This Dark Earth (28 page)

PROPOSAL: Not much discussed, though someone suggested composting zombies for the gardens. Doc Ingersol mentioned how much disease can come from a single dead body. Knock-Out pointed out that, in essence, we’d be eating our own dead, which sickened most of us, except for Gus, who laughed. “They eat us! It’s only fair.” Keb shook his head and made crazy motions around his ear.

It’s weird that Gus doesn’t have a right hand anymore. He gestures with it like it’s there. And, honestly, I can see his hand there; I know what gesture he’s trying to make.

Keb told the women at the fire circle that the slavers crucified Gus on a traffic sign. That they chopped off his fingers and then drilled a hole in his hand and put rope through it to string him up.

It’s kinda hard to believe that someone could do that to another person. And Gus is different now. He can’t look me in the eyes.

I wish I hadn’t kissed that guitar player.

DATE: July 18, 2018

TIME: 11:00 AM

PLACE: Command Tent

Present: Chairwoman Ingersol, Co-chair Gus Ingersol, Co-chair Quentin Wallis, Co-chair Jim Nickerson (Knock-Out), Engineer Joblownski, Citizens Hattie, Keb Motiel, and the general populace

Secretary: Barbara Dinews

ITEM: Zombie accoutrements, IDs from wallets namely, have been found from as far away as Nashville and Denver. This means they’re migrating. A discussion followed about the possibility that clusters in excess of 100 or more might batter our city gates. Joblownski assures us that the murderholes can accommodate much larger numbers, but closing the currently manual double doors will be problematic. However, now that there is minimal electrical power, he could jury-rig winches that could open and close the steel doors even if zeds were in the way.

Gus and Wallis pushed preparing for the worst, which would be thousands of undead at the gates. This could conceivably happen, since we’ve been seeing more extended damilies and what the outriders are calling mega-damilies on the move.

However, right now, Joblownski assures us we are safe. He reminded us all that with the recollection of the large stores of chain-link fencing from Ozark, we’re beginning to establish concentric rings of chain-link fencing, and he’s designed
multiple levels of murderholes, funneling all the migrant revenants toward the master murderhole. He displayed his designs on graph paper. They seem logical, though I have doubts they will hold—just chain-link fencing—if a mega-damily of a thousand or more comes battering.

Joblownski (and Gus and Wallis) argued we should focus our attention on the slavers who will be coming. He insists on another reconnoiter as to their position. Wallis tabled the discussion, wanting to keep that private for the moment.

This makes me nervous.

ITEM: To date, we have harvested two hundred pounds of silvered, gilded teeth. We have fifty or sixty pounds of change and over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in reclaimed paper money—which is worthless except for use as kindling or toilet paper. But people like to look at the money. Some of them cry.

DATE: August 2, 2018

TIME: 8:00 AM

PLACE: South Gate

Present: Chairman Gus Ingersol, Co-chair Quentin Wallis, Co-chair Lucy Ingersol, Engineer Joblownski, Keb Motiel, and the general populace

Secretary: Myself, Co-chair Barbara Dinews

ITEM: Knock-Out couldn’t attend the rancher’s arrival, but the rest of the Big Four were there.

The rancher is a sour little man, raw-boned and rangy, prone to laughing too hard to hide his sadness. Somehow, he’s survived in the Ouachita Mountains for the last four years, keeping cattle and horses. He came through the outer ring of chain-link, leading the cattle, with only a few undead trailing him.

When we brought him inside the protective ring, away from the murderholes, he pointed to a large bull—his only bull.

“That bastard right there will trample any goddamned rev in sniffing distance. He’s meaner than the devil. Probably will trample the living too, only I’m too smart to get next to him. But keep any people away.”

We haven’t had any real need for provisioning livestock until now—except finding food for Cookie, the stray dog that ended up at our gates. We lost a man trying to get her into the city, and so she is quite loved and becoming too fat as well. As to the livestock, Joblownski, with two assistant engineers, immediately came up with a solution.

“We’ll pasture them on the south shore, in a ring of chain. Since the revs don’t seem attracted to cattle or horses, maybe the bull will act as an extra line of defense. I know—” He waved his hands. “I know. It’s laughable. But we should test. It’d be nice if we had three tons of roving, zombie-stomping bull to our south.”

