The Hunt Chronicles (Volume 1): Awakening (16 page)

I pondered a moment.  Should I ask about his wife and son?  I mean, that was pretty personal.  Chances were one or both didn’t make it.  I wasn’t sure what was appropriate.  I never asked Fish about his personal life, but then again, DJ had just told me more about himself in two minutes than Fish had since I met him.

“Are they…” was all I could manage to say. 

“Are they dead-heads?” he finished for me.  “Naw, I’m lucky.  My brother lived with us.  He got sick and changed.  I had to put him down… twice,” he added.

“So they’re alive?  Where are they?” I asked a little excited to hear some good news.

“Back at our camp.  Ry wasn’t too happy about me coming out here tonight,”  he said referring to his wife Ryan, and then laughed, “Hell, she’s never happy about me leaving camp.  But we put up some good defenses, and have yet to attract any scabs.  The LT’s a douche bag sometimes, but he means well.  His troops aren’t half bad either.  Haven’t had a breach since we set up our compound.” He looked at me, and changed to a serious tone.  “If I didn’t feel like they were safe, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.  He had his family when most people didn’t.  I didn’t know what had become of mine. 

“We’re not in such a bad spot either,” I said, “but Fish still thinks we need to move.  After what I saw tonight, I guess I kinda agree.  We’re just too close to the city.  Too many of them wandering around.”

DJ seemed to ponder a moment.  “You guys may be able to join up with us.  I don’t know, though.  Our little community would have to discuss it.  It’s hard to feed everyone as it is.”

I wasn’t sure how Fish would feel about that, either.  I know I wanted to.  But I wouldn’t do it without him, Judy, and definitely Boomer.  They might not be too keen on a dog running around.  Fish seemed to have his own plan, anyway.  He hadn’t let me in on it, though.  He was going to have to open up a little and trust me. 

I let the silence linger.  I wasn’t sure how to respond.  Telling DJ how paranoid Fish could be about meeting other people didn’t seem like a good idea.  I glanced over at the picture he was drawing.  It looked like a fire truck that had some Mad Max style upgrades.

“That looks interesting,” I told him.  “Drawing something for your kid?”

He gave me an awkward look, and then continued with his illustration.

“This is for me,” he said.  “A guy back at my camp is helping me design something to make biofuel,” he continued as he added some finishing touches.  It wasn’t the Mona Lisa, but it wasn’t half bad either.  “I figure we should have something big and bad if the need ever arose.  Most fire trucks are diesel, finding replacement parts would be easy, and the bastards are tough as hell.  Not to mention it can carry water for us.”

“That and he always wanted to be a fireman,” Jared joked as he came over to where we were sat.

“Can it, Jared,” DJ shot back.  He wasn’t serious.  I saw a smile start to form beneath DJ’s bushy beard.

“How long have you guys known each other?” I asked.

“Too long,” DJ jested before Jared could answer.

“Three years,” Jared said and then added with a smile, “Like he said, too long.”

“Yeah, the bastard showed up at my place the day after the power went out.”  He pointed his pencil at Jared.  “He’s lucky I didn’t blow his head off then.”

“Really?” I asked.  “So you guys were good friends before all of this happened?”

“Not good friends, but we saw each other from time to time,” Jared told me.  “He would call me whenever he wired something wrong in his house.”

“Won’t let me live that down, will you?” DJ said, sharing an inside joke.

“Nope,” he returned smiling, and then looked at DJ’s illustration.  “Still trying to become a road warrior?”

“Keep messing with me Jared,” DJ retorted.

“It doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea,” I said, throwing in my two cents.

“Seems like Christian is smarter than you, buddy.” DJ folded up the paper and stuffed it into a cargo pocket.  “Time to get some sleep you two.  I’ll be waking you in an hour, Jared.  I don’t want to hear you crying because you’re tired.”

DJ rose and walked over to his truck.

“So how did you two meet back up?  I mean, after everything went bad?” I asked Jared as he started to turn to leave.

