Hazel (finished?)

The shambling un-dead American was eating chunks of bloody flesh with stray hairs. A very messy eater. He, it, had gotten a hold of a squirrel somehow; that and a flash of gold around its neck was a minor mystery and I am a sucker for that. As I considered it I heard a twig snap behind me. I’m light on my feet these days, moving and turning silently and quickly, but the girl was quicker and I found myself facing a fairly decent handcrafted arrow. I looked down the shaft at the young girl with a slightly under-powered bow, it couldn’t have been more than a twenty-five pound pull. She was maybe eleven, a scrappy little survivor of the apocalypse, greasy ponytail, dirty face with a nasty infected scratch, hazel eyes, and a snaggle-toothed not-grin, lips skinned back from yellowed teeth. She needed a bath, some neosporin and a toothbrush, stat.

She hadn’t decided to kill me, yet, so we were on better terms than the last survivor I’d tangled with, about five days ago... and six feet, give or take. Maybe more like three.

“My friends call me George; you can call me George, okay? Uhm, Hazel?”

“Who?! Oh.. uh, Amanda.” She looked behind me and I risked a look. Squirrel breath was looking around, bits of squirrel all but forgotten in its hands. It turned to us, and the bright yellow metal flashed again in the sunlight. A locket.

“Do you mi-”

“No! Don’t you hurt him!”

Puzzle pieces fell into place and I crabbed around, no sudden moves, but I preferred an arrow to  teeth.

“Okay,” I said slowly. I watched her consider once again putting an arrow in me and regretfully (on her part), passing on that option. God help me, I had questions and little sense. “Who was he?

“My Dad.”

Ouch.

“That sucks and nothing I say will make it not suck.”

“But?” She said it quietly, but make no mistake, there was an edge there, underneath.

“It’s a blessing to quiet the undead.”

I watched the point of her arrow describe a tiny circle. It was a pretty good ground spoon and I imagined trying to extract it from between my ribs. God help me…

“You think I couldn’t figure that out?”

“Sure you can. And yet… he’s… he was your Dad. The right thing is never easy.”

“You have a death wish.”

“I won’t patronize you, except, well, you’re obviously a pretty sharp kid.” I risked another look at, well, undead Dad. “Can I please get a little distance, or are you planning…”

Her eyes bugged out a little. “What?! I’m not planning to feed you to him!”

“Well thanks for that. About, well, him, what’s he got around his neck?”

“Is that what you were asking me a minute ago?”

“Yes. I'm gonna get myself noshed on one fine day, but I have a natural curiosity, and I have to know, or try to figure these things out…”

She nodded and then indicated her dad with a tilt of her head his way. “We talked about that. A few hundred million death stories.”

“You, he talked about heavy shit like that with you?”

“Now you are being patronizing.”

“Sorry. That’s just not how that used to work.”

“It’s how we worked!” She closed her eyes, and lowered the bow and put the arrow away. “Sorry. That’s a locket he gave me. I put it on him, after, and then…”

“He got back up again, as they do-”

“If you don’t make it permanent.”

“Yes.’

I concentrated on the zombie now, trusting her more than it. He was not terribly interested in me, fortunately. Well fed…

“What was his name?”

“Jake. Jacob Herriot Bixby.”

“Three good names for the price of one. How long ago did he pass and how?”

“Not long, less than a week. I’m not sure what it was, a fever. He was burning up, talking nonsense and getting things out of order. I, he tried to get me to leave him, and…”

“You wouldn’t, of course. And there was a thing which he couldn’t ask his daughter to do?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I guessed, but it happens a lot. I have walked a long way since the dead started getting back up, with a lot of people, and now I’m alone again. By choice and by chance, both ways.”

“One of them told you that thing about it being a blessing to quiet the dead.”

“She did.” I smiled sadly. “I think you would have liked her, if you could stand each other, which I bet you could. You’re a lot like Ruth.”

We were quiet for a bit. You could hear the breeze blowing. Even the zombie was quiet.

