The room was quiet though. The gentle hum of the freezer was the only sound in the room. It was the hum that encouraged the questions.
Neil asked, “Do you have electricity?”
“Well, yes and no. I have a generator upstairs in the garage that’s keeping the freezer running and lets me turn on the stove every now and again. After I went through all the gasoline in my car, I just went around and found all the other cars in the area and have been running it off of that since. I haven’t needed to take that much gas so far, but I know where the cars are and know where I can get gas when I need it. I usually turn it off at night and then turn it back on during the day. I figure the freezer should be able to keep itself cold when I’m not going in and out of it.”
“So what all do you have in the freezer?” asked Jerry. “If you can share a pizza, I think I would be willing to be your slave for all of eternity.”
“No. No pizzas. It’s mainly halibut, salmon, and moose with a little caribou and some vegetables from the garden.”
Emma asked, “Garden?”
“Oh yeah. It was Lucy’s garden but Moe and I have kept it up over the years. We’ve got tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and some other odds and ends out there. Lucy showed me how to can vegetables a few years back, so I’ve got shelves of jarred vegetables in the storage pantry and even some cranberry, blackberry, and raspberry jelly in there. If we’re quick about it, I can show you out back if you’d like. There are quite a few raspberries still out there.”
Emma, still distracted with his inventory, asked, “Cranberry jelly?”
“Sure. You want to try some? I’ve got a jar over here in the fridge.”
Neil asked, “I thought you only ran the freezer?”
“Oh, I do. But I keep re-freezing water bottles and cooling packs to keep in the fridge so that I can keep some of that chilled too. I figured it would be a long time before Fred Meyer was going to open again, so I’m trying to make everything last as long as possible.”
Neil had thought he had been clever and resourceful, but now he was seeing true resourcefulness. Charles was amazing. He did not strike any of them as someone who was trying to scratch out a basic existence with only survival in mind. He was living well...as well as could be expected. Looking around the room again, Neil found himself wondering at the level of comfort in which Charles had surrounded himself. Neil looked at the cleaned and drying dishes sitting next to the sink in the kitchenette, at the garbage can next to the stove, and at the dog food dish next to that. He looked at the neatly arranged books and magazines on the shelves along the wall and at the blankets folded and sitting along the top of the couch. There were some candles and flashlights on the couple of end tables in the room. Nothing was out of place and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Really, the only things in the room that looked slightly out of place and dirty were the group of survivors that were Charles’ guests.
That one fact was more than a little embarrassing to Neil. Here was a guy who was older than any of them by decades and he was doing a much better job of taking care of himself and his surroundings than all of them combined. Sure, it could be argued that a single person requires less food and less maintenance, but a single person only has himself to rely upon as well.
What would Neil have done if he were alone? Could he have made it this far all by himself? He doubted it. And then he remembered the day when he and Tony started the fire down the block from their safe house. He got himself up and over a fence only to be confronted, grabbed, and threatened by one of the ghouls. The creature had Neil in his clutches and had it not been for Jerry, Neil would be one of them now. That memory still chilled Neil’s thoughts and made him in even more awe of Charles.
Dr. Caldwell asked what Neil and Jerry were thinking, “What about...you know...the zekes... zombies...those things? You’ve obviously seen them. When did you first start seeing them?”
Charles sat back in his chair and thought. A hint of emotion crept onto his face and landed squarely in his eyes; eyes that were as grey as time. He took a deep breath before he began, “Sorry. It’s just this is really the first time that I’ve had to talk about those first few days. Moe doesn’t ask me a lot of questions and when he does it’s usually about either eating or going to the bathroom.
“The street lights still worked through that first night but they only light things up so far. I think I started seeing them then. There were just a few, and in the dark they kind of looked like normal folks who were just in a bit of a daze. I guess I wasn’t the only one who decided not to leave, because ole’ Jaspar from down the street, he went out to see if he could help them. Maybe he thought they were just in shock or something, I don’t know. I could tell that they didn’t seem right and it wasn’t shock. They just weren’t right.
“As soon as Jaspar came into the light, there was this horrible noise and they took off after him. Jaspar was old, so he wasn’t running anywhere. He held up his hands but they didn’t stop. They just came at him. In the glow from the street light they didn’t look human anymore as they went to work. It looked like something you might see on Discovery or....” He looked at Jules and Danny and stopped himself short, “Well, you know what happened.
“I heard his wife scream from further down, out of the light, and those things were after her just like that. She must have been up at the house still, because I heard some banging and then some shattering glass. There was a scream and then nothing. I hoped she had a heart attack or something before they got to her. Betty...Beatrice, had a bad heart. The next morning though, there was Beatrice, in her pink nightgown, wandering in the street. She was a walking nightmare. She wasn’t a thing of grace and beauty when she was alive, I gotta be honest, but she really was a monster. The thing that I think bothered me the most, though, was that her little yappy pain in the ass white dog was still following her around like she was still in there. I’d hope Moe would have better sense.
