Enduring Armageddon (31 page)

“The zombies, mutants, creatures, freaks, or whatever you want to call them, were dependent on meat and food that they could find. Once that disappeared, they ate the weakest members of their group and finally none of them were left. People who resemble the mutants, but were only disfigured like your friend and not crazy like the others, began to emerge from hiding and seek refuge in communities. We call ‘em the
Changed
.” Strike that, I was now surprised
three
times.

“Wait, you mean all the zombies are gone?” Jackson cut in.

“Most of them have died off, yes. Nobody knows if it was starvation or if the diseases they carried finally killed ‘em, but except for the occasional creature that threat is pretty much gone,” Jason answered. “The real danger is man and the occasional giant insect.”

I agreed wholeheartedly with him. “You’re sure that your men won’t mistake my friend for a zombie and shoot him?”

“I’m sure. We have someone like your friend in our group too. Along with their appearance, other things about them have been changed. Most develop valuable skills that they never had before the war. Our man can sense when there’s fresh water and food nearby.” Jason chuckled to himself, “One time, Marcus had us dig in a collapsed house for over an hour and we found three cans of pork and beans. Sometimes the senses go a little haywire, but what can you do?”

I thought immediately of Alejandro’s ability to manufacture just about any piece of mechanical gear that we needed and wondered if that was the skill that he’d developed or if he’d always been good with tools. “Alright. Jackson, go get Alejandro,” I said, purposefully leaving out the others. I just met this man and didn’t trust him with my life.

We made idle small talk until Jackson returned with Alejandro. Jason didn’t seem fazed by our friend’s appearance at all and shook his hand. “Let’s go sit down by the fire so we can talk,” the caravan’s leader recommended.

I was startled when a tall man, who was covered in scars like Alejandro, appeared next to our little group. He introduced himself as Marcus, the caravan’s seeker, and shook everyone’s hand. When he got to Alejandro, he grasped his hand for an uncomfortably long time until he finally let go.

“Alright, introductions made,” Jason said. “Let’s get down to business—”

“Who said that?” Alejandro interrupted him.

“What?” I asked.

“Someone just said that they were glad they got the opportunity to meet me,” he replied.

“Ha! You guys really have been on your own then,” Jason said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Marcus interjected. “I was just trying to talk while these two discussed trading. It’s really boring stuff.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jackson piped up.

“One of the other abilities that the Changed have is to speak to each other through their thoughts,” Jason answered back.

“Wait, you mean like…” I searched my thoughts until I finally remembered the term. “You mean they can talk to each other through telepathy?”

“Is that what it’s called?” Marcus asked. “Yeah, we can talk to each other without using our mouths, just our minds. Most of us, anyways. We can’t talk to the muties, though. They’re too far gone in the head to bother with.”

“That’s amazing,” I mumbled. “What else don’t we know about?”

“You said that you’ve been cooped up for almost two years, so there’s all sorts of stuff that you probably don’t know,” Jason said. “Did you guys know that they tried to re-establish a US government last summer?”

I shook my head and glanced at Alejandro. He hadn’t heard because he was staring intently at Marcus. Every so often he’d tilt his head a little to the side like he was thinking. Jason followed my gaze and said, “Oh yeah, he’s already learning how to do it. Before long they’ll be able to have an entire conversation without looking at each other and we’ll be none-the-wiser.”

“What happened with the government?” I asked.

“Word in the wasteland is that Indianapolis survived the nuclear war intact. The government moved the entire operation there and a large part of what was left of the army. They had almost established order in the city and surrounding area when food started to run out and the troops began fighting with the civilians. Before too long, some big mercenary army from Illinois moved in and wiped ‘em out. Every last one of them.”

My head whipped back around at the mention of a mercenary army in Illinois. “Crazy shit, huh?” Jason said, misinterpreting my surprise.

“Where was the army from?” I asked.

“Somewhere in central Illinois. Word is that they have some crazy lady that leads them all over the area killing everyone who gets in her way. She’s making a little kingdom up there.”

Surely it was impossible, but I had to ask. “Do you know her name?” I felt nervous and my voice actually quivered a little.

