The Apocalypse Fugitives

by Peter Meredith

  "So what are we going to do?" Fred Trigg asked. He was one of the refugees from Gunterville. He was never happy and undermined Michael at every opportunity, especially in the "Monday morning quarterbacking" department. Always after the fact he would chime in with the advice of perfect hindsight.

  Michael wanted to ask him the same question, but knew better than to try to put Trigg on the spot. The man would just slip away from a decision saying something along the lines of Hey man, it's your show.

  "We go after them, for once," Michael said. "I think all the men should gear up and go. We should get this guy and beat him into a pulp and make him talk."

  "What do you expect him to say?" Marybeth asked. She looked particularly pale and wasn't the only one.

  Shawn answered for Michael, "We need answers. We need to know who these raiders are and where they're hiding out. We need to know how many of them there are...and if any of the people they've kidnapped are still alive. And if they're not alive, I want to know what they did to them." Shawn's eyes burned so fiercely that Marybeth wouldn't look at him and no one would second-guess him.

  Chapter 4

  Neil Martin

  Lewis Smith Lake, Alabama

  Neil went out alone to find the perfect spot to bury Sarah. He carried only a .38 and his trusty axe. There were a number of zombies in the forest across his path, however the intense humidity and heat of the Alabama afternoon made them torpid and slow. Like chopping down soft trees, he killed them one after another until his arms grew tired and then, as more came stumbling toward him, Neil jogged away down a deer trail to escape.

  The forest was so thick and lush that he was soon out of sight and the undead wandered off or stood around in a half-doze; what passed for sleep with them. A quarter-mile later, Neil stopped and looked back; he was winded and sweating but also feeling something quite alien: a small touch of a pride. He had just killed nine zombies and there had been at least triple that number all around him, and yet he hadn't been afraid.

  "Interesting," he said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. "I wasn't scared at all…that's never happened before." He didn't marvel over his victory for long and the touch of pride was short lived.

  With his axe on his shoulder, he went on down the deer trail and after a while, and after splitting the skulls of another couple of zombies he found a glade ringed with some unknown pink flowers. Stepping into the oval, he knelt and touched the soft grass that grew to a height of about a foot. A mild breeze stroked his hair back. It was nice and so he sat down and relaxed for a bit, cooled by the gentle shade thrown down from the trees overhead.

  The glade was almost too nice. He found himself growing sleepy and after a while he discovered that his unfocused eyes had been staring at nothing. It made him wonder how much time had passed since he had left Grey and the others. "It doesn't matter," he said. He stood and assessed the spot: "Too fragrant."

  With that simple critique, he left the glade. The deer trail had up and disappeared so Neil parted the trees, walking without a destination in mind and his purpose half-forgotten. A brook crossed his path and he followed it downstream until it threw itself off a steep crag of rock in a pretty fall of water. There was a pool beneath with a sandy bottom. Fish darted about in the white foam and in the eddies. Around the pool the foliage was extra green and extra thick, and yet there was a strip of wild grass next to the water that would do for a proper burial spot, except…

  "Except it's too wet," he decided. "She would get all mildewed."

  Neil splashed brook water on his neck to cool himself and went on tromping through the forest. An hour had passed since he had left the others; he neither knew nor cared. Something caught his eye off to his right—what appeared to be a tremendous wall of wood.

  They were sycamore trees, though Neil mistook them for oak, simply because of their size. An urbanite his whole life, he assumed, incorrectly that the "Mighty Oak" was the largest tree.

  The stand consisted of three sycamores rooted in a triangle. Their deep brown trunks were massive; the largest was thirty five feet around. How tall they were was difficult to judge. Neil circled one while craning his head way back and guessed that it was about a hundred and fifty feet in height; he wasn't far off. The triangle of earth created by the trees was padded with deep moss that was as soft as any couch cushion and all around the base of the trees were flowering lilies.

  The whole effect reminded Neil of something out of a Tolkien book.

  "This would be perfect, except…" He squinched up his face trying to fathom why the spot wasn't perfect. He had a nagging feeling it wasn't perfect, though it took him a few minutes of wandering around beneath the huge trees to figure out why. With a snap of his fingers, he said, "It's too far away from the road."

