Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (84 page)

I will wait until the morning and see how much activity there is. I don’t want to stand out.

Saturday, August 10
th

I found out how the NAA is keeping everybody in line. All of the children have been moved to the middle floor of the Sunset Fortress. A few dozen of the soldiers are keeping them hostage. Once a day, a few of the mothers are allowed to go in and see that the children are okay.

I still haven’t seen Mama Lindsay, and the few people that I ran across say that they’ve not seen her or the president since the first day of the attack. The good news from that is that they didn’t see them hung. I also asked about Phaedra, but got pretty much the same result, only, nobody that I spoke to really knew her until I described the healed wound on her face.

One of the things I am going to ask Mama Lindsay about when I find her is how we have managed to live in such anonymity. There are not that many of us here. And while I don’t think it is important that we all know each other’s business…I find it peculiar that we know so little about each other.

Monday, August 12
th

Mama Lindsay is home!

I was so glad to see her that I forgot much of what I wanted to say…wanted to ask. Instead, I just couldn’t seem to let her go. The whole time that she filled me in on what I missed, I never once allowed her to slip from my arms.

Here is what I missed:

The NAA came about two hours before sunrise. Since their movements had already been scouted, it wasn’t a surprise. The surprise came in the fact that they didn’t try to negotiate or even engage in any sort of dialog. They simply started launching fir
ebombs, focusing on the Sunset Fortress structure. (Mama Lindsay says it is obvious that they knew about that particular building because they placed far too much importance on it.)

Apparently, Jenifer gave the word to open the North Gate after less than an hour. Mama Lindsay thinks she might have acted a bit premature, but Jenifer insisted that we didn’t have the firepower to match up with them.

Here is where Mama Lindsay went on a bit of a rant. I guess we have never put measures in place for a concentrated attack from a living enemy. We always believed that any individuals that came at us…raiders and the like…would be “normal” people. We never planned for an army to invade. (I guess Mama Lindsay has been hollering for that cause for a while.)

What nobody expected was the round-up of women who fit a possible description of Meredith and the hangings that fo
llowed. I guess it broke Jenifer. She screamed and cried and insisted that Meredith has been dead for years, but they wouldn’t listen. Worse still, they made her watch each time they brought a new bunch of ladies to the gallows.

I finally interrupted to ask about Phaedra. I was so co
ncerned that she might be one of those brought out. What I never realized was that both Mama Lindsay and Phaedra are actually quite tall. Meredith wasn’t.

That is when I got a new surprise. It seems that Mama Lin
dsay and Phaedra are an item. All the times I have seen them together…and the missions that I have had with her have all been by design. At first I was a bit miffed. I felt lied to and spied on. However, as I listened, I began to hear what she was really saying.

Mama Lindsay has been alone since Mama Janie was killed. She has found somebody, but she didn’t know how to tell me. How can I be upset at her for trying to be happy? How can I e
xpect her to spend her life alone? She already gave up so much of it to care for me by herself.

So, back to events here. The NAA has announced that they will be conducting a census. They will be requiring every person here to fill out their forms. Failure to do so will mean an imm
ediate order of execution. Also, as a demonstration of our acceptance of their authority and that of the President of New America, Dominique DuBois, we will be required to submit one half of our population between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two as enlistees in the NAA.

A lottery is to be held next Sunday to determine who will go after the call for volunteers has been put out. For the next few days, there will be a recruiter at the dining facility accepting those who would enlist of their own free will.

The census forms will be checked and used to compile a list of all eligible members of our community. I guess I should prepare myself for the possibility that I may be leaving my home. Oh…that was the other catch; any new recruits will be shipped via train out to Irony, USA…the supposed capitol of New America.

With all of this news, I am more than a little surprised at how well Mama Lindsay is taking things. I asked her what she would do if I were selected; she was not even hesitant for a s
econd when she said that she would follow me to Irony even if she had to walk the entire way.

The next thing I asked was how Jenifer was doing and if I could see her. Mama Lindsay says that it isn’t a good idea right now because Jenifer had a bit of a collapse. She has used words like “broken” and “collapsed” to describe one of the toughest women I’ve ever known. It has me concerned.

Wednesday, August 14
th

Mama Lindsay and Phaedra sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! Yep, my mom has a girlfriend. Phaedra moved her stuff in yesterday. And the two of them are smiling like idiots.

Corridor 26 is facing its largest crisis and those two are a pair of love-struck dumb-bunnies. It was cute for about ten s
econds. I finally told them I was going to the EEF depot to fill out my registration card and that I would not be back for at least two hours.

Now, I am sitting up on this wall of concrete-filled cars that has meant safety all my life. This is where I came the day before I began my EEF training. Only, this time, I am alone. I have my crossbow, but no zombies have made an appearance yet. Most of the walkers have been concentrated near the North Gate. I have seen a few in the distance, but nothing I could shoot.

Why now?

That is the question that hammers away at my insides. If Mama Janie had lived, would we still live in Warehouse City where I was born? If so, would I have joined the EEF? So many questions that I can’t answer.

And what about Warehouse City? We haven’t heard anything from there to suggest one way or the other how the NAA has fared. Is it possible that they have been able to withstand the attack? Perhaps the NAA was beaten and now help is on the way here.

