In the Dead: Volume 1 (7 page)

“
Hey,” Robin called up to the kid.

He was curled up in a ball, and he clung to one of the big branches of the tree with scabby hands. He stared down at them. From the distance, she couldn’t tell if his eyes were red-rimmed from infection or not. She’d ask Carl to use his rifle site to get a better look, but she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t just “accidentally” kill the boy and be done with it.

“
You know zombies don’t talk, right?” Carl asked from beside her.

She shot him a look. “If he was a zombie, why wouldn’t he have attacked us by now?”

He opened his mouth and then hesitated. She smiled. Once again she had halted him with post-apocalyptic logic. Yeah, she kind of rocked that way. Maybe it came from being a teacher in the Before Zombie world.

“
Hey, honey?” she repeated.

The little boy hunched up tighter, like he was trying to disappear and made a little dissatisfied grunt.

“
See, he’s making those weird zombie sounds,” Carl snapped. “We should just shoot him.”

“
That wasn’t a damn zombie sound and you know it!” Robin said as she shot him a dark glare. “Now stop thinking shooting is going to solve everything and shut up while I try to get this kid down so we can check him out.

“
What’s your name?” she asked, reverting to her teacher tone. Nice teacher, not mean teacher. Caring teacher who hadn’t been jaded by years of working in the system. What? She could fake it.

The little boy just stared at her. But he seemed like he understood she was a person, not a walking Happy Meal.

“
He’s not a zombie,” she said softly. “He’s just a scared kid.”

Carl craned his neck to look up the tree. “How do you know?”

“
Well, for starters, if I can smell him, he can smell me. And he hasn’t gone all ‘bloodlust’ on our asses. Second, he’s looking at me. I can’t see if his eyes are red, but zombies never really look. Finally, he’s holding on to that tree branch for dear life. And zombies don’t protect themselves from falling or getting shot or anything else. Hurting doesn’t hurt them.”

Carl scanned the immediate area for zombies another time and then leaned back to look at the kid again. “Okay, maybe you’re right. So what do we do? I mean, we just can’t leave him up there.”

She stared at him briefly. So Carl had a heart after all. Good.

“
Well, he’s scared, that much is clear. Probably traumatized, though he should get in line. I’m a little traumatized, too.”

“
Maybe you should climb a tree,” Carl said with a wink.

She stuck her tongue out at him and then wondered how she’d gotten to the point where she was acting like one of her fifth graders.

“
I remember talking to a child psychologist for a seminar and she suggested that sometimes music can reach a child.” Robin said. “Maybe I could sing him something. What was popular before the apocalypse?”

She scanned her brain. One of the nicest things about a zombie outbreak was that she no longer had to listen to the shit that passed for music to her students anymore.

But it all flooded back when she stopped blocking it out.

“
I guess there was Bieber,” she said with a heavy sigh.

Carl stared at her. “If you sing a Justin Bieber song, I will shoot that kid. And then I’ll assume you are turning into a zombie and I’ll shoot you.”

Robin smiled, despite herself. “Ok, ok. I’m sorry, I won’t sing that crap. How about the Beatles?”

Carl sighed. “Thank God, you know a good band. If you hadn’t, I might have had to shoot you anyway.”

Robin wrinkled her brow. “You’re talking an awful lot about shooting me. It makes a girl nervous.”

Carl rolled his eyes. “Just sing a song. How about
Hey Jude
?”

Robin smiled. “One of my favorites.”

She glanced back up the tree and smiled at the boy before she started a soft rendition of the song. The boy stared at her, mesmerized as the melody moved through the quiet and filled the air. He inched forward on the branch and leaned down like he was trying to hear better.

“
It’s working,” she said as she finished the song.

“
God knows why,” Carl laughed. “You would never make it on Idol.”

“
Haha.” She stepped back. “Come on, I think if we move away and I sing something else, he’ll come down.”

Carl shrugged and they both moved back toward the path they’d made in the wheat.

“
I think I’ll try U2,” Robin said and then started in on a new song. Just as she’d hoped, the little boy grunted in displeasure and clamored down a few branches to get closer to the sound.

They repeated the same process a few times more, backing up, Robin singing a new song and the boy moving lower and lower on the tree until finally he stepped down onto the ground and stared at them.

“
Stay back and watch for zombies,” she whispered. “I’m going to see if I can get closer.”

She started humming, a low meaningless sound that was still musical, but not specific to any song. The boy tilted his head, but not in the “zombie dog” way, just in curiosity and interest. He tensed as Robin got close, but didn’t run or bolt back into the tree.

She crouched down when she was within a few feet and stopped humming.

“
I’m Robin,” she said softly. “What’s your name?”

He drew in a short breath and then stared. Now that he was closer, Robin could see there was no redness to his eyes. He was filthy, though. Skinny, too.

“
How long have you been out here?” she murmured, more to herself than to him, since she knew he wouldn’t answer. “Where did you come from?”

“
What’s up with him?” Carl asked as he stepped up behind her.

The boy cowered against the tree trunk and Robin reached back to swat Carl on the legs. “Shhh, keep your voice down. I think he’s…. he’s sort of feral.”

Carl stared. “Feral, you mean like a cat?”

She nodded. “The trauma and probably being out here alone for… well, God knows how long has made him wild. I’m not even sure he knows what we’re saying or if he can speak.”

“
That’s fucked up,” Carl muttered.

Robin stood up and turned to look at him. “Shit, dude, did you get
that
diagnosis from your years of school?”

“
It
is
fucked up, Robin,” he argued with another glance at the kid. “So what do you propose we do with the wild child?”

“
We take him with us,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t leave him out here on his own.”

