Dead: Winter (9 page)

Standing in the center of what had once been a beautiful living room with hardwood floors and minimal furniture made from exotic wood was a child no older than five. A long gash across its bare chest indicated that at least somebody had tried to stop it at one point. A bandage was still wrapped around the left forearm where the child had presumably been bitten.

Kevin eased away from Aleah, pulled his KA-BAR Becker Combat Bowie knife, and advanced on the pitiful creature. As he took the first steps forward, he noticed the child made no move towards him. Once again he was faced with one of these things who seemed to be observing him.

Taking a quick glance back at Aleah, he decided that he could take his time with this kill. He had to know…were these things learning? Were they even capable?

He took a step closer, keeping the blade in front of him, but a bit off to the side. Not quite an arms-wide-open gesture, he made a slow approach to the undead child who still stood unmoving. Its eyes went from his knife hand to his face, almost as if it were questioning whether he would actually use it.
Could that be a questioning expression
, he wondered.

Bringing the knife around so that it was directly in front, he watched the eyes to see if there was any change of expression; or perhaps an indication that this thing could actually be thinking. The eyes followed the blade, and then returned to his face. Kevin stopped a few feet short and slowly slid the knife into its sheath. He brought his hands up in what he hoped would seem like a non-threatening gesture.

“What are you doing?” Aleah whispered. She had watched everything so far and could not understand why Kevin hadn’t just put that pathetic child down so it could be at peace.

“Look at it,” Kevin called over his shoulder, not daring to take his eyes from this thing for a second. No matter what he thought about the possibility of some of the zombies being able to develop a semblance of cognition, he wasn’t fool enough to turn his back on one.

“It’s a zombie!” Aleah insisted.

“It’s watching me,” Kevin said. “Pay attention to its eyes. They follow me, and I swear I see some sort of recognition in them. It is trying to figure something out.”

“Yeah,” Aleah shot back, “like how to eat you…maybe which bits might be tastier than others.”

Kevin ignored the quip and took another step closer. The child tilted its head one way then the other, very much like a dog. One foot slid forward a few inches, then the other. Kevin froze, his hand going instinctively for the knife he’d put away.

“Just kill it!” Aleah insisted.

The zombie child’s head twitched slightly. It craned its neck a little, just enough to look past Kevin. Aleah felt her flesh crawl with goose bumps. Those undead eyes looked at her in a way she’d never experienced before with a zombie. Those eyes were
studying
her!

“Stop screwing with that thing,” Aleah demanded.

“Then you see it, too.”

“I see a zombie that is about to take a bite out of you if you keep playing around.’

“But you agree that it seems to be studying us…trying to learn?”

“I agree that the little creep is freaking me out.”

Kevin drew his KA-BAR. The zombie launched itself at him the moment his hand touched the grip. With his free arm, he swatted the tiny creature aside. It crashed to the floor in a heap and began struggling to its feet. Thinking or not, it was no more agile than any other zombie he’d ever encountered. Before it could regain its footing, he plunged the blade into its temple. Just like that, it collapsed. In that instant, Kevin realized that he’d almost expected the thing to squirm or struggle a bit like a living person might. But no…just as every other zombie he’d ever faced, it was like pulling the plug on a radio; it just stopped like some sort of “off” switch had been thrown.

“Something strange is going on,” Kevin remarked as he wiped his blade off.

“Neat,” Aleah said, obviously not caring too much at the moment about what behaviors may or may not be starting to show up in zombies. “Can we find some clothes so I can change?”



“…but I swear the thing was studying me,” Kevin insisted.

“I think maybe you are just over-tired.” Heather scooped up a bowl of rice and vegetables from the large pot that hung over the fire pit they’d made in the parking lot.

“You didn’t see the way its eyes followed me.”

“You are a walking buffet,” Peter quipped. “Of course its eyes followed you. I imagine food su
p
plies are getting slim for the zombie population. It was probably like those Bugs Bunny cartoons. The thing was probably picturing you as a giant hot dog in a bun.”

“It happened twice,” Kevin insisted. “Both times it was with children.”

“So what do you want to do about it?” Peter prodded. “You want to go out and wrangle a few child-zombies and do a study?”

Kevin was silent.

“No!” Peter exclaimed. “Absolutely not, Kevin.”

“I wouldn’t bring one inside our compound,” Kevin huffed. “I’ve seen enough in the movies to know that never works out well…except maybe for Bub.”

“This ain’t the movies!” Peter, Aleah, and Heather all sing-songed Kevin’s mantra back at him in unison.

“What happened now?” Shari Bergman strolled up to the group with a bottle of water in her hand and moved under P
e
ter’s arm.

