There Were People
Author’s Note
When I was a little, my brother and I would play this adventure game that we always called “Explorers.”
I had this purple plastic suitcase that I would carry with me. I think it was meant to hold art supplies or something, but I’d emptied it out and stuffed it full of notebooks, pencil crayons, and flyers and maps from my trips to Florida. With the case in hand, the two of us would trek around the house pretending we were exploring some foreign land. The maps and flyers for kitschy American tourist traps were our maps and documents to buried treasure.
This curiosity, this inkling to discover new things, has led to a fascination in my fiction with places and settings that are vastly different from our own. This has coupled with my love for dystopian fiction tales like Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road, or zombie apocalypse tales like The Walking Dead or 28 Days Later, to create a fairly interesting series of stories.
I think it’s society’s belief that these sorts of situations force people to do things outside the norm, things that civilized humans would usually never do. It’s these themes that make The Walking Dead so powerful.
I wanted to explore some of these things in There Were People.
The first time I put pen to paper for this story was in 2008. I was living in a house with two of my friends in Brantford Ontario, attending university. I still remember the room I penned many of my first short stories in. None of them are really any good, but they all hold a special place on the library shelf in my mind. They were what started it all. Stephen King’s, On Writing gave me the match I needed and that room was the rough strip I could strike that creative energy against to create a spark. The Playground, They Always Find Out, Bring Your Friends, all of these stories were created in that room in 2008 at the small, glass desk in the corner that was perpetually covered in greasy finger prints. The original version of this story was penned around that same time. I initially tried to get it published in a few literary magazines, but didn’t see any success with that. Not surprising, the original version was chalk full of a lot of extraneous detail that really drowned the main aspects of the story that I really wanted to explore.
This story saw a massive progression when I read The Walking Dead comics for the first time. One of the early graphic novels ends with a dramatic drawing of Rick Grimes exclaiming, “We are the walking dead!” a statement that raises the question of the humanity of our cast of characters who have yet to be turned into shuffling corpses like the majority of the population. I realized that was the theme I was exploring in this story. How much humanity is lost when our main comforts in life are stripped away? How far will people go? Or, on the contrary, do people really change during apocalyptic situations, or are we just evil to begin with?
I wouldn’t say the story is perfect, but there are parts of it that I’m really proud of. I like the scene with Derek shuffling from the diner, which is kind of homage to my love of a good zombie moment, when my apocalypse does not include these monsters. I also like the opening, which I think has the ability to draw the reader in. It could just be me, but I’m okay with that.
As I said, I cut a lot from the original version of this story, mostly background about Anne, my protagonist, but I didn’t feel like it was needed as there is a lot that is left unknown. We come upon these characters, things happen, and we’re gone. A keyhole glimpse into a different world, I think that’s what all short stories are meant to be.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading.
J.J.W.
Cover design by Backpack Studios
I have to admit, I was starting to feel a little bit ridiculous.
My body was curled into a tiny ball, my hands gripped around my knees.
“Get down and don’t move,” Al had said, his voice gaining a tone of urgency that always raised it a couple octaves. “And pick a comfortable position because it may be a while.”
“Okay, Al,” I said, because that’s what you always said.
I don’t know why I picked the fetal position. My arms were now screaming at me, my knees felt like they were gaining more and more pressure with each passing second. They longed to be straightened, I already imagined the loud crackles they would release when I was finally able to do so.
After assuming the position, Al had covered my thin frame in leaves. I got a little self-conscious when he started shovelling them beside my braless chest, but he never got close enough to touch.
Whatever Al’s reasons for rescuing all of us, especially me, a youthful 17-year-old, sexual motivations didn’t seem to be a part of it.
My leg twitched and the dried leaves shifted, the sound seemed very loud in the silence of the clearing.
I stared at the pointy mosaic of fall colours in front of my face. The sun shone through the transparent husks before my eyes turning the world into a sepia-toned collage.
Before the interruption, the day was actually turning out to be a nice one. The road had been fairly clear of any debris, save for the odd stranded car, discarded piece of clothing, or empty suitcase, thrown open by every passerby looking for something useful. We’d been walking Highway 6 for more than a week and this was perhaps the twentieth time I’d found myself twitching with anxious anticipation in the dirt.
