Authors: TW Brown
DeAngelo made for the kitchen, and I quickly corralled the girls to the ladder that led up to the lookout tower. “Go up with Fiona until this is over,” I said, turning my attention back to the room, and specifically the woman slumped in the corner.
A low moan rolled through the room from the kitchen and I heard a loud sound that could only be a pan of some sort connecting with a skull. Everybody was trying to rush into the back, including the newcomers, and completely ignoring the woman.
I stopped a few feet away, my field machete in hand, and drew my arm back to deliver the killing blow. Just then, the woman’s head popped up. I could see the black tracers in her eyes, but not the white film that indicated she’d died.
“Do it,” she breathed. “It hurts…everything hurts. My body feels like it is on fire.” Her accent was thick with what I imagined to be the same dialect Enuma spoke, but she was speaking English!
I wanted to bring the blade down, but looking directly into her eyes, even though I knew what was about to be her ultimate fate, I still hesitated. Yes, I’ve had to kill a few folks who were still alive, but only once was I looking the person in the eyes. In my defense, I’d been in a state of rage. I wasn’t feeling anything like that at the moment. All I felt was…pity. Her eyes locked onto mine and I saw understanding. She closed them, knelt, and bowed her head. I took a deep breath and swung down hard. I felt the stinging reverberation all the way up both arms.
The chaos was dying down almost as soon as it had started. The variety of expressions ranged from fear—most of the new arrivals had huddled together and I bet they were wondering how we would respond to some of theirs turning in our home—to confusion. We hadn’t ever had to deal with zombies
in
our new home. They’d come close to overrunning us once, but we held them off outside.
“Where’s Billy?” I called out.
“Here,” he replied as he came out of the kitchen.
“What the hell happened?” I bit back the anger. He wasn’t the type to flake off things. I was sure he had a reason.
“I heard Jamie crying,” Billy said sheepishly.
“You what?”
“You need to come in back,” he whispered. For some reason, he couldn’t look me in the eyes. “I’ll get the doctor, and Jon looks like he has a handle in here, but you need to go in back…now.”
I didn’t like any of this. Something dark settled in my heart in that moment; a feeling of dread and doom unlike anything I’d felt since this whole thing started all those months ago. That is saying a lot.
I glanced around the room before I left. The girls were in the corner with Melissa. They looked a bit rattled, but far better than a child should be considering everything that went on around them. Jon, Jake, and Jesus were with DeAngelo and the newcomers. In this world, I guess that is about as under control as I could hope for.
I went back to where Jamie and Teresa slept. I could hear the sobbing already. It was Jamie. I thought I could make out the words “I’m sorry” but it was too difficult to tell.
When I walked in and saw Teresa sitting up in bed, I knew.
Jamie had his head down in her lap, and she was stroking his head. That was not going to be enough to comfort him, of that I had no doubt.
When had I dropped to my knees?
I realized where I was and climbed to my feet. It wasn’t easy. I had no strength all of a sudden. Still, I forced myself to take each of the three steps it took to get to the side of Teresa’s bed. Jamie never moved, never so much as acknowledged my presence. I didn’t blame him.
“You see it, too.” It was a statement. I had no idea how long I stood there and stared down at her, but Teresa never even seemed to blink. I kept wishing to God that she would blink. Then, at least for one split second, I wouldn’t see the black traces in those eyes.
Aaheru stood on the crumbling remains of the wall that had ci
r
cled this “city” for so many years. It had been known as The City of the Dead for decades. Cairo’s population had long since outstripped its capacity. The poor had no place else to turn, and had claimed this vast graveyard as their home. Now, it stood as the last bastion (as far as he and the others knew, at least)
against
the dead.
One of the millions whose stench floated on the cool desert evening air stood below him, its hands reaching desperately for the living being that stood above. Ahi pulled the long spear from his back and jabbed it down into the eye socket of the horrific creature.
“Why waste your energy, brother?” Aaheru whispered. “Another will fill its place.”
“It is one less that we will face when we leave.” Ahi shook his spear free and lined up to jab a
n
other. The sea of heads stretched out before them gave an endless supply of targets to choose amongst.
“We will not be facing them when we leave, my brother.”
Ahi jabbed, yanked the spear free and faced Aaheru. “What do you have planned?”
“There can only be so many that come on this journey,” Aaheru said with no emotion. “I will deem who comes…”
“And the others?”
“Will be given a different path.”
Ahi plunged his spear down again into the eye of a boy that could have been the playmate of his son…the son who had perished in a crowd of those things the first days when the dead had r
e
turned to take vengeance on the living. “Do you believe they will go willingly?”
“I do not care,” Aaheru said with a shrug. “We have the guns and the knives.”
