He waited, letting anticipation build. “The good news,” he said, “is we are better prepared now to deal with any further incursions from the un- … from the infected. You no doubt saw the wall on the way in, as well as the large number of troops providing security. There are, at this time, more than fifty-thousand troops stationed in the city, as well as armored cavalry and air support. We have infantry, artillery, and a host of support troops, vehicles, and equipment. We have enough fuel to last us several months, and access to vast strategic reserves. This includes ammunition, medical supplies, food, clean water, and the materials to build new shelters for you and any other refugees who may arrive.”
There was a collective sigh of relief. I felt tension release from my shoulders and let out a breath I did not realize I was holding. Sophia and I smiled at each other and reached out to hold hands.
“Now before we go into all that,” Sherman went on, “there are some things you need to know about life here in the Springs. You’ll find out most of this for yourselves in due course, but I want to give you a heads-up so you know what to expect.”
He spoke for another hour, stopping occasionally to answer questions, but the gist of his speech was as follows:
The first thing all of us would be doing upon leaving orientation was driving to The Citadel Mall, part of which had been repurposed into the Colorado Springs Federal Refugee Intake Center, where we would present our entry passes and apply for housing assignments. After that, those who wished to do so could apply for a job with the city, speak to an Army recruiter, or submit an application for a business license. Skilled tradespeople such as carpenters, masons, welders, mechanics, medical professionals, electricians, and plumbers were in high demand, as were engineers, doctors, scientists of all stripes, and anyone with military or law enforcement experience.
The colonel warned us that water and sewer services as well as electrical utilities were extremely limited. The city’s residential areas were divided into small districts, each one assigned a manager who oversaw health and safety duties such as distributing fresh water and ensuring proper waste disposal. We would be briefed on our responsibilities in this regard upon arrival at our housing districts, and we would all be required to do our part to keep our area livable. Additionally, if we had any questions regarding the location of medical facilities, law enforcement, fire, or other services, we were to direct them to our district manager.
Toward the end of the speech, Sherman explained that while weapons were allowed in the city proper, we were expected to conduct ourselves responsibly. Any violence perpetrated for reasons other than self-defense and defense of others would be punished to the full extent of the law. Additionally, he warned us if any infected found their way into the city, or if there was an outbreak, we should report to the nearest military personnel as soon as possible. We were not to engage the infected unless we had no other choice. Any person killed on suspicion of being infected would be tested by medical personnel, and if the victim was not infected, whoever killed them would be charged with murder.
Thinking it over, I understood why the military did not want civilians killing walkers. If they allowed it without restriction, anyone involved in a dispute could simply shoot their antagonist in the head and claim they were infected. Not the kind of thing that contributes to a peaceful society.
Last, he explained the rules and regulations all refugees were expected to follow, which boiled down to treating each other with respect, avoiding violence, not robbing, raping, or defrauding one another, and staying the hell out of the military’s way. All things I intended to do anyway.
Finished, he bid us good luck and retreated through the same door he had entered.
“Maybe it’s not as bad as we thought,” Sophia said, the light of hope in her eyes.
“Don’t say that,” Mike intoned. “You’ll jinx us. Bad luck is the last thing we need.”
I have never been superstitious, but in light of everything that happened after, I cannot help but wonder if Mike’s fear of bad luck had been well placed.
FORTY-EIGHT
A month later, on my way home from work, I stopped at the mouth of my street and stared blankly ahead and felt a black depression sink past the weariness in my bones.
The refugee camp had been a neighborhood, once. There had been houses, and cars, and families, and people who had not known what it was like to live without electricity or running water. People who cooked indoors, and greeted each other in the morning, and held block parties, and smiled at the sounds of children laughing in the streets. People who had never had to chop wood for cooking fires, or mark the days on their calendars when the waste truck would come around to collect stinking buckets of filth, or remember that only gray water and piss went into the latrines.
They could take a bath whenever they wanted, not just wipe themselves down with a damp cloth. They did not have to stockpile clean water because the municipal supply only allowed two gallons per person, per day. They did not have to stand at the head of their streets every morning with empty jugs and wait with the other grim, silent, stinking people for the water truck to come around. They did not have to buy their food from a government commissary, or go to sleep at night to the sounds of gunfire, artillery, and moans, or live with the constant fear that the hordes sweeping down from the north would someday overwhelm the soldiers holding the line.
Life had been better then, when the houses still stood.
But the houses were gone now, burned down during the fighting, most of their former occupants dead, the remains bulldozed aside to make room for the refugee camp. Only the foundations remained, flat gray squares like tombstones marking the graves of a more hopeful time.
I did not see much hope as I stood there, gazing down the rows of multi-colored shipping containers. I saw smoke, and dirty people in ragged clothes, and children with gaunt, wary faces, and outhouses made of scavenged plywood and corrugated tin. I saw mud where there had once been green lawns, squat metal boxes where there had once been Tudors and colonials, and empty driveways that would probably never see a car again. I saw thousands of dirty footprints overlapping one another on the pavement, some from shoes, some from bare feet.
I clutched the cold handle of my empty lunchbox and thought about the bland meal of flatbread, canned vegetables, and beans that waited for me in the rectangular blue box less than a hundred yards away. My stomach wanted building materials, but I was not sure if I could work up the energy for an activity as vigorous as chewing.
I knew if I didn’t, I probably would not have the strength to get up and go to work the next day. If I did not go to work, I wouldn’t earn the little paper markers I took to the commissary once a week to purchase food. If I did not buy the food, I would not have the strength to work for another slip of paper and another trip to the commissary so I could endure another day of brutally hard work and poor rest and bad food and another slip of paper and another shopping trip and more work and more eating and more wondering what the hell it was all for.
Sophia. Do it for Sophia.
I put one foot in front of the other and trudged ahead.
*****
Where the shipping containers came from, I had no idea.
Like most of the materials and supplies that came into town they arrived with military convoys under heavy guard, the containers full of food, medical supplies, ammunition, building materials, and myriad other things. Once unloaded, they went to the camps where teams of workers installed modifications so people could live in them.