Chapter 10
“They’re coming this way, Char,” Sam said. He hadn’t climbed any higher in the tree, and was still talking. The quiver was apparent in his voice, the tone an octave or two higher than normal. Char was almost certain she could hear him sweating.
She did not answer him. Eventually, he would have to catch on and realize just how golden silence truly was. She tried listening to the night. Sam
might
be right, the infected seemed to be headed toward them. It could be the scent of fresh blood that Sam dripped onto the tree trunk that aroused their senses.
This gave her second thoughts about climbing into the trees now. A pack of infected would just stay at the base of the trees and moan. She couldn’t imagine being stuck in a tree with the tree surrounded by infected. The more noise they made, the more moaning they did, the more infected would show. They often reminded her of seagulls. When her dad, Cash, and her went to McDonalds, they oftentimes ate in the car in the parking lot. The seagulls knew the cars in the area were filled with people eating food. One seagull always approached. He’d caw, squawk and slowly make its way closer and closer. Cash was notorious for throwing at least one French fry out the window. Dad would yell, but not as if he was seriously upset. Just before that seagull snatched the fry up off the asphalt, it would give out one last high-pitched squawk. That was the tone, the alarm the other seagulls waited for. Once it sounded, they all came. It was almost as if Char could understand Seagull. If translated, the seagull would have said something along the lines of: “They’re giving away fooooooood!”
They were in trouble. “We should get down. Now. Make a run for it,” she said.
“Climb down?”
“Before they get here.”
“They sound close, Char. Real close,” he said.
Their conversation wasn’t helping the situation. It wasn’t like he had very far to climb down, either. Wasting time debating didn’t help any. Char started down the tree. She took each step carefully, one branch step at a time.
“And then what? What are we going to do?”
“Get down from the fucking tree now, Samuel!” She jumped the last five feet and bent her knees to absorb the impact. It was distant, but distinct. The moaning was awful, a steady groan that was both guttural and phlegmy. Char wanted to plug her ears and block out the sound. There wasn’t much point, though, once it was heard it could never be unheard. It was one of the only sounds she vividly recalled from nightmares that plagued her sleep when she actually did sleep.
Sam landed on his feet.
“Back to the trail. We’re making a break for the town.” Running along the road would be easiest. There would be less obstacles, no fallen branches, or wild weeds to trip them up. Char always hated movies when someone, usually a female character, tripped and injured an ankle. Half the time directors didn’t even have the actor trip over anything. They just tripped. They’d sit up and coddle and ankle, without even having put any weight on it first. It was part of what made cheesy movies classics.
“Why not back to Tony and Grace?”
Char ran past Sam. If he was more interested in asking questions, then he could. She just wasn’t planning to hang around an answer them.
“We might be running straight into them!”
Char heard heavy footfalls, and heavier breathing behind her. At least he was running, following her lead. If she could only get him to shut up she would be as close to happy as she could be in a situation as dire and dangerous as this. As she ducked under branches, and jumped over stumps, she almost smiled. More and more she was looking forward to thoroughly kicking his ass.
For all the moaning and all the groaning, Char was surprised they had not yet seen one infected. They had to be close. It had sounded as if they were closing in on them at one point. So where were they? Where were all the infected?
Char saw the trail. They had not been that far away from it in the first place. She slowed, and then stopped by the last row of trees. Sam came up behind her and wheezed.
She cringed waiting for him to talk. Just to be safe, she pressed a finger to her lips and he nodded, a hopeful indication that he might finally get it.
They stood still.
The woods had fallen silent.
She walked out from between trees and stood on the trail. She did a three-sixty searching for signs of anything in the brush around them. There was nothing. Not a single infected. She motioned for Sam to join her.
“This doesn’t make much sense. I don’t like it here. I have a bad feeling about this, that town, all of it. I think we should go tell Tony and just keep going south, or west, or wherever. Anywhere but staying here,” she said. She knew that cheesy horror movies had the chicks with sprained ankles, and she realized, they also had the pessimist who was also given lines that foreshadowed upcoming events, and almost laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was how she felt.
