Dead: Siege & Survival (34 page)

Slider had no time to admire his work. He drew his knife just as the man with the limp skidded to a stop about ten feet away. He threw his hands up in the air in surrender.

“I d-d-don’t want no p-p-problems, f-fella,” he stammered.

“Those kids,” Slider growled.

“What? Them muties? You want ‘em…hell, have ‘em both,” the man couldn’t get the words out quick enough. “If that was all this was about…well we could have worked somethin’ out, man. No need for violence. In fact, we got other stuff to trade as well…food…even a knife bigger than that ‘un.” The man pointed to the Ka-Bar in Slider’s hand.

“Run,” Slider whispered.

“Huh?” The man appeared to be confused by the word.

“I said run,” Slider repeated. He slid the knife back into its sheath.

Apparently the man mistook the intention. “You want me to hurry and go get what we got for trade?”

Charles “Slider” Monterro walked up to the stranger. He brought up his right hand and the man reached out to accept what he assumed was a proffered handshake. Like a snake, Slider grabbed the extended hand, used it to whip the man around, and grabbed under the chin with his left hand while cupping the back of the man’s head with his right. In a single action, he jerked hard. The satisfying crack sent a shiver down Slider’s spine.

Yes indeed
, he thought as he began up the road after the two small figures he’d seen run away,
sometimes it was actually enjoyable killing another man
.

15

Tough Choices

Dr. Zahn’s voice would make an excellent alarm clock. It has that certain quality to it that makes you want to smash the button and shut it off…for good. I’m not proud of the fact that this was my first thought as I opened my eyes.

“…can’t simply expect him to do everything when it comes to the dirty work.” The doctor was ripping somebody a new one by the sounds of it.

“I’m not saying that,” a voice responded defensively. It took me a second to place it: Nickie Bailey. Of all the residents, she was the only one with that peculiar Southern accent. I say peculiar because this is the Pacific Northwest. While some folks may adopt a lazy form of speech, hers was definitely a real, honest-to-goodness Southern drawl. I keep meaning to ask her about it, but I’ll be damned if things don’t keep cropping up.

“I think it is best if Sunshine makes her concoction and then we administer it when the child is on the verge. Ease her into it if we can.”

That made me sit up. They were discussing Emily. I already had my mind made up. I would be the one to take care of her in the end.

“And that is fine,” Nickie countered. “However, Jesus has said that he would step in and take care of her after. Steve has enough to deal with…why should he have to be the one to put that little girl down for good?”

“Because she is my responsibility,” I said, causing both of them to jump.

“Steve, I am sorry if we woke you,” Nickie sputtered. “We were actually outside when this conversation began. I guess we just lost track of where we were and how much volume we were using.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a wave of my hand. “But as for Emily…I will be the one to deal with her in the end.”

“Steve—” Dr. Zahn started, but I didn’t want to hear it.

“That’s not open for discussion.”

“Oh good…you’re up.” Melissa pushed into the open room past the two women who were still giving each other the evil eye. “The newcomers are starting to come around and we have a problem.”

“Never a shortage,” I huffed. “Now if you all don’t mind, I would like to change into some clean clothes before I go out there.”

For some strange reason, all three of them looked at each other, and then at me like I’d sprouted an extra appendage somewhere in the middle of my forehead.
Fine
, I thought. I dropped my pants and hooked my thumbs in the band of my underwear. When I looked back up, Nickie was gone.
Well, so much for that.

“Doc…do you mind?”

“Oh, sorry,” she said with a slight shake of her head. Obviously she had gone on to other things in her mind and could care less if I were about to drop trow.

“I guess now is as good of a time as any to ask,” Melissa began with just a trace of hesitation in her voice.

“Sure,” I shrugged, “why not.”

I pulled on a clean set of boxer-briefs and sighed as they almost slipped back off. Who needed fancy pills or expensive gym memberships? I hadn’t been exactly fat before all of this, but on those rare occasions when I would work out with a few buddies and we got around to doing sit ups or whatever the latest thing one of them had read about in some fitness magazine, the rally cry would go up. “Time to do abs!”

