Zomblog Saga Box Set (Books 1-6) (125 page)

What you need to remember is this: were it not for what we did and what we do now, you very likely would not be reading this. If General Carson and his splinter group from the NAA managed to succeed, everybody would be dead and the Era of the Anomalies would have begun. I may not have made a big enough deal of the fact that this group—this ‘extremist faction’ of The Genesis Brotherhood (an already extreme group in their own right)—were prepared to end humanity. That means YOU.

It is always easier after the fact for people to judge the actions of others. Funny, I went back the past couple of days and read Sam’s and Meredith’s journals. Something stood out that made me bristle at the response that Meredith has received all these years.

I considered copying it here, but instead, I will simply say that everything that you needed to know about her was written on the evening of Friday, June 20
th
in my dad’s journal right after his death. She told you exactly who she was, so any of her actions, including when she gave me up, should not have been a surprise.

Looking back on some of my own words, I do not have that luxury. You know why? Because, I still do not really know who I am. I wonder how many of you will forget that I am still just eighteen. Sure, I have ideas about who I
want
to be, but those change about as often as the weather. I am still trying to find that answer.

Also, I only very recently discovered that I am part of a cu
lture that I have not yet really been able to absorb or understand. I’m not saying that being born with Native American blood in my veins makes a difference in who I am, but I should at least try to find out a bit before I go one way or the other.

I have so many questions…and I am going to spend some time looking for answers. And I may not find ANY of them, but at least I can look.

I have no idea if I will continue this journal or not. Right now, I just want to be able to relax. Not think. Not act.

I have to be honest, I set this book down for most of the month while I tried to process everything that had happened. I only missed it for the first couple of days. I know that Meredith set hers down once, but she said that it was a form of therapy for her to write everything down. For, me, that comes from talking to these people that surround me…Betty…

I was sitting on a rock with Betty this morning and she asked me why she had not seen me with (and this is a quote) “that stupid book?” I shrugged and she just nodded and told me that I didn’t need to try and
be
anybody except myself. I don’t think I am the journaling type.

So, what does that mean? That means that we are done. If you have found this…if for some strange reason it was copied and made available to others like my dad’s and Meredith’s, then I applaud your stick-to-it-iveness if you have read this entire thing. I hope that it provided you with something useful…at the very least, a diversion.

A snowflake fell just a moment ago. I believe that I will go sit with Betty and watch to see if others will soon join. It seems we will be camping here until winter has passed. Travelling through any of the mountain ranges now would be folly. This location is not bad. We did move just a bit after I did away with General Carson.

Chapter 6

Tuesday, November 1
st

There are a few inches of fresh white powder on the ground. Life has slowly returned to something like normal. I feel refreshed.

Last night, I went for a walk with Jimmy Stonekiller. We talked about stuff that I imagine normal young men and women our age talk about. He seems nice. I think I can actually enjoy that now…the part about him being nice.

Lately, the evening fire has been a time to share our stories. I have discovered that the Native Americans are not the only ones who tell a good tale. Last night, one of the women from a tribe located along Corridor 26 told her story. I look at her now, and it is not difficult to see the young girl that she spoke of in her moments before the fire as she shared a piece of her life.

Her name is Rindy, and she is a member of the Aloha Wa
rriors. (She pronounces it A-lo-a and makes sure to correct any who mistakenly call it A-lo-HA. She tells you very curtly that she is not from the island paradise of Hawaii.

Hers rang a bell for me, and so I sat with her today and asked her to tell it again. So here it is as she told it to me. I call it,
Yes, Rindy, there is a Santa Claus
.

Rindy Farmer peeked out from the shadowy doorway. This house had been a good find, sitting all by itself on a hill looking out over a vastness that everyone was pretty sure must be som
ewhere in Wyoming. A steady rain continued to fall, adding to the gloom felt by everybody the past few days. Nobody could be absolutely certain, but the general consensus placed it to be sometime in December. This would be the third Christmas since
them.
Most folks called them zombies, not Rindy. That was the nickname she had given her little brother Zimbalist—named after some long dead television star that her dad liked when he was little.

When her parents brought him home the first day and told her the name they had picked, she wrinkled her nose in distaste. From that day, he’d been ‘Baby Zombie’ to her. He was dead now.

Both times.

Same as her parents.

At age twelve, Rindy Farmer had been trapped in a bathroom while her mom, dad, and little brother clawed at the door. Then, the soldier came. His name was Morgan, and he had shot each of them in the head.

He saved Rindy.

Over the next two years, she traveled with Corporal Morgan. He taught her to shoot. He also taught her
not
to shoot. Noise always brought more of
them
. That was why he also taught her how to use a knife, a spear—for jabbing, not throwing—and a bow and arrow. He showed her how to search a room and then secure it after ensuring an escape route existed.