Shari Bergman had been a staple of tabloid fodder as a pop music star; known for her sexually charged dancing and over-processed vocals, along with what could barely qualify as lingerie as an e
s
sential component of her wardrobe—both in her videos and in public. Still, it was her baby sister, the fourteen-year-old (at the time of the discovery) Erin Bergman whose pregnancy by Shari’s thirty-five-year-old manager that had been in all the headlines just as the dead began to walk.

“Kevin says that the zombies are thinking,” Peter snapped with obvious sarcasm.

“Well if they can figure out a way to make it warmer at night in that drafty country club, I say let them in,” Shari snor
t
ed, catching on to Peter’s tone.

“Maybe if you helped with getting wood,” Aleah immed
i
ately switched over to defending Kevin, she didn’t care for the former pop star at all, “then we wouldn’t run out in the middle of the night and all be coated with frost in the morning.”

“Does that mean you and Heather are going to start helping with the baby?” Shari shot back.

“Not our baby.” Heather stepped in to the verbal fray.

“Stop it, all of you!” Kevin snapped. “We have been through all this. Taking shots at each other is a sure fire way to end up dead. We are a team and, like it or not, a family. We are all each other have.”

“I’m just saying that the princess over there needs to start getting her hands dirty with the work around here,” Aleah grumbled. “I get it that Erin has a baby to care for, but Shari is using it as an e
x
cuse not to do anything that might chip her nails.”

“That’s not fair,” Peter spoke up. “Every time she offers to help, you and Heather say you have it covered.”

“That’s because she
asks
right about the time we are finis
h
ing—” Heather began.

“Enough!” Kevin snapped. “I said for everybody to stop. I am going out tomorrow to try that neighborhood again. There is a lot of stuff that we can use and just a quick look around has me co
n
vinced that there will be a decent amount of supplies that we can salvage for the baby in addition to things for us.”

“I still don’t get why you didn’t bring a bunch back,” Heather said.

“With the attack, I just felt we might be in danger of getting trapped,” Kevin replied. He hadn’t said a word about Aleah’s little potty accident. “Plus, Aleah had lost a lot of blood and I was worried she might have problems.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed, “you can’t risk infection. We need to start remembering that things we never gave a second thought to can kill us these days. It is basically like being tossed back to the pi
o
neer era.”

“Only with a bunch of zombies trying to eat us,” Aleah ad
d
ed with a laugh.

“Yes,” Kevin gave everybody that look he used when he was trying to let them know he was b
e
ing serious, “well, be that as it may, we have some grim work ahead. The weather is tur
n
ing fast. We keep getting little dustings of snow, but there won’t be any radar reports warning us when the first real storm is about to hit. We need to stick to the plan.”

“Plan, plan, plan,” Shari groaned. “Every single day that is all we hear about. Plan this, and plan that! Can’t we just take a few days and catch our breath? Peter has been building on your wall forever without even an afternoon off. He is a doctor, not a construction worker. What if he hurts his hands out there?”

“We don’t have that kind of luxury, Shari,” Kevin said, feeling like a broken record. He was b
e
ginning to wonder if maybe he
was
pushing everybody too hard. He just couldn’t escape the feeling that things needed to be done as quickly as possible. The weather was changing fast and it could eve
n
tually become a bi
g
ger danger than the undead.

“I’m sick of listening to you bitch,” Heather snapped. “Aleah, Kevin and I are the only ones g
o
ing out on these scavenging runs. Why don’t you make
the next trip and see what it’
s like to actually do something for a change?”

“You don’t think I could handle myself out there?” Shari took a step towards Heather.

“No,” Heather and Aleah said in unison.

“I said ENOUGH!” Kevin yelled. “This damn fighting is not helping. So here is the deal, Heather, you are going to help Erin with the baby the next couple of days. Aleah, you will join Peter working on the wall reinforcements. Shari, you will leave with me in the mor
n
ing to do a scavenger run.”

Kevin stomped away leaving the group staring at him with open mouths. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were under a bit of a deadline. There wasn’t anything specific, just the fee
l
ing that if they didn’t get things taken care of soon, the zombies might prove to be the least of their problems.

Entering the country club he found Matt putting the final touc
h
es
on
a set of lined gloves. A stack of finished ones sat on the table beside him.

“Sounded like things were getting a bit testy out there,” Matt said, setting the newly finished pair with the ot
h
ers.

“Everybody seems to be at each other
’
s throats,” Kevin sighed and sat down across from the young man.

“You have to admit, it’s been a pretty intense few weeks.”

“And it isn’t going to get better.”

“Sure,” Matt drew the word out.

“Go ahead,” Kevin urged. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You obviously are the man with the plan,” Matt began. “Nobody is
questioning the things you say;
it’s just that they could use a break.”

“And when we get this place secure—”