Fortunes & Failures - 03 (9 page)

Her mind drifted. Chad and his group had left two days ago. For some reason, almost everybody had gone with him. About ten minutes after he had left, she realized that she was the only female to stay behind. Her on-again/off-again boyfriend, Duane Bowers, and his two drinking buddies—Eugene Jasik and Ray Owens—had stayed. So had that creepy Mexican José Reyes that worked at the Casa Felíz restaurant that she used to frequent on Double Margarita Mondays.

Then there was the sheriff, Glenn Kollars. Sheriff…that was a joke. They’d been fucking for three months when he’d told her that he had the perfect way to get rid of Chad. At first, she thought he was going to say something about having him killed. She would have never agreed to that, but instead, all she needed to do was to say that he’d molested her three-year-old daughter. It had been just that easy. Six months later, Chad was sentenced to ten years in prison. Unfortunately, by then, she and Glenn had split up.

Kimberly bit her lower lip. She’d tried hard these last few months not to think about Phoebe, her daughter. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she heard that scream. The one she’d heard in her back yard that day. That was the day she’d put her daughter outside because Duane wanted a hummer before going into work.

Kimberly blinked back the tears.
No,
scolded herself,
you won’t think about that.
was all about survival. Not for the first time, she wondered if perhaps Chad had the right idea. Only, he’d cut her out of his life, going so far as to get into some sort of perverted relationship with his ex…Donna. That little slut Ronni’s mother. He’d been seeing Donna since he’d gotten out, then there’d been that ‘incident’ at the rescue center. Donna had landed a lucky punch. Now, that bitch was dead and she was doing what it took to survive.

The bushes shook and Glenn stepped through.
Yes,
thought,
everybody has their role now.
The men were busy finding supplies and hunting for a place to stay besides this stupid park or native trail, or whatever the hell it was they’d camped in last night.

“Where’s them red bikinis I got for ya?” Glenn asked as he unclasped his belt.

“Hanging up to dry,” Kimberly said as she rolled over onto her stomach and propped herself up on her hands and knees.

She heard and felt Glenn move in behind her.
Yes,
Kimberly winced as she reminded herself,
everybody has their role.
She braced herself as the thrusting started.

* * * * *

4

Geeky Soulmate

“I played a softball tournament here last year.” Heather scooped the last grape from the can of fruit cocktail into her mouth.

“Here?” Kevin looked out the press box window.

“Well, not this field.” She got up and stood next to Kevin and pointed. “This is the boy’s field. The softball diamond is right across. See it?”

Kevin looked out past the fence to another playing field that looked pretty much like the one they were directly behind home plate of. They were in a big building that contained four different press boxes; each one looking out on its own baseball diamond. This hub was useful in that they could watch from every direction. The biggest threats were the ones looking northeast and northwest back towards the city of Newark.

“Is that one?” Heather grabbed Kevin’s arm and turned him just a bit. They were in the northwest box looking out into a neighborhood that had, thus far, been almost frighteningly quiet.

Kevin brought up his binoculars and made a slight adjustment. A lone shambler was indeed wandering in the trees across the way. It looked like a young girl, perhaps ten or so years old. She was missing an arm.

“Yep,” Kevin confirmed. He gave a slow going-over of the area to be certain it was alone. “Doesn’t seem to be any others.”

“Where have they all gone?” Heather asked.

“Well…” Kevin continued to scan the area. “Since we’re about five months in, and we’ve seen large groups moving in pursuit of people—”

“Like us,” Heather joked.

“Yeah, like us,” Kevin agreed. “But also Shaw and his men, and anybody else who’ve passed through. And who knows what else has put them in motion. Anyways, from what I’ve seen, they bunch up if they figure out there’s something to eat in the area.”

“Like us,” Heather giggled.

“Yes.” Kevin took a deep breath. She was trying to get a reaction from him and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. “The problem I have is that we couldn’t see any singles in the more populated areas. They gather. The appearance of a single could be that these things are like goldfish.”

“Goldfish?” Heather sounded skeptical. “If you said piranha, then I’d agree…but goldfish?”

”I’m talking about their memories,” Kevin explained. “Supposedly you can tap on a goldfish bowl, and by the time it swims back, it’s already forgotten.”

“Oh,” Heather sighed. Sometimes Kevin didn’t make any sense. She knew he was trying to make a point; he was just really bad at it.

“What I mean is,” Kevin sensed her frustration, “I think those things might not have any sort of memory. If you watch, they can claw at a door or wall forever. The ones we’ve seen trapped in cars keep clawing at the glass to get out. They have no concept of futility. But something comes along and disturbs them, and off they go on a totally new tangent.”

“We’ve got a couple,” Peter announced. He, Shari, and Erin had been watching from the southeast and southwest facing press boxes.

Kevin brought up his binoculars. There were four moving along the road out front. They were coming from the east; which meant they’d come across the bridge less than a half a mile from their location.

Sure enough, there were two zombies…and a dog. Looking closer he noticed that the dog was leaving dark splotches in its wake. That would indicate that it was probably a recent kill. It looked emaciated, every rib showing in the mangy looking, patchy fur.

“That’s disgusting,” Heather whispered at his side.

