destroying everything in its path…that will be sign enough.
“But if I succeed…it is me that will return. And I will rebuild Sunset if I have to do it alone and with my bare hands. Then…I will repair the Corridor. And I promise you this…no tribe will ever set foot inside the walls again except to surrender.”
At first they all stared at me with open mouths. Then…slowly…they started to laugh. I heard it all the way down the hall as I left and exited Warehouse City. My ears burned with a mixture of anger, embarrassment, and something else…resolve.
No, I don’t plan on becoming the next Dominique. I’m not going to assassinate her and then assert myself as the president or anything like that.
I will kill her or die trying, then I will return to my home. As far as I am concerned, the tribes are like the grasshopper in that old bedtime story about the ant and the grasshopper. They are happy to sit back and let others do for them. That is fine, but I do not think that they fully realize how much they relied on the people of the Corridor.
We were their trading post. They came for miles and brought their goods to trade with us and each other. None of them were so self-sufficient that they did not need a little something from us. And that was really it…
Us.
To the tribes, if you are not actually a member, then you are an outsider; even if you are a member of another tribe. That is why they all have those ridiculous names.
Inside the walls of the Corridor, it didn’t matter if you were from Warehouse City, Sunset Fortress, or simply one of the people who settled down its length, you were part of a greater whole. That is why we sent the EEF out there to help others prepare settlements. That is why we had regular meetings with the people of the Confederated Tribes.
The people of the Corridor may not have been perfect…but then, who is? However, we did not turn our back on the world.
So, we left Warehouse City. I was surprised at who was walking beside me as I headed down the tracks in pursuit of Dominique. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago, I would have sworn it would be Bob and Felicia. I guess I should have known before when I first surrendered. That might sound unfair, after all, I was walking down into an occupied city and giving myself over because they had my mother. But the signs were there and I chose to believe that they were like people I grew up around.
One of the things that I am counting on is the fact that we did sabotage several points along the railway. Nothing that is not repairable; we didn’t have anything that allowed us to be too intricate. It was mostly prying a piece off here or there—by the way, that is much more difficult than you may think if you have never tried it yourself.
When the first day came to an end, I was making a fire. Selina came to me and I could tell that she had something on her mind. I knew it could not be something mundane like her wanting to actually watch how I built a fire. When I got it going, I decided to make it easy on her. I asked what was on her mind. Turns out she was wondering where the zombies might be hiding.
I actually had to explain to her that they were rarer than most people might believe. I told her about the rumor that there was a herd numbering over a million just standing in the aptly named Death Valley. Rumor had it that their eyes had shriveled away to nothing. Also, there was supposedly a place out in the plains of the Midwest…a huge valley of grass surrounded on three sides by a series of cliffs with several hundred thousand just standing there. Most encounters were with singles or small groups. On occasion you might encounter a herd of a hundred or so, but over the decades. Many of the larger groups had come together and formed super-herds which, due to their size had pushed their way into a place and eventually come to a stop in the face of some natural obstacle. The Grand Canyon has stories so fantastic that they are
“But if I succeed…it is me that will return. And I will rebuild Sunset if I have to do it alone and with my bare hands. Then…I will repair the Corridor. And I promise you this…no tribe will ever set foot inside the walls again except to surrender.”
At first they all stared at me with open mouths. Then…slowly…they started to laugh. I heard it all the way down the hall as I left and exited Warehouse City. My ears burned with a mixture of anger, embarrassment, and something else…resolve.
No, I don’t plan on becoming the next Dominique. I’m not going to assassinate her and then assert myself as the president or anything like that.
I will kill her or die trying, then I will return to my home. As far as I am concerned, the tribes are like the grasshopper in that old bedtime story about the ant and the grasshopper. They are happy to sit back and let others do for them. That is fine, but I do not think that they fully realize how much they relied on the people of the Corridor.
We were their trading post. They came for miles and brought their goods to trade with us and each other. None of them were so self-sufficient that they did not need a little something from us. And that was really it…
Us.
To the tribes, if you are not actually a member, then you are an outsider; even if you are a member of another tribe. That is why they all have those ridiculous names.
Inside the walls of the Corridor, it didn’t matter if you were from Warehouse City, Sunset Fortress, or simply one of the people who settled down its length, you were part of a greater whole. That is why we sent the EEF out there to help others prepare settlements. That is why we had regular meetings with the people of the Confederated Tribes.
The people of the Corridor may not have been perfect…but then, who is? However, we did not turn our back on the world.
So, we left Warehouse City. I was surprised at who was walking beside me as I headed down the tracks in pursuit of Dominique. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago, I would have sworn it would be Bob and Felicia. I guess I should have known before when I first surrendered. That might sound unfair, after all, I was walking down into an occupied city and giving myself over because they had my mother. But the signs were there and I chose to believe that they were like people I grew up around.
One of the things that I am counting on is the fact that we did sabotage several points along the railway. Nothing that is not repairable; we didn’t have anything that allowed us to be too intricate. It was mostly prying a piece off here or there—by the way, that is much more difficult than you may think if you have never tried it yourself.
When the first day came to an end, I was making a fire. Selina came to me and I could tell that she had something on her mind. I knew it could not be something mundane like her wanting to actually watch how I built a fire. When I got it going, I decided to make it easy on her. I asked what was on her mind. Turns out she was wondering where the zombies might be hiding.
I actually had to explain to her that they were rarer than most people might believe. I told her about the rumor that there was a herd numbering over a million just standing in the aptly named Death Valley. Rumor had it that their eyes had shriveled away to nothing. Also, there was supposedly a place out in the plains of the Midwest…a huge valley of grass surrounded on three sides by a series of cliffs with several hundred thousand just standing there. Most encounters were with singles or small groups. On occasion you might encounter a herd of a hundred or so, but over the decades. Many of the larger groups had come together and formed super-herds which, due to their size had pushed their way into a place and eventually come to a stop in the face of some natural obstacle. The Grand Canyon has stories so fantastic that they are
Similar Books
