15
I moved through the thick brush and found the spot that would be perfect. Stretching out on my stomach, I brought the binoculars up and started scanning the area. Just down the gentle slope from where I had taken up my position, a group of six zombie children moved along the cluttered, narrow street.
One of the children paused and seemed to search the area for a moment. It tilted its head one way and then the other as it turned in roughly ninety degree increments. It paused as another zombie rounded the corner in the direction it had turned and hesitated as if taking an even more thorough look. This zombie was a normal one and easily eight to twelve years since it had turned.
The child zombie seemed to immediately dismiss the adult zombie and resumed up the little street. As always there were cats scurrying about the feet of the little zombies. The most interesting to watch were the kittens. They pounced and played, chasing the little child zombies and lunging at their feet as their undead hosts went about whatever business it is that zombies have during the course of a day.
“Look over there,” a voice a few feet away whispered, giving my arm a tug.
I looked in the direction Jim was pointing. At the far side of an old car crash that had eventually melded into a single large lump of twisted metal and various plastics that had almost made it impossible to tell where one automobile ended and the others began were a pair of zombie children sitting on the ground.
One of the children had its legs splayed and a group of kittens were using it as a border of sorts for an arena where they all wrestled and played. Every once in a while, one of the kittens would scamper up the abdomen of the child and then perch on a shoulder before pouncing on its brothers and sisters and rejoining the game.
“It doesn’t even seem to notice,” I whispered.
“Nope, that’s where you’re wrong, cupcake. Take a closer look at the eyes.”
I adjusted my binoculars and let a slight gasp escape. I had to watch for several seconds to be sure, but eventually I dropped my glasses and pulled out my journal, writing furiously every detail I could think to describe.
“Not only is it aware, but I swear I saw the corners of the mouth twitch. If it had more control I would bet that thing would be smiling,” I mumbled the words that I was committing to my journal as I wrote them.
“The day that I see a smiling zombie, I think I’ll just step off a cliff and say farewell. A world with smiling zombies is no place that I want to be.”
I had to hide my smile. Already we had seen enough in our time observing zombie children that, if Jim had ever been serious, he would have done himself in long ago. The most recent event being the scene yesterday when we had watched a pair of zombie children seeming to kick an old can back and forth for several minutes.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Jim had breathed after the first exchange. But after several more he had simply excused himself and slipped back a ways where he was no longer able to watch.
I don’t understand why these things bother him so much. Maybe it has something to do with how many zombies he had killed. The thing about Jim was that nobody really knew that much about him from his life in the Old World. It is a common thing for people to talk and share stories of their lives from before. Some of them fascinate me when I get to hear about the types of activities that were considered jobs back then. There were people who did nothing but make coffee for other people. I’ve never actually had coffee before, which I guess made imagining this sort of thing that people described seem even more incredible.
One man said that his job was to hold a sign in the heat, cold, rain or shine that told people to drive their cars slow so they would not hit the workers fixing roads. One man had a job riding around and giving people citations for parking in places illegally and there was a lady who sat behind a window all day and took money from people and gave them a receipt telling them that their money was now safe.
It all seemed so meaningless when you looked at the world today. As it was, I’d had to fight for this job to even be considered. If not for Dr. Zahn, I doubt that I would have pulled it off. Yet, here I was; me and Jim were out in the field doing an observational study of child zombies.
“You will be the new Marlin Perkins,” Dr. Zahn had quipped the day that I had finally been given the go ahead to commence my field work. Granted, I had no idea who Marlin Perkins was, but I thought it sounded like a good thing, so I didn’t let it bother me.
I had been given permission to take a maximum of three people to act in support and watch my back while I was out. I explained to the committee that I only wanted and needed one person. I still remember the look on Billy’s face when I’d announced that to the committee. Only, I also remembered how it had changed when the name I gave was Jim Sagar instead of Billy Haynes.
It wasn’t that I do not love Billy. In fact, that might be the very reason why I have chosen Jim instead. Billy had spent several days in a deep depression after I had announced that I’d not only encountered Emily, but had put her to rest as well.
“We need to move,” Jim whispered.
I snapped back to the current situation. A group of the child zombies were shuffling in our general direction. We crept backwards on our bellies so as to minimize the chance that the zombie children noticed us. When we finally reached what had once been a gas station right on the edge of this little town, we got to our feet. I went first, climbing the rope ladder that we had set up so that we could get up on the roof.
I ducked into the little tarp shelter that we had tied off to give us shade from the sun or shelter from the rain. So far the weather had been almost perfect. The days were sunny, but not too hot. The nights were chilly, but nothing a sleeping bag and my warm clothes could not keep at bay.
I grabbed a few wrapped bits of field bread and some dried meat. Jim shook his head to my offer of food and instead moved to the edge of the building and laid on his stomach, his binoculars almost glued to his face for the entire time that I ate. After a bathroom break, I went in and laid down to catch a nap. I pulled out my journal and began to review my pages of notes. A few of the entries were marked with big stars scratched in the margins of the page.
Those were things that I felt Dr. Zahn would be the most interested in when she started going through my observations. I felt my eyes grow heavy and I drifted off reading my notes.
***
Entry Seven—
At least two dozen of the children are walking across a grassy field. At first I was not paying any notice, then the cats caught my attention and what I witnessed has me absolutely fascinated. Jim says we should all just give up now because the zombies are gonna win.