“You wanna go and tell Tony, what? That we thought we heard a bunch of infected, we ran and climbed trees to hide? Are you gonna tell him that nothing ever showed up, we got down, and whaddya know, everything is okay?”
Char sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit down on it, just hard enough not to draw blood. Sam was right, and that was what pissed her off. “Keep your eyes open,” she said.
Sam raised an eyebrow, a silent way of saying,
Duh
, without saying it.
The steel sword felt like it weighed close to a hundred pounds. It didn’t, but perception ruled. She laid the blade over her shoulder like a ball player waiting for a turn at bat. The lights from the town below did look warm, and welcoming. They were like nothing she had seen in a long while. There was an overall Hansel and Gretel feel to the situation only it was the draw of lights instead of a gingerbread house decked out in candy. The power of a lure to poison was always dependent on the cravings.
Char stopped when she saw a sign posted on the side of the trail. They were less than a few hundred yards from where spotlights sat perched aiming toward the forest. She read it to herself, and then out loud, “Welcome to Arcadia. No Stealing. No Fighting. No Murder.”
“Remember that bad feeling you had, about this being a bad idea and everything?” Sam said. “I don’t know if I have a bad feeling, or if I find this sign the exact opposite of welcoming and more —I don’t know— just creepy as shit.”
“We are going to need the both of you to lower your weapons and then lace your fingers together behind your head.” There was a distinct pump-action sound. First it came from the left, then the right, and then from directly behind them. “You heard me. Weapons down.”
Char lifted the sword off her shoulder. She squatted as she set her sword onto dirt and loose gravel.
“Sir, your machete.”
Sam looked at Char. She made a face at him. Did he not just see her set down the sword?
“Sir, I will ask one more time politely.”
“Sam, put the fucking machete down,” Char said. Damn him for looking so stupid, it made her look stupid too. How could they ever give off an impression of confidence with stupidity in such abundance inside Sam?
“And your knives, ma’am. All of ‘em.”
She thought they might have missed those. Perhaps it wasn’t as dark out as she thought.
“We don’t want any trouble. We saw those lights over there, and wanted to take a closer look,” she said.
“Which is fine. I have no problem with that. Before I can bring you into town, we just have to make sure that there are no surprises. You and your boyfriend going in with weapons leaves the town open to surprises. See what I’m saying?”
“We’re not a couple,” Sam said.
Char winced, as if a razor had just sliced skin on her back. She removed her knives and set them alongside the sword. “But we’ll get them back?”
“Eventually.”
“These were from my father,” she said. It was partially true. Together they ransacked a cabin’s arsenal grabbing up as many weapons as they could carry. “They hold sentimental value.”
“You’re not going to need weapons on the other side of that wall.”
“Wall?”
“We can talk about Arcadia here, or we can go to Arcadia and talk about the town over a cheeseburger and Coke. Your call.”
Cheeseburger and Coke? Char’s mouth watered. It was a ploy. The guy holding a gun to the back of their heads was teasing them. It would be no different from offering a bottle of Voss to a dehydrated man in the middle of a desert. “How about we pick up our weapons and just go back the way we came.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Then do it. We’ll watch you go. Just understand, if you come back the same thing will be expected. Turn your weapons in at the door. It’s not unfair or unreasonable, if you think about it. And if harming you was our purpose, then wouldn’t we have already?”
Char could think of many reasons why guys like him might keep girls like her alive. “Just because you didn’t shoot us on site, doesn’t mean you don’t mean us harm.”
“Good point. It’s your call. What do you want to do?”
Char knelt down. She picked up her knives. She strapped one in place on her thigh, the other on her belt. She lifted her sword. “Sam, pick up the machete.”
“Nice and slow, you two. Nice, and slow.”
The man speaking did not sound apprehensive at all. He sound calm and in control. Still, Sam moved at a snail’s pace. She wanted to bend over, grab the machete, and kick him in the ass. “We’re going to leave,” she said.
“I figured that out when you picked up your stuff. Be safe out there.”