“You mean
ab
,” I always corrected them. I had a very well-defined one pack. It sorta looked like the hood of a VW Bug.

Now, I could actually see three of the mythological—to me at least—six-pack. Why is it that I could see the top two and the second one down on the left side? Weird.

Anyways, I would need a smaller size next time we sought out those sorts of supplies. I pulled on some pants and fastened my belt, realizing for the first time that I was now three notches past the original ones.

“…ever you did has not only got that child all stirred up, but also that other guy, Potter or Palmer or whatever his name is,” Melissa was saying.

Oops
, I guess I was distracted. Still, I think I was catching the gist of what she was saying.

“I was the one who put down her mother and a few others,” I explained. “I guess they have been shielding the kids from what is going on. She thinks I was actually killing people.”

“That’s terrible,” Melissa sighed.

“I know,” I agreed. “I mean, how long did they think they could keep that up?”

“No,” Melissa scolded, “I mean how could you kill the zombies, especially her mother, right in front of her, Steve?”

What?

“That had to be very traumatic. No wonder the little girl is terrified of you.”

“It wasn’t like I was the only one,” I snapped. Why in the heck did I have to defend myself? She should know damn good and well what it is like out there. We never shielded Thalia or Emily. In fact, she was one of the big proponents for getting the girls exposed to
more
of what went on. “Jon was in the barn taking them out, too.”

“I bet he was inside and out of sight of that poor little girl.”

Honestly, the way everything was starting to blur together, I couldn’t really remember. What I did remember, and it came to me in a bolt that made the hair on my arms and on the back of my neck stand up, was the reaction of that one child-zombie that had seemed to observe us from a distance.

“Well, Misty seems to only remember what
you
did,” Melissa insisted. “And that man keeps breaking into hysterics, saying that you went crazy and just started chopping people up and bashing their heads in.”

“Is that right?” Now I was a little annoyed. Not with the child. Actually, her being the way she was had everything to do with how the adults around her had acted. What I wasn’t going to do is let some stranger come in here and start painting me as a blood-thirsty lunatic.

I headed out to the lobby area. Luck was with me as everybody—except those on watch—was sitting down to eat. The newbies, or at least the ones that were mobile enough to come out and sit or slump at the table, were present. I did a scan of the faces and realized that, other than Mr. Patton and little Misty, only two others from the group we’d rescued were present. I would worry about names later.

“So…I guess we need to have a group meeting,” I announced. Most of my “old” group simply glanced up from their plates. However, it was the reaction from the newcomers that got my irritation meter slamming into the stops. You would have thought, based solely on their faces, that a herd of zombies just walked through the door…led by Satan.

“W-w-we don’t want any trouble,” the man, Mr. Patton, stammered.

“Well that’s really the issue, isn’t it?” I snapped. “We plucked your people—the ones still alive—from a bad situation that was only going to get worse.”

“You killed—” Patton started, but I cut him off.

“You were eating each other,” I snapped. “You had almost nothing left as far as supplies go. We found you and made not one, but two trips to gather you up and bring the ones here that we could try to save. Now obviously many of you were too far gone. And I am really sorry that so many of you died even after we brought you here, but I am not a monster. I put down those of you already dead who had come back as zombies.”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Patton said meekly. “But am I to believe that you are saying the members of our group that became ill were…coming back as...zombies? I believe that is the word that you used isn’t it? Zombies?”

What rock had these people been hiding under?

“Do you have a better term?” Billy leaned forward at his place in the table so he could look down and see Mr. Patton.

“I imagine there are probably several if we were to have the opinion of an actual doctor,” Mr. Patton said with what actually sounded to me like disdain.

“
I
am a real doctor.”

Now you’ve done it
, I thought as Dr. Zahn slipped into her normal seat at the table which happened to be right next to Mr. Dean Patton. Perhaps I wouldn’t need to say much at all.

