“I believe you,” was all I could say. I thought she was going to pass out soon.
“My son was a good boy too. He didn’t want to… didn’t want to kill his father.” Her voice was getting raspier, and I would see her go into a mild convulsion here and there. She was getting worse. I didn’t remember going through that.
“I just… want… someone to… remember them,” she squeaked out. Her head was twisting side to side, and I noticed her hands were gnarled, like she had arthritis. I also saw that her skin was becoming veiny. Slowly, the veins started to spider web around her neck from beneath her hair. She was changing…
“Judy!” I said. “Judy, stay with me!” But she was fading fast. One of her hands gripped the side of her face as her eyes rolled back into her head.
Then it happened.
Her fingers started digging into her cheek. She didn’t scream in pain. Her back arched, like a bolt of electricity went through her body. Her fingers kept plowing into her face, clawing away skin. Blood dripped from the deep gouges. Her eyes came back, but they were not the same. Her once red bloodshot eyes were being taken over with purple tracers. Her jaw twisted, and a guttural noise came from her throat.
“Judy!” I cried again. But she wasn’t listening. Her mouth was open, as if in a silent scream. I heard Boomer growling on the other side of the bed.
Judy’s head snapped toward me, and then whipped in the direction of Boomer. Before I knew it, I was standing and had moved back a couple of paces. She tried to rip her right arm free, but the handcuffs were holding tight.
Judy was no longer the sweet woman I had come to know over the last few days. A demon was inside of her. Dark red blood formed around her mouth, and she growled like a hungry lion. She tugged on her arm trying to get it free, and snarled at me while she did it. She was a caged animal.
My heart sank as I raised my Glock. I tried to pull the trigger, but couldn’t. She was a sweet woman. Maybe I just had gotten to know her, but from what I did know, she didn’t deserve that. No one deserved that. I lowered my gun, and looked to the ground.
There will be a time in your life when you will have to do the wrong thing for the right reason. Just know that when you do, you will have to carry that burden with you. But remember to carry it with pride, because it takes a strong man to make that kind of decision and live with it.
I don’t know why that thought came into my head. Hell, I didn’t remember why my father had told me that years before. But I think I know now. He knew that one day I may be in a situation where I had to do something bad, but also right.
I raised my head. I could hear Boomer next to me now, snarling. But I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see the bed, or the walls. All I saw was the shell of a woman I had barely known, but cared deeply about.
I raised my gun, letting it track her head as it bobbed back and forth, looking at me with hungry eyes.
“Goodbye, Judy,” I whispered, and pulled the trigger.
My shot was true. Brain matter spurted out from the back of her skull, spraying the floor outside of the bedroom.
I looked up and saw Fish standing there. His gun was in one hand and the bottle of vodka in the other. His .45 wasn’t raised, but held loosely at his side. Dangling off his pinky from his hand holding his gun, were the handcuff keys. He tossed them on the bed, turned around, and headed back into the living room. It appeared he was leaving the dirty work for me.
I guess I deserved it. After all, he had warned me. He was going to do it himself but I had stopped him. The guilt was left for me to carry.
Looking back, I knew it had to be done. The guilt wasn’t only due to the fact that I had to kill her myself.
But there was another feeling that crept up inside of me. I was alone. Not physically, but emotionally. Keeping the secret that I was immune put me in a private little room by myself. The situation with Judy confirmed that I was resistant, and everyone else, as far as I knew, was subject to infection.
I shook those thoughts off and looked at Judy’s body. It was dangling from the foot of the bed by her arm.
First, I dragged her corpse outside to the front of the house and left it in the yard. Next, I did the same with the scab that Fish had killed. I wasn’t sure if scabs came back as zombies or healed again and were still scabs, but I wasn’t going to take either chance. I felt cold-hearted as I put an end to the both of the bodies, ensuring that they would never rise again.
I didn’t shed a tear for Judy, and that made me mad. I should have. For some reason, emotions had started to abandon me. I didn’t like what I was turning into. I hated myself for those feelings, and made a silent promise that no matter how bad things got, I would try to hang on to my humanity.
