Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (11 page)

Paulson was outside Thomas’ cabin. There was no need for a guard. No one could imagine hurting the old man. Thomas was much beloved. And if they tried? Well, Thomas was getting on in years, but he could still hold his own. Paulson loved the old man, and liked being around him enough that he often stationed himself outside of Thomas’ cabin.

Red nodded at Paulson and he nodded back. She knocked on the door and when she heard Thomas say come in, she stepped inside.

“Red. It’s good to see you back.”

“Thomas. It’s good to be back.”

“Come on in. Sit down.”

The interior of the cabin was Spartan. There were few furnishings—a wooden table with three wooden chairs. A bookcase filled with books. Thomas had made these all himself. Some meat dish was cooking off in the kitchen, its delectable smell wafting throughout the cabin.

“How’s Homer treating you?” Thomas asked her about the book he had leant her.

Red sat down at the table across from him. “Achilles is desecrating Hector’s body.”

“Yeah, he did go a little overboard there. He reminds me of you, you know? Achilles that is.”

“Because we both have red hair?”

“How’d it go out there with Mac?”

“I think we’ve got ourselves a penitent.”

“Well, I gotta say good job then, Amy.”
Amy
. Thomas was the only one to call her that. Everyone else called her Red or Lil’ Red.

She nodded.

“Anything out there I need to know about?”

“We attracted twenty-five Zed.”

“Twenty-five, huh?”

She said yes.

“Well, twenty-five is a lot, but it’s nothing like we used to face. You’re too young to remember, but there was a time we’d have thousands of those things wandering around.” A look came over Thomas’ face, the look that always stole over him when he was remembering the way things had been. “Millions in the cities.”

Thomas had been around since the time before. He’d had what Little Red heard Gammon refer to on more than one occasion as “a life.” Meaning a family, a job, a home somewhere. Meaning daily routines free of the undead. Gammon’d had such as well. Since she was born, all Little Red had known was Zed. Zed and spiked cancer rates, and those of your own kind that you couldn’t depend on, or worse, that you couldn’t trust. Hence their camp, where they were safe with each another.

“That wasn’t all, Thomas.” Little Red told him about the three bandits, about what they said and did and what she did.

Thomas looked at the girl before him. She wasn’t much—a little wisp of a thing really. People’d been underestimating Little Red since day one, and Little Red had been defying their expectations—oftentimes to deadly effect—ever since. Thomas knew he’d underestimated her when they’d met, when he’d rescued her from those folks. He loved this girl like a daughter, and admired her something awful.

And he knew she was fiercely loyal to him, to their camp.

It had been Red’s idea, taking Mac out in the woods like that. Thomas hadn’t liked being put in the position. If it was up to him, he probably would have killed MacKenzie. But Little Red had talked to him, and what she said had made sense to his old ears. They were down to a hundred and seventy five souls, about two thirds of them women and children. Zed and the hostiles weren’t the issue these days, not the way they’d once been. The cancers were taking their toll, though. The sick and dying had overtaken the number of healthy being born. And of those being born, you had to figure one in three was going to be suffering, marked by the radiation in some way.

There was nothing worse than losing a child. Thomas knew this firsthand. Well, he thought, admiring Little Red, he had this girl. He had his Tommy. And he had Johnny, Phil, and Merv, and all the special needs they carried between the three of them. He had old friends like Gammon. And he had this camp.

Thomas said something quietly. Red didn’t quite catch it, so she asked him what he’d said.

“I said its sad is all. It’s sad that after all…” he gestured with upturned palms to the wider world around them “…
this
, after all this, we still can’t trust our own kind. I mean, zombies? I expect them to try and eat us, right? That’s what they do. But human beings?” Thomas shook his head. “And three women no less?” Thomas couldn’t believe it, but he did.

“Yeah, but they were bull dykes.”

“Bull dykes?” The old man laughed. “Where’d you hear that term?”

“I don’t know. I picked it up somewhere. Gammon maybe.”

“You’re a pip, you know that?”

Red shrugged. He’d called her a pip before. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she knew he meant it well. Thomas had his names for her. Pip. Ishkabibble. Other things.

