World of Ashes (18 page)
Even
in the darkest days of the Black Plague there were more people left alive than now, more chances to keep from contracting the disease. Had people in the Dark Ages any concept of sanitation the Bubonic Plague may never have taken hold in Europe in the first place. This virus, Envier Strain 1 “Resurrection,” was just sadistic. How could a benevolent God allow such a thing to be created some might wonder. Ethan would have suggested that just because God had a plan didn’t mean it was a good one, or that you’d like it. Then again Ethan firmly believed God was much less like a personal guardian angel of all mankind, and infinitely more like a kid with an ant farm.
At the door of Paula’s house a handful of zombies were banging slowly on the door, moaning and smearing their blackened paste-blood all over what had been relatively new whitewash. Pulling out an illegally modified Tech9 Keith had taken during the Blood’s Massacre he mowed the zombies down on full auto, not worrying about hitting them in the head as he emptied the magazine into them. He dropped the smoking weapon after he’d finished, jumped on a railing on the porch and climbed up to the balcony that connected to the upstairs windows. Ethan and Lee stood in the yard, Lee dabbing blood off his nose and Ethan’s eye beginning to swell. They watched Keith’s display of climbing prowess, both standing just like Ethan who was becoming famous for his unintentional “Superman” pose with hands on his hips. The women in the house looked worse for ware, the battle overnight kept them from their beauty sleep. They too looked on with jealous expressions when Keith pulled Paula out of the window and onto the roof with him for a movie-moment recreation of the V-Day kiss.
A stocky looking woman in hockey armor was riding a bicycle nearby when Keith tore the zombies down and rescued his girl. She was a photographer/journalist for the first daily newspaper since the Army retreated, albeit printed on 8 ½ x 11 computer paper, and her camera clicked a dozen times during the eons long kiss. The image would be on the front page of the Sullivan Outpost Daily the next day.
“I’m gonna be a little busy today, but I’ll catch ya for dinner, okay?” Keith said to Paula, who was too stunned to speak. Keith helped the love of his life back inside her house and hopped down off the balcony to greet the Cally brothers. “Dafuq you two staring at? Carry on.” He smiled, pretending to be someone.
The first snowfall of the year brought with it the painful reminder that civilization had leaned too heavily on electric power all around the world. Hardly one out of every ten homes built after the mid 1960’s had been designed to accommodate a fireplace of any kind. Several homes burned down when residents, unfamiliar with the ancient art of fire, installed furnaces on carpets or in trailers. Lots of neighbors became very close that winter, just for survival, and anyone with extra fire wood or coal powered stoves to sell found themselves well-to-do in a hurry. The shift in social classes was mildly amusing to some, especially the lower income families who saw their practical skills come back into high demand, the rich and lazy were quickly becoming the riff-raff of this frontier culture. One family with a two story house had opened a “Warm Café” for those who needed a few hours in a well heated house. Their home had a fireplace in every room but the bathrooms, which allowed them to be so successful they’d opened up five more locations all around the town in less than two months. Stuck at work on the recycling trucks? Have to pull a double shift and don’t have time to walk home? No problem. Warm Café was there for you with hot, cheap food, clean water and a warm recliner. Squatters not welcome.
Though they argued about it every day, Lee managed to keep Ethan in town for the winter with horror stories of a modern day Donner Party. Keith was distracted more than ever when only a month after the V-Day picture Paula was pregnant with their first child. They were still living at Lee & Ethan’s until it seemed safer to move. The brothers didn’t seem opposed to having company, they’d both had friends or girlfriends come to stay with them before. Supply problems, the cold, and always he undead as omnipresent issues, the new town government was also having trouble legalizing the doling-out of abandoned properties to people who weren’t from town, but who now lived there much like Keith and Paula. Abandoned properties were technically now municipal property, and with large free lands up for grabs for what basically amounted to peanuts, the greedy reared their ugly heads to take advantage of the plan and make under the table property grabs.