  Neil and the others were simply too worn down to carry Sarah all the way out there. Another strike against the spot was that it would be hard to find a second time when they wanted to visit her. Neil came to this conclusion at about the same moment he realized he was lost.

  He had been wondering which way he would go next when he discovered that he didn't know which way he had come from. He turned a circle and wondered, How did I get here?

  He'd been on a trail for a while but it had petered out and then he had, well he hadn't so much as blazed his own trail, rather he had meandered his own trail. Now, he was clueless as to which way he'd come from. He went around the clearing, looking out at the forest, but every tree looked the same and the rocks that jutted up here or there were just rocks, seemingly like any other rock.

  The shrubs weren't all the same, however. As he was watching, one moved to the right and stepped toward him.

  "Eee," Neil said, jumping back. It wasn't a bush, it was a man. Neil tried to raise his axe and pull his pistol at the same time. The two moves almost cancelled themselves out and neither was very threatening.

  "Relax, it's just me," Captain Grey said. Neil let his arms drop and his sigh of relief was clear in the still air. Grey pretended he hadn't heard. "We were wondering where you'd gone. I was thinking you might have gotten lost."

  "Me? Lost?" Neil tried to smile away his discomfort. "No, just looking for a good spot to, to, you know."

  Grey looked around. "I liked that little open area with the pink flowers better. But I didn't know your wife and I won't presume to tell you what would be right for her."

  "Not dying would've been right for her," Neil said. His uncomfortable smile shone brighter and more awkward before it fell away completely. "Or if her husband had been less of a coward. I should have been the one to have gone after Eve."

  "Water under the bridge," Grey said, simply. "Don't dwell on it, just suck it up and move on."

  A little snort of derision escaped Neil. "Just move on? You think it's that easy? I loved her. The only woman in the world for me and I wasn't man enough to…" He stopped in midsentence as a feeling of self-loathing reverberated through him.

  "I'm not talking about moving on from her," Grey replied. He took hold of Neil's shoulder in a firm grip. "I'm talking about moving on from any mistakes you think you might have made. That's done with. Learn from them and move on. Your only other choice is to second guess yourself into paralysis."

  "I should have gone after Eve," Neil said. "It's as simple as that. Sarah would still be alive if I had."

  Grey sighed, then grimaced and clutched his chest. Rubbing his breast bone where he'd been shot, he asked, "Is that really what you learned? From what I understand you were right not to go. You had a sick daughter, bounty hunters after you, and a little girl on the verge of a mental breakdown. Who knows what would have happened if you had left all that for Sarah to deal with? My guess is that all of you would've died. Sometimes, Neil, a leader has to make tough decisions and I probably would've made the same ones you did."

  Neil felt like a child next to the grizzled veteran and he could sense a blush coming on at the kind words. He squeezed his eyes closed and then when he reopened them he admitted a truth that h
e had been holding back, "I don't know what to do about Sarah. I…I don't want to bury her. Not yet. If I do it'll be like…"

  The familiar tears were back in his eyes and he rubbed them away with a vicious swipe of his hand.

  Grey shifted his eyes away, glancing up at the giant trees. He was quiet for a time, but eventually said, "It'll be like she's gone, I get it. But…"

  "No, you're wrong," Neil said. "It will be like it never happened. Like there had never been a girl for me to love." That was the strange thing, Neil felt his love for Sarah like a shadow of what it once had been and the same was true with Eve and Sadie. He felt dulled-out inside, like he was living the life of a shadow.

  This sort of admission seemed to make the soldier uncomfortable and again he scanned the trees before saying, "Be that as it may we don't have certain luxuries anymore. It would be best if Sarah is buried before tonight. Like I said, I'd go with that little dell with the pink flowers. It was very pretty. Jillybean kept telling me how pretty Sarah was, and Sadie said you were a lucky guy."

  "She was pretty," Neil agreed in a little voice. "So pretty…you can't tell now how pretty she was, not with all the burns, but she was like, I don't know, like something out of a book or a dream."