All because Al had felt that “something was up.”
I sighed, leaves had fallen into the collar at the back of my neck and I resisted every impulse to snatch them away and scratch the itch.
Through my leafy-vision, I couldn’t see the others, but I could practically sense their growing frustration. Save for Derek, the twitchy, nerve-rattled 18-year-old we’d found in an abandoned diner two months ago. I could hear him sniffling from behind me.
“Shhhhh.”
The noise came from Al who was laying covered in leaves somewhere behind me.
“There’s nothing,” Marcus hissed. He was also somewhere behind me, further away than Al because his voice was more faint.
I heard the shifting of leaves, and slowly lifted my own head to look in that direction. Marcus was propped up on one elbow. Dirt was smeared on one of his cheeks and leaves were clinging to his short hair. The pile of leaves covering him was considerably larger because his girlfriend Beth was in there somewhere too. I stared at the large curve his bicep created as his arm bent to support his head. My eyes, and mind, drifted down and, not for the first time, thought about what he would look like without a shirt on.
Al’s voice cut through the whispers like a hand through smoke.
“Shut up!” he half-yelled, trying to whisper at the same time. “ Shut up! All of you, and get back on the ground, Marcus!”
Glancing around, I couldn’t see where Al was. I had no idea how he knew Marcus was up, but he did.
It was one of the main reasons I dropped back down and did my best to cover myself again. When Al said to do something, you just did. And when Al thought that “something was up” you believed him because the guy just seemed to know things.
I caught Marcus’s eye before I turned back. He rolled his eyes at me and I smiled, rolling my own and dropping my head back down to the leaves. I watched as his arm slid forward and I could see the form of leaves that was Beth shift as the arm wrapped around her waist, the leaves rippling like a blanket.
The jealousy was there, but I tried to ignore it. They were so lucky to have survived together, like, what were the odds of that?
Short sobs were coming from behind me as Derek, once again, tried to contain his tears.
I cursed the world that he had to be such an oddball. The end of the world can really wreak havoc on a girl’s love life.
My mom always used to tell me that old trusty cliché, there are lots of fish in the sea.
But what happens when global warming dries up that sea? Dries it up and drops the world into a chaotic frenzy of war and destruction. I sighed.
I tried my best to position my long curls beneath my cheek to soften the dried scratchiness of the forest floor.
A gust of wind blew through the clearing, pulling the collection of leaves from my collar with a blessed relief. A small pile formed against the top of my head, which was good. I couldn’t move my hands to cover my face again, but I figured that was okay.
After a few more minutes, Al would more than likely get up and tell us the danger was passed.
I stared at the country road that had been our hiking trail for the past week.
The pavement was only a few car-lengths from where we all lay concealed, the cracked and heaved pavement would have made for some interesting driving today, but I didn’t think anyone would be driving on it for some time now.
Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t register the absolute silence that had fallen among us in the clearing. Marcus had stopped whispering to Beth, she had stopped giggling and even Derek had stopped his sniffling.
My heart started to beat faster because I knew that wasn’t good. Then I heard the voices.
He’d emerged at our calls, crawling from the darkness like a timid mole rat. His shirtless form, a thin collection of bones slipped inside a layer of pale-white skin. He didn’t say a word.
“It’s okay, son,” Al said. The boy twitched.
At first, I thought our end of the world had just turned George A. Romero.
The four of us stood on the other side of the shattered windows that led into the small diner along the side of Highway 6. The laneway from the highway had been littered with those things the wind hadn’t been strong enough to pull away over the last year or so.
A suitcase lay open with a blue work shirt, stained with dirt, hanging over the lip like a swollen tongue. A baby rattle, striped like a barber pole, sat on the cracked pavement beside it.
Our boots crackled on the pebbles of pavement and specks of broken glass peppered over our approach.
We’d heard the movement inside the diner the minute we got close and Al had told us all to be careful, something was “definitely up.”
It turns out; it was really nothing to be afraid of. The state of Derek’s arms, it didn’t look like he could have ripped a piece of paper in two if he tried.
