DEAD: Reborn (13 page)

That last line was one that I delivered in a voice that was barely above a whisper. I still had trouble with that whole scene. I didn
’t want my discomfort with what he and Jake had done used against me.

“So don
’t start telling me what I do and don’t understand. You all have said it enough, maybe you should listen to your own words…this ain’t the old world any more. Things are different. I feel the loss and am hit by guilt and failure just like the rest of you when things go badly. Jamie was my best friend and hung himself. You don’t think that I ask myself every single day if there was something that I could have said or done?” I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. The last thing that I wanted to do was start crying.

“Listen…” Jon started, but his voice trailed off.

I could tell that he was trying to put something into words, but then…I saw it. Tears were welling in his eyes. They had that shiny look to them and I was pretty sure that it was a battle he would lose in a few seconds. I did what I would want him to do for me if the situation were reversed.

I turned and walked away.

***

“Billy!” a voice called from the porch of the cabin.

I turned to see a very pregnant Melissa trying to make her way down the stairs. I slung my weapon over my shoulder and rushed up to see what she needed.

“Can you help me carry a bag down to the cart?” she asked sheepishly. “I tried to pick it up and the baby started a soccer game in my uterus.”

A little more than I what needed to hear, but I nodded and ducked inside to go fetch the bag. When I got to Melissa’s sleeping area in the back, I was not surprised to find that it was still set up for her and Steve. There was a big duffel bag sitting beside the air mattress.

“Kinda surprising how much stuff we have accumulated while running for our lives,” I joked as I slung the heavier than expected bag up and over my shoulder.

“Some of the stuff should have been thrown away, but I just…” Melissa’s voice trailed off and I didn’t have to see her face to know that she was fighting back tears.

I headed towards th
e front of the cabin where everybody else had their stuff packed, stacked, and ready to roll out of here. As I came into the large entryway, I heard screaming. I dropped the bag and burst through the door that separated the back where most of us had our beds and the reception area of the visitor’s center-turned-dormitory.

“…
voy a matar
!” Thalia hissed as she stood over the prone and crying figure of Misty.

“Whoa!” I vaulted the desk and ran down the length of the table where we had all once eaten together.

Thalia spun around on me, and for just a moment, I thought that she might take a swing. I slowed to a walk, but I continued to close the distance.

“What
’s the problem?” I asked, while simultaneously looking around for just one adult. Funny how they were never around when you needed one.

“She was talking bad about my daddy,” Thalia said through teeth clenched so tight that I wondered how they did not simply shatter.

“Misty?” I gave her what I hoped was a stern look. Also, I was trying to see how much of an ass kicking Thalia had dished out this time.

The girl remained silent, but I saw enough in her expression to know that Thalia was probably telling the truth. Still, that did not mean she could just beat this other girl down. I tried to cha
nnel my mother for a minute.

“Thalia, what have you been told about beating up Misty? W
ould you like it if somebody did that to you every time that you said something they didn’t like?” I know it was pretty lame, but for crying out loud, I am absolutely
not
a parent.

“She said that my daddy prob
’ly deserved what he got,” Thalia said like that was absolutely the only justification that she needed.

“Misty?” I gave her the raised eyebrow that my mom a
lways used on me when I had done something wrong.

My mom had this magic power. She could simply say your name in the form of a question and raise one eyebrow just enough. You could not help yourself. Before you knew it, you were not only telling on yourself for whatever misdeed that she was currently trying to get to the bottom of, but you would tell about stuff from weeks earlier that you didn
’t get caught at.

The girl started to sniff. Her eyes immediately went to the floor and I knew that Thalia was telling me the truth. I still did not get the whole dynamic between these two. It had started a
lmost the moment that Misty was brought to our camp. The weird thing about that is that Thalia has always been so eager and excited on those few occasions when we brought children into our fold.

“She wouldn
’t stop staring at me,” Misty blurted.

Ah, to be a child again. Here we are, packing up for a jou
rney that will take at least a week at the pace we will have to move, and these two are fighting over “regular” kid stuff. It is almost like they are oblivious to the world and the situation around them. They are living in this exact moment. The past is just that, and the present just does not show up on their radar.

“Thalia?” I turned my attention to her and used the same arched eyebrow.

Nothing.

She stared back at me like she was waiting for the rest of the question. I kept my face frozen for another several seconds, but she still just kept looking at me like she was waiting for me to do or say something.

“Were you staring at Misty?” I finally asked.

She at least had the decency to look abashed. She gave a very slight nod that could have just as easily been mistaken for a shrug or shake. I knelt down between the two of them and took their hands in mine.

“We have a long trip coming up. It is going to be dangerous and we need to help one another and work together. This will require cooperation. Do you both know what that word means?” I looked from one to the other expectantly and was relieved when I got nods from both. “Now, I don’t want to have to spend my time on this trip walking between you two girls. I need to be up front keeping my eyes open. I can’t watch you two and keep an eye out for zombies at the same time.”

There are times when you say something and are struck by how it sounds. I try to envision what my thoughts would have been if I ever considered just as recent
ly as last year that a sentence like that was going to come out of my mouth. Now, it is the way of the world.

“Can I walk with you when we leave?” Thalia asked.