  "Then let's bury her body and keep her memory alive with us, ok?"

  "Sure," Neil said and the tears that had been leaking out of him dried up suddenly. "Let's do it. I think she'll like that glade, too. It was so pretty but I just didn't…I didn't think I could…" Neil took a deep breath and finished, "I didn't know if I could bury her, but I can now, I think."

  He was just saying that for Grey's sake. If they buried Sarah he was sure that he would change, that he would break in some way. He looked up at the captain, smiled fleetingly, and then started off for the glade, mentally preparing himself for what was ahead.

  Grey grabbed his arm. "You're going the wrong way. That glade is south, southeast about two klicks…never mind. Just follow me." He started walking, glancing over his shoulder frequently as if Neil would get lost even with him leading the way. After a while the soldier chuckled, coughed, and then rubbed his chest again. "Jillybean called it. When you weren't back after twenty minutes she said you'd be lost. I told her there was no way."

  "You had faith in me?" Neil asked in surprise.

  "Well, sort of…ok, not really. I just don't understand how anyone gets lost in any forest. Maybe at night if there was a storm, but out here? In the day? Can't you feel north?"

  "A little, maybe." Not at all, was the actual truth.

  Grey pointed up. "Look at the sun. It's about two in the afternoon…"

  He went on for some time explaining the nuances of the earth's tilt in relationship to its spin. Then he added seasonal factors. Then he went on about the use of landmarks. All the while Neil walked in a dream, thinking of Sarah.

  He was surprised when they made it back to the Humvee so quickly. Jillybean and Eve were asleep on a blanket, while Sadie watched over them. Her eyes were as red as Neil's. She had lost as well. Not just the only mother-figure she had ever known, but her first love, Nico.

  "There's a glade," Neil said. "It's nice."

  "Is it far?" she asked. When he shook his head, she smiled. It was a tired smile and one full of grief, yet there was still that spark in her that he loved. "So you did get lost. Jillybean's got you pegged. Man, don't ever make a bet with that girl."

  "You made a bet with her? That wasn't too smart," Grey remarked as he dug in the back of his Humvee. When he straightened up he had his entrenching tool in hand. "I should do the digging; give me about half an hour and don't scratch the paint on this bad boy bringing it through the forest. I signed for it."

  Neil glanced at the Humvee and then back to Grey. "I won't. I'll be careful."

  Grey clapped him on the back. "It was a joke, Neil. I'll see you in thirty minutes."

  "A joke?" It took a second for it to kick in. The Humvee was in a soldier's term: Beat to shit. The front window was gone, there were bullet holes all over it, and it was so scratched up it looked as though a tiger had sharpened its claws on it. Neil tried on a smile. It didn't fit very well, which didn't really matter as Grey was already sneaking off into the forest without looking back.

  Sadie was staring at her burnt Converse sneakers and the blisters on her lower legs. She wasn't blinking.

  "What did you lose? You know, betting with Jillybean that I was lost."

  "Huh?" Sadie looked up, startled. "Oh, nothing really. I have to give her my cheese and crackers next time I get them in an MRE. It's just fine with me. They're pretty gross." Sadie tilted her head to glance at Jillybean and Eve, both of whom were sleeping on their backs with their little pink lips parted slightly. They looked like sisters. "I wonder about her. Do you think she was this scary smart before?"

  "What do you mean? Are you wondering if she's the way she is because of what she's been through? The old nature versus nurture argument?"

  Sadie nodded, listlessly. Neil settled himself down beside her, saying, "I'm going to go with nature. She had to be scary smart before this, though she may not have known how smart she was. The proof is in the fact that we haven't seen any other children her age. If you think about it there had to have been millions of children who were put in her exact same situation. You know parents dying to save their kids. So that begs the question, where are all those kids?"

  "Dead," Sadie replied.

  "Yeah," Neil agreed. "The apocalypse was the most extreme measure of survival of the fittest. For a child of her age to have survived, especially alone, meant she had to be something special. Now me on the other hand, I'm the recipient of the Survival of the Luckiest award."