She hated when someone was condescending. She slid the sword into the scabbard. She didn’t want to give the men with rifles any reason to shoot. Turning around, she was surprised to see a boy about her age standing behind her. He held what looked to be a twelve gauge shotgun. The barrel was not pointed at her, but instead lay cradled over the crook of his arm. His jaw was accented by a dark haired goatee and the rest of his face by a bit more than a five o’clock shadow. She hadn’t expected. . .him. “There were a lot of infected in the woods not long ago. And then. . . nothing.”
“Infected?” he said.
“Zombies,” Char said. “We could smell them. We heard them.”
“Did you? You have a lot of questions. Maybe coming in to town and talking with us would be best?” he said. “I’m Benjamin. Ben.”
Had he held out a hand, she might have shaken it. He didn’t so she walked past him instead, and only hoped Sam was behind her. She didn’t want to have to look back and see. Regardless, she kept walking up the trail.
She thought she heard someone say, mockingly, “I’m Benjamin, but you can call me Ben.”
This made her smile.
“What do you think?” Sam said, walking beside her. “We were right, huh? The place is crazy. We go tell Tony and we high-tail it as far away from this place as possible. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure about what? Giving them our guns, what supplies we have —because you know they’re going to want that stuff too, all of it. You’re not sure about just turning everything over because one stranger, oh, excuse me, one cute stranger demanded that we have to do so before being allowed entry into their precious Atlanta?”
“Arcadia.”
Sam said, “Atlanta, Arcadia, what difference does it make?”
“For one, Arcadia stands for. . .
Utopia
.”
Chapter 11
“We didn’t get that close,” Char said, addressing Tony and Grace. Sam couldn’t be more wrong about everything. The idea of turning over their weapons and supplies just to enter a town was ludicrous, regardless of what Ben looked like.
“We did, however, meet some of the locals. At gunpoint,” Sam said, adding his narrative to the rendition.
There was a bite in the air. Tony refused to start a fire. He didn’t want to tip anyone off to their location at this point. Instead, they sat huddled together in a circle wrapped in their sleeping bags.
Grace used a camping spork to eat fruit cocktail from the can. “So they want our guns?”
“If we want to enter, yes,” Char said. She wished she’d been able to gather more information, get a closer look. Ben made it sound like the town was fortified with walls. At least that was how she interpreted what he’d said. She hadn’t seen a wall, though. Just the Arcadia sign.
Tony pulled his sleeping bag tight around his shoulders and rocked forward. “I say we walk.”
“I second that,” Sam said immediately after Tony spoke.
“Grace?” Tony said. “What do you think?”
She held the spork in one hand while tipping the can to her lips and drinking the syrup. She smacked her lips then drew a sleeved forearm across them. “I don’t know. Part of me thinks it’s worth checking out, still. We don’t know enough about the place. I’m not comfortable with turning over our weapons though.”
“No one is getting my bow.” Tony cocked his head to the side. “They’d have to kill me to get it out of my hands.”
“I feel the same way,” Sam said.
“You don’t even have your own weapon,” Char said.
“You know what I mean. I had one. Before,” he said. “I’m going to need a new weapon, Tony. We’ve got to find me something. I can’t keep borrowing Char’s machete. Unless you just want to give me that to keep, Char?”
“Ah, I don’t think so,” she said, almost snickering. “We’ll find you something. Somewhere.”
“Then it’s settled?” Tony said.
Grace held up a hand. “I haven’t said one way or the other, yet.”
“Neither have I,” Char said.
“Well?” Tony shrugged. “What are you thinking?”
Char sucked in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “I really don’t know. I have trust issues. The idea of turning over our weapons doesn’t sit well with me. Not at all. I hate lending my machete to Sam. I keep waiting for him to lose it so I can kick his butt.”
Sam said, “I really don’t think—”
Char held up a hand. “The guy we talked to made it sound like there is a wall around the town. They have lights, which means they’ve somehow figured out how to run electricity. They were protecting their borders. It would have been easy for them to kill us and take our weapons if that was what they were after. Once it was clear that Sam and I meant no harm, they relaxed. We were allowed to leave with our weapons. Entering the town seems voluntary. I don’t think in and of itself that’s a bad thing. The Welcome sign said no stealing, no fighting, no murder.”
“Not exactly the Ten Commandments,” Sam said.
“But it kinda is,” Char said. “It covers the general bases.”