“Oh, I don’t know. Jennifer? Jessica—Wait, that’s it. It’s Jillian. They call themselves ‘Jillian’s Villains’.”

My stomach dropped. That crazy bitch had survived and now she had a legitimate army. “I know her,” I said.

“Oh yeah, sure you do!” Jason said with a slap to my shoulder. “I knew the president before she chopped his head off and mounted it on the hood of her truck too.”

“No, I’m serious,” I said as I shrugged off his hand. “She lived in our town and I was forced to kill her lover, D’Andre. She left town and somehow ended up with the army that destroyed our community. She tried to kill me the last time I came anywhere near her.” I stopped and thought things over for a second. What if the reason that army from Springfield had even bothered to travel to Virden after they kicked our ass was because she made them go? “And then her group destroyed our town. I just don’t understand how she had taken power so quickly.”

Jason’s smile never left his lips as he said, “Well, she’s a long way off now and no bother to any of us.” He gestured towards the grill and continued, “Squirrel?”

“No, thank you,” I replied sullenly as I tried to shake the knowledge that she was still alive and causing trouble out of my head.

“Okay, your loss,” the merchant replied. “Like I said, we travel around searching for stuff to trade. We’ve currently got a case of working water purification systems, a big stash of double-A batteries that still have a lot of juice in ‘em, some weapons—mostly knives and such—oranges from way down in Mexico, a lot of seasoning spices, three wagons full of canned goods, hell, a lot of stuff. What do you need?”

I thought about it for a moment and decided that even though I couldn’t make a decision for the entire town, I did know of a few things that would be helpful. “Balmorhea’s mayor is a man named Pedro Hernandez, so he’d be the one to make all the trade decisions. But I do know that we need medicine and soap or hand sanitizer. Do you have anything like that?” I asked.

“I’ll put soap and sanitizer on our shopping list, but we do have medicine. Standard drugstore stuff like aspirin and cough syrup, but if you want specialized drugs you can talk to Mikey. He’s our resident drug addict and can probably either hook you up with things from his stash or knows where to find it. It’s the only reason we keep the guy around. He was a pharmacist before all this went down, so he’s a walking encyclopedia of helpful shit with medicine when he’s not wasted.”

“Good to know,” I replied. I thought about Balmorhea’s population. Several people were losing their hair, our fingernails were very brittle, most people’s blood didn’t clot very fast after a wound and abnormally dry, cracked skin was prevalent. Maybe it was the radiation, but I was willing to bet that it was some type of vitamin deficiency that we couldn’t make up through our crops alone. “What we really need is multi-vitamins and probably some pain relievers.”

“Mikey!” Jason shouted towards one of the wagons. “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Hold on a minute, Chuck.”

He stormed over to a wagon and threw open the flap. “He’s always passed out and worthless,” Marcus startled me by saying. “Oh goodie, here he comes,” he finished as he pointed towards Jason who was dragging one of the most pathetic excuses for a human being behind him by the arm. The man half-heartedly kicked his feet in an effort to stand up every so often, but it was clear that he was drugged up and didn’t mind being dragged behind the caravan’s leader.

Jason deposited his cargo in front of me and sat back down on the picnic table. “Here we go, Chuck. What was it that you needed from our pharmacy?”

I went over the symptoms with Mikey and discussed what we’d been eating for the last year. He nodded groggily. “Yeah, man,” he replied in between the wipes of his dripping nose on his sleeve. “Sounds like you guys are all severely Vitamin A deficient and probably several of the Vitamin B’s too. You should round out your diet with more meat and dairy. I’d also recommend that you need Vitamin C too since you’re probably not getting enough.”

“Really?” I said sarcastically. “If we could have done that we would have. We get the occasional deer, but it’s mostly just the vegetables we planted that we have to eat. Sounds like we need to get some multivitamins and maybe some calcium supplements.”

“Sure, that would do it too, man,” the high pharmacist replied.

I waited for a couple of seconds before I looked back to Jason. “Is this guy serious?” I asked. “Can he help or not?”

“Yeah, he’s an annoying asshole isn’t he?” Jason said with a grin.

“I can hear you, man,” Mikey said.

