The Last Blade Of Grass (18 page)

Tiffany Langford, age 35, her twins, Steven and Lauren, age 13, and her daughter, Grace, age 9. Wife and children of Joshua Langford, daughter in law and grandchildren of Randy and Patricia Langford—both men are still trapped on the second stacked storage towers.

Matthew Langford, age 37. His wife, Heather Langford, age 34, and their sons, Andrew, age 10, and Anthony, age 8. They are the son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren of Randy and Patricia Langford.

Conner is slowly walking up from the second shelter supporting Patricia Langford as she makes her way to where we are. Patricia is the mother and grandmother of many of the people lost. She was walking confidently behind her daughter Rebecca, but also nearly collapsed when she first heard her daughter scream.

“Does anyone have a flashlight?” I ask as I walk up to the container’s entrance. I pull up the neck of my shirt and wipe the tears from my face with the only unsoiled portion of clothing at my disposal. Conner’s son, Jake, walks up behind me and hands me the light from his pistol.

There is still complete cloud cover blocking out the sun, giving the day a dull gray look. The dark tunnel of the shelter isn’t inviting. I hesitate to walk in for a few seconds. I’m no longer afraid of facing the infected. I have killed enough of them to wash away the remorse over taking a life. I am deathly afraid of walking in there and seeing one of the many people that we all knew and loved turned into one of these things, however.

Still, I take the first step, followed by another and before I realize it, find myself facing the back of the empty storage container. No one is in here. I shake my head clear, thankful that I didn’t have to see any of them, and put them down. Looking at the details of the place now, I see blood everywhere. Not the thicker blackened blood that comes out of those that have been infected for a long while, but bright red that is from the newly bitten. Still, there are no bodies here, even though the story is the same as if there were.

I walk back out and shake my head at anyone that is looking. “No one is inside. No bodies either.”

The crying just continues. I want to take a break and allow myself and others time to deal with this loss, but I know I can’t, so I call everyone nearby back into action. “There is still a big crowd surrounding Arthur’s stacked containers. We’re going to have to kill them from up high,” I say to whoever is listening.

At this point I feel like giving up. I had that stupid feeling of success just a few minutes ago. Thankful that I survived, grateful that
we
survived, and now I wonder what have we survived for? A third of our group is gone from one attack when we have lived so well for so long. And the worst part is that we lost a big part of our future. We lost seven of the thirteen children ages 12 and under.

Simone runs toward me around the group of mourners sobbing by the ramp. She is crying also and stops directly in front of me. “Eddie, you need to come quick. Your mother is dying.”

Chapter Eight

Good is Gone

I was numb for the rest of the day. Just like everyone else, I went through the motions necessary to kill off the remaining infected, and get Arthur and his group off of their stacked containers. I was running on empty even before my mom died. Apparently, the prolonged lack of oxygen was too much for her, and her heart must have given out. Once she died, I pretty much shut off all emotions at that point. The tears stopped, my expressions went blank, and I just went through the steps necessary to finish the day.

Once we killed the final infected around the second stacked containers, Arthur and Randy had to help lower Joshua Langford off the containers to us. He is in a shock induced coma or just checked out of the world due to his loss. They all knew before any of us that the people in the third container had been overrun by the infected. Joshua was shooting next to his wife by the third shelter when it fell.

Somehow they got overrun by the infected and weren’t able to shut the shelter doors. Joshua isn’t able to speak yet so we can’t find out exactly what happened, but we know it wasn’t the hinges. I was afraid that the doors on their storage container might have gotten stuck or frozen in place, but when I grabbed them after checking inside for bodies, they swung freely. That was also one of the preparations everyone did while we were setting up for the attack, to check if the doors would move and lock closed.

Arthur told us he originally thought Joshua was dead too, because he wasn’t at their container when they arrived, and the infected were close behind them. They were getting ready to pull up the ladder when he ran through the group of approaching infected and climbed up. He managed to make it through without getting bitten, but once he was safe with the three of them, he just sat down in a catatonic state and has been like that since yesterday.

Joshua just sat looking out into the attacking crowd as his wife and children were put out of their diseased state, along with all the of other infected. Arthur and Randy had to see their infected loved ones who should have been protected in the steel walls underground and put them out of their misery. An act I’m not sure I would have had the strength to do.

We are all gathered in the living room of the main house now. We have cleared the property and all of the buildings of the mobile infected for now. There are some infected still alive, but trapped under too many bodies to move. We’ll deal with them when we clear those specific areas. For now, we have to decide what we’re all going to do.

