The tall man looked at me and gave me a sly smile. “My name is Simon Crays. John Talon, you say? I think I’m happy to meet you.”
2
We retrieved Simon’s things and rode slowly back to the lodge. Simon’s long legs allowed him to walk at a mile-eating pace, and he had no trouble keeping up with Charlie and myself. I rode on Simon’s left while Charlie brought up the rear. We talked briefly of the Upheaval and I learned that Simon was a computer software engineer, working out of Los Angeles. When the Upheaval hit, he managed to escape the carnage of the city and take refuge in the mountains. He had been living off the land and foraging through the ranches when he was ‘recruited’ by the Major. He didn’t elaborate and I figured we would learn more when we returned home. I told him about where we lived and how we came to be there. His eyes got wide when I told him of the towns and communities we had put together and he expressed a sincere interest in seeing those towns. Simon apologized for his behavior, but he thought he had been chased for hundreds of miles, thinking he had given his pursuers the slip when he crossed the Mississippi. When he saw us in all our gear, he immediately thought of the Major and therefore reacted the way he did.
The sun was high when we reached the outer gate and Simon was impressed with our earthen wall. I could see him running an experienced eye on its effectiveness and I saw him nod his head in approval. As we approached the lodge, I could see Simon openly nodding.
“Very nice,” he said. “Was this place a tourist spot before the zombies came?”
I gave him a short nod as I put my bike away. “This place has a lot of history, but the short version is we found it empty, realized its potential, and settled in. We could have done worse and nobody has laid a counter claim to it.”
“Not yet,” Simon mumbled, but quickly smiled to cover it. “Looking forward to seeing the rest,” he said amicably
Charlie led the way and we climbed the stairs to the second floor, then worked our way down to the main room. Simon whistled at the size of our common area, then walked over to the window to admire the view. I shrugged off my backpack and took off my vest. Charlie did the same, although he put his used tomahawk near the fireplace in the center to burn off any trace of the virus from the Z he killed. I motioned Simon to settle in at the big round table we used for discussions and he sat down, relaxing into the chair after his long hike. He pulled a bottle of water out of his pack and took a drink, his eyes glancing around at his surroundings.
His pose was casual, but I could see he was tense. It seemed as if he had some knowledge that he wanted to let go of, but didn’t know where to start. For my part, I figured I would just wait, seeing where the silence took me. It was an old trick I had used to good effect once upon a time as an administrator. Those with guilty consciences tended to need to release their guilt and the longer I waited without saying something, the harder it was for them to keep it in.
Charlie sat down at the table, pulled his Glock from its holster, and placed it on the table. The move wasn’t lost on Simon, and he leaned forward, placing both hands on the table while leaving his firearm holstered. I chose to stand away from the table, leaning on a low wall that separated the main room from a bar area. My casual pose put my hand close to my SIG and on Simon’s right. If he tried to get into action, it would be hard for him to bring his gun to bear before I shot him. Ordinarily, I wasn’t so cautious, but the man had reacted a couple of times a little out of the ordinary, so I wasn’t taking chances.
“Where do I begin?” Simon asked suddenly.
“Your survival story, I will assume, is pretty much standard these days. You figured out what was going wrong, got the hell out of dodge, fought a few zombies, and ended up someplace you didn’t like. Along the way, you have heard my name, and you have an interesting story to tell about a certain ‘Major’,” I said, starting the ball.
Simon blinked, then he fully smiled. “You don’t waste time, do you?”
“Not really. Why don’t you pick up where you left off on the way here. You said you were taking to the hills when the Upheaval started,” I supplied.
“Right. I had spent a bunch of time up in the mountains around the Tahoe area and I figured maybe with the terrain, the plague hadn’t hit so hard. Well, I got to Tahoe all right, but one look around had me running for the hills again. Seems like a lot of people had the same idea and one of them was infected. The whole slaughter had started again and I barely managed to escape the zombies by climbing the expert slope on Heavenly. The zombies weren’t great climbers and I got ahead of them pretty quickly. Last I looked, there were dozens of people trying to escape the undead by swimming out into the lake. Trouble is, the lake is cold, and I am sure most died of hypothermia while the ghouls waited at the edge.
“On top of Heavenly is a lodge and I stayed there for a time while the world died around me. The place had been abandoned and I was able to break into their food stores and live for nearly six months. By that time, the weather was turning and it was getting pretty cold at night, so I started to venture out. The first person I encountered was a zombie. But it was cold enough that he couldn’t chase me and was moving so slow that I was able to take a large branch and knock him down the mountain. By the time he reached the bottom he was in about six pieces.”
I smiled at the description and imagined a Z cartwheeling down the mountainside with limbs flying off and leaving a grisly trail of smashed-up zombie chunks.
Simon continued. “About the time my food ran out, winter was starting to hit the mountains pretty hard. I figured I needed to move on and do it quickly before the passes were closed. I took one of the maintenance trucks that had been left up at the resort and started my way down the mountain. I was hoping to get into Carson Valley and maybe find a decent place to hole up for the winter. There wasn’t a large population in that area and I thought that I could winter there and then move on. On the way down the mountain I passed several cars that had reanimated people inside them and more than one family car was covered in blood as a sick family member came back and ate his relatives.
“Carson Valley was relatively untouched by the virus and I spent the winter with a couple who had been living there for a while. They had been monitoring the progress of the disease by the internet and we spent countless hours going over plans and preparations. When winter broke I planned on heading north to the rough country, then maybe going to Colorado. I had heard the military had made a stand there and were welcoming survivors. Rumors told me there were almost a hundred thousand people in the mountain and the military was going to start heading back out to take on the threat.”
I paid close attention at this point, because it coincided with information I had found at State Center Bravo in what seemed a long time ago.
“I killed my next two zombies that winter. The couple I was rooming with? Yeah, they went out to their neighbors’ ranch and came back with the sickness. Virus took them both out in a short time, then they came for me. I killed the woman with a shovel and beat her husband’s brains in with a length of fence post. They were good people.” Simon drifted off for a second at the memory, but recovered quickly.
“I took what I needed from the house and left that evening. I drove through the night and when I ran out of gas the next morning I figured I was in Colorado. That’s when the Major’s men caught up to me.”