"We've secured the house with minimal losses," she told them unceremoniously. "I'm going to assign some of you a job to do, and you will do it."
"What do you mean 'minimal losses'?" Ana asked.
"Look sweetheart, I'm a fucking CEO of a Fortune 500 company so it's time you understood that I don't do menial labor," Steve protested loudly.
"That's fine Steve, but remember this, you don't work, you don't eat. Leastwise, not while I'm here. After we leave I'm not particularly concerned what bullshit the others are willing to put up with from you," she announced, drawing outbursts from those situated around the room.
"You can't leave us here alone!" protested Fran.
"You're leaving!" squeaked Nicole.
Turning first to Ana the first to question her, Briggs replied, "We lost Evans while we were clearing the house. He was bit, put a bullet in his own head to keep from turning into one of those things. It was a brave thing, something I hope each and every one of you is prepared to do. As for my team there's been a change in plans," she said, directing her attention back to the rest of the group. "We'll be leaving within the next 48 hours. You'll all be safe here, Caroline will see to that," she said, gesturing to the stately older woman seated at the head of the dining room table.
"But why are you leaving?" Nicole asked.
"Orders."
"Whose orders?" Caroline asked, looking curious. "And why are you wearing that awful uniform and acting like a soldier again? I thought you'd left the Army years ago dear."
Ignoring her, Briggs began delegating tasks. Pointing to Steve, she said, "You're on clean up detail Sunshine. Sanchez and Jones, make sure he actually does the job and gets his hands dirty. Terry, Felix, you two can give them a hand. I want those corpses moved outta the house. Bury them, or better yet burn them. They're already starting to decompose, that's just more disease waiting to happen."
Caroline looked upset. "Kenny! You can't be serious about burning those bodies. For goodness sake Richard is among them. He's a US Senator! Don't you think he deserves the honor of a full state funeral?"
"Caroline, are you up to speed on your current events? Aside from the fact that the world as we knew it is over, meaning that a state funeral is a thing of the past, Richard was a self-important, womanizing hack of a Senator. He had designs on the White House and believe me, there was nothing he wouldn't do to get there, even murder billions of innocent people. Trust me on this, he doesn't deserve your tears or your pompous state funeral ideas," Briggs replied coldly.
Caroline paled at her words, choosing to try a new tactic. "All right then, forget about Richard, he was 'only' your ex-father-in-law so why should that make any difference to you. But what about what Riley? What would he say? And all those others here in the house, don't you think their families would want something better for them?"
"Frankly Caroline, I don't really give a shit. I mean, go take a look outside your front gate. All those things out there, they were once people too. Worldwide, we're talking billions of walking dead now. There's no way survivors like us are going to be able to locate their dead family members and give them a burial, hell, they're rotting away as we talk. This is the reality of our lives now, you have to face it."
"Kendra Burke, I can't believe you'd say things like that," Caroline exploded. "When your husband arrives here maybe he'll be able to talk some sense into you."
"He's my ex-husband Caroline," Briggs gritted out. "And I don't recall ever telling you he was coming here either," she said sharply, watching as the older woman turned ashen again. "So did you know about Operation Clean Sweep? Did you help your husband and your son to kill off most of the world?"
A shocked silence momentarily filled the room before Caroline finally spoke, futilely attempting to express her innocence. "But I didn't know anything about that. I knew Richard and his friends were holding secret meetings, that Riley sometimes sat in on them, but I thought it was all regarding his plan to run for the Presidency!" She looked wildly about the room before focusing once more on Briggs. "Oh Kendra, the only reason I knew about Riley coming here was because Richard told me he was going to his study to contact him for help just after Catalina had bit Thomas and we understood how the sickness was spread. I just never thought he'd barricade himself in there and leave me at the mercy of those, those things..." she trailed off, tears streaming down her face.
A slow clapping broke through the stillness Caroline's confession had brought to the room. "That was really great, the best performance I've seen in a long time. Too bad the academy probably won't be voting this year, you woulda been a shoe in," Sanchez mockingly called out.
"Sanchez!" Briggs called out sharply, her eyes never leaving Caroline's face. "Take your team and get to work removing the corpses."
"Kendra, I knew that if you heard my side of things I could make you understand," Caroline said, smiling through her tears.
Briggs looked away, watching as Sanchez escorted his team out the door of the dining room, literally pushing Steve along in front of them. Finally she turned back to the older woman, "Save it Caroline, I'm inclined to agree with Sanchez right about now. All your little display has really done is convince me how wrong I've been about you." She began to leave the dining room then, until Ana's voice stopped her.
"What about the rest of us Sergeant, what are we supposed to do?"