Three large windows fronted the diner and all three had been smashed in long ago. Derek stood framed in the middle window, the bright sunshine making his skin almost transparent. The rings around his eyes were a fiery red. The window only reached to about his waist, where a pair of torn and filthy Nike track pants were clinging. Around his wrists were purple and black bruises that faded to a dark brown and yellow as they moved up his arms.
“It’s okay son,” Al said again. “What’s your name.”
Derek took a lurching step forward and my mind immediately went to a movie I saw ages ago. He looked like a zombie.
“Some 28 Days later shit right here,” Marcus said.
“Shut up Marcus,” Al spat.
I couldn’t help but giggle and that earned me an annoyed glance from Al.
“It’s alright,” Al said, gesturing for Derek to come out. The tone of his voice and his slow movements suggested he was trying to coax a timid puppy out from under the bed after a loud thunderstorm.
“Al, I don’t know about this man, the kid can barely walk,” Marcus said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Al said. “He’s standing isn’t he?”
“He looks sick, man.”
“And we have medicine.” Al moved slowly toward the broken window. Derek had stepped to the other side and was looking at all three of us. His eyes fixed on me for what felt like longer than anyone else, but his expression suggested he wasn’t registering anything.
“Come on now, I got ya,” Al said, holding his arms through the broken window. As he did, Derek exploded with movement, jumping back, falling over in the process, and disappearing into the thick darkness. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him shuffling through broken glass, something that sounded like a plate fell to the floor and smashed, then a door slammed shut somewhere inside.
“God damnit,” Al said. “Kid’s terrified.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Marcus said. His arm was around Beth’s shoulder. She stopped them as he tried to turn around.
“I don’t know Marcus, we should probably help him,” she said.
“Beth is right,” Al said. “The kid needs help, if we don’t nobody will, and he mostly certainly will die in there.”
“How do you know it’s not a trap?” Marcus asked. “You see the kids arms? He’s someone’s slave, what if they just keep him tied up in there and use him as pity bait anytime kind Samaritans like us come marching by? They could be waiting for us back there right now.”
I glanced back into the diner, pulling a lock of curls from in front of my face.
“I don’t think so,” Al said. He gestured to the parking lot around us.
The surface looked like something very big, and with a lot of power, had exploded right in the center. A black crater had large cracks that snaked their way in every direction.
Long grass had sprouted up through the cracks.
“If people were using this place as some kind of base, all this thin grass would be trampled to the ground.”
“But what if-“
“They use the back door?” Al finished for him. “Then they aren’t having very good luck with their ‘pity bait’ as you call it.” Al said. “The other travellers would have trampled it down too.” He shook his head as he turned back to the diner. “No, I don’t think anyone has been here for some time.”
“So what if he’s alone?” Marcus said. “Do we really want him dragging along behind us?”
“Marcus!” Beth said, taking a step away from him. “We can’t just leave the poor kid.”
“Why not?” Marcus said. He folded his arms in front of his chest and I watched the curves of his biceps roll over his hands.
“Because that’s awful,” Beth said.
“Maybe,” Marcus said. “But we don’t have lots of food, and what happens if we get ambushed by a group of Roamers? The kid barely looks like he could hold his own dick to take a piss let alone hold a revolver.”
“Don’t be crude, Marcus,” Beth said.
“Just proving a point.”
“No,” Al said. “You’re making a point, not proving one, and you’ve made it, but we’re still helping him.” With that, Al carefully stepped over the broken window and into the diner. “And I could use some help,” he said. “Anne, with me.”
I nodded. From the corner of my eye I could see Marcus shaking his head as he turned around. Beth only stood staring at Al as she chewed her fingernail.
“Oh no, oh no,” I unconsciously whispered the words to myself, as if the fear forming in my chest coagulated the words in my lungs and sent them out with the air I exhaled.
There were three of them, four if you included the girl on the end. A rope was wrapped around both her wrists, binding her hands together.
The four men walked along with torn track suits hanging off them like some kind of apocalyptic sports team.
Two of them were small and timid looking. The one looked like someone who would be filling your gas tank for you off the highway in the middle of nowhere. His hair hung in a greasy ponytail behind his back and his teeth stuck out in different directions over his lower lip.
