On their fourth day together, they heard voices in the woods ahead of them. One voice, a young girl, was sobbing and the others sounded like they were trying to calm her. They crouched down to listen. Camila translated for them. The girl was crying because they’d left her grandma behind. They others were trying to reassure her there was no other choice. Grandma couldn’t walk very well. The crying girl screamed that they could have carried her. The others didn’t respond.
“I don’t think they’re dangerous,” Camila whispered. John raised an eyebrow. “Look at them, they’re pathetic.”
“They may be safe, but they may be a liability,” John whispered back.
“Come one, John, we’re both liabilities ourselves.” Camila said.
“I’ve trusted strangers with my son’s life before, I’m not making that mistake again,” he replied.
“Well this isn’t ‘last time,’ and you never know how things turn out in the end. Besides, I’m a stranger and you’re trusting me.”
“That’s different,” he whispered sharply.
“Maybe not. I might get you killed, yet.”
Before he could counter, Camila stood up and whistled at the group.
There were about twenty people—men, women and children. They looked frightened, hungry and weak. Liabilities. The people were startled by the sight of her. They stood and moved away cautiously. She approached them, and they backed up further. They stared at her rifle. She spoke to them in Spanish, told them she wasn’t going to hurt them.
Camila spoke some more. John understood very little of what was said. He looked over at Mark, who looked back at him. What was their next move?
“I guess we should go take a look,” John muttered. Mark nodded. They motioned for Rosa to come along and walked toward the big group.
Their arrival unnerved the ragtag band all over again. Camila repeatedly stated they were friendly and gave their names. John waved and managed a forced smile. It didn’t stop the suspicious stares. To John’s complete surprise, Rosa walked over to a woman about her same age and gave her a hug and whispered something in her ear. The other woman nodded and looked at John and Mark. Her face was the same dead-eyed mask as Rosa’s. John didn’t like it at all.
Most of the group ignored the interaction between the two girls. One of the older men in the group started muttering, though, and he stormed over to the two and began shouting. John couldn’t understand, but he caught the word “diablos.” The man roughly began searching the girl from his group and pulled out a small pouch of red rocks from her waistband. Furious now, he dumped them out onto the ground and began kicking the rocks away. The rest of the group seemed to understand the implication of the red rocks and began panicking. One of the other women fell to her knees and began to weep uncontrollably while looking up to the sky. The men began arguing and shouting about what to do.
“Camila! What’s going on?!” John exclaimed over the noise. He pulled Mark close. Fear and confusion were written all over the boy’s face.
“I don’t know! They say the girl has brought the undead upon us! We need to go!” Camila cried, grabbing Rosa by the hand and running for the trail.
How you led zombies with red stones, John had no idea. He wasn’t about to argue, though, and he and Mark began running after her.
They hadn’t gone far when he heard it. The unmistakable sound of the undead. Lots of them.
“Mark, stay close!” John yelled. Hundreds of zombies appeared out of nowhere, choking their path. They were surrounded. Camila stopped and fired on a walker thirty yards ahead of them. Its head exploded.
John pointed to an area where the trees were particularly dense. “To those trees!” he shouted. They hurried to them while he searched for a large, sturdy Y-shaped branch. Spotting one, he ripped it off the tree and handed it to Mark. He then searched frantically for a long, straight stick he could fashion into a spear. Camila methodically sent rounds into the approaching zombies and bought John a little time. As fast as he could, he fastened his knife to the end of his stick with some cord. He cursed at himself for not having done this earlier when the pressure wasn’t on.
The walkers were numerous but, thankfully, starting to spread out. The undead struggled to get through the dense trees. When one got close, Mark would hold it at a distance with the “Y” part of his branch while John stabbed it in the head with his makeshift spear.
“Behind us!” Camila yelled as two snuck up on them. One grabbed at Mark, and he stumbled to get behind a tree before tripping on a rock. John stabbed at the walker’s head and missed. Mark got his balance and restrained the zombie against the trunk of a tree as John tried again and succeeded. A shot came from Camila, and a walker just inches from John’s side crumpled to the ground with its head cut in half. John nodded thankfully at Camila, and she nodded back.
There were five trees about ten feet tall growing in a ring. John ordered the group back behind them. They reached them and John and Mark dispatched biters, and Camila saved her limited ammo for when absolutely necessary. Rosa crouched, out of the way, but provided no help. At one point he saw her holding out her hand to an approaching walker and speaking to it. John stepped in front of her, shoved it onto the ground and crushed its head with a rock.
“There are too many!” Mark shouted as a group of about fifty zeroed in on them. The undead bumped into tree trunks and careened over roots, as they lurched even closer. Mark held one at bay when his branch broke. The walker grabbed his shoulder. Mark maneuvered around a small tree and used it to leverage the biter’s grip off. He spun around jabbed it through the eye with the broken part of his branch. Pointing past their tree barrier he yelled, “More!”
