3. Tangled Webs
Calhoun skirted around the lobby and ducked down one of the lesser used hallways. The voices in the lobby were echoing and mingling with the ones in his head, causing his brain to hurt. Falling against the wall, he was dimly aware of the two people standing behind a plant nearby, whispering to each other.
Clutching his head, he tried to get his thoughts together. He envisioned all the thoughts moving through his mind like long, colorful threads, twisting and looping, sometimes weaving together. Sometimes they made perfect sense, other times they became a jumbled mess. When that happened, his head throbbed and those threads all sang in wild voices, demanding his attention. Gripping the wall with his dirty, gnarled hand, he tried to find the strongest thread, the strongest thought, and hold onto it. Then it came to him.
His eyes snapped open and he became vividly aware of the two people staring at him with disgust. It was that blond bitch and Ray, one of the salvage crew guys.
“Blanche Mann, you’re the whore of Babylon!” He could see it so clearly. Her twisted soul was a black miasma of goo around her neck and evil was vivid in her red eyes. With a cry of despair, he twirled around and ran from the hallway. He barely heard Blanche order Ray to, “Get the old fucker.”
It was painfully clear to him what was going on now and what he needed to do. There was evil in the halls of the fort, and he had to rectify the situation. Running across the lobby, his battered boots beating on the marble floor, he wailed an agonized cry.
Out of the fuzzy world around him, a face came sharply into focus and he skittered to a stand still.
“What’s up, Calhoun?” Travis looked at him quizzically. Calhoun felt his mind slip off the thread he was clutching and swirl downward into the maze of brightly colored thoughts. It took a few seconds for his mind to snap onto a new one.
“Flame throwers!” Calhoun snapped his fingers. “Flame throwers to protect the gate! That’s it!”
“You seemed a little upset there.” Calhoun tapped his chin as he tried to remember what it was that had terrified him so. Whatever it was, it had escaped him. “Don’t rightly know.”
“Okay, but you’re ready to talk about the flamethrowers? Eric is in my office with Juan.” Travis looked at him worriedly.
Fumbling with his jacket, Calhoun managed to find the pocket he had made by sewing a kerchief into the lining. Tugging out his notebook, he waved it in front of Travis. “Got it right here! Let’s go!”
The big red thread in his mind, full of fire and the destruction of messed up clones, throbbed and opened up, pouring out all the information he needed to guide the young ones to proper defenses.
For the next thirty minutes, he was vividly sane.
Five minutes after the meeting, he was lost again in the web of his own mind, feeling uneasy that there was something trapped inside that was very important and dangerous to the fort.
4. The Scales
After the meeting with Calhoun broke up, Travis found himself consumed with helping Juan and Bill build an extensive list of supplies the fort would need to expand. Walking in the cold, notepad in hand, he had to marvel at the high walls that encompassed their world. Strange how the first makeshift wall made up of construction trucks had given birth to high, concrete walls patrolled by armed sentries.
It was nearly dinnertime when he finally made it back into the hotel and up to the room he shared with his wife. He felt half-frozen and was dying for a hot shower. When he pushed open the door, he saw Katie sitting in a chair near the window, holding a baby blanket, and staring wistfully toward the hills.
“Katie?” “Do you ever wonder when it happened? When the tide turned against us?” Her voice was soft, thoughtful, and melodic.
“What do you mean?” He shrugged off his heavy jacket, glad that the heater in the room was working.
“There had to be a moment, a flash, a second, when it all turned against the living. When the future of the world was precariously balanced between the living and the dead. And then the scales tipped in favor of the dead.” She looked toward him and he saw she had been crying.
“Katie, honey,” he said, feeling utterly helpless all at once. He was confident and strong when out on the walls, planning, plotting, building, and fighting, but seeing his wife crying made him feel desperately weak. He moved to comfort her, wondering if he could. “I was just sitting here, looking at the blanket, and wondering about the baby and then it hit me. What if our baby is the first of the new generation that will grow up with the dead walking? He or she will never know what it is like to live freely outside of these walls. And then it occurred to me that there must have been just one deciding moment in all of this.”
Travis knelt beside her chair, his hand rubbing her fingers lightly. “Maybe, but we’ll never know what it was or when it happened. This insanity had to be happening for some time before what we call the First Day. It couldn’t have gone to hell in just twenty-four hours. Jenni’s no good husband was bitten the day before. There was that weird plane crash in Chicago. Riots were being reported for days before the First Day.” “Why didn’t they tell us?” Katie’s green eyes were so big and beautiful with tears sparkling in them. “Why don’t you think they warned us?”
“Maybe they thought it was under control. Or maybe they didn’t understand how fast it was spreading.”
“Do you think they wanted it to happen?”
Travis pondered this, then shrugged. “I may sound like Crazy Old Calhoun, but maybe they wanted it to happen so they could seize full control, but it went too far. I don’t know, but if there was a moment when the scales tipped, then maybe it will come again. But this time those scales will tip in our favor.” Katie leaned her forehead against his and stroked his cheek lightly. “I want to believe you.”
“Then do,” Travis whispered, and kissed her lightly. “I’m sorry I’m being so hormonal,” Katie said, pouting.
“Nah. You’re just saying what everyone else thinks. We’re all in a weird funk. We need to get ourselves out of it. Focus on more positive things. Like the fact we are alive. We are inside fortified walls, not outside them. We have food and supplies. We have ammunition. We have each other.” Travis felt better just expressing those few thoughts aloud. It was all true, but so easy to forget when the days were cold, gray and full of unexpected dangers.
“You’re right,” Katie said after a beat. “And maybe we will have our moment to claim it back. For our sake and the baby’s.” Travis leaned over the armrest to kiss her swelling belly. He was in awe that his baby was growing inside of her and of the magic of that reality. His little family meant the world to him, and he never would have had it if not for the zombie rising. It was a strange, wondrous truth.