“Shit! Get Nerit!” Travis headed toward the communication center.
“What does that mean? Is that zombies? Bandits? What?” Eric was flustered as he rushed after Travis. He shoved his glasses up on his nose and looked as alarmed as Travis felt.
“In this crazy world, who knows?”
They burst into the center at the same time. Bill was perched over an array of radios.
“Repeat! Repeat! I can't make out what you're saying!” Bill looked up, his expression one of despair.
“…got through…we are fight-…please hur…” The sounds of gunshots peppered the woman's voice. She sounded terrified and static kept overwhelming her voice. “…please hurry! Please hurry!
They're…repeat…got in!”
“Zombies?” Travis asked in a soft voice.
“I don't know. I can't make it all out,” Bill said in a surprisingly composed voice.
Travis was always impressed by Bill's ability to handle stressful situations in a calm manner.
Eric cocked his head, listening to the frantic woman's garbled message. “Are we really going out there?”
Bill looked at Travis.
“Hey, I'm not the mayor. ”
“Not yet,” Bill answered.
Nerit entered the room, her yellowed silver hair in a braid over one shoulder and her bathrobe tied tightly at her waist. “What is the situation?”
“Hackleburg is under attack. I can't make out if its zombies or bandits. Sue just keeps screaming into the microphone that someone got in. ” Bill rubbed his broad forehead. “It don't sound good. ”
Peggy rushed in with Curtis behind her. She was in her pajamas and her son clung to her like a monkey. “Hackleburg? Shit! They have kids in there! That's the one where they are in the church community center. They had enough food to make it through another week!” She tried to dislodge Cody, but he wouldn't let go. She ended up snatching up her map and heaving him onto one hip.
“Show me,” Nerit said to her.
“They're here. On the outside of town. They holed up in a church community center. Twenty-two people are in there. Mostly old folks, women, and kids. All, but four of the men went back into town to fight the zombies. They didn't come back alive. Anyway, they didn't have any vehicles to escape in and they ended up with zombies banging on their doors. They've held them off by barricading the doors and windows. They even managed to thin them out a little by dropping things down on the zombie's heads from the roof. They were saving the ammo just in case the zombies got in. ”
“There have been gunshots going off,” Bill said quietly.
Through the static, they could still hear the woman crying and begging for them to come.
“We gotta go get them! Save them!” Curtis looked desperately at Nerit. “We gotta go. ”
Travis sighed. It was decisions like this he did not like making.
Did they sacrifice resources to save other survivors, or did they stay safe within their walls? His humanity told him one thing, his fear for those he cared about told him another. He felt conflicted, yet he knew what he wanted to do. What he felt was truly right.
“How far away, Peggy?” Travis asked.
“Twenty-one miles going southeast. ” Peggy was trying to sound calm for the sak
e of her son and her own nerves, but her eyes were wide with fright.
“We have to get them,” Eric said. “We have to. If we can, we have to go get the survivors. We have room and food. We can't let them just…die. ” His voice shook with emotion. It had not been that long ago that Eric had been trapped outside the fort and under siege by zombies.
Travis rubbed his jaw and looked at Nerit, waiting for her to say something. He wanted to rush out and save the people, but he knew Nerit understood the actual dynamics of the situation better than he did. Nerit finally turned her gaze to Travis. Her expression said it all.
Travis was glad for her in that moment. She was quick to decide and quick to action.