So we tested in one of the concentric rings guarding the southern shore, where there is ample grass and water. After the animals checked the perimeter and settled down near a large cottonwood, Joblownski and Keb went to the outer gate, unlocked and unlatched the chain door, and let in the few
zombies waiting there. The bull—who Dap, the rancher, calls Satan—snorted, roused himself, and began to saunter over to the men and the undead.

Joblo ran away, and Keb danced backward, leading the revenants inside the chain. There were only three: two men and a child. Keb brained the fastest rev with his headknocker, dropping it in its tracks, and then turned tail and ran to the inner ring, through the gate, to rejoin us. Satan chased him. Dap, his mouth full of tobacco, laughed merrily, watching as the bull stood breathing heavily behind the chain-link fence. Then a rev moaned, and the big animal wheeled and tromped off.

It’s amazing what short work three tons of bull can make of two zombies. More were gathering on the outer ring, pawing at the chain. We considered letting them in as well, but relented. Eventually they’d find their way down the sluice-way to the murderholes, so we could keep count, harvest metals, and perform tracking.

Dap tells the committee he knows the locations of two more ranchers keeping their cattle and people in the highlands. Maybe twenty or thirty head more cattle and fifteen or twenty more people, not including a few dogs, which the zombies
will
attack, strangely. Man’s best friend becomes man’s best snack.

We, immediately and on the spot, requested Dap to outride, find the ranchers, and invite them here. We showed him the ins and outs of life on the bridge, the progress of the Tulaville reclamation, and the “great” wall that is now beginning to take shape around the neighborhood closest to the bridge.

He agreed.

Our little community is growing.

DATE: August 8, 2018

TIME: 8:00 AM

PLACE: Command Tent A

Present: Chairman Gus Ingersol, Co-chairwoman Ingersol, Co-chair Jim Nickerson (Knock-Out), Engineer Joblownski, Engineer Broadsword, Keb Motiel, and the general populace

Secretary: Myself, Co-chair Barbara Dinews

ITEM: It was with happiness mingled with sadness that Engineer Broadsword debriefed us on the events of the Ozark Galvanized Tin, or Tinman, mission.

They recovered four tons of chain-link fencing, ten tons of bricks, unknown amounts of lumber and galvanized tin. In this, the mission should be considered a success.

However, on the exit from Ozark they encountered an extended damily—numbering in the hundreds—which swarmed the outriders and escort vehicles. Five men were lost: Montfredi, Stevens, Wilkins, Bilyeu, and Hammond. Morale teeters, a strange mixture of delight at the new building materials and grief at the loss of the men. Montfredi is especially mourned.

To make it worse, it seems the damily that got Montfredi is heading this way, trailing the fleeing raiders. It could be here in a couple of weeks. God, I hate to think of towheaded Montfredi shambling along with his ears flapping. (And I find this odd, the prediction of a damily battering the gates—it smacks of meteorology, which we all know is, or was, consistently inaccurate. I can’t help but think of the book Daddy
always read to me when I was a girl,
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
, with food falling from the sky. God, I miss him. I imagine he didn’t make it out of the Dallas firestorm. But this new book we’re writing would be titled
Sunny with a Chance of Zombies
.)

Joblownski brought out stores of his moonshine for the wake. The women of Bridge City conducted an emergency meeting and allowed the remembrance to be held at the women’s fire. Many of the men became ecstatic, it being their first time. The poor boys.

DATE: August 14, 2018

TIME: 10:00 PM

PLACE: Command Tent A

Present: Chairman Gus Ingersol, Co-chairwoman Dr. Ingersol, Co-chair Jim Nickerson (Knock-Out), Co-chair Quentin Wallis, Engineer Joblownski, Engineer Broadsword, Keb Motiel, and the general populace

Secretary: Myself, Co-chair Barbara Dinews

ITEM: Strange to be woken by Gus. He came to my tent and scratched on the fabric. I could hear the usual moaning of revs, and it was hotter than the dickens even at night, and the cicadas were making a horrible racket, but Gus was very quiet and soft spoken. Almost hard to hear.

“We want you to attend this meeting, Barb.” He smiled at me, remembered himself, stopped smiling, looked away toward the river, looked back, and smiled again.

