"I guess get ready for the military to come knocking," Travis decided.
"Calhoun says he overhead them talking about coming to see us today.
Maybe they"re gonna finally answer us."
"And I get to be John Wayne," Nerit decided with a gleam in her eye, but a stoic expression "Oh, no, no, no, Nerit. I want to be John Wayne," Travis protested.
Nerit considered this. She shook her head. "No. I"m John Wayne."
Katie looked back toward the people gathered to pet the cows. She knew in these moments of ridiculous brevity there was serious concern. They were going to have to take to heart something she had read somewhere that John Wayne had said, "Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway."
They were going to have to saddle up.
Sweeping her hair back from her face, she could only wonder what Bill and Jenni were experiencing in this very moment.
What were their thoughts? Were they saddling up?
Chapter 15 1. Tales of the Madison Mall Jenni poked at the lumpish gray stuff in her bowl that she was certain was supposed to be oatmeal. It looked nothing like oatmeal, though the smell was similar.
"Army food," a woman said sitting down across from her.
Jenni was surprised that someone was talking to her. Everyone the day before seemed to regard her with suspicion. But she was grateful for the company. "Not all that great."
"Makes me really appreciate the army," the lady said with a wry smile. Her eyes flicked to a soldier strolling by in full battle fatigues. "Where did they rescue you from?"
"I wasn"t rescued. They kidnapped me," Jenni said with a frown.
The woman blinked in confusion. "Huh?"
Jenni lifted her eyes to truly look at the woman. She was probably a few years older than Jenni, but those had been hard years. She had lank dark blond hair and pale blue eyes.
"We were returning to our fort and this helicopter swooped down and blinded us. We had an accident and woke up here. We were pretty much kidnapped."
"Fort? Do you mean a real fort?"
"Well, more like four blocks of a downtown walled in, but the big hotel is pretty d.a.m.n nice," Jenni answered.
The woman double-blinked. "Are there lots of people?"
Jenni furrowed her brow. "I think may be close to two-hundred and fifty people now. I"m not real sure."
The woman slowly exhaled. "Wow. We really thought we were the only ones still alive out this way. But why would the army take ya if you weren"t in trouble."
"I think whoever runs this place wants the fort. Or at least that is what my friend Bill says."
"Well, d.a.m.n, that would be the Senator. But then, it has been real tough here," the woman confessed.
"How long have you been here?" Jenni shoved her plate of food away with one hand and tried to eat something that looked like toast.
"Since the first day. We were over at that yonder civic center first. When the news started getting bad, FEMA said to go there. It was a rescue center. At first we didn"t pay no attention. It was just crazy talk on the TV, but then this man came and started trying to get in our back door. Troy, my husband, he shouted at the man to get lost, but this guy kept hitting the door. Hitting it so hard he was busting his hands open. We could see it through the window. My kids started screaming. Troy keeps threatening to shoot the guy with the shotgun, but the guy keeps banging and making these noises."
"Oh, G.o.d, what did you do?"
"Well, Troy grabs the shotgun off the fridge and opens the door and waves the gun at the guy. But this guy has his guts falling out and he just lunges into the house. Troy shouted for us to run,. So me and the kids run out the front door. Troy runs, too. That guy, the messed up one, falls on his own innards."
Jenni made a face and shivered. "d.a.m.n."
"So we get into the truck and Troy is getting into the truck when he sees Mabel, our neighbor running to us. She"s got some nasty folks after her.
Troy shouts her name and reaches out to her. And she bit his hand! So he cold c.o.c.ks her one and we see her back is all tore up. He gets into the truck and we hauled a.s.s to the civic center."
"So if the rescue center was the civic center, how"d you end up here?"
Jenni was enraptured by the story and reached for another piece of stale toast.
"Soldiers came and got us after FEMA took off."
Jenni mulled this over. "FEMA took off?"
