World War Z: Ya Ha Tinda

                                             Yaha Tinda, Alberta


[After the end of the war, when the majority of survivors had been gathered together by the military or their own free will, most settled down right where they found themselves. There didn’t seem to be any real reason to spread back out, not when there wasn’t all that much to go back to.  Most people didn’t want to be alone. Eric Rickman is not like most people. He’s spent his entire life here in the Rocky Mountains, first as a trail guide and now as a cowboy and occasional survival trainer. Although he’s nearing his sixties, he still possesses the vitality and poise of a much younger man. He remains on his horse as we talk, keeping one eye on the cattle wandering over the grassy plateau.]

I never liked that word, or acronym or what have you. Last Man on Earth. Sounded too much like ‘lame’, like stupid or crippled or whatever. Like all those guys who couldn’t back down an’ give themselves back to the world were less than the RCs, like there was somethin’ wrong with ‘em. An’ maybe there was for some of ‘em, what the hell do I know. But if there was, well... Can you really blame ‘em?
Ten years is a real long time. An’ when you spend those ten years all on your lonesome, with the only people you see Zackos or bandits, an’ you learn to shoot anythin’ that moves tryin’ to carve out some little patch of safety, an’ then some snot-nosed army brat comes up an’ tells you that patch ain’t yours anymore, well... I can understand why a lot of ‘em would rather go down shootin’ than give it up. I did the exact same thing, when they took Winnie away from me.

Winnie was your horse, right?

Yeah, Winnipeg. Everyone called ‘er Winnie, like that bear in the kids books. Pooh Bear, or whatever the fuck his name was. God, she was an ugly horse. Ugliest damn horse I’d ever set my eyes on. Whiskers and scars an’ a whole in her ear... An’ mean, too. I been ridin’ horses my whole life, an’ I couldn’t get her to do a damn thing I asked. Kept buckin’ me off, runnin’ me into trees and rocks and such. Bit me too, real hard. [He pulls up his sleeve to show me the scars on his arm, and I wince in sympathy.] That was a hell of a time, tryin’ to keep it clean. Had more’n one scare, thinkin’ something was gonna get in an’ turn me spook.

If she was that bad, why not just... get rid of her?

Oh, I thought about it, ‘specially durin’ that first Grey Winner. Nothin’ to eat, nowhere to get warm. I thought about pullin’ a Skywalker, you know how he gets on inside that white thing? Winnie never let me get close when I was havin’ those thoughts. Like she could tell.
An’ besides, a mean horse is better’n no horse, ‘specially when she knows how to kick out a Zacko’s brain. She saved my life, more’n a couple of times.

All right. How about we start from the beginning, when you first realized what was going on?

I didn’t, really. I’d been up near the YMCA Outpost, helpin’ them out with the summer camps. After the first couple a hikers went missing up near there, they decided all their rides and hikes and the like had to be accompanied by a professional. Outpost’s about 90 miles from anythin’ even remotely resemblin’ civilization, an’ I never watched much news to begin with, so I had no idea anythin’ was up until the kid’s parents started showin’ up, asking if they could stay out there with us.

You must have heard something.

Well, yeah, there were whispers. All the councillors and temps and hands were talkin’ about some new disease in China, but what the fuck did I care about China? I’d never even heard about Phalanx until the kids started showin’ up, all jacked up on it. I just thought it was another scare, like anthrax or killer bees. I didn’t think it would ever reach out here.

But it was already here, wasn’t it?

Yeah. ‘parently, some rich son of a bitch with a day house up near Banff got himself a bad Chinese patch job, started spreadin’ it south. That’s what was takin’ the hikers out, not some damn fool bears.
The first Zacko I saw, I didn’t know what I was lookin’ at. It was the second or third week of August, an’ I was up late tryin’ to find a way to make three days worth of oatmeal stretch for twelve. I heard somethin’ shufflin’ around outside. I thought it was some perv brother or uncle or somethin’ tryin’ to sneak into the tepees where the girls slept. I didn’t even think to check that the shotgun was loaded. I was just gonna scare ‘im. But Zackos don’t get scared. I remember cockin’ the gun an’ shoutin’ at him, an’ I remember how he just moaned real deep. You know that sound. Scared the shit out of me. I thought he was jumped up on meth, thought I was gonna have to shoot him. I’d never killed a man before. I was already tryin’ to figure out how I was gonna explain it to the blue. That’s when I realized his guts were draggin’ in the dust. Didn’t hesitate to shoot him after that.

What did the others do?

