Randy was wishing now that Tony hadn’t brought up going to the bathroom. That thought kept percolating around in his head until he had to pee so bad it felt like his back teeth were floating. He hated to ask the guard to help them out since he knew the answer was probably going to be negative. Not able to take it anymore he finally asked and was rewarded with a quart container being tossed in his direction. Tony hurriedly moved back as far away from the possible splatter zone as he could. Randy wiggled out of his boxers and carefully started peeing into the container.
At almost the exact same second as his stream of urine hit the bottom of the container the door opened, and three men walked in. They stopped and took in the sight of Randy taking a whiz into the Tupperware. Not the first impression he’d hoped to give. He assumed none of them were going to want to shake hands when they met him. Randy found himself in an extremely awkward position as he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop peeing anytime in the near future. If he tried, he was probably going to end up pissing on himself which he assumed would provide an even worse first impression than the current situation.
“Holy crap dude. How much did you drink? Sorry guys but you may want to step back in case he overflows.” Tony chimed in after the awkward silence became too heavy in the room. Randy wanted to crawl under a rock. Especially as the jug was rapidly filling up and he was worried he might actually end up overflowing the container. Whatever bladder pipe is controlled by the bladder faucet finally shut down and Randy was able to stop and seal up the warm jug full of his pee and sit it down on the floor next to him.
“You all done?” One of the men who’d just walked in asked. Randy nodded. His whole face was flushed bright red with embarrassment. Randy sensed Tony behind him getting ready to say something stupid, so he jumped in.
“All done. Sorry about that. When we find water and we can’t carry it all we drink as much of it as we can on the spot. Which is normally fine, but this time someone decided to handcuff me to one of these ballerina practice poles after taking me on a scenic tour with a dusty bag over my head.”
“You resisted. You were in our territory, using our supplies, and you resisted our soldiers. Everything we did was done with restraint. You’re lucky, when people come on our land to steal and attack us, we normally aren’t nice enough to let them live. You two are together right?” The man asked. Randy was assuming he was the guy in charge.
“Not like together-together but yeah we’ve been wandering the roads together for a while.” Tony answered.
“Ok. We’re going to split you up and ask each of you some questions. That way we can see if your answers line up the same. What’s your name?” The man pointed at Tony who said he was Tony. One of the other men came over and took off Randy’s handcuff from the rail then had Randy turn around so he could fasten the loose handcuff on to his other hand. Then he was marched out into the hallway to wait while Tony was interrogated. About ten minutes later Tony was brought out the door in cuffs. The guard with Randy marched him back into the room.
Randy sat down on the floor and waited patiently to be handcuffed to the wall. While he was getting handcuffed, he looked up at the man he was assuming was the leader and asked him if it’d be possible to get a pair of pants.
“You’re actually better dressed now than you were earlier.” The man replied with a smirk referring to them walking in while Randy was in the middle of taking the worlds longest leak. Randy nodded and leaned back ready to answer questions. They’d decided to keep it simple and stick to mostly the truth. They were just going to throw in a little fib about Kelly having died the last time they’d gone into a house looking for the kids. They also weren’t going to mention having found Zoey.
“What’s your full name?” The man asked as he sat down at the big wooden desk and opened up a worn looking notebook. Randy told him then asked him if he had a name.
“You can call me Captain O’Donnell. Now tell me how you ended up here. Start with where you were at when everyone turned into crazy cannibals. You can speed up through the boring parts. I’ll ask if I want you to dive deeper into anything.”
Randy told his story. He was completely honest until he got to the very end. That’s where he did some acting and told O’Donnell about Kelly dying and how him and Tony had decided to just find the locals they’d run into and join up to try and find his daughters. They thought it was the best way to find his daughters and keep them safe.
“One of my men here tells me you’re the guys we took the pilot away from out on the toll road. That right?” O’Donnell asked.
“Yes sir.” Randy hadn’t hidden that part, but he hadn’t really talked a lot about it either. “How’s he doing anyway?”
“Better than the rest of us. As long as there’s aviation fuel sitting around, he has a very valuable skillset. Him and Amos are busy jetting around the state as we speak. Your friend Tony was in the Coast Guard. We do a lot of work on the coast. The ocean is about the safest way there is to get around now. Especially for Florida. He has useful skills. You have any useful skills?”
“I worked with computers before the power went off. Computers and networking if those things help anyone anymore. I can help setup networks and that sort of thing.” Randy answered.