“What meeting?” I asked. I really had no clue.

“Slavers,” was all he would say. So I made myself as presentable as possible and followed. Gus is tall and takes long strides and I had to jog, almost, to catch up. He wasn’t looking at me. He was doing whatever he could to
not
look at me, walking fast, staring at the river, looking at the stars, and finally, half wanting to slow him down and half wanting him to pay attention to me, I reached out and touched his arm. Unfortunately, my hand fell on his stump. It felt angry and hot.

He stopped and looked at me.

“Gus, I’m—” I didn’t know how to say it. “I’m sorry for what happened.”

He laughed. A little nervously, I think, holding up his stump. “It was just a hand . . . I’ve got another. The redundancy of the human body—”

“No, I don’t mean—” I tried again. “Not your hand, though that was . . . horrible.” I took his other hand, held it in mine. I felt his nervousness in the tension of his fingers. I dug my thumbs into the hard calluses of his palm, massaging, trying to loosen the tension there, like Dad had shown me so long ago.

“I mean the night . . . when I danced with that other—”

He pulled his hand away and looked at me. Hard. As intensely as only he, or his mother, can with those gray, almost
animal-like eyes. Wolf’s eyes, maybe. He squinted a little and tightened his shoulders as if awaiting a blow. Even missing a hand, he’s worked shifts on the Wall, and he remains as massive and muscular as ever. Possibly the largest man in Bridge City now that Jasper is gone.

Then he sighed, and smiled. His shoulders relaxed, and I was powerfully reminded that he is just a boy, really. Not uncertain, like any other boy I ever knew. No, not that. But inexperienced.

He has the raw intelligence of a man. But wary. I wish I hadn’t kissed that guitar player.

“It’s nothing,” he said. He waved his missing hand in the air, and I could see the gesture he was trying to make. “Really. It’s nothing,” he said again, leaving me wondering if he was talking about our history or his hand.

Gus might be a boy or a man. I can’t tell which. But whatever the case, he’s complicated.

Wallis and the Doc looked up as we entered the tent, and the Doc’s eyes went back and forth between us two, maybe three, times. Knock-Out, bald now and looking for all the world like David Carradine on
Kung Fu
, dandled the baby on his knee. I sat by him, put my pencil and paper on the table, and made googly eyes at Ellie. Knock-Out grinned and gave her to me, and for a while, everything was all right. The dead, the living, the undead, they’re all minor problems. Holding this smiling, chubby baby is like holding your own soul, unborn, all the possibilities unexplored, all the wrong roads and mistakes untaken. She’s pink, and fat, and has cankles. She smells like love, and the world we’ve
almost forgotten. She put a chubby hand on my cheek and then moved it down to my neck and tugged on my collar and explored my necklace.

I could have stayed like that forever, holding Ellie. Maybe it’s my body telling me something. Maybe it’s the world, the scarcity of life now on this new frontier.

Knock-Out, wasted and no longer looking like a black, burly bear, winked at me, took the baby, and walked her over to Doc Ingersol, who pulled out a breast and stuck it into Ellie’s mouth.

Wallis stood, pointed at a map, and spoke. “Stevens, on his last run, marked the slavers’ retreat back to New Boston, where they knew they could find shelter in their old camp.” He stabbed at the map with a long finger. “They lost many of their soldiers and slaves in the retreat, but they’ve been more actively recruiting . . . if you can call it that . . . making forays into Oklahoma.”

Wallis paused, wiped his face. It was close, still, and hot in the tent. The moans of the dead came through the tenting canvas, and the cicadas sounded even louder.

“They’ve found a cache of fuel, it looks like, and an engineer or mechanic skilled enough to resurrect some armed transports from the Army Depot. But that’s not all.”

Doc Ingersol, Ellie held close to her breast, said, “Don’t mess around, Wallis. Get to the bad news so we can make some decisions.”

Wallis ground his teeth at the interruption—I know it must be hard for him, a former military man, to have a council of equals. He took a sip of water and continued.

“All of our scouts—Stevens, Ransom, Sunseri—report more and farther-flung patrols around the Boston base. Ransom was nearly caught by one. And Sunseri, on his way south, spotted a small cluster of zeds and thought he heard a motorcycle. We have to assume they’re scouting us too.”