Cried, mostly. You gotta remember, most of these folks had come up here to try an’ escape these things. They didn’t want to be up here, they just thought it would be the safest. Lot of ‘em were kids, too, twenty an’ under. I was only twenty six, but I was the oldest one there. ‘Cept for the parents, of course, but they were just three different kinds of useless. Half of ‘em had never even been in the woods before, let alone tried to live there.
We tried to hole up until it all blew over, but that went south real fast. There wasn’t much in the way of buildings out there, just a cabin, a barn an’ a couple of tepees. Most folk slept in their cars, but lots of ‘em ended up in the barn with the horses or in the mess hall. There wasn’t enough food, an’ of course no-one had thought to bring any up with ‘em. There were a lot of fights the first couple of weeks.
More an’ more Zacks started to show up, more ‘n I  could shoot, an’ the buildin’s just weren’t secure. I was in the barn, trying to stop this one CEO type from killin’ a soccer mom over a patch a hay when they got into the cabin. We heard them start screamin’, an’ then everyone got real quiet. I never heard the mountain so quiet. Then one of ‘em, the Zack I mean, started bangin’ on the doors.
Now, I’m not sayin’ they did it on purpose, or that they even could. We all know there ain’t nothin’ left, we all know they can’t think worth a damn. But while that one was bangin’ on the barn doors, gettin’ all our attention, four more came crawlin’ in through a hole in the wall. Swear to God, they didn’t make a God damned sound, not until they were rippin’ Mr. CEO’s throat out. Well, I got out of there as fast as I could, on the first horse I could grab.

You didn’t try and save them?

[He pauses. The animal beneath him shifts and fidgets, and he settles it down.]
The good answer would be yes. I mean, there were twenty three little girls an’ their families hidin’ up there, trustin’ me to keep them safe. An’ I ain’t no coward, I mean I’ve gotten in an’ out of my fair share of sticky spots with bears an’ mountain lions an’ such. But Jesus Christ, one of the things crawlin’ through the wall used to be my best friend. I was scared out of my mind. I just turned tail an’ I ran.

That’s probably what kept you alive.

Yeah. Probably. Doesn’t make it feel any better, though.

[He pauses for a long, uncomfortable moment.]

Anyways. After that, I took me an’ Winnie up the mountain, as far up as we could go. Winn wasn’t too pleased about that. She was a old pack horse, about two years from the glue factory. But she was as scared of the Zackos as I was, an’ as long as we were headed away from them, she didn’t complain much. But it eventually got to be that you couldn’t run away from one without headin’ towards another. I don’t know how many times we just managed to slide by on the skins of our teeth. I kept tryin’ to find someplace to settle down for the duration, but nothin’ ever worked out. Either they were... Already occupied, or unsecureable, or not worth the trouble. We just had to keep movin’, stayin’ off the trails, keepin’ to the mountains.
At first, I saw other survivors on a fairly regular basis, once every couple a weeks. Sometimes, we’d trade stories, spend a couple a days together, pool our resources. It’d never last too long. Most times, we’d get on one another’s nerves, or in one another’s way, or run out of supplies for two, pick a area clean. Didn’t usually end in violence, not at first. But the longer things went, the fewer folk I saw, an’ the more Rambo they got. After a while, I didn’t even bother sayin’ hello. I just got the hell away or started shootin’. They were worse than the Zack. Zackos ain’t cruel, Zackos don’t set traps or ambushes or anythin’ like that. Zackos don’t...

[He pauses again, turning his face away from me under the pretense of lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. When he looks back, his eyes are red and glassy.]

They don’t shoot your horse for no God damn reason.

Do you need a minute?

No, I need twenty fuckin’ years. I need these last to have never of happened. But that ain’t gonna happen, so what the hell.
It happened about seven, maybe eight years in, after I started my shoot-to-kill policy. Me an’ Winnie were hidin’ out in a cave, somewhere north some place, where it snowed eight months out of the year. It was winter, so I wasn’t expectin’ much in the way of trouble. Just the usual should-I-eat-my-boots-or-my-foot-first kind of stuff. We were hid pretty good, an’ we didn’t have much in the way of stealables to begin with, so I kinda assumed we’d be ok. I had myself a sleep, the first I’d had in days.
I’m not sure where they came from or where they were headed, but I sure as hell know where they ended up. It was the gunshot that woke me up. The shot, an’ something real warm hittin’ my face. I grabbed my shotgun before I even my eyes, got the first one square between the eyes. That kind of thing becomes reflexive, after a while. Second one almost got me back, but Winnie saved me again, blessed beast. While she was dyin’, she thrashed around a bunch, knocked me over onto the ground. The guy’s bulllet got her in the barrel an’ she stopped movin’. I got around behind her an’ managed to shoot the second one in the chest. I think about those guys sometimes, when I’m up here an’ can’t get to sleep.

You think about what you did to them?

Yeah. An’ I think, what I did wasn’t near bad enough. They could a just shot me first an’ been the ones sittin’ up here today, but they didn’t. I don’t know what they were thinkin’. It’s not like there was that much meat, on either of us.

[He pauses, smoking the cigarette for the first time since he lit it. Most of it is already ash.]

Winnie was a damn good horse.

Tell me about the end of it.

The end of what? The end of the war, or the end of the Panic? There ain’t much to tell about either that ain’t been told a million times already. My story’s the same as most everyone’s after that.

Tell me anyway.

Fine, have it your way.
I saw the military draw back behind the Rockies. I even helped a little, though I don’t think they ever even knew I was there. Who’s gonna notice a couple a rounds of buckshot comin’ out of the woods when there’s about a thousand Zackos on your ass?

Why didn’t you join up with them?