"Yeah. They gave us milk and cookies and told us to sit down in the auditorium. They took the worst of the messed up people into this reception hall or something. I dunno. They said Troy wasn"t hurt enough to go back there with the volunteer doctors and nurses. I heard all sorts of rumors that the hospital wasn"t taking no more patients." The woman sighed. "We just sat in there and it was real scary. All we heard was gossip and s.h.i.t. I heard someone was gonna come and give us all shots so we wouldn"t get rabid, too. Troy starts getting a fever and the kids were all antsy and it was just plain s.h.i.tty. Then the d.a.m.n FEMA people started packing up their stuff and told us that we need to sit tight and wait for the Army to come get us and take us to another place. So they bail and we get stuck in the auditorium just waiting."
A few other people began to draw closer to listen. Jenni became aware of one older black woman vigorously nodding her head. "Oh, yeah. I remember that!"
"So Troy gets sicker and so do some other people. Finally the Army does show up, but it"s just a few guys. They start getting on the radio trying to figure out what is going on. One of them comes in saying that the doors to that other room are locked and there are those things in there."
"FEMA just up and left us with a whole bunch of those zombies in that back room. All those doctors and nurses got ate up," the black woman cut in.
Jenni thought back on Katie"s decision not to go to the rescue center in Madison and was she ever grateful for her friend"s intuition.
"Right, right. So then more soldiers show up, but they are looking for a place to be safe, too. Then a few more. And it gets real clear to us that none of them know what is going on. Then that one guy shows up."
"That handsome Kevin," the black woman put in with a grin.
"Yeah, and he finds out about those things in the back room and he just says that we are all going to the mall. So they load up the old people in the trucks. The soldiers start going and asking people if they are bit or not.
And all the bit people are made to go to another room. Including my Troy," the woman took a breath, looking ready to cry. "The kids are crying and it"s just bad."
"Uh-huh, real bad," the other woman agreed.
"Well, we got into lines and filed outside. The trucks were taking people back and forth to the mall. It"s only like two blocks away, but they wanted us to be safe. You got a ride on a truck, didn"t you, Ethel?"
"Thank you, Jesus, yes, or I wouldn"t be here today," Ethel answered.
"My kids were crying real hard for their Daddy. We younger folks were the last to go and just as the trucks left with some people, the doors behind us start banging hard. We look and those things are trying to get out of the Civic Center. So the soldiers shouted "run." And, girl, we ran."
Ethel nodded her head. "We got into the mall and the soldiers were all shouting and telling us to keep moving. Was bad."
"We were running like crazy down the street. A whole bunch of us with some soldiers. Then those doors got knocked down and those things came running. And everyone was screaming and crying. People were tripping.
The soldiers were trying to shoot..." The woman steadied herself emotionally and Ethel took her hand.
"Take a breath, Amy, take a breath," Ethel said softly.
Jenni looked around to see their table was now not only packed with people but others were gathering around to listen. Most were nodding their heads, obviously remembering the horror of the first day.
"And my little boy said, "Look, Mommy, Daddy is coming, too" and I looked back. It"s not my Troy anymore. He is all messed up and screaming. We just keep running and I could barely breathe. One of the soldiers grabbed my kids and just yanked them up into his arms and ran.
And I was running hard. And people...started...to fall back...then we could hear them getting...getting...ripped up..."
A big black man leaned forward, taking over the story as Amy sobbed into Ethel"s shoulder. "So we made it to the mall and the soldiers were closing the gates the city council had put in to keep vandals from doing graffiti on the mall."
"Probably the only thing they ever did right," someone huffed.
"We just had that one gate to get in and the soldiers were shooting and we just ran, ma"am. We just ran," the black man continued.
"They shoved cars up against the gates to keep them closed and kept those things out," Amy said.
"Later, the helicopters came," the black man added.
"Oh, yes, they were shooting those undead b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for hours. Almost ran out of ammunition," Ethel added.
"Those soldiers didn"t know what they were doing at first," another woman said. "They were scared, too, but once they got it safe and those things weren"t getting in, they tried to calm us down.
"Fed us..."
"Got us safe..."
"So this wasn"t the rescue center?" Jenni asked. "They just brought you here and made do?"
"Exactly," Ethel said.
