“We can always come back,” Short Order repeated.
“This place is here because the people here built it,” Chef said. “The thing to do would be to rebuild it and take folks in like they did before.”
Short Order said, “When was the last time anyone besides a raider came in?”
There was a long silence. I couldn’t remember the last person that had joined the Complex or when it was. The quarantine rooms had been out of service for a long while. I was definitely shaking now.
Doc said, “That doesn’t bode well for what’s left out there to find. We know what’s around us for miles in every direction.”
“Doc,” Short Order held up his clinched fist, “I know what surrounds us, but it’s right outside the damn doors too and what do you think is going to happen when we go a mile up the road to check on the animals? Those things are everywhere, but they are here too and they are still getting inside the-”
“Stop. Stop,” Doc waved his open hands. “That’s not what I’m saying, Short. I’m saying we have mapped out, searched, scavenged, and patrolled the land for several miles in every direction. If we’re really talking about doing this, we have to plan for a substantial journey in a particular direction. We are going to have to go way out before we really have a chance of finding something that we wouldn’t have already found if it was there. This is a marathon journey we’re talking about. ‘Just coming back’ is not going to be an easy thing no matter what we do or don’t find. This is a serious thing we’re considering here.”
“Are you saying no?” Short Order asked.
“No … I mean, no, I’m not saying no,” Doc stammered. “I just don’t want to walk out there and have the people I’m with fold up when we get too far out to just change our minds and run back.”
I leaned back against the wall of the roof’s door hood to keep from slumping with dizziness. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to walk out there. I hadn’t been on foot or in a truck outside the Complex since they took me on as an apprentice in the kitchen.
“We wouldn’t walk,” Chef said. “We’d take one of the vehicles.”
“And fuel up where?” Doc asked.
Chef paused.
He answered Doc, “They’re all multi-converted, John. They can tank regular gas, ethanol, alcohol, or raw greases.”
Doc shook his head. “It’s been too long. Once we leave the Complex, we’re not finding any of that. Gas sitting in tanks will have separated into water and sludge by now. There are no cooking vats with usable oils left. There is no converted saw grass unless we find someone making it currently. We have one tank and however many cans we carry which limits how much food we carry and then we are walking unless you can refine crude oil in your stew pot.”
“The raiders are running their vehicles on something,” Short Order said.
“We missed our chance to join up,” Doc ran his hands through his hair again.
Chef said, “We could go a certain distance and then come back.”
“And lead the zombies back with us,” Doc said.
“That sounds like a no, Doc. Are you saying no?” Short Order asked again.
Doc looked down. “I’m not going to be any good at rebuilding. I’m going to end up back out there one way or the other. We can do it after the cans run out. We can do it after the next raiders or zombies get in and I walk out bit and become one of them. If I stay here playing house with you three, I’m going to end up sneaking out one night. That’s it. It will probably be best if we left together now while we have the supplies. We need to face a couple facts though. We can and probably should take a vehicle, but we may end up walking because of an empty tank or a slippery road. We need to be ready for that. Also, if we do this, there is a very good chance we are never coming back here for any of a hundred reasons.”
I did sit down by the door to the stairs now, but they didn’t notice me.
Chef said, “Before we continue talking about this, we need to decide if we are looking to search out a new home or we are going to rebuild this one. We have to decide and we have to move forward with the decision we make. We’ve been drifting and … I don’t know what you call it, but it isn’t working and we need to move forward with a plan … whatever we decide. We should vote, I guess.”
“Show of hands,” Doc said, “One hand per man … this ain’t Chicago.”
They chuckled. I didn’t get it. I pulled my knees into my chest and had a flash of memory. I was back in the house I barely remembered from the time before zombies had come crashing through the windows. My mother was putting me under the bed. She told me not to talk or make a single sound until she came back.
Short Order raised his hand before Doc was done with his Chicago joke. Doc raised his hand after Short and then looked at Chef. Chef looked around and noticed me for the first time. The others dropped their hands.
Chef said, “Mutt, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about it from your … If you want to stay, I’ll stay. I don’t want to lay a decision this heavy on you, but I can’t imagine what-”
I raised my hand and he stopped talking. Looking back, that changed everything. I set everything in motion. I can’t explain exactly why I popped my hand up. That’s one of those moments that I remember vividly, but I’m not certain I remember with complete accuracy. I read about that happening after President Kennedy was shot and people thought they remembered the details, but they got all twisted around in their memories. I don’t know why that’s any different than when we lost a thousand other people we knew since then, but I guess people weren’t used to killing and death back then.
I probably did it because I was afraid the group was about to split or that Doc was just going to walk out one night. Maybe I thought the raiders were coming back or the zombies would keep coming in, but that doesn’t sound right to me now. It’s all shaded by what followed and I’m not the same person I was when I sat on that roof.
I did raise my hand and everything changed.
Chef looked back at the others. Doc and Short Order raised their hands back up again. Doc pursed his lips and raised his other hand too. He winked at me and I tried to keep my hand from shaking.
Chef faced me again. “You are sure, Mutt? You are absolutely sure you understand we are talking about leaving? We may be gone a long time and possibly forever. I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I just want to be sure you understand your vote here.”
I nodded my head slowly. He kept staring at me. I nodded it more vigorously and felt a little ill after doing it. I wasn’t sure of a damn thing.
Chef turned back to the others and held up his hand, “Well, we need to pack and plan today instead of playing farmers and ranchers. We’ll set out in the morning once we’re ready.”
Everyone dropped their hands.
Doc ran his hands through his white hair. “This is officially the most fucked up funeral I’ve ever been a part of.”
“Amen?” Short Order said.
Chef went down the stairs first. “We need to pack light on personal stuff. We need to decide how much fuel, which vehicle, and how much of everything else we bring.”