Ahi glanced back into the gray sprawl of monuments and tombs, to where the last sons and daughters of Cairo struggled to survive. Those who had once called this armpit of the unde
r
world their home now served Aaheru and those who he had brought with him all those weeks ago when there were no places left to run or hide in the city any longer.
Ahi remembered the killing. It had been a necessary evil to make the point clear that none of the tribal leaders held power any longer now that a
real
citizen of Cairo had arrived. The so
l
diers who had chosen to follow Aaheru—Ahi included—had gunned down the elders without mercy. Aaheru had told them that as long as one remained, there was a chance for rebellion.
“Cut off the head, and the body will be helpless…
much like the walking dead,
”
were his exact words.
“And when do we leave?” Ahi asked.
“At dawn.” Aaheru picked up a stone and tossed it into the crowd. “You and the men will gather the most infirm of the res
i
dents and bring them to my tent for a feast this evening. We will celebrate their long life and praise them for their service to the glory of Egypt.”
“And then?”
“In the morning they will be taken to the south wall and made to stand.”
“But, and forgive me, my brother,” Ahi risked the wrath of his leader, “there are far too many outside the walls. How do you expect us to escape? It is a difficult enough task to get a handful of men out who are travelling light to search for supplies. The caravan you have in mind will move slo
w
ly. The dead will r
e
turn before the last of us can be through the gates.”
“I have determined the order by importance.” Aaheru faced his most trusted subject with a grim expression. “If we stay here any longer, we will
all
die. Every day, more of those abominations to A
l
lah come. Soon, they will not be tens deep, but hundreds. They abandon the city by the thousands. Many come on the heels of those we have sent for supplies. We are fortunate that this City of the Dead is so vast. Much smaller and it would a
l
ready be too late.”
Ahi looked out at the faces that stared back up at him, so many with mouths open emitting sounds that reminded him of a babe crying for its mother’s teat.
Yes
, he thought,
there were more every day.
He knew that Aaheru was correct, but that still didn’t make him comfortable with killing more living, breathing souls. Yet, if he opposed Aaheru, he might find himself in that tail end of the departing ca
r
avan.
“It will be as you say, my brother.” Ahi jabbed his spear into the face of a woman whose burka had been reduced to rags that were rigid with long-since-dried blood.
A series of shacks sitting on stilts that looked like telephone poles cut in half were scattered in a rough circle in the center of what had once been a city park. Walkways from one to another kept all of the tiny residences connected. A wall of cars and trucks formed a fence-like barricade as the first line of defense. Juan could make out several coils of barbed and razor wire wrapped around the defunct vehicles. Inside that, he thought he could see the shadow of a trench.
In the center of the elevated huts was a decent sized fire pit. Playing near the fire were at least a dozen children. Juan went to take a step forward, but Thad grabbed his arm.
“We’ve been spotted,” Thad hissed.
“Huh?”
“There, in that big pine tree, on the platform.” Thad pointed. Juan followed his finger and spotted the man with the compl
i
cated looking bow pointed their direction.
“He ain’t the only one,” Keith breathed. “To the left I spot another.”
Juan raised his hands above his head and took a few steps forward. When nobody fired, he took a few more. This time, an arrow punched into the ground a dozen feet in front of him.
Unstrapping his weapons, he made a big show of tossing each one back to Thad and Keith who had not budged. Lifting his coat, he did a full circle to show that he was unarmed and took a single step forward. After waiting to ensure another arrow wasn’t going to be fired, he began to walk slowly towards the ring of cars and trucks.
“We got company!” Keith called.
“Deal with it,” Juan said over his shoulder. “I’m kinda busy right now.”
“We can’t leave you like this,” Thad shouted. “Forget these people and maybe we try again later.”
“You two do what you have to do,” Juan yelled as he co
n
tinued forward. “We finally found some other survivors…I gotta at least talk to them.”
Juan began walking at a regular pace, mostly convinced that these people weren’t going to shoot him…yet. As he reached the circle of rusting cars and trucks, he was further impressed to see that concrete had been poured into them. He’d seen a herd of deaders move a vehicle aside and imagined they would have a much tougher time of it with these.
A man was waiting for him in the concrete-filled bed of a pick-up truck. He had a pistol in his hand with a scope on it. Juan tried not to smile.
Who put
s a scope
on
a pistol
?
he thought.
“You the folks living out on the island?” the man asked.
“I guess,” Juan said with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Where you send them others?”
“They’re dealing with some deaders that are on our tail.”
“You come here for a reason?” Juan noticed that the man was starting to sweat. Considering he was in a short-sleeved shirt, and it was barely over thirty degrees, that was curious.
“Looking for supplies and seeing if there might be any su
r
vivors who want to join us.”