“General bases?” Sam said.
“Do you know the commandments, Sam? Can you recite them for us?”
Sam lowered his head.
“I think we shouldn’t just walk away. Not without knowing. When daylight comes, I think we should go back. All of us.”
“And give them our stuff?”
“And bury our stuff.”
Tony pursed his lips. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Bury our stuff?”
“We go in. We don’t give them anything. We spend the day checking it out. Then we leave. Unless we love the place, unanimously love the place. This is my family. You guys. Even Sam.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Char said.
“What if they don’t let us just leave?”
“They going to lock us up in a prison?” Char said. “I don’t think so. We can get out. If we decide to leave, we’ll get out.”
Grace just stared at Char. “I don’t know if I like that plan or not.”
Tony said, “Sam?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did, but I’m just not sure.”
They decided to sleep on it. In the morning, they’d revisit the proposals.
Char volunteered to take first watch.
# # #
Char sat with her back to a tree, shivering. The sleeping bag provided little protection against the cold. It was only going to get worse. They needed someplace real to stay. She didn’t want to leave the mountains. It was beautiful and calming, if not inspirational. There were cabins and houses everywhere. The problem was finding the right one. The four of them were used to moving around since the whole thing started. Was it the idea that stopping just didn’t seem plausible because they didn’t know how to stop moving around?
That was possible.
Eventually, they would have to stop. Rebuild. Start over.
Eventually, but when?
Tony stirred around inside his sleeping bag, and sat up. She watched him rub his eyes and pass a hand through his hair. It was getting long. Soon he’d ask her to cut it for him, again. He crawled out of his bag, picked it up and sat down next to her.
“Mind if I join you?”
“It’s not your watch yet,” Char said. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been guarding them. Usually when she started to get tired and felt like she could no longer keep her eyes open it was the next guy’s turn.
Tony leaned his head back against the tree bark. “Not very comfy.”
“Could use your bag as a pillow.”
He draped it over him. “Need it as a blanket, though. Brrrr. Maybe we should have started a small fire?”
“You think?”
The silence that followed was not awkward. Neither felt like they had to talk to fill the space between words. The night stretched on for several minutes until Tony cleared his throat.
“I, uh, before all of this, I was an attorney,” he said.
Char was thankful for the darkness. She knew her jaw had dropped. Tony was violating his own rule. She did not stop him, but wanted him to talk.
“Corporate law. I handled employee issues.”
“Like firing people?”
He shrugged. “Before a manager fired anyone in their department, I’d make sure all the T’s were crossed and I’s dotted. You know, I’d ensure that there was documentation filed, and actual written policies broken. Nine times out of ten that was good enough. Bob’s been an hour late to work once a week for the last five weeks. First time he received a warning, then some documentation, a final warning, and then termination. That tenth time, the former employee would sue, file a complaint with the EEOC, and claim one of their rights was violated. We terminated them because they were black, or pregnant, or a transvestite, or in the military, because they worshiped Allah instead of God. You know what I mean?”
Char nodded.
“It was a good job. I enjoyed the work. Before everything happened we had this case. A group of former employees filed a class action suit. It’s where they all alleged the same discrimination, had one lawyer representing them. It had been going on for years, but we were finally getting close to a trial. Discovery was a nightmare. We had to turn over a room full of documents. All those papers had to be scanned, and identified numerically. There was a room we turned into what we called a War Room. It had phone lines and fax machines, copiers, and filing cabinets. Staff worked in there from sunrise to well past sunset. Judge was giving us two weeks on the docket. There were a ton of witnesses and expert witness to meet with. I mean, depositions were completed long before, but just to touch base before they took an oath on the stand wouldn’t hurt.”
When he fell silent, Char waited. If Tony was opening up, she didn’t want to rush him. Maybe that was all he wanted to say. If there was more, she’d wait.