John saw nowhere to retreat. He shouted in disgust as his knife came dislodged from his stick in a biter’s head. He saw Rosa slip through the tree ring. She laughed with rapture, as she was bit on the arm. She moved in to hug the walker that had bit her. It dug into her neck. Camila screamed out and tried to pull her sister back, only to be pulled forward by two walkers. They began to rip into her. Mark screamed and leapt to wrest them off. John pulled him back and shoved him out of the thicket, forcing him to run in the direction with the fewest threats.
Kicking, shoving and swinging, they battled on through the undead. There were always walkers in front of them and increasing numbers following them. They just managed to stay ahead of those behind and fight their way through those in front, but they knew this was a losing battle unless they could get to the edge of the herd—if there was one.
“What do we do?” Mark cried over the groaning.
John didn’t know, but he wasn’t defeated. He smacked one in the temple with the butt of his stick, splintering his primitive weapon. Mark wielded a rock and was kicking or throwing the biters to the ground before crushing their heads.
Then John saw them. Tall rocks ahead, the height of three men, steep but climbable. John yelled for Mark to make for them. They made one final push toward the rocks and scrambled up the side. Walkers grabbed at their legs and John gave one a swift kick in the face, sending it sprawling on the ground. The two made it to the top of the rocks and looked down as the zombies began piling up at the base of it. Father and son looked at one another. It wasn’t the best solution, but would have to do.
John laid back onto the rock and tried to catch his breath. Night was falling.
As he lay there listening to the groaning below, his mind swam with images of the red rocks and Rosa letting herself get bit.
John woke to beautiful silence. The undead had cleared out, moving on to whatever stimulus was more enticing. Maybe an animal, fires in the distance, anything. Whatever it had been, John was thankful. The first hints of sunrise were appearing through the canopy. He nudged Mark and whispered that the biters were gone. Mark grunted and rubbed his eyes.
John stared down at the ground. His bow was trampled and broken, strewn in pieces across the forest floor. How it had gotten down there he didn’t know. The two climbed down the r
ocks and assessed the situation.
“We need to get to Tenochtitlan,” Mark said. “It’s the only safe place.”
“Home is the only place I’ll feel safe,” John replied. “We need to get back to Aaron.”
“We can wait in Tenochtitlan until this herd thins out, then head home,” Mark offered. John nodded. His son was probably right. They headed north once again.
The rest of that day was uneventful. Father and son assumed the walkers had made their way back to the lowlands. They kept alert in case their assumption was wrong.
Their plan was to stay in the mountains as long as they could. Neither was sure how long that would last. Without a map it would be difficult to choose the right mountain range to maintain elevation as far north as possible. It might simply come down to luck.
They trudged on, and twilight fell.
In the faint light, John caught a flash of color on the ground. The sight of it was like a kick in the gut. He grabbed Mark and pointed. Red rocks in a line across their path.
Chapter 6
Ellie groaned. The sound echoed out into the hallway now that her door had been removed.
She was immediately embarrassed because it sounded so much like the noise the undead made. She felt like a zombie, though—engulfed in futility. Whatever Sal had told her about why he needed her reports, she could safely assume he’d left something out. That meant she could be spending hours, days, even weeks on a task with no real purpose. Just like how he’d had her looking at old imagery. Pointless.
Maybe that wasn’t entirely true of her task, monitoring the giant herd traveling north; but with Sal everything invariably had an agenda or ulterior motive. She was beginning to truly loathe working for him. She felt so sorry for his wives. Wives…
Remembering his “proposal” made her angry all over again. Pushing it down, she watched the slow forward motion of the progress bar on her beat-up monitor. Maybe he really just wanted to see how long her computer equipment lasted? Make someone work on it for long hours and see when it broke. Yeah, this was just a machinery stress test! He was always complaining how she clicked too hard on the mouse. He really wanted her to click hard, see when that thing broke. He probably had a warehouse filled with thousands of mice to test on the next hapless girl.
No, that probably wasn’t it.
She reflected on what Sal had said about the giant herd and joining forces with other groups. Now that she had time to analyze his statements, some of them actually made sense to her. She caught herself slipping into almost believing him. She mumbled, “Remember, don’t trust anything he says.”
Just then, he popped his head in her room and gave a loud “Hello!” She jumped, and he sniggered. They’d already played this fun game a few other times. Another bonus of having the door removed. He sat down and sighed.
His puffy mouth opened several times, as if to speak, but each time he hesitated. Apparently he was having some inner struggle. Ellie suppressed the desire to roll her eyes. This should be good, she thought.
“Ellie, I feel I need to tell you the whole story. If I want you to help me, I need to be totally transparent with you. I need you to trust me.” He took a deep breath, sounded like he was trying to reassure himself that telling the truth was the proper course. Was it just an act, though?
“We are coming to the end of the zombie age. Well, maybe not the end, but there will be fewer zombies in the next hundred years than the previous hundred years.” He waited for that to sink in. It wasn’t news to Ellie. “Think about it. Everything we have built…everything…all of our construction, transportation, agriculture, is built around zombie labor. If you look at the world, those who best harness the zombie win. This will change. Once the zombies are dead, man will be on their own again. My sister realizes this. She’s making one final push while she’s still powerful to get what she wants.”
