Flip This Zombie - Jesse Petersen [11]
“Oh, yeah,” he said with a laugh. “Some loons are talking about special zombies.”
I had been looking off past the second gate to see where David had parked, but now I snapped my head around to look at Smith. “What do you mean ‘special’?”
“Dunno,” he said. My tone must have revealed something because he looked closer at me. “Just said they were different. Why?”
“Jimmy No-Toes said something similar about a pod in the Basilica,” I said with a frown. “But all we found were regular droolers.”
“Told you it was the kooks talking about it,” Smith said with a shrug. “You can’t exactly trust No-Toes.”
“That’s what David said, too,” I said softly.
In the distance I saw Dave loading up a pack for our nightly supplies. As he locked up the van, he looked in my direction with an expression of confusion. Usually I only talked to Smith for a second or two.
“Well, he’s likely right. Anyway, I see another car coming, gotta concentrate.” Smith turned away. “’Night, Sarah.”
“ ’Night.”
I made my way through Gate 2 and joined David. He gave me the same questioning look I’d seen from a distance.
“What up?”
I shook my head. “Smith said that others were talking about ‘different’ zombies. Maybe bionics?”
David rolled his eyes. “C’mon. We didn’t see anything different today. It’s just freaked-out talk. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past Jimmy and some of the others to even start that shit. It makes his goods more valuable if other people are too afraid to go out and find their own supplies.”
I nodded. That made sense, actually. Jimmy had been a grifter in his past life, why not now when it was so much easier?
“Maybe you’re right,” I said as we walked down a sloping hill past what were once parking garages but now were flattened, twisted hulks of concrete and wire. “And there’s always the fact that it’s been a few months since the initial outbreak and people naturally have to scare themselves all over again.”
“You’d think they’d have enough to be scared about,” Dave said, trailing off as we entered the half-collapsed stadium itself.
We’d been staying here on and off for over a month now, but every time we came in it gave us pause. The makeshift camp held about five hundred survivors. I have to say, it was pretty well organized for being one of the biggest camps we’d seen. Some other camps had become a study in the worst of the Old West, with gunmen running the show, crime out of control, and people too afraid to speak out for fear they’d be left to the zombies as “punishment” for nameless offenses.
But here in New Phoenix they had formed a semblance of a government, a system to distribute supplies, and a trade market where one could haggle with anything from extra rations to grandma’s silver (though rarely one’s own grandma’s silver). I guess that was all thanks to sensible people like Smith and some of the others who were in charge of this place.
We were lucky, but still, the stench of human sweat and waste was overpowering until the nose got used to it. And the people were tired, gaunt, and afraid, even if they tried to hide it. That was why we took our chances at least half the nights of the week and stayed outside the camp. It was just too hard to watch how low humanity had sunk in only a few months.
I blinked to keep sudden, always unexpected tears from falling and forced a smile. Someday this would get easier. It had to.
Didn’t it?
“Come on, let’s get dinner,” Dave said softly as he took my hand. We didn’t really talk about our feelings on the subject of the camps, but I knew him well enough to know it bugged him, too, no matter how jaded he pretended to be.
We weaved into the barracks area and grabbed some mismatched plates and cutlery before we got into line for chow. Swill. Whatever. Fresh food had vanished a long time ago, though you did sometimes scavenge your way into an orange grove or apple tree, which was always a nice surprise (and a valuable one here in camp).
Same thing with meat. Every blue moon you found a random cow or chicken you could actually catch to eat, though I guess that would end soon enough.