Reckoning in an Undead Age

by A. M. Geever

  “It’s okay, it’s all right,” Skye said.

  Another voice, with a child’s high pitch, shouted, “Let her go!”

  Doug saw the boy ahead, down on the ground. He was looking up at Skye, who was still on the roof. She was trying to hold on to a struggling tangle of arms and legs—and lungs. They had to achieve two outcomes at odds with one another as quickly as possible: get the kids to trust them and shut the howler up.

  The boy tensed, his brown eyes filling with fear when he finally saw Doug approaching. Dirt was smudged over a nose broad across the nostrils that hugged close against his face. His dark-brown skin was dirty, hair matted and tangled, his frame on the scrawny side. He backed up a few steps, as if to run, then stopped, unwilling to leave the screaming, squirming girl Skye was wrangling on the roof.

  “I want Bun Bun!” the girl shrieked.

  Doug slowed and held his hands out, palms up, about twenty feet from the boy.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice low, but needing to be heard over the other child’s shrieks. “It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

  “Let her go,” the boy demanded, fear and fury swirling over his pinched face. “Let her go!”

  “Where are your parents?” Doug asked.

  At Doug’s question, the boy's lower lip began to quiver. So, no parents.

  “Let her go,” he cried again, but now he sounded on the verge of tears.

  Skye seemed to have a secure grip on the now sobbing girl, whose occasional hiccups sounded like b-b-bun-bun.

  “What’s bun bun?” Doug asked the boy.

  Tears suddenly filled the boy's eyes. “Violet’s rabbit. You were coming and we had to leave him.”

  “A rabbit?” he said, taken aback, feeling pretty sure that the apocalypse had finally thrown every weird thing it could at him. Aloud, he said, “Is Bun Bun back in the room?”

  “Mister Bun Bun,” the boy said, his voice quivering.

  He looked small and frail, and so vulnerable that Doug’s heart ached. The boy’s chest began to hitch hard as tears trailed down his dirty face. Doug walked closer, waiting for him to spook and run. When he was five feet away, Doug dropped down to his knees.

  “How about we go get him? Will you let us help you get Mister Bun Bun?”

  The boy began to cry in earnest. Doug could see his relief that maybe this adult was someone who could be in charge. Someone who could take responsibility for him and the still distraught girl from his too small shoulders.

  He nodded, wiping at his face, smearing the tears and dirt together into a muddy smudge.

  “Skye,” Doug called, partially turning his head so that his voice would carry, but not wanting to take his eyes off the boy. “We’re going to get Mister Bun Bun. Okay?”

  “We’re going to get Mister Bun Bun?” Skye echoed, clearly bewildered. Immediately, the little girl’s crying began to subside. “Okay,” she continued, her voice becoming a soothing singsong. “We’re going to get Mister Bun Bun.”

  Doug returned his full attention to the little boy.

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy looked at him, wary, but the doubt and fear lurking in his eyes was quickly giving way to exhaustion. He looked like a scared kitten, the kind that startles and runs from a leaf blowing on a breeze. Doug would not have been surprised if the kid said his name was Kitty.

  “Silas.”

  Doug smiled and held out his hand. Slowly, Silas extended his own. Doug took hold of his grimy fingers.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Silas. I’m Doug.”

  2

  “I don’t know why I thought things couldn’t get worse,” Rocco said.

  The stems of withered and discolored leaves he’d been holding fluttered to the ground. Crouched beside another plant, Miranda chewed on her lower lip. Curled, discolored leaves covered the potato plant. Some had turned yellow; others were still green but had dark splotches. Every plant in the field was in a similar state, except for the ones that were completely dead. She was so familiar with the mildewy smell wafting from the plants that at this point, it almost didn’t register. She dusted her hands and stood up.

  “I thought maybe we’d caught it in time.”

  “You didn’t think, you hoped,” Rocco said. “By the time you discover it, it’s too late.”

  Miranda sighed, then said softly, “This is bad.”