The trio of undead continued along the road, apparently uninterested in the baseball complex. As he watched, he was stricken with an idea. He returned to where he and Heather had been and found the straggler. It was moving along the outside of the fence now…heading for the others. He kept going back and forth between the north and south west-facing press boxes. The road that the trio were walking along arced away and they still hadn’t seemed to have noticed the lone straggler.

The others—Peter, Shari, Erin, and Heather—watched Kevin in silent curiosity. This went on for several minutes, but other than questioning looks and the occasional exasperated sigh from Erin, everybody stayed out of the way.

Finally, Kevin was able to stay in the southwest facing box and watch both the singe girl and the trio. The dog-zombie noticed first and veered away from the group, heading towards the one-armed girl-zombie. But the other two continued on. Finally, the pair stopped. In their slow, awkward way, they changed direction and started across the open waist-high grass. When the group converged, there was a pause, and for several seconds they all just stood there. Then the little girl turned and headed towards the road that would lead north though a residential area and eventually into downtown Newark. The others followed.

“Goldfish!” Kevin exclaimed, pointing.

Everybody stared at him like he’d sprouted a second head, even Heather who had heard the ‘goldfish theory’ explanation only moments ago. Kevin stared back, his look of realization slowly giving way to sheepish embarrassment.

“I don’t mean to sound like a jerk,” Peter finally broke the silence, “but what are you talking about?”

“Okay,” Kevin sighed, his inner-voice telling him to make sure he didn’t talk to them like they were stupid. “The zombies, from what I’ve observed, seem to have absolutely no short-term memory. They move along the path of least resistance until something causes them to deviate.” He saw Erin’s face scrunch up at that last word. “Umm…change direction.” Her face brightened and he continued, “There is no way I can determine a course, but, and this is what we can use, I can comfortably say that I believe we can effectively distract them.”

“But what does all this have to do with us?” Shari asked. The others nodded. They still didn’t get it.

“If we can get to this golf course that Heather talked about, then we will have a secure place on a bit of a hill. This allows us to see in plenty of time if there are any dangers, living or dead, approaching. If we fortify the fences and walls, even a heard should flow past like a river skirts an island. Then we can rig all sorts of noisemaking devices. That way, when the damned things bunch up on our location for whatever reason, hopefully we can distract them.”

Everybody continued to look at Kevin while he spoke. Slowly, their looks of skepticism changed to nods of agreement and approval.

“This needs to happen soon,” Kevin continued, casting a pointed glance at Erin’s belly. “I want to be someplace remote and at least moderately safe for when the baby comes.”

“That’s a really good point,” Peter agreed.

“The problem we’ll have is making the trip,” Kevin sighed. “We could use the truck to get us in the area, but I think it’s a bad idea to bring it all the way. That would be like ringing the dinner bell.”

“I know, baby girl.” Shari put an arm around her little sister and returned her defiant gaze to Kevin and Peter. “I will watch her if you two big, strong men can’t deal, but there is no way you are just going to leave three women to fend for themselves while you dash off where anything can happen.”

“That might be a mixed blessing,” Peter spoke up, everybody choosing to ignore Erin’s statement. “Sure, we could get in contact with each other, but I know for a fact that they were monitoring frequencies back at The Basket. We start blabbing and somebody say the wrong thing to give our position away and we bring them right to us.”

“Then what do we do?” Heather asked, brimming with frustration. “We can’t let those jerks dictate everything that we do or don’t do.”

“No,” Kevin shook his head, “but unless we add to our numbers, we are prime candidates to be picked off by any large group or band of raiders that come along. That was the cause of the ultimate demise of the characters in the original
Dawn of the Dead
, they created this Utopia, but some raiders came along and they couldn’t defend it.

“We have a good location. Being this close to a city and surrounding neighborhoods, we could actually be sitting pretty when it comes to supplies. Our biggest need is finding more people like ourselves.”

“Okay…the Licking River…we follow it east. According to Heather’s dad, there is a nice golf course about a hundred miles that way,” Kevin explained.

“First flaw,” Peter spoke up. “That river hooks north at some point because it passes right by The Basket. Second …well…it’s more of a question. Why are we going so far if the point is to stay close for supplies? Not to mention we would be going
back towards
the bad guys.”

“Let me take those in order.” Kevin set down the pencil and turned to face Peter and the others. “Thanks for the heads-up on the whole heading towards The Basket thing. We will need to stay on the south bank. When the river veers north, we will maintain our eastern course until it comes back to us. As for your second question,” Kevin made exaggerated air-quotes, “it is irrelevant. We will still be close enough to major population areas for supply runs. Also, we have the advantage of having more ground to lose any zombie herds that pursue. And really…does it matter which direction we are
from
The Basket? We’ve been thown back to the transit equivalent of the Pioneer era when wagon trains took months to make the journey out West. We might as well be across country. I’d rather be in a position that, if they branch out their scavenging operations—”

“Like they did to Heath,” Heather piped up. She glanced over to see Kevin scowling at her. “Sorry.”

“Like they did to Heath,” Kevin enunciated each word. “Then we will have plenty of warning. By the time they reached our new location, hopefully we would have the numbers to fend them off.”