Fish stayed on the couch the whole time, drinking the vodka and staring off into nothingness. I went back into the house and decided to join him.
First, I went to the bedroom and grabbed what was left of the rum, and started drinking straight from the bottle. I sat on the love seat, staring into empty space. Boomer trotted in the room and snuggled up on my mattress.
“Wasn’t easy, was it, kid?” he asked after a moment of silence.
“No,” I said, and looked down. I could tell he was drunk, or at least, on the verge of being drunk. The vodka bottle was over half empty, and his demeanor was odd.
“You know, I was one of the first in Afghanistan. I put down a lot of towelheads. Seven tours before I retired.” He was rambling, and at first I thought it was humorous to see him like this, but then I started feeling bad for him as he continued. I knew it was time for him to unload, so I sat there and listened as Fish’s wall finally came crumbling down.
“Twenty-two years I gave to my country. That’s what it’s all about, right? Serve, be proud, and kill the enemy.” He took another drink. “They say you see their ghosts when you sleep. Bullshit. I never saw a ghost… and I made plenty of ‘em.” He turned and glared at me. “Not all deserved it, either.”
“I know,” was all I could manage to say. I really
didn’t
know and I couldn’t relate to him. I was a pogue, sitting in the relative safety of my camp, not out in the mud. Dave knew though...
“You know what I did, boy?” he asked.
“No,” I said cautiously.
“Operator. Sniper,” he told me. “One shot, one kill. It’s all bullshit.” I knew he was drunk now. I was probably better off just being quiet, but I wasn’t that smart.
“Yeah, they used to make us say that when we were at the range,” I said.
“Bah, what do you know? Sure, you guys said it like it was a cadence. We fucking lived it.” He took another long drink and tossed the empty bottle on the floor. Thankfully, it didn’t shatter, but just rolled against the wall. Boomer raised his head, startled.
We sat there in silence for a little bit. I didn’t want to say anything else to make the situation worse. I was hoping he would drift off to sleep, but he didn’t.
“When I retired, I never wanted to see a gun again. I saw so many kids armed to the teeth over there. I didn’t want them anywhere near my son.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “Just a revolver. That’s all I had. Locked away from my boy.”
“My boy…” he trailed off for a moment. “He was gonna be quarterback next season, you know that? Such a smart kid. Now…” He turned and looked at me, stopping in mid-sentence. No longer did he have that stern, angry glare. His eyes betrayed his hurt, his remorse.
“We tried the hospital. ‘No more patients’ they said. Don’t even get me started on the FEMA camp. She held him. My Becky held him in her arms and watched him die in his own bed.”
Anger started to boil up in him again, and tears started to form around the rims of his eyes.
“I told her to let him lay in peace!” he said, raising his voice. “But she couldn’t. She held him for hours. She was so excited when he started moving again. She called to me, and I made it in the room just as Nolan… bit… into her. He was ravaging her, tearing into her side like some insane beast!”
He stopped, sniffled, and looked around the room like there was a jury judging him.
“What could I do? I threw him off of her, but he kept coming. My boy! What could I do?” He started to calm down again, lowered his voice, and talked between sobs.
“I locked him in the room. He kept banging on the door until it started to give way. What fucking choice did I have?” he asked the ghostly panel. “I- I got my gun. I told him to stop, but he just kept coming down the hallway. I- I… I had to. I tried to just wound him. I tried to make him stop, but he just kept coming. I didn’t have a choice! I only had one bullet left.”
He didn’t finish the rest of the story, and he didn’t have to. I knew he put his own son down to save his wife. He just didn’t know she was already dead.
Ironically, his story bared similarity with what happened between me and Dave. I had wondered how so many zombies had risen, when it seemed only around half of the population had actually gotten sick. That explained why there was so many of the dead walking around. Not everyone got sick, but most were probably naive and fell victim. By all accounts, I should have been one of them.
