Beyond the Barriers (40 page)

He adjusted something on the inside and, with a crackle, the speaker let out a squawk. He hit a knob then adjusted a dial, and his eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. Then he turned up the volume a little bit. A flat hiss sounded, but it wasn’t so loud it might call any remaining zombies within the vicinity to our camp.

“Now we wait.” He grinned and patted the top of the radio.

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for someone to talk to us. A bunch of groups keep in contact with CB’s, but we can’t run them all the time.”

“Let me guess, on a particular channel that requires a decoder ring to gain access too?”

“Something like that.” He laughed.

We sat in silence for a few moments, both of us waiting for the radio to speak up.

“Do I need to say it?” Scott’s gaze drifted toward our vehicle.

“That we rescued a lot of people?”

“No, man. How many of them are like Haley? About to change …” He trailed off as he turned his eyes back to the burning camp.

“We don’t know that for sure. We don’t know if she was one of them.”

“Come on, man. She was. Lee was an asshole, and he could have handled it differently. The fact is, we might have learned a lot from her. Maybe she wouldn’t have been like the others. Maybe our influence would have kept her on our side.”

‘Our side.” I thought dully,
What is our side?
“People hiding out, waiting for something to happen.”

“Better than the alternative.”

“It is, but we have to do something about it. I’m sick of running, of being afraid. I’m tired of seeing groups of people divided. We need to find a place to call home and get people organized.”

Scott looked thoughtful.

“There are a lot of people out there still. People that want to fight back. I say we head to Portland, find Lisa and her crew, and start the revolution.”

“And then what? Make an army of flamethrowers and clean out these camps? Do you know how long that will take?”

“It’s better than the alternative. If we let them continue to multiply, we will never win.”

Scott sighed, but he had to know I was right.

“So what do we do now?”

“Go back to the farm, get some rest, and then make a break for Portland. If some of these folks want to go with us, they’re welcome. The rest can go their separate ways.”

“Works for me. All I want to do is rejoin my old friends. Lisa, I miss her.”

“You have something going with her?” I had wondered if she moved on after Devon.

“I don’t know. We spent some time together. What do you think? Would we make a good match?” He grinned.

“She is pretty fiery. Good with a gun. She might shoot you if you piss her off. I mainly knew her before the change. I guess that means I didn’t really know her at all.”

Scott chuckled and stared at the flames.

The day had been exhausting, but I suspected the coming days would be worse. My body was sore, and my face hurt from the fight with Lee. I wished I had found his body so I could finish him off. He would never see reason, no matter how hard I argued. I had to stop and reflect on the fact that I had so glibly decided to kill another human being. Eradicating the dead was making it easy to kill. Was one human life so cheap?

We sat for a long time as the flames died down and smoke continued to rise. As night came on, we decided to make for the farm and call it a day.

As I stood up, a voice came over the speaker. I just about jumped out of my skin.

“News of the world?” A female voice that sounded familiar to me. Deep, but still female.

“Hey. If it ain’t the mysterious Lizabeth,” Scott said. “You can’t believe how happy I am to hear you. It’s been a while.”

“Well if it isn’t the smartass. I thought maybe they got you.”

“They did, but we escaped. Are you still in town?”

“Nope. We left a few weeks ago. We’re camped on the outskirts of Portland.”

“That’s where we’re headed.”

Lizabeth. Liz. It had to be her. So they had made it out of town after our distraction. They were safe. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

“Liz, it’s Tragger.” There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

“You.” She laughed.

“Me.”

“You got us out, you know that? We made it out of town thanks to you. Are Pat and Katherine okay?”

I closed my eyes for a few seconds then spoke.

“Pat didn’t make it. He sacrificed himself so Katherine and I could escape. Katherine’s with another group of survivors. They left for Portland about a week ago. They’re in a huge convoy of trucks. You can’t miss them.”

“I hope it’s not the sorry group of burned out vehicles we found a few days ago. Some of the guys were on a sortie to find some food. It looked like the convoy had been attacked at night. We found bodies but not many. Some may have escaped.”

I clenched my fist in fury, slamming it into the hard ground and ignoring the pain.

“She has to be alright,” I muttered. “Everyone else is gone. I need her to be okay.”

“Maybe she is. We’ll send out a party in the morning. Maybe they’re hiding in the woods. No guarantees, but we will do our best. It’s the least we can do. I didn’t care for you much, Tragger. But you done good,” Liz said over the airwaves.

“We’re coming to you. We’ll be on the road first thing in the morning.” I wanted to leave right then and there, but what about the other survivors with us? Some might want to return to whatever home they had occupied. I would wait to broach the subject after some rest. We all needed it before making any hasty decisions.

“Lizabeth. If you find them, ask for Lisa. She runs the outfit. Tell her you are a friend of Scott and Erik’s. Just tell her that and bring her in. Bring them all in.”

“I will. Hey I have to go. We have some activity here.”

“Wait!” I yelled at the radio, but it went dead.

The End of Book One

Timothy W. Long has been writing tales and stories since he could hold a crayon and has also read enough books to choke a landfill. He has a fascination with all things zombies, a predilection for weird literature, and a deep-seated need to jot words on paper and thrust them at people.

Tim is the author of the horror novel
Among the Living
and the forthcoming sequel
Among the Dead
. His other works include the deserted island ‘zombedy’,
The Zombie Wilson Diaries
. He also co-wrote the post-apocalyptic novel
Wacktards of the Apocalypse
which was recently named the preferred version of the end of the world by a consortium of rapture survivors.

Tim can be found tooling around his website: TimothyWLong.com.