“Dad, that had to come from a person, they might even be fighting him.”
“He coulda found a shotgun, he’s had the run of the town since the Peace.”
“Well, then why would he be shooting then?”
“Animals probably.”
“He didn’t need it for animals before.”
That was a good point but he didn’t respond.
“We can’t help from here!” His granddaughter hissed at him for the third time in as many minutes. What had sparked this off was a shotgun firing off twice in the direction of the old cemetery. He pulled her behind him.
“Lena, be quiet,” She opened her mouth, “keep your mouth shut!” He spat then internally sighed, he was not prepared to raise a 20 something year old granddaughter alone. She had come home for the weekend from her freshman year in college and between wanting to go back, ‘to check on her friends’ and with her naive, misguided sense of heroism, it was almost more than he could manage.
John looked down at the auditorium attached to their grade-school. The school wasn’t a big thing, but at one point, they had been hoping it would be. In fact, it technically shouldn’t have even existed but it had been built, and built well, a… few decades now he figured. Damn time swept by.
Well, except for the last week.
There had been a baby boom around here for a few years, then some California regulations or some politician crap about a cost-benefit analysis had shut down any hope of their iron mine being anything but fodder for young people to kill themselves inside of while doing the damn social medias or whatever the newest fool thing was. He had helped build the newest door of the damned mine and that would take more than a pair of heavy duty bolt cutters to get through. Shit, he was getting old. Rambling bullshit to himself.
He turned away from his perch on top of the auditorium that had been pulling quadruple duty as town-hall, community center, and both youth and senior center. Now, it was the only secure place in town. John stared balefully at the old church straight across town.
In actuality, the town was too small to have needed any of these things. The looming and oft-lamented upcoming census that had been steadily approaching in sharp dread toward their little township had been the local cause of concern for nosy old local women for years.
After the last week and the messages they had received, he figured they’d need to find something new to gossip about. Still, they had lost most of the town. Near everyone had pets or enough beasts of burden to help them tend to their small plots or from sheer habit.
He rubbed his upper chest, his damn horse had gone crazy. The thought of leaving the women alone had given him the strength to kill the old thing and make it back to the house. Lena had managed to kill their dog but only after Lena’s mother and grandmother had been…
He dismissed it and brought his old bolt-action hunting rifle to a ready position. Lena shakily held his glock next to him.
“Rule 1, finger off the trigger. I don’t need to get shot by my own damn daughter.”
She gulped and didn’t seem like she had heard him, at least until her trigger finger moved off of it.
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Now that I had a few more minutes to think about it, it didn’t necessarily mean that the Law of Averages “settlement timer” would activate even if I earned Feats. I could just be banking them and then the process would start when I opened it. Would it have taken a fucking ArchAngel that long to have written a fucking paragraph or two laying out some of the rules for it?
I felt the distant eye and a snicker.
“Fuck you Gabby, it’s because you’re so shitty that you got stuck doing the archangel bitch work,” my finger pointed up into the sky.
I felt my Seed of Redemption activate again and shield me from what I, almost assuredly, knew to be some sort of attempt at an individualized reprisal. Probably.
“Fucking petty bitch too aren’t you.” Getting bitten by a zombie wasn’t helping my mood much.
I finally broke through the deepest part of the forest and found a road. A paved road. Even better, it was pretty wide. I picked up my pace to stay ahead of whatever was, almost assuredly, following in my wake. As I moved around the bend in the road I saw the small town that Duck and I had fueled up in on our way here. I briefly looked through the gas station as I passed it, but didn’t see anything that stood out so I kept moving deeper into the one-street downtown. It was a ghost town. Was everyone dead? I saw a church on one end and a two-story building at the other. I decided to check the church, that’d be a safe area in the Tribulation, right?
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“Who is that? I thought we got everyone.” He mumbled a few more things but she only made out a few other words from him along the lines of, “what is that idiot doing?”
Her dad was watching on the other side of ‘town’ who had apparently just appeared.
“Is it someone from town?”
“Dad?”
“What? No, I don’t think so, he’s young and armed. I’d say Daryl’s kid… but…”
She rolled her eyes, “but he’s dead.”
“Yup.” At that, her grandpa tossed her the binoculars, “Go inside and get… Joan or maybe Franky if he’s sober, tell em to take watch.” He slung his rifle over his shoulder and started to climb down the fire escape.
“Where’re you going?!”
Her dad gave her a flat look and resumed his climb down. When he reached the street she pulled up the fire-escape latter after him, then once he had gone far enough away, she lowered it back down.
