Zoey and the Zombies (A Mondamin Court Adventure)

Epilogue

One Year Later

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Hillcrest stalked across the fallow field. He'd grown taller and broader since they'd left Des Moines last fall. More than that, he had matured, with a strong, angular face like his father's. He moved with a cat-like grace.

"See anything?" Ruth asked at his back.

He shook his head. "Just a little more," he said. He was armed with a long spear and a machete. He buried the tip of spear in the soft ground and drew the machete. It was better in brush anyway.

He didn't really think anything was inside. It'd been months since they'd had zombies this close to the farm. The winter had played havoc with the originals, the zombies left over from the apocalypse. They'd frozen and thawed, their flesh rotting to nothing. New zombies were growing scarce as the tiny number of survivors got better and better at dealing with them.

Not to mention Zoey. Zoey and her expeditionary group, made up of a few Mondamin veterans like Kyle and a few locals, scouted a wider and wider circle around the farm, decimating the hordes long before they came near.

Holly worried about Zoey. Ethan had heard Holly talking to Lydia about it in hushed tones. Holly was worried that Zoey was borderline suicidal. She couldn't transition like she wanted. Michael and Jessica, the former nurses, were the closest they had to doctors. Any hope of surgery was gone now. Better to just die in a blaze of glory?

Ethan didn't think so. He felt Zoey had made peace with the new world, better than most. She knew, and Ethan agreed, that as long as one zombie remained, they would never truly be safe. They had a duty, all of them, to eliminate this curse from the earth for good. Zoey would do her part, and so would Ethan.

Ethan's part kept him closer to home, guarding the farm. He owed it to his new wife, Jamie. He smiled at the thought. It had been a spring wedding.

He could still recall his childhood crush on Padme Harrish. It seemed so distant now. At the time, their age difference hadn't seemed important. Then he had fought the hordes, had become a man. She stayed behind the fence, with the other kids, and in his eyes, remained a child. She acted it at least.

Jaimee, on the other hand, was a woman, even though she was only his age. They were the farm's power couple, two young people who became adults in a trial by fire. They understood what it took to live in this new world, and the entire community looked to them for guidance. It felt good, Ethan had to admit. It felt good.

"Anything?" Ruth's voice prompted.

Ethan rattled the bushes with his machete. "Safe," he called. Ruth, Esther, and a handful of other kids came forward. The wild plums were ripe, and they got to picking at once. The farm had food, but not a lot, and these plums would make a great treat. It was worth the risk.

He stood back as the kids worked, scanning the bushes for any sign of movement. The sound of a distant vehicle drew his attention. It was a battered, old jeep. Even at this distance, he could recognize them all—Kyle at the wheel and Zoey in the back, her face wrapped, only her eyes showing. Ethan smiled. "Hurry it up," he shouted at the kids. "I want to get back, see how the scouting went."

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Zoey watched the farm come into view with a sense of relief. It was a safe place. It wasn't the undead she was afraid of; the patrol had been quiet. They'd found and dispatched one lone zombie along the road. He had no ID on him, probably an indication of some survivor, not an original from the apocalypse. They'd hauled the body as far as Montgomery, on the north side of Lake Okoboji, but no one could identify him.

He'd probably wandered up from the south. It was still bad down there. The winter up here had pretty much decimated the zombies that had converted during the apocalypse. Down south, they still had some of the original left, slowly rotting but still walking. That meant big hordes. And big hordes were the real danger.

It was a different kind of safety that Zoey craved. The safety of Holly's arms. The safety of the old Mondamin crew. She gave a shaded glance at Kyle, behind the wheel of the jeep. She was glad he'd been along. It had made the hard stares of the Montgomery survivors bearable. She sighed.

They didn't accept her. They never would. Whatever the old Mondamin crew thought of her gender, she'd earned her place among them in the early days of the apocalypse. If they had any thoughts in their head besides complete acceptance, they kept them to themselves. She was one of them. They owed her that much.

Increasingly at the farm, people felt the same way. Her willingness to go out there on patrol and face the threat of more zombies had earned respect from even the older men. And that was enough.

In Montgomery, where they didn't know her, all they saw was a transgender person. "I thought they all got killed off," one had said. This part of the state had always been more conservative, and the speaker betrayed no sorrow at the passing of the trans community. Kyle had informed them darkly that what the man said was not true.

Maybe Kyle could take over patrols in that direction in the future. Zoey was sure he'd be willing. She stifled a laugh at the thought. "Hey, I got those notes for you," was probably the strangest pickup line Zoey had ever heard.

The recipient of this line has been a pretty, young blonde whom Kyle had apparently known at Drake University. And the line was, for Kyle at least, pretty slick. He had grown in confidence since Zoey had met him.

As they turned in the driveway and drove past the farmhouse toward the growing clump of cabins that survivors were calling Martinsdale, Zoey spied her. What had begun with Holly needing a moment to forget a horrible act had grown into something much more between them. It hadn't been easy.

Holly had spent much of the winter alternately pushing Zoey away and pulling her back, as she dealt with the aftershocks of her rape. Zoey had her own PTSD, in part because of her relationship with Caleb and from all of the things she saw while raiding during the early days of the apocalypse.

There was nothing unusual about that. Almost nightly somebody in the village woke screaming from a bad dream. Rocky relationships were more normal then healthy ones lately, as almost every survivor was on their own emotional roller coaster. Zoey figured that the fact that she and Holly talked about these things, and neither of them tried to drown them in home-brewed beers or in stolen narcotics, made them one of the healthiest post-apocalyptic couples she knew.

Zoey leaped out of the jeep the second it stopped. She ran to accept a hug from Holly. "Was there a problem?" Holly's face was full of concern.

Zoey shook her head and gave her a look that she hoped conveyed, We will talk about this later. Out loud, and for the benefit of the crowd, she said, "It was a quiet patrol. Found one and dispatched it. No one local. Everyone good as far as Montgomery."

The tension went out of the crowd. It was always a relief to know that none of your neighbors had been overrun. Or that new hordes weren't coming to threaten their village. Zoey pushed past the crowd, heading for the barn that had become the village's center. Jamie would no doubt want a more thorough report before Zoey and the others returned to their individual lives.

Or at least before the others returned to their individual lives. For Zoey, the time she spent in the village wasn't life but merely a respite from her life. Her life was out there in the wild wastelands of abandoned towns and fallen civilization, a place where beasts walked. Beasts Zoey swore she would see gone from this world.

The end

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