As the World Dies (9 page)

    On the screen was another IM. It wasn't from Stephanie but someone calling herself
texaspeg
.

    The message simply read:
If you're alive, lemme know.

    Eric immediately wrote back:
I'm here. Safe and sound.

    There was a very long pause then more words appeared:
where in texas, hon?

    Eric quickly typed out his location, his hands trembling with excitement and nervousness.

    When the words popped up in the box, he let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding.

    I'm in Ashley Oaks. We're holed up in city hall and inside a construction site. You're not too far from us. Thirty miles.

    Eric quickly typed, explaining his situation and asking if she was safe.

    Got lots of people here. Got a wall put up. Got supplies to last awhile. People are off getting guns. Lots of zombies though, hon. Keep where you are til we clear them out.

    Eric laughed with delight and quickly typed back that he would do just that. To just let him know when the coast was clear.

    We'll come get you when we can. Just gotta kill a whole lot of zombies first. We got a plan to do it and it shouldn't take long.

    Pepe skipped into the room with the toy in his mouth and plopped down next to the chair.

    "We're not alone, Pepe. There are other people out there and they’re safe. They're in a safe place. They actually think they can take out a whole crowd of zombies."

    Pepe didn't look too impressed by this and kept chewing on the doll.

    Eric looked back at the screen. The words that glowed there made him feel a little less alone in the ugliness of the world.

    The words read:
My name is Peggy. And I'm glad to meet ya.

Chapter Twelve

Clones, Aliens and Amazons

    Hope is a wondrous thing. After typing back and forth with Peggy most of the afternoon, the malaise and depression that had threatened to overwhelm Eric shrank back from the glory of his newfound hope.

    Before his conversation with Peggy he had decided to fight for his life and Pepe, but after realizing that there were more survivors out there, he felt a renewed sense of community and drew strength from it. He wasn't alone. There were others. And they had a place saved for him in their "fort".

    That night, he actually made himself dinner instead of eating a sandwich or eating leftovers. Using the last of the fresh vegetables and thawing out some chicken, he made a meal that left him feeling sated and a little more normal.

    Afterwards, he sat upstairs in his room with a cup of coffee and the last piece of pie. Bored and curious to see if anything was changing, he began flipping through the TV channels one by one. The major networks were gone and running the emergency broadcast feed. It was looping the same old news. All the other cable networks were gone now.

    Channel after channel, there was nothing but static.

    Pepe trotted into the room dragging the nearly destroyed toy and flung it down in front of the TV to begin his mutilation. Eric grinned and leaned down to pet Pepe's head as he continued to flip channels.

    "…and they knew it…"

    His finger automatically hit the channel button despite hearing the voice. He quickly hit the return button. An old man's face filled the screen. It was a craggy face with deep wrinkles in the sun worn flesh and a big nose. His eyes were wide and very intense under his wiry eyebrows and he wore what appeared to be an army helmet with foil glued to it.

    "…think its coincidence that the President was at Camp David and the VP was out in East Texas hunting when this all went down? I tell you no! No, no, no, no! How many stories did they cover up? Stories about people biting each other? Or killing so they could…could…" The old guy backed away from the screen and he pantomimed a zombie eating a person quite well. "You know…eat!"

    "Whoa, what a crazy old geezer," Eric said in awe.

    The old man was standing in the middle of a long, narrow room that appeared to be made of cement blocks and concrete. There was a cot in one corner piled with blankets and pillows, a very beat-up sofa was filled with all sorts of dog that were watching the old man with rapt attention, and a table was shoved up along one wall and full of all sorts of computer and electronic equipment.

    "So they covered it all up. Hid it. Pretended they didn't fuck up the clones and that the clones got out and started eating people. Cause the clones were all fucked up!" The old guy pointed to his head and then leaned close to the camera again. "All fucked up in the head. And you know why?"

    Eric and Pepe looked at each other then back at the TV.

    "Aliens."

    "I kinda knew he was going that way," Eric said.

    Pepe barked in agreement.

    "They're making deals with the Amazonian queen. They want this planet. They want its resources. So by letting those clones out, they get what they want. And you know what I say?" The old man leaned closer to the camera so only his mouth full of gnarled teeth was showing. At the top of his lungs, he shouted, "Fuck you, aliens!"

    Eric fell back against the bed and began to laugh.

    The old guy looked quite indignant and a cat sauntered past the camera and looked into it for a long moment, then walked on. Once the screen was clear of the cat, the old guy came into view sitting at his mish-mash of equipment.

    "I'm watching them, survivors. Oh, yeah. I’m watching them. I know what's going on. I can't keep broadcasting forever to you ‘cause they'll find me sooner or later, but I'm telling you, I got my eye on them. Oh, yeah," he said reassuringly.

    Suddenly the lights in the bunker turned bright red as an alarm started to peal.

    "Gawddamn, clones!"

    The old guy sprang to his feet, ran to the camera, picked it up and ran back to his desk. Propping up the camera so it was filming what appeared to be a security monitor, the old guy's long dirty finger came into view as he pointed out what was happening.

    "See, there come the clones again. Always coming up on the east side of my property. I'm telling you, they know where I am. And they're sending their damn messed up clones."

    On the screen a bunch of the dead were pushing against a barbwire fence.

    "Hate those guys," the old guy muttered as he pointed to each zombie individually on the monitor. "All screwed up and spilling guts on my land."