“Well then surely you can not expect us to believe that the dead are getting up like some sort of very bad movie and eating people. This has to be some sort of virus or biological weapon,” Mr. Patton almost laughed.

“Where exactly have you been all this time?” Dr. Zahn asked as she folded her hands before her and turned her gaze fully on the seemingly ignorant Mr. Patton.

“We have been living in our commune,” he said simply.

“What sort of commune?” Melissa spoke up.

“We are simply a group of people who left the material ways behind and sought a more simplistic and basic life,” Mr. Patton explained.

“Like a religious cult?” Billy squinted and seemed to be on the verge of laughing. I shot him a stern look and he quickly straightened his expression.

“Some of our members choose to follow certain faiths,” Mr. Patton explained. “We had all kinds. Some were atheists, and some kept it to themselves. Religion had nothing to do with our choice.”

“So like a hippy commune,” Jake Beebe offered.

The look on Mr. Patton’s face told me that he was starting to get really annoyed. I guess I could see why. Still, I was not really clear about him or his people, and if he wasn’t going to just offer it up, then I guess he would have to keep being asked questions that he didn’t like.

“Some of our members are former bankers, corporate CEOs, we were made up of all kinds and classes.”

“So then you don’t have television or radio in your…” I considered my next word and just decided to say ‘The hell with being delicate!’ “Compound?”

“We chose to remove ourselves from society after our government had repeatedly failed us and practically wiped out our retirements, our jobs, caused many of us to lose our homes.”

Okay, that I could get behind. I understood their logic…at least sort of anyways.

“So you really don’t know what has happened?” I pressed.

“Our deliveries of oil for our heating and cooking systems and our gardening supplies did not show up as scheduled. After several days, a few of our people went into La Grande to find out what was wrong.

“When they returned, only two made it back and both were almost beyond understanding as they were delirious with fever. When one of them went into a catatonic state, we were preparing to send for a nearby doctor that comes out and does annual check-ups of our people—we aren’t crazy or solely reliant on nature or God to tend our needs,” he threw that last line in and glared around the table at all of us. I imagine we’d given him enough reason to feel defensive, so I wouldn’t hold it against him.

“Only, just as we were about to do so, Trent came out of his coma. It was his crying that brought us all running. It was the most peculiar cry if you knew Trent. He’d been a welder in the shipyards before and that cry almost sounded like it came from—”

“A baby?” Nickie blurted.

“Yes,” Mr. Patton said. He got a far away look for a second, shuddered, and then continued his story.

“When folks went in to check on him, he was up and out of bed…but he was obviously still very sick. His eyes were…wrong. And his tone was certainly off. He attacked people who tried to help him. Even managed to bite a few. When we finally got him restrained, that was when the other fella who had just slipped into his coma an hour earlier woke up. We got him tied down, but a few more ended up being bitten or scratched.”

“You didn’t start to realize that there was a problem?” I asked. “I’m not doctor, but I have a pretty good handle on what
dead
is. Nobody noticed the lack of a pulse…breathing…some of the basics?”

“We just thought we were missing something,” Mr. Patton insisted. “Nobody wants to be the one to say that a dead person is getting up.”

Denial
. There it was as plain as day.

“But you started figuring out…some of you must have,” Jon spoke up. “The first time we came out, you had everybody that was infected either tied down or locked in a shed. So how come you folks didn’t start trying to find help?”

“Honestly?” Mr. Patton looked up with red-rimmed eyes.

“That would help,” Jon said with a nod.

“By the time a majority of us were willing to accept the possibility…a few of our group had snuck away in the night. They took our only working vehicles and most of our canned food. We always had a pantry with dozens of shelves lined with jars. Our gardens were well-tended and everybody took part to ensure that we were always set just in case of any prolonged stretches of inclement weather.”

“It sounds like there is more to this than you are sharing,” Jon pressed.

“There was a fight. Only, none of us had guns. Well…none of us were supposed to,” Mr. Patton admitted. “The ones leaving had us outmatched. Even worse, they took a few against their will. That was when it got really ugly and a few of us tried to stop them.”