To Ky, abandoning men and boys like that was the same as killing, even if she hadn’t ever seen Starr end someone’s life. And she wanted no part of any of it.
Kate hugged the young woman and turned on her heel toward the admin building, looking up at the sky as she did so. The angry glow of the volcanoes in the distance was an ominous reflection of her anxiety.
They needed to just play it cool until they had a chance. Maybe tonight, during a sleeping sentry’s watch. Maybe tomorrow or the next day during a gunfight or a raiding mission.
Until then, they need to avoid making waves. She took a breath and climbed the old wooden stairs, pulling the screen door open on its squeaky hinges, and passing through an ancient lobby. Dust on the desks and around the rack of still-organized pamphlets proved that the building had been abandoned long ago. Kate tried not to inhale too deeply. There had been one zombie still inside when they cleared it—an old woman in one of the back storage rooms—and the place still reeked of death and mold.
A single soldier stood behind the main desk, eyes serious—although seeming slightly amused—as Kate walked in.
“For Starr?” she asked, scanning Kate and then reaching for her radio.
Kate nodded as the woman spoke into her radio softly, then gestured to the door to Kate’s right.
“Down the hall, third door on the left.”
The paint was peeling in long strips from the planks of simple wood splayed against the walls. Several faded posters illustrating campground safety and different maps of the area hung limply from their rusted tacks as Kate made her way down the hall. Outside, the sound of people leaving from dinner was still loud, as metal plates and cups clanked against one another and voices rose and fell with energy, anger, or joy.
A large spiderweb hung from the door opposite Starr’s and Kate watched briefly as the spider climbed into the web, pulling its dinner into the center of the web with special care.
Kate’s fist was heavy on the door, and Starr’s voice was quick to call out.
“Enter.”
The room was bare, but had been quickly cleaned. Kate wondered absently if Starr cleaned it herself or whether she had people. A single chair stood in one corner, draped with Starr’s BDU blouse. A double bed sat against the opposite wall, next to a desk. One window—narrow and filthy—sat above the bed. Moonlight was managing to trickle through the ash-thick darkness outside.
“You’ve eaten, I hope?” she asked, turning from where she was writing something on the desk in the corner. Her clothes were new and only slightly wrinkled from the large bag that sat in the corner of the room against a hideous red lamp. Her short hair had been freshly washed and the water from her hair had made a ring of moisture on the neck of her shirt. She held a towel up briefly, pulling the remaining water from her serious, but pretty, face.
“Yes, thank you. The venison was a nice surprise,” Kate said, unsure of what else to talk about. There was so much she needed to guard. The vaccine, and her special abilities to be sure. Her association with Mike. The fact that he might still be out there. Her profession. And she somehow needed to keep up the absurd excuse for her physical prowess in the warehouse. It was crucial to her own freedom and safety that she keep from divulging too much.
“Sometimes we get lucky. That one was actually shot. Some of them … well, we’re not picky about eating something we hit with a vehicle. Unless it’s one of them, of course.” She smiled quickly, then released it, as if the physical act caused her pain.
Kate returned the brief smile, putting her hands in the pockets of her borrowed clothes. Jeans that were one size too small and a sweatshirt that was one size too big, and drooped heavily in the front. But at least it wasn’t her gore-spattered field clothes. She had been assured that someone in the group was doing laundry during the night. She hoped.
“Have a seat,” Starr said, gesturing to the bed. She pulled the chair from the desk over the rough wooden floor, positioning it with the back facing Kate as she straddled it and rested her arms on the top of the backrest.
Her eyes followed Kate as she sat down slowly on the bed, noting the worn sleeping bag spread out meticulously on the dusty mattress and the dark green watch laying perfectly aligned with the edge of the small table next to the headboard. She met Starr’s gaze and waited.