He taught her other stuff, too. He taught her how to tell if a can of food was bad, how to make fire with a flint and the blade of her machete. And he taught her how to hide.

“Never trust anybody,” Corporal Morgan said time and again. “Especially men.”

“You’re a man.” Rindy had pointed out the obvious the first time.

“Yep,” Corporal Morgan agreed. “And my daughter was about half your age.”

“
They
got her?”

The corporal nodded. “But not everybody had daughters. Some men will see you differently.”

Rindy knew what Corporal Morgan
wasn’t
saying…was too embarrassed to say. The past few years, she had seen gruesome examples of exactly why he had given that warning.

Two hundred and thirteen days ago, Corporal Morgan died. Then, he sat back up. Rindy put him down. Then, unlike with her brother and parents, Rindy was able to take the time to bury him. Afterwards, she had been alone for almost a month. Just like when she travelled with Corporal Morgan, sometimes there were others; sometimes not. One morning, twenty-six days after she buried Corporal Morgan, Rindy discovered a motel all by itself on an empty stretch of what was left of a highway. That wasn’t a very big deal. The big deal was finding Marjorie, Brad, and Amber.

Marjorie was only a few years older than Rindy. She was Brad and Angie’s big sister. She was also very pregnant. She and her brother and sister didn’t have a Corporal Morgan. They had found out the hard way that they couldn’t just trust anybody. Especially men.

Brad, age nine, and Amber, age seven, didn’t talk anymore. Marjorie told Rindy that they had
seen
things
. Rindy didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. The four of them lived in one motel room together for a week. Rindy didn’t like staying in one place too long.

One morning, she woke up, ready to say farewell to Marj
orie, Amber, and Brad. Only, Marjorie wasn’t there. She checked in the bathroom…empty. She went outside, peering through the dusty plastic blinds first just like she’d been taught.

In the room just to the left, the door was open. Rindy peeked inside, finding Marjorie on the bed. Something was sticking out between her legs. It looked like tiny feet. Marjorie was dead…she didn’t have a Corporal Morgan. Rindy covered Ma
rjorie with a blanket and left the room closing the door behind her.

Just leaving the two little ones wasn’t a choice. After all, where would she be if Corporal Morgan had just left her behind? So, she went into the room and woke up Brad and Amber. After breakfast—the last can of beef stew—Rindy explained what happened and held them as they cried.
It was okay to cry
, Corporal Morgan said. Holding everything in wasn’t good for you. When things happened that upset her, he always told her,
“One good cry…get it all out and move on. It ain’t like the old day when you had time to let one tiny problem own you for weeks.”

Rindy let them cry. It was obvious that they needed it, b
ecause they cried for a long time. Then something strange happened, Brad stood up and asked, “Can we leave? I don’t want to stay where my sister died.” 

Little Amber got up next to her brother and wiped her red, runny nose with her sleeve and sniffled. “Me, too.”

Rindy helped them gather their few belongings and they began walking up the long, empty road. Two days later they met Ryan and Penny; they were both twenty-five. Ryan was a cook and Penny was a dancer. Rindy tried not to giggle when Amber asked if Penny could teach her to dance.

The two had met at a
FEMA
evacuation center. One night the soldiers in charge simply up and left. Ryan said it got bad fast. A couple of men were ‘hurting’ Penny when he found them. He had a .22 pistol and shot one of the men. The other man walked away. That night Ryan and Penny left the
FEMA
center. They’d been on the road ever since.

The five of them travelled together. Twice they thought they’d found a place to hold up through the winter. Once, a large gang rolled into the area. Nobody wanted to wait to find out if they were friendly, and they slipped out under the cover of night.

The second place, a non-descript house in a partially burned down development seemed perfect. Even though many of the houses had burnt down, the whole community was behind a waist-high wall. A stone’s throw away, a river swept past. Ryan said it was the Platte River. The blessing became a curse when a terrible storm thundered through. For three days they watched as the river flowed over its banks, creeping just as slowly and steadily across the flat plain as any zombie. Every hour it came closer to the houses. Eventually, water began flowing down the razor-straight grid of streets.

They travelled for two more weeks when they found the biggest, most amazing house Rindy had ever seen. It sat on a hill looking over a valley that stretched off to the east and west. The valley was bordered by enormous rocky cliffs to the north and the south.

