We had a long night ahead of us. The Brethren held back on firing and everyone broke out the pitchforks. Whenever some undead thing got to close, somebody would reach down and stick it in the brain, thus saving on bullets. While we were doing that, the patriarch had driven the bulldozer into the main mass of what remained of the enemy and was busy grinding all the riffraff into a dark red paste.

  After a bit I noticed a bunch of the wounded in need of tending. Not that I’m a doctor or anything, but I have met a lot of doctors, and not all the head shrinking kind, neither. I decided to see if I could help.

  The woman looking after them seemed pretty somber about her job, which seemed strange to me. None of the wounded looked too bad off. The worst of it was just a bunch of bites, probably from the ghouls, and that was a simple fix for most folks, at least according to my friend from Haven, Mark.

  I had talked to Mark all about differing infection rates during the winter. I’d had to sneak off to use my shortwave because I hadn’t wanted anyone else to know about what I was doing. If everyone had known about Haven then I was afraid that they might all want to leave. Then I would have been alone again, and that would have been sad.

  What Mark had told me was that the best shot to cure a zombie bite was to offer the Eucharist. To his way of thinking that would save any believer. Since I was looking at a bunch of believers that seemed like a good thing to try. Although I had received the Lord’s Supper once, from the hand of my uncle, the treatment is only supposed to work after a victim is bitten. Since I’ve been bitten lots of times without any attempt at a cure and never Changed, I wasn’t sure if it was true that it would work, but then again, maybe I’m just extra special.

  When I brought it up to Angie, the lady in charge of fixing hurt people, she said, “We don’t believe in that. There’s no magic in the Lord’s Supper, it’s just a symbol. Superstition won’t help these people, their time on this earth is almost over and they need to prepare themselves to meet the Lord.”

  My reply was the essence of logic, “Is you’re brain broke? We’re currently surrounded by a massive army of walking corpses, a veritable mockery of the resurrection, and you’re worried about, what? A symbol of sacrifice actually doing something you can see? Who cares what you believe! Give it a shot and if it doesn’t work then we can all sit around and watch these people die.” I should point out that it was generally understood, from their own previous experience, that all of their bitten would die.

  Angie was not to happy with me and called me a papist. Since I didn’t know what that meant in that context I decided to let it slide. I kept harping on about the possible cure, though, until some bitten woman’s husband broke down and said that he’d try it if I thought that it might help. The look Angie gave him was pure poison. She tried to talk his wife out of it.

  What surprised me was that Angie wasn’t the main problem. The problem was that nobody had any wine or bread. Or at least nobody would admit to it. Those two things are really important for that particular ritual. I’ve seen people die from being bitten before, and it’s not that bad as dying goes. Pretty sudden, actually, without any warning. Same as if the person turns into a zombie except the victim just stays completely dead (as opposed to the walking around kind of dead). The point being that I didn’t know how much time I had to mess around looking for, or making, the necessary elements for the ritual.

  I might have mentioned sometime, that there was a girl I knew who had been shot by a bullet that had passed through a zombie on its way into her. What eventually saved Keisha was a transfusion (of a sort) of my blood. I figure the reason that worked was because I’ve been bitten so many times that I had become super-immune (I just made that word up).

  One of the things I carry in my pack is a tiny syringe, just in case. As small as it is it takes up almost no space, and it’s useful for any injection, not just for using my magic anti-zombie blood. Anyhow, I didn’t tell anyone (especially Angie) about what I had in mind. I just filled the syringe and got to work.

  No one said anything at first because I made a point of bringing the syringe from out of my first aid kit. What I said was, “This might help,” and that was good enough. They all probably thought that it was some kind of drug. After my fourth patient got an injection, though, Angie noticed me sticking myself in an effort to get a refill.

  “What are you doing!?” She screeched in her most horrible hag voice. Then she came over to prevent me from administering the next dose.

  I have to admit that I had no for sure idea if my cure would work or not. This was the first time that I was testing it on someone who had been bitten. My main line of reasoning for thinking that such a treatment might be of some salutary effect, was that that there wasn’t really much point to having a cure for death by Change if it only worked on people who had been shot by a bullet that had passed through a zombie. Therefore, obviously, it had to have a more general application. Kind of a non-sequitur, I know, but sometimes that the way things are.

  Anyhow, what I said was, “This is medicine. It might ease some of the difficulty.” I hate to lie (unless it’s fun) but those words seemed like a good compromise. Ambiguous, while implying some sort of pain killer. The kind of thing medical professionals like to say when they don’t want to kill false hope. I think everyone understood it that way, anyhow.

  Before Angie could fully rat me out, I continued, “I don’t think we have to worry about the negative effects of opioid use at this point. In my medical opinion this is the best we have to offer.” By which I indicated the shot I was administering while I spoke.

  Angie yelled, “I saw you stick that in yourself! What are you doing?” She acted to interfere.

  To which I replied with a look of confused irritation, “What are you babbling about? I don’t have a dozen of these syringes ready to go, I have to refill the same syringe each time. Cross contamination of these patients is no longer a concern for them, surely you agree.”