I do know that any time I have asked Mama Lindsay about that place the past couple of days, she has just shaken her head and said that the NAA might find them a tougher nut to crack. I keep thinking about sneaking out for myself and travelling down the Corridor to see what I can, but I don’t want to worry an
ybody. Still, I can’t help but wonder…and this is a recurring thought that is starting to bother me…

“What would Meredith do?”

Thursday, August 15
th

It is late and I am tired. The NAA kept us all on the top deck of the Sunset Fortress. The sun beat down on us and the concrete just seemed to make it even hotter. We were given water twice.

I don’t think things went well at Warehouse City. The train returned early this morning. It was missing a car and the whole thing looked like it had been dipped in tar and lit on fire. Black globs of the stuff are hanging in thick patches. Also, I didn’t get a good look, but apparently, a bunch of the soldiers were off-loaded and carried into one of the buildings that many of the re
sidents of this area called home.

Meanwhile, several soldiers went around and asked ever
ybody their name, age, and occupation. I don’t know why, but when they asked me, I said farmer. I guess I was just afraid to say that I am in the EEF. I don’t want to be bumped to the head of the selection pool.

However, the biggest concern I had today is about Jenifer. She was nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t the only person to notice. Some folks asked about her and basically got told to mind their own business.

That didn’t sit well with anybody. A few people started getting loud, but the soldiers moved in with these cattle prod looking weapons. Only, they didn’t use them on the folks getting unruly…they brought up a few of the children from where they were being held. There wasn’t even a warning, they just showed up and zapped this little girl no older than six.

Then a big fight broke out, only, it was us fighting amongst ourselves. People were yelling and carrying on. Things are fal
ling apart here. In no time, nobody was talking about how well it appeared Warehouse City did against the NAA. All the talk about hope and making our own stand…about the possibility that we might see some help from down the Corridor was gone. Instead…we were fighting each other and casting blame. By the time it was over, people were even blaming all of this on Jenifer.

I can’t believe how fast we are coming unraveled. It is like everything done here the past twenty years has been thrown out the window.

Saturday, August 17
th

As I sit here in this partially burned down apartment complex, I wonder if I will ever see my home in Corridor 26 again. I wonder if I am doing the right thing. I wonder if I will be able to live with the choices I am making…and the ones made for me.

Friday, agents of the NAA started rounding up all citizens that fell in the sixteen to thirty age range. I guess they decided to expand their acceptable parameters. It started early in the mor
ning about an hour or so before sunrise. The only reason I knew ahead of time was because Phaedra and Mama Lindsay were in the front of the house having some sort of secret resistance meeting. (I will get to that later.) They heard a commotion outside and watched as a neighbor of ours was dragged out to the street and added to a group already shackled together.

Phaedra went outside to ask what was going on, and it turned ugly in a hurry. One of the soldiers hit her in the side of the head with a club or something. That caused everybody who had been at this little revolution planning event being held in
our
living room to get angry. Before Mama Lindsay could say or do anything, folks were rushing out of our house and attacking the soldiers.

At some point, Mama Lindsay had dragged Phaedra in the house. She was telling me to grab our bug-out bags as she went back outside to try and get things under control. I had everything by the door and even managed to clean and bandage Phaedra’s head. I guess I was so absorbed in that task that I just didn’t rea
lize how bad thing got outside.

Then I heard the scream.

I ran to the door and saw a woman crawling across our little yard, the handle of a very big knife jutting up from her back People were coming from all directions now. Soldiers and citizens.

The battle got hot and the soldiers were losing. They were simply too outnumbered. I was in the yard searching the crowd for Mama Lindsay when the flare burst over the Sunset Fortress. It froze everybody as the reddish-white glow lit up the area. It took me a moment to realize that it was a tiny body being tossed from the roof.

A voice came across on a megaphone demanding that we cease our “hostile actions” immediately. As an added emphasis, a second tiny body was tossed. This time
everybody
heard the screams and I swear I heard the impact. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I will go to my death certain of what I heard.

Needless to say, the fighting stopped. Nobody—at least none of the citizens of Corridor 26—wanted to have another child’s death on their conscience.

Mama Lindsay rushed me inside. She helped get Phaedra to her feet and she urged us to the back of the house and out the door. We made it to the wall and it only took a little extra help to get Phaedra over. From there, we wove our way through a well-looted neighborhood. When we came to this apartment complex, Mama Lindsay chose it as our place to hide. I was initially worried that we hadn’t gone far enough, but she insisted that they didn’t have the manpower to spare to go look for three people. Besides, we could have gone in any direction and they have no way of knowing where we ran.

Still, it just does not sit right with me.

Sunday, August 18
th

I went out for a while on my own to see if I could find us a way to Warehouse City that wasn’t too deep in the wilderness. It looks like we can travel along the north side of the Corridor. That will keep us away from the railway and provide plenty of wooded cover.

This won’t be like when Sam or Meredith made the trip along this route. Most everything that is useful is gone. We will need to worry about food if it takes longer than four days—the standard load for a bug-out pack—but the plentiful creeks and streams will take care of our water needs.

When I returned, Phaedra was doing better. She still feels a bit woozy and won’t be worth a damn on foot for at least another day, but she should be fine to move out tomorrow. I guess that she and Mama Lindsay thought it was as good of a time as any to let me know they had a plan in place to keep me from being picked in the draft.