Short Order followed as Chef’s voice disappeared down the next turn.
Short said, “We should lock down this place with whatever is left inside. Set it up so that we can come back.”
I heard Chef very distantly, “I still want to go and set loose whatever animals are left once we leave. There’s no need to let them all die.”
“The zombies will get them,” Doc mumbled and shook his head as he put out his hand and pulled me up to my feet.
He started down the steps. “Funerals would be easier if at least one of us still believed in God. Nothing else would be, but funerals might.”
I still believed in God. I didn’t let any of them know that. The other two would let it go, but Doc would give me an earful. He had gone off before on God and faith. He wasn’t the only one. A couple weeks before that funeral, the Complex had been full of people who blamed God and hated God for a lot of different things, but mostly for the zombies. I don’t see how people could hate God and blame him and then not believe in him. It seemed that not believing would make it easier to let go of the blame and hate, but it didn’t. Now they all knew for sure if God existed or not and one day sooner or later, we would too.
Believing in God did not make this funeral easier nor any of the ones that followed.
Chapter 3: The Day We Almost Had Two Buffets
We didn’t leave the next morning or the morning after that.
I half expected us to spend the rest of our lives pretending like we were going to go, but never actually packing the truck and driving away. I more than half wanted that to happen even if we did eat from cans for the rest of our days.
We locked down the kitchen flipping chopping blocks, sealing off grills, scrubbing out traps, breaking down vents, and covering equipment with plastic. We cleared the pantry of perishables and began boxing up cans and dry goods in plastic tubs for our unlikely return.
There was more debate over vehicles. They discussed taking one of the diesel engines instead of the converted, scout vehicle. There was an argument about the likelihood of finding stored diesel on farms. It turned into shouting and I started to think the argument had nothing to do with fuel. I can’t imagine any of them cared that much about the nature of diesel. In the end, they decided that no stored fuel of any kind would have lasted this long.
There was even a suggestion about bicycles. I nearly had to lie down during that exchange, but they passed over that fairly quickly. Later, we were going to wish we had packed them.
We did finally begin packing the convert late on the second day.
It was the chaise of an old Wrangler, but nothing else in its guts was from the original truck. The outside was scarred, scratched, and dented down to multiple coats of primer. There was a double layer of crash bars welded across the front of the truck. The doors and roof were reinforced with roll bars. The cab was a set of jump seats that could lock or turn. The windows were replaced with wire grill welded to the doors and frame. Cheap plastic was wedged into the space behind each of the metal gratings. The engine was a hybrid design to choke down several fuel types and emergency substitutes. It would not take diesel. The cargo section had a metal drop hatch that could be opened or closed off from the crew section. The wheels and axils were built on to the vehicle from another truck design with which I wasn’t familiar or that I just don’t remember being told.
We loaded in weapons, fuel canisters, canned foods, packs, cooking supplies, and other gear.
That night we triple checked our barriers and all the doors and windows to our selected building three. I guess at that point it really became building one.
The next morning, Chef told us to pack light on personal items and I did. I only brought a few changes of clothes and no books. The libraries were in the other buildings and I wasn’t interested in crawling through the barriers.
Chef himself just brought one small duffle that he placed carefully into a storage groove in the cargo section in the back of the truck.
Short Order wore about three or four layers of clothes and filled the pockets with whatever struck him in the moment, I think. At first, I thought it was about the pockets. Doc thought that Short hated even a light chill outside, but it turned out that he didn’t like being uncovered.
Doc brought his aluminum bar, of course. He also brought a crank, record player and a crate of vinyl records. It was mostly gospel and a couple other classic rock albums. He tried to explain what made classic rock different from rock and different from pop and different from a dozen other types of music that used exactly the same instruments. It was worse than listening to him talk about God.
Chef stared with his mouth open, but didn’t bother calling them out on their overpacking. I knew Doc liked his music, but playing music out in the open with zombies around seemed instantly like a bad idea to me.
Chef reached in his pocket before we loaded up and pulled out a cork from our “last meal on Earth” several meals ago. He rolled it around in his hand for a while and then finally placed it up on a shelf in the garage.
Short Order felt around the pockets of his outside coat. Several pockets either crinkled or jingled. He reached up on the shelf with Chef’s cork and brought down a tin box. He slid open the top and showed a collection of matches. They were the kind we used to make in the Complex and not the kinds left over from before the zombies. He closed it back and shoved it in one of his pockets.
“Well,” Chef said in the echoing garage, “Are we ready?”
Doc pursed his lips, “If I say no, can we just go on anyway.”
“Let’s not make speeches,” Short Order said. “We don’t want this to sound like a second funeral.”
“Thanks for the bad Juju right from the start, Short,” Doc said as he opened one of the truck doors.
Chef turned from the garage door back toward the truck, “How do we open it?”
Everyone just sort of stood. I finally pointed at the chains and pulleys on the sides of the big, pull-up door.
Chef said, “Thanks, Mutt, I got that. I mean, how do we open it, get in the truck, get out, and then close it again?”
Everyone stood and stared.
“Damn,” Doc said rubbing his chin.
Short Order said, “They pulled the exiting vehicle right up to the door. They put up a ‘U’ shaped fence around the door that locked into these ruts on the floor. Someone worked the chain opening the door from behind the fence. The vehicle pulled out. They closed the door. They killed the zombies that got into the pin, took the fence down, and then dumped the bodies. I had to do this a couple times before I started working in the kitchen permanently.”
“How do you get back in the truck after you work the door?” Chef asked.
“The guy working the door and clearing the bodies wasn’t in the truck,” Short Order explained.
Doc said, “They never planned on having a last man out the door.”
“How do you close the door from the outside?” Chef asked.
“You can’t,” Doc and Short answered together.