The other was more of a kid than a man. His eyes darted back and forth over the shotgun he held clutched to his chest like a teddy bear.
It was the third man that was catching my eye, and I knew Al was sizing him up from behind me. He was the one holding the other end of the rope.
He had to be close to seven feet tall and his face was a tangled mass of hair. The long greasy strands coming from the top of his head connected with his wiry beard somewhere around his ears. The only human features visible through the tangle was the bulbous red tip of his nose and his small beady eyes. There was a heart patterned bandanna tied around the top of his head. It was yellowing with stained sweat and dirt.
I closed my eyes, repeated my mantra and waited for the sound of their shuffling feet to pass. I prayed I was buried enough. I prayed they wouldn’t look over.
I imagined myself as that woman. Then I heard her fall.
The thick sound of flesh hitting pavement was followed by a surprised yelp that could only have come from her. My eyes opened, despite my brain’s desperate desire to look away.
“Let’s go!” The bearded man barked. White globs of saliva glowed in the sunlight as they stuck in his beard. He gave the rope a solid tug as the woman got to her knees, which were bloodied from the fall. The pull caused her arms to shoot forward and sent her back to the pavement where her chest slammed into the cracked surface.
She was crying. Her cheek was resting directly on the cracked yellow center line and I could see the tears cutting tracks through the dirt caked on her other cheek.
I could have sworn she was looking right at me.
“Come on!” The bearded man bellowed. The woman didn’t move. The rope hung loose and the woman pulled her bound hands to her chest, pressing her forehead into her swollen fingers as she curled into the fetal position.
I noticed a gold ring glowing on the second finger of her left hand. I wished I hadn’t.
“You heard him,” the man with the greasy ponytail growled. He stepped around the man, where he had been practically hidden behind him. A handgun glinted in his hand. “Move it!” He lashed out with a sneaker-clad foot that connected with the woman’s back. She flopped over so her face was staring at the sky.
I felt, more than heard, Al tense in the leaves behind me; if I listened hard enough I’m sure I could hear his blood pumping.
The woman’s hands were held in front of her like she was praying, and I noticed the deep purple bruises that were forming under the rope. There was no yellow snaking up her arms, but the look of them reminded me a lot of what Derek’s arms looked like when we found him.
Then I noticed the Nike swoosh on the side of the woman’s torn track pants. My breath caught in my throat.
Derek had been with us for nearly a month and still hadn’t said a single word to anyone.
He took the food we offered him silently, and allowed Al to mend his wounds, all the while staring off like his brain was miles away from us, or perhaps left behind in the diner we found him in.
At night we would sit around the fire, far off from the danger of the road, and eat our meagre dinner of a can of beans, or corn, or whatever Al removed from his pack that night. I don’t know how he carried it all with him without getting a soar back, but he managed and never said a word about it.
Following “dinner” we would sit and chat, usually about how things used to be, because talking about how things are now just wasn’t a good idea.
“I would kill for a Big Mac right about now,” I said, dropping my spoon into the empty can of beans. “Perhaps that would fill me up.”
“Or a Whopper?” Beth said. She was laying flat on the ground, her head resting on Marcus’s leg. “Those were the best.”
“Fast food?” Marcus interrupted. “Shit, if you’re going to wish, wish for a thick steak, or an ice cold beer,” he said, shaking his head. “I would kiss Derek if it meant I could drink a bottle of Steam Whistle.”
The three of us laughed, glancing over at Derek who was staring down into his can of beans. I don’t think he heard us. Al was off on patrol, making sure nothing was “up” in the area.
The three of us fell silent. I watched Derek move his spoon slowly around inside his can. I could hear the hollow scratching of metal on metal. He was wearing a collared shirt that was slightly too big for him, it came from Al’s pack, and his jeans were torn, but better than the track pants he had on before. Al had tossed them away, and if something was deemed as a lost cause by Al, you knew it was completely useless. Al had also washed his hair. Derek hadn’t said a word as Al hung his head over a nearby stream and, using his hand, took handfuls of icy water and scrubbed the grit from his scalp. He hadn’t put on much weight, but there was some colour back in his face now.
