DUSK 2
Gunshots startled Jasper out of his slumber. He grabbed a hunting rifle and looked up, realizing that he was in a junk yard. The gunshots were no accompanied by screams, shouts, or undead moans. Instead they were regular, like shots from a firing squad. Sal must have been training the other refugees.
A house stood in the midst of the mountainous garbage piles. The structure was two stories high, but Jasper didn’t dare venture up the stares for fear of falling through a weak spot in the floor. He’d slept outside of the front door not only because he’d be able to respond to any trouble, but because he feared the house would fall on his head.
Squinting at the sunlight, Jasper climbed to his feet and stumbled off of the porch. He wasn’t in a hurry to attend to the day’s business, so Jasper didn’t head directly towards the gunshots. Instead he stopped and unslung his back pack, pulled out a canteen, and took a swig of warm and stale water.
He’d woken up in the middle of the night, startled from a nightmare, but Jasper couldn’t remember the dream. Had it been another premonition? He didn’t know. This time he didn’t wake up with nostrils full of Connie’s scent. Instead, there was nothing but naked terror.
Jasper was sure he and Sal were communicating with a ghost. Though the apparition gave him hope that his wife still existed and able to see and talk to him, he wondered why he always saw some blonde stranger. The only times Connie could have communicated with Jasper were in dreams that he couldn’t remember.
He nearly tossed the canteen to the ground, but stopped himself. The butchers who’d slaughtered nearly everyone he’d known were out there somewhere and he’d been forced into hiding with children.
Connie had wanted children.
The gunfire stopped. Sal spoke, but Jasper couldn’t understand the words. When Jasper moved in closer, he saw Adeline and some of the older kids with rifles and pistols in their hands.
“Do you remember your nightmare?” Sal shouted.
Jasper shook his head.
“Neither do I.”
The class scattered and Sal met Jasper behind a mountain of twisted metal.
“I wonder if my old car’s in here somewhere,” Sal said. “I hate cities. There are too many people and too many eyes watching. The man was everywhere. Now it seems like they’re full of crazies and zombies.”
Sal gazed behind Jasper, as if to make sure nobody was coming.
“We keep having nightmares at the same time. What do you make of it?” He asked.
Jasper shrugged. He wanted the conversation to end. Although something was trying to communicate with them, there was really nothing either he or Sal could do if they didn’t know what it was trying to tell them. Jasper was also disappointed that the visions weren’t exclusively his.
“I think it’s trying to keep us on edge,” Sal said. “We may have to leave soon.”
*
Sarah McRee sat curled in a corner, gazing out of the second story window. She’d snuck upstairs because her father was busy training the children how to shoot and Jasper had been afraid to set foot inside of the house, let alone climb the unsteady staircase. The abandoned second story bedroom offered the only privacy for miles, without wandering through a maze of trash.
Though she’d stopped crying hours ago, Sarah did not want to go outside and face the others. Once she’d let go, she found it hard to regain her strength. She was jealous of Sal and Jasper. She and Wade hadn’t shared dreams. If they had, would Wade still be alive?
They’re only dreams, she thought. If Wade had been having them, he’d still be dead. She felt sickened that she wished her friend and father dead. She wondered if Wade could hear her thoughts. If he could, would he be disgusted with her?
Now that they’d reached the temporary safety of the junk yard, Sarah wondered what was next. They were safe for the time being, but what happened whey they ran out of food? What about the winter? Their home had sturdy buildings with power and heat, while all they had in the junk yard were the house and trailer. They could construct shelter out of scrap from the mountains of rusty and ruined cars, but they would be drafty and flimsy. She also wondered if they had the man power for the job. There were around thirty survivors, but only four adults.
She knew they didn’t have enough people to hunt for food. The only two skilled scavengers were her father and Jasper. With more soldiers, fire power, and equipment to employ advanced strategy, people still died. If they died, the rest of the group would soon follow. Even if they were successful, they wouldn’t be able to carry much in terms of supplies. Using the trailer would be awkward with only two people so they’d likely use the station wagon. That meant they would not be able to carry as many supplies back. With less troops on the hunt, they would have to make more trips to and from the car. They also had to worry about fuel. The stockpiles of fuel they’d gathered were gone. Though they had an emergency supply stashed in the junk yard, that would not sustain them for prolonged operations.