“I tried to fix her. I patched her up. But she got sick anyway. That’s when the radio told us what was happening.” He wiped the tears from his eyes, but didn’t notice that he had spread the black sludge across his face in the process. He drew a heavy snort to clear out his nose. Then, oddly, he straightened his face. It no longer looked sad or angry, it was just blank.
“She told me to do it. She begged me.” His stone face stared ahead, as if he was watching the scene on the blank TV. “But I couldn’t. I tried, but…”
He closed his eyes. I thought he was done, but then he looked over at me. The jury in the room disappeared and the scene on the TV was gone. There was just Fish and me…
“In the end, kid, it’s better to do it before they change. At least… at least they die as they are, and not some…” He stopped. He didn’t have to say anymore.
Though I told myself I didn’t want to know what his demons were, I was glad he had told me. It was something he needed to get off of his chest. From that point on, he was no longer alone. He was still an asshole, but now he had a friend.
Too bad I still felt alone. I didn’t think my burden could never be shared.
Chapter 16
Returning the Favor
April 19
th
Morning
The next week went by uneventfully. I say that because I didn’t come close to death. Plenty happened, though. One thing about surviving in the apocalypse was that there was always something to do.
Fish and I never talked about what had happened with Judy or the preceding and intoxicated conversation. I originally didn’t want to know what had hardened him, but now was thankful that I did. He undoubtedly remembered that night and I think it made our relationship easier. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t really change much, but there were certain allowances we started to give each other.
We invited DJ and Jared down to our house. Lt. Campbell and one of his soldiers accompanied them. The Lieutenant didn’t seem like such a bad guy, but he definitely kept his guard up.
We learned a little about the Lieutenant and his group before they came to Palm Bay. He and his men had fought their way out of Miami. Along the way, they picked up Chad and a reverend named Ken. Ken, who they referred to as Preacher, had a couple of orphans with him.
They headed north to try and link up with an Army Battalion out of Jacksonville Florida. By the time they made it to Palm Bay, though, they had lost communication with the other unit. They saw a huge cell phone tower where DJ’s group was starting to build up fortifications. Campbell hoped to use the cell tower as an antenna to contact other surviving military units. Up to that point, they hadn’t had any success.
Jared had little experience with solar panels, but his working knowledge of DC to AC, which I was still trying to grasp, helped us rig up a decent system. That was good, because we were able to get the fans working. It was getting pretty damn hot and humid. We were also able to get enough juice to run the fridge for about half the day. I cannot express enough how nice it is to have cold water. Jared also told me they had rigged some car alternators into windmills, and drew the specs out for me just in case I wanted to try.
DJ brought materials to strengthen up our truck, but left them for us to mount. Fish had told me he had his own idea for a “cow-catcher” for the front of our new vehicle.
We showed them our set up for our garden, and they seemed impressed. The constant water flow to the plants was ingenious. They had tried planting some vegetables, but bugs or the heat withered them away and the constant watering wasted their reserves. Campbell’s underling, ironically named Private Gardner, took notes.
Campbell found it interesting that Fish was a former Special Forces sniper. He told him they could use a good man like him, but Fish declined, saying this is where his hat was hung. I was intrigued when the LT asked at what rank Fish retired. He was an E8, or Master Sergeant. Basically, the highest rank an enlisted man could go before you were more of an administrator. That still meant Campbell outranked him, but I had a feeling rank didn’t mean anything to Fish.
DJ brought up Fish’s earlier proposal about co-oping on scavenging runs. That was also something Campbell was interested in. They had a large group, but the soldiers were needed for defense. DJ had taken it upon himself to organize most of their food and equipment scouting runs with the civilians from the camp. The LT thought that was best because they knew the lay of the land better. Occasionally, some of the soldiers would accompany them, but mostly that happened only when the situation required more firepower.
This revealed to us their biggest dilemma as well. Though they had thirty one survivors in their camp, most were old, women, or children. Only DJ, Jared, Chad, Jenna, Daniel, Lt. Campbell and his five soldiers were actually capable of handling the zombies. Two thirds of their group was completely reliant on the others for security.