Many people were glad someone like Aaron Kenly had been elected mayor, because had he not a woman who’d been in real-estate before the apocalypse, Jenny Kopland, would have grabbed almost every vacant property in town under one shady loophole in the law or another. As irritating and bossy as she already was, there was a very real fear she would probably try to live out some sort of Wild West whorehouse fantasy in her perfectly clean Cowgirl boots and tasseled shirts if she were ever given power. She was short, shrewd, wealthy and reminded people ad nauseam that she had experience in leadership. This “leadership” might only have extended to being the President of the PTA, but it fueled her narcissism to new heights. Ethan unintentionally coined the name “Madam Miley” for Miss Kopland when he equated her behavior to a much fatter, older Miley Cyrus; post-Disney.
Kenly finally put the bottle and bong down long enough to stage a very clear news conference about his interpretation of the law, which was about as directly in conflict with Jenny Kopland’s agenda as anything could be. Like Presidents of Old he gave his speech on the front lawn of the town’s police station on a podium he got from who-knows-where. The air was frosty, but warming slightly as the clouds broke on that late November day. “On March 15, this coming year, all properties not currently owned or occupied by pre-war citizens, and those properties owned by people out of town, constructed within the predefined boarders of Sullivan and Oak Grove Village, will be up for auction. The price will not be in U.S. dollars, but in services or goods to the community. Prices will be low. The catch is, if a pre-war resident returns within the next five years, their property must be surrendered back to them unless a compromise or compensation is accepted by the returning party. All items not for daily life-sustaining usage must be properly stored for no less than five years, to include electronics. Municipal Storage will be available at no cost, but storage numbers are tied to house numbers. You are ultimately responsible for the items until the first day of the sixth year of storage. No one, and this means you Miss Kopland, will be allotted by the Municipal Government more than their own home or business for the foreseeable future. This is to prevent the rise of barons, or tenement states. This is a Libertarian State, folks. Everyone is free to come and go, do whatever they want for a living, or be with anyone who chooses them in return. We, your governing body, are here to protect and serve you, not the other way around. But we’re not going to allow criminal enterprises to flourish in our own back yards. Commerce will be regulated, and there will be taxes. Again, not in monetary form yet, but we will figure that part out in due time. Despite how the abridged history books in our schools was portrayed, the United States wasn’t built overnight. The Colonials didn’t just send a letter to the King with lots of pretty signatures on it and magically we became a nation. There were four long, bloody years of war and nearly another decade before the Founding Fathers were able to ratify a constitution and bill of rights. We’re not advertising a perfect system. We’re probably not even advertising a good system. But compared to all the others available, I’d stick to what we got here. Defend it to the death if necessary.” That got a round of cheers from the unexpectedly large audience, even Jenny Kopland for the sake of appearances.
This caused quite a stir, especially amongst people who were not direct owners of property. Renters or family tenants suddenly felt very threatened by citizenship laws, especially if the landlord or property owner couldn’t be proven dead. Kenly and the dozen or so office workers he’d been forced to hire tried desperately to assure those people they would not be evicted with nowhere to go. Laws, unfortunately, were arbitrary for now and Aaron Kenly was the arbiter until or if a legitimate judge were found.
The political battle with Jenny Kopland didn’t end with a speech. The
woman was a manipulative bitch and a benevolent tyrant. Her style of thinking, her ideology, was what had allowed the plague to reach global proportions in the first place. Ethan, and probably many others, wondered how this woman would have fared had she not had a survivalist/hunter/yogamaster husband to protect her.
“We can get our own place in the spring.” Keith smiled, kissing Paula on the head as the crowd dispersed from Kenly’s speech. Every Friday afternoon Kenly would get on the stage, and regardless of crowd turnout give a briefing on the activities of the town. He appointed individual chiefs to run details such as trash removal, maintenance of public buildings, zombie corpse disposal, scavenging parties, etcetera. This style of direct democracy only worked on a Macro Scale, and the feedback wasn’t always official, or even acted upon. There would be no “Free Beer Fountains” in the Wal*Mart Trading Post as one man had shouted out during a weekly address. Sullivan was small enough that it didn’t need to be a Republic, no representatives or politicians need apply. Everyone could literally have their own say, sometimes even the children. A little boy, perhaps eight, asked the Mayor when the park would be reopened because he missed playing with his friends on the swings. Kenly personally helped clean the town’s two parks and reopened them that day.
“What? Our place not working for you? Because you can have Ethan’s room. He passes out on the couch most nights.” Lee smiled too, putting his gloves back on. He was having a lot of secret meetings with Mayor Kenly and the Lieutenants. He was apparently off to another one right now. “I wouldn’t look under his bed if I were you. Crusty socks and whatnot. It’s an Army thing.” He smiled.