“The next day I woke up and looked out the window there and didn’t see anything. Beatrice was gone and so were all the others. Of course, I couldn’t see much from those windows, but what I did see was a lot of nothing out there. A little later in the day, I saw my first group of survivors. They were running. There were about six of them, maybe more. They looked like they were just ordinary folks, but they looked so scared. They stopped right out there by the street lamp. It looked like they were just resting; trying to catch their breaths. I wanted to go upstairs and tell them to come inside, but I just couldn’t. I was too afraid.
“It looked like two of them started to argue about which way they should go. One pointed north, into downtown, and the other pointed west, toward the airport. Maybe they were being tracked already or maybe it was their raised voices. Regardless, they all stood up at once and the fear already in their eyes became panic. Two of the women, girls really, started to cry.
“I might have still had time to help them. I could have told them to run over here and they could have hid in the basement with Moe and me, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched them start to run that way up the street and then all of a sudden they came running back the other way. They disappeared from my sight and so I didn’t see what happened, but then I heard the screaming. I honestly don’t know what happened to them. They might have gotten away. I haven’t seen any of them around since, if you catch my meaning.
“I saw a handful of others over the days, but it’s been quite some time since the last group. In fact, the last one I saw was a single woman. She looked like she was in a bit of a daze, but she was still alive. I saw her at least a couple more times after the first too. She would just wander in the street and then disappear again. My guess is that she’s moving from house to house, if she’s still alive.”
Jerry asked him, “What about lately? Have you seen any people or any of those things?”
Charles nodded and continued, “I’ve seen those things a bit but we’ve been able to avoid them mostly.”
Neil tilted his chin and s
aid, “Mostly?”
“Well, Moe still needs to go out. I didn’t really want to turn Lucy’s house into a latrine. I didn’t want to catch hell from her for an eternity when it was my time to join her. So, after the first few days, Moe started to go out back but I could tell that he wasn’t satisfied with this arrangement. I got myself a tire iron and decided to take him out.”
Meghan asked, “A tire iron?”
Charles answered, “It was the best I could do.”
Jules asked, “Weren’t you scared?”
“So scared that my knees were knocking with each step. That first walk was short and sweet. He went out, took care of his business, and then we got ourselves back home. This went on for a few days but then we decided to be a little braver. We took a walk around the whole block. That was our routine for a couple of days, maybe a little more. When you’re spending as much time alone as I have, details start getting a little murky.
“I guess we were feeling a bit cocky because we decided to let our guard down a little and almost ran smack dab into a group of three of them. Lucky for me, they didn’t walk any faster than me. And we were able to lose them, but now I knew that there were some of them around. And they knew that we were around too. Almost ruined a perfectly good thing.”
Dr. Caldwell asked slowly, “So are they still around then?”
“In a manner of speaking. They’re really not much of a threat anymore.”
Jerry nodded. “I get where you’re goin’ with that.”
“Probably not, actually. I decided to go out on my own one morning. I didn’t want anything to happen to ole Moe here and I didn’t want to get tangled in his leash or anything. No offense, Moe, but I think you would have been a bit of a liability. I went out with my tire iron and not a clue as to what I was doing, but I knew that I needed to get rid of them or they’d end up getting rid of me. It didn’t take long to find them. They were standing out on a corner. It looked like they were just waiting for the bus or something. They were just standing there. It was the damnedest thing. They looked like grey statues or something, only every now and then one of them would shake from their feet up to their heads and out to the tips of their fingers. It looked like maybe they were each in turn stepping on the same exposed live wire and getting a little jolt of electricity. I think that bothered me more than the way they looked, or even smelled for that matter.
“I got their attention, which didn’t really take more than me rounding the corner. While I was still headed toward those things, I saw that Jackie Gordon’s garage door was open. So, on my way back I decided that maybe this would be my chance. I knew that I couldn’t outfight them. Hell, I was fighting with the tire iron just to keep it in my hands. Those things get heavy after a bit. Anyway, the garage is a detached model that used to be someone’s shop and Jackie’s late husband Tye did some modifications to it. One of the things that he’d done that he was most proud of was rigging a release in the back of the shop right next to the backdoor. The lever was just a really big switch and when triggered, it was a manual release for the garage door to come down. They had an automatic garage door opener, but he was a tinker and it came in handy when the garage door was outta repair.
“I guess none of that matters. What does matter was that I led those little buggers into that garage, shut the front door and let my self out the back, locking them inside. With a can of Tye’s spray paint that I swiped from one of the shelves as I made my way through, I painted a warning on the front of the garage. Just in case anyone ever heads back this way. I’d hate for the wrong person to open that garage door and get a nasty surprise.”
Neil asked, “And so you haven’t seen any more of them since?”
“No. Moe and I have been pretty much the only ones around in several days. It may have been more than a week since I locked those things up. You wanna see our garden now?”
They went out back to check out the garden and just get some fresh air. Using a ladder, Jerry climbed on top of a little storage shed in the far corner. From there, he could see into most of the adjoining yards and beyond. He could also see up and down several streets. It was a great vantage point, but even better than the view was what he didn’t see. He didn’t see any of the predatory undead creatures that had been stalking them. Charles was right; there really didn’t seem to be anything or anyone in the vicinity. Still, Jerry found himself scanning the backyards and streets over and over again as the others picked raspberries and other late odds and ends from the garden.