“This isn’t like before, sweetie,” I said with a shake of my head. “We have too many people and that means that we have to move differently.”

I could already tell by the look on her face that I was not making any sense to her. We had travelled as a group back when Steve was alive. Of course there had been far fewer people in our little band. The truth now was simply that we would have to move much more cautiously. We had to be ready for zombies, but we were also getting ready to march in and take something. We were, for lack of a better term, invaders.

Sure, the former occupants of the place we had our sights set on were all dead (as far as we knew), but there was no telling if anybody else had made the move yet to claim the place. We were a small army and we were about to go take something that may or may not belong to somebody else. Plus, don’t even get me started on how that camp came to be empty in the first place.

“But I like it here,” Thalia insisted. “And ever since stupid Misty came, all the bad things have happened. Why can
’t she just go to this place by herself?”

I hoped that my open mouth went unnoticed. Is this what the growing animosity between these two girls is about? Is Thalia holding Misty to blame for the stuff that has gone down in the last several weeks? I shot a look at Misty. I guess I expected her to be angry or
outraged at such a claim. Instead, she was just standing there, glaring at Thalia pretty much the same as she had been since I stepped in between them.

“Thalia, you can
’t blame Misty for what has been going on,” I said.

The problem was, I really could not think of a good reason to give her as to why. Was it any different than the pair of socks that I wore all football season as my “lucky” socks? This was nothing more than coincidence, but to Thalia, all the bad that we had experienced in the past several weeks coincided with Misty
’s arrival, therefore, she had to be the cause.

“I bet we wouldn
’t be moving if Daddy Steve were here,” Thalia sniffed.

Okay
, I thought,
on that I have to agree
. For one, I am pretty sure that there was no way he would have allowed Jon and Jake to do what they had done down in La Grande. However, Steve is not with us anymore and this entire group, which is now more than four times the size it was when he was alive, is sort of flapping whichever way the breeze takes us on any given day. I guess I was hoping that, once we get to La Grande and settle it, things will calm down into something like it used to be.

“Can I tell you something about this new home?” I fixed on something that I had seen in my short visit. Thalia nodded her head. I noticed that Misty did as well. “This place has a great big park with a playground.”

“Just like Serenity?” Thalia asked with obvious interest.

“Yep,” I answered with as much enthusiasm as I could mu
ster.

If I could sell her on this, maybe things would settle down for these two while we were on the road. Honestly, once we got to La Grande, there was so much room that these two could go for days without seeing each other.

“But…” I let that word hang in the air as I gathered up all my “inner-mom” channeling that I could muster, “…if you two can’t behave, well I just don’t see how you will be allowed to go to the park when we get there.”

I think I actually spotted a pair of halos appear over both girls
’ heads. They both hit me with their best smiles and widest eyes that sparkled with innocence.

“I
’ll behave,” they both said in unison.

Crisis averted, I headed back to the stairs where Melissa was waiting right beside her bags. A few others, most notably, Su
nshine, Shelly, and Cheryl, stood in a group as well. They were all looking at me in a way that I was not comfortable with at all. I felt sort of like a bug under a microscope. It didn’t help that they all had nearly identical looks on their faces.

“You handled that well, Billy,” Melissa broke the silence as I edged around the gaggle of onlookers that did not seem to care that they were standing between me and Melissa
’s bags.

“Thanks,” I said, not sure what else to say. I did my best to ignore the women who were still obviously st
aring as I grabbed the bag, hoisted it over my shoulder, and headed for one of the carts.

I didn
’t dare look back when I heard giggling and whispering. If I lacked a basic understanding of children, I was probably in even worse shape when it came to women. All that extra room in La Grande was looking better every minute.

***

“I spotted at least five up past that second ridge and another dozen at least that are on our tail.” Jake had a drawn a very detailed map in the dust beside the road where we had currently stopped so that all the water containers could be filled from a waterfall.

“But if they have been so close for the past day, why are they keeping their distance?” I asked.

“It could be anything,” Jake said with a shrug. “They might be trying to see if we are bad guys. We do have quite a few women in our group as well as eight to ten kids. They could be seeing if we are treating them bad. Or…they could just be sizing us up to see if we are easy prey.”

“So no middle ground?” I quipped.

“I’m just offering both ends of the dog,” Jake said with his easy drawl. I noticed Carol smirk briefly.

“Maybe we should send somebody to try and make contact with them,” a short, skinny man with an accent that I could not place spoke up.

“That is an option,” Jake said, but I could tell he was dismissing it.

“If they are keeping their distance, I don
’t see what the big deal is,” Sunshine said. “Are we really going to be that group that treats everybody like they are the enemy? And I for one think that it is a very good idea to send somebody to try and speak with them. It beats not knowing.”

“If they were interested in talking to us, I think they would have made some attempt,” Jon said sternly. I saw the look on Sunshine
’s face and knew that he was not scoring any points with his girlfriend.

The conversation continued, but I zoned out on it as I began to form
a plan in my head. I sorted through it and came up with all the arguments that I figured might come once I let this particular cat out of the bag. If this worked, just maybe it would solve a few of my problems as of late. Of course, if it failed, then I would probably end up dead…in which case,
all
of my problems would be solved in a manner of speaking.