“Ok. Believe it or not that may prove to be useful down the road. Although for now that kind of skill probably gets you a manual labor or sentry job, but we’ll see.” O’Donnell looked up from his notebook and right at Randy. “Tony already said he was good with signing up with us. Worse case I can hand both of you a gun and have you stand on the walls. Well, I guess worse case for you would be a big step down from that but the lowest level I deal with is guards on the walls. You want to throw your hat in with us too? Once you’re in we don’t take kindly to people trying to get out. I can tell you that right now.”
“I’m in. Like I said I need to find my daughters and I need to give them a safe place to grow up. I’ll stand those walls as long as it takes to keep them safe.”
“Good man.” O’ Donnell stood up to leave. “Normally I’d shake your hand but like I said I saw what you were doing earlier. You’re going to have to earn it but let me go ahead and extend my congratulations on you joining the brotherhood. It’s not an easy path but we’re going to blaze our way through this apocalypse and come out stronger on the other side. You’re making the right move.”
“Can I get some pants now?” Randy asked as O’Donnell stood up to walk out.
“I really hope so.”
With a grin and shake of his head O’ Donnell walked out, and Tony was escorted back in. They were both handcuffed to the pipe again when someone did come in with a few giant Ross bags. The man with the bags hooked them up with jeans and plain green t-shirts. It made a world of difference not to be chained to the pipe wearing just their boxers. Of course, it’d be even better not to be chained to the pipe at all.
Chapter 25: Good Girls
Mr. Abrams walked Myriah into a room that had a large TV on the wall. There were the desks used in schools scattered around in front of the TV. Caitlyn was sitting at one of the desks with a notebook open in front of her. She looked up as they walked in. Myriah saw the momentary flash of excitement as Caitlyn saw her. Then she turned her attention back to the TV. Myriah got the message. Caitlyn was playing the adults game too.
Myriah sat down and Mr. Abrams went to the front of the room. He fumbled around with the electronics up there until he had the DVD playing that he needed to show them.
“Ok. This will run about an hour then we have several more for you to go through. The lights stay on and you’re expected to take notes and be able to pass a test at the end of the day. No talking between the two of you. People will be checking in on you to make sure you’re both focused on the videos. Lunch will be dropped off so you can keep watching while you eat. Any questions for me?”
Caitlyn and Myriah both politely said they had no questions. Then they settled in to watch the movie. Mr. Abrams left the room a
nd shut the door behind him. Cailyn stage whispered she was happy to see Myriah and loved her and asked her if she’d seen Doreen and Ali.
“They’re both fine. They got beaten because of what I did when they brought us here. That’s how they keep us in line here. If we screw up, they’ll hurt them instead of us.” Myriah whispered back. She wasn’t extremely concerned about talking as long as they didn’t get too loud. At the end of the day the people in this building had a lot more to worry about than two teen sisters talking to each other during a documentary or whatever this was they had to watch. Myriah opened her notebook to take notes. She didn’t think they’d beat Doreen or Ali if she didn’t pass this test, but she wasn’t ruling it out as a possibility either.
The movie started. It was a tall man with salt and pepper hair sitting at a desk with an American flag and a Georgia state flag behind it. The man began speaking with a cultured down-home southern gentlemen accent. Myriah and Caitlyn began scribbling notes as the man spoke.
“Hello there. I’m Senator Wilcox of the great state of Georgia. If you’re watching this then I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on. What have you gotten yourself into? I’ve made these little movies to help you understand. I’m making this one to give you an overview of who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. I also want to share with you my vision for how you fit into this new world. As the young women of this brave new world you serve a greater purpose. You’ll be the ones giving birth to and raising the first generations of children to be born into this brave new world. It’s a grave and critical responsibility that’s been thrust upon you.”
“Now to be clear. I’m not just a Senator. I’m also a man of God. I’ve held multiple titles in my life that’ve helped prepare me to be your leader in these tumultuous times. I’ve spent time in the military and the intelligence communities. I’ve spent time in the business world, and I’ve answered the call to serve the church. My role as a minister is especially relevant. It gives me insight into what’s happening today. God has set a plague loose on the lands to cleanse the earth of sin. The evils that man have perpetuated have caught up to him.”
“I believe that while God seeks to cleanse the earth, he does not seek to destroy all mankind. Just like he sent the floods to punish the sinners in biblical times he’s sent this plague to remind us of the dangers of sinning. There’s going to be a future after this plague. A future that’ll be bright and based around the teachings of the bible. Like the proverbial Phoenix arising from the ashes so shall we rise up. We’ll rise up better and stronger than ever before. We’ll rise up as strong, godly men and women. We’ll show God we’ve learned the errors of our ways. We’ll show him how good we can be while understanding why he inflicted his divine justice on us.”