  "I thought that was my title," Sadie said. "I don't know why I'm stillhere…I should've died so many times that it doesn't seem fair that better people like Ram and Sarah and N-Nico died and I'm still here, useless as always."

  Neil grabbed her hand and squeezed. "Stop it. You have a role. You're both daughter and sister. And you're the energy in the group. You always have such a good attitude. And you're cheetah-fast. You got survival of the fastest. To me it's almost like a super-power."

  As always unable to take a compliment, Sadie blushed and then steered the conversation to someone else. "Captain Grey got survival of the toughest and Eve got survival of the cutest. She's so precious I doubt a hungry lion would take a nib…"

  The sound of a gun firing caused her to jerk; Neil jumped to his feet and Eve made a pouty sound in her sleep and rolled over. Other than to open her eyes to bare slits, Jillybean didn't react at all. Neil wasn't fooled. He knew that she was wide awake and that her senses were on full alert.

  "Was that Captain Grey?" Sadie asked. "It sounded like it came from that direction."

  "That was his M4, but I'm certain it was nothing," Neil assured them. Despite his outward calm, he was nervous and his ears strained to hear cries of help, or the sound of fighting or something that would indicate trouble. When nothing materialized, he relaxed. "It was probably just a zombie," he said. "Don't worry, Captain Grey is too good a soldier for a few zombies to bother him."

  Sadie nodded, accepting this, however Jillybean wasn't convinced.

  "That's why we should be worried," she said, getting to her feet. "If there were just a few monsters he would have bonked their brains in with a rock and if there were a lots of monsters he would have shooted his gun more than just once."

  Neil shook his head, yet felt queasy inside. "There could've been just enough zombies for him to feel the need to shoot once." But how many was that? Neil wondered. Earlier he had faced at least thirty of them and hadn't felt the need for a gun.

  "That's possible," Jillybean allowed.

  "But you don't believe it?" Sadie asked. When the little girl shook her head, Sadie stood up. "We should go check it out, just in case."

  "We?" Neil asked, dubiously. "No, you're injured. I'll go alone. You stay here and watch over Eve and Jillybean."

  Jillybean rais
ed her hand. "Ipes thinks that if Sadie is too hurted to go with you then she's too hurted to watch over us little kids. And he thinks that if Mister Captain Grey is really in trouble then maybe Mister Neil going by himself won't do all that much. He thinks we should all go in the Humvee."

  "One vote of no confidence from a toy zebra, that's just great," Neil sighed. Jillybean started to apologize but he cut her off, "Don't worry about it. It's the story of my life. Either way, this is probably nothing, but just in case, let's get a bottle for Eve and a gun for Jillybean."

  Her eyes went big, as did Sadie's.

  "It's just in case," Neil repeated. "If we get surrounded, I'll be driving. I can't drive and shoot at the same time. Not very well, at least. Besides, Jillybean you carried that gun for a week and no one knew. You kept it safe and you used it responsibly."

  Sadie made a face that suggested he was crazy, but still she pulled out the little silver gun that Jillybean had dropped on the forest floor after killing the bounty hunter. "Keep it handy and, you know, be careful where you point it. Here." She held it out.

  The little girl took it gingerly as though it might go off if she breathed too loudly. She then checked the load. "It's missing two bullets," she said and then shivered. "The extras are in my pack."

  As Neil got a bottle ready and Sadie picked up Eve and gently put her in her carseat, Jillybean topped off the load with all the delicacy a brain surgeon would use when operating.

  When they were ready, Neil took the Humvee off road, his blue eyes scanning everywhere. "This is all just a precaution," he said to reassure himself. "It was probably nothing."

  In the passenger seat Sadie held the sawed-off shotgun in sweaty hands. She agreed with him, "Probably. Maybe he even accidentally fired his gun. Or better, maybe he shot a turkey or a pheasant. We didn't think of that."

  "Ipes just called himself an ignoramus," Jillybean said with a high giggle. "He says that we have equated guns with monsters or bad guys for so long that we forgot all about hunting!"