A leather holster was cinched around his waist, a small revolver that Al had given him was strapped there. I think it was some kind of a male trust thing between the two of them. I had never seen him touch it and didn’t even know if he knew how to use it.
I felt sorry for him. I wanted to talk to him but didn’t really know what to say.
“What do you think is wrong with him?” Marcus asked.
“Marcus, shut up,” Beth said.
“What? I don’t even know if he speaks English. We don’t even know if his real name is Derek, that’s just what Al calls him.” Marcus glanced between the two of us then stood up, surprising Beth whose head almost fell into the dirt. The fire cast black shadows over Marcus’s muscular form.
“Hey! Hey kid,” Marcus said snapping his fingers in front of Derek’s face.
He lifted a small mouthful of beans to his mouth and glanced up at Marcus, who shook his head.
“See, doesn’t know a thing.”
I looked away, turning my attention to the fire, trying to ignore the yelling in my gut letting me know I needed to eat more.
“God, I’m starving,” I said.
“We all are Anne,” Beth said. “Al said we should find some more food soon though, so that’s good.”
“Yeah, soon can’t come soon enou-“
I was interrupted by movement to my left. Derek was leaning forward, pushing his can of beans across the ground toward me. He didn’t look up, and I stared at the top of his head as he angled closer and closer trying to get the can as close to me as possible. His spoon stuck out at an angle from the open lid.
When he straightened up, he met my eye and for the first time I could truly say he was looking at me, not just through me.
“No, Derek,” I said, lifting the can and trying to hand it back to him. “You need to eat this. I’ll be okay.”
He shook his head, pushing the can, and my hand, back toward me. His palm touched my fingers and I could feel the warmth of his skin.
My stomach growled as I glanced down into the half-full can of beans. There was no denying I wanted to eat it.
I glanced up at him, and I could see the trace of a smile on his face as he watched me.
“Looks like you’ve made a friend, Anne,” Beth said.
The two of them were staring between the two of us. In my surprise I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I was sad Al wasn’t there to witness Derek’s first moment of interaction.
“Thank you, Derek,” I said.
I thought I saw the hint of a smile on this face, but it could have just been a flicker of the firelight.
A burst of movement came from behind me, and before I could even turn to look, the explosion of gunfire assaulted my ears.
When I tried to get up, my muscles wouldn’t cooperate. My heart was slamming so hard into my chest that it was pushing everything else into overdrive. In the frenzy, my arms and legs had forgotten their jobs.
My eyes shot back to the road where the man with the baseball cap, the one who had kicked the woman in the back, was clutching his neck as a stream of red shot between his fingers.
The other two stood stunned, staring at the man as if he wasn’t dying, but had just broken into song. I watched the man who Derek had shot through the neck, take a stumble step forward, the woman on the ground pulled her legs in so she wouldn’t be stepped on.
Before falling to the ground, the final movement the man would make, ever, he looked in our direction, his hand slowly falling away from his neck. He had a confused look on his face, and he was squinting, as if he was trying to make out just what exactly had come out of the trees and struck him.
A final glut of thick red blood slopped down onto his shoulder and the man’s knees slammed into the concrete followed quickly by the rest of him.
I could hear Derek walking through the leaves behind me, his feet landed within a few inches of my back as he passed by.
I couldn’t hear anyone else moving, and knew nobody else would.
We had been with Al long enough to know that Roamers were to be left alone, not attacked, and if Derek had to learn that lesson the hard way, then we all would let him do it.
The two men stared as Derek approached. He came into my field of vision with his gun raised. The tail of his shirt hung untucked out of his torn jeans.
His rubber boots rippled around his shins with each step through the dried leaves.
“Don’t!”
The large bearded man jumped and his hands immediately moved away from the gun hanging around his waist.
I was confused at first. I didn’t know who had spoke because neither of the men on the street had moved their mouths and it was way too deep to be a woman’s voice.
It was Derek.
The faces of the two men on the street quickly moved from one of fear, to something else as Derek stepped out of the trees and into the road.
The sun was shining on Derek’s back and into the squinted faces of the two men, despite that, I could still see the looks of recognition on their faces.
“Well, Sid look who it is,” the big bearded man said. He took a step forward, his hands hanging at his sides. Derek took one of his own to meet him, the gun practically pushing into the man’s nose.