“Nina. She was just eleven years old then, but my wife and I, we knew something was, I don’t know, different by the time she learned to walk. She liked to push a toy vacuum. All kids kind of like to do that. Her room, spotless. Socks rolled. Everything on a hanger, hung in a particular way in the closet. She would cry if the end tables in the family room were dusty. Cry. A guy on TV threw a toothpick into the street, she got off the recliner to pick it up. It was on TV. There was no toothpick to pick up. By the time she was, I don’t know, around seven, we told the pediatrician what was going on. She was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. They put her on a prescription. After a while it worked. She still cleaned, but it wasn’t as necessary, if that makes sense. The side effects, though, had her putting on weight. My wife and I, we didn’t really notice it. It upset Nina, though, and she kept it to herself.
“She started wearing hats. Every time we went to the mall she’d buy a new hat. She had fedoras and those cabby hats, baseball caps,” he said, and touched the brim of his cap. “This was hers. One of her favorites for some reason. I’d bought it for her at a game.
“It was after her eleventh birthday, October fifteenth, when I saw her in the bathroom. The door was opened just a crack. I wasn’t spying on her. I was planning to use the bathroom, had almost walked right in. For whatever reason, I stopped, you know. Through the crack I could see her staring at her reflection in the mirror. I could honestly say it was the first time I’d seen her without one of her hats on. And I just stood there, and I just stared. I might have been crying. I don’t know.
“She was missing clumps of hair. It looked like she’d pulled out almost all of her hair. If I didn’t know she wasn’t sick, I’d have sworn she’d been getting radiation treatment. Right when I was about to turn around and find her mother, she pulled open the door. The hat —she’d put it back on. She stopped when she saw me standing there. I know I tried to smile. It had to look so stupid, me standing there grinning. She knew. She could tell by the look on my face. She started crying. Her shoulders shook. And I said, ‘Honey,’ and I went to reach for her. It was the only thing I wanted to do. I just wanted to hold her, to hug her. She looked ashamed. Her cheeks got all red, but she pulled away, went back into the bathroom and slammed the door closed.”
Char thought Tony might be crying. She didn’t know how to handle it. She was not used to seeing him like this. There was no way to know how he’d react to a hand on his shoulder. She knew it scared her, all of it, him talking, the crying, and her not knowing how to respond.
“Doctors said she had something called
trichotillomania
. It’s an actual condition where people pull out their hair. It was going to take a little more than a prescription to fix this. Someone even told me the pills she was taking could have triggered the hair pulling behavior. So we checked out a hospital in Arkansas, a children’s hospital. They agreed to take her as an in-patient. There was no start-finish date. It was kind of a program and when she was ready to switch to out-patient, she could come home.
“My wife went with her. I couldn’t leave work. We had so much going on with that class action suit, but I wanted to go. I wanted to be there.
“A few nights later, after they’d arrived, I was talking to Nina on the phone. Sirens started going off in the hospital. I could hear them. I told Nina to let me talk with her mother. Neither of them knew what was going on, and that they’d call back. So I figured a fire drill or something, right? It wasn’t. My wife called back and was screaming that one of the doctors had just bitten Nina and that she was bleeding badly.
“While I was still on the line, I heard what sounded like a football team crash into their room. My wife was screaming, my daughter was. . .she was calling out for me, for her Dad, and then the line went dead.
“I kept calling and calling her number, and the hospital, and their nine-one-one center. I felt so helpless. I wanted to be there. I knew I needed to be there, but I didn’t want to do anything until I knew what was going on.”
The silence lasted several minutes this time. Char figured it was the end of what he’d want to tell her. “Did you ever find them?”
“I made it to Arkansas, to the hospital. It took me a while, nearly a week. By then, I knew what was what. I knew that if my Nina had been bitten then she was gone. It didn’t stop me though. I kept on track and I made it to Ohio. It was a mess there. The city was the worst I’d seen. The halls of the hospital were either deserted or littered with infected who weren’t coming back. I couldn’t find my wife or Nina. I’m no fool. I don’t hold onto optimistic bullshit. I accepted it, and then I started walking. Just, walking.”
“Tony, why are you telling me this?” Char said. “I’m glad you did. I just, I’m confused about why.”
He leaned closer to her. “Did you ever just feel like everything is about to go to shit?”
“You mean like Arcadia?”
He shook his head. “I mean beyond Arcadia. All of this. Everything.”
“Why are you saying that? We’re doing good, Tony. We’re surviving.”