WILLA, стр. 18
The guards never did. Many of the people circled and circled the parameter of the house until they turned, then whoever was on watch would put them down. Only on rare occasions did the person persist to the point that someone would shoot them before they turned.
I had a feeling the guards showed the same treatment to any strangers who came up to the house.
“Why don’t we start letting people in,” I asked Chad during one of the few times he wasn’t on guard duty. “We’ve lost so many. There can’t possibly be enough people on watch.”
“There isn’t,” Chad said, stretching out on his cot. “But, Dad doesn’t think we’re ready to bring strangers into the house. He doesn’t think we’re far enough into the outbreak for people to be out of panic mode. I don’t know if I agree with him, but only a few people have shown up that would’ve been any help to us. Most have been bitten and turned shortly after their arrival.”
“Does everyone with a bite mark turn?” I asked.
“So far. We had one lady—I think she was a teacher at my high school, but I’m not positive.—show up with a nip on her fingertip. We only knew it because she had a bandage on it. She said her baby, who didn’t have any teeth, had grazed her finger. The infant had turned in his sleep, and she hadn’t known it. When she went to pick him up, he snapped at her. She said she didn’t know how he’d turned. He hadn’t been bitten...that she knew of, and hers was only a graze, so she didn’t think she would turn. Dad said we couldn’t take the chance, and told her to leave. She didn’t. A day later, she turned, and someone brained her.”
“You think that was the only bite she had,” I asked.
“I don’t know. No one examined the woman’s body after she died.”
I could picture one of the guards shoving a spike through her head before dragging her body to the cow field.
“What do you think caused the baby to turn if a zombie didn’t bite him?” I asked.
“No idea. Maybe one of those things had bitten the baby, and his mother hadn’t known it or wanted to admit it. Probably, he died of natural causes in his sleep and turned upon death.”
“If that’s the case, then wouldn’t we all turn once we die?”
“I have no idea. Uncle Ray didn’t. Neither did Claire. Maybe it has something to do with the way they died, or perhaps the baby was exposed to the virus some other way.
“None of this makes sense to me.”
“Me either,” I said, spreading out on the floor next to his cot and looking up at the ceiling.
We lay there for a long time in silence.
“Mason is talking about leaving,” Chad said, breaking our silence. “Dad and Uncle Carson doesn’t know it yet. Mason had heard rumors that there’s a military base in Missouri taking in survivors. He thinks we should pack up and go, but he knows Dad, Uncle Carson, Grandma, your mom, and a few others won’t agree.”
“They won’t. I don’t. I think we’re safer here. I think we’ll continue to be safe if people would only stop panicking and looking for others to save them.
“Don’t look at me like that. You damn well know that I’d be doing more if Mom would let me.”
“If Mason leaves, she won’t have a choice. He has the largest family. We’ll lose half the guards we currently have when they go. There won’t be anyone else.”
“She’ll have a fit, but I’m ready to help. I don’t want to shoot anyone or brain them with a spear. If it keeps us safe, then I will. Mom, on the other hand, will be useless in that department.”
“I know. And your mom won’t be the only one. It won’t matter. They’ll have to pick up the slack. And if they don’t, we’ll all die.”
“Even knowing that, they’ll still be of no use to us.”
“I know, but too many people have left.”
Silence spread between us again. That time it lasted until Chad fell asleep.
13.
Mason and his family did leave. Not too long after that, we began running low on food. I think if Mom had come across as a rational person in all other aspects of our survival, people might have listened to her more when she harped on rationing food. Despite being able to see the emptying shelves themselves, those that were left at Grandma’s ignored Mom’s warnings.
Yeah, when we’d had more people, we could go hunting or collecting eggs, but there weren’t enough of us left for anyone to venture far from the house. Only on the rare occasions when the zombies weren’t coming at us in groups of five or more were we even able to get the eggs or tend to the chickens. Luckily only a few of the small animals had died since the outbreak at the hands of those creatures who mistook them for tiny humans.
The zombies didn’t seem to like animals but would eat them in a pinch. We’d long since let the cows and pigs run wild because the undead would go after them if a human wasn’t available. I don’t think they liked the bigger creatures as much as they did humans, but the zombies preferred them over chickens, dogs, cats, and other less meaty animals.
The dozen or so of us left had assumed that with so few people, the food we had and the food we could kill would last, and it would have for a bit longer if we hadn’t fallen. Eventually, those like my mother would’ve probably come to understand that if we didn’t want to starve, they were going to