08 The Meetup

The Sojourner Sundown Service wasn't anything special by Before standards, just a normal radio worship with some bible readings, music, and a short sermon. Messages about sin and grace could seem really out of place in the Plague Years, but Father Caleb was giving them anyway. Hearing his voice again made me smile, even if his sermons were from another time. I had missed the old man more than I realized.

At the end of every broadcast he invited listeners to reach out to them on the radio, followed by the dim static that indicated the station had stopped sending. That's when I thumbed my microphone.

"Sojourner radio, this is E." When all I got was silence, I hit the transmit button again. "Sojourner, this is E. Don't tell me you've forgotten me already?"

I was starting to worry the entire program had been a recording, or some kind of trap. It wouldn't be the first time raiders had baited their traps with radio. With two directional antennas a person could locate me and send out a raiding party, so I didn't want to speak for too long. But, Father Caleb's voice came out again from the speaker.

"Been a fair while, son. You looking to come home?"

"Yes, plus one passenger." Calling Sandy a passenger was code to indicate I didn't know her very well and I couldn't fully vouch for her. "Family" indicated people you knew well enough to trust your life to, and "cargo" was a prisoner, someone to be treated with utmost caution.

The frequency was dead for over a minute, but I knew better than to interrupt their deliberations. Caleb was talking to whomever else ran the Sojourners with him, debating whether to bring me in and how it should be done.

"We've set a meet," he came back finally, "two pm tomorrow, at Abigail's grave. If you're really him, you'll remember where that is."

"Yeah," I said into the mic, "I remember."

"What the hell, Father," I grumbled after the radio was off.

❖❖❖

It wouldn't do to make a poor first impression, not after so long away. That night, I made sure we were both washed and had clean clothes to wear. And, at Sandy's recommendation, I shaved my beard and let her trim some of the extra length from my hair. That was a first for her, expressing an actual opinion about something, and for me in allowing her to wield a sharp object near me. Even when we were cooking, I had kept her more than an arm's reach away when she had a knife in her hand. But I let her use the scissors to cut a couple inches from my overgrown head of hair.

"Sandy," I told her when she was done, "you should know, they're going to interview you. Ask you questions about where you came from. We should practice, so you know what you're going to say."

It was like she had been waiting for me to ask. "I always belonged to Georgine, since before the zombies came. My mother sold me, so she could get drugs, and then I lived with Georgine. Then she married Carl. I did chores, and did sex, and they fed me and they promised not to give me to the police so I wouldn't go to jail. Then we all got sick, and I took care of everyone until they got better, but then there were zombies."

"You took care of them, even though you were sick yourself?"

She looked at her hands instead of me. "When they felt poorly they would … do things to me. I didn't want them to get mad."

"How did they survive after the zombies came?"

"Carl had a house in the forest, a big one. He said it was off-grid, with food and power and stuff, and I guess it was. We went there, and lived there a long time. I lived in the basement. Until Dan."

She looked up, finally, with wide watery eyes. "I was glad when he killed them. I was happy they were dead, but it was a bad thought. I was punished for it. Dan had me, and he was just the same. He was worse."

I wasn't sure if I should try to hold her hand or not, or if I should do anything at all. She was starting to cry, so I grabbed a clean towel and dabbed at her eyes for her. If the tears started running in earnest, I was going to panic. It had been years since I had talked with anyone, and tears were outside my comfort zone by at least a county or two.

"You weren't being punished. All the stuff that happened to you, wasn't about you. It was bad luck and you didn't deserve any of it. But your luck is better now. You're with me, and soon hopefully with the Sojourners, and you won't do sex with anyone you don't want to. Nobody does. It's a rule. A big one. You'll be expected to work, but you'll be fed and you won't be harshly punished for little mistakes. But they will want to know about you before letting us stay with them, so you'll have to tell them your story, okay?"

She nodded, a little calmer. I put the towel in her hand in case she needed it again.

"Now, this is important. Carl and Georgine lived in the same place, with nobody else but you, the whole time since the zombies came? So, what about Dan and his guys? Do you know where they came from?"

"They came from a new kingdom," she sniffed, "in the East. They said they were deserters. Jonsey said that's someone too smart to stay in a loser situation. But he laughed when he said it, so I think he was joking. They used to be able to fuck any girl they wanted. They liked that a lot, but then they couldn't so they left. They said, the rules changed? They could only get a girl if her guardian said it was okay and they didn't like that. They had some before me, but they died. I thought I was going to die, too."

I asked her more questions about this kingdom, but she didn't know anything except Dan and his two guys had been part of the Army, there was a king, and the king had a palace.

