Damage & Decay

Chapter 28

Part Two: Zombie Cards (Collect the Whole Set!)

"Everyone carries around his own monsters."

- Richard Pryor

----

But the night was not done with the Jaeger brothers.

First they had to remove the artist's body from the house and turn it over to the town watch. Two men came with a horse-drawn cart to remove the body, accompanied by Captain Strunk, who looked haggard and word from the night's activities. Once upon a time Strunk had been an acting teacher and director, but during the madness of First Night, he'd stepped up and organized the defense for a school that was attacked by zombies during a  late rehearsal of a new play. The students held out for three weeks against the dead, always hoping that help would arrive. It never did, but eventually the zoms outside were drawn off by other distractions--people fleeing, animals trying to escape the small town in which the school was set. When there were fewer than a dozen of the dead in the schoolyard, Strunk dressed his kids in heavy coats and choir gowns; armed them with golf clubs, hockey sticks, and baseball bats from the gym; and led his makeshift army out of the danger zone. Of the thirty-seven kids and four other adults who left the building with him, twenty-eight kids and two adults were still alive and uninfected by the time they discovered another group of refugees who were bound for a fenced-in settlement of central California. Strunk helped organize the town's defenses and served as it's first mayor, and now he commanded the fence patrols and the town watch. And although he and Armin agreed on many things, Strunk had no inclination to expand the town or reclaim the world. He was haunted by those kids he had not been able to save.

Strunk watched as the artist's body was loaded onto the cart by a cluster of deputies, and he listened to Armin's account of what happened. Mayor Kirsch came out of his house next door and joined them.

"And you think this was Charlie and the Hammer?" Strunk asked, running his fingers though his thick, curly gray hair.

"Yeah, Keith, I do."

Mayor Kirsch sighed. "I don't know, Armin. You've got nothing but circumstantial evidence, and pretty thin evidence at that. Guesswork isn't the same as proof."

"I know," said Armin. "But the pieces fit as far as I'm concerned."

"What do you expect me to do?" asked Strunk.

"How about arresting them?" said Eren.

"And charge them with what?"

"Murder. Torture. How much do they have to do before you'll do something?"

"Hush, Eren," cautioned Armin. To the others he said, "I know you can't do much based on my say-so, but I have to do something."

"Whoa now, Armin, let's not get ahead of ourselves," the mayor said quickly.

"Don't worry, Randy, I'm not going to do anything in town. Not without proof."

"We have to do something!" Eren said, and then realized he was yelling. He dropped his voice to an urgent whisper. "Armin, we have to do something. You said--"

"I know what I said, kiddo. Go inside and get washed up. Try to get some sleep."

"Sleep? Sleep?  What are the chances that I'm ever going to be able to sleep again?"

"Try," said Armin.

"And what are you going to be doing?"

"Your brother asks a fair question, Armin," said Strunk. He had his thumbs hooked into a Western-style gun belt, and it made him look like a gunslinger that Eren had seen in a book about the old West. Eren realized the Strunk was willing to use force, or at least imply that he would, to keep Armin from taking the law into his own hands. Eren wanted to knock Strunk's teeth out. How could the man want to give Armin a hard time when Charlie Matthias was walking around free? When he opened his mouth to say something, he caught Armin's eye, and his brother gave him a small shake of the head.