Born In The Apocalypse (22 page)

Chapter 48

It took three weeks, but between the three of us and some help from Trey’s dad, we managed to clear out the house and build a serviceable wall around the vulnerable sides. The east side was completely open, but the way the land was configured no one, not even me, could easily climb up to the window, let alone get the leverage to break it. During that time, Trey and I got to know our new neighbor, and she got to know a few things about us. Trey and I taught Kim how to set trap lines, where the water was, and how to skin and gut the animals she caught.

It was funny when there was a pounding on the gate, and Kim as there with a dead rabbit, grinning like a loon and holding it up for me to see. I was proud of her for her success, and I think she felt like she could actually survive on her own without having to scavenge all the time. In the spring, Trey’s mom promised to teach Kim how to can her own food and how to grow a good garden.

When the weather was warmer and the snow was in full retreat, Trey and I took the horses and headed back to that little sports store we had found in the winter. I still hadn’t told Trey about the lights I had seen, and I still wondered if I had actually seen them at all. Maybe I had actually dreamed it. Part of me didn’t believe it, but then I wondered if seeing those lights might have driven that other guy crazy.

I had asked Kim if she wanted to come with, but she was busy with her garden and yard, so she declined.

A warm breeze pushed us along the road, and I was carrying the compound bow we had found a month ago. I had discovered the bow’s shorter limbs were perfect for shooting from horseback, and Judy loved the fact that I took her out more often. I was hunting larger game a lot more, and she was very helpful in pulling back full animals. It was also safer in that any Trippers we encountered, Judy was much better able to outrun them than I was.

We went past the asylum where Trey and I had spent that night, and it didn’t look any better in the day. I was still curious about what they might have used the top floors for, but if I was honest with myself, I’d rather that remained a secret.

The landscape was different now that the snow was melting. Instead of being white, it was a lousy shade of brown. But even though it wasn’t very pretty, it meant spring was coming and everyone, including the Trippers, felt it.  We were seeing one every other mile; sometimes they were close, sometimes they were further away. I killed the ones that got too close, putting arrows in their hearts and dropping them. The compound bow made it easy, with the sights and all, and I had figured out how to adjust the strength of the pull so I had it at the edge of what I could manage.

“Still can’t figure out why they die when I put an arrow in them, Trey,” I said, putting the bow back behind me. I had a hook on a leather strap that the bow hung on. Judy didn’t care, so I figured it was a good idea.

“No idea,” Trey said. “I’ve seen several with bullet holes in them, but they’re still walking around. Maybe they heal up if the holes are small, but if the thing causing the wound is stuck in there, they can’t heal, and nature takes its course.”

That was the best idea I’d heard. At least, it made the most sense.

“Is this the place?” I asked, pulling Judy up.

“Yep,” Trey said. “The sign I threw in the bushes is still there.”

We went through the store and picked up everything we had left behind. We filled bags with camping supplies, knives, arrows, and everything in between. I had two bags and Trey had two more, and I rigged the bags to act like saddlebags. Judy really put her ears back at me for the extra weight. I hoped we wouldn’t have to run, but if we did, I was ditching our load.

We made it back to our homes before dark, and while Trey put Pumpkin away, I took the bags into the house to arrange the haul and see what we wanted to do with it.

While I was doing that, there was a hail from outside. I knew the voice and went out to let Kim into the yard.

“Hey, Josh! Do you have a hatchet I could borrow? I need to cut up some kindling, and the axe I have is not working as well as I want it to,” Kim said.

“Sure, I think I can set you up better than that,” I said. “Come on in.”

Kim came in, and I was a little anxious to show her what I had. I think I needed someone to approve of what Trey and I had done. We went into the front room where I had laid out all of the stuff we had retrieved. Everything was categorized, and there were multiples of several items, including hatchets.

“Oh my god!” Kim said, clasping her hands to her mouth. “Where did you guys find all this stuff?”  She picked up a lantern, put it down, picked up a knife, checked the edge, then put it down. She finally picked up a hatchet.

“Oh, this is perfect! Can I borrow it?” Kim asked, holding the hatchet close to herself.

“You can have it in trade,” I said.

Kim cocked her head at me. “Trade for what?” she asked slowly.

“Information,” I said.

“What kind of information?” Kim still looked at me with a funny look in her eye.

I had no idea what she might think I meant, but I wanted Trey to come over and hear it, too.

“Come back around an hour after sunset,” I said. “Trey will be over, and we can have dinner. I’ll tell you what I want to know then.”

Kim gave me a half smile. “All right, Mr. Mysterious. See you later.” As she passed me, she leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks.”

I felt better than I had for a month. “You’re welcome.” I grinned like an idiot watching her walk back to her house.