DJ told us Jenna was actually more gifted than half the men. According to him, she knew how to hunt and clean animals, how to fix a car, wasn’t afraid to get dirty, and had a mean right cross. I guess Chad found that out a couple of days after they joined up. Fish remarked that she was probably more capable than I was. Asshole.
They had to do scavenging runs almost daily to keep up with the needs of the group, and had yet to make any big scores.
DJ told us about the one time they got into a shootout with some other survivors. They were both looting the same convenience store. Evidently there was a misunderstanding, and things went bad. That told me how desperate they really were for food. That worried Fish. During that conversation, I noticed Fish had eyed our supply room more than once.
Lt. Campbell and friends left a couple of hours before nightfall. We made an agreement to let each other know when we went on scavenging runs. They seemed pretty nervous about running into any more undesirables again.
We spent a couple of days upgrading our truck. It wasn’t easy. Any little bit of noise would draw the attention of a nearby zombie. We learned that the moan of a zombie could bring others, too, almost like a mating call. I wondered if they had different pitches that gave them some sort of weird communication system. Who knew, but I wasn’t about to ask one of them.
Days went by, and Fish said we had to start scouting for our new home. I agreed, even though I really didn’t have a say in the matter. We planned on leaving early in the morning to scout for a new home. We spent the previous night loading our gear in preparation of being out for more than a day. Boomer sensed we were planning a trip and seemed excited to be leaving the house. He hadn’t left since before I was forced to kill Judy.
Boomer held both positives and negatives when venturing out, I realized. When we took refuge in Wagon Wheel, Boomer would have been a hindrance. His tactful ability to help against a couple of zombies was great, but against a thousand, he would be useless. That’s not even counting the trouble we would have had getting him on the roof before the zombies broke through our defenses.
But he more than made up for those shortcomings when it came to alerting us of danger. I didn’t know if it was his hearing or sense of smell, and I really didn’t care, but it made him invaluable. In close quarters, one mistake or unread sign could mean death. That’s where Boomer upped our chances of survival.
The next morning, we loaded up the big truck. Unlike DJ’s vehicles, we spot welded our front to act more like a cattle catcher on an engine of a train. Fish said he thought it would allow us to run through the Zulus faster. Like I said before, combat driving wasn’t his strong suit.
Fish told me to radio DJ’s group and let them know we were heading out on a run. We had discussed before with them what radio call signs to use. They were “Stallion” and their base was “Stable”, we were “Dog” and, you guessed it, our base was “Dog House”. Believe it or not, this is how the military actually communicates. We each had our own numbers too. I was Dog Two. I’m sure you can guess the rest.
Over the last few days, it was hard to get used to, at least for their civilians. I was sure I heard Jared and Chad both chuckle when they would refer to themselves as Stallions Four and Six.
We secured the house just after sunrise. I checked and noted it was already April nineteenth. A month of living in this hell had passed. It felt like it had been at least a year.
“Stable,” I said as I keyed the radio, “this is Dog 2. All Dogs are leaving the House. Over”.
After a few seconds, I received a reply. I was sure it was one of Campbell’s troops. They were more professional on the radio.
“Roger that, Dog House. What’s your destination? Over,” they asked.
“I don’t like telling them when we’re leaving the house,” Fish murmured. He agreed to full disclosure with the Stallions, but he wasn’t all too happy about it.
“Heading north, just looking for supplies. Over,” I responded, ignoring him.
“Roger, Dog House.” I could tell Campbell was on the radio now. “Can you be a little more specific? Stallion Two and company are heading out in thirty mikes. Just want to know if we’re going to cross paths. Over.” For those of you who do not know military jargon, ‘mikes’ mean ‘minutes’.
I looked at Fish, and shrugged my shoulders. I knew he wanted to keep a low profile with these guys, but if they saw us somewhere we said we weren’t going to be, we could lose trust with them.
“Tell them we’re going to be around 192 and Wickham,” he told me. I gave him a curious look. We hadn’t headed that far north yet. Granted, it was only eight miles from where we were but that short of a distance could be a million miles, especially since we hadn’t explored it yet.
