DEAD: Reborn (2 page)

“I was checking out a zombie,” I said with a shrug. “And I think that we need to have a meeting.”

“You know the rules…nobody goes out alone,” the doctor snapped. “You could have gotten yourself killed, and quite honestly, we cannot afford to lose the manpower.”

“Yeah, well I had Jamal watching my back from the tower,” I said, trying my best to sound confident and not like some child who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “And maybe we can discuss all this after we clear the place out.”

I hiked my thumb at the zombies that were on the other side of the trench. The thing is, I’d sort of had my back to them during this very brief exchange. When I turned back…most of them were already gone. The zombies were leaving!

Now I have seen them do a lot of stuff. Some of it seems strange, but I have never seen a zombie walk away when there is a living, breathing person just a few feet away. It was already peculiar that none of them were just tumbling into the trench as they reached for us. Seriously, zombies are not thinkers. They react to the newest stimulus (that is a word I hear a lot from Dr. Zahn).

“This is the behavior that we observed when Jon, Steve, and I made that trip…” Dr. Zahn’s voice trailed off as Melissa turned and walked back up to the cabin.

Sure, it had been several weeks since Steve had died, but she was not that much better. I still walked up on her crying pretty much any day our paths crossed. I did my best to
keep busy and stay away from her, Cheryl and Melinda—each of them had lost their husband in that raid. Of course we had lost a lot of good people that day, but that was the way of things now.

When I thought about it in those terms, a little voice in the back of my head told me that I might be getting just a touch pe
ssimistic. Maybe, but things were the way they were and there was nothing that could really be done about it.

Maybe this hard shell I am building has a little to do with some of the other things that I know. Like how Jon, who was bitten by a wolf-zombie and was apparently immune, and Jake, who has a healed bite scar that nobody but Jon and I seem to know about, used their blood as a bio-weapon against a settl
ement down in what used to be called La Grande. Sure, they had some sort of evil plan in store for our little group, and apparently were kidnapping people from some of the other small groups in the area, but what Jon and Jake did stretches what I am okay with. Basically, they infected an entire settlement of people by dumping their blood into the food or water or whatever.

It should have been an easy thing to take down these zo
mbies, but it really wasn’t. No matter who you are, if you have a shred of humanity left, it is still difficult to take down a child. Granted, none of us were foolish enough to let something like emotion get in the way as we went about it, but still…

To make matters worse, once again these zombies acted di
fferent. When we dropped the drawbridge, they should have rushed us, heedless of the weapons we held. But even the few that had actually remained were still hesitant. We took them down and actually had to chase the rest. Now, as we closed in, they did turn and attempt to attack, but I swear those things were trying to get away. It was some of the most peculiar behavior that I have ever seen.

We were all drained by the time it was done. However, the moment that I walked back into the cabin, Dr. Zahn was all over me asking me what the heck I thought I was doing. I guess I had just had enough. It seemed that I was good enough to be treated like an adult when they needed somebody to do the dirty work, but any other time, I was treated like a child.

“You know what, Doc?” I spun on the woman, and I think it surprised her. Now don’t get me wrong, she didn’t jump or anything. But there was a slight raise in the eyebrows. For Dr. Zahn, that is about as big as it gets. “I’ve had it! I bust my ass around here. And lately, while everybody has been sick, it has been me taking all the extra watches and splitting firewood, and trying to clean up. So how about you just back off for a bit. If you have a problem with how I stand watch or deal with an issue, you do it yourself.”

I didn
’t wait for a retort; I stormed out of the cabin and slammed the door. I didn’t care that I technically still had an hour or two left on my watch shift. The bottom line was that I was tired and frustrated and sick of…well…everything.

As I stalked across the parking lot and made my way over the bridge and into the picnic grounds, I could hear Jamal calling after me. I wanted to feel bad about him being stuck up in the crow
’s nest, but I couldn’t. Sure, he looked sick, and I have seen just how nasty this little flu bug or whatever the hell it is can be. I have also seen a few people take advantage of it and milk it for a few extra days. Personally, I just didn’t care at the moment.

As I ducked through the trees and into the actual picnic area, I habitually checked my weapons. I had my machete, a big knife, and a wicked axe that had the blade on one side and a five-inch spike-like thing on the other.

Not for the first time, I considered just taking off. After all, my best friends were dead. There wasn’t much reason for me to stay other than I had been with some of these people since the beginning. The problem with that was that none of the people that I connected with were still around.

From the group that walked out of that FEMA rescue facil
ity, it was down to Melissa and Thalia. Everybody else was gone.

“Holy crap,” I said out loud.

It is one thing to endure all of these losses; but to have fought so long and so hard to be the last one left from all that I knew before this nightmare began…hurts. I sat down at one of the tables and, against all the rules that we have made, I put my head down on my arms. I doubt I could have seen anything anyway for the next few minutes as I cried like never in my life.

I cried for everything that I
have lost the day this started and everything that I lost since. I cried for my friends who I knew didn’t make it and for those who I had no idea. Then I cried some more. Never in my life had I felt so empty as I did in that moment.

I was not sure if it was ever going to stop. Thankfully, after who knows how long, I felt myself start to level out. I wiped my eyes on my shirt as I tried to figure out what I would do next.

I knew that I could not just up and leave these people. For better or worse, this was my new family. This is where I belong. Besides, I’d been out there a few times on my own and it wears you down in a hurry. You don’t realize how much you rely on other people to watch your back until nobody is there.