Chapter 49

Trey came over after sunset, and we spent some time going over our haul and what we thought we could do with it. We decided not to try and have a store of any kind, mostly because we couldn’t decide on who would run it. I thought we could trade the extra stuff for tools we didn’t have, but Trey pointed out we could probably find whatever we needed for free.

“Sell it?” I asked.

“To who?” Trey replied. “And for what?”

I had to laugh. Here we were with a bunch of stuff that everyone could use, but no one really needed. “Maybe we’ll just bring a little bit into town and see if there is anything to trade for,” I said. “Maybe somebody has something we can’t think of right now.”

Trey laughed as well, and we worked ourselves up into a good fit of the giggles. Every time we stopped, one of us would snort or make a noise, and then we’d start all over again.

We were still giggling when Kim came over. She was carrying a small bundle which turned out to be a small loaf of bread. She was very proud of it, having made it herself. Trey’s mother had shown her how to do it, and she was very eager to see what we thought of it.

Our dinner consisted of a stew made with rabbit meat, canned vegetables, and Kim’s bread. The stew I had made a dozen times, and was pretty good if I did say so myself. I wish I could say the same thing about Kim’s bread. Honestly, if I nailed that loaf to a stick, I could use it to brain half dozen Trippers without ever losing a crumb. Trey and I were too polite to say anything, though; we just held the bread in our mouths until it softened up a mite. Kim kept waiting for a response, and I tried to give her one, but the only thing I could get out was “Gouh.”

“Does that mean ‘Good’, Josh?” Kim asked, taking a bite of her own creation. She worked in her mouth for a while and made several faces as she worked her jaws around it.

After about five minutes of chewing, we all got it down. I took the remainder of mine and dunked in the soup bowl, leaving it there for another five minutes before picking it up again to try a bite. When I did, there wasn’t anything left in my bowl but meat and vegetables. The soaking helped, but not much.

“Well, it was my first try,” Kim said.

“That’s all right,” Trey said. “You should have seen Josh’s first attempt at skinning a rabbit.”

“That bad?” Kim asked, smiling at me.

“Let’s just say the rabbit would have looked better being eaten by a pack of wolves,” I said, reddening a little under the collar.

We finished dinner and went to the large room off the kitchen. The stove had been fed recently, and the fire was warm. We pulled up chairs to be closer, and Trey brought out the little jar of cider he had ‘borrowed’ from his dad’s supply. The cider was good when it was cold, but it was great when it was warm. Trey poured the jar into a coffee pot and put it on the stove to warm. When it was ready, we all had a cup, and in the warm glow of the fire and the fermented apple juice, I cashed in on the trade I had made with Kim.

“Kim,” I said gravely, smiling.

“Josh,” Kim replied, with equal, smiling gravity.

“That information I want from you.”

“Okay. What’s do you want to know?

I looked at Trey before I looked back at Kim.

“What really happened when the Trippers came? I’ve only known what my dad told me, and it wasn’t a lot. Things had already gone bad by the time I was born. But you were there. You know what happened. That’s what I want to know,” I said.

Kim looked at the two of us. She took a long drink before she settled back in her chair with her eyes closed tightly. After a few seconds, she leaned forward again and opened her eyes. She didn’t look at us when she finally spoke; she was looking at a point in time twelve years ago.

“My parents were smart people, and we used to live in a big house right outside the city. I went to a nice school and had lots of friends. Our neighborhood looked a lot like yours, only there were kids all over the place, and no fences.

“I was a little girl when it all seemed to happen at once. I was even younger than you two. We’d been hearing reports about some kind of virus that came up through the streets; the junkies and the pot-heads were turning into rage monsters, tearing into people and ripping them up. Those that didn’t die turned into the same infected people.

“My dad watched the news all the time, trying to get an idea of what was going on. My mother was more of the kind who thought the government would be able to take care of us; that we should just relax and trust, and we would be fine.”

Kim paused for a minute, letting the memories come back. I could tell she’d pushed a few down deep that were just now seeing the light of day. After a long look into the fire, she started up again.

“The problem was we didn’t know anything for sure! We were hearing reports, but there was nothing on the news, nothing! It was almost like we were being kept in the dark on purpose. We heard that the cities all over the country were full of Trippers, that people were dying by the thousands every day, and the only state that hadn’t fully fallen was ours. So in order to keep some part of the United States alive, they sealed us off from the rest of the world, and we would have to fend for ourselves. Dad talked about duty and resolve and something else I didn’t understand; all I know is he and my mother had a big argument over the rifle he had bought just the day before.

