, it was like the world was moving in slow motion and I was the only one moving at normal speed, only I wasn't the only one. Tim was going to bite Mary, I just had to move fast to get to her, to save her and I did. I don't know how.”
“That....is strange. Are you sure it wasn't adrenaline?”
Nina shook her head violently, “No Steve. Remember how that super vaulted over the fence three weeks ago, took John Williams by the throat and almost took his head off?” Steve nodded, remembering the incident, “Remember how he was kind of fuzzy around the edges? He moved so fast we could hardly even see him?”
“Yeah, as I recall it was Dora who shot him in the head to finish him.”
Dora nodded, barely remembering the incident, which was just one among hundreds that had played out in the six weeks since 'zombie day'.
“Well Dora moved like that, real fast.” Nina shrugged, “Maybe faster.”