“What-”

“No. Sorry, but no.” I was shaking a little bit, turned to ‘Jake’ and his shiny bit of pretty.

“What’s with the locket, or is that-”

“I can tell you about that. It’s a gold heart-shaped locket my uncle Jamie gave me for my tenth birthday last year. It has my name and the meaning of it and a picture of our family. I wanted him to have it.”

“Your family?”

“My uncle, his little brother, my dad, Mom and the baby.” She chewed her bottom lip. “We were all that was left, and then there was one.”

“I think we’ve had enough questions, save for one or three. Are you hungry, Amanda? What do you do with your shadow when you need to eat and sleep? And can I interest you in a nice bar of soap?”

***

I made good on my offer, after we got Jake to follow us back to the house they were squatting; well, she was living there, and keeping him in a room with two doors.

Minding a zombie is exhausting. You’d think it would be easy to keep its attention somehow but no. Whatever is going on in that decaying brain it can’t stay focused, unless it does and then there’s no distracting it. Like turtles; god knows, I’ve come across zombies who have spent hours worrying at a box turtle, torn fingers and such. Or rabbits, too.  I’ve found zombies stuck in collapsed tunnels which they were apparently digging after a rabbit, or badger, enlarging a burrow and getting stuck.

Stupid zombie tricks.

Anyway, we got him locked away and I made ‘stone soup’, or stew, whatever I had and whatever she offered, starch, protein and veggies. I had a rabbit, a few potatoes, carrots, a battered can of peas, and she had a little old cornmeal someone had wrapped in aluminum foil. Whatever works.

We both had a bit of a wash up and I gave her my neosporin; it’s pushing things, date-wise, but nobody is making any more and I haven’t sourced any handcrafted ointments and such. That’s one of the other things I’ve been up to…

It was a bigger meal than either of us had been used to; the rabbit had been joined by a couple of squirrels. Good hunting, on both our parts! And food these days doesn’t last. What was left in the pot would simmer overnight, perhaps even as the start of some forever stew, perhaps not. There wasn’t much more talking, what with the washing and cooking and eating. The lockup included all the doors and the rest. Although I didn’t ask, the former occupants must have had some pressing reason for leaving a decent fort. Maybe she didn’t know.

I got back up and attended to business a few hours later. I’m a lot better in the near dark, surprisingly so. I think we were spoiled for electricity and good lighting, in the before times. The human eyes and other senses are pretty good and fear maximizes what we have.

I waited by the door to her dad’s room for ‘Hazel’, instead of attending to that other business I’d gotten up for, and she came looking for me as I expected, a little frantically, which saddened me but didn’t surprise me much.

“You had no ri-”

“I didn’t.”

 

She checked the door anyway and it, I mean ‘he’, groaned, hit the door a few times and settled back down again.

“What’s this all about, then?”

“Your dad, of course. This is your decision, but I need you-”

“No.”

“When you decided, a few days ago, not to quiet him, that was grief. I’ve been taking your measure and you are competent-”

“Thanks!”

“-to make this decision, but you need to revisit it now. Now that you have had a little time-”

“And now that you can brow-beat me into making the ‘right' decision?!”

“Well, I suppose I could try, but you are obviously going to do whatever you want to do, and I don’t need another enemy. I need all the friends I can make and keep alive and healthy.”

“Which this isn’t, I suppose?”

I shrugged in the darkness and then sheepishly added, “No?”

***

A few months and a few dozen zombies later (I keep count, but that’s for me to know), I found myself in familiar territory. An empty squat this time, not a home, occupied by a pair of zombies which I quieted with a heavy heart. I buried them side by side in a single grave because I don’t see the point of digging two holes when one will do, but I had a look at the locket, which I took from around his neck and put back around hers.

As she said, two brothers, her mother, a baby in her arms and Amanda, ‘worthy of love’, proudly holding up a store-bought bow. I suppose, but I hadn’t asked, that she learned to make her own after she picked up archery.

A useful skill in this world, one of a few thousand more I’m trying, and mostly failing, to keep.

In.

This.

World.