“Man is a sinner. We all know that. We all know there’s nothing we can do to change that. We can try to lessen our sinning though. We can learn from the lessons of the past and grow in our faith and let it sustain us through the rough times ahead. Let there be no doubt that some of the hardest work is still ahead of us. I know we can walk the path together though since you’ve shown you have the stuff to have survived until now and kept your decency. You wouldn’t be sitting in those chairs watching this video if you didn’t show promise.”
The senator paused at this point in his narration to stare into the camera. After about ten seconds of staring he started back up again.
“We find ourselves in a world that’s ready to be reborn. A world we can shape into the kind of God-fearing community we can all be proud to live in. Let’s talk a little bit about how we’re going to do that. When this crisis first started brewing the President and the rest of congress all thought activating the military would alert and scare too many people. They shuffled some things around covertly and then trusted in the false god of science to get them out of this mess. None of them were expecting an event that can only be described as the rapture. An event that took ninety nine percent of the people to their final reward leaving nothing but the husks of their bodies to roam the world until they collapsed.”
“The final percent left here on this earth must now survive. We must rebuild this world and be ready to welcome Jesus when he comes back down to this planet. We must punish the sinners and make a safe place for those who obey the commandments. We must spread the gospel. First things first though we secure the land we own. When the rest of Congress was trusting in science and trying not to upset the regular folk, we in Georgia called up the national guard. We started insisting on curfews in major cities. We prepared for the day we knew was coming.”
“Have no doubt those early days were still utterly horrific. In our big cities like Atlanta there was no end to the suffering. Because we’d prepared though we were able to pull through better than our neighbors to the north and south. Now we’ve expanded into Florida so that all of Georgia and Florida are part of God’s country. We’re blowing up bridges and sealing the borders so that we can make our land safe. We’ll hunt down those soulless husks who left behind their bodies filled with the evil lust for consuming human flesh. We’ll make this land safe then we’ll expand into the other states and islands around us.”
“Our new militia to enforce God’s will is known as the brotherhood. Your responsibility is to support them as they go out to share the word and secure our borders. You are on the journey now to join the sisterhood. Once you’re of age and you’ve proven worthy you will be given in matrimony to one of the brotherhoods to propagate our species. We will be fruitful and multiply. We will fill up these lands once again. Only this time we’ll fill it up with people who won’t incur the wrath of a vengeful God. Well fill it up with God’s chosen and live in paradise on this plant until we’re called home to the one and only real paradise.”
“Pay attention in your lessons and walk the path of the righteous and you will go far. Do not follow the path of sin. That path was trod before and anyone with eyes can see where it leads. We will rebuild and then we will rejoice. You will be a part of this. I welcome you heartily to your first steps on the journey to sisterhood.”
The DVD ended and came up with a few selections you could make. The section they’d just watched was labeled the ‘Senators Intro to Sisterhood’. Caitlyn refused to look back at Myriah. She knew there was no way they’d be able to stop from cracking jokes about what they’d just seen. She had a feeling cracking jokes about the senator were probably frowned upon. She had a vague recollection of hearing about the evangelist getting elected to be senator of Georgia and stirring up a bunch of stuff because people thought he was too conservative.
Their family had never been ultra-religious. They’d gone to church most Sundays then gone out for lunch afterwards. They’d done various church events and youth groups and things like that. The church they’d gone to hadn’t been that special brand of brimstone and hell fire that it sounded like the senator subscribed to. They were going to need to fake it until they could make it in this new society. Caitlyn hadn’t given up completely on escaping, but she saw it as less of a reality every day. With Brenda and Eric both dead she didn’t even know where they’d go if they did escape. The hope they may actually find their parents was slowly dying. She was slowly accepting the reality that this was her new life and she’d probably never see her mom or dad again. At this point she just wanted to see her little sisters again and figure out a way to be with them.
That was the other reason she kept from turning around. She didn’t want to see the hope she knew would be blazing in Myriah’s eyes. Myriah wasn’t a practical person. Myriah would never accept their parent’s death until she saw the actual corpses. Myriah believed in fairy tales. Caitlyn didn’t think she could have the luxury of believing anymore but she didn’t want to try and snuff out that flame of hope burning bright in Myriah’s heart. It may be the only thing that sustained her in the days ahead.
She stared straight ahead. She ignored the coughs and other noises meant to get her to turn her head to talk to Myriah. She
ignored them until Mr. Abrams walked back in and started the next section of the DVD. She leaned back and grabbed her pencil to take notes on how to maintain ‘The Hygiene of a Godly Woman’. At least they were getting into some information that was more useful than some old guy rattling on about the end of days.
Chapter 26: To Thine Own Self Be True
Zombies! (Book 3): Violence Solves Everything Page 23