  Rocco snorted. “Understatement of the century.”

  They walked between the mounded rows in silence to the field’s edge. It was a hell of a way to begin September, knowing that nursing and babying of their crops all summer hadn’t been enough. Rocco scrubbed his face with his hands, which only exaggerated the worry lines around his pursed lips and the bags under his dark-brown eyes. Even his eyebrows, one of the more prominent features of his blunt face, looked diminished. He leaned against the side of the pickup truck’s bed. Miranda joined him, even though the metal was hot from sitting in the sun.

  “We’re gonna have to start sending people out to look for food,” Rocco said.

  “How far will they have to go?”

  “Everything inside the sound defense perimeter is cleaned out, and everything beyond it for ten miles, probably.”

  She felt her mouth fall open. “That far?”

  He nodded.

  “Fucking Dominic,” she muttered, but without the venom that had been present at the beginning of the summer. It was an automatic response, like how you wished someone a good day, or said someone’s kid was cute. Even the venomous hatred for San Jose’s City Council President had been beaten into submission by one disaster after another. “Can we please kill Victor now?”

  Rocco chuffed out a laugh. “You’re relentless, you know that? We’re not executing the guy, Tucci.”

  He held his hand up to silence her when she opened her mouth. She thought he was going to say more, but he didn’t, so she said, “He’s the reason we’re in this situation in the first place.”

  “I know, but killing him isn’t gonna fix this.”

  “It’d make me feel better. He’s sitting on his ass in the stockade, eating our food during a food shortage that he caused when he led the attack that almost got us overrun by zombies. And killed your predecessor.”

  Rocco shook his head, then said, “So what do we have?”

  “What?”

  Rocco scratched his forehead. “For staples, we have the two potato fields that border P-Land’s fields, and the corn.”

  Victor conversation over, she thought. Aloud, she said, “And the barley, too.” At his baleful side-eye, she held up her hands to concede the point. “I know we lost most of it, but we have some.”

  “A month’s worth, at best,” Rocco grumbled. “The two big southern vegetable fields, so cabbages, green beans, broccoli…” He gave her a questioning look.

  “Eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, garlic, onions…squash?”

  Rocco shook his head. “Squash was planted in the east field—trampled.”

  They were both quiet for a few moments, then Miranda said, “So between zombies trampling the fields when LO was surrounded, the wire worms infestation in the barley, and now this blight, we’ve lost what? Fifty percent?”

  “Try seventy-five.” When Miranda winced, he said, “That doesn’t even include P-Land’s losses. Last time she was here, I think Zoe said thirty percent.”

  “They can absorb that.”

  Rocco nodded, but by the distant look in his eyes, Miranda knew his attention was focused inward. “Can’t help us out much, though,” he said absently, then seemed to rouse himself. “If P-Land wasn’t giving us feed for the livestock, we’d have to slaughter it. We’ll have milk and dairy, and eggs until the weather turns cold.”

  “You know some genius is going to want to eat them, right? If things get tight enough, we’ll need to post guards.”

  “Tucci, I know things are shitty where you come from, but that won’t be a problem here.”

  Miranda laughed. His naive
ty was refreshing. She’d never realized Rocco could be naive. “When people get hungry, they get stupid. And things can always get worse.”

  “You’re just a little ray of sunshine today,” Rocco said, elbowing her, but he smiled.

  “How much food is in the emergency stores?”

  “Two months’ worth. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…I don’t know what we were thinking,” he said softly. Then he said, his voice firm, “Actually, that’s not true. We never had a loss like this. Even the first two or three years, and believe me, the most experienced people were backyard gardeners. We had no idea what the hell we were doing. But there weren’t that many of us, and we hadn’t told people to come find us.”