"It was real scary. Every time new people showed up to get saved, it was real scary. Lots of shooting. I heard the helicopters went and got more ammunition and soldiers until the National Guard base got taken by the dead things," a middle-aged man said. "And they had to...shoot...the people who got bitten."
Amy, the first woman who started speaking, nodded sadly. "They had to.
Cause they"d die and just get right back up."
Jenni"s back was a coil of nervous knots. Hearing what these people had been through brought back all her memories of the first day. When Bill touched her back, she jumped, then looked up with relief to see him. He slid onto the bench next to her and looked very solemn.
"So you folks have been here all this time with the soldiers taking care of you?" Bill asked.
"For the first week," Amy answered. "Then the Senator came with her soldiers and that Major General. They made Kevin step down. He did such a good job in the beginning, too. When they came, they brought a lot more zombies with them. They went through the d.a.m.n town and dragged them down on us."
"So you don"t like the Senator?"
Everyone looked nervous now, looking around warily.
An old Mexican woman, probably almost a hundred years old said, "Tonta! Pendeja! Stupid. She makes the Mexicans do the...the...work of the gutter. She don"t like us cause she says we"re wetbacks. My family has been in Texas since it was Mexico!"
"Total b.i.t.c.h," a woman said who looked like she had been some sort of professional. "She won"t talk to any of us. She stays up on the second floor and looks down at us. I know she"s behind them doing some sort of weird questionnaire on everyone."
"Yeah. That was kinda weird and scary," Amy agreed.
"Esta tonta! Pendeja! Tocha," the old Hispanic woman muttered.
Jenni giggled, reminded of her own late Mexican grandmother. The woman was on a roll with her insults.
"Things are not good here," Amy said to Jenni. "Not at all. We"re all hungry. We"re all scared. Nothing is getting better. It only gets worse."
Bill folded his hands on the table and looked at the people gathered around. "The fort has room for everyone here. I just don"t think the Senator will let y"all go there and live with us. I think she"s gonna try to take over our home, too."
Murmurs of discontent spread through the group.
"Is it really better for y"all? Really?" Amy"s expression was hopeful.
Jenni looked around at all the tired, smelly people with their desperate expressions. "Yeah. It is."
The old Mexican woman hit the top of the table with her cane. "Then we go with you. The puta stays here."
Everyone laughed until Bill coughed nervously as the Senator appeared on a walkway above them. Everyone lapsed into silence, a few people drifting away.
"I"m not sure what is going on," Bill said at last, when the Senator walked away. "But I"m sure if we can get you good people to the fort, you are more than welcome there."
Expressions of hope appeared on the faces around them and Jenni looked at Bill nervously. She leaned toward him and whispered, "Bill, how are we going to get all these people there?"
"Dunno...but...d.a.m.n..they gotta have hope," Bill answered.
Jenni looked up to see the people talking around her and realized that what had been missing since she had arrived was a sense of hope. Now it was spreading like wildfire and the very desperate expressions were giving away to smiles.
"Gotta have hope, Jenni," Bill repeated. "Gotta have hope."
2. Preparing the Way Travis could always tell when his wife was on edge. She"d stand with her legs slightly apart, arms crossed, one hip shifted to one side, her chin set firmly. Walking into the lobby of the hotel, he saw her posture and thought "c.r.a.p." Moving up behind her, he looked over her shoulder to see at least fifteen people sitting around on the sofas and love seats, backpacks, suitcases and even pillow cases, all packed up and ready to go.
"Do I want to know?"
"They"re waiting for the army to come rescue them," Katie answered in a low voice. "Ingrates."
"Katie," Travis chuckled.
"They are! We risked our a.s.ses to go out there and rescue them and this is the thanks we get? Them ditching their ch.o.r.es and sitting around waiting for the army?" Her eyes were flashing with indignation.
"You know," Travis said with a slow smile. "You"re kinda s.e.xy when you"re feisty."
Katie frowned and narrowed her eyes at him. "Don"t make me hurt you."
"Hormones," Nerit whispered walking by.
"I am not hormonal!" Katie said pa.s.sionately.