Page 5
Story: Siege (As the World Dies 3)
“Penis! I see a penis! It’s a boy!” Stacey sounded far more excited than she should be.
“Gross!” Katie made a comical face. “That is so disgusting!” She couldn’t help but look. “Ugh! Stacey!”
Stacey giggled a
nd wiped her bangs away from her forehead. “It flopped out!”
“It’s not funny! It’s a poor dead guy. ” Despite herself, Katie was laughing.
“My God, the gallows humor around here is thick. ”
“Freud would have had a blast studying us,” Stacey agreed.
“Oh, well. Either we be a little crazy and laugh at the absurdities of life or just give into the despair and die. ” Katie shrugged and reset the crossbow, taking care to show Stacey each step.
“I’ve done despair. It doesn’t help anything. ” Stacey fell silent for a moment, obviously pondering something. “The fort hasn’t really had anyone go nuts and commit suicide or anything has it?”
“Well, a city councilman in the first days tried to save his zombie family and ended up eaten. And we do have the Vigilante pitching people over the wall. ” Katie slipped her hands into her jacket. Her swelling belly was straining the zipper. She would need to find a new winter coat. “Some of us haven’t handled things as well as others. ” She thought briefly of Jenni.
“And others have used the crazy to survive. ”
“Who do you think the Vigilante is?” Stacey pulled the collar of her coat up a little closer to her face and huddled down into it.
Katie bit her bottom lip, not sure what she should say, then opted out by just shrugging. “No clue. I’m sure everyone has a theory. ”
“I think it’s Nerit,” Stacey confided.
“She wasn’t here when the first guy got pitched over the wall. ”
“The meth dealer?”
“Yeah. Ritchie. ” Katie remembered far too vividly the young man’s mutilated body as he stared up at her from the road, duct tape still over his mouth.
“Well, there goes my theory. ” Stacey watched the street thoughtfully. “A few people think the Vigilante is doing the right thing. ”
“I had no love for Phil or Shane, but what the Vigilante did to them was inhumane. Stranding them with gimped weapons in the middle of the zombie deadlands. ” Katie shivered.
“They kinda deserved it. ” Stacey shrugged. “I’m not gonna cry over them. ”
“Maybe not. But what if the Vigilante gets mad at you, or Eric, or someone else you care about? What if the Vigilante kills them out of some skewed sense of justice? The Vigilante killed Jimmy because he panicked when we took the hotel. We all have our moments. All of us. We’re human. And zombies are so fucking terrifying how can we not be afraid?”
Stacey’s brow furrowed at Katie’s words. “When you put it that way. . . ”
Katie pulled her cap down on her head a little tighter, the cold wind whistling in her numb ears. “Life is hard enough without worrying about someone judging you and casting you out of the fort based on their own sense of right or wrong. ”
Stacey leaned her elbows on the wall, avoiding the rebar poking out of the top of the cement blocks. “I just want to feel safe. ” Her gaze was on the mutilated body of the zombie below. “But I never really do. ”
They smelled Calhoun before they saw him. The scrawny, old man shoved them roughly aside and looked down into the road.
“Hey, Calhoun, watch it! Katie is pregnant, you know!”
“Checking something,” Calhoun muttered.
He scribbled in a battered notebook, making quick notations with a stubby pencil. Katie craned her head to take a peek, but couldn’t make sense of the marks.
Stacey covered her nose with her gloved hands, trying not to gag while Katie felt her eyes watering. Calhoun was more ripe than usual.
Calhoun whipped out a strange contraption that looked like rulers taped together at odd angles and held it up, studying various views. Grumbling something about the city planners being imbeciles, he made more notations.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5 (Reading here)
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207
- Page 208
- Page 209
- Page 210
- Page 211
- Page 212
- Page 213
- Page 214
- Page 215
- Page 216
- Page 217
- Page 218
- Page 219
- Page 220
- Page 221
- Page 222
- Page 223
- Page 224
- Page 225
- Page 226
- Page 227
- Page 228
- Page 229
- Page 230
- Page 231
- Page 232
- Page 233
- Page 234