This gathering isn’t like the first night of the fall. Everyone then was happy to see each other, and while everyone knew there was trouble on the horizon, it wasn’t an immediate threat, more like a distant rumble of trouble that could be ignored. Right now no one wants to meet anyone else’s gaze.

“So what now?” Daniel, the former sheriff’s deputy asks.

I look around the group and see their eyes all gazing back to me. I want my moment to mourn like they do, but it is my property, and I can’t just throw off my responsibility. “We live or we die,” I say plainly. “That has always been our choice,” I continue. “We knew what was going on in the world with this thing and that the odds were always stacked against us. While we weren’t all related to the ones we lost, the close relationships that we have built over the last few months made us all part of each other’s families in a way. And it feels as if all of the children we’ve lost were my own, as if they were our own.

“A part of me wants to curl up in bed, go to sleep, and never wake up again. But my opportunity to do that passed with this horde. I fought the overwhelming numbers we faced because I want to live. Even with the pain and loss that I feel, I still want to live, and I’m sure everyone here wants to continue living as well.”

It isn’t a cheering or happy moment, but a few people nod almost imperceptibly or purse their lips in a determined agreement with the idea that they want to live as well.

“The next few days will be more difficult, both physically and emotionally than any we have faced in our lives. We have to clear the bodies from the land. Many are already frozen in place with these temperatures which will add an additional problem to the clean-up effort, and if it warms up, they will begin to rot. We won’t be able to stay here if the bodies remain. I can use the tractor to move them into burning piles, but we will have to sort through them all one at a time to look for our missing, so that we can give them proper burials.”

“There must be fifteen thousand bodies out there!” Dianne Blount says.

“I don’t care!” I yell, snapping back at her. “I’m sorry, Dianne.” I take a deep breath with my eyes closed, and continue, “I think we should find the bodies of the missing, but it is a nearly impossible physical task. Can anyone give me suggestions on what we do about the loved ones we lost?”

Patricia Langford stands up with tears streaming down her face. “I’m not going to lose anyone else. I know all of you loved those that were lost, but it was my son and grandchildren that died out there. I raised them and loved them their whole lives. I want to find them to give them our respects, but I do not want to lose anyone else. If we start handling that many bodies, somebody will get infected. There will be a scratch or a cut and we could lose everything. We could lose everyone. I want to give them a proper burial more than anything I’ve ever desired, but I need the rest of my family to survive.”

Everyone remains silent, and Patricia sits back down next to Randy, who pulls her into an embrace.

Katy Chapman, Donald’s eleven year old daughter speaks up, “They are all someone’s loved ones, aren’t they?”

I nod and look at her, and through watery eyes, Karen answers her daughter. “You’re right, Katy. Everyone out there had someone who loved them. We should have a service for all of the lost, those that we knew, and those that we didn’t, once we have cleared the land.”

“But they tried to kill us,” Hannah says in a hateful tone that no twelve year old should have. She and Steven liked each other and did almost everything together that they could. Now he is dead, and the property is full of the bodies of former people that did it.

“They didn’t know what they were doing, Hannah,” I offer. “These infected people should be feared and avoided. Killed because we need to survive, but they are no different than wolves, lions, or sharks. It’s fine to hate what they do, but please try to remember that they were once people just like us, trying to survive, and didn’t have a choice in coming here.”

“Why did they come here?” Conner asks.

“I have an idea, but don’t like what it means for us. Yesterday Hannah said she heard music again, which is what alerted us another attack might be coming. Right, Hannah?”

“It was faint, but it was music, playing in the distance somewhere out in the forest. Steven and I were riding into the woods toward it when we saw the infected coming.”

I look at Daniel and nod. Everyone else looks at our exchange with questioning expressions.

“If you all remember, Daniel suspected after the second attack that someone might be driving the infected toward us,” I say.

Daniel finishes the explanation for everyone. “Someone is using music in the woods to draw the infected toward us. Someone is staging these attacks. There was probably music or something else we didn’t hear that drew the first attack here as well. My guess is, someone wants this land and the supplies, and is more than willing to kill us all to get it.”

“So now we have two enemies?” Donald asks.

“Now I have someone to hate,” Hannah replies coldly.

While I don’t like hearing her say it, I know exactly what she means. I am filled with rage right now, but don’t want to show it and encourage Hannah or the others in letting their emotions get the best of them. This attack has changed Hannah. I just need to teach her to use it to her advantage.