“Can I join you?” a voice said from behind me
, causing me to jump.

I spun around with my knife in my hand before I was even really aware of what I was doing. Standing about ten feet away was Shelly. Her long dark hair was limp from the light rain that had started falling at some point.

“Join me? For what?”

“You gonna go hike to Proposal Overlook?” she asked.

At some point, that was what folks had taken to calling that rocky outcrop that looked out over the grounds of the camp. It is where Steve had asked Melissa to marry him.

“I hadn
’t thought that far ahead,” I admitted. She was looking at me with her head sort of cocked to the side, like she was studying me. I got a chill. For just a second I remembered how those child-zombies did the same thing.

“Well why don
’t we start up that trail and see where we end up,” Shelly said as she walked past.

Considering the fact that I didn
’t really have a plan when I stormed off, it seemed like as good of an idea as any. We made our way up the trail. As I hiked, I remembered the day that I had taken everything up here for Steve and set it out for him. Of course, that memory only made my throat tighten.

We finally reached the big rock that jutted away from the face of the foothill. I realized that I hadn
’t been up here since that day. Looking out over our camp, it seemed so small. I couldn’t believe that so many of us lived in that cabin.

“You thinkin
’ about leaving?” Shelly asked, breaking the silence and a flood of memories that I was helpless to fight off.

“For less than a second,” I admitted.

“Good,” she said with a nod, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Being out there alone can really suck.”

“I guess I am just tired of everything…and I don
’t know what to do about it.”

“Yeah…I don
’t recall any of the movies showing long stretches of absolutely nothing. You start to get inside your head and can’t find a way out.”

I sighed, partially out of relief. I was worried that I was the only person who felt this way. I guess everybody feels like they are the only one experiencing a certain feeling or emotion. Pro
bably one of the flaws of being human or something. At least that is what I bet Barry Jenkins would say. He was always saying smart stuff like that. I hadn’t thought of him or his wife in quite a while.

To me, that suddenly seemed so odd. I mean, we all watched Barry die and then turn that day…but even worse, his wife Randi had been murdered brutally and then, to make it worse
still, a terrible word had been sliced into her skin. How do things like that just slip from your mind?

I looked out past the camp ground and could see the lack of trees where the road would be. So many times, I had come and gone from this place. Each time, I never considered the fact that I might not ever see it again. I guess that is another one of our human traits: we all believe that we as individuals are immortal. I bet Steve never once thought he was going to die that day.

I was staring out into nothing really when I saw the truck emerge from the trees at the entrance to the grounds. I knew for a fact that nobody was in the perch up front. That meant that whoever was in that truck was going to make it all the way to the drawbridge before having to stop. I also knew that there was no way, even if I ran my fastest—heck, even if Shelly ran her fastest—that I would get there before whoever was in that truck made it to the drawbridge and lowered it; and probably still not before they reached the gravel parking lot in front of the cabin.

“I sure hope it
’s Jon,” I huffed as I lumbered down the trail. Not for the first time, I hated how bulky I was…and how slow.

Shelly pulled farther ahead with each switchback until, eventually, she was lost from sight. As I reached the picnic grounds, she was nowhere to be seen. As I reached the edge of the grounds, I could hear the truck shut off up by the cabin.

I had a good running start and hurled myself across the moat on the backside of the cabin. I just did not have the patience to go all the way around front. I started regretting my choice about halfway up the hill. Since I was coming up from the rear, I was not enjoying the luxury of a road to follow. The hill was a soaking wet mess and the ground was a vertical swamp it was so saturated from the melted snow, and now the rains that were trying to usher in spring.

By the time I reached the top, I thought my heart was going to explode out
of my chest. Still, I drew my machete as I reached the corner.

The relief I felt at seeing Jon and Jake took at least a small amount of the misery I was now experiencing after having run so hard to get here. The two men were standing at the open rear of the big pickup truck with huge grins on their faces. It took me a few minutes to realize what all I was seeing.

Of course, the first thing that my eyes took in were the pallets of cardboard cases marked with a variety of canned goods. Yet, that was not really the highlight of what they had arrived with. Stacked from the rear and all the way to the cab were dark green boxes. They were stacked higher than the pallets of food. I’d seen enough of them to know ammunition boxes when I saw them.

Considering the fact that we were almost completely empty in our ammunition locker to the point where I was pretty sure that we were down to a single bullet for each member of the community for that “all else failed” measure that none of us liked to talk about, the bullets were an even better find than the food. Don
’t get me wrong, we have been scraping the bottom in the meal department, but we still had enough to feed everybody at meal time.

“…and the really good news is that there is plenty more where this came from,” Jon was saying with one arm around Sunshine.

That was another thing that had changed since Steve and the others died; the relationship between Sunshine and Jon had become public. It wasn’t like everybody didn’t already know, but at least now they weren’t hiding it.

Of course, that brought up another question. After Teresa dying
, it was clear that whatever was causing people to become zombies could be transferred by ways other than being bitten. Jamie was immune but had infected Teresa, then hung himself. So, considering you could not just bop on down to the drug store for condoms…

“We want to take a larger group out in a couple of days. That train is just sitting there waiting to be emptied. Billy, we need you to come on this run. We already know that you can handle yourself in the field and the zombie presence in the area is surprisingly high,” Jon was saying.
I dismissed my previous train of thought and gave my full attention to what was being discussed. “We tried to figure out why, but with just the two of us, it got a bit dicey.”