“But I won’t lie,” Thomas continued, and Little Red knew—
here it comes
. The fatherly spiel. “I worry about you when you’re out there.”

“I’m a big girl.”

Thomas looked her up and down with one eye, exaggeratedly.

“No, you’re really not.”

She sneered. “You know what I mean.”

“You might be the toughest person in this camp,” Thomas granted, “but that don’t mean I can’t worry about you. It’s a bad world out there. It’ll hurt you every chance it gets. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

“Something bad always happens to us.” There was a moment of silence as she and Thomas thought of the dozens of friends they’d lost. Lost to zombies, lost to hostiles, lost to plague and disease and the cancers. “None of us is long for this world.”

“My only hope…” admitted Thomas, and he had told Red this before, “…is that I don’t outlive you and Tommy.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“You’re a tough old man. Who taught me everything I know?”

“I taught you everything
I
know, Red. But I didn’t teach you everything
you
know.”

“I’ve been out there for three nights. I could really use a shower and some sleep. And you’ve got me here listening to the mawkish reverie of an old man.”

Thomas pointed a finger at her. “I can say that to you because I can’t say it to Tommy.”

“Don’t underestimate Tommy. He’s made of sturdier stuff than you think.”

“I know what my boy is made of, and I
don’t
underestimate him. I worry about him. That’s all. Him and you, the boys, you’re all I got left in this world.”

“That’s not true.” Red thought of the camp Thomas and Gammon and a few others—long dead and gone—had built; of the people who looked to Thomas for leadership and protection. “And since when did a tough old man become a whiny old woman?”

Thomas smiled. “You’re good for me, Red. I mean, I might worry myself to the grave over you. But you’re good for me, I think.”

“If we’re done canoodling—how’d you like that word?—or whatever we’re doing, and it’s okay with you, I’m going to go and catch that shower now.”

“A shower sounds like a good idea. And take that stink with you.”

Red laughed as she left the cabin.

Thomas sat there and listened to her go.

Merv, Phil, and Johnny would be coming in soon. Thomas would see to the boys’ supper. He already had a pot of stew on the fire in the other room. They were good boys. All fucked up from the radiation though.

The pain hadn’t been too bad today, Thomas reflected. Not like last week. But the old man didn’t kid himself. Whatever wasn’t hurting him so much this evening was killing him on the inside. He didn’t know how much time he had left.

He worried about Phil and Johnny, but Merv not as much. Merv could survive on his own. Not that he’d be alone. Tommy would see to his younger brothers. Tommy and Red, the old man hoped. Thomas had never tried to play match maker, but nothing would make a dying old man happier than if his son and the girl he thought of as a daughter would shack up and stay that way.

That play wasn’t in his hand though, and Thomas knew it. If it was going to happen, it would happen on its own. And if it didn’t…Well, Thomas didn’t think he’d be dying in the next day or week, or even month, so who knew how thing’s would play out. Time would tell. In the meantime, he had to see about that stew.

The days were shorter, and it grew dark and cooler as Anthony and Riley rang the doorbell. Evan had left them to make arrangements for the morning with his Defense Forces buddies. Something about trying to arrange a helicopter ride into the Outlands. That would save them a lot of time.

The woman who opened the door for Anthony and Riley was obviously ill. Her cheeks were sunken, and there were deep, dark circles around her eyes. She wore a kerchief around her head, and it was obvious that she was bald. Even her eyebrows were gone. Anthony and Riley both made her for a cancer victim.

She took one look at Anthony and said, “I know who you are” before he could say anything. “Come on in.” The gaunt woman turned and walked off into her house, leaving the door open.

Anthony and Riley looked at one another before stepping into the woman’s house and following her to a neat parlor. Riley paused to shut the door against the chill of the autumn evening.

“Sit down. Can I offer you something to drink?”

Riley was going to answer but looked at Anthony. “No, thank you. My name is Anthony. This is my sister, Riley.”

“Your adopted sister.” Gwen settled herself in a cushioned chair across from the couch on which the brother and sister sat. They both noticed how delicate she was, wasting away. “The war—Zed—did that to people.”

“Did…” Riley let her question trail off.

“It made a lot of orphans. Okay, so how did you find me, and why now?”

