“William! This is my time! I scheduled my time a week ago.” The man in front of the group motioned to a chalkboard that depicted a schedule. All manner of topics were listed; bullet making: 9:00am, undead behavior studies: 10:00am, sports talk: 11:00am, book club: 1:00pm. Pam hadn’t even realized it was just after midnight and the item on the list for that time was bible study.
“Miss,” the arguing men stopped their banter and bowed their heads as she passed.
“Gentlemen,” Pam returned the gesture. As she left the area, she could hear the two men resuming their argument.
“The devil brought this plague!” one yelled.
“No, God’s testing us!” the other yelled back.
“Your mom’s testing us! Now shut up and let us sleep!” Someone from a nearby cube shouted.
Pam giggled. She guessed that someone made the mistake of assuming a religious discussion would be quiet enough to schedule for late in the evening. She doubted that mistake would be made a second time.
Finally, Pam found the section she was looking for: M. This was clearly one of the largest sections, and she struggled to remember Carl and Miguel’s cube number. She eventually found it after a few minutes of wandering through the area.
“Anyone home?” Pam knocked on the side of the cube, lifted the sheet that served as the door, and peered inside. Like all the other cubes, Carl and Miguel’s was covered by a blue plastic tarp and lit by the gentle yellow light of the ship’s storage bay.
“Come in.” Carl greeted her and then resumed looking at his accommodations with frustration; the small office cubicle hadn’t been designed for living quarters. It was cramped for one person, let alone two.
“I hope Private Wensel is okay.” Miguel groaned as he lifted his broken leg onto his cot and tried to prop himself up on his backpack. The cot was too short for a full grown adult, and Miguel struggled to find a comfortable position
“Yeah… If he isn’t bit, he’ll be okay. If he is…” Carl spoke somberly as he sat on his cot and rubbed his eyes, “another one bites the dust, I suppose.”
Pam and Miguel shared a look. Carl seemed distant.
“Hey… You talk to Cap?” Pam looked around for a place to sit. Seeing that Miguel was occupying his entire cot and Carl was trying to organize his things… she eventually settled on the floor opposite the door.
Carl leaned his rifle against a corner, stared at it for a second, and then picked it back up. “You think our stuff is safe here?”
“I think so…” Pam answered optimistically. Now that the question had been asked, she wondered if it had been wise to leave her things in her cube.
Carl popped the clip of his rifle out and then back in. “This is my last clip. I picked it up on deck when we arrived. I couldn’t stand carrying around an empty rifle,” he noted to no one in particular. “Yeah, I talked to Cap… Don’t get too comfortable. We’re heading over to the Reagan in a couple of days. They don’t really know what to do with us yet. Captain Sheridan is gonna try to keep us together, but he couldn’t make any promises… said we should be ready for a welcome ceremony, though. Cap says we should try to enjoy the down time while it lasts.”
Miguel squirmed in his cot. “I hope we’ve got more space on the Reagan than we do here. This is way too small.” He popped a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket and carefully extracted the contents. He held three cigarettes out to his friend and smiled. “My lucky cigs… they aren’t a cigar, but now seems as good a time as any.”
Pam did not smoke, but took a cigarette to indulge her friends. Carl hesitated. It seemed to him that smoking Miguel’s lucky cigarettes signified a finality he was not yet able to embrace. Reluctantly, Carl reached out and slid a cigarette from Miguel’s grasp, placed it in his mouth, and lit it.
Pam took the lighter from Carl and lit her cigarette. She took a drag and coughed. “Damn… lucky?”
Miguel took the lighter from Pam, lit his cigarette and inhaled before handing the lighter back to Carl. “Lucky.”
A moment of quiet reflection passed between the soldiers.
“Did any of you see if Private Wensel got bit?” Pam eventually broke the silence. She had lost plenty of fellow soldiers this past year, but this was the first living person she had to look in the eye as he was left behind. He had seemed unconcerned, resolved that he had not been bitten, and the entire issue would be sorted out after a couple of days.
“Nope, I didn’t even know he was hurt,” Miguel answered. “The DDC was hairy, though.”
“Too hairy…” Carl mumbled “and that little girl rode in car three all the way to San Onofre. I didn’t know she was hurt either…” Carl trailed off, lost in thought. Right now, one of the little girls the convoy had rescued was living the last few moments of her life on a San Onofre rooftop with her father.
“Yeah, what were there? Four if you count that dad who wasn’t bit?” Pam continued.
Carl tried to get comfortable in his own cot. “Cap’s in contact with Private Wensel. He’ll be fine. I guess we’ll find out for sure in a day or so.”
“It doesn’t even take that long most of the time.” Miguel blew out a big puff of smoke.
The three soldiers sat speechless for a few moments; thinking and taking in the enormity of the past year. It felt strange to see the civilians in Cube City conducting themselves as if the world weren’t being devoured by the living dead. Without cars, roads, caffeine, or undead, the three friends struggled to find things to talk about. The sense of being relatively safe placed them paradoxically on edge.
“I know they’re mindless, but I feel like this is some crazy undead trick… like we made it all the way through only to walk into a trap. I feel uneasy,” Miguel admitted. “Is that weird?”
“I feel the same way.” Pam took one final drag from her cigarette before offering it to Carl. “There’s a library in section MC. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to read a book… try to relax. I can’t remember the last time I read a book.”
“I’m going to the mess hall to find a cook and get myself a steak.” Miguel closed his eyes, and a dreamy expression came over his face. “I’d give my right arm for a steak.”
“Ghouls run all the cow ranches now. I’m sure they’d take you up on that offer,” Pam joked.
“I’m not sure what to do.” Carl held a cigarette in each hand and took turns inhaling from them. “I guess I’m going to clean my rifle and sit around doing nothing.”
“A little bit of doing nothing is a damn good thing.” Pam smiled hoping her commanding officer could take some time and unload the emotional burden he’d been bearing.
The three friends talked for a bit until sleep began to nag at them. Miguel drifted into slumber and Carl started to drowse, so Pam stood up and took her leave.
Pam made her way back towards her quarters through the corridors between cubes… wondering how many of these people could thank the convoys for being here. She wondered —after some time spent in cramped cubes adjacent to strangers— if they would thank them at all. Clearly, there were already problems with assault. What other social problems would take root? Thievery? Organized crime? Lack of education? Lack of opportunity?
“Better than being in San Diego…” Pam muttered quietly, as she remembered the sight of the San Onofre power plant shutting down.
To her horror, an all-too-familiar moan echoed back at her. She froze in her tracks — was it her imagination? A sound of the ship she was unfamiliar with. Someone making noise in his or her sleep? A few seconds passed before she discovered where the sound had come from. Her eyes locked onto the white sheet of cube 26.