12

Remy

"What the heck are they doing?" Castor asked, as we stared down at the sea of zombies.

"Seems like they're just sort of existing," Boden answered.

"They can't die, and they can't get out, so this is all they can do," I said.

"How do you know they can't get out?" Castor asked, with an undercurrent of fear in his incredulity. "Maybe they're just hibernating here."

"If they were hibernating, they wouldn't be moving." Lillian pointed to the ones closest to us, maybe fifteen meters beneath us on the benched step of land. They were stumbling and hobbling, not really going anywhere, but their feet shuffled beneath them.

Castor was at the edge, and he leaned forward slightly. His toe brushed against a small rock, and it rolled down the sheer dirt wall until it bounced off and hit a zombie right in the head.

The zombie looked up, tilting its head, and its eyes never seemed to look beyond the wall of dirt and stone just before it. But the rock had made it aware of us, and it walked straight ahead and ran into the wall.

"They don't climb," Boden said. "They took down walls at the government quarantine by ramming into them with brute force and waves of their bodies. But they didn't climb over it, and they don't really look up. "

"So they're just trapped down there, without any food or water?" Castor asked.

"There's water." Boden motioned to a stagnant pond on the lowest level of the mine, where it was the most crowded. Presumably because the zombies would stumble and fall over the edge on the higher levels but never climbed back up.

There were so many zombies, it left hardly any room for them to stand, and yet they all avoided the pond, giving it a wide berth. They were all cramped together, mashing each other between their decaying bodies and dirt walls.

"Zombies don't need water to survive," Lillian said.

"They don't need anything to survive. That's the problem," I grumbled.

"Why are they so afraid of water?" Castor asked. "I only see them avoid rivers and lakes. That kind of thing."

"They're not afraid of anything, because I doubt zombies feel anything at all, except hunger," Lillian said. "The virus that causes zombification is a mutant cousin of rabies, and that induces hydrophobia. I can't remember why exactly anymore, but I am assuming that the there must be some sort of central nervous system active in the zombies, so they can walk and grunt and devour."

"It's the humming sound I can't make sense of," I said, and I shivered as if I could shake it off. "Have any of you heard that before?"

Lillian shook her head. "No. Death groans, howls, whatever grunting moan that one is making, I have heard all of that before. But the humming is new."

A friend of mine in high school used to have an old car with subwoofers so big that the bass resonance would feel like an earthquake when we listened to Snoop Dogg. Standing here listening to the zombies gave me a similar, but much more macabre, feeling.

"It's like bad subwoofers," I said.

"It reminds me of bees," Boden said.

Castor looked at him like he was an idiot. "Bees buzz, and the zombies don't have wings."

"No, not when they're flying, but when they're killing an invading wasp," Boden elaborated. "I saw it on a nature special once. They crowded around the wasp and vibrated their wings so intensely that they kill the wasp."

"Maybe it's all those zombies crammed together, trying to move and breathe, and the sound is echoing through the mine," I speculated.

"How long do you think they will stay down there?" Castor asked.

"Maybe someday, when humans rise up again, and those zombies are little more than bones and dust from weathering the earth for so long, people will come and bury them underneath layers of dirt and rubble," Lillian imagined. "But even in their graves, I bet they will still hunger."

"Christ, that's dark," Boden said, but he didn't disagree.

"Maybe they'll drop dead tomorrow, but that doesn't seem likely," Castor said, somewhat more optimistically.

"All that matters to me is that they can't get out of there." I pointed to the only roadway down into the mine, and it looked to have been blown up some time ago, leaving charred rubble and no way off of the first step of the mine without scaling a wall.

"They don't have anything to offer us," Lillian said with a flat finality as she stared at the pit of thousands of zombies. "We should split up and look for supplies. There are so many buildings, and we should move on soon."

It sounded reasonable enough, so Lillian and Castor took the buildings to the south, and Boden and I took the ones to the north.

"Anything good in there?" Boden asked as we went into a musty, bloody cafeteria.

I shook my head. "Anything good has already been taken or rotten a long time ago."

"If there's a lot of people passing through on their way to Emberwood, this has all been well and good picked over," Boden commented.

"Yeah. Just let me take a quick pass through the storage room behind the cafeteria. Then we can head back in."

"All right. I'll wait for you outside," he said, probably because the smell inside was putrid.

He went out, and I took a quick walk through the storage room. A skeleton lay in a pile of waterlogged toilet paper, stained rust red. But there was nothing we could use.

I made my way back to the main cafeteria. The front doors were open a bit, letting in sunlight, and I could see Boden waiting just outside.

"Hey," a girl's voice, approaching out of sight, and I think it was Polly.

"Your brother is around scoping for supplies with Lillian," Boden said, answering a question she hadn't asked yet. "They'll probably be back out front soon, since there's nothing really worthwhile here."

"Bummer," Polly said with a sigh. "Where's your wife?"

"Just inside. I'm waiting for her," Boden replied as I was reaching the door.

"I'm not his wife," I said as I came out, and they both turned to look at me.

"Oh. Sorry. I just kinda assumed you were married," Polly replied awkwardly.

"We're together," I amended. "But we're not married because there's no governments or religion anymore."

She frowned, looking perplexed. "Ooookay. I don't really care that much so you don't need to tell me your life story." Then she turned back to Boden. "Which way did Castor and Lillian go? I want to catch up with them."

He pointed to the north. "That way. But like I said, they're probably heading back to the gate by now."

"That's fine. I wanna get out of here soon anyway," Polly said. "That low rumbling sound is giving me a headache, and it smells awful around here."

"Take as long as you want. No need to rush," I said as she went off to find her brother.

"Why did you do that?" Boden asked once she was gone, and we started making our way back to the gate.

"Because I want Stella to have as much time as possible to rest," I explained.

"No, not that," he said, annoyed. "Why did you correct Polly when she called you my wife?"

"Because I'm not," I replied with a shrug.

"I know that. But we've shared our life and our bed together for years," he contended. "Is it so bad if someone considers us married?"

"No, it's not bad. It's just not true," I said, growing frustrated. "Are you actually upset about this? I don't understand."

"I don't know what I am," he admitted and stopped walking, so I had to stop and look back at him. "What would you say if I told you that I wanted to be married?"

"I'd say that now is not the time," I told him, because I honestly couldn't think about it then. "We're still weeks away from getting Stella through a zombie infested wilderness." I took a step closer to him and put my hand on his arm. "You know what you mean to me, Boden. But right now, all I can really think about is ensuring that everyone in our family lives long enough to see that baby be born healthy and safe."

"Yeah. Yes. Of course." He nodded like he understood, but he wouldn't quite meet my eyes. "We can talk more once we're in Emberwood."

I stood on my tiptoes, kissing him on the mouth. He kissed me back, but he broke away first.

"We should get back," he said, and we fell in step beside one another.

I lowered my voice, since I didn't know if Polly or any of her group were lurking around, and I asked, "What do you think of the others?"

"We've been travelling with them for a few days now, and they haven't tried to murder, assault, or rob us, so they're better than most people we've met since society fell," he reasoned.

"I guess that is true," I agreed reluctantly.

"You don't like them." He stated it as fact.

"Like and dislike are too strong of words," I argued. "They're fine as long as they pull their own weight and don't put us in any danger."