Shelter, but Not Home

Chapter 10: Denton, Iowa: Fairgrounds

Denton, Iowa: Fairgrounds

Liza Palmer sat at a folding table with food and a bottle of water.

Gathered around her were Doc, Mr. Booth, Karen, and Brianna Kelly. The rest of the place was in the process of packing up. They had given her a rundown of the confrontation with the group of what they were calling bandits while she drank more water and tried to figure out how she was going to tell them what she had to without sounding like she was crazy.

She had come through the fall of the farm unscathed, the only one of the twenty-two living there to make it out alive, by sheer luck.

Taking a deep breath, she told her story.

She started with Ben and his miraculous survival after a bite. She told how he had helped them around the farm for several days before leaving to find his family.

Then, Ben returned a week later with an army of the dead.

It was a slaughter.

The dead seemed to know where the weak points were, where the blind spots for the guards were and moved in coordinated groups rather than the random howling mobs they were all too familiar with.

During the attack, Ben stood among the dead, watching. Liza thought he was directing them somehow, but she had no idea how that could be.

The one thing she did know was that Ben wasn't one of them, but he didn't seem entirely human anymore either. His skin was pale, a beacon in the moonlight. He looked, she commented, like a conductor directing an orchestra.

"I ran. This was the only place I could think of to go. We thought our plan was perfect, we thought our walls and guns would keep us safe. The only reason I'm alive is that I was feeling closed in and I needed to get away. I was sitting in Dave's tree stand, just to have some time to myself. They never saw me, and I didn't go to help. God forgive me, I didn't even try to save them."

Her story ended, she put her head down on her arms and sobbed.

Doc nodded and led her to the RV clinic to wash up and rest.

None of the search teams had returned, but they weren't expected for several more hours. That wasn't as much of a worry as the realization that they had to leave and had nowhere to go, but as the sun began to set, Janet's truck pulled into the nearly dismantled settlement.

By sunrise none of the other teams had returned. Messages were left for them, coded with personal information as to where they could find directions to their new home and a long line of vehicles headed on their winding trip to their new home.