❖❖❖

The meet location was the parking lot of a burned-out Walmart. It was just like Caleb to pick a place like this, put his thumb on a sore spot and press, to see what I would do. He was in charge of meeting new people so it was his responsibility to judge their character. If I was violent or unstable they would leave me here, next to Abigail's grave.

Back when it happened, we had thought the Walmart was clear, that all the zombies were dead or gone but, somehow, nobody had checked the loading dock. The inside doors gave way and hundreds of zombies came pouring out, and Abigail just happened to be the closest one to the door at the time. I remember a banging sound as the door gave way and many hands, my memory counts them as a hundred though it isn't possible, grabbed her. She was facing me and the zombies grabbed her from behind, ripped her belly open, spilled her onto the floor, and mouths of black teeth ripped at her arms and legs and neck. She wasn't the only one who died that day, but she was the one who looked at me.

I don't know if Abby's expression was one of surprise, or a desperate call for help, or a warning to run, but running is what I did. I shouted for everyone to run. The zombies chased us through the store until we all rushed out the front and barred the exits. A few of us climbed the building with ladders, used chainsaws to cut holes in the roof, and poured lighter fluid onto the horde. I lit the igniting flare myself, stood back from the hole in the ceiling, far back, and tossed the flare at the hole. It disappeared in a hiss and trail of smoke. Fire and heat and expanding gasses flexed the roof beneath us, and I rode it like a wave.

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We must have watched it burn for hours and hours, but grief had stopped the clock and didn't begin to let go until the last lick of flame had died.

When I remember it, Abbey's zombie is there, under the hole we made in the roof, belly open and empty, her fresh zombie eyes turned up to the dropping flare, her mouth frozen in a final scream. I know for a fact she hadn't fully risen yet, couldn't have, because the conversion takes a while and there probably wasn't enough of her left to stand up. But in my memory she's there, the first to catch fire. Abigail is what I saw when I was hiding from a horde under a mylar blanket. And Abigail is what I wasn't seeing when I was planting, hunting, building, cooking, harvesting, studying, and tending to all the other tasks that kept me alive.

And Caleb had chosen to meet us there, of all places, the spot I had been running from. But three years was as good as a century back then, and the heat of that fire had long gone out. It was just a ruined building with nothing left to offer, not even ghosts. Everything that was left of Abigail lived in my head.

I felt a hand in mine, narrow and dry, and I was shocked to find Sandy there, looking concerned for me. With everything she had been through, it should have been the other way around.

"I lost someone here," I said to her unspoken question, "I couldn't do anything for her. Nothing at all. But I loved her very much."

Father Caleb let us wait by the four charred walls open to the sky, for over an hour. A few weeds were trying to colonize the store, but were having a hard time finding more than scant traces of soil. Sandy and I were standing in the shade of the cinderblock walls when Father Caleb drove up in an electric minicar, weaving his way between the abandoned cars in their disorderly clumps and lines. He circled the store quietly at low speed before getting out and greeting me.

Father Caleb was an Anglican priest for whom the Plague was a godsend. Adversity had put iron into a tottering faith, added dire purpose to previously mundane responsibilities. He dressed in a black leather cassock tailored closely to his lean frame, topped with a clerical collar and one of those wide-brimmed saturno hats. He wore his cross tucked safely away in between the buttons of his cassock. Instead of the traditional cummerbund-like fascia he wore a gun belt equipped with a silenced pistol at his hip, slung low for quick drawing. Unlike most guns, Caleb’s was loaded. Add his neatly trimmed beard, and you had the perfect picture of a spiritual shepherd prepared to kill the wolves who were after his flock.

“Been a while. How was California, Son?” If he felt any dissatisfaction in my showing up with a new girl in tow he didn’t let it show in his greeting.

I returned his handshake, extra-firm like he liked it. “It’s like the Garden of Eden. Plus zombies.” I purposely didn’t ask him about the meeting location. I hadn’t forgotten Abigail, but I wasn't going to fuss.

“We’ve missed you. Rachel talks about you all the time. Who’s this?” I had to explain Sandy. He wasn’t keen on the idea of my holding her as property or a slave or whatever, but you only had to talk to Sandy for a minute to realize there was something desperate at work inside her. When Caleb questioned her too hard she drew close to me and held my left wrist in both her hands as a frightened child would. Caleb agreed that she would remain “mine” for the time being, with the promise of revisiting the issue later.

“Are you back for good, or just passing through?”

“I was hoping we could winter with you. Sandy needs to be around some decent people, and I have a project I’m working on that’s going to take a while.”