They needed to find other people and soon. She just hoped they were friendlier than the ones they’d met so far.
Sarah climbed to her feet and walked out of the bed room.
*
Lenux hadn’t visited Helen since the refugees were loaded into the trucks, of which she was grateful. However, she hadn’t had a moment of privacy save for the time she’d spent in the bathroom booth. When she was nine, the cultists she’d lived amongst and killed for had built a colony in an abandoned mountain town. This was before she’d been picked to bear the messiah’s child, but at the time he’d wished to replace the parents he’d killed in front of her. There’d been a wingless Boeing 707 resting in the woods. As often as she’d thought about the plane, she could not fathom how it got there. The messiah had been equally intrigued by the discovery. He’d told Helen about how the plane allowed people to travel across the entire country in a matter of hours instead of weeks, months, or years like the cult had been. The customized trailer’s bathroom reminded her of the one in the dead, metallic bird.
Though the trailer was furnished for comfort, they were cramped and only had one bathroom. The metal boxes were not meant to carry away so many people. The refugees took turns sitting in the chairs, while the rest sat on the floor or stood. The convoy occasionally stopped to distribute meals to the passengers and give the drivers a chance to switch, but the passengers were not allowed to leave. Had it not been for the window slits in the walls (which looked like they’d been originally designed as places to poke rifles out at the world, but had been dressed up in an attempt to make them look decorative), Helen would not have known if it was night or day outside.
She’d spent most of the trip tucked away in the rear corner of the trailer, far away from the door and bathroom, holding Jack’s hand. At the moment, the boy slept with his head on her shoulder.
Occasionally, she’d spot Sam nervously pacing back and forth, waiting for the convoy to stop. He held no control over the situation, and he felt as powerless as everyone around him had felt since their home was attacked. He had no way of knowing if the strangers would be good to their word or if their intentions were nefarious, yet there’d been no choice but to take their offer. With all of the ears listening and Catherine and Frank in the other trailer, Sam had nobody to confide in.
As she looked around, Helen spotted some of the survivors chatting as if they were on a relaxing ride in a train instead of meat in a truck. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. Many of them were tired of struggling. They just wanted to relax and feel safe. They weren’t used to fighting and they’d always had faith in their heroes. Many of them probably didn’t see a reason not to trust other living people. Nearly all of their problems in the last twenty-two years had been caused by the undead. For some, that had been a lifetime and others just couldn’t remember what it had been like to live isolated in a larger community.
The sunlight penetrating the window slits indicated that it was daytime. Since they’d boarded the trailer, Helen had lost her sense of time. She wondered if they were almost there or if there was another day of traveling. Judging by Jack and the multitude of people sleeping on the floor, she wasn’t alone.
Sam hadn’t slept through the whole ride. He hadn’t really talked to anyone either. He just paced around that door.
The trailer jolted and the wheels crashed back to the ground accompanied by a metallic thud. Some of the passengers cried out and others grabbed at whatever they could, trying to steady themselves. Sam fell on his ass. Jack stirred and mumbled, then he fell back to sleep.
Helen wished she could see more than slashes of sky through the windows. She wondered if they were off road or if the existing road had deteriorated or was covered in wreckage. Though they worried her, Helen and apparently everyone else had gotten used to the occasional bumps in the road.
When Sam got back on his feet and resumed pacing, Helen gently pushed Jack aside, stood, and walked over to her other companion.
“I’m glad someone’s sleeping well,” Sam said without glancing at Helen.
“You look worried,” she said.
He looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. In a hushed voice he said “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I, but you’re going to wear yourself out. You should get some rest while you can,” she stretched her neck and shoulders. “There’s nothing we can do right now and they obviously want us alive for the time being. If they were out for blood they could have killed us back in those roach boxes we called home for a few days.”