“I know you can. Yes, Chuck, now that our amazing encyclopedia of medical ailments has passed judgment, we can definitely help you. We have several cases of multivitamins in the drug wagon where Mikey stays. Question is: What do you have to trade for it?”

There’s the crux of it then. Of course I knew that Jason and his band of merchants were out for a profit, but I figured that they may have been willing to part with some vitamins as a gesture of goodwill. I really needed to get those vitamins for Rebecca and Sam and there were a couple of other women in town who were at varying stages of pregnancy as well. In fact, we’d been contemplating a journey to Fort Stockton about forty-five miles to the east to see what supplies we could find, but if we could get something here, it would save us from a very dangerous trip. “We don’t have a lot,” I replied, “but we do have a few extra plows that Alejandro designed and we can spare some seeds for planting.”

Jason thought it over for a while and then said, “What are these plows made out of and how are they pulled?”

I described Alejandro’s plow to him and he stood up to pace around and make a show of thinking things through. Obviously, he was a fan of theatrics, but I was willing to put up with it if we could get some vitamins.

Finally, he returned and said, “Alright, we’ll trade you some items for your plows. Obviously we’ll trade the vitamins, but I’d like to talk to that mayor of yours to see how else we can do business.”

“I’ll take you to him whenever you’re ready,” I answered. “We’ll need to head back before dark anyways. Otherwise they’ll get nervous and send out a party to search for us.”

“Alright, I’d like that. I can go either tonight or tomorrow morning, but we need to get moving before noon so we can make it to our next campsite before dark. Even though the muties are mostly gone, there are things out there that you don’t want to run into in the dark without a defendable position.”

“Let me go back tonight and discuss this with Pedro. Then come to the south gate the first thing in the morning. Only you and a couple of people though,” I said as an afterthought.

“Sounds fair,” Jason replied. “I’ll be there first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Hey, mister,” Jackson piped up.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any razor scooters would you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t. But I bet they have some in New El Paso. If we can work out a trade deal with the folks in your town then I’ll be sure to pick one up when we go through there and drop it off on our way back through next week.”

Jackson grinned from ear to ear. “That would be awesome,” he exclaimed. “I miss my razor more than anything. Well, that and ice cream!”

I placed my hand on his shoulder and gently turned him back towards the cabin. “We’ll be heading back now,” I stated as I glanced at the darkening sky. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

Jason shook my hand and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Time to get back inside the safety of the firelight anyways,” he replied. “Safe journey.”

I waved and started walking back towards the cabin to link up with the others. I felt Alejandro’s presence immediately behind me. “I heard Jackson ask for a scooter,” he said. “It’s funny, but sometimes with all that we’ve gone through I forget that they’re still kids.”

“Yeah, but I think he’ll be alright,” I responded. “I think we’ll all be alright.”

* * *

As promised, I discussed the trade proposal with Pedro and the other members of the town. We all saw it as a win for Balmorhea to begin trading with the larger communities that were left. The week flew by and in no time Jason and his crew were at our gates again with the supplies that we’d requested after our initial meeting but they didn’t have. The exchange seemed fair, but I began to wonder if it would be easier to trade directly with New El Paso ourselves and cut out the middleman.

Alejandro and I discussed the possibility of going to New El Paso with Rebecca and Sam. They finally agreed that it would be alright to go as long as the two of us stayed together and agreed to watch each other’s back. It was a win-win in my book: the town would get a firsthand look at what was available for trading and what we had that others wanted, and I’d get to go back out onto the road to see what was out there.

I’d always considered myself as sort of a homebody before the apocalypse, but all those months of traveling had bred a thirst in me for getting out and seeing our world. I craved the excitement of finding something new around the next bend. I’d been feeling the itch to travel for months now and to just get away from the familiar. Maybe that was why I volunteered to go on every work detail to the lake.

Regardless, Alejandro and I were leaving for New El Paso in a few minutes and I was excited. I packed a few things into the exterior pockets of my backpack that I’d left out last night to use this morning, but I was pretty much set. I heard movement behind me and I saw Rebecca walking towards me from the nursery. “Jesse’s still asleep. I can wake him up if you want to see him before you go,” she said.