He turned around and smirked.

“DJ was one of those prepper guys.  You know, tons of guns and ammo, gas masks… all that crap.  My wife passed a few years ago.  Guess I got lucky with that.  Too many people I’ve met had to put their own loved ones down.  I didn’t know where to go and I remembered him.  I showed up an hour after he shot his brother.  We both had to put him down a second time.  Funny, he almost shot me when I knocked on his door.”

“So you guys must be well set.  I mean, I saw some of those shows.  People waiting for the world to collapse.  They seemed ready for anything.” I probably sounded a little jealous when I said that.

“Not really,” Jared chuckled.  “He won’t admit it, but we bugged out of his house so fast after his brother came back to life… death… whatever.  It freaked us out.  We left half his supplies.  Come to find out most of it was useless.  We went back for a few things but left the rest.  After finding those kids, we’ve burned through most of the food he had.  Man’s gotta big heart.  Don’t let his grizzly appearance fool ya.”

“Kids…” I muttered.

“Yeah.  We ran across some-” Jared started to say, but was then cut off.

“I said go to bed, Jared.  You know how grumpy you get when you don’t get your beauty sleep,” DJ said as he came back over.

“Alright, alright, I’m going.  Night Christian.”  Jared turned around and went back to the truck he had been in.

DJ plopped back down next to me with a small pad of paper.  I could see he had some notes already written down, but couldn’t make out what they were.  I guessed it was a shopping list.

“So you were a prepper?” I asked.

“Heh, no,” he chuckled looking back at the truck where Jared had climbed into.  “Jared tell you that?”

“Yeah,” I smiled.

“No, not like those idiots on TV.  I always thought a man should be prepared for whatever may come, but I never went crazy with it,” he said as he wrote down a few notes.

“Guess those idiots weren’t so crazy after all,” I said, more to myself than to DJ.  It made me think of my best friend Dave.  He believed in being prepared.  I wonder if my making fun of him kept him from prepping more than he did.

“You’re right.  I used to think I had enough ammo.  I would see people with tens of thousands of rounds.  I was happy with a just a couple of hundred.  I guess the one good thing I did do was make that silencer last year.  It was illegal as all hell, but only my wife and I knew about it.”

“I think you did a lot more good than that,” I told him.  I paused a moment.  “I’m glad we met you, DJ.”

We didn’t really discuss much more, and I said my farewell to him as I went to lie next to Fish on the mattress.  He was breathing steady and I carefully lay down next to him, attempting to be as quiet as possible.  I knew it would be difficult to sleep that night.  It was the first time since I found Boomer that he wasn’t nestled up next to me or at my feet.  I always felt safe with him around.

The sun must have gone down, because the echoing hum of the dead could be heard even through the thick walls of the fire station.  I was thinking about how Judy and Boomer were doing when I felt movement beside me. 

Fish was stirring in his sleep.  I could faintly hear him mumbling and made out the names Becky and Nolan.  I couldn’t hear everything he was saying, but the words ‘sorry’ and ‘I had to’ kept coming up.  He never mentioned those names before, but it was a good guess that Becky was his wife.

Fish shook and sprang up to a sitting position.  He held his head with one hand and grabbed his chest with the other.  He looked around the fire station, and seemed to slowly come back to reality.  DJ was right.  Fish did have demons.  He looked down at me, too quick for me to look away.

“What are you staring at, kid?” he asked, breathing heavy.

“Sorry, you were dreaming,” I replied.  I could have made a smartass remark like he did about my sister, but thought better of it.  Not because he would kick my ass, which I’m sure he would have, but because I didn’t want to see the pain it would bring.  I no longer wanted to know what demons he was suppressing.

He lightly patted his wound, and gave me somewhat of an apologetic look.  Of course, he would never actually say that he was sorry.

“Daniel said you would be okay.  Just that you lost a lot of blood,” I told him.  “Maybe you should lie back down.  Rest for the night.”

“Yeah,” he said, then asked, “Can we trust these guys?”

