Scavengers (27 page)

They descended upon her, ripping and tearing.  Blocking the pain from her mind, she watched the swaying tops of the thick pines and the autumn sky growing darker, a deep lavender that would give way to a purple-black night. A flock of geese, black, like dots of embroidery stitched upon the dove-gray sky, moved in a ripple of motion in front of soft wisps of cotton clouds. A sharp pang snapped her from her daydream. Instinct willed her to fight.

You can’t give up.  Not now.  Not yet.

It was impossible to say where the energy came from, but it was there just the same. She threw her full weight backward to escape.  Her shoes slipped in the wetness of her own blood, and she expected to hit the pavement hard, but she fell back into a zombie embrace. She struggled.

An infected zombie rent the soft skin of her abdomen as another attacker bit hard into her neck with broken, ragged teeth. Blood spurted from her throat. Dejah fought, but her strength was waning. She felt herself opened up.  Strangely enough, although she’d wished for death, she realized, now that it was imminent, she didn’t want to die.

The reek of the vile creature filled her nostrils. She was weak and nauseous. She collapsed into the zombie’s arms.

“No,” she heard a guttural voice. Not the first one who’d been giving orders, but someone – some
thing
– else. “Stop. We have orders to bring them back alive.”

The infected that held her loosened its grip. “Blue Shirt said—”

Dejah tried to focus on the figure that came toward them. She couldn’t make out much of its features, but could tell it was one of them...one of the talking ones. The smarter ones.

“Let go,” it commanded.
Did this one have power like the man in the blue shirt?
she wondered in the half-dream state of lightheaded blood loss. Bony arms released her and she fell. Others came, drawn by the scent of her fresh blood. She heard David shouting her name and her mind whispered to her in the memory of his arms embracing her, and his tender kisses trailing over her neck and breasts. And then everything began to blur in a swirl of blackness.

“Stop! That one is right. I was wrong.”
Was there fear in the blue-shirted one’s voice?
she wondered in a near delirium.
Could they feel fear?
“Bal Shem want them alive. Take them back to camp now.”

The infected that gathered around Dejah grumbled.

“Enough!” Blue Shirt shouted.  A gunshot punctuated his renewed command. The blood-covered faces of the infected looked up from their prey and stood, satisfied that they’d been given their fair share of the hunt despite the abrupt halt to their feast. Dejah’s body still had meat enough for a meal. “Throw body in the Jeep. Take it back for later.”

“Take her back,” the talking one with the guttural voice echoed the order.

They shuffled around her. Bones cracked and ligaments snapped as they hoisted her aloft. 

Yes, back,
she thought.
Take me back.

The zombies carried her like a slab of meat, throwing her into the back of the Jeep. Her head struck the metal edge of the cargo bed with a loud bang. The last breath in her lungs escaped.

*       *       *

David hung from the hands holding him, his knees scraping the asphalt of the road. He cried, his heart broken. Shaun’s words haunted him:
And have you lost anything in all of this?
 

“Dejah!” he shouted, over and over again until her name became a woeful groan. Tears blinded him. He couldn’t free his hands to wipe them from his eyes as they mingled with dirt and blood. The gore-streaked hands shoved him into a Jeep, jostled beside Abbott and a badly beaten, Brooks. He didn’t see Robbins in the fray.

After they’d been loaded onto the Jeep, they traveled along County Road 3516 before arriving at the forested quarantine camp. Within a frame of thick oaks and southern pines, a clearing used as a cattle ranch and hay meadow appeared as they topped a rise and came through the trees. From the road, they could see barbed wire fences separating pastures from the camp. A large, weather-beaten barn near the edge of the clearing was surrounded by tents at one end of the camp.  The center of the camp was composed of multiple rows of perhaps thirty tents. A row of FEMA trailers with a dilapidated barn behind them formed the end of camp nearest them as they came down the rise. The whole layout resembled a capital-I lying on its side. The county road gave way to a narrow dirt road leading into the camp as the Jeeps bounced through the open metal gates, tires vibrating over a cattle guard.