  The moron just wouldn’t let it go, “You’re injecting them with you’re blood. I saw what you did!”

  My reply was only ostensibly to her, but actually I was directing it to the remaining patients, “You’re panicking. Calm down. Think about what you’re saying. What logical reason would I have to do as you’ve suggested? I think that maybe you’ve let your concern over what you see as religious differences get in the way of your good sense. The next time I refill my syringe I’ll be sure to let you watch more carefully. Please give me some room.”

  I finally had her doubting herself, if only for an instant. Maybe I did have a bag of happy juice at my hip, she didn’t know, and by the time she figured it out I had already given each of the remaining bite victims one tenth of a cubic centimeter of the red stuff. That was stretching it a bit thin, but with everybody watching I couldn’t afford to go back to the trough.

  With Angie glaring daggers at me, I told everyone, “Just try and relax. The medicine should help. Perhaps Angie here would be kind enough to lead us in prayer.”

  And so she did. I remember, it was all about getting ready to die and not believing in any divine power of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Baptism, or Last Rights, or any other such thing. Also as I recall, there was a side order of trusting one’s fellows, and not being tempted by strangers.

  By the time that was over, the patriarch had returned triumphant. The enemy were slain, and we were victorious. The first thing that Angie did was tell on me. The patriarch was not pleased.

  “These people are dying, son. Show some respect. They don’t need any last minute distractions or drugs. What they need are clear heads so they can concentrate on their preparations for the end. I’d appreciate it if you left them in peace. I insist.”

  Looking past Fisher, I was surprised to see that nobody had bothered to kill Goth. Somehow she had finally managed to free herself of her bonds and had snuck up behind one of the Brethren. She deftly drew his sidearm from its holster and shoved him to the ground. I had Zippy out in an instant, and sending a bullet whizzing past Patriarch Fisher’s head, put a hole straight through her throat. Her dead body had enough time to hit the ground before it rose as an ogre. It was the forceful gait that gave it away. I put another round through its head even though it really was a waste of a bullet.

  I said, “Yeah, I’m really sorry about the misunderstanding earlier, it won’t happen again.” By which I meant that the next time any of his followers were dying from zombie bite I’d leave them to it. I continued, “But I hope we can still be friends. There’s a lot I’d like to learn from you.” Which was true. None of it was of a religious nature, however.

  There was one of those pregnant pauses normal people sometimes have, followed by some mild cursing. The patriarch asked me, “Where did you learn to fight, son? Your like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “My uncle taught me. He was the best.”

  Which led to all kinds of annoying personal questions: ‘Where are you from? What happened to your family? How have you survived? Where are your friends? What are things like there, there, and there? Do you know of a safer place where we might stay? Where can we find more munitions? etc.’

  Fortunately, I was able to ask a few questions of my own. Fisher told me that his group was from slightly farther south, near, but not on, the coast. His scouts to the south had reported that there were no boats left by the time that they’d arrived, that everyone who could flee by that route had no doubt taken them.

  The town his people were all from had been affected by the Change, but being a ‘God fearing people’ very few of them had Changed. The few who had turned into the undead were all ‘science teachers and such’.

  “So what happened to all your kids?” It was a cruel question but he had been grilling me all about my own family, so fair is fair. I was willing to bet that he hadn’t had to splatter their brains all over the kitchen floor, at least.

  “They all died when the apocalypse struck. It was the Lord testing our faith, but we remained true.”

  That was another thing that Mark had told me about. He had a whole bunch of scientists and religious types looking into the matter. What some of them thought was that the ‘spiritually dead’ were mostly the ones that got turned into zombies. Certainly not all, but mostly. I guess that’s because they thought that they were already just a bunch of soulless bodies ruled by appetites, or something like that. They said that ‘as a matter of demographics’ baptized believers mostly weren’t affected by the Change when it had first happened. Unbaptized believers, though, died. Most little children had died during the Change, and I, myself, had yet to see a little kid or baby zombie, and precious few under four feet tall. I guessed all the really little kids counted as ‘believers’ regardless of the status of their parents, at least for the purposes of zombification resistance.

  Personally, I lacked any great confidence in all of that pious thinking. It seemed a little too convenient for me. I’d seen some weird stuff though, so I knew better than to disregard anything out of hand. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ etc.

  I decided to not share that gem with Fisher, though. Considering that his flock would rather die than reconsider a religious notion, I figured that tidbit of education would likely go over like a lead balloon. If I told him that all their kids were dead because nobody had dunked them with a prayer, I don’t think we could have been friends anymore, and religious differences aside, I kind of liked the man.

  The patriarch and his followers needed a place to stay so I recommended the village of West Block. It was located a bit to the north of Middletown and seemed just about the right size for the patriarch’s bunch. I offered to help him clear it out. He asked what the overall zombie situation was like in the region. I told him that a bunch of the zombies in the region had stumbled their way into a big gravel pit, like a bunch of morons, so now we didn’t have hardly any zombies left. He decided to take me up on my offer and decided that his people would head out as soon as everyone was well enough rested to travel.