She wasn’t sure she believed herself. On top of that, Sam wasn’t worried about the impending danger so much that there was nothing he could do. In the short time she’d known him, Helen had learned that Sam needed have some control of the situation when his people were involved. Had practical thinking not taken over, Helen would have been pacing by the doorway with Sam.
Darting eyes and his hushed demeanor gave away Sam’s apprehension about revealing his concerns where others might hear. Sam’s attempts to conceal his anxiety only amplified it.
“Why don’t you sit with us in the back?” Helen asked.
“I want to be the first one to greet them,” Sam said letting his hand brush his waistband where he’d concealed a sidearm. Their hosts had confiscated all firearms. They’d said that the danger of accidental discharge was too great and there was no need to worry because their escort was heavily armed.
Helen just hoped she’d see her rifle again. It was the only thing from her old life that she truly cherished.
After all they’d been through, it was hard for Helen to believe that she hadn’t known Sam for years. She’d seen him handle worse situations well, but she’d also seen him snap. He’d nearly strangled her when they first met because he thought she was an assassin sent by the same group who’d killed half of his unit. He’d felt trapped in that situation as well. She hoped he wouldn’t pop off too soon and get everyone killed.
*
Jack waded through wreckage of a burned out apartment building which had poured out onto the street. The ash, brick, and twisted metal seemed to stretch out for miles. The sky was a blackened gray, like the kind he imagined when reading about volcanic eruptions, but the street was bright as if the sky had been a clear and vibrant blue. Hundreds of the undead shuffled in the street around Jack, oblivious of his presence.
Am I dead? He thought. Is this what it’s like to walk around as one of them?
The buildings across the street hadn’t been touched by fire, but the years hadn’t spared them. They stood, but inside they were rickety and unstable. They were so close together that Jack could have placed his hands against one building, his feet against another, and crab walked up the space between them. He thought about doing just that in case the undead suddenly noticed that dinner walked among them, but wondered if his movement would attract their attention.
A flock of crows swooped overhead. The black, squawking cloud crashed swooped downward, barely clearing the rooftop of the building directly in frond to Jack. Looking down, he saw a squirming undead body crucified to the third story. Several crows, maybe ten of fifteen broke formation and swooped down upon the body. They landed pecking at the dead man’s eyes, chest, neck, and anywhere lese they could land. The ghoul tried to bite its feathered attackers, but the crows dodged the undead maw.
The development was strange because Jack had never known zombies to attack animals, nor had he ever seen the scavengers attack an undead corpse. Most animals stayed away from the undead as though they sensed some sort of poison in the creature’s soulless body. The only exception Jack had seen were insects.
The corpse shook its head, temporarily scarring the birds away form its face. One of them flew away and swooped back at the ghoul’s groin. Both of the flesh eater’s eyes had been pecked out and the flesh around its mouth had been pecked away.
“Jack,” the creature said in Paul’s voice.
Jack stumbled back, tripping and tumbling to the ground belly up. The undead noticed him now.
As the mob turned one by one, grinning and drooling at their prey, Jack crawled backwards, wishing he’d taken his chances climbing up a narrow alleyway. He reached for a pistol, club, knife, anything he could use as a weapon but found nothing. When he tried to grab a brick, it crumbled an fell through his fingers like sand.
Before the undead were upon him, Jack saw a figure standing in the background with a dumbfound expression on his face. The man was very much alive.
*
“Jasper,” Sal kicked the boy in the leg. “Wake the hell up! It’s time for you to take guard duty.”
Jasper had been having a nightmare. Sal had considered letting Jasper sleep through it, he decided not to because the boy never remembered them. Even if this was a premonition they wouldn’t learn anything.
Gasping, Jasper jolted out of his slumber.
“Do you remember your dream?”
“Yes, no, maybe. Something about some burned out buildings and crows.”
Sal shook his head and walked away. He figured he should get some sleep, but he wasn’t tired. The sun had just gone down and they hadn’t done much during the day. He had a feeling that would change by the end of the week, but for the time being Sal was wired.
He hadn’t talked to Sarah all day. He’d spotted her walking into the old house earlier, but figured she wanted privacy. She hadn’t had time to grieve. At that moment, Sal realized that he’d never given himself a chance to grieve for Tammy.