“Three weeks after the wall was built, the first Trippers started coming through our neighborhood. My girlfriend Jill was caught outside, and she was killed, torn to pieces by a small horde. Her parents tried to help her, but they were killed, too. People didn’t really understand the disease or what it did to the people who caught it. They just didn’t get it. No one really did,” Kim said.

“I got a question,” Trey said. “How did it spread so fast? We had always been told that you have to get bit to get the disease. Ain’t no way all those Trippers could have suddenly sprung up from the streets just by being bit.”

Kim smiled a little smile. “If you hadn’t caught it in the first three months when everything was starting to go south in a hurry, then you weren’t going to get it.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Kim looked at me. “Because it was airborne.”

Chapter 50

Everything came at me in a rush. My father, my mother. Oh my god, I killed my father. My mother died because my father was gone; I killed my father. I started to breathe heavily, and I had a hard time focusing. I couldn’t hear what Kim was saying or Trey’s responses.

A hand fell on my shoulder, and I looked up, right into Kim’s eyes.

“You okay, Josh?” She asked.

“I killed my father,” I said.

Trey looked at me for a second, and then he figured it out. “Oh, man. Josh, how could you have known?”

Kim rocked back into her chair. “Wait. What? What happened? What do you mean you killed your father?”

I couldn’t formulate words. I waved hand at Trey. I could feel tears starting up, and my heart felt like it was going to fall out of my chest.

“Josh and his dad went out for a look at the wall, and on the way back, Josh’s dad got bit by a Tripper. He thought he was turning and told Josh to end it for him. Josh did the right thing by his dad, and that was it,” Trey said.

Kim shook her head. “You poor kid. How could you have known? Your dad was going to die, Josh, and it would have been extremely painful.”

“What?” I said stupidly, my head still foggy.

“We finally figured out that Trippers are very sick themselves, and their bodies are literally walking virus farms. They have rotting meat and who knows what else in their mouths, along with the main virus which is a mutated form of ataxia,” Kim said. “Your dad’s system couldn’t handle a load like that without heavy antibiotics, and he was
going
to die. People who get bit by Trippers will
always
die without antibiotics, and we ran out of those five years ago.” Kim put a hand on my arm. “You saved your dad from a very prolonged, painful death. Never be sorry you did that. If I get bit, I hope someone will put me down.”

I found I could breathe again, and it felt like my shoulders were a little lighter.

“Really? You’re not just telling me this?” I asked.

Kim nodded. “My mother was bit by a lone Tripper in our back yard. My dad shot the Tripper, but it was too late. She lingered for three weeks literally screaming in pain until finally her heart gave out.” Kim looked away again. “My father brought me to a neighbor’s house and then he left. I never saw him again.”

“What did people do when they realized they were on their own?” Trey asked.

Kim sighed. “People who lived in the city died. They couldn’t get out; there were too many infected people there, and they had no way of getting food. Things got better the further you got away from towns, but then towns started building walls, and they started fighting for resources. My neighbors took me to a town north of here, and we lived there for three years before it got overrun by another town of bigger, meaner men. I was taken to live in the new town with the other children. My neighbors were massacred.”

“Did you escape?” Trey asked.

“Day after I arrived,” Kim said, with a little pride in her voice. “I took a knife, a pack of food, a bottle of water, and I took off. Been five years gone now.”

“Where was that town?” I wanted to know.

“North of the river, just south of a big collection of highways,” Kim said.

“Ever think of going back?” Trey asked.

“Not since the Trippers shredded it,” Kim said.

We sat in silence for a while, just listening to the logs in the fire talk to each other. Every once in a while one would say something especially important, and punctuate its remarks with a shower of sparks and flame.

I voiced a question which had been on my mind for a while.

“What do you think is on the other side of the Wall?” I asked to no one in particular.

Trey spoke first. “Trippers.”

Kim was gloomier. “Death. No one who has ever crossed over has ever come back.”

I just nodded. “You’re probably both right,” I said.

We finished our evening, and since it was too late to send people home in the dark, I set up Trey and Kim in the extra bedrooms. The cider Trey had bought had really started to do a number on us, and we all were a little light-headed going into bed. I think I understood what Trey’s dad meant when he called his cider the “Slow Riser”.

In the morning, we went our separate ways, and I spent a good deal of time combing Judy and just thinking about things in general. One of the things I couldn’t get out of my head was that crazy man’s last words and what I had seen when we were up in that office building.

I went out to my lines, carrying my shorter bow. As I reached the top of the earthen dam, I looked east for a long time. My dad always told me that I needed a goal, something I had to try and achieve in life before I could move on to the next goal. It used to be surviving from day to day. But as I stood there feeling the sun on my back and hearing the whispers of the trees, I knew at that moment what my goal was.

I was going over the wall.

The End

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