  Until then Fischer decided to spend the night ‘keeping vigil’ over all the bitten, praying for them. He wondered if I would like to join him. I was whipped from all the fighting so I declined.

  Come morning no one had succumbed to death by zombie bite and everyone was ecstatic, wondering at the miracle. Naturally, Fisher had a chat with Angie and then came over to me.

  He said, “Good morning, Gideon. Angie tells me you had some strange doings with the bitten. Before, I was quite upset by that, but lo, this morning finds them all well. How did you make that happen?”

  He seemed honestly curious, so in spite of my earlier reservations I decided to share what I knew, what I’d seen, and what other people had told me. I still had to be careful not to hurt his feelings, so I came up with a gentile way of explaining everything, “You know how in the Bible a lot of people didn’t much care for Jesus? You know how the dummies had ideas about what God had revealed long ago and how those ideas were wrong? They had their old fashioned way of doing things and really, really, really didn’t want an upgrade? Know what I mean?”

  He thought for a second before answering, “Yes, I know whereof you speak.”

  “That’s you.”

  He took it better than I thought he would. At least he didn’t order me stoned or anything. I explained what I knew, told them all about it. Zombies, ghouls, ogres, even the bone ghouls I’d faced once. I told them everything, even about Haven. It took them a few hours to adjust so it was mid afternoon before we finally moved on from that place. I made sure to pick up my van on the way back.

  It only took a day to clear West Block. The undead were of a more common variety with only four ogres in their number. I took the liberty of dispensing useful advice regarding improving the town’s defenses and even offered them the use of another bulldozer if they needed it. With the town framed on three sides by a creek it seemed like an easy place to completely surround by a moat. Then I went home.

  Chapter 14

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “You want to do what?” A fellow from the town of Lakesight, who’s name I forget, had come all the way to the prison to speak to me personally. He had some strange and unhealthy ideas.

  “Eventually the zombies will all get out, and then what will we do?” he said. “They’ll come for us like they always do. We have to stop them!”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. We were discussing all the zombies which remained in the stone pit, and what to do about them. I cleared my throat to temporize.

  Undeterred, he continued, “I have a great plan. All we have to do is clear the incline leading down into the quarry. But before that we build a series of walls at all the corners to all the roads to help herd the zombies in the way we want them to go. Then we just lead them out of the stone pit and off away from us! All it would take is someone with a car to lead them all away. You see?! It’s foolproof!”

  I said a brief prayer for strength and looked to the man who had accompanied him, one Officer Lowland, “Is this what all the good people of Lakesight want? Because, I must admit, I see a sort of pointlessness to the whole thing. What do you say, officer?”

  Lowland replied, “Hey, don’t look at me! The mayor just told me to keep him safe for the trip. His mother wants him back in one piece.” That seemed very thoughtful to me, since there were still a few of the undead wandering around here and there. I made sure to tell the officer so.

  To our would be savior, however, I replied, “I don’t think that your plan can be accommodated. The main problem, aside from all the other problems, is that we’ve gone through a lot of trouble to wipe out the incline leading into the pit, altogether. There is no way for them to ascend unless someone is willing to go through a lot of trouble to build a new one. In the history of the Universe there has never been a clearer case for just letting things be.”

  So I had to send him away disappointed. He wasn’t the only one to seek me out for some useful advice or to take up his cause. After defeating Reagan and his goons I enjoyed a sort of elevated status unique to the region.

  Right off, just a week after getting rid of Reagan, a nice old man by the name of Cooter had showed up on my doorstep with a bunch of dynamite. He explained that he’d been using it for fishing from the time before the Change, but now it wasn’t worth it to make that kind noise just to catch a bite to eat. Such explosions had the tendency to attract too many monsters, and with even just a few malingering zombies loitering about, there was too great a chance of the fisherman being the one getting caught. So he gave it all to me. He said it was like a ‘civic duty’ or some such. Anyhow, I thought that was real nice of him.

  Cooter wasn’t alone in such generosity, either. There were lots of people who showed up to pay their respects and they usually brought some kind of gifts. Typically a few odd caliber bullets or maybe some medicine which nobody in their town needed, stuff like that.

  A number of the townsfolk had discovered my taunt letter that I’d left for Reagan, and had taken it into their heads to treat me with respect, as if I really were a judge. There were even a few cases for me to settle. I was more than happy to comply, but it was harder than I thought it would be. I mean, sure, some thief gets caught in the act and the solution is obviously to force reparation, and beat the thief to a pulp. That’s just common sense. But what do you do if it’s some granny who does the stealing? I don’t mean a crazy old lady with some kind of old person disease, I mean she knew what she was doing and figured her elderly status would clear her. Instead of the beating (which, although fair, would not have been very nice) I had them take her bed away. That really upset her, because it was a nice bed.

  More than judging cases, though, I established a guard station, complete with a roadblock and radio, to the west (the direction I thought traders from Haven would eventually come from). Then I ordered ruined all other roadway approaches to our little corner of the world. I knew that would only deter zombie movement to a very limited extent, but I was sick of all the bandits and brigands. It felt like it was a good time to turtle.

 

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