“I suppose you’re wondering what I wanted to talk to you about. Seems weird, I know. Hell, the whole convoy thing probably seems odd to you. Although I know you’re not one of the dyed in the wool ‘take to the bunkers’ type, since you were trying to get somewhere else when I found you. But it’s a little tradition of sorts that I explain what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and why you should sign on, in a matter of speaking.”
Kate smiled disingenuously, trying to look pleasant. Inside, her skin crawled at the thought of joining this group.
Starr continued, removing a small pair of nail clippers from her pocket and, trimming a single nail on her left hand, stared intently at the digit as she spoke.
“After we bugged out a couple months back, there were more of us soldiers. Thirty or so. Major Forest decided that we needed to find somewhere else safe to hide. Somewhere to squirm down a rabbit hole and wait for the tide of undead to pass us by. As if the plague would stop, somehow. As if we could be safe anywhere.” She grunted once, squeezing the clippers and sending a small shard of fingernail spinning to the floor.
“We moved into some more rural areas, trying to steer clear of heavy infestation zones, of course. Problem was, they had already started herding up pretty consistently, and were ranging farther afield. We didn’t know that piece yet, of course—about how they were grouping up into larger herds. But Major Forest had a plan.” She laughed briefly, shaking her head and looking up once, meeting Kate’s eyes.
“Everyone has a plan, right? Until life intervenes, laughs at your bullshit, and shows you what it has in store for you.”
Looking away again, she pulled the nail file free of the small metal device and went to work on the same nail.
“Got to some shit-ass town—don’t even remember the name of it—and Forest decides that we need to make better time. Need to split the group. Sends us in two separate directions. One patrol east, one patrol west. My patrol finds an empty movie theater—no deadheads around, quiet, even some food left in the pantry of the snack bar. We pull up in the parking lot, set our perimeter, and call it in. We get no answer. Nothing back from Forest. We change frequencies, call it in again. Nothing.”
Kate shifted slightly on the bed, unsure where the story was going. She focused on maintaining the fiction that she was engaged.
Starr continued to file the single nail, slowly moving the small metal blade back and forth.
“Protocol was to wait fifteen minutes after loss of contact before checking in. So we waited. Tried again. Nothing. So we broke camp, loaded up, and headed east, following Forest’s group. It took us four hours of combing the streets to locate their vehicles.” Her voice was even and calm, and she finally stopped working on her nail, holding it up to the light to check the edges.
“They were parked around the edge of an elementary school gym, creating a small perimeter around the reinforced doors. No guards outside. No deadheads. Total quiet. The sun was setting, so we reinforced that perimeter and I took a squad inside, our radios still getting nothing but dead air. The first thing that hit me when I opened that door was the screaming.” She paused, looking over Kate’s shoulder and narrowing her eyes as if she was seeing it played out on the wall behind the bed.
“Before the smell. Before my eyes could adjust to the light. It was the screaming.”
She shook her head and took a deep breath, folding the clippers and putting them into her pocket. Despite herself, Kate spoke up, now curious about the end of the story.
“Zombies?” she asked, making the obvious conclusion.
Starr simply tilted her head and frowned, ignoring the question and allowing her voice to soften in an inquisitorial tone.
“Have you ever wondered what makes people break? Not theoretically or from the kind of shit you see on the movies—nothing textbook. In real life. What has to happen to a person—what kind of fucked up, horrible shit has to go down—to make someone lose their fucking sanity?” Her voice was still quiet, but the intensity was raw, her eyes moving as she accessed the memories of that day.
“I … I have some familiarity with the subject, yes,” Kate said lamely, not wanting to give Starr any information on her background.
“I suppose we all do,” she said, staring now at the wall behind Kate. “Now.”
She gestured around them both, intending to take in the whole world with the movement of her arms.
“After all … this. The inversion of everything. The emptying out of everything. Of society. Of rules. Of humanity. We’ve all seen our share of the horrid. I certainly learned several things that day. About how people break, and about what is in our nature. About our basest desires and how quickly they can manifest when we break. But I also learned this: we can bring something of that society back, even in small doses. Community. Safety. Justice.” She emphasized the last word slightly more than the rest, and Kate caught the inflection.