  The last part, telling people to come to Law & Order, the nickname for their community that most people just called LO, was the icing on the worry cake they’d been eating for the last two months. When they’d sent teams of people out to gather the raw materials to manufacture the vaccine, and before they realized the scope of the crop failures, they’d told anyone they met that there was a vaccine in Portland. They told them to come, and to spread the word. It wasn’t like the old days; word didn’t spread fast, but it was spreading. Over the summer they’d had at least a person or two arrive every week. In the last two weeks the number of people arriving to get the vaccine had noticeably picked up. If the trend held, they were going to have two hundred people or more by Christmas, and seventy-five percent less food to feed them.

  They weren’t publicly rationing food yet, though they were behind the scenes with how much food was prepared for communal meals, and the size of the portions. Miranda had no difficulty conjuring the terrible scenario most likely to play out: the community breaking into factions of those who wanted to keep LO what it had always been—welcoming—and another that would want to keep their meager resources for themselves. But seeing as how that hadn’t happened yet, nor the commencement of scavenging parties to look for food, she decided not to dwell on it. As Father Walter would say, why borrow trouble?

  “This sucks; don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But at least people at LO are committed to the community thriving, to each other. A lot of places aren’t like that. You just have to lay it out there and kick ass when needed.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “People have their own little vegetable gardens, too.”

  Rocco groaned. “Like that’ll be enough.”

  “Well, no shit,” she said. “But let them keep some of it, take the rest for the community. Some people will be assholes, but most people will be okay with it. Especially when you frame it as a way to keep everyone fed, and ask them one-on-one. Make them feel special.”

  “So we’re taking it no matter what, but we’re asking all nice?”

  “Yep.” She pushed off the truck. “We should get back. The meeting tonight is gonna suck. I might need to pre-game it.”

  Rocco barked out a laugh, which made her happy. He was carrying the weight of the world, or their small slice of it, on his shoulders. If she could lighten it, even by something as small as a joke, she would.

  Rocco caught her arm in his paw of a hand. “Hold on a sec. I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I need you to come to Portlandia with me tomorrow.”

  She couldn’t suppress a groan. “You want me to come to P-Land? Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I’ll talk at the meeting tonight and you can let people be pissed at me instead of you.”

  “Sorry,” he said, shrugging. “I know they drive you crazy there, and you’re already on the hook for the regular meeting next month, but River can’t come. What’s her name…Veronica?”

  “The one on bed rest?”

  “Yeah,” Rocco said. “The one having twins. She went into labor right before we left. River expects it to take at least twelve hours, but it’s high risk. She has to be here.”

  Twins, she thought, disliking the pang of envy it caused, but not able to completely tamp it down. Veronica’s group had arrived two months ago. She’d known she was pregnant, obviously; she’d already been as big as a house. She and her boyfriend hadn’t known it was twins until River did an ultrasound. Before getting pregnant herself, before the excitement and hope, people having babies had filled Miranda with incredulity and poorly masked scorn. Why would anyone bring a kid into this? she’d always wondered. She got it now, even though things hadn’t worked out as she’d hoped. That Veronica got good news from her ultrasound wasn’t something Miranda would ever begrudge her.

  “Okay,” she said, resigning herself. “Why are you making a special trip to P-Land anyway? What else is there to discuss apart from new arrivals and no food?”

  “I don’t know,” Rocco said. “They were real squirrelly about it. And you never know with them…could be practical, could be about someone’s aura.” He blew out a heavy breath, his cheeks puffing up. “The food situation is bad, Tucci. I’m worried. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. It’s gonna put us to the test.”

  “If there’s any place that can get through this, it’s LO.”

  She wasn’t just blowing smoke up his ass; she meant it. She’d always been impressed with how cohesive the community was, but transitions were tricky. Rocco was still new in the role… This was a test of his leadership. A tough one, at that, and right out of the gate. “I know you’re worried.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “We’re back to scavenging for food… Christ, that’s depressing.”

  “At least there’s the vaccine.”

  Rocco’s laugh was bitter. “That we can’t make a priority.” Miranda opened her mouth to object. “We’ll still do what we can. Don’t get your panties all in a bunch. It just won’t be what we thought.”

  “Kind of par for the course right now,” she said.