“Our father,” said Anthony. “He told us where we might…”

“How is Steve?”

“He’s good,” said Anthony.

“Is he still drinking?”

“Wow,” said Riley. “You do know dad.”

“Did. I knew your dad. Would you believe we were together for a few years? You,” Gwen looked at Anthony. “You were just a little baby back then. You too,” she said to Riley.

Gwen’s living room, and what little else they saw of her house, was neat and well kept. A folding table near her chair had an array of vials and pill bottles lined up on it. She saw them noticing the meds.

“Leukemia,” she said by way of explanation. “They diagnosed it last year. I guess it was only a matter of time.” This last part came out resigned—one of those facts that just is.

“Did you know my parents?” Anthony steered the conversation away from Gwen’s illness.

“Yes, I most certainly did.”

“Can you tell me about them?”

Gwen looked at the young man. He couldn’t be more than twenty, twenty-one. Maybe his sister was a couple of years older, if that. This was obviously important to the kid. Gwen could tell. Coming here to see her, to learn something.

“Your mother’s name was Julie,” Gwen told Anthony. “She was a beautiful woman. Very tall. Like you,” she said to Riley. Gwen returned her gaze to Anthony. “And she had tattoos.”

“Tattoos?” Anthony smiled and looked at Riley. “You hear that? My mom had tattoos.”

“Your father’s name was Harris.”

“Harris?”

“Yes. It was his last name.”

“What was his first name?”

“I never knew.”

“What was he like?”

Gwen chose her words carefully. “He was a high school principal. He was well-regarded. And he loved your mother very, very much.”

Anthony smiled. “How did I come to be…how did I wind up with dad—with Steve?”

“We were living in a place called Clavius. Ever heard of it?”

The two siblings shook their heads.

“It had to be abandoned after the nuclear power plant melted down. We all came here. Well, I mean, not all of us, but me and your father—Steve—a lot of others. But we were living in Clavius City, and your mother—Julie—she’d gone off into the wilderness with some other people, with her friends. With our friends. She was pregnant, very pregnant, with you.”

“Why didn’t you go into the woods with them?”

“It’s complicated.” Gwen hoped the kid wouldn’t press her for details. When he didn’t, she continued. “About a week later, a woman came to Clavius City. None of us had ever seen her before. She was a mess, all dirty, in rags. This was the end of winter. Spring hadn’t really even started, but she had you all bundled up and warm.”

“I was with
her
? Where was my mom?”

“I knew whose baby you were right off the bat,” Gwen ignored his question. “You’re the spitting image of your father now, and you were back then too. This woman came to Clavius and, well, people figured out whose baby it was, and they called me.”

“They called you because…”

“Because they knew I knew your mom.”

Anthony already had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but he knew he needed to listen to what Gwen was going to tell him. She was frail and ill, and he didn’t need to annoy her or stress her any more than she already was.

“She was reluctant to part with you, this woman. I asked her how she had come by you, and she told me a story.”

Gwen paused for a few moments. Anthony and Riley thought perhaps she was feeling the effects of her illness. Instead, she was choosing carefully what facts she would present, and which she would leave out of what she was about to reveal. She wet her lips.

“She—this woman—had been in the woods, checking some traps she’d set, checking to see if any little animals had gotten themselves caught up in them. And she heard some noises in the distance, and those noises frightened her…”

“What kind of noises?” Riley had to ask.

“Gunfire. She said she thought she’d heard gunfire. But she had nothing to be frightened of, as it turned out. She was resetting one of her traps—it had sprung but caught nothing—when a man walked up to her in the middle of the woods and handed her a baby. Just like that.” Gwen looked at Anthony. “Handed her you.”

“A man?”

“A man.”

“Was it my father?”

“Oh, no, he wasn’t your father.”

“But how do you know that?” Anthony wasn’t trying to challenge her.

“Because I was there when your father died.”

Anthony nodded at this. “So who was the man?”

“I don’t know,” Gwen lied. “And neither did the woman. I think she thought it was all just too…I don’t know, strange? Surreal? This man walks out of the trees, hands her a child—a newborn—and then he walks back into the trees and she never sees him again.