“I think so.  I mean, they didn’t have to come save our lives.”

Fish nodded and lay back down.  He wasn’t looking at me, but just gazed up at the ceiling, seemingly lost in thought.  Then he broke the silence.

“Today, when I told you to get out of the truck…” he stopped in mid-sentence.  He pondered for a moment and rephrased what he was going to say.  “When you got out of the truck, you looked like you were about to leave me.”  It wasn’t a question and he didn’t sound angry, but it didn’t stop the queasiness in the pit of my stomach from forming.

I didn’t know what to say.  This man saved my life from that scab when there was no question that she would have killed me.  Then I repaid him by almost leaving him behind to get eaten by the sea of zombies that attacked us outside of Wagon Wheel.  He had to have seen my expression when I turned around.  The white fear must have been written all over my face, just like the guilt that was written all over it while we were talking.

“I… I panicked,” I said after a pause.  “I’m sorry man.  I couldn’t think of anything except getting away.”

I wasn’t sure what he was going to say next and it made me really nervous.  Was he going to lash out at me?  Put a bullet in me?  Tell me I was now on my own?  Could I even have blamed him for that?

“Why did you turn back around?” he asked in the same monotone voice.

I really didn’t think it would sound right if I told him I kept hearing my father’s voice.  I mean, it wasn’t like he was really talking to me.  I wasn’t going crazy or anything, but Fish may not have thought that.

“I don’t really know.  I mean, I wanted to run.  I was scared,” I paused a moment.  “But I couldn’t leave you.  Something told me to stop.”

The silence between our exchanges was killing me.  I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I did know he was trying to put the right words together.  Normally, Fish was direct and blunt and rarely thought before he spoke.  I wasn’t sure if this meant he was really mad, or was just choosing his words carefully.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he finally said.  “Anyone would’ve run.  I’m not saying I would have, but most would.”  He rolled over, facing away from me.  “You’re alright, kid.”

It took me a moment to put together what he was telling me.  In the end, I realized he was saying that most people would have run, and it took a special soul to stick it out.  If only he knew it wasn’t my soul that made me turn around.

“Thanks,” I whispered so low I wasn’t sure if he heard me or not.

“But,” he said, back in his gruff and condescending voice, “If you ever slap me again, I’ll rip your skinny little arm off and beat you to death with it.”

That made me smile.  Leave it to Fish to turn a heartfelt moment into his normal barrage of harassment.  From that point on, however, Fish never referred to me as ‘Supply’ or ‘pogue’ again.  Of course, he never stopped being an asshole.

Fish didn’t say another word that night.  I watched the shift change, as Jared went over and sat next to the door leading to the main part of the station.  I wanted to talk to more people and find out more about what was going on, but I was also physically drained.  Like Fish had said, it really doesn’t matter what’s going on.  The world had gone to hell, and we were left to dwell in it. 

I didn’t feel entirely that way, though.  There had to be hope.  Besides, we were learning new things all the time and I felt that it was important.  I found it odd that DJ and his crew had yet to see zombies climb.  Of course, I hadn’t until that day.  I was starting to become obsessed with what those things could do. 

In most movies, zombies died after a shot to the head.  The real ones didn’t. Instead, they seem to be incapacitated for a short time, like a day or so.  That meant that the ones I took down at Wagon Wheel Pizza would be back up and moving around tomorrow night.  Of course, I had no idea why at the time, nor did I really know the time frame it took for them to reanimate, but it did mean that to clear out an area, you had to stick around and finish the job. 

The fact that zombies could climb was another thing.  Most shows and movies had them held up by walls and fences.  Real zombies climbed that ladder in the restaurant.  Real zombies could climb over counters about chest high.  It took time, but they were able to figure it out. 

I started to wonder if they had more brains and were more than just mindless feeding machines.  They seemed to sniff the air, listen, and even test places to see if there was anything living in it.  Sure, they were not rocket scientists, but it seemed some sort of intelligent instinct existed.