“I don’t think Ethan would appreciate a crying child at all hours of the night.” Paula said.
“Where is Ethan, by the way?” Keith had to ask. It had been at least a day since he’d seen his friend.
“I sent him and that kid Allen on a scouting mission. They took a couple four-wheelers yesterday.”
Keith narrowed his eyes at Lee, “And what are they scouting?”
“The other towns.”
“For what?”
“For everything. Anything.”
“And who gave you the authority to give orders around here?”
Lee smiled. “Come with me. I have a job offer for you…”
4
The center of Union was a ghost town. Aside from the occasional holdout unwilling to expose themselves, hermits and rednecks and the like, there were no living people. The winter chill had frozen most of the zombies cold. They were still animated enough to moan or turn to look at you, but chasing you was out of the questions. The only real concern was vagrants and gangs in this frozen, dirty winter wonderland.
While Ethan was inside a gas station checking for anything there might be to find,
Allen had driven off a man who looked like a lumberjack in women’s clothing, a strange sight as he ran amok with a ceremonial sword whacking at zombies and air while repeating the last thing he read over and over again as if he were actually saying something. “Mega Gulp Just Seventy Nine Cents!” Insanity among survivors was epidemic, people without medication or those who’d simply snapped. Rumors of feral children sneaking into camps at night and stealing things had become fact when someone set up a game camera and caught them. The kids were all under the age of ten, barefoot, and extremely dirty looking. They moved like ninjas and reportedly were always accompanied by a terrible smell. However, they weren’t afraid of zombies, they carried kitchen knives or anything sharp, and they especially weren’t afraid of you.
“Gas stations are completely dry.” Ethan tossed the nozzle down at the Quick Trip. “We can’t even count on private businesses having gasoline in their stores anymore.”
“We knew gasoline would dry up eventually.” Allen replied, watching the cross-dressing lumberjack reappear on a hilltop less than a mile away. He ducked down and was gone as soon as his pink nightgown over cammo pants was spotted. “I say we go ahead and check Washington. This place is pretty well looted. I don’t even want to check the Twin Bridges trailer park. I’m willing to bet it crawls.”
“And you don’t think Washington will be looted too? It’ll look as bad as this place and St. Clair combined.”
“The zombies from the river drove people out sooner than most towns. Maybe they didn’t have time to burn everything on their way out.” Allen shrugged and put his helmet back own. “Besides, Union and St. Clair are closer to the highway than Washington. It’s geographically isolated.”
“Whatever.” Ethan started his four-wheeler and they began driving. Normally this mission wouldn’t have involved either of them, but Ethan had gotten into another fight with Lee. This time it wasn’t about going to Oklahoma to find their family. It was worse. Lee was going to start a boot camp in the spring. He was going to train Deputies to be Soldiers. The very idea urked Ethan. He wasn’t the biggest government supporter ever, not after the things he’d seen. As Ethan saw it, Deputies were People working for The People. Soldiers… Soldiers were expendable assets of a governing body. Property by Contract. Ethan had protested, saying that though there would be virtually no difference in the duties performed by a Deputy vs a Soldier and Soldiers weren’t going to be needed for one town. Using the word Soldiers, Army, Military, all had implications Ethan couldn’t ignore. In his mind there was no reason for a separate unit, and it had come to fisticuffs with Lee once again. Neither was a graceful loser, and had the bruises to prove it. At least this fight wasn’t in the full view of the public.
The ride to Washington took longer than they’d expected, navigating through one impossible traffic snarl after another. Ethan had a long time to think about things, the humming of the ATV’s engine inside his helmet drown out anything else. He couldn’t talk to Allen, because for some reason they’d been too stupid to bring the Humvee. That left little else but to do but self-deprecate and consider the finer points of how bad it might hurt if he survived wrecking the four-wheeler. They pressed on until a massive roadblock halfway between the two towns forced them to turn around with only minutes of light remaining. The last two nights Ethan suggested they stay in the multi-purpose building of a local community college Ethan had attended. East Central College was a massive campus for a two year school. Built in 1976 the school had added new buildings, bought more property, and while going for asthetic appeal that would outlast the 70’s accidentally created a modern castle.