She pulled her backpack from her shoulders and set it down. From it, she withdrew a cereal bar. She unwrapped it and pulled the stale bar out.

“
Hungry?” she asked.

The boy stepped forward and sniffed at the bar, but didn’t take it. He stared at Robin with his wide, sad eyes. Then he looked at Carl. He moved a little closer and examined him carefully. Robin glanced around for zombies and then watched as the boy stepped up and touched Carl’s hoodie.

“
Cold?” Carl asked. “Are you cold, er,… Jude?”

“
Jude, that’s what we’re going with?” Robin asked.

Carl shrugged. “He liked the song, we have to call him something more than ‘Hey you’.”

The boy… Jude, touched the jacket again. Carl unzipped it and slipped it from his shoulders, then held it out. The boy looked at it, touched it, but didn’t take it. Carl sighed, then stepped forward and put the jacket around the kid’s shoulders.

“
Put your arms through,” he encouraged Jude, taking one hand and putting it through the arm hole. Jude smiled and then stuffed his other arm through.

The jacket was three sizes too big and hung down almost to Jude’s knees, but he seemed happy enough. Without warning, he grabbed for the cereal bar Robin still held out and sat down under the tree to eat it in three big bites.

“
What do you know,” Carl said as he sat down next to the boy. “He’s trainable. Want to try fetch?”

“
Hush,” Robin scolded. She smiled at Jude. “I wonder what happened to him.”

“
The same thing that happened to everyone,” Carl said.

Robin was quiet for a moment, just watching the boy. She didn’t know what to say. Her training as a teacher could only take her so far. She wasn’t equipped to deal with a feral child.

“
What if we-” Carl started, but before he could finish, Jude jumped to his feet and made a little squeal in his throat.

“
What?” Robin said, getting up and looking at him. “What is it?”

He grunted and moaned, his eyes wide and wild. Finally, he lifted up his hand and started motioning off into the distance.

Carl looked, then lifted to his tiptoes to see better. Finally, he let out an exasperated sigh and jumped onto the trunk of the oak where Jude had been hiding earlier. He climbed up onto one of the lower branches and lifted his rifle so he could site in on a further distance.

“
Fuck!” he cried, then jumped back down. Jude stared at him in wonder and made an approving grunt in his throat.

“
What?” Robin asked.

“
What do you think?” Carl snapped. “Zombies. Like ten zombies. Coming this way.”

“
Shit!” Robin said.

She grabbed for the boy, but he jerked out of her hand and backed up against the tree. He made whimpering growls, warning sounds as he lifted his hands up to ward her away.

“
Jude,” she pleaded. “There are zombies coming. Bad guys. We have to go. Please!”

She reached for him again, but this time the boy swatted at her hands with a grunt.

Behind her, the field was rustling and the faint moan of zombies floated over on the breeze. She stared at Carl.

“
What do we do?” she asked.

Carl stared at the little boy. Then he reached into his pocket and drew out the keys to the motorcycle. Robin couldn’t help but smile. When they’d found the bike, both of them had commented on the key ring. Bugs Bunny in a leather jacket with a carrot hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette.
Rebel Without a Paws
, Carl had joked at the time and it was the first time Robin had really liked him.

Jude’s eyes lit up and he moved toward Carl with a grunt. Carl jangled the keys.

“
Come on…” he urged. “Come on.”

Jude inched forward. When he reached out to grab for the key ring, Carl caught him, slung him over his shoulder and started to run.

“
Run, Robin!” he called.

Robin blinked and started to jog behind them. Jude was facing her and was wailing and pounding on Carl’s back as they ran. Behind her, the sound of the zombies got louder. She peeked over her shoulder. They had burst from the field in a mass of drool and arms and gnashing teeth. There were at least ten, and some of them were doing the zombie sprint and gaining on them.

She yanked the handgun from her holster and tuned slightly to fire. Her shot rang true and the zombie in the lead dropped in a heap. That gave her enough space that she faced forward again. Jude was smiling now and clapping.

“
Shooting zombies is like TV for him.”

Carl glanced up at the boy over his shoulder. “Good, now we know how to keep him entertained. Run faster, a few of them are starting to catch up.”

Robin fired back toward the zombies and from Jude’s giggling reaction, she hit at least one. She could see the bikes in the distance and there was something else in the side car storage area that she knew would take care of their zombie problem.

“
Here,” Carl said, handing her the little boy as they reached the motorcycle.

She took him, and to her surprise, he didn’t struggle against her as he had when she tried to take him in the first place. Carl wrenched open the storage area and pulled out…

The grenade.

They’d found it a few weeks before on the corpse of an army private rotting along the side of the road. Carl yanked the pin and threw the grenade toward the crowd of zombies. Then he grabbed Robin’s hand and pulled her behind the motorcycle.

They all peeked over the bike seat as the grenade exploded with an ear-ringing concussion that rocked the earth. It also blew the zombies back in a wave of shattered limbs, busted heads and bloody stumps.

Jude squealed in utter delight and clapped like he had when Robin shot the first zombie. Slowly, Carl stood and surveyed the damage. Most of the zombies lay dead (really dead, not undead-dead). A few were still making an attempt to get back up.

“
Got it,” Carl said, yanking the rifle from the sling on his back. He lined up one shot after another and took down the last few zombies who might still be a threat.

And once again, Jude chuckled and smiled up at Robin. She couldn’t really blame him. If she had been abandoned alone for who knew how many months in a zombie wasteland, she’d probably enjoy watching them get shot, too.

“
Are we good?” she asked as she swung Jude to balance him against her hip and stood up.

“
For the moment,” Carl said. “But all the shooting and exploding is going to bring more. You know that.”