Both 192 and Wickham were major roads in Melbourne. State Road 192 was a few miles north of where our house was. It spanned from the beaches of Melbourne all the way to the greater Orlando area in the middle of the State of Florida. There was very little development between the two cities, leaving hundreds of square miles of swamp land. I guess it was just too expensive to try to conquer the marshes. Wickham was a major north and south route through both Melbourne and Palm Bay.
“We’re checking out 192. Over.”
“Roger that, Dog House. Good luck. Out,” the response seemed suddenly disinterested. My brow furrowed.
“They’re probably worried we might stumble across their camp. I figured they were south of us,” Fish noted.
We drove out of our neighborhood with little care about how much noise we made. The diesel truck was louder than my old car or Fish’s Ranger and since we were leaving, we really didn’t care if zombies came out of the shade. The sun was bright and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
We jumped onto Minton road that headed north to the bridge that I drove over the first day, towards the burned out middle school. If you continued north, it would cross 192 and turn into the aforementioned road, Wickham. But we didn’t keep going. Fish stopped the truck in the middle of the bridge that crossed Interstate 95.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked as he got out of the driver’s seat. Boomer was overcome with excitement, whining and begging to get out of the truck as well.
“Well,” he said as he grabbed his binoculars and 308 rifle, “chances are 192 is jammed packed. It’s the only way to 95 or Orlando for miles.” He shut the door while I scrambled to get my gear and let Boomer and myself out.
“And,” he continued, “there aren’t a whole lot of roads going to where I want to go.”
I rounded the truck to join him as he headed to the west side of the bridge. I scanned the area, but didn’t see any immediate threats. There were plenty of woodlands around at the bottom of the bridge, but if there were hundreds of zombies hiding from the sun in the trees, Boomer didn’t detect any.
Fish walked up to the edge of the bridge and stared with his ‘eyes’, as he liked to call them, down the highway. I joined him and stared in awe. Interstate 95 was backed up as far as the eye could see on both sides of the median. All the traffic, including the southbound lanes, was heading north. Most of the vehicles probably came from Miami and the surrounding cities. Something further up north had stopped the traffic.
It wouldn’t take much, I guess. One little accident would lead to another. With little emergency response available, it probably snowballed into a feast for whatever scabs or zombies were in the area. I could see some sitting or hunched between the cars, patiently waiting for someone to stir them up.
Fish turned and faced me. “Well, there goes that idea.”
“What idea?” I said while I kneeled down and gave Boomer a treat.
“Well, I wanted to check out this place just west of 95 off of 192. This camp my buddy bought a few years back. Kind of like a tourist attraction.”
“What kind of camp?” I asked, standing back up.
“Air boat camp,” he replied.
“Are you talking about Camp Holly?” I asked with a little amusement.
“Yeah,” he said, openly annoyed that I found his idea funny. “You have a problem with that?”
“Um, yeah” I responded mockingly. “Dave and I-” I cut myself off. I said ‘Dave’ like he was still alive. Guess it still bothered me.
“My friend and I went there last year,” I continued. “The place is kind of a dump.”
I could see a scowl start to form on his stoic face. I guess he didn’t like me calling his friend’s place a dump.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said hastily. “We had fun. It was some big party for this girl’s father. Rednecks were everywhere.” I was trying to save face, but it wasn’t working.
“I know it’s old, but that place has been standing for years. It has a decent perimeter and we can add to it. Fresh water, lots of game to hunt… fishing. Hell, there’s even enough room for you to keep playing Green Acres.” I still don’t know what he meant by that. But knowing Fish, it was probably a stab at the garden I had been working on since Judy changed.
“It’s also a good seven or eight miles away from anything else,” he went on. “There’s only one way to get there by land. The surrounding swampland should protect us from any Zulus that wander that way and we still have your dog to alert us. Without the dead around, we can safely fortify it.”
I went along with it. Fish, Boomer and I jumped in the truck and headed north. We turned west early, deciding it was better to take back roads rather than take our chances on 192. When we were finally forced to jump onto the State Road that would take us to Camp Holly, we came to a dead stop.