Ellie didn’t see what Sal’s crazy sister had to do with anything, but she understood everything else he said. Looking at road maps, city maps, and political maps revealed a world built around a dead structure. Populous cities had enabled complex economies of specialized workers, as well as fertile breeding pools. Once the zombie arrived, these assets became liabilities. Specialized skills were useless compared to the ability to grow food. Dense populations created unstoppable zombie herds. The hinterland was able to weather the storm better with lower population densities and more practical skillsets. Roads, buildings and defenses stood as relics of this dead world.
“S-s-so, what does she want?” Ellie asked.
“Well, there’s what she says she wants and what I think she really wants,” Sal snorted.
“W-w-wha–” Ellie began.
“What does she really want?” Sal said.
“My sister is trying to prove that she can create something. She inherited the cartel from our father. She didn’t work for it. Deep down, she’s afraid everyone will find out she’s a fake. She’s no Academy family visionary, she’s just a manager. That’s why she’s on the move. The longer she waits, the greater the risk she’s found out.” Sal scratched the back of his head. “Honestly, it would be a better strategy for her to wait. She has a powerful zombie army comprised of freshly turned walkers that have a good hundred years in them. No one has that. If she waited, the other powers would only get weaker over time as their stocks dwindle. They could start kidnapping and breeding like her, but she’s got a good head start. It’s the political power she needs to use while she can. Once her people realize this is all about her and what she wants....she’s done.”
Ellie blinked.
“Sorry, sorta got off topic there. This honesty thing suits me a little too well, eh?” he joked solicitously.
Ellie considered this information. She took it to mean that getting other governments and tribes to join Sal—and therefore her own task—was about more than just protection from the herd. He was creating a buffer against Sara. While this was all refreshingly honest material from Sal, she reminded herself that this “transparency” likely was incomplete. As far as she knew, Sal was incapable of not having an angle. An uncontrollable shiver went up her spine, as she tried to shake off all his statements.
“That’s just my opinion. Who knows, maybe it is just some ‘woman’ thing with her I don’t understand. She may not even understand.” He shrugged.
Ellie wondered if Sal saw the irony. He’d described Sara as a self-serving autocrat trying to consolidate and maintain power. He had basically described himself. Maybe that was a “man” thing.
Sal wished her luck and left her to the task. She wondered if he meant to be patronizing or if it came naturally. At least he hadn’t mentioned marriage again.
Her first batch of images had loaded while Sal was talking. She brought them up. Covering a portion of Central America, they were from a low resolution imaging satellite meant to capture large swaths of land. The images were useless. She wouldn’t be able to discern zombies on such poor resolution. She dumped the images from her machine’s memory and opened the next. The coordinates the computer displayed for the new image put it somewhere over Panama. Much better resolution. This looked more promising. It was from three days ago.
She shuddered at the image. It was a single frame. The land was covered with zombies like a forest. She instinctively began to count but then realized there was no point. There was nowhere in the lower elevations that wasn’t covered by the undead. She looked at the northernmost point of the image to see if she could find the head of the herd. There was no end. She stared for a few minutes, realizing the magnitude of what she was looking at. Maybe Sal was right. It might take the entire continent and all its different factions to defend against this.
The other images were from the other side of the canal. It revealed that walkers on the other side were still moving across the now-filled barrier. As ghastly as it all was, she marveled at the singlemindedness of the herd. Once it got moving in a direction, it continued undeterred. Something significant would have to hap
pen to change their direction.
She heard an someone clear their throat behind her and turned around to see a small, old, peevish looking man. He wore a single piece robe and smelled of urine. His nose was running from a cold, and he was ignoring it. She tried looking away from his nose but couldn’t help staring at the crusted buildup. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to her without saying a word. He cleared his throat again.
“Hello?” Ellie asked without stuttering.
“Yes, um, I am here to take notes,” he said.
“Mmm,” Ellie said. She hadn’t been sure if there were people more socially awkward than her, but now she knew.
“I am here to document what you observe, and how you feel about it all,” he said.
Ellie was confused why he cared what she “felt” about it all. Was that required for an official report?
“This will feed into my report to be presented to Sal,” he said. “You understand this is a very important report, and I expect you to take it very seriously and act professionally. Please don’t let personal considerations get in the way.”
Ellie blinked. “H-h-here is what it looks like,” she said, directing his attention to the imagery of the herd.
“Oh yes, yes! Fantastic. Yes, let me begin to describe it…” the little man’s voice trailed off as he scribbled with his beat up pencil on some a yellowed pad of brittle paper.
He didn’t say anything else for five minutes, as he furiously wrote, only interrupted by occasional coughing spasms. Ellie wasn’t sure what to do. She turned to look at the computer screen and started to click over to other images.
“Ahem, if you don’t mind, I still need to see that picture.”
Ellie sighed.
100 A.Z. (Book 2): Tenochtitlan Page 5