———–

“Eddie’s right. Everyone had a theory, but no one had seen it in action. So we went and looked. They tie them up and march them out across the desert. The Brainers ride some Brainer horses and corral them, like so many cattle.”

“Although traditionally you don’t tie cattle when you go on a cattle drive. Then again, I suppose that cattle don’t often want to escape. They might, granted, but they seem to be fine just walking.”

“Yes. Thank you, Eddie, for that brief, yet fascinating, look into cattle herding,” Franklin said with a roll of his eyes. “When we saw that we realized we couldn’t ignore it. Humans suffer, they die and they do what they need to in order to survive. We get that, better than a lot of people, probably. This is different.”

“Besides, we’ve seen you all,” Edward dropped and stubbed out his cigarette, his eyes scanning all of us slowly as he did.

“We have. You’re breaking. There’s no fighting back going on. No anything. You are all now sitting here waiting to die. That’s it, that’s all you have left for yourselves. You’ll slowly sink further and further down and the wall over there will get a weak point, but you won’t care. Then another. Then it’ll fall down.”

“Walls fall but they don’t have to. If this wall falls, do you think other people north or here, or south, will hold their lines forever, either? What man, my grandfather one asked me…”

“No he didn’t, Eddie. Your grandfather… look, why do you have to attribute bad sayings to this man who, I might add, you never even met?”

“Not the point, Frank. The point is that he was right.”

“He couldn’t have been right, he never even… why do I bother?”

“I couldn’t tell you. But I can tell you that the point is that if you don’t hold why should you expect any one else to?”

“But what can we do?” James Higgins, the town butcher, asked.

“We’re getting there,” Edward told him, “see we would’ve tried this ourselves but we needed supplies and we needed a few extra hands to help.”

“To help with what?” I asked, unable to hold my tongue. The mood of the crowd was shifting slowly. We grew restless.

“Getting there,” Edward Bones said with a smile. “We also needed to make sure there would be a town to come back to.”

“We intend to bring the fight to the Brainers and disrupt their little herding plan,” Franklin said, the glint in his eye unmistakable, “even just one, just to start working out how we can do it again and again and hold the walls and eventually push them back.”

“Trust me,” Edward put in, “it surprised us to think of this, too. We’re not normally your public servant type. Though I did once work collecting garbage.”

“You also sold rugs. Let’s not push it.”

“I wasn’t really selling… oh well, no, I mean I really was paid to collect garbage, Frank.”

“I couldn’t imagine caring any less. Can we get on with this?”

“Sure,” Bones said and straightened his shirt a bit. “We need about four guys who can deal with camping out and fucked up conditions and death. Four guys who aren’t so afraid of the Brainers that they’ll be useless.”

“They should also,” put in Franklin, “be able to follow orders.”

“Are you saying that I can’t?” Edward asked, with a hurt look on his face.

“History speaks for itself, Eddie. Still. That ain’t all we’ll need. We also need supplies.”

“Yeah, let’s see,” Edward thought for a moment, recalling a list the two had obviously spent time thinking over, “we need twenty or forty feet of chain link fence, an equal footage of two by four beams, enough so the width of the beams adds up to the length of fence, see? About a hundred feet of solid steel wire, a staple gun, ten or so four by eight wood beams, a few tents, some padlocks and some styrofoam, you can’t get rid of the stuff so I’m sure there’s a bunch somewhere around here. What else, Frank?”

“Mmm, let’s see now, Eddie. as much razor wire as you can find, bolt cutters, rope. Good strong rope, none of that twine shit.”

“I hate that stuff, the nylon?”

“Cuts your fingers. About six pounds of raw mint leaves, if possible.”

“Don’t forget the make-up. We need make-up, women’s stuff will do.”

“Right. A bunch of wax, enough water for six people to last about a week and dried food to last the same. Heavy duty rubber bands, if any still exist, a few bags of flour, extra boots for everyone involved, heavy gloves, gasoline or the like, and maybe some tennis balls if you can find any.”

“See,” Edward said with his customary smile growing even bigger, “simple.”

It wasn’t nearly as easy as Edward Bones claimed, of course. Some of the stuff they wanted could be managed without too much hassle. Jerry Smitts agreed to give up a section of his chain link fence for the cause without too much bitchin’ and moanin’, for example.

The wood beams were likewise simply a matter of talking someone into helpin’ out. People wanted to help, any way they could, unless it meant personal hardship. That was understandable, to a point, but only to a point. It felt like the town’s survival or a few people who had needed goods. In that sorta situation, when the person won’t give up what’s needed, it gets taken. It gets taken right quick, too, to be honest about it.

Deidre Fontaine had herself a few tents that she never really used. Still, she saw a potential use for ‘em in the future and wanted us to find something else to use. We woulda, except for the fact that hers were the best tents around. They were on the list. One night Deidre put her foot down, firmly, by slamming her door in the faces of some of us other townsfolk.