Once in the camp, the zombie mob drove them down and deposited them into the large barn.  Inside, terrified groups of people scattered into the shadows at their arrival. One of the big barn doors slammed shut, and Dejah’s body was thrown inside onto a pile of hay, like cast off garbage, before the other door was also closed. Abbott, Brooks, and Dr. Robbins collapsed onto the hard-packed, dirt floor of the barn, weeping from exhaustion and defeat.

Surrounded by the stares of the curious shadowed people, David crawled through the dirt and hay on bloodied hands and knees to Dejah’s corpse. His body racked with sobs of despair, he gathered her in his arms. “Come back to me. Oh, god, Dejah, come back to me.”

Coming back was never a good sensation. As soon as she regained consciousness, she became aware of a burning heat emanating from the marrow of her bones. Her muscles felt like they’d been ripped in the hardest workout of her life.  It hurt to move anything. It hurt her to breathe. She felt the beat of her heart rushing blood through newly formed veins and arteries like surging waves in her throat and skull. Besides the ache of freshly healed wounds and bones, there was a persistent longing inside of her. It was almost implacable. Perhaps hunger. Perhaps loss.

Dejah did a mental check of her faculties and touched her limbs. She reassured herself that she was indeed
living
again.

She awoke atop a pile of moldy blankets. The smell assaulted her first, the scent of unwashed bodies, wet wood, hay, and the vile scent of decay. Someone had dragged her into a narrow horse stall to give her some privacy. 

Dejah moaned, touching her neck. It was crusty with blood. The deeper wounds weren’t completely healed.

“Dejah?” A man’s voice.
David’s voice.
It took her only a moment to place it, to search recent memory and sort out what had happened. David scrambled to her side. He’d been asleep, slumped in a corner with a US Army blanket pulled up to his shoulders. He let it drop as he rushed to her side. “Oh God,” he whispered.
“Dejah.”
Suddenly about twenty people gathered in the entry to the stall. They were dirty and unkempt, but they were people: living, healthy, uninfected people. Dejah tried to sit, but exhaustion overtook her. Sensing, at least for the time being, her life wasn’t in immediate jeopardy, her body refused to cooperate.

“Just lay down, no need to get up, everything’s okay for right now,” David said, smoothing her blood matted hair.

“She’s alive!” someone said. 

“Let her rest,” an older woman said. “Show’s over, everyone move away. Poor woman’s been through enough already.”

“Get her some water,” said a man. “The rain cups are in the hole, hurry!”

She felt water over her lips, and opened her mouth. She drank too fast and choked. David gripped the back of her neck, supporting her head. She was able to take a couple of small swallows. There were whispers around her.

David washed her face with some of the water from the cup, clearing away the crusted blood and dirt. The water had a nearly instantaneous affect on her stamina, imbued her with new strength. Energy flowed through her arms and legs, her aching back, and strengthening neck.

Those around her gasped as Dejah sat up.

“The wound on your neck,” a woman with greasy gray and black hair said in awe. “It just closed up. It looks like fresh, pink skin.” She looked suspiciously at Dejah, her face was deep with the lines of hard living. She looked downright ugly as she glanced disapprovingly at David.

“Your wounds should’ve killed you,” said a skinny man with a week’s growth of beard. “I swear I just saw the wound on your neck close right up. You … you should be
dead
. You were just a mangled corpse.” The crowd came close, frightening Dejah. They reached out to touch her, clutching her shreds of clothes, touching her bare flesh.

She trembled, feeling a sense of vertigo at all the faces coming at her, the stifling shadows, the scents of the blankets and hay stirring around her, mingling with the pain.  Blackness threatened to take her again.  Her stomach swooned.

“David,” she gasped, and then dropped out of consciousness again.

*       *       *

“Okay, back off, all of you. Let her rest.” David pushed against the crowd amassed around the stall.

“What the hell is up with her?” The ugly woman said, her tone harsh, voice raspy, like she’d smoked a million cigarettes in every bar between here and 1979.

“Who the fuck are you?” said David.  It was his best response next to punching the bitch.

