History
By: Liz B
----------

“Let’s move!” Karl ordered from the lead semi-truck. The Black Hawk camp started moving before he had finished the order. Standing beside the third truck, Dahlia put her fingers in her mouth and whistled sharply to her men. “We’re moving out! Lock them down!” Her men, four pilots and four soldiers, jumped up onto the flat bed trucks she was in charge of and started locking down the three old Black Hawk helicopters. She climbed up into the driver’s seat of the lead flat bed, and waited for the all good signal. It didn’t take long for them to be ready to move. Hunters had to be able to move quickly just in case. The key to living in the Dead Lands was either huge walls or constant movement.

Earth had been split for nearly fifty years now. She had heard rumors that the Sky Cities were already teaching History classes on the Time Before. She snorted at the idea. Couldn’t change the past, what was the point of learning about it? Unless the scientists made a time machine, there was no good that could come from remembering the past. Conscious transference was banned and with the walls keeping zombies out of the Farms and gravity keeping them out of the Sky Cities, they weren’t gaining any numbers. People should be looking towards the future and solving this problem. The “angels” in the Sky Cities should spend some time in the Dead Lands, then they’d stop talking about the past so much.

“We’re ready to go, boss.” Greg climbed into the passenger seat and she grabbed the radio to relay the message to Karl at the head of the caravan. Of course the scientists were the last to be ready. Locking down all their sensitive equipment took too much time for her liking. If they were ever swarmed, she hoped they’d have the common sense to just take off and worry about their equipment later. Even with the scientists slowing them down they were ready to go in under an hour and their caravan of twenty roared to life and they started down the crumbling highway towards the next Farm.

She kept her eyes on the road, but her head was stuck in the past. What had those scientists all those years ago been thinking? They’d wanted immortality by being able to transfer human consciousness from old, decrepit bodies into new younger ones. She spotted movement in the long over grown forest and sighed. This was the result of their hubris. When the conscious was transferred, the old body was supposed to have died, except they didn’t. They rose right back from the “dead”. Some form of very basic consciousness stayed with the body and without the whole soul to take it to the afterlife, the body rose and started to look for the missing soul. Those scientists had inadvertently proven there was an afterlife, but they’d created zombies in the process.

She wasn’t as educated as the “angels” in the Sky Cities, but she knew the history. The people in the past hadn’t caught on until the world was about 3 zombies or maybe more. The number varied from person to person. Dahlia thought the people in the past must have been some self-centered bastards not to notice soul sucking zombies wandering around. That’s what really ate at her. The old movies said zombies craved flesh, but these were much worse. In their desperation to find a soul, they would suck out any one they could find. No one knew what happened to the souls they ate, but the process turned the victim into a zombie. It was a cycle that no one was sure how to stop.

Force didn’t work. You shoot a zombie and it kept coming at you, you burn them and they become walking skeletons, and if you hack them to bits they put themselves back together. The only real answer was defense. In the past the major cities of the world had been domed off, kinda like Farms today. There were still a few domes standing, but most of the major cities had become Sky Cities. She glanced up, noting the absence of a huge floating city over their heads. The wind patterns had blown most of them south of where they were anyway.

The world was pretty evenly split between the living and the “undead” now. Real problem was people died and the zombies didn’t. Populations were carefully controlled in the Sky Cities and the domes and the human population was slowly falling behind. Even the Farms, which could support a pretty large population weren’t able to stop the downward slide in population. In three weeks the greatest scientific minds, world leaders and a few select bands of Hunters would meet to discuss this problem and come up with another temporary solution. Karl would be splitting the Black Hawks up because of it. Anton, the second in command, would stay in the Dead Lands and keep hunting zombies and protecting Farms. She would fly Karl to the summit to see if they could do any good.

The lead truck blew its horn, signaling the Farm was in sight. Dahlia relaxed slightly. She had grown up in a Farm and the huge concrete walls always made her feel safe. There was an unwritten and universal law that when Hunters showed up at a Farm they were given shelter, food and fuel or whatever else they might need. Hunters traveled the world like gypsies, risking their souls to protect those who dared to live in the Dead Lands and it was only fair to give something back to them. She had grown up hero worshiping the Hunters that came through her Farm. They were the heroes of song and legend, every kid on the Farm worshiped them. She had been sixteen when she begged her way onto the Black Hawks. They had needed a strong back and she had been crazy enough to leave safety for adventure.

“Farm doors are opening for us, on your guns.” Karl’s voice crackled through the radio. Greg climbed into the back of the truck and up the ladder to the jury rigged mini-gun. She scanned the area around her, looking for movement. Zombies in perfect condition were surprisingly agile. The old shuffling walk didn’t happened until they’d been blow apart a few times. Skeletons were the really dangerous ones. No one knew how they moved without tendons and muscles, but they were fast and could take even the most experienced hunter by surprise. Skeletons were spooky things.

They entered the Farm without incident, and Greg climbed back down into the cab. “A corn Farm, finally. We’ll be able to get some good fuel.”

“And they’ll have more than enough to spare.” She sighed, “What we need is fuel for the choppers. We don’t get that and we’re grounded.”

“Could always go back to one of the Domes. They’ve got fuel.”

“Yeah, and we have to pay for it.” Dahlia waved through the window to the people in the fields who were now lining the road to watch them drive by.

“You and Karl have to get to that summit, gonna need fuel, even if we have to pay for it.” She grunted in response. She didn’t like the Domes. They made her feel trapped. After learning to be a pilot, she couldn’t stand the ground for long. Andrew had called it sky cravings. She reached up and brushed her thumb over the dog tags around her neck. It was all she had left of Andrew now.

She had started out as a foot solider when she first joined the Black Hawks. They’d taught her how to shoot, put her in with a bunch of guys and turned her lose on the zombies of the Dead Lands. She had survived her first year and then Andrew, a pilot, had caught her eye. He taught her how to fly and they’d grown close. They got married after her second year with the Black Hawks. It seemed so young to be getting married, but what choice did they have? They could be swarmed and converted at any time. Better to get married young and divorce later than die before you ever got the chance.

Andrew had been passionate about hunting. Zombies had taken his little sister and he hated them all. He fought hard. A lot of other hunters said he was reckless, and looking back, she agreed. He threw himself at walls of zombies without blinking an eye. He was reckless and stupid and she had loved him with everything she had. There luck ran out. One mission he didn’t come back and she was left with just his dog tags. His “death” had been pointless too. They’d lost that battle and now, she figured he was out there somewhere.

They stopped just outside the main collection of worker’s houses and she got out to accept hand shakes and welcomes while making her way towards the lead truck and Karl. She looked over the crowd, standing close to Karl and remembered why she was living this way. These people deserved to live without walls. They’d find a solution, something permanent and final. The world shouldn’t be divided. She wouldn’t have this present be the future of the children she saw. She would make it the past.