There was no heat in the school,
but hidden on the third floor in a tiny electronics office they were as safe as they’d ever be. Their body heat warmed the room, if only marginally. Ethan couldn’t believe how bad he smelled and wished the locker room downstairs still had working plumbing. There was probably nothing wrong with the nearly untouched campus, every water tower in Union had been destroyed and nothing in the area worked. Strange tactic, Ethan thought, destroying the water towers. What good would it do? Then it dawned on him. Without the water towers the electricity still flowing in the area would be useless for pumping new water into the towers. No water and people wouldn’t recolonize the area. Someone wanted to preserve the town. When Ethan shared his theory with Allen, the young man laughed. There was no strategy to it. The fighting here had seen to the destruction of anything useful before the town was overrun. Ethan countered with why would the school they were hiding in not be destroyed then? For that Allen had no answer, unless of course everyone died fighting in the city proper and no one was left to destroy this place too.
“We should think about occupying this place.” Allen said at long last.
“Why?”
“Because man, it’s like a fucking castle. Like Glenbard or something.”
“Glenbard?” Ethan started laughing, recognizing instantly the reference.
“You know the book?”
“‘
The Girl Who Owned a City’
by O.T. Nelson? It was one of my childhood favorites! I reread it while I was in Iraq because I was bored. Magnificent book, but promoting what amounted to monarchy was maybe the wrong way to go with it. I don’t know that I could have written a post-apocalyptic book about children though. Something about kids limits where you can take the story.” Ethan sighed and smiled, thinking about how his interest in that book had been the beginning of all his fantasizing about a world much like the one he lived in, only as a child. Life after civilization had been a scary notion then, it was even worse in reality. The novelty of having an empty world all to himself had worn off as soon as he’d seen someone being eaten alive.
“So then you understand. I mean, just this building alone could be a great outpost. After reinforcing the ground level this would be perfect.”
“Yes it would. A castle on a hill.”
They joked into the night, talking fondly of the book they’d both read. There was nearly a ten year difference in their age and still they had enough in common to be this close. Ethan eventually had to break the mood.
“Do you ever think about the day with the Bloods?”
“Only on days that end in Y.” Allen answered quickly. He didn’t have the thousand yard stare most men who’d seen combat had from time to time. Maybe his reaction was delayed, or maybe he really was comfortable with what he’d done.
“Does it ever bother you?”
“Not as much as it should.” Allen put his spoonful of ChiliMac down and swallowed. “We all know the truth about what happened there. Some fucking gangbangers came to our doorstep and shot at us. Then, when John Peek shot a zombie,
they
shot at us
again
because they were so stupid, so ignorant in the ways of the world, that they
wanted
us to be their enemy. If they’d wanted help they wouldn’t have shot at us. They were so used to the chasm between Blacks and Whites because of our leaders trying to divide us rather than unite us, that they saw us as more of a threat than the fucking Zombies, man. Now, did I have to empty the entire belt into them? No, probably not. On hindsight I could have stopped firing after about twenty rounds, my helmet being blown off or not… But then we’d have never been rid of them, you understand? That was a lesson my brother taught me after his first deployment. If you don’t kill them all, then you’ll either end up giving them medical care after they’ve just killed your friends, or they’ll run and tell a CNN reporter and you’ll go to jail for doing your job. Think about it. What would that fat-fuck Kopland lady do with surviving gangbangers telling their fucking sob story over and over? There’s enough out-of-towners, scum from Chicago and the likes, who would listen to them. It would start a witch hunt, and we’d be the witches, every one of us who was there that day. Besides, they shot me in the head. Even if we were ever put on trial, I’m going to claim insanity and blame you.”
Ethan stared blankly at the seventeen year old for a moment before he started laughing. He didn’t have anything to say. Allen was right. They would all have been crucified before the alter of Political Correctness, Zombie Apocalypse be damned, if even one of the gang members had lived. The entire incident had been an excellent example of Better Them Than Us, the unspoken motto of the world they lived in. Morality didn’t have much to do with it, Survival was the only answer.
“Look, eventually it will catch up with us. No good deed ever goes unpunished, but I figure that by the time it does, by the time those who’d want us punished get around to it, the zombies will be rotted to the bone and we can spread out enough to get away from civilization. Hell, I was thinking Colorado might be nice with fewer Mexicans… er,
people of the Beaner Persuasion I mean
.”