A lifetime ago, Sal had been in and out of trouble with the law and worse. He’d butted heads with an arms dealer who’d been connected after knocking boots with the dealer’s old lady. In an attempt to evade his pursuer, Sal had traveled to the last place anyone would think to look for him: the city. He’d hated cities almost as much as he hated deserts. There were people everywhere, and the cities were among the first targets if the Soviets had ever decided that they weren’t afraid of US nukes. In the event of an outbreak, the cities would have been the worst places to be. Aside from that, Sal hated the traffic. However, the very elements that made the cities death traps had also made them perfect places to hide. Nobody in the city knew Sal, nor would they have been able to tell the difference between him and a drunken vagrant.
The plan had been working, but Sal had trouble keeping a low profile. He’d stored a small cache of weapons deemed illegal by The Man in his apartment and he’d had a few clashes with some local gangs when they’d tried to get him to pay a street tax. The fallout had made the news, but Sal had gotten away clean.
Sal began frequenting strip clubs. One in particular was owned by a man named Merv who was even more paranoid than Sal. He’d told Sal all about how The Man had filmed the moon landing in a sound studio just to fake out the Ruskies. He’d suspected that the moon landing had been a farce, but Merv had detailed theories. More importantly, there was a stripper named Tammy, or Ginger as the clientele knew her.
When Tammy first met Sal, she’d stumbled into an argument about the Roswell crash and Area 51. While Merv adamantly believed in alien abduction, the crash at Roswell, and extraterrestrial infiltration in the US and Soviet governments, Sal saw stories of little green men as pure lunacy. In the past, they’d argued over other popular topics such as the Kennedy assassination. Merv thought that had been a hit by the Men in Black. Merv even thought that aliens determined the outcome of most major sporting events. When the dead started walking, there was no doubt in Sal’s mind that Merv thought that had something to do with aliens too.
The two conspiracy theorists had raised their voices to shouting level, when Tammy grabbed the barstool next to Sal and lit a cigarette and took a drag. Sal had seen her on the stage before. Her movements were always smooth and graceful. She later said that she’d been dancing since she was five, and she’d had plans to storm Broadway but they hadn’t worked out, so here she was bouncing between dives.
“It’s funny” She’d told Sal, “hearing you call someone else crazy.”
Perplexed, he scowled at her and took another swig of his beer. Merv laughed at the turn of events.
Tammy ordered Tequila Screwdriver and pushed a strand of her blond hair out of her face. She turned to Sal and crossed her legs.
“I never thought I’d see someone else in here as… colorful as Merv,” Tammy said. “Where are you from?”
“Are you FBI?” Sal asked. He’d been dead serious.
This time the woman was confused. She shook her head.
“I’ve just never seen Merv get along with any of the customers so well,” she said. “You’re Sal, right? I’m Tammy.”
When Merv placed a glass in front of the stripper, she fell silent. Sal had forgotten that the barkeep was standing there. Tammy plucked the cigarette from her lips and grabbed her drink. Losing all traces of femininity, she gulped the tequila and citrus mix. Sal wondered how anyone could stand tequila.
“Would you like to come back to my place?” she asked.
Sal spotted Sarah sitting on the rusted remains of an old Chevy. The paint had long ago been stripped away by the whether and all of the windows were shattered. The frame was dented all over and crumpled in the front as if the car had crashed into a tank. She faced away from Sal, gazing in the direction of the vacant highway. With her mind in the distance, Sarah didn’t notice her father’s approach. He thought about turning back and leaving her alone, but decided against it. She needed her father.
“Mind if I share that trunk?” Sal asked.
Sarah slid over without saying a word and Sal took a seat next to her.
“I’ve been thinking about your mother.”
Sal had never told Sarah much about her mother, mostly because he didn’t know where to start. Telling Sarah that her parents had started their relationship on a purely physical level and that her mother was a stripper wouldn’t do Tammy any justice. Looking back, Sal knew that had Tammy lived and the dead had decided to stay dead, they wouldn’t have lasted and Sal probably would have just disappeared to another city, running from yet another problem.
