Peter ignored the semi-tumult of crosstalk that erupted, keeping his attention on the seven people on the dais. Two of them — the red cheeked woman and the older man — looked unhappily at him, while the other five traded either words or looks amongst themselves. Waiting, Peter continued focusing on the leaders as they worked through their initial reactions. It took about fifteen seconds, then one of the male leaders came across the platform and stood on the edge, close to Peter.
“What makes you think we want to run around saving people?” he asked loudly.
“Chas, that’s a real shitty attitude.” someone in the crowd of onlookers called out.
“I’m supposed to be one of the leaders.” the man replied. “And me and the rest of the scout teams spend a lot of time away from town seeing what things look like. I know better than most how dangerous what he’s talking about can get.”
“You’re not the only one who does runs.” Brenna said with a flash of obvious annoyance appearing on her face.
“Didn’t say I was.”
“And if we decide we might want to cooperate, no one’s saying you have to be involved.” the broken-nosed leader pointed out.
“Didn’t say that either.”
“Then . . . what?” someone in the crowd asked.
Chas shrugged. “I’m just wondering why we’re supposed to be so concerned with everyone else?”
“For fuck’s sake.” someone muttered, and not entirely alone; a number of other voices were saying the same thing. Most of them less profanely, but also basically matching the sentiment. However, there was a not inconsequential level of agreement with Chas’ apparent position.
“They’re right.” someone else said loudly, a short woman who was barely visible amid the people gathered in the middle of the big room. “If people don’t start working together, it won’t matter much how things turn out because most of us will be dead.”
“We’re doing just fine.” a third person said, sounding indignant. “We don’t need any help.” he added, sending a look that was most of the way toward being a glare at the woman.
“Who’s saying things are bad all over? This guy here?” a woman near the glaring man said, pointing at Peter. “So what, we don’t know him or anyone with him. They could be lying.”
“Why in the fuck would they lie about something like this?” Brenna asked.
“To trick us.” someone said.
“Yeah, to get us to spend time and resources running around.” another voice spoke up.
“It could be something Ellsworth is up to.” still another pointed out.
“Yeah.” Chas said. “He says he’s not with the base, but that’s just what he’s saying. He could be trying to deplete our stocks and defenses here so his people could show up and take over.”
Peter frowned, but before he could gather his thoughts into some sort of response, the quiet woman on the platform raised her voice. “Ellsworth has said what they want is our people, not our stuff. The only reason they want supplies from us is so
they
don’t have to run around gathering them up.”
“Yeah, there’s food and shit everywhere for the taking.” the short woman in the crowd said. “What that asshole they sent out here wanted was everyone who could be pressed into useful service to sign up and join the crusade.”
“Well, isn’t that what he’s asking for?” the female leader with the weathered skin demanded. “For us to throw into his little plan to save the world?”
“I’m not trying to save the world.” Peter said loudly.
“Sure sounds like it.”
“No?”
“You kind of are.”
Peter waved his hands above his head. “We’re here, and even the continent is enormous. The world’s bigger still. No group as small as this one can save it all.”
“Then what are you getting at?” the angry man in the crowd asked.
“Like I said,” Peter answered, “if someone somewhere doesn’t start helping people get their shit together, the few who are left will get fewer. At a certain point, there won’t be enough for it to really matter to whoever’s left.”
“That’s fucking bullshit.” someone snorted.
“Yeah, it’s not like we’re all about to go extinct or something.”
“Actually, it kinda is.” a man in his early twenties said, pushing to the front of the crowd.
“A lot of people have died—” a voice rose in protest, but the man — kid, really — shook his head and spoke loudly, directing his attention to Peter and the people on the platform.
“Best guess is one out of four people are still alive; that’s three-quarters who’ve died or become zombies since the outbreaks started.”
“Yeah, so there’s still a lot of us left.” someone cut in.
“Maybe, but jury’s still out on that.” the kid said. “Do the math, and allow for problems since the start of this thing with disease, accidents, starvation, and everything else that’s been showing up, and there could be only a billion people left on the planet.”
“Yeah, a billion.” the woman who’d sided with the angry man said, taking a few steps forward. “A billion is a lot you know.”
“For the whole planet?” Brenna demanded. “That’s the kind of population density we haven’t had since, what Matt?” she asked, looking at the kid in the audience.
“Since around the eighteenth century I think.” he replied. “And that assumes the level we’re counting on holds steady, and is already evenly distributed.”
“It hasn’t.” Peter said. “We’ve seen a good piece of the pattern; at least in part of America. Every city of any size we’ve gotten a look at has been torn apart; either by zombies or fire or both.”
“About seventy percent of the US lived in cities.” Matt said. “And I think it was something like half the world’s population.”
“That’s still a lot left.” the angry man said.
“Don’t forget to take out people who made it through the first weekend or week, or the first month, then got fucked up by something else.” Brenna said.
“Right.” the kid said. “We’re in the middle of a huge depopulation event. Just looking at the US, there could be only a few ten million people or so left breathing, and that’s not very many when you consider how big America is.”
“Yup.” Peter said. “And trust me, however good or bad off we might be here in the States, there are a lot of other places in the world that were already low pop or below subsistence level as it was when there
weren’t
zombies walking around eating people.”
“This is a cute and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that you want us to spend time and effort to . . . actually, what exactly do you want us to do?” the red faced woman on the platform asked. “Go set groups up, or bring them back here, or what?”