“What are you going to do?” the man asked.
“You know exactly what I’m going to do,” Derek said. “I thought that was pretty obvious at this point.”
“Put that toy down and let’s-“ The man’s bearded face twitched as Derek cocked back the hammer on the gun.
“Shut up,” Derek said.
“Come on now boy, we can work this-“ It was the other man who never got a chance to finish his sentence.
Derek turned the gun and fired a bullet directly into the man’s forehead. The bullet exited the back of his head, pealing back a piece of his skull like a trapdoor filled with blood and chunky brain matter. His body was thrown back into the car behind him from the impact of the bullet before he crumpled into a heap.
Through the man’s thick facial hair I could see that his cheeks had gone pale.
“Come on now,” the man said, his voice shaking. “You don’t really want to do this do you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Derek asked.
“It’s not you, kid,” he said. Derek quickly glanced at the two bodies laying on either side of him.
I thought this was when the man would make his move, when Derek’s attention was temporarily distracted, but he didn’t move.
The man was almost a full head taller than Derek, and I could see his small beady eyes studying this strange creature that had joined our small little group. A strange little creature who was nearly out of his mind it seemed.
Derek started to laugh.
The sound echoed through the clearing, bouncing from tree to tree. It was a happy sound too. As if Derek had been holding it in all this time, building it up.
The man didn’t move, but I watched his hand twitch and thought I saw it move a little closer to the holster at his hip.
“You’re a good kid,” the man said. “I know you won’t believe me when I say that.”
The man’s voice was so deep his words carried across the clearing even though he was practically only whispering. “Let’s forget this okay? Forget what happened before, forget you just killed my two best mates.” He paused, glancing around.
The woman was still on the ground, she was staring at her hands, as if oblivious to what was going on around her. Perhaps she no longer cared. “I’m going to need some more help now,” he said.
Derek’s hand repositioned on the pistol, which he still had levelled between the man’s eyes. Derek glanced down at the woman again, as he did, the hand moved closer to the holster. If Derek’s attention waned one more time, it would be for the last time.
“You know, ten months ago when I was her, and you had offered me that, I would have gladly taken you up on it,” he paused, not taking his eyes off the man.
“And you know, when I was being dragged all over by you and your fucking clan, I tried to keep reminding myself that I was human. I had to keep telling myself that sooner or later someone would come along to remind me that there are still people, there is still love and goodness. I know that now.”
Derek turned away and the man’s hand darted to his hip. His hands were around the butt of his revolver in a matter of seconds and it was at his hip. It didn’t make it any further. Without bothering to turn back, Derek’s gun fired a bullet into the man’s face where it punched through is left cheek and into the think tank behind it.
He collapsed into a heap, the gun hitting the pavement with a metallic click.
Al was up and moving before I had time to really figure out what to do next.
I waited for him to curse and scream. Ask Derek if he had some kind of death wish, but he didn’t. I knew why.
The remaining three of us emerged out of the leaves and followed behind Al who was approaching the road slowly. We kept silent.
Derek was standing over the woman on the road, who was now staring up into his face. I could see that same look of recognition in her eyes.
We stood on the gravel shoulder and watched as Derek levelled the gun between her eyes.
Al moved to stop him, but halted at the edge of the road when Derek spoke.
“How long?” he asked her.
The woman’s face was a mask of dirt and thin lines, like veins, covering her cheeks where the tears had pushed through the grime.
“Five months,” the woman said, her voice was soft, surprisingly quiet. “They started just after you left, Josh.”
“I guess that’s karma,” Derek, aka Josh, said.
“I never meant for that-“
Before she could finish, Derek cut her off with a bullet. Blood spurted onto the centre line behind her.
The gun flopped down to Josh’s side and he turned toward the rest of us.
I thought Al would say something, but when he didn’t speak after half a minute, I took the chance.
“Who were those people?” I asked.
“No,” Josh said, holding up his hand. “They were people, they were, but haven’t been for a long time.”
He turned and moved over to where the bearded man’s body lay slumped against the rusted hulk of an old SUV. He bent down and retrieved the heart-patterned bandanna from the man’s head.
“They were people,” he said again.