Aside from living in the same city and knowing Merv, Sal and Tammy really had nothing in common. She thought he was crazy and would have had a fit if she’d found the stockpile of weapons that Sal kept near by just in case. She knew about the firearms Sal had stashed in his apartment, but he wasn’t sure which made her less comfortable: that he had six firearms hidden like Easter eggs or that he hadn’t obtained any of them through legal means. He’d have hated to face her wrath had she found out about the explosives.
Although Sal loved the outdoors and felt that he’d been exiled from his home in the mountains, Tammy was very much a city girl. If Sal ever decided to move back to the mountains, Tammy would have gone, but she would have hated it and him.
About two months after they met, Tammy showed up at Sal’s doorstep. They hadn’t had plans that day, but she was made up and wearing a nice dress. It looked like she’d spent hours in front of the mirror before heading over to Sal’s place. Her usual aura of confidence had been defeated by an army of nervous ticks. When Sal answered the door, she didn’t look him in the eyes. Although she’d spent a long time engineering her appearance, her mascara was streaked as though she’d cried on the way to Sal’s place.
He invited her in and brought her a cup of coffee. When he returned from the kitchen, Tammy blurted out that she was pregnant and Sal promptly dropped the cup of coffee on the grey carpet, where it exploded in a splash of brown liquid and shards of white. By the time he sat down, Sal realized his mouth was hanging open and his girlfriend was crying and begging Sal not to leave her.
Three years earlier, a bouncer at the club Tammy danced for had knocked her up and promptly left her. A month later, she’d had a miscarriage. One night, Tammy hadn’t showed up for work, so Sal had dropped by her apartment. He found her in the bath tub, drunk and sobbing, with a razor in one hand. She told him about her pregnancy and they never spoke of it again. Sal wondered if the sobbing woman on his couch remembered her drunken confession.
He moved to the couch and put an arm around Tammy. That nigh, they’d made love and talked about the future for the first time.
“You have a lot in common with your mother,” Sal said. “She thought I was crazy too.”
*
Jack had woken up screaming about two hours before, then fell back asleep. Sam had moved to the back of the trailer to check on the boy, then walked back up front, continuing his pacing. Helen remained close to Jack, holding his hand and keeping his head close to her heart. She occasionally cooed something soothing and kissed the top of his head, like a concerned mother would have done. She wondered if she should wake him. He’d awakened only to fall into another nightmare.
When Jack grunted, Helen shook him.
“You’re having a nightmare. It’s okay,” Helen said.
Jack’s eyes flew open and his arms waved. He grunted and was pulled back into his fitful slumber. Some of the passengers gawked as Jack slowly kicked, but most of them paid no attention. Maybe they’d had similar experiences.
Helen just kept holding Jack’s hand until the trailer stopped moving.
Jack leapt to his feet like he’d been kicked in the ass and his eyes sprung open. He looked around, panting.
“You were having a nightmare,” Helen said. “It looked bad.”
He looked around as if he didn’t recognize anything or anyone around him, then slowly registered his surroundings. His mouth hung open and his arms were out and bent at the elbows, like he was trying to brace himself against something on each side of his body.
“What were you dreaming about?”
“I don’t remember.”
Helen heard voices outside. They weren’t shouts of rushed orders or combat, but casual conversation. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but she saw Sam intently facing the door. Still disoriented, Jack sat down next to Helen.
The trailer lurched forward again, and kept moving at a crawl. After a few minutes it stopped again. Someone opened the back door and ushered everyone out. Sam jumped out first and started asking questions. She saw door usher and Sam exchange a few words before the crowd swallowed them.
Still holding hands, Helen and Jack followed the crowd out into the open. The crowd was directed into a line and she spotted another line formed by the refugees from the other trailer. Ted and Catherine stood on either side of Erica, holding her steady. The trip must have been hard on the girl, for she looked exhausted.
Suddenly, Jack’s grip tightened on Helen’s hand. He was hurting her, but Helen didn’t pull away. Jack’s eyes traveled between six of the ushers.
“They were in my dream,” Jack whispered.