Aliens Versus Zombies (27 page)

When the new guests arrived at Casa Paradiso shortly before dinner time, the surprised residents greeted them. Most welcomed them with hugs and smiles. A few had reservations about bringing people they didn’t know into their already overcrowded home. They were shouted down by the others.

Amanda and her family were given something to drink, and then found themselves surrounded by the gathering. Amanda, despite being filthy, was cooed over by the women. They called her adorable, and darling.

“Here, take a load off!” Geoff offered. “Tell us all about yourselves.”

The newcomers sat in the front porch rocking chairs.

Dinner could wait. Everyone wanted to hear how the four of them had survived all this time against Zoms and aliens.

It was a bizarre scene: A little chatterbox going on and on about what had happened to her group, while the adults sat mute and seemed apprehensive about the crowd around them.

“And then we got chased by the bad people trying to eat us. One of them tried to grab my hair, but Uncle Jay got us away and then we met you.”

She finally wound down and took a long drink of water.

“Do you have any milk?”

“No, sweetie,” Chrissy said. “No milk. Sorry.”

“We used to have a cow, but—” someone started, before being shushed by the others.

“We do have beef, though,” someone else added. “Do you remember meat?”

Amanda nodded. “Sure! We found a bunch of Slim Jims in a store, an’ some beef jerky, an’ some v’enna sausages. Uncle Jay an’ Aunt Suzi gave me some raw meat, but that’s yucky.” She made a face.

Raw meat?
Daniels cleared his throat. “Um, I don’t know how to ask this politely, but…are your aunts and uncle all right? They’re not very talkative.” That was a gross understatement. They’d hardly said a word on the trip back, or since arriving, while Amanda had talked almost nonstop.

“Oh, they don’t talk much. But they like to sing. I taught them the alphabet song, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Old MacDonald Had a Farm, and some other songs.”

“You taught them…” Daniels frowned. “I don’t understand. Why would you need to teach them those songs?”

“Well, they didn’t talk at all when we met. You know, they were the bad people who ate other people. But I told them they couldn’t eat family; well, unless they died.”

“What? Wait. Are you saying they’re
zombies
?”

There were shocked intakes of breath from the crowd and several stepped back a pace.

Amanda nodded while she drank. “Uh-huh. Or they used to be until I taught them to sing. And then they got sick again a few weeks ago and a lot of them died.” She started to tear up, but then brightened again. “But after they got better, they were a lot smarter. They know the alphabet, and how to count to a hundred, and a bunch of words I taught them.” She smiled.

Daniels looked at Chrissy, who shrugged.

“Are you
sure
they couldn’t talk before?”

“I’m sure. They’re a lot smarter now. Uncle Jay knows how to use a gun now, too. But guns are bad. But I guess they’re good, too, because he saved you with his.”

“He did at that. Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Ooh, you said a bad word. Your mommy should wash your mouth out with soap. At least that’s what my mommy always used to say, before she went away…” Amanda started to tear up again.

“Okay!” Chrissy said, looking to stave off the fireworks. “Whaddaya say we finish fixing dinner? We can talk more later and you can tell us
how
you got out of the city. Gus brought back some flour the other day, so we’re gonna make a big pie with some cherry pie filling we’ve been saving. How about that?”

Amanda licked her lips. “Mmm. Cherry pie. I haven’t had pie since…I don’t know. A long time. Since I was little.”

The gathering burst into laughter. Then they split up into various groups: one to peel the veggies, another to pump water from the well out back to cook the veggies in, a third to prepare the cured meat, a fourth to set the tables, and so on. They now had thirty-four people to feed.

The house was going to be even more crowded than ever.

* * * *

Geoff, Daniels, Chrissy, and a few others met out back to discuss the situation.

“What do you make of this?” Geoff said to the group. “Can they really be Zoms? If so, what happened to them?”

Daniels shrugged. “Beats me. I guess that explains why they don’t seem very bright. On the other hand, Jay can use a gun and they all rode bikes. Have you ever seen a Zom do anything like that?”

No one had.

Then Chrissy chimed in. “Amanda said that the Zoms got sick and most died, and then the survivors got smarter. What’s that all about? We’ve seen a lot of dead Zoms lately, many of them didn’t seem to have a mark on them. So what killed them, and how could they get smarter?”

Daniels shook his head. “We don’t have anything to go on but the word of a little girl. Maybe she’s just confused. Or maybe there’s a new strain of the virus going around that’s killing more people—although that wouldn’t explain how the survivors got smarter.”

“A new virus,” Geoff repeated. “That’s a scary thought. What if these Zoms are carriers? We could all get sick, maybe die.”

“Holy crap,” Chrissy said. “But they don’t seem sick now. Maybe that means they’re no longer contagious. If they are, we’ve probably already been exposed.”

“If they’re really Zoms,” someone else asked, “how do we know they won’t attack us in our sleep?”

Daniels held out placating palms. “Hey, let’s not work ourselves into a panic, now. From what the girl says, she’s been living with them for months and they not only didn’t kill her, they protected and fed her. And remember, they saved our lives today from other Zoms.”

That seemed to calm everyone down.

Geoff nodded. “Y’all make some good points. I suggest we keep a close eye on them, just in case, but treat them like everyone else unless and until we have reason to do otherwise. Agreed?”

The others all nodded in agreement.

“Good. Then let’s show our new friends how we do dinner at Casa Paradiso!”

* * * *

After dinner, the cooks of the household asked to add the food the new members of the family had brought with them to the group’s pantry.

