Books of the Dead (Book 3): Dead Man's Land (10 page)

Chapter 15

Wheels within Wheels

They had won. They had repelled the invaders and held the town. But the victory had cost them.  They lost a bus and nearly two dozen soldiers. The soldiers were easily replaced.  Buses were harder to come by, but they’d improvise if they had to. Why Anthony was partial to school buses, they never knew, but he liked them for some unknown and unspoken reason.

“One more time,” he said.

“Boss, we’ve been through this a dozen times,” Rex said, trying to hide his exasperation.  They were in one of the meeting rooms that Anthony used as his office.  It wasn’t much of an office. Electronic gadgets and wiring lay around the room in piles, parts of future or aborted projects.  Rex couldn’t discern which was genius and which was junk.   

Anthony debriefed Roy and Maggie for over two hours, going over every little detail.  Rex had told and re-told the story of the battle with the intruders.  He had gone through it himself for nearly an hour and broken it down from every perspective.  They had seen, they had fought, they had kicked ass and had taken names, sending their enemy away with their tails between their legs.  What the hell else did he need to know?

“Please,” Anthony said. 

This caused Rex to pause. Never in his experience with Anthony had he ever heard him use the word, ‘please.’  This was worth taking note. 

“Okay,” Rex said and went through the incident, step-by-step.

When he finished, Anthony had a far off look in his eyes.  Rex knew that this could mean one of two things: hard work or trouble. Or both.  He also knew to wait for whatever revelation Anthony was about come up with.  Anthony may be a crazy bastard, but it was a-kind-of-crazy that Rex had learned to trust. 

Anthony cleared his throat and started, “While our soldiers are in constant supply, my control devices are not.  And we need to take into account the training period.  Lastly, there is the remote chance that we could lose all of our soldiers in either a surprise attack or if an overwhelming force were to come on the scene.”

Anthony stopped, and Rex waited patiently.  Anthony’s thoughts coalesced again, and he started up again.  “We need to find a way to better protect the soldiers, and I have an idea, but it’s going to take some time to implement.  Can you get me some scrap metal and welding equipment?”

Rex thought he was going to like this idea.

Chapter 16

We Go On

One time, as a little kid, I watched over a large ant colony in my front yard for a few days.  The little buggers were some of the busiest things I had ever seen. They dug, they carried, and they went this way and that. Sometimes they pulled back things twice their size, be it a twig or the carcass of another insect. It seemed as if they were constantly doing something, persistent and constantly busy.  

Being a kid, I had a somewhat limited sense of empathy.  These were bugs, and they were either a living toy for me, or something to be stepped on or ignored.  There was no middle ground.

After about a week, I grew bored, so I took our garden hose and dowsed the colony in what seemed like a hundred gallons of water.  The water must have flowed over their little world like that time it rained forty days and forty nights.  I would have gone to two hundred gallons, but my dad started yelling about me wasting all that water.

When I went out the next day, I fully expected to see my little colony gone for good, but I was amazed to see they had moved just a few feet away.  They were just as busy as they were before, almost doubley so, since they had to set-up their colony all over again.  Sure, there were a few corpses still lying about, but they just went about their business as if nothing had happened.

Again, my lack of empathy got the best of me, and I drowned the colony again, but like the day before, they just moved the house and started at it again.  Between my dad’s yelling at me about the water bill and general boredom, I moved onto other pursuits.

When I reflect over the years and consider our plight among the living dead, I sometimes wonder how different we were from the ants.  We busied ourselves with making our place safe and secure. We went out and looked for food and supplies.  We carried on in spite of a tidal wave of zombies flowing across the country.  We carried on even when there seemed to be no point in carrying on.

I knew God was up there.  I knew that quite personally, since He sent some disturbing messages from time to time, but I sometimes wondered how different He was from the seven-year-old me, watching from high above as His ants scurried about.

Those thoughts haunted my darkest moments, but something on that day broke me out of my black mood.  It was glorious and spectacular.  And that was corn on the cob.  I can safely say that nothing in my life ever tasted as delicious as that first bite I took on that day in July. 

“What do you think?” Travis asked.

“Can’t you tell?” I asked back.  “I’m in heaven.”

All the work and toil had paid off.  Travis and the field workers had worked their butts off and gotten that first planting of corn in early, and we were now enjoying the dividends.  Usually the dining room was full of quiet chatter, but the only thing that could be heard across the entire place was chomping, as teeth worked away at the corn. Many people had their eyes closed as they ate in a state of near ecstasy.  I think I even saw a smile on Brother Ed’s face.