Hell if I know. A bunch of reasons, I guess. You get so used to not seein’ people, not gettin’ along that you forget how to do it right. You stop thinkin’, ‘Hey, there’s another human bein’’, an’ start thinkin’ ‘I wonder if there’s anything of his that I could use’. That’s not a good way to look at a military type. If I ever got myself into a fight with one of ‘em, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was gonna be the one to win. An’...I guess after all the things I’d done, all the folks I’d killed or... or left, I guess I thought I was gonna get arrested or somethin’. Hell, I don’t know. I just didn’t. Thought about it, though. Thought about it a lot, ‘specially after, when I hadn’t seen anyone for a while.
People don’t really get what that’s like. Most folks that made it through, made it through in groups, or at least saw another livin’, breathin’ human being every once in a while. But once the military came through, there wasn’t anythin’ left up here but Zackos an’ corpses. Everyone who could get out got out, followed the army east. I didn’t see a single livin’ thing for the next four years, not even animals. The Zackos got ‘em all. No bears, no deer or cougars or horses. Nothin’. After a while, I just started assumin’ that I was the only one left on the whole fuckin’ world. Last Man On Earth is right.
Thinkin’ that, bein’ that hopeless, can do strange things to a man, make him go a little crazy. I started, I guess talkin’ to myself, but really I was talkin’ to Winnie. It was mostly just to hear the sound of a human voice, to begin with, but you do it for long enough, don’t eat for a while or eat something that you ought not, an’ it becomes real. Lot a times, I couldn’t tell the difference between what I was hearin’ in my head an’ what I was hearin’ with my ears. Started seein’ things too, after a while. Things I don’t really care to explain in polite company. It gets awful lonely, up on the mountain.

I think I understand.

Anyways. By the time the army came back west I was totally out of my gourd. They missed me in the first wave, believe it or not. Well, they didn’t so much miss me as I stayed the hell away from ‘em. Thought they were Zackos, the ones left over from the retreat. Even after I saw ‘em shootin’ real Zacks, it never landed in my head that they were the good guys. It’s a real good thing I was more of a flight than a fight guy, or who knows what kind of damage I could’ve done. Certainly wouldn’t be standin’ here today, that’s for sure.
I’m not sure I even noticed when the Zackos disappeared. Nothin’ changed for me, ‘cept I didn’t have to run as often. Then, things started changin’ for real, things even I noticed. The wildlife started comin’ back. I started seein’ cows, deer, even a couple a sheep.

What did you do?

Ate ‘em. Told you, I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. Just thought they were survivors, like me, wanderin’ around with no real purpose.
I think it was somethin’ like a year after the last Zacko in Canada had been wiped out that I finally found myself comin’ back into society. I probably wouldn’t a even come back then, if it weren’t for Karee an’ Blue. Her an’ her parents settled down near where Sundre used to be an’ set up a ranch. Cows, mostly, but a couple of horses an’ the sheep I kept seein’. They were tryin’ to build a fence around their pasture, but livestock like that takes up a lot of room, an’ they hadn’t quite finished. Every once in a while, one would get loose an’ go runnin’ up the mountain, an’ nine times out of ten it wouldn’t come home. She came up lookin’ to find whatever was takin’ them an’ puttin’ it out of this world. She didn’t reckon on me, though.
I saw her movin’ through the trees, an’ I was gonna shoot her. Had the gun aimed an’ cocked an’ everythin’. An’ then I heard Blue, chompin’ away at his feed bag. He was the first horse I’d seen since Winnie, an’ by God if he weren’t the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I came runnin’ out of the woods screamin’ an’ hollerin’ an cryin’ like I’d lost my mind, which, of course, I had. It was her turn to almost shoot me. Thought I was a Zacko. Don’t blame her, either, ‘specially the way I was grabbin’ onto that horse. But for whatever reason, she didn’t pull the trigger right away, an’ it didn’t take long for her to realize that I was huggin’ poor ol’ Blue, not bitin’ him.
It took a while after that for her to get me to come down off the mountain. God knows that girl has patience. She just kept comin’ up with Blue, bringin’ me a little food or some new clothes, gettin’ me to trust people again. She brought me back. If it had been any other person, I might a gone the way of most of the other LaMOEs. But she brought me back to civilization. Well, as much as this ranch counts as civilization. I still get antsy with more an’ ten people about, an’ don’t even ask me to go into anywhere crowded. Got into more than a couple scrapes that way, over the years. But Karee’s been there to get me out of it, each an’ every time.

You’ve kept in touch?

Damn right, we’ve kept in touch. [He laughs, pulling off one of his leather gloves and showing me a band of horse hair wrapped around his ring finger.] We’ve been married for comin’ on four years now. Already got two kids, Andy an’ Jake. I know I’m a little old to be startin’ a family, an’ she’s a little young, but what the hell? In this kind a world, you need all the happiness you can get, proper or not.

[In the valley below, a small group of cattle breaks off from the others. Eric rides off to take care of the problem, leaving me to make my way back towards the Winnipeg Ranch and the rest of the world he and his new family have happily left behind.]