The raspberry bushes covered the entire back fence and were popping with the little red fruit. For Jules and Danny, this was the best time they’d had on their vacation to Alaska yet. There was something special about picking fresh anything from a plant and eating it right on the spot. They savored each sweet, juicy bite.
While the others enjoyed the backyard, Dr. Caldwell and Neil moved the van into the backyard through a large vehicle sized gate. With the gate closed and Jerry in his “crow’s nest” observer position atop the shed, the back yard seemed like a fortress, safe and secure. For the first time in a long time, Neil felt like he could relax for a bit.
Chapter 25
Malachi sat in the open air of the backyard and thought to himself that this was probably how Adam felt on that first day. This was no Eden, but it was closest thing to it that he’d seen in a long time. He leaned back in his folding lawn chair and soaked in the scene. Other than a grill, the afternoon had all the trappings and leisure of a holiday barbecue. There was food and laughter and, more importantly, no fear. It was as if the seven-foot cedar fence that wrapped itself around the yard like a pair of protective arms, held all the horrors of the past several weeks at bay. Of course, as he sat and reveled in the day, he was sitting away from most everyone else. To him, it was just safer, in case none of what he was seeing or doing was real.
Charles had brought out a couple of packages of smoked salmon from the freezer. The packages were passed around to each of the very eager guests in the backyard. Jules and Danny sniffed at the strips and then declined to eat any but everyone else dived in hungrily. The two kids busied themselves with eating the raspberries and then going back to pick more. While they worked on the harvest, they each ate the peanut butter sandwiches that Meghan made for them.
Art and Neil were busy at the back of the van. They were unloading some of the food and most of the blankets and extra clothing and carrying it into the basement. It had been decided that the group would stay for a day or two with him while they formulated a new plan. Hoping to assuage some of the guilt he felt for not helping the others that he’d seen, Charles elected to open his sanctuary to these strangers.
He was watching Art and Neil work and found himself amazed at the stacks of food and material they were removing. He moved over next to the van and peeked inside. When he saw the supplies in the back, he let out a sigh and said with obvious relief in his voice, “Boy, you folks sure travel in style. I was afraid that maybe I was gonna hafta feed all o’ you. But look at all of that.”
With a hint of false offense in his voice, Neil asked, “What kind of houseguests do you think we are? D’you think we were just going to eat all of your food and then leave you high and dry? I’ve got something for you in here too. Where is it?”
Neil lifted a canvas bag filled with cans and moved it aside. He pulled a plastic container from under the back seat. “Ahhhh. Here it is.” He opened the opaque tub to reveal a variety of handguns and boxes of ammunition. He lifted a small, stubby nosed revolver and a box of shells and handed this to Charles. “You look like a Smith and Wesson man.”
Charles took the firearm and weighed it in his hand like the statue of Justice holding her scales silently. He didn’t say anything for several seconds. Neil wasn’t sure whether he was having an emotional response to the gesture or if it was maybe something more. The gun was sitting on his hand more than in his hand, and this fact was not lost on Neil.
He asked tentatively, “Is everything okay, Charle
s?”
No response except more silence. He was thankful that enough was happening around them that no one else was paying any attention to their interaction. Neil could see now that Charles’ quiet was memory induced. He could see the past in the old man’s somber, distant eyes; a past that was steeped in forgotten memories.
“Charles?”
“Sorry. I just...I...uh...haven’t held a gun in my hand in over fifty years.”
“I didn’t mean to...I didn’t know.”
Charles smiled as reassuringly as possible and replied, “How could you? My kids don’t even know.”
“What happened?” Neil was imagining some accident or possibly a crime involving a gun. Perhaps Charles had been a police officer or a security guard and he was forced to use his weapon.
Charles asked as he looked up at the sky, “Have you ever heard of the Chosin Reservoir?”
Neil started to say that the name wasn’t completely unfamiliar to him but stopped himself short. Instead, he shook his head and let Charles continue.
“I was in the Army in 1950. I was part of the Army of Occupation in Japan. It was easy work and good pay. I was only eighteen, hell, just eighteen, and I was seein’ the world on Uncle Sam’s dime. And then, all of a sudden I found myself aboard a troop ship headin’ to Korea. Who the hell had ever even heard of the damned place before ‘50? I eventually got assigned to the 32nd Regiment of the Seventh Infantry Division. We were called the Queen’s Own. I know, I know. It’s kinda funny to think that a US Army formation could carry that title but we did. It had something to do with the unit coming originally from Hawaii and having some traditional queen there first call us into service. I used to know the story pretty well. I guess because I was pulled from my original unit—an anti-aircraft battery—to supplement the 32nd’s infantry roster, I didn’t have the same connection to the unit that the other guys had. Hell, I was so new that I didn’t even have a name yet. I was just, Hey new guy.
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