“What kind of project?” Caleb used to know all about my projects. Tapping into parking lot solar arrays to extend the power budget; building electrical storage from arrays of car batteries; making windmills from easy-to-scavenge parts; finding an efficient way to clear dead cars from a road. My telling him about a project was deliberate bait.

“This isn’t the best time to explain it. I promise you’ll know all about it before we leave for Idaho. Assuming you still winter in Idaho.”

The Father’s face went stern and searching, looking for any sign of deception. He had the gift of looking you in both eyes at once, without his pupils jumping back and forth, “I can’t promise to condone a project if you don’t tell me about it.”

“You don’t have to. If you find it objectionable, we’ll go our own way. I wasn’t planning to find you until spring but, ” I looked at Sandy, “plans change.”

❖❖❖

We followed Caleb to where his flock of forty-plus people occupied a small hotel on the edge of Richfield. Hotels, like schools, took time to clear properly because of the numerous rooms. But hotels also made for good settlement sites because they had both private and communal spaces aplenty. This one had a stout wall around the back and sides of the property, and the Sojourners had extended the wall to cover most of the front, then barred the entrance with a rolling iron gate. It was a sound defense against zombies, but too obviously a settlement for my tastes. Raiders could find it with ease.

They had a big garden planted in neat rows, a ways off from the hotel, and I spotted the telltale signs the solar arrays on nearby buildings and parking lots had been tapped. They probably had enough power to run an electric pump for water and a large refrigerator, with enough left over for video games. A lot of work had gone into the place.

The defenses were good enough to handle a horde of several hundred, if they had to. The yearly mega-shamble migration would still be a danger: in those numbers zombies would just pile up until they could get over the wall. I didn't see an emergency exit from the compound, but they would definitely have some kind of plan.

We were barely inside the gate before Rachel showed up, elbowing her way through the curious gathering crowd. I was glad to see her looking so well. She was taller than I, and had always been athletic. Before, she had trained to be a federal officer but her career had been nipped in the bud by Plague. During the Plague she typically wore fatigues with a harness for her weapons and gear, and that's what she had on when we arrived in Richfield.

I had planned to say something to her, I don't remember what now but probably something lame, but I never got to say it before she had her arms around me. The embrace lasted for all of thirty seconds, warm and smelling a little like Abigail had, a wonderful homecoming until she broke contact and punched me in the solar plexus. Hard. I was on my knees learning to breathe again.

While it's true that I deserved it, for vanishing the way I had, that doesn't mean Rachel had to give it to me. We were supposed to rise above that kind of thing, try and be better than that, at least according to Father Caleb's sermons, but he wasn't doing anything about the situation. I think Rachel and Caleb felt bad afterwards because Sandy threw herself on top of me. She said, between sobs, I had promised her the Sojourners would be nice people but they weren't and we should leave right now before they hurt us any more. She begged me to leave right then.

"No," I grunted, still on the ground trying to get enough air, "I deserved that one! I hurt them really bad, a long time ago." Big, painful inhale. "Rachel's a friend. She deserved better. I'll be fine."

Rachel knelt in front of us, so she would be at eye level with Sandy who was clinging to my back, in a futile attempt to somehow shield me from the strangers. "I'm sorry, Sandy. I didn't think about how hurting him would hurt you, too. I wouldn't have done it if I had thought about it. And, it's the only time, I promise. I missed him when he was gone, and I didn't know if he was alive or dead, and it was torture. So I was happy and mad to see him."

"Do you promise you're his friend?" Sandy demanded.

"We're more than friends. We're family. Sometimes families fight, but they shouldn't hit. I'm sorry." This time she was apologizing to me, stroking me on the head like some puppy she had kicked on accident and was in need of soothing. It felt nice, but in a humiliating way that I didn't like.

I brushed her off and stood up, with Sandy's help, while most of the Sojourners went back to whatever they had been doing when we arrived. Susan stuck around, she was the resident beautician, and with her was a girl who was maybe twelve or fourteen.

Susan gave me a stern look. "You didn't think to cut her hair?"

"Remember that time I tried to cut Abigail's hair, and everyone laughed at me for months after? I thought it was best if you do it."

"Coward," Susan accused me. Then, she gave Sandy the sweetest, kindest smile I ever saw a woman aim at a living thing that wasn't her own baby. "He's a nice man, but he really is hopeless with the scissors. Let's pretty you up a little, okay?" After a glance at me for permission, Sandy went off with Susan and the nameless girl, leaving me with Rachel and Caleb.

"Well, I'm off," declared Rachel, "someone has to check your back trail."

After she was gone, Father Caleb clapped my shoulder with a heavy hand. "That went well. I was worried she might hit you in the face."