“Her name’s Evelyn,” offered a man from the back of the crowd. “And yes, she has the tact of a rhino in a china shop.”

There were scattered chuckles among the crowd. Evelyn’s dark eyes flashed at the people around her.  If she were a wicked witch, no doubt the monkeys would be flying.

“She’s injured,” David said to Evelyn, trying to keep his temper in check. “Now go away and let her rest.”

“Injured? Them weren’t no injuries, pal. She was fucking eaten. She should be dead. What the hell’s going on here?”

He paused only a second. For the first time since he awoke, David noticed the patter of rainfall on the roof of the barn high above. “The injuries weren’t as bad as they looked obviously.  Just a lot of blood was all.”

A young man with double chin and glasses had eyes that bugged and a head that tilted with disbelief.  “Seriously, man?  You know we all saw her when she came in. You didn’t look too hopeful yourself.  Evelyn’s right; she looked dead.”

David looked up at them, scanned the faces. They looked desperate. But for Evelyn, all of their eyes seemed to crave some hint of hope, proof of a miracle. They were hoping something wonderful had happened here. Something other than the very bad magic that had torn apart their world and left them all prisoners here on a farm in the middle of Timbuk-Texas. Dejah had been dead when she got thrown into the barn. They knew it, he knew it. Now, she was stirring again, alive. How did he explain the unbelievable? At this point, did he even need to?  Maybe they all needed this.  To see this miracle of life that bloomed here before them. To see that all was not lost.  Because her regeneration meant something to him, too.  Maybe not a God-thing per se…
but then what?  What does this mean to you?
He flashed back on Shaun’s words that he had no faith. But faith could be more than just a belief in God. It could be a belief in hope.

“Dejah,” he said, “has a special gift.”

“
Special gift
?” Evelyn mocked him. A few curious faces waited for his explanation.

“She … comes back.  I’ve seen it once before.  She was ravaged.  Dead.  But she comes back.  Regenerates.”

“She what?” The woman was clearly not the brightest bulb in the box.

“Regenerates. Heals herself.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” She looked around, hands on her hips, cackling. No one else broke a smile. “So, you telling me she can’t be killed? That them bastards out there can’t eat and kill her?”

David’s cheeks burned at the woman’s demeanor.  He really did want to hit the bitch, but he answered more for the benefit of the others in the barn. “It seems that way.”

“So,” and the hag half-turned, as if making an announcement to the others, “Bal Shem won’t have to have his creepy kid heal her almost dead ass when the infected eat
her
. She can do it all by her own damn self!” Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Did this virus bring along some other self-healing freaks too, because it seems like a lot of magic fairies are landing here in our little circus camp.”

One college-aged young woman giggled behind a self-conscious hand. Evelyn made eye contact with her and she was silent.

Dejah stirred.  She blinked her eyes and looked around, refocusing.

“Careful,” David whispered, coming to her side.

Dejah struggled to sit. “Creepy kid? What do you mean? Is she a girl? About nine?”

“Yeah, that’s the brat. They got this whole place rigged out to keep them in food. They come in here, grab some of us, eat us, then they haul our almost dead asses back to Bal Shem’s trailer of horrors and the girl heals you. Poof! All your shit is new again. Then they haul your ass back to the barn and you get to do it all over some other day.”

Dejah tried to stand. David urged her to relax. “Not now. Now isn’t the time. You’re not strong enough yet. You need food.”

Evelyn laughed. “Well, food comes in the form of canned goods, and never enough.”

“Look, would you shut the fuck up? Don’t you have some other inbred hayseed friends to terrorize?” David shouted at the woman.

Evelyn flung her stringy hair over her shoulder and marched toward the other end of the barn. The crowd dispersed. A lone teenager remained.  She came cautiously into the stall and knelt next to them.

“Do you need any help?” the girl asked softly. “My name’s Lauren.”

“I’ve got it right now, but thanks.” He covered Dejah with a blanket again. The rain had brought a damp chill. “So, what’s that bitch’s story?” David nodded toward the corner of the barn where Evelyn went, some of the people rallying around her in the shadows. Evelyn stayed across the room, eyeing them with apparent malice.