“No!” Jay shouted. “Ours!” He hugged one of the backpacks to his chest. Why did the woman want to take his food?

“I understand,” one of the women said, “but we’re sharing our food with you. It’s only fair that you share yours with us. We’re all one big family now.”

Jay backed away, still clutching the bag.

Amanda, hearing the commotion, ran into the kitchen. “Ma’am, he’s not used to people. ‘cept me.” She turned to face Jay. “Now, Uncle Jay, give the nice lady the backpack. There’s lots and lots of food here. We don’t need to keep our own.”

For as long as he could remember—and that was only a few weeks—food had been hard to come by. You either had to kill it, or risk being killed to find it. Now he was being asked to give it away. He was so confused.

Amanda kept talking. He liked listening to Amanda talk. She was so smart.

Finally, he put down the backpack. Amanda dragged it over to the woman.

“That’s good, Uncle Jay!” She grinned at him and he grinned back.

Amanda was happy, so he was happy.

Later, when everyone was getting ready for bed, someone made up the sofa for Amanda. The others were given throw pillows and sheets. There weren’t any spare beds available for the newcomers. They would have to sleep on the living room floor until some more beds could be built.

The three adults spooned together in the middle of the room. After a few minutes all alone on the sofa, Amanda got up and dragged her blanket over to the others. She raised Suzi’s arm and crawled under, pulling her blanket over their legs.

Then, with a contented sigh, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

* * * *

The next morning, Daniels and Chrissy headed back toward the small town where he’d found the church and feed store for more supplies. They had four more mouths to care for now and were running low on some items.

Daniels hobbled around with a heavily wrapped ankle, but at least it wasn’t broken. Again, he rode Buck and Chrissy was on the smaller Mabel. But this time they had the new cart some of the enterprising carpenters had made from various bits of wood and metal they had found around the homestead.

It was built rickshaw-style, with two long poles harnessed to Buck’s flanks. The poles led back to a two-wheeled base riding atop the spare tires from two of the SUVs still parked in the garage of the first farmhouse. The axels had been the tricky part, but they worked it out. The cart was relatively small, but plenty big enough to hold a generous amount of supplies, and with the fold-down wooden bench seats it could even hold four passengers in a pinch, two to a side. Today, it carried only Hiram, curled up on the pile of burlap sacks.

It was a good two-and-a-half hour ride into town, which gave the couple plenty of time to talk.

“So,” he began, “What do you make of our new guests?”

“I dunno. Can they really be Zoms?”

He shrugged. “They aren’t normal, that’s for sure. Slow, maybe, but there was a look of cunning in Jay’s eyes.”

“If they’re Zoms and something changed to make them smarter and less bloodthirsty, are they the only ones, or have others changed, too?”

“No telling. But the other Zoms we’ve encountered recently sure haven’t been any friendlier than before.”

“Oh, I’d say they’ve been way
too
friendly, as in ‘Come here and hug me so I can eat your face.’”

They laughed at that, causing Hiram to open one eye, before going back to sleep.

* * * *

As the horses approached town, Daniels observed a change from his last visit.

There were more Zom corpses littering the streets, but this time in the town square there were two Zoms standing over a pile of them. They were working together. One hacked off arms and legs with a hatchet, while the other put them in a wheelbarrow.

“It looks like
some
of them survived whatever killed the others,” Daniels said. “And these two appear to be more of the ‘upgraded’ variety, like Jay and the others. Keep your guard up, in case there are others around that aren’t too busy to notice us.”

They rode around town, checking various neighborhoods. They discovered another grocery story, a convenience store, a hardware store, two pharmacies, and several small shops that contained usable items. And they found one neighborhood that appeared almost untouched. The doors and windows were intact in most of them.

What they
didn’t
find was a bunch of rampaging Zoms.

That latter realization provided food for thought.

* * * *

“Are y’all
insane
?” Geoff asked.

It was evening, and Chrissy and Daniels had asked to speak to Geoff and the rest of the “ruling council” that made most of the decisions—subject to group vote—for those living in Casa Paradiso.

“Y’all want to move us into a town full of Zoms? Wasn’t that the whole point of living out here in the country, away from population centers?”

“It
was
,” Daniels said. “But things have changed. You know as well as I do that thirty-four of us can’t continue to live in this one house indefinitely. There’s no electricity, we have to pump water by hand, and it’s a five-hour round trip into town to scrounge for supplies. What’s gonna happen come winter when there’s no heat, except for the one fireplace, the well freezes over, and there’s no one to clear snow on the road from here to town? We need a more permanent solution.

“Look, Chrissy and I scouted around town for several hours and saw a grand total of four living Zoms. Four. I think that’s a manageable number. And we found a nice neighborhood that still has power, running water, and working furnaces. We can fix up a few houses so we have room to breathe. It’ll put us much closer to the grocery store, farm supply store, hardware store, and everything else we need to survive. We can plant gardens in the yards for vegetables and make a more permanent life for ourselves.”

Geoff nodded in thought. “Hmm. Y’all make some good points. We’ll have to give this some thought. I’m still concerned that being in town we’d be more exposed to Zom attacks.”

Daniels shrugged. “It looks like most of the ones that were there died from this new plague, or whatever it was. The ones we saw were more workmanlike, rather than mindless animals. If there are only a small number left, we should be able to manage them. There’s no guarantee that the occasional Zom won’t show up here, either.”

“It’s also possible,” Chrissy chipped in, “they can be taught, like Amanda taught Jay and the others. If they can be trained to tend a garden or do other chores to help the community it would not only solve the Zom problem, it would also give us a chance to start rebuilding.”