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I think… I think I made a bad call. The area around the church was silent as death. In fact, the church’s entire plot of land seemed entirely too large for the size of the building, though I wasn’t sure what that meant. It did have a bell tower that was nearly stories tall and higher than the rest of the buildings here and, if my guess was right, taller than about half of the trees that surrounded the town. The doors were big, wooden, and solid looking. Solid construction and a look-out tower? Perfect. Besides the dead silence.
I pushed against the doors and they refused to budge. There was a small iron-lined portal on one side of it that didn’t move either. That was good and bad, one one hand other people wouldn’t be able to easily get in. On the other hand, neither could I.
I stepped back and raised my foot then slammed it against the door. It shook and a boom echoed from deep inside. I heard a sound like a thousand sheets being shaken come from somewhere beyond it.
“What do you think you’re doing young man?”
I whirled and my shotgun and the other man’s rifle were both raised and pointed at each other.
“You planning on shooting me, old timer?”
“Not if you ain’t.”
Slowly, very slowly, we both dropped our barrels a few inches. A sign of initial trust, but still close enough to blow each other away if anything felt off.
We stood there, an uncomfortable staring content starting between us as long seconds ticked by. I didn’t have time for this bullshit.
“Well? Did you just come by to say hi? I got shit to do.”
“Why the hell would you do that?”
I remembered the fact that he probably didn’t know about the horde of zombies by the cemetery that surely, by now, couldn’t be that far behind.
“I know this is going to sound a bit unbelievable, but there are zombies, like… risen from the grave, lusting after human-flesh, zombies.”
His rifle pulled back up and my shotgun matched the motion.
“Whoh, whoh, relax old timer. I’m just going to get inside the church and then you can fu-, then we can go our own ways.”
“Don’t know what you’re planning ya weirdo, but I ain’t letting you open that church.”
“Why do you give a shit?”
“I ain’t gonna say it again, step away from the church doors and keep it moving, there’s plenty of other places you can stay. Better yet, you can keep it moving down the road.”
This was pissing me off now, “It’s the fucking apocalypse! Why do you give a shit about this shitty old church?”
He reached a hand up and pulled the bolt back then forward in a smooth motion. Shit, I could have just shot him but now it was an actual standoff. I felt myself start to tense.
“Dad! What are you doing? And who are you and why are you trying to go in there?”
A light-brown haired girl had snuck into our standoff and the old-man’s face cracked but that wasn’t good news, his finger tightened on the trigger. I noticed the fact that I noticed that and it made me feel even worse about the outcome.
“I’m just trying to get inside the church because there are zombies, I don’t know what the hell is your… dad’s problem? Dad?” My look must have been obvious, she was a young college looking girl and the old man next to her was just on this side of ancient… oh God was this some sort of sick apocalypse relationsh-
“First of all, he’s my grandfather and… you want to get to the zombies?”
“Huh?” My shotgun wavered, “What are you talking about? There are zombies coming down from the cemetery.” I tipped my head towards the direction I had run from.
The old man’s face paled.
The daughter put an exasperated hand over her face. “There are also zombies in the church.”
My shotgun dropped and I whirled around as something slammed into the other side of the door. A shot rang out next to me, entirely too close. I yelped and jumped back around.
I had a lot of questions, but two or three floated to the top fighting for precedence over one another, they came out in a merged jumble, “Why you shoot tell not zombies in… there?!”
The girl giggled. Great, they must have taken all of the sane people.
I started to raise my shotgun again but the old man wasn’t looking for a followup shot, besides that, his face didn’t give me a ‘here comes imminent death, damned youth’ look, instead he was balancing somewhere between protective of his granddaughter and… I wasn’t sure if he was bummed that he missed or at the fact that I would have the drop on him if I decided to shoot them.
I scowled at her, “What’s funny? Your gramps nearly killed me!”
Less than a second later she realized that I also did, in fact, possess my own firearm. Presumably loaded.
She whispered something to her grandfather, then louder.
“Sorry… kid.” It seemed like it almost pained him to say it, “Lena! Why the hell are you out here? Didn’t I tell you to stay… back?”
“Papa, I’m not a… dog.” Her face fell at that word. Likely pet owner, no surprise there.
“Uh, hey not to interrupt your little… whatever, but I wasn’t running toward the church, at least not specifically. I was running from something. Like more zombies. From the cemetery.”
“This way!” She was off, dragging her grandfather behind, he was still giving me the stink-eye. Old dickhead, I wasn’t the one who tried to shoot him.