The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 13

The following weekend Sam and Benny had picked up the Saturday edition of the Town Pump, because it had the biggest wanted section. All of the easy jobs, like working in stores, had been long-since snapped up. They didn't need to work on the farms since a lot of the greenhouses are busy. Besides, it meant dropping out of school completely. They didn't love school, but it wasn't too bad, and school had softball, free lunches, and girls. The ideal fix was a part-time job that paid pretty good and got the ration board off their backs, so over the next several weeks, they applied for anything that sounded easy.

Sam and Benny clipped out a bunch of want ads and tackled them one at a time, having first categorized them by "most possible money," "coolness," and "I don't know what it is, but it sounds okay." They passed on anything that sounded bad right from the get-go.

The first on their list was for a fence tester.

That was interesting, because they were actual Infected on the other side of the fence that kept the town of Fairview separate from the great Ruins. Most of the Infected were far away, standing in the field or wandering clumsily toward any movement. There were rows of poles with brightly colored streamers set far out in the fields, and with every breeze the fluttering of the streamers attracted the Infected, constantly drawing them away from the fence. When the wind calmed, the creatures began lumbering in the direction of the movement in the town side if the fence. Sam wanted to get close to a Infected. He tries to sneak out the gates, to hunt them down as practice. None in the town except the guards, and scouters go out and fend off the Infected, and anyone else stays inside the gates. Sam hated that.

The shotgun guy watches over the teens, riding a horse. Sam and Benny had to walk the fence line and stop every six or ten feet, grip the chain links, and shake it to make sure there were no breaks or rusted weak spits. That was okay for the first mile, but afterward the noise attracted the Infected, and by the middle of the third mile, Sam had to grab, shake, and release pretty fast to keep his fingers from getting bit. He wanted a weapon to push the Infected off the fence, stab through the chain and be done with.

Sam got his chance today. The Infected was a squat man in the rags of what had once been a police officer's uniform. Sam stood as close to the safe side of the fence as he dared, and the Infected lumbered toward him, mouth working as if chewing, face as pal as dirty snow. He looked right into the creature's eyes, saw dust and emptiness. No reflection of any kind, nothing. Kids would be afraid of this officer, but Sam didn't. He've seen the terror, but he also knew they used to be people once, doing the lives and worked, had families.

Then the Infected lunged at him and tried to bite its way through the chain links. The movement was so sudden that there were no tensions, no twitch of facial muscles.

Benny yelped and back-pedaled away from the fence with Sam staring, wanting to quiet the Infected- quiet was a silver spike where people who are bitten are quieted, the silver into someone's skull so they won't turn, and people say that than killing or bashing a couple of Infected or Children of Lazarus- then Benny stepped in a steaming pile of horse crap and fell hard on his butt.

All the guards burst out laughing.

Sam and Benny quit at lunch.

-:-:-:-:-

The next morning Sam and Benny went to the far side of town and applied as fence technicians.

The fence ran for hundreds of miles and encircled the town and its harvested fields, so this meant a lot of walking while carrying yet another grumpy old guy's toolbox. In the fury three hours they got chased by a Infected who had squeezed through a break in the fence.

"Why don't they just stab all the Infected who come up to the fence?" Sam asked their supervisor.

" 'Cause folk would get upset," said the man, a scruffy-looking guy with bushy eyebrows and a tic at the corner of his mouth. "Some of them walkers are relatives of folks in town and those folks have rights regarding their kin. Been all sorts of trouble about it, so we keep the fence in good shape, and intestinal fortitude to grant permission for the fence guards to do what's necessary."