Dead: Siege & Survival (15 page)

That was just the beginning. One by one each of them were stripped of their jacket and moved close to the fire. Each had the exact same injury. Everybody, that is, with the exception of what turned out to be a woman. Again, the malnutrition had made determining the age next to impossible.

Of all the members of the group, she was the only one without the missing lower left arm. However, there was something in her face that seemed far worse. It was just the expression, but she actually looked more damaged emotionally than the others.

“What is it?” Dr. Zahn grumbled as she came out of her office with Sunshine dragging her by the wrist. “I’ve got—”

Whatever else she was about to say died in her throat as she saw—and most likely smelled—the new arrivals. I was about to say something when I saw a flicker of the old doctor in the eyes of a woman who I had thought to be lost for good.

“Get these people into the back room. I want everything we can use put to the task of getting me as much hot water as possible. I want rags and I want the cleanest clothing we have as well as a minimum of three blankets for each.” Doctor Zahn was back.

The room was silent for a few seconds until she stepped into the middle of it and clapped her hands together once. “Now, people!” With that, it was like roaches in a room when the light came on; everybody took off in different directions. Some bumping into each other.

I caught Jon’s gaze and we both headed back out to the cat to get it unloaded. As we walked down the stairs, Jesus caught up.

“I can’t stay in there with those people right now,” he said.

“You can help us unload,” Jon offered. “But then we are going back.”

If it were at all possible, Jesus turned even paler. “I just don’t think—”

“Your job isn’t to think, soldier,” Jon barked, sounding very much like a Marine sergeant. “You will do as you’re told. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So are you gonna give me the details?” I asked.

“I will, but believe me when I tell you that words can’t actually relate what we found.” Jon’s voice seemed to grow quieter with each word.

“When we got just outside of La Grande, we started to find signs of people. Every so often we would come across a few zombies that had been taken down. The fact that we were seeing them meant that they were recent kills; otherwise they would have been buried.

“Then we saw what looked like a small trailer park with a corrugated metal fence built around it with lots of extra reinforcement and no visible gate.” We reached the Snowcat and Jon paused as he climbed up into the attached cart.

Once he started tossing things down, he continued. “We tried to hail anybody inside and thought it might be abandoned or that maybe everybody inside had turned. Then we heard a cough.”

“Otherwise we would have moved on and never found them and they would have stayed there to…” Jesus started to talk, but his voice trailed off at the end.

“We climbed over, and my first thought was that they had turned and that sound hadn’t been a cough, but rather just some random noise from a walker. However, there was a small fire burning in a metal barrel and that had to mean that they were alive.” Jon stopped again and I looked up at him and saw what I thought might actually be tears in his eyes. I kept my mouth shut and waited.

“They were eating themselves, man,” Jesus finally spit out, unable to keep it in any longer.

I looked from Jon to Jesus, unsure of what I heard. They couldn’t be meaning what I thought they were, could they? Jon gave a slow nod. I looked back to the cabin as if that would help me understand. I had that image in my head of each of those people missing their left arm to the elbow. All but the one. It must’ve shown on my face because Jon sat down on a large burlap bag of rice or beans or something of the sort and folded his hands on one knee like he was settling in to tell a story. Only, I had the distinct feeling that I would not like the ending, and that nobody lived happily ever after.

“The woman was pregnant,” Jon began, but already he was having trouble speaking. He kept swallowing like there was a huge lump in his throat that wouldn’t clear. “According to one of their group, she miscarried at the seventh month…probably due to lack of nutrition.”

Suddenly I wanted to hug Melissa. I was becoming increasingly aware of just how good we had things…even during our worst times.

“They ate it,” Jesus whispered. “They were so hungry that instead of burning the child…they ate it.”

When had I sat down?
I wondered as I found myself seated in the cold snow.

“We brought the ones we felt comfortable moving without the doc taking a look. And we left the strongest behind to try and protect them, but I don’t know if they can fend off a stiff breeze at this point,” Jon explained.

“So that is what you meant when you said you had to head back out?” I was at a loss.

I had several thoughts flood my brain, and I’m not proud of many of them. What would this mean for all of
our
supplies? The entire reason that we sent Jon and the men out in the first place was because we would not last the winter. The first five were already here, but how many more were there. And as messed up as they were, what possible diseases might they be carrying? How would this affect the kids?

I was the leader of this group. It had been voted on and been unanimous for the most part. Supposedly my word was the final say. They had chosen me because I thought through things with what they considered more clarity, but I called it a bunch of guessing and making it up on the fly. If I made the call to leave things as they were—there was no way I could toss out the people they had already brought—would everybody agree? I had a feeling that Jon might oppose me on that decision. However, that was the least of my concerns. I doubted with all seriousness my own ability to simply ignore the problem. It would mean that we would need to endanger ourselves further and go out for more increasingly-hard-to-find supplies. But it would also mean that I would be able to look myself in the mirror.

An image flashed in my mind that made me shiver. I pictured Thalia, Emily, and Melissa looking like those new arrivals. If I was wrong and we were unable to meet our supply needs, that might very well be the fate that I consigned them to.

“I will get a few helping hands to unload the supplies you brought,” I finally said. “Then you and I and the doc will roll out.”

“Are you sure that you are in any condition—”

“I’m going,” I said with as much authority as I could muster. “But we do this on one condition, if the doc says that one or any of those people will not survive…we leave them. You do what needs to be done to lessen their suffering, but I will only do this under that condition.”

“Understood,” Jon agreed.

I glanced at Jesus and am fairly certain that I saw relief on his face when he realized that he would not be going.

