Timothy Long - Beyond the Barriers

“We don’t know much—just theories and rumors. There was a lot of talk of a bad swine flu vaccine, and then others said it was the regular flu shots. Then there was a rumor about some experimental gas in North Korea that got out of hand. None of it makes sense.”

“Understatement.”

“Yeah. What have you been up to? You look like you’re in good shape.”

I had been hoping for answers, but like the other survivors, these didn’t know anything either. I wanted to pound the chair in frustration, but what good would it do? Would it even matter, knowing how the cursed virus started? It would just be one more thing to file away for a rainy day when we were all old and retired from zombie hunting—if we lived that long.

I had done more thinking along the lines of food and supplies. The stuff in stores wouldn’t last forever. We would need to start farming, raising animals, taking care of crops. How could we do that when the world was overrun by the dead?

“I hid out at a cabin until I ran out of food. Then I came back and hooked up with a bunch of crazies holed up at the Walmart.”

“Oh them. We have been in communication a few times. They wanted us to join them, but we were happy here.”

So there was dissension in the tiny fiefdoms after all.

“You didn’t want to join forces?”

“We worked hard to build this place. We brought in generators, a tanker full of diesel. We have semis full of food lined up. We brought in a truck filled with water bottles, and we’re doing all right. When we need more stuff, we go on recon and get what we need. We didn’t need them trying to bring it all to them.”

“They had a pretty nice setup. Very secure.”

“We have a nice setup.”

I had to agree. They had a defensible position and they were well supplied. If overrun, they could always pile into the trucks and make their escape.

As if to punctuate my thought, a gunshot broke the still air outside. Another followed. From the blasts, I guessed it was an AK-47, which had a very distinctive sound. I would have loved to have gotten my hand on one; they didn’t look as nice as my assault rifle, but they were a lot more reliable.

“Shit,” she said and jumped up. I followed her out, but I glanced back down the hallway through which they had taken Katherine. Lisa saw my look and nodded. “I’ll be out there when you’re done. As soon as you can, ask around about a jumpsuit. They’re pretty good protection, and your clothes are a mess.”

I nodded my thanks and turned to check on Katherine.

The hallway led me to a kitchen, where a respectable triage unit had been set up. A pair of tables draped in white made up the beds. They both appeared to be padded. There were a couple of kitchen chairs in a corner, and a whole counter full of tools and medications. There were syringes and a box of sutures, piles of gauze and bandages. This place was ready for war.

Katherine sighed as the nurse slid a needle out of her arm. She smiled in a goofy way at me, and I wondered what kind of painkillers they had given her.

“You know something, Erik? My life was a lot simpler before you walked into it.”

“If you’re getting romantic, then I’m all ears.”

I went to her side and took her hand. She was still cold, but the woman attending piled a sheet and a quilted blanket on her. Katherine’s shoulder was exposed, and the paper towels had been pushed aside. The woman took the same syringe, wiped it and Katherine’s skin with alcohol, and then administered a couple of shots to the area. Katherine didn’t even seem to notice.

“She’s floating on a sea of morphine right now. She may get sort of loopy.”

“I’m Erik. Thanks for the hard work, Doc.”

“Oh I’m no doctor, but I’m the next best thing. I’m a nurse, used to work in a facial reconstruction office, but I have all the chops.”

She was dressed in the familiar jumpsuit, but she had a white strip tied around one arm, which reminded me of the corpsmen I used to see in old World War II movies. She was tall and thin with strong Asian features.

“I’m Maddy,” she said and gave me a short wave in lieu of a handshake.

“Hi, Maddy.”

“I’m numbing the area. I don’t have a lot of morphine, so I have to use it sparingly, but I do have a few bottles of Lidocaine. Same stuff they use at the dentist.”

I was familiar with the drug. I once had a small procedure to remove a cyst, and they shot the area up while I tried to relax and play it cool.

I looked away when she got out the blades, but she seemed confident with them in hand. I found a chair and sat down so I could see Katherine from the right side but not view the work. The smell of alcohol filled the room.

“You’re not exactly a romantic guy, but you’ll do, I suppose.”

“I have my moments.”

“You do. But you usually have a big knife or gun when they happen.” Katherine smiled.

“Who shot you? Did you see anything?” I asked for the second time that night, wanting answers. I refused to believe that one of those ghouls was capable of picking up a gun, aiming it and firing. In my mind, the ghouls may have been smarter than the zombies, but they barely had motor skills. There was so much I didn’t understand about them.

“I think it was one of those guys with green eyes. I don’t think a regular human would be hanging out with them.”

“Are you sure? Did you or the others ever see one holding a gun or weapon of any sort?”

“Nah, but they always stayed pretty far away from us. They seemed intent on just corralling or directing the dead bastards.”

It didn’t make sense, but who could make sense of any of this? The dead were back, and they ruled the world. We were now the minority, and our existence was a big question mark.

She started to say something else, but drifted off into lala land. I stayed by her side, and, sometime during the night, my mind drifted far enough away for me to fall into a deep slumber.

I was rocketed out of sleep like a sled down a mountain, or such was the impression my dream left on my mind. In it, I was at the cabin, and it was covered in snow. We were surrounded on every side by the dead. After running out of ammo, Katherine had an idea. She dragged me to the rooftop, where we had a sled like the one Santa used. He was one of them now, a jolly fat man in red. Red the color of blood. He waited for us and he was hungry.

We got into the sled and left the top of the mountain at high speed. We flew over a freeway, skidded onto it, and kept on going until we ran into a swarm of ghouls.

Something loud banged outside, and even in my half-sleep state, I recognized the AK-47 again. I came out of the seat and whipped my head around in search of my shotgun. A shooting pain rocketed down one shoulder. Somehow I had fallen asleep in the wooden chair, and no one woke me. I had been left exhausted as soon as my body stopped running on high-octane adrenaline. The night had been a blur. The escape, the fight, the flight, and then meeting up with Lisa and her crew of holdouts.

I rubbed my eyes, but they were so dry they felt like they were coated in sand as if I was rubbing tiny grains into my pupils. After a minute, I stood up and went to check on Katherine.

Drugged or not, she was used to living on edge, and her eyes popped open, hand moving toward a nonexistent gun, the moment I entered the area . She saw me, and a flash of confusion was washed away by a genuine smile. It touched me, I won’t lie. I had spent a lot of time with her, and I was attached, but she was still very reserved around me. The concern she had brought up about not being able to bear children meant little to me. She could take her common sense and piss on it, because I wanted to be with her no matter what.