"Which is a fancy term for zombies. We are dealing with zombies. You know the living dead. They want to eat us. I thought we all knew that by now." Juan shook his head and folded his arms over his chest. People were so stupid.
"I do not believe we should give into hysteria and superstition," Tobias responded.
The city secretary's kid started to cry, loud and desperate and she tried to shush him.
"Daddy tried to eat us! He kept banging on the window!" The boy was near hysteria. "His guts were hanging out!"
Tobias flinched and said, "Now, son, maybe you shouldn't be in here."
"He's in this, too, Toby," Rosie said softly. "You can't shield a child from this."
Peggy snuggled her son up to her and kissed him on the forehead. He continued to cry softly, his tiny body shivering.
Curtis sat in the corner, hunched in on himself with his arms folded high on his chest. "Let's get back on topic. We need the guns. We can't keep killing them with spears."
"Yeah, blades aren't much help with these kinds of zombies," Juan said grimly. "The handbook did not have these running zombies in it. This is a whole other ballgame, but the basics are the same. We need to make this place as safe as possible and think before we act. We missed out on the whole being prepared thing, so we gotta do the best we can now."
"How do we figure out how to get Travis back in, that is the question," the Mayor said softly.
"Travis suggested we find out what everyone's skills are and figure out how to use them," Rosie said. "Maybe someone on this list has the experience we need to figure that out."
"Like someone has experience with zombies," Curtis muttered.
"The infected people out there deserve better than to be murdered and run down. I do not think murder should be an option to any plan we implement," Tobias declared. "We have been murderers for days now."
"They are not infected!" Curtis voice almost sounded shrill. "They are eating people, Tobias!"
Tobias' eyes were swimming with tears, but he fought to keep his voice steady. "My family needs help. Not to be butchered!"
"They were already butchered! They are dead!" Curtis' face seemed younger now that he seemed close to cracking.
Juan stood up and tried to break some of the tension. "Look. We got construction equipment. We got that much. Now we need to get creative."
"Build a corral," the little one said.
Juan looked at him for a second. "Huh, kid?"
"His name is Cody," Peggy said softly.
"Build a corral. Like I do with my Lego's. When Daddy and I…" He started to blubber, but pushed on, "played with my cowboys and my Lego's, we built corrals for the cows."
The Mayor looked at Juan. "A corral?"
"Fuck me," Juan said and took a step back.
"Juan!"
"Sorry, Mom. I think we can actually do that…yeah…from the mouth of babes…from the mouth of babes!"
Juan didn't even wait to talk this out. He just headed out the door.
Loca was standing near the door, spying of course.
"I want to help," Jenni said, her big dark eyes so beautiful and so nuts.
"No."
"I can help!" She rushed after him.
"You're loca."
"Maybe, but I can still help. I have to help!"
She grabbed his arm and they stared at each other for a long moment.
She was nuts, yeah, but she looked determined.
"How?"
"I used to play with my kids with Lego's all the time and build all sorts of-"
"We're not using Lego's," Juan pointed out.
Now the Mayor, Curtis, his Mom, Tobias and Peggy and her kid were pooling around them.
"Yeah, I know that!" Jenni stomped her foot. "I'm saying that I know how to make plans to make things work a certain way. My kids and I built entire cities with Lego's"
"Me, too," Cody said.
Juan looked at both of them.
The Mayor was still twisting his pen in his hands. "Listen to what they have to say. It won't hurt."
Juan hesitated. Well, he actually wasn't sure how he would build a corral, was he?
"Okay, fine."
"I have some Lego's!" Cody ran down the hall.
"It won't hurt," Peggy said to Juan.
Juan looked at everyone gathered around him. They were all loco, he decided. Hell, the world was loco. And for some reason, this made him smile.
"Fine, fine, the kid has a good idea."
An hour later, on a conference table, Jenni and Cody had constructed the fort with its wall and its buildings and the surrounding streets. The older kid with the hair hanging in his face had come in with the dog and started to help out. Juan just sat there, flipping through a magazine, not really paying attention.
"So the zombies are all here," Jenni said and put tiny little Lego men in front of the wall and into the street the truck had run out of gas on.
Curtis wandered in and looked it over. "They are all in the front, spread across from here to here."
"It's like they feel that is our weakest point," the older kid said and the dog whined.
Cody, looking more like a little kid than a scared rabbit now, picked up several blocks of Lego's that he had attached together and made a big noise as he dropped it down between two buildings. He made very effective sound effects of the zombies being crushed. Now that he was playing, he was having as much fun as a little boy can with his toys.
Juan leaned forward watching the kid, then glanced up at Curtis. Curtis lifted his eyebrows.
Cody picked up another stack of Lego's and dropped it down between two other buildings. Now all the fake little zombies were trapped between the first line of defense and two large barriers hemming them into a t-shaped area.
Jenni clapped her hands and high-fived the little boy as Juan and Curtis leaned over to look at the configuration a little more closely.
Cody now commenced to have a plastic Godzilla from his bag of toys stomp the zombies into the ground, but an idea was already in Juan's mind.
Jenni looked up at the men. "We can do this, can't we?"
"Travis can come in from another direction. We can have the zombies all hemmed in here," Curtis decided. "They can come in from over here where there won't be any."
"But how do we get them in?" Jenni frowned at the tiny colored town.
Cody laughed and picked up one of his matchbox trucks. "Like this." He swung his arm like it was a crane and set the truck down in the fort.
Juan grabbed the kid and hugged him. "You've been watching us set up the site. It's the crane he's talking about. Maybe we can't lift the truck in, but if they load everything onto a pallet, we can lift the load and them over the wall to safety with the crane."
Jenni leaned over and snuggled the kid and kissed him. "You're a genius!"
"I just like big trucks," Cody answered and plowed the zombies down with one of his toy trucks.
Juan grabbed a piece of paper and started drawing. He felt Jenni lean toward him and looked up.
"We're all in this together, you know," she said.
"You're still loca," he told her.
She grinned at him and, much to his disgust, he smiled back.
2. Threshold
Jenni slid off her cot and sat at the edge of it, frowning. Jason was asleep, snoring slightly. Jack sat on the floor near her stepson's cot, staring at her quizzically.
Glancing over at Katie's empty cot, Jenni shivered in her nightgown. It was several sizes too big, but it was all she could find in the donation box for the needy. Pushing her dark hair out of her face, she rose and walked to the door.
Jack immediately got up and followed her. She rested her hand on his head and smiled down at the dog. He was a good and loyal friend.
Slipping quietly out, she moved down the narrow stairwell, her bare feet not making a sound. Distantly, she could hear the zombies moaning. The living had kept well out of view of the dead, and now the zombies were just standing around moaning. Juan had been right about that. Staying out of sight kept the zombies calmer, but they certainly weren't going away. A few kept pounding away on the trucks until their hands were a bloody pulp, but most were just standing out there.
Jenni shivered as she thought of Katie. She couldn't bear to see her like that. Empty, lifeless, a mere husk of whom she had been with her spark gone from her eyes. Jenni had been all over the place emotionally all day. Juan had pissed her off by calling her loca, but she had put on her best "I'm just a pretty girl" persona to get him to lay off of her and let her hear what was going on. She knew her initial reaction to the word that Katie was very sick and possibly infected had set her back in the eyes of some of the people, but she didn't really care.
Even now, the thought of Katie not being here was too much to bear.
Katie had been the first good thing in her new life and she wanted to keep that. Katie made her feel safe. Katie made her feel like she was okay. Normal, not a dysfunctional battered housewife blundering through life. Katie was everything she had ever wanted to be, but had failed to be when she had married Lloyd at eighteen.