Travis had warned us that it probably wouldn’t be very good, but none of us listened or even cared. We had corn on the cob, and life was good.  Travis said green beans would be on the menu soon, followed by a whole bounty of other fresh produce.  After subsisting on canned food during the past year, having fresh food was indescribable. That we had grown it ourselves was the icing on the cake. 

To make it an even sweeter experience, Jason was at my side.  Kara had graciously given up her spot there for this night and sat across from me with Naveen and Madison beside her. 

This was Jason’s grand debut to the full community, and to my surprise, most people greeted him warmly. Brother Ed and Mrs. Hatcher still eyed him suspiciously. Some looked at him out of curiosity and must have been wondering what all the fuss was about. He couldn’t have weighed over a hundred and ten pounds, and his pallor was still bleached out from being out of the sun for so long.

Travis walked among the tables, his facing beaming with pride, checking in with the diners as if the place was his own private five-star restaurant. He slid up to our table, put a hand on Jason’s shoulder, and asked, “How do you like it?”
              Jason gave him a-thumbs-up sign and smiled broadly. 

“It’s so good to see you out of the basement,” Travis said.

Jason nodded his head emphatically in agreement.

Travis turned his attention to me, “I think Dad would have loved this.  What do you think?”

“I
know
he would have loved it,” I said, reaching up, putting a hand on his arm and giving it a squeeze.

“It’s just fantastic,” Kara said as she reached over to wipe a kernel of corn off of Naveen’s cheek.  This set off a ripple of giggling from Naveen and Madison as they poked each other under the table.

“I see you girls are enjoying it, too,” Travis said.

Sobering up, Naveen said, “Oh yes, it is quite delicious.” 

“I really don’t like corn all that much,” Madison said.

We looked at her, but then burst into laughter.

“Well,” Travis said, “you can’t please all the people all of the time.”  He went off to mill around the other people, a sense of self-satisfaction emanating from him.  It was nice to see him coming out from under the cloud of grief that had surrounded him after Hub’s death.             

After months of just surviving, it seemed as if we were thriving.  Now, that may have been an overstatement at the time, but we could see a place down the road where we might have a real life.  That life would be quite different from the ones we led before, but maybe, just maybe, we might be able to start building toward something that resembled that former life, one that might mean safety and security. 

But it seems that life in the zombie apocalypse hung in a precarious balance on the scales of fate and one that was heavily weighted towards the bad.  I’m sure someone would call me a fatalist, but I’m sure our moments of joy and hope had knocked the scales too far in the positive column, so the balance sheets would need a reset. 

I learned more about that balance later that night, when God decided to send me another cryptic message.  This message was similar to one that I had received in town, when we were facing off with the man on the bus and his undead army.

I was back in the endless white limbo.  Whatever I was, spirit, soul, or ghost, floated in this limbo, feeling its all-encompassing peace and serenity.  It reminded me of being in a comfy, warm bed on a cold winter’s morning, only this feeling was exponentially more satisfying.  It was a place I could get used to, but I didn’t fool myself this time.  Something was going to happen.  Some revelation or epiphany. 

Only it wasn’t either.  It was a single word floating in the fathomless white.  “BEWARE.” 

Now, just how helpful was that, really? 
Beware
was the watchword of the zombie apocalypse. 
Caution
was a way of life. But there seemed to be an unspoken subtext to the word and it eased its way into my consciousness.  This subtext was, “Things are not what they appear to be.”

Not that this was all that more illuminating, but it did clarify the message. 

You’d think that all of this would break the serenity of this nirvana-like world, but being enveloped in endless tranquility sort of dulls any negatives emotions.  In this world, I accepted the message, knowing that it was the truth, and I didn’t need to look any farther for answers.

It was only in the real world that I had my doubts and questions, but this wasn’t any different than what happened all the time.  God speaks to me when I am in that perfect place of communion, and it makes sense.  I accept whatever happens while in that place, but moments later, when I am out in the real world, I am clueless and full of doubt.

The real world began to tug at me again.  This time it was a nagging buzzing sound in my ear.  It was a distant-buzzing at first.  Buzz, buzz, it went.  A bee or mosquito.  The buzz became more insistent and transitioned into popping noises.  It was something far off, as if someone were making popcorn. 