“I don’t know yet.” Peter shrugged. “Some might want or need to come back here. Others might want to stay where they are, but they’ll need help to do that and stay alive. We’d have to take it as comes up. But we can help, and it occurs to me Canton’s probably ideal for being able to get in touch with other groups.”
“And what happens to us?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Yeah, it’s already freezing and it’s going to get worse.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” the kid from the crowd said. “There can’t be all that many people left, and winter is going to do a serious number on most of them.”
“Why are we going to stick our necks out for people we don’t know?” someone demanded.
The quiet woman on the platform abruptly stood. Picking her chair up, she started slamming it into the dais; making an echoing hollow noise boom out that quickly began to override the crowd’s voices. When the conversation faded and everyone was staring at her, she brought the chair down one more time and released it.
“I don’t believe you assholes.” she said, glaring at them. “Everyone here is doing as well as we are because we’re all
working together
.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up!” she yelled, clenching her fists and holding them next to her head like she was trying to block everything out. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Jeez Nicky, have a damn fit why don’t you.” the red faced woman next to her said in a voice that carried.
“Fuck you Suzanne.” Nichole said, lowering her fists and glaring at the other woman. “You couldn’t even walk when Max’s group found you last month.”
“I had food poisoning!” Suzanne snapped, her eyes flashing.
“Yeah, I know. I’m the one that got you through it. And Max’s guys are the ones who carried you back here for me to fix. Brenna’s geeks are the reason I had electricity to run the clinic we set up. Dominick’s guys are why we have clean, uncontaminated water to give you. And everyone who’s worked on the construction projects and supply scavenging and repairs and everything else that’s keeping us going here in Canton is the reason there’s even a Canton left at all.
“And now you’ve got the nerve to stand here and say we should tell everyone else to deal with their own shit?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“No, I just don’t want us to end up screwed because we try to do too much.” Suzanne insisted.
“No, you want us to ignore people who need help.” the broken nosed leader said.
“You’re putting words in my mouth Luther.”
“They’re your words.”
“I never said that.” she insisted.
“You meant it.” Brenna said. “That’s what not doing something like what Gibson here is suggesting means.”
Suzanne looked at Chas, her expression furious even as her eyes tried to pull him back into the argument. The tanned man scowled, but he opened his mouth. “There is a limit.” he said in an even tone. “There aren’t enough of us to fix every problem people are having.”
“There are enough us to
help
people fix problems.” someone in the crowd said.
“And what happens when we push too far and piss off Ellsworth?” someone else said.
“Yeah, or if we send teams out too far and they run into trouble and die because they’re trapped or something.”
“That’s not a new risk.” Brenna said loudly. “And we’ve already got ways to keep ourselves safe against that kind of thing.”
“Sure, now.” Chas said. “When we’re close to home, know the area, and have others nearby who can come help us if we have problems.”
“Exactly.” Nichole said. “We have people who can help us.”
“We know each other.” the older male leader said.
“Not last week or last month or two months ago we didn’t.” Luther said. “Hell, we rescued that group three days ago; the ones who were trapped on the roof of that little store near Newton Hills. That’s seven people who are part of the town who weren’t until a little while ago.”
“That’s dif—” Suzanne started to say before cutting herself off.
“One of those guys is a kick ass chef who’s already started changing the recipes to improve what we’re eating.” someone in the crowd said loudly.
“It’s not different.” Nichole said, looking at Suzanne. “People are people. Anyone who’s not pointing guns at us or trying to kill us or who wants to destroy the town or something fucked up like that is a person we should be helping.”
“How are we going to know who the bad guys are?” several people asked, using more or less the same words, at more or less the same time.
“That’s what people like me go figure out.” Peter said loudly. Heads and eyes swung back to him, and he shrugged as he spread his hands widely. “Bottom line, it’s almost always a guy like me or someone in my group who are the ones everyone else waits to hear from. War, conflict, border skirmish, disaster relief, whatever the reason; most people are waiting to hear back from the sharp end of the spear how things are going on the front line.
“Not everyone’s a fighter. Not everyone has to be. In the Corps, everyone’s a Marine, but we’ve all got jobs. And not all of those jobs are infantry who get down in the mud and shoot it out with a bad guy. For every pair of dirty boots there’s dozens of guys behind them doing the million and one things that have to happen so the fight can be won.”
“You said you were a mechanic.” the angry man in the crowd said.
“I was and I am, but I’m also a Marine. The three people with me are all soldiers in the National Guard, even though they’ve got civilian skills that could be useful. But right now, there are a lot of civilians and not so many troops left. Not after the way the outbreaks went.”
Heads nodded around the room. For whatever reason, and no one Peter had ever heard from had figured out how or why yet, the groups mostly likely to convert into zombies had been military personnel and students. The National Guard, or at least those around Peter during the initial wave of outbreaks, had seemed less prone to zombifying; but they’d been thrown into the meat grinder and been among the first to be eaten as the zombies appeared.
“I’m mad as hell at Ellsworth.” Peter said. “And not just because I came all the way from Georgia through zombies and burned out towns and all the other shit we’ve put up with. Ellsworth says they’re the government, that they’re the last remaining leadership of the country. Well, as far as I’m concerned, what I know of their ‘plan’ to save us sucks.”