Unlike many houses these days, this one still had most of its windows intact. It stood three stories high and had a huge fireplace inside that seemed bigger than Rindy’s bedroom in her old house with mom, dad, and ‘baby zombie’. The only disappointment proved to be the pantry. Easily the size of a small apartment, it was full of bags and bins. These people had obviously not believed in food out of a can. Not a single box of macaroni and cheese. There were a variety of herbs and spices…all rotten and useless.

Looking around, they found a large plot that Ryan said was a garden. Of course it was dead and full of weeds, but Ryan said it held promise. It looked like they had found not just their wi
nter home, but maybe a place that they could stay. At least that’s what Ryan and Penny kept saying. Rindy wasn’t so sure. She didn’t like staying any place too long.

The days grew shorter, colder, and gloomy. Rindy continued to teach Brad and Amber the things Corporal Morgan taught her. Sometimes Ryan and Penny watched, whispering back and forth. For some reason, watching her, Brad, and Amber train seemed to make them sad.

One morning, Rindy was out early before the sun came up. She’d made herself a breakfast; roasting a chunk of pumpkin and eating it with her fish that Penny caught and smoked a few days before. She liked going out early by herself. The first day, she’d come back with three rabbits. That had been quite a feast. She hadn’t been out twenty minutes when she saw it: an enormous deer.

An hour later, she, Ryan, and Penny were hauling the field-stripped carcass back to the house. While Rindy and Penny went to work cutting it up, Ryan and Brad went foraging for some e
ditable winter greens. Ryan was really good at identifying plants.

Late that afternoon, Ryan and Brad returned. Ryan was very excited. The two had gone off searching for some greens and hopefully a few herbs he could use to spruce up the night’s meal. They found a road, mostly washed out. Curiosity getting the be
tter of them, they’d followed it. It was Brad who found the sign: Elkhart 2 mi. A town was a mere two miles away!

“You know what that means?” Ryan asked.

“That we’ll need to be more careful and keep our eyes open for roamers and stragglers,” Rindy said.

“Gloomy much?” Penny snorted.

“It means that we might be able to salvage some useful stuff,” Ryan ignored Rindy.

“It will be like a shopping spree,” Penny said, sounding like she’d just won the grand prize on a game show.

That night, everybody sat around the fire, eating venison, a bitter salad that Amber took one taste of and refused to take another, cups of steaming hot water from the creek nearby, and the big surprise that Ryan had kept hidden and sent Brad for once dinner was done…apples!  One of the houses on the outskirt of the newly discovered town had a pair of apple trees in the yard. They were kinda shriveled, but everybody snacked away with ear-to-ear grins.

“You went into town?” Penny asked.

“Naw,” Ryan shook his head, “just this one house on the outskirts.”

That night, the rest of the talk centered on the possibilities of what they might find. The next day, Ryan and Penny left early with empty backpacks. They were gone all that day and night. The next day, they came back with full packs and huge smiles.

“We got the makings of a regular feast,” Ryan crowed. “Just in time for Thanksgiving.”

“Did you find turkey?” Amber climbed up onto a stool next to the counter as Ryan and Penny unloaded their packs.

“Nope, but we got venison, just like the pilgrims ate, and…” He produced two bottles carefully wrapped. “I found corn syrup.”

“Ohhhkay,” Rindy raised an eyebrow.

“The perfect sweetener, along with some cinnamon and ginger I found. I think I can make something close to pumpkin pie. Just without the crust,” Ryan explained.

This made everybody smile. The next day, while she was out in the morning, Rindy bagged five quail. To make things even better, she found a nest with seven newly hatched eggs. She bundled up the chicks and returned to the house.

“You’re lethal with that bow and arrow,” Ryan said. Rindy scowled and Ryan raised his hands. “Young lady…sorry.”

“That’s pretty close to turkey,” Penny offered. “But what’s with the little peepers?” she asked, tilting her head at the cluster of chicks Rindy arranged carefully in the empty kitchen sink, nestled in a ratty sweatshirt.

“Maybe we can raise ‘em and use their eggs,” Rindy shrugged.

“That’s not a bad idea at all,” Ryan admitted.

That night, they decided it was close enough to Thanksgiving. The meal was great, and everybody loved Ryan’s pumpkin custard. None of them could remember being that full—that satisfied—in a long time.

“All we need is the Detroit and the Dallas games and it would be just like old times,” Ryan said as he undid the button on his pants and stretched out on the couch.

“You were into
that
?” Penny scoffed.

“I’m a guy aren’t I?”

“I miss the
Black Friday
shopping with my sister and a few friends,” Penny admitted sheepishly.

“You are one of
those
people?” Ryan sat up so that Penny could sit at the other end of the couch. Amber had taken to following the woman everywhere and climbed up to nestle under her arm.

“And I suppose you were the type that did all his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve.”