“Fah!” said Starr, in a sudden act of dismissiveness, standing quickly and turning on her heel as Kate flinched slightly at the fast movement. “You know all this shit. You have to you. You’ve survived. You know how people are now. You know that we’re all stronger together. Protecting each other.”
Starr turned back to her, now leaning against the desk and locking eyes with Kate, pausing for several long seconds.
“The world is a new place now—with new possibilities. It’s a time for new ideas. New leaders. New hierarchies have to come into play.” She paused, cocking her head slightly. “Because the old ones…they didn’t work out that well, did they?”
She stared at Kate, as if hoping for an answer to the rhetorical question.
“You suspect, but you don’t know, is that it?”
The question came at her from the blue, and Kate started visibly. Her mind was whirling. Should she play stupid, as if she hadn’t realized that this band of merry fools were killing—either by design or misfeasance—all the men they came across.
“I … noticed.” She said haltingly, her hands clenching slightly on the sleeping bag on the bed beneath her. The fabric felt rough and oily, as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks.
She hoped the gesture came across as fear, not as being a symptom of the raging anger she felt inside.
“It’s hard not to,” she continued. “You don’t like men. Or you don’t trust them.” She took a breath, deciding to push her luck. “Either you’re killing them outright, or you’re just allowing them to die by not including them in relative safety—essentially killing them through studied ambivalence. You perhaps fear them a little. Or a lot. And you’re not taking the risk.”
Starr’s face was blank and Kate wrapped it up quickly, hoping that she hadn’t gone too far.
“So … yeah, I noticed,” she added, lamely.
Starr nodded once, allowing her eyes to travel to the wall behind Kate before walking slowly across the room. She picked up the chair and slid it carefully beneath the desk, the soft sound of wood on wood filling the room momentarily before her weight was on the bed next to Kate, her thigh barely touching Kate’s as she sat, arms resting on her legs and hands clasped in front of her, leaning forward and speaking softly.
“Like I said, it’s a time for new ideas. New paradigms. In the old world, we dealt with being controlled and being subjugated. We fought the idea that we were less. That we were weak and shallow. That we were only good for one thing.” Her mouth twisted with the last line, and Kate felt a knot in her stomach.
She didn’t know whether it was fear or sympathy. She knew what had happened to this woman. She didn’t know how, but she knew what.
“We no longer have to accept that paradigm. It’s no longer the world we left. It’s the world we own. And those who survive have the right to make it in their image. To control for variables that threaten our very species. Our very existence.”
“Without men,” said Kate simply.
Starr’s head lowered and she took a deep breath, eyes still downcast.
“You must think me cold and unforgiving,” said Starr, taking Kate by surprise again with the quick change. “But I assure you I am not. I was like you once, before. Before the end. Before the screaming.”
She took a deep breath again, turning slightly to catch Kate’s eye. Her back straightened and she leaned back slowly, moving her arms to recline on the bunk, elbows resting on the sleeping bag.
“I do now what I have to. Men … before … were one thing. Men now… Do you know how many women we’ve saved that report being raped repeatedly? Being made into some smelly ape’s sex slave? Or even the women that were relegated to kitchen duty, told that a gun was too complicated, a knife too difficult to protect their own children? Do you want to live in a world like this? Where rules have collapsed—where society no longer harnesses a collective will for order and controls our baser instincts?” She shook her head, smiling at Kate now differently, leaning forward slightly and lowering her voice to almost a whisper.
“I don’t. So I seized the chance. Make this world what we want of it. Safer. More secure for our daughters. Control for the variables.”
She exhaled slowly and Kate watched her slow her breathing, closing her eyes briefly before straightening. Kate turned slightly now, pulling her left leg up onto the bed so that she was half-turned to Starr, who drew even with her and leaned close. Too close, thought Kate, suppressing the urge to sit back suddenly. She swallowed.