    Though Eric couldn't see what he was doing, he could hear the old man typing away on a keyboard.

    To his amazement, on the monitor screen, what looked like some sort of robotic arm made out of farm equipment rose out of a haystack and opened fire on the zombies with an Uzi.

    "Gawdamn clones," the old man was muttering angrily. "Good thing I got my security system up before it all went to shit. And that is where they fucked us, didn't they? They didn't tell us they were out there. The clones. Doing what they do. They hid it ‘cause that's what they were supposed to do. But I knew! I knew!"

    The camera continued to film the scene on the monitor as the robotic arm swept back and forth with the Uzi strafing anything standing outside the fence. In just a few short minutes, all the zombies were dead.

    "Gotta go, kiddies. Gotta go put more ammo in the Uzi. Gotta keep alert. Don't let the government do nothing for ya. Don't go to those rescue shelters. Keep hiding. Stock up on food and ammo, cause boys and girls, them clones are doing the work of the Amazonian Queen and her alien overlords and we gotta be ready to fight back." The old guy swiveled the camera so his face filled the screen again. "Calhoun, over and out."

    The screen switched to what looked like a cardboard box that had the words "Truth is Here" written in magic marker on it.

    Eric sat on the floor for a long moment then began to howl with laughter. He didn't stop for a long time.

Chapter Thirteen

An Unexpected Turn

    The hope that was born in Eric when he first made communication with what was being called "the Fort" in Ashley Oaks, Texas, grew each day that his surroundings remained zombie free. It was also a relief to talk to Peggy on the Internet. She was funny and warm in her chat and he felt comforted by the fact she was out there. When she told him the fort was actually talking to quite a few people that were holed up in their part of Texas, it was an enormous relief to know that pockets of humanity was still surviving. Even though the phones were down in the area of the fort, the cable was still working and Peggy explained they had a communication center up where they were talking to survivors over CBs and ham radios as well as the Internet.

    At one point, Peggy grouped all the survivors that still had access to the Internet into a chat room to explain what was going on at "the fort" and Eric was amazed to see twenty different people pop onto his list. After that, he never felt alone again as he chatted occasionally with the others. But mostly, he talked to Peggy. She was obviously the town gossip and had all the news about what was going on in the fort. She began to feel like an old friend as they chatted on and off during the day.

    "You still free and clear over there," she asked one morning.

    "Yeah, so far," Eric typed back. "They're all still in the community center. I don't think they're getting out any time soon."

    "That's good. When we come pick you up, we shouldn't have any major problem there. Some of the other survivors are surrounded and that ain't going to be an easy rescue," Peggy wrote back.

    Even though he had a renewed sense of hope, he felt overwhelmed at times with the loss of Brandy and his family. He would sit at Brandy’s grave while Pepe did his business and tell her how sorry he was. Sometimes, he could not even speak he was so overcome with emotion, but he knew in his heart that she was at peace now even if he was not.

    He kept trying to call his family, but no one ever answered at his sister or brother's place. The phone's busy signal at his parent's house told a sad story he did not want to consider for long. None of his friends wrote back and his email box remained empty. A few messages from old school chums were posted on his MySpace, but most of them were holed up and fighting to survive. The questions on the boards and chat rooms for survivors were the same.

    Was the army coming soon?

    How long before FEMA would open secure shelters?

    Was the government up and running?

    Was anyone getting updated news reports in their area?

    He watched Calhoun's regular broadcasts every night while eating dinner. The old guy always rambled on about clones, aliens and Amazons, but he was highly amusing. His instructional video on how to kill a zombie was fairly disgusting, but darkly humorous at the same time.

    "Cutting off their arm does you no damn good if they got the other arm," Calhoun said at one point during the demonstration. He danced around a zombie caught in the barbed wire fence surrounding his property as chickens and a dog wandered past not seeming to notice the moaning, hungry zombie. "See?" Calhoun whacked off one arm with a machete and the zombie kept reaching with the other one. "It still gots the other one to get ya. You gotta smack em in da damn head." With a deft whack of the machete, the zombie was no more.

    "Public access was never this exciting back in the old days," Eric decided and looked down at Pepe who was still hell-bent on destroying the antique toy.

    The dog eyeballed him for a moment then went back to gnawing.

    The next day, Eric made sure to find a machete in the tool barn and rig a holster for it.

    Every day he took Pepe on a walk down the driveway. He was always sure that Pepe was calm and not bothered by their surroundings before they would start down the road that would take them to the accident site where Brandy had died. It bothered Eric to see the car, but at the same time, it was a good location to take a look at the community center through the binoculars.

    Despite the danger that he knew lurked near by, he was growing bolder. One day, he and Pepe rode down in the ATV to load up at the corner store on supplies. He had broken out the window with an ax he had taken with him and hurriedly grabbed things he needed. He had been terrified the entire time, but when no zombies ever appeared, he began to sincerely believe they were all trapped inside of the community center. Pepe had enjoyed riding on his lap and Eric made sure to gas up the ATV before returning it to where he had it parked under the window where the fire retardant slide was rigged.

    "Travis and Katie are due back tomorrow with the guns," Eric said to Pepe one day as they took their walk. "Peggy says they went to Ralph's store to get more ammunition and they are coming back tomorrow because Juan corralled all the zombies somehow so they can get in. That means we can get in soon, too."