The door to my room burst open, I was out of my nirvana again and feeling the jarring sense of loss from being ripped out of it once more.  “Joel, get up!  We’re under attack.”  It was Kara.

Just three hours ago, I had lain down to go to sleep, my belly full of corn, and my rounds completed.   Everything was safe and sound in the Manor.  I could get used to this.

Going from zero to sixty in less than a second wasn’t my natural state, but the engine of fear roared to life in me.  The walkie-talkie next to my bed blared, “We got several attackers coming at us from the south side of the building,” a voice shouted; it was Brandon’s

I snatched up a walkie-talkie and asked, “How many?”

“Enough,” he responded.

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“Only a few, I think,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because if there were more, they would have probably done an all-out attack.”

“Any idea who it is?  Is it the crew that attacked us before?”
              “We have no idea,” this voice was different; it was Jo’s.  “It doesn’t seem like many, but they’re well-armed and are great shots.”

“Anyone hurt?” I asked, feeling the panic creeping up inside me.

“No,” Brandon said, “because our early warning system caught them as they were about to enter the building.”

That turned out to be a bit of an overstatement.

I was up and moving in an instant, my heart hammering in my chest.  Kara yelled into the girls’ room and told them to stay away from the windows, and then, we were out the door and running.  She was ahead of me, sprinting down the hallway, her rifle in hand. 

The report of gunfire filtered through the wall on our left.  The exchange came in staccato bursts, like a one-handed drummer pounding out a rudimentary and random beat on a snare drum. 

“Give me an update,” I said into the walkie-talkie, trying to sound calm. 

Brandon came back, “They’re in the woods, moving and shooting. They’re like fucking ninjas or something. We can’t see them, other than their muzzle flashes.”

I moved the walkie-talkie from my mouth and said, “Let’s head for the front stairs and go down, but let’s take a look out front before we do.”

Kara nodded as we pounded down the hallway.  A gray haired man stuck his head out the door as we shot by.  “Mr. Schultz, stay inside your room,” I shouted back at him and heard a door slam shut.

Kara led us into one of the front-facing observation rooms, where we found Brother Ed and a nervous looking guy named Larry.  He was one of the crew that came with Travis to the Manor.  He was a little guy, with a round face and a scraggly beard that made me think of one of the dwarfs from
Lord of the Rings
. 

Brother Ed had his rifle aimed out a window, but Larry held back out of view.  A milky white fog shrouded the landscape outside, hanging on the bulky shapes of tree limbs poking through the veil in places, but everything else was indistinct.

“What do you see?” I asked Brother Ed.

“Not much,” Brother Ed said, “they seem to be moving in an arc around our front.  They take a few shots, then move.”

“What do they want?” Kara asked.

“We have no idea,” Brother Ed said.  “I think they tripped one of the traps, and that alerted one of our guards.  Then they started shooting.”

“One of our traps in the woods?” I asked.

“No, one up next to the back building.”

Our early warning system wasn’t state of the art or anything like that.  We had placed a series of simple trip wires around the complex, at the edge of the woods.  These trip wires led to anything that made considerable noise -- stacks of glass bottles, some metal pans, anything to make a noise.  Brandon, being the ingenious guy that he was, placed a set of pressure plates around the exterior of the complex that also set off early warning detectors.  The ones closest to the building were more sophisticated and led to electronic alarms inside the building.  These types were few and far between.  We’d have to get lucky for someone to set off one of those.

“But that means that they got closer to the building than the ones out in the woods,” I said. 

Flashes of light, looking like the spray of a flare, appeared out of the fog and were followed by the report of gunfire. 

“There, there,” Larry yelled, aiming his gun at the flashes and firing. He ripped off an entire clip before he stopped and pulled back inside the wall.

Brother Ed looked at him with one eyebrow raised.  “Larry, you just blew an entire clip, firing blindly into the fog. You need to be a little calmer.”  He brought his rifle up, took a moment to aim, and then popped off two shots.  He dropped the rifle down to a relaxed position. “Try something like that next time.”  We were seeing a different side of Brother Ed. 

“Why are they shooting at us?”  Kara asked.

“What do you mean?” Larry asked.

“Why aren’t they just running away?” she asked.

That was a good question and one that I should be able to answer.  A part of me wanted to spring into action and mount a vigorous counter attack, but another part of me, a voice deep down inside, said to hold in place. I needed to think.  So much of what we did was reaction, but I had learned something from watching Greg: immediate action was not always the best course of action. Thoughts bounced around inside my head, and then it hit me.