Well, she mighta’ slept well right after, but the very next night she was woken up to the sound of her front door coming down in splinters. The tents were bundled up with the other equipment and when Deidre asked about them, screamed about them, why no one had any clue what tents she was talking about.

While the stuff was being gathered, as best it could be, Cleaver and Bones picked their team of companions. They needed four men and found themselves facing down fourteen volunteers. Both men smiled at that, but they went down the list, asking questions and watching the eyes of the men and women answerin’.

In the end Sally Teekin, a widow who had bigger arms than most men, Otto van Potts, who also supplied all the rope and steel wire needed, Billy McDougal, a damn fine shot and I were chosen. I ain’t sure why I was picked above some of the others. I guess they liked the look of my eyes and my steady hands.

It only took a few days to get everything together, the gasoline and tennis balls being the only item we couldn’t locate any of. High octane moonshine was used for the gas and Edward Bones gathered up a bunch of avocado saying they’d do as well as tennis balls. The styrofoam packing, which I thought would be a problem, was actually in use as insulation up in the barber’s house.

Cleaver and Bones lashed all the equipment into bundles and arranged straps for each bundle, handing them out to us and taking a fair share themselves.

“Ain’t we gonna use horses or something? A mule at least to carry this stuff, maybe?” Billy asked, shuffling his pack onto his shoulders and frowning.

“Horses and mules generally are not smart enough to avoid smaller mammals,” Franklin said, “and they don’t think of them as threats. But everything out there that is not the six of us is a threat to us. Beasts of burden would only cause us problems. We carry the load.”

The West Gate was a horrible thing to see, then. It was suddenly all that stood between being brave and being dead. I could read it in the faces of my fellow travelers, all except for Cleaver and Bones. Their faces were neutral, for them this was just another day. But for us, well we hadn’t been out west since things started to settle. I knew I was new to town and all, but it wasn’t as if I spent the time before that wandering in the wasteland like our two tour guides had.

The west wasn’t something you went back to. It was hard enough scratching out a living on the safer side of the gate. The sentries didn’t want to open it, looking around for someone to tell them to stop even as they started to pull the thick, heavy barrier wide. Some of their fellow sentries stood on the wall, making sure nothing was in view that could leap out and burst through the gate before they could react.

Once the gate was open wide enough for us to walk, well, we started walking. Ahead of us lay nothing. Sand, the occasional tree and low sitting bush, and the awful power of the sun. It seemed hotter on the other side of the gate, even though that was stupid to think. That was it. Not a Brainer in sight. No animals of any sort. Not even a bird in the sky. We could see nothing worth seeing, but we could see one hell of a lot of it.

The sound of the West Gate closing behind us caused a pit of fear to swell in my belly and I looked around. Otto nodded at me, letting me know that he shared my fear, but wouldn’t let it stop him. I nodded back and adjusted my pack. Where we were now we were only gonna come back from one way. If we passed back through the gate into town it meant we were successful. If not, we were dead.

We walked on in silence, the punishing sun doing its level best to stop us. If we kept covered we wouldn’t burn but keeping covered enough made most of us feel too hot to move. Damned either way, we would remind each other that the burns weren’t going to be worth the temporary relief of removing any protective covering. The guarded friendship that seemed to blossom instantly made the walk a little easier at least. We were watching out for each other the best way we knew how then.

By the time the sun started to dip low in the sky we were well out of sight of town. The wall was behind us, we knew in our minds, but glancing back showed the same featureless expanse as looking forward did. It didn’t exactly help our state of mind.

Of course whenever I’m sayin’ “we” here, I refer to the four of us that came along with Cleaver and Bones. The two men themselves I wouldn’t really wanna guess about. Their minds were their own, and though we traveled with them they weren’t in the same space as we were. We were being led, they were leading. They said nothing, so we said not much of anything. They walked so we trudged behind. When Franklin held a hand up and stopped cold, we all froze in our tracks and tried not to look too worried.

“Eddie,” Franklin asked, “do you see that?”

“Yeah, Frank,” Edward answered, neither men looking at us, “what do you think?”

“I think we keep moving for a while longer than set up camp.” Franklin looked back at us. “That good for you guys, too?”

We nodded and shrugged and made other motions of acceptance and agreement. What could we do, say no? How would that have gone, I wonder? It didn’t matter and so we pressed on.

Otto nudged me a few feet later and pointed out to where Franklin and Edward had been staring. I looked off the point of his hand and then slowly turned to look at the man himself.

“I don’t see it either, Otto.”

“No, I do see it,” he told me in a whisper, “and I’ll tell the others. It’s something moving. You really can’t see it?”

I shook my head and tried to look in that general direction again. If I tried really hard I thought maybe I could see something moving towards us, but it could’ve been heat waves off the ground or any other damned thing for all I knew.

———–
High Noon of the Living Dead is copyright Adam P. Knave.