Ethan laughed again. “Racist much?”
“Of course not. That would falsely imply I like white people best. I’m an equal opportunity hater.” Allen leaned back in a computer chair. “So in that regard, I’m way ahead of the curve in treating everyone equally.” Allen changed the subject. “What are you going to do when it’s all over?” It went without saying that “it” referred to the zombies.
“Probably the bare minimum.” Ethan admitted. “I hate farming. I’ve hated it all my life. My dad loved it though. My grandpa too. I can do it. It’s hard work, but everything you have is yours. There’s a certain appeal to it.”
“I assume I’ll end up being a salvage trader.” Allen burped aloud. “There’s a lot of material out there to salvaged. If Texas and Alaska are going to reign over this land they’ll need men like me to gather supplies for them.”
“Yeah, they worry me.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not flying Old Glory.” Ethan sat up straighter. “Look, the American Flag stands for something. Just because the world has ended as we know it, doesn’t mean the last beacon of hope and liberty, of justice and freedom, has to fall too… I just don’t trust either state as an independent nation to retain the liberties promised by the Constitution. Hell, we could see them come back with a vengeance and be totalitarian dictatorships. And what happens when South America, Mexico even, starts putting itself back together? Shit, probably the only people in Mexico to hold out will have been corrupt government officials and drug lords rich enough to protect themselves.” Allen hadn’t thought about that and his expression showed it. “There’s going to be one fucking war after another if Texas doesn’t put them in their place first thing. Our commanders were always saying that once we mopped up the Infection we were going straight to war with Mexico. Think about it, we sit on the most desirable piece of land on the entire globe. Everyone from Hajj to Crazy Ivan know it’s undefended now. If anyone else survived with an intact army we could be in real trouble. In-fighting and zombies might be the least of our worries.”
With that depressing thought in mind they eventually fell asleep. The next morning they had a choice to make. Return to Sullivan without completing the mission, as they had only just enough fuel to go either way, or go to Washington and risk walking back. That was a potential death sentence, so they chose to go to Washington and hope they found fuel. The roadblock ended up taking over two hours to negotiate, serpentines of derelict cars cluttered the path, even off the pavement itself. If the zombies had been mobile they’d have never made it through so many. One particularly fat zombie blocked their path between two pickup trucks. Neither would get too close because what used to be a
she
was still snapping at them, though her rotted legs wouldn’t budge to take her close enough to attack them. The grotesque looking zombie’s feet were pinned by a car’s bumper, and frozen in place by the liquefying rot. The creature’s knees were fractured and bent backwards, but somehow the snapping, bloated corpse kept standing, albeit precariously.
“Reminds me of a pair of birds feet attached to a hip-bone I found on a frozen tree branch. Cat must have found the frozen bird and eaten it off of its own hips.” Ethan got off his four-wheeler and looked into starting a 90’s model Nissan pickup that was nearby. It started, but with only vapors left in the tank.
“That’s really gross, Ethan.” Allen said, listening to the frozen flesh crackle as the fat zombie squirmed. “Thank you for sharing this moment with me.” He said after Ethan put the truck in reverse and plowed the frozen zombie over with a sloshy sounding thump. He left the truck and the bloated chunk of frozen snot that was the zombie beneath it in a ditch. The shoes and feet were still frozen to the road. Ethan smiled at the thought of seeing the faces of the next people to come through the area. If it was still winter the feet might still be there. What would they think to see the frozen feet? He considered leaving a letter for the next guy, but decided it would take too long. Could a hidden game camera really be worth it? Yes. That wasn’t really a question.
Riding as far as the edge of Washington, the two men found an abandoned farm house and took up a spotter’s position in the loft bedroom. Death Metal posters covered up a floral pattern wallpaper from the 1970’s, and the place smelled of whatever dog had lived there before it escaped out a broken window. A dead hamster was belly up in a cage by the computer desk, the woodchip smell of rodents permeated the room like a foul smelling air freshener. Allen started rooting around and found a few porn magazines and a stash of pot in a bowl under the bed. He rolled a joint, lit it, and watched as Ethan peered through the binoculars at the town below.