I want to correct her or try to bring her back to the loving and kind girl that she once was, but Jake intercedes first and not in the way I would like, when he says, “Now we all have someone to hate.”

All of the older adults are looking around at each other concerned, while everyone in their 20s and younger are nodding in agreement with Hannah and Jake. The world has changed, and the young are changing with it, while the rest of us are locked into the old world that we once knew.

“Hate can be a dangerous thing,” I offer. Hannah looks at me with an almost pitying expression on her face, as if I just don’t understand what we are facing now.

I start talking to Hannah, but address all of the younger people in our group that are boiling over with anger. “Hannah, listen. You can feel what you want, but like everything I’ve ever tried to teach you, you have to be in control. If we ever find out who did this to us, you can let your hate make you rush into a fight with them which could get you and everyone else killed, or you can use it to organize your attack so none of them get away.

“I understand this isn’t our world anymore, this is your world, the world of the young, but the rules for dealing with living people are the same. They are dangerous because they can think, but they are cautious because they want to live.”

Daniel adds, “Whoever did this knows about this place and probably knows how many people we have here. If they thought they could overpower us on their own, they would have done it, so they must not have a huge group of people.”

“They have enough people to gather thousands of infected for an attack!” Daniel’s girlfriend Jessica says.

“They’re like cattle,” Arthur replies. “It would only take a couple of people to put those numbers together in Medford. These things are attracted to sound, so it probably wouldn’t take much to attract such a large group out of a city area that held over two hundred thousand people.”

Two hundred thousand people in Medford! That number echoes in my head. “We need to find who did this before they send another attack. We can’t take another onslaught like this—each time they’ve sent more.”

With an eerie sense of timing Jennifer Palmer, Daniel’s mother, walks into the room, and says, “Someone’s coming.”

Daniel’s parents, Michael and Jennifer, were keeping watch together on the roof of the house while the rest of us discussed things.

“What do you mean? Did you see someone?” I ask and everyone stands up ready to run out and fight.

“No, but we hear vehicles off somewhere in the distance.”

“They have to be coming here then.” I say. “We haven’t heard any road traffic for months, and it would be hard to hear any vehicles from the highway, it’s too far away. Grab your guns and load up. If we can hear their cars, they might be close.”

Hannah flips off the safety of her AR-15, pulls back the charging handle, and loads a round.

“Use your hatred, Hannah, don’t let it use you. These people might think we are all dead. They sent enough infected here to finish the job. Don’t just shoot at them at first sight, we should stay hidden, and let them come onto the property. We’ll know when they arrive if they think we are gone by how they act.”

“How?” Jake asks.

Daniel understands what I’m thinking and fills in the blanks, “If they think we are alive, they’ll park outside the property, and slowly move in ready to fight. If they think we're dead, they might drive right in, only expecting to deal with whatever infected are still in the area.”

“How should we do it?” Hannah asks.

“Let Daniel, Arthur, me, or Donald take the first shot. No one shoots before we do. So if we don’t shoot, you don’t either.”

Hannah shakes her head. “I don’t like it. If we don’t all shoot, some of them might live, they might get away.”

“Hannah, you don’t get it do you? We need some of them alive.”

“No way, none of those bastards are going to live!” she yells and starts to storm out of the room when I grab her.

“You’re wrong and you’re going to stay here to listen. All of you are going to listen! I am angry too, but those of you that agree with Hannah, you are wrong. We don’t have time to discuss this, those people are heading here right now and we need to set up, but if you shoot before we do, we could all die, so you might as well just start shooting us right now.”

Hannah relents reluctantly. “I’ll wait for you guys to shoot, but I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Donald, Jake, can you and some of the other guys roll one of the pickups over by the gate? If you have time to tip over a vehicle just inside the entrance, we can keep them from driving into the open area away from the house, and also give a few people a place to hide on the south.”

“We’ll get on it,” Donald says.

“Hannah, you go with me. We need to talk. Two big things, Hannah, first, the cars we hear could contain innocent people. We are guessing at who they are based on the attack we just had. Second, whoever shows up might have more people waiting for them out there somewhere, and we can’t leave anyone out there to send another attack our way,” I say as we walk to hide behind the bushes next to the house.

“So that is why we need to keep some of them alive?”

“Yes. And why you won’t shoot if we don’t. We need to know who is coming before we decide to just kill them. We also need someone to question, to find out the where’s and why’s of this situation. Now I want you to go around to everyone that was taking your side and explain why it has to be this way.”