  Rocco said, “When I have time to think about the vaccine, all I see are problems there, too. People are gonna be uptight about the food and needing to go out and look for more. We’ll have new people thinking they can get the vaccine and being told they have to wait. Oh, and by the way, new people, we have no food,” he added sarcastically. “If people get restless, or some ass gets impatient and stirs people up, things could get bad fast.”

  Miranda pushed off the truck. It was getting hot in the sun, and talking about it more wasn’t going to change anything. Not today, anyway. She squinted, looking over the blighted field, and called for Delilah. The pit bull was in there somewhere. Belatedly, Miranda realized she might eat some of the blighted potato plants. Would that make her sick?

  Miranda turned to Rocco, who squinted at her because of the sunshine. “Whatever we end up managing with vaccinating people, maybe we should start a pool for the new arrivals. Pick at least one new person every time we do a round. It’d show them we’re serious about them getting the vaccine, too.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Rocco said. “And the P-Land crowd will eat it up with a spoon. It’ll be more inclusive.”

  Miranda chuckled. She turned around when she heard Delilah behind her. The pit bull trotted up, two inches of pink tongue hanging from her mouth.

  “Hey, baby girl,” Miranda said, reaching down to pat her. “I was an idiot and didn’t bring any water. You’ll have to wait till we get home.”

  “There’s something else, Tucci.”

  Miranda cocked her head his way. Wariness prickled under her skin at the change of tone in his voice. Whatever he was going to say next wasn’t good.

  “We found Courtney’s journal.”

  She took a step backward, like she’d been given a good, hard shove to the chest. The birdsong receded, washed out by the blood roaring in her ears. She felt dizzy, but it wasn’t from not drinking enough water while they’d been out in the sun. She leaned over and put her hands on her knees.

  “You okay?” Rocco asked, gravel crunching under his feet. She felt the weight of his hand while he patted her back. He performed the gesture so awkwardly that Miranda wasn’t sure his
hand was attached to his body.

  She’d thought about Courtney’s journal, dreamt about it. Like a family needs a body to bury, she needed to know it had been Courtney who’d told Jeremiah things he shouldn’t have known, because what if it had been someone else? Someone still living at LO, who she said hello to every day? What if it was someone she considered a friend, or who laughed at her jokes? What if it was someone who fussed over Delilah, and gave her belly rubs and treats? What if it was someone who, if not a friend, she at least hadn’t known was an enemy?

  Hands still on her knees, she looked up at him. “Was it her?”

  “Yeah. She told Jeremiah about you being pregnant, and what you called the baby.”

  A weight sloughed off her shoulders. “Just her?”

  Rocco’s voice was gentle. “As far as we can tell.”

  “What else?” Miranda asked, straightening up.

  “She sabotaged the sound defenses at Station Eight, the day you went to investigate. It wasn’t clear how she ended up in the trench with the zombies.”

  “Did she kill the others there? And the dogs?”

  Rocco shrugged. “Didn’t say. Just that she’d sabotaged it and was saved by you guys, but yeah. Probably.”

  “Phineas almost died because of her,” she said, a furious anger flaring inside her. She took a deep breath. “Can I see it?”

  “If you want,” he said, brow furrowing over his lowering eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “Yes,” she said. How could Rocco think she wouldn’t want to see it?

  “Okay, Tucci,” he said, putting his hands up as if to ward her off. “You wanna see it, you can see it. But… What exactly do you think reading it is gonna to do for you?”

  Rocco’s question brought her up short. She’d thought about finding proof, a journal or diary, notes on napkins, she hadn’t cared what, just as long it told her how Jeremiah had known about her pregnancy, and that they’d call the baby Tadpole. She’d lost him because that monster had bitten her, the virus in his veins poisoning her just long enough to doom her child. Now the proof had been found. What did she think reading it would do for her? Did she really need to experience what Courtney saw and thought and felt as she was pulled into the web of lies and delusion that Jeremiah had spun around her?