Each of us grabbed what we could carry and headed back to the cabin. When we arrived, everybody was still standing around in stunned silence. I could only speak for myself, but I had a feeling that everybody was seeing a glimpse at a possible future. As for the survivors, they had all been hustled to the back.

“Everybody listen up,” I called out. A few people jumped. “We have supplies outside that need to be unloaded yesterday. Jon, Dr. Zahn, and I will be heading out to the camp where the rest of these people are staying. While we’re gone, I want Billy, Melissa and Fiona to inventory the supplies and make a reasonable rationing list that will give us an idea how long the food will last. Calculate it for an additional…” I glanced at Jon who flashed both hands once and another hand, “…fifteen people being added to our ranks.”

“Excuse me?” Cheryl Coates spoke up.

“Yes?” I was not sure where this would go, but I was seriously hoping that this would not turn into a debate on the idea of bringing these survivors into our camp…especially by our newest additions.

“I don’t know about anybody else, but I feel rather useless just standing around. Is there anything that needs to be done to set up for these incoming people?”

“And is somebody going to explain what happened to their arms?” Nickie added.

I took a deep breath. After a glance at Jon and Jesus, I figured that they had relived this situation enough for now. I related the story as it had been told to me. I forced myself to relate even the worst details. Everybody needed to be aware of what we were doing and why.

When I was finished, I scanned the room. Everybody seemed to have drifted off into his or her own private little world. The children were huddled together and whispering to one another. I had no idea what that conversation might sound like, but it was clear that they understood at least some of what was going on.

“I will need a couple of you to volunteer to help Sunshine. Since I have to bring Dr. Zahn with me, she will need a few helping hands.” I considered my statement just long enough to wish I’d used different words.

“So will you be going solely to pick up the other survivors, or will this also be a supply run?” Doug Coates, Cheryl’s husband, asked.

“This is simply a rescue mission,” Jon answered. “There would not be enough room for anything else, and even if there were…it is paramount that we get these people transported here as quickly as possible. The ones here represent the healthiest with the exception of the two we deemed to be the most able to take care of the others.”

I don’t think I had made it clear that the rest who had been left behind were even worse off than the ones with us. I saw a lot of winces in the crowd.

“So what is the deal with the left arm?” Christina asked a very reasonable question that I hadn’t really considered up until that point.

“It was considered the least useful since all of them were apparently right-handed,” Jon explained. “From what they told us, each week, somebody’s name was drawn at random. That person endured the amputation and then the cauterization by the blade of a machete that was left in the fire for however long they saw fit.”

“So what would they do after they ran out of left arms?” All heads in the room turned. Levent stood there behind Rabia with his hands on her shoulders and a questioning look on his face. “Would they make more babies?”

“Oh my God,” Nickie gasped with her hands to her mouth.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But we are going to help them.”

I headed for the door and was pleased that everybody fell in on my heels. It took less than an hour to get all of the food unloaded. It looked like so much, but I already knew that it was not nearly going to be enough. For one, it was less than we had currently in our stores. That did not bode well, but I could only deal with one crisis at a time.

With everything unloaded, I went back to get Dr. Zahn. She was bustling around her five new patients with an energy that I had not seen in a while. I almost hated to pull her away from it.

“Time to roll, Doc,” I said. She looked up for just a second and then returned to whatever it was that she was doing with her current patient. I cleared my throat and she continued to tie off something that she had wrapped around the stump of this patient’s left arm.

“Hey, Doc, I said—” I started, but her head popped up and she cut me off with a tone of voice that I did not realize I missed so much.

“I heard you, Steven, but unless you want to return and find all four of these men dead, I suggest you wait the ten minutes more it will take for me to finish cleaning and redressing these injuries.

“No problem,” I said, raising my hands in surrender and backing out of the room. I stopped to kiss all my girls and assure them that I would be careful; then I returned to the Snowcat and climbed in with Jon.

“Don’t expect to see too much zombie action until we get down the hill,” Jon said. “I don’t think they can make it up here without a lot of difficulty. Which reminds me…how much activity did you guys get when we left?”

I related all that happened, including the bit about the child-zombie. He nodded thoughtfully a few times and didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Are you totally sure that you should be out?”

“I am probably slowing down the healing process, and I may be doing a bit of damage, but the days of being able to convalesce for any reasonable amount of time are long gone.”

Jon didn’t have anything to say to that. I think he knew damn good and well that he would be acting the same way…if not worse. Dr. Zahn did not take ten minutes, it was more like twenty. She gave us both a look that dared either one to say anything.

Once we were out of the campgrounds and had made it up to where I guess the road should be, Jon filled us in on some other aspects of this run. For one, we would not reach their location until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Also, we would need to stop and refuel. He already knew of a tanker that would do nicely.

Also, they had seen signs of human activity in the vicinity that we would have to camp at tonight; but the only other option was to forge an entirely different trail and hope that there were no nastier surprises. Having not been out in a while, I had a hard time recognizing anything and absolutely deferred to his judgment.

“Besides,” Jon said with a shrug, “we don’t know what the nature of these people are, and may just be worrying about nothing.”

He had a good point. It was just that we’d had some bad luck with the living lately. I did not want to put any of us at greater risk than need be…especially Dr. Zahn.

The rest of the day was driven in relative silence with only the steady growl of the engine as our travel soundtrack. When we did finally stop, I noticed that the huge fuel tanker was obviously being used by any who passed. There were all sorts of cryptic messages painted or etched all down the side of the vehicle.

Jon and I climbed out. I was surprised to see an elaborate and obviously handmade setup for siphoning the gas out of the tanker. Not only had somebody gone through a great deal of trouble, but they had left it behind for others. I was amazed and ashamed, because I hadn’t realized how pessimistic I’d become about my fellow man.