“Oh,
her
,” Lauren said, and shrugged. “Before the virus, she waitressed at the truck stop on the way to Commerce. She likes to think she’s in charge around here. Causes trouble any chance she gets. She’s even caused problems with Bal Shem. I keep hoping they’ll just eat her and actually let her die instead of healing her the way they do.”

“Who is this Bal Shem guy?”

“One of the infected. Word has it he was the terrorist who blew up the plane over the county. He made everyone sick.”

“And he’s
here
?”

“Yeah. Before things got really crazy, I talked with one of the cops. He said that this Bal Shem escaped from custody the night of the explosion. I guess the guy couldn’t get out of the county because of the lockdown. Anyway, he turned up sick in this camp. Right before the infected went nuts and killed everyone, they confirmed it was him.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, when it rains, it pours, huh?” Lauren sighed.

“So, now he’s running the place?”

Lauren leaned closer, trying not to disturb Dejah who had settled into sleep. “He calls the camp his Flesh Farm. He’s got a whole system working now. Not all of the infected cooperate though. From what we’ve seen, some of the infected are just like mindless flesh eaters who gather at the edges of the camp. They just lean against the fences. The other ones we call the talkers — talking zombies. They’re Bal Shem’s henchmen. Bal Shem tells everyone what to do.”

David shook his head in disbelief. “What do you mean by Flesh Farm?” He asked the question, but the dread pooling in his guts told him all he needed to know.

Lauren looked around to see who was listening. She shot a nervous look toward Evelyn’s cronies. “Well, he has things set up so he’s corralling us. Breeding, and harvesting humans. Children are in another part of the camp.”

“What the fuck are they doing with the kids?”

“There’s this one talker. His name’s Joe. Sometimes he’s actually almost normal, and he…uh, calls me ‘pretty’ and, well, I guess he has a thing for me. It’s...weird, but I’ve tried to use it to get information. He tells me they don’t really know how the breeding process is going to work. But, he and some other talkers think they’ll hold us here long enough that babies will be born. Then Bal Shem will allow the adults to raise the children to a certain age, and then the infected will start eating as many adults as there are children to replace them.”

“Holy shit. I didn’t know these bastards could reason like this.”

“Not all of them can,” Lauren said.

“How many people are here, in the camp, I mean?”

“I heard some of the men saying there’s a couple hundred healthy people. A lot of families were here with infected relatives.” Lauren paused. “So, there’s a lot.”

“Evelyn said they feed us canned goods?”

“Once a day they drop off cans at the doors, and the bunk leader brings them in for distribution while one of talkers supervises.”

“Bunk leader?” David asked.

Lauren looked toward Evelyn, who, sensing she was being discussed, narrowed her black eyes at them like a cobra.

“Evelyn,” said the girl.

“I see,” said David.

He watched Dejah sleep.  Rain water patted into the hay a few feet away. He studied her face, felt his heart ache for her, for her daughter, for their loss, the absence of Shaun.  He met the girl’s eyes.

He calls me ‘pretty.’

David lifted a reassuring hand to her shoulder.  Lauren gave him a weary smile.

The old doctor that rode in with them pushed through the scattered group and came into the stall, joining them. 

Dr. Robbins looked about as good as the rest of them. His dirty clothes were shredded in spots, streaked with blood from surface scratches as they’d been restrained.  He nodded firmly at David, then knelt next to Dejah and gingerly tended her remaining wounds.

*     *     *

Evelyn sat on a bale of hay. It poked her ass, cutting through her skirt. She stared toward the horse stall where these newcomers, Dejah and David were. The other guys were huddled over in the corner, with the doctor coming and going between Dejah’s stall and the two soldiers that came in with their group. Somehow the soldiers and the doctor managed to keep a duffle bag when they got tossed in here. Everyone was pretty curious about what the men had in the bag. Mostly they wondered if they had any food. The canned goods were coming less often than before, and panic was running high that the infected were running out of food to feed them.