The children were in a bit of a line across this one field. They were scaring out mice! The cats were running around pouncing on them and making a feline fiesta out of the entire thing. When it was over, the children all just drifted over to one area and stood around while the cats sprawled at their feet and enjoyed the spoils of their zombie child-assisted hunt. Eventually, the cats moved into a patch of sunlight and they all just sprawled on a cracked grocery store parking lot, dozing while their benefactors apparently stood in watch over them. An adult zombie wandered up and started for the sleeping cats only to be bumped and jostled until it was moving off in another direction away from where the cats napped.
Entry Seventeen—
A pack of zombie wolves arrived. That meant Jim and I had to retreat to the roof for safety, but I was able to witness a few things. Of course zombies don’t attack zombies. At least that was my understanding until today.
The wolves obviously spotted the cats and figured they had just stumbled into a buffet. (Okay, I know zombies don’t ‘figure’ anything, but I am trying to illustrate a point.) They started for the largest concentration of the cats that were currently located in an open park that still had an old corkscrew slide standing in the midst of all the tall grass like an ancient sentinel that refuses to be displaced.
I heard the first moan as we were pulling up the ladder and taking a seat where we could try and get a look at the wolves. I hadn’t planned on being able to observe them, but I would not pass up on an opportunity that was dropped in my lap. One thing I noticed right away was that the wolves still moved sort of like a hunting pack. They were spread out and in a staggered wedge formation as they closed in on the seemingly unsuspecting felines.
Out of nowhere, a very large group of zombie children crossed in front of the wolves and actually ran into them, forcing them to alter their course. The wolves began to make their odd growling groans as they apparently did not care for such treatment. Unlike human zombies that can simply be pinballed in another direction and appear to forget what it was they had previously been closing in on, the wolves tried to return to their intended targets.
Over and over, the zombie children moved in groups that forced the wolves to change directions. I must admit that I started to actually become annoyed by the reactions of all those cats. By reaction, I mean they simply continued to sunbathe and groom themselves. They went on about their business like they did not have a care in the world. Perhaps they didn’t. What I am certain of is that there is a definite relationship between the zombie children and the cats.
Entry Twenty-four—
A group of five people came through today. Okay, they didn’t actually come through, they sort of showed up, realized their mistake, and then tried to run for their lives. I want to have it on record that I was about to warn them off when Jim told me absolutely not. He insisted that this was a perfect opportunity to observe the zombie children reacting to the living without putting ourselves in danger.
The people arrived a few hours after sunrise and looked like they were actually searching for something. They would cluster up, point to a few places and then split up. From our spot up on the roof, I could see several of the zombie children as they broke into small groups of eight to ten and, for lack of a better description, stalked these people. For a while, they made no attempt to contact the living intruders and simply looked content to follow them around, always just a little out of sight.
I was also able to observe a large group of the zombie children as they moved to the center of town and clustered in the tall grass of the park. It was as if they were standing watch to ensure the safety of the cats.
What happened next still chills me and I am having a difficult time dealing with the fact that I sat in my perch and did nothing. Of course, the only thing in mine and Jim’s defense is the fact that it happened so fast when it did occur that we had no chance to offer help or a warning.
It was like a spring-loaded bear trap in its sudden violence. The whole thing started with a single child zombie. It stepped into an intersection so that it was easily spotted by the people. The people started for it and I think they were mostly just curious. I could tell that they were not taking it as a serious threat. After all, what harm could one lone zombie child cause?
They were within about twenty or so feet when I saw the first group of zombie children step out from around the corner of the intersection behind the group of people. It was very obvious that the living had no idea that a sizeable group of the zombie children had taken a position behind them because they continued edging towards the lone child, all their attention and focus aimed in that direction.
To make it clear, our position relative to this scene had us at the same end of the street as the little mob of zombies. So, when the next group rounded the distant corner where the single zombie child had been standing, it was as much of a surprise to us as it was to the people down there in the street. Still, I was in no way prepared for the groups that suddenly emerged from the broken down and dingy buildings on either side.
As I said earlier, this was like a spring-loaded trap. It was sudden; it was also very violent. The children came at their fast walk, all of them reaching out, arms extended. The living never stood a chance as they fell under the onslaught. In moments there were screams and the pleas that would go unheard by the predatory zombie children as they came in at full force, numbering well over a couple of hundred.
To see them not only all in one place, but also acting in concert with one another was perhaps one of the most brutal and chilling displays that I have ever witnessed. All Jim and I could do was to watch. I did try to turn away, but I was honestly just in shock at what I was witnessing.
When the screaming finally came to its merciful end, another wrinkle to the whole thing took place. Cats started to slink from everywhere down on that street. They drifted in and out amidst the children, some being so bold as to sit in the middle of the feasting and join in, others crawling all over the children and licking them clean which made me realize that despite some of them looking weathered and old as far as being a zombie, they were otherwise mostly very clean.
It is my belief that these two entities, the feral cats and the zombie children, are almost becoming a single, co-dependent organism. The closest that I can liken it to is the remora and the shark. I have read about how this little fish rides around on a shark and provides basically the same service in the cleaning and keeping the shark clear of parasites. In exchange, well, who is gonna try and attack a fish that is hitching a ride on a shark.