"CJ, Michael and Roger, follow me. My soldiers already know their assignments. The rest of you may as well get this house cleaned up. I don't know how long you'll be living here, but I assume you don't want to be stepping over body parts while you're here."
As she walked out of the room, her soldiers that had still remained there began exiting too. Steele moved to stand behind Caroline, accompanied by Masters. "Excuse me ma'am, but I have orders to escort you to your room and place you under guard until Sergeant Briggs is prepared to leave."
Standing gracefully, Caroline turned to the young woman. "I believe I shall retire to my room for the evening young woman, but it is of my own free will. I don't require your assistance," she said haughtily.
"I'm sorry ma'am, but I wasn't offering you any," Steele said. Raising her rifle slightly, she motioned towards the door with it, "If you please ma'am, I will use force if necessary."
"What is the meaning of this?" demanded Helga, jumping to her feet, her words spoken with a heavy German accent. "You come here and you save us only to turn us into your prisoners. Mrs. Kelmsley is the finest of ladies and you have the audacity to pull gun on her? It is absurd!"
"Perhaps you wish to accompany her ma'am?" Steele replied. She withheld the fact that Briggs had instructed her to place both of these women under guard.
"Of course I will accompany her, I would never leave her alone to be roughly treated by the likes of you," Helga sneered. Her devotion to Caroline and her disdain for the soldiers was readily apparent.
Ana and Monica, witnessing this exchange opted to follow CJ, Michael and Roger as they departed to do Briggs' bidding, as did Kenneth, Tom and his nephew Dennis. "Do you ever get the feeling you're like Alice in Wonderland?" Monica asked Ana as they stepped out onto the expansive grounds of the estate, trailing slightly behind the men.
"You mean like I've fallen through a rabbit hole and landed in a world where nothing is as it seems?" she replied.
"Exactly."
"All the time, I'm just glad someone else feels that way too," Ana smiled. She and Monica hadn't really talked that much with each other despite the length of time they'd been trapped in their small group together.
"Sometimes I wish I'd never gotten out of bed that morning, as if that would have changed things any," Monica continued. Ana didn't even need to guess what morning she was talking about.
"So where were you headed when you ended up at Saint Verbena's?" Ana asked quietly, suddenly filled with the urge to get to know her better. To understand how they had all ended up here in this place together. "Or did you just head there from your home?"
"No, I was on my way to the bus station to pick up a ticket. I'd planned on heading west to Madison," she said, unusually embarrassed over the topic.
"What for, hot date?" Ana joked, trying to bring a touch of levity back to Monica's mood.
"I wish, it would have been so much easier," she laughed, hesitating again.
"It wasn't a job interview was it?" Ana asked, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. She'd always thought of Monica as being more street wise than book smart, not the kind of person to attract job offers from what was nearly the other side of the state.
"No. I was actually trying to get into school there, become a Badger and all that shit," she laughed. "It's why I took up exotic dancing a few months before this went down, I wanted a way to earn some good money fast."
"Oh my god! You were an exotic dancer!" Ana laughed. "I don't think I could ever be brave enough to stand on a stage and take my clothes off in front of a bunch of strangers like that. Now, piecing together bodies in the ER with families screaming and crying in the waiting room, and watching some doctor prancing around like a prima donna making play dates for golf instead of dealing with the patients, that was simple," she grinned.
Monica laughed too. "It's actually kind of fun, stripping I mean, if you get the right kind of guys in the bar. But then there are the nights when all you get are the fat, balding, middle-aged married men who all think they're Don Juan and you have to ask yourself is it really worth all that. It's where I learned how to put up with guys like Steve. Great at sex, zero personality."
"Maybe if we live through all this you'll still get your chance to go back to college," Ana said, unintentionally sobering the mood. The two walked in silence for a moment, before Ana suddenly said, "Speaking of Steve, I wonder how he's doing right about now," causing the two of them to burst into laughter once more.
"What about you Ana, how'd you end up at the mall?" Monica asked.
The smile disappeared from Ana's face. "I remember seeing some of the first victims coming into the hospital where I worked. I was there late the night before, kept getting held up for one reason or another, but it was okay. I was going to get a three day weekend at the end of the month so Louis and I could go somewhere romantic. Louis was my husband," she explained, answering Monica's questioning look. She'd long since removed her wedding band. Somehow it had seemed wrong to her to keep wearing it, knowing that even though Louis was dead he was out there walking somewhere in the city, ready to try and kill her again.
Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Ana continued. "Anyways, it was like any other night, I pulled up to my driveway and the neighbor's kid, Vivian, she was outside roller-skating. She was so proud that she'd learned how to skate backwards," Ana smiled, remembering the smile on Vivian's face. "Anyhow, Louis and I spent that last night, well, 'together' so we missed all the news reports. The next morning, I woke up when Louis climbed out of bed. Vivian just stood in our bedroom doorway, she stepped forward when Louis called her name. That's when he saw her face, it was horrible, all chewed up. He ran to help her and she just bit his neck," she paused, taking a deep breath. It was the first time she'd talked about that morning with anyone she realized. Although it still hurt to think about what happened, Ana realized that sometime during the last few months she'd begun to heal.
"Ana, I had no idea, you don't have to say any more if you don't want to," Monica said quickly.
"No, I don't mind. That is, if you don't mind hearing about it. It's kind of cathartic really. You're the only person I've told any of this too."
"Go ahead, you look like you need to talk to someone," Monica told her, surprised that Ana had chosen her to confide in.
"Well, when Vivian...when Vivian bit his neck I just freaked. I ran over and yanked her off of him, she took a whole chunk out of his neck when I did, right down to the jugular. Anyways, I just hurled her down the hall and slammed the door shut. Then I ran to help Louis, he was terrified, I think he knew he was going to die. I did everything I could to stop the bleeding, but I just couldn't reach the vein..."
She stopped walking then and just sat in the middle of the lawn, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin upon them. Monica plopped down beside her. "Ana, you don't have to go on..."
"I want to, I just don't think I can walk and talk at the same time right now though," she tried bravely to smile. "After Louis turned, it's kind of a blur to me. Somehow I ended up in the bathroom, laying in the tub, covered in his blood and clinging to my car keys. When he put his head through the door and just plowed his way in, I barely made it out the window."
"He put his head through the door?" Monica asked. "Sounds a little bit like a guy I dated once. Did not understand how to take the word 'no' for an answer." It made Ana smile, which was exactly what Monica had hoped would happen.
"You want to know the funniest thing I saw that morning?" Ana asked suddenly.
"There was actually something funny?" Monica replied, intrigued by the thought.
"Well, maybe not exactly funny in a comic sense, more ironic I guess," she explained. "After making it out the window, I'd run around my house to reach the car and was just screaming out for help when I finally took a good look around the neighborhood. There were helicopters flying overhead, gunshots, houses on fire, people running, just screaming in terror as those things chased them. And in the middle of all this, Vivian's dad is walking out onto his lawn, in his bathrobe and slippers of all things. He had blood spattered all over his face, and he was holding a handgun. He kept telling me to stay back, even when I asked him to just tell me what was going on. Right when he raised the gun at me like he was actually going to shoot, an ambulance comes flying out of nowhere and just plows right over him!" She let out a half laugh.
"I guess I don't see what's so funny about that," Monica said.
"Don't you see the irony? Ambulances are for helping people, and this one just plowed a man down," Ana tried to explain. "Maybe we should just catch up with the guys, see what Briggs has them doing," she said at last.
"Sure," Monica agreed. "Just tell me one thing first."
"What?" she asked, confused.
"Why'd you tell me all this? After all the time we've been hiding out together..." Monica trailed off.
Ana laughed. "I don't know. I guess a part of it is because I just kind of regret that we've lived all this time together and we still hardly know each other. And the rest of it, I guess I just really needed to get all that out. Thank you."
"So how did you end up at the mall?" Monica asked as they climbed to their feet and started walking once more.
"After I saw Vivian's dad get mowed down by the ambulance, Louis came tearing out of the house after me. I hopped in my car and got the hell out of there, almost managed to plow myself into a sheriff's car along the way. Anyhow, I was doing great heading further into Milwaukee, right up until I came upon a city bus jackknifed across the road. I was totally shell shocked from everything with Louis and Viv so I just sat there crying and watching. Some poor woman was trying to fight those creatures off of her in the back of the bus, and then some asshole jerked my door open and I just totally panicked. I hit the gas and swerved straight through the guard rails. Smashed into a tree at the bottom of a hill. I don't know how long I was out cold. I woke up staring at the airbag, somehow I remembered how to open the door and there was Kenneth, pointing his rifle in my face."
"He did seem to really like that thing," Monica added.
"I know what you mean, it's gotta be a guy thing," Ana said, smiling. "Right after that is when we met up with Michael, André and Luda. You know the rest of the story."
"Yea, I know," Monica replied, looking thoughtful. "Do you want to know the funniest thing, at least to me, that's come out of all this?"
"You mean from the end of the world or this discussion?"Ana asked.
"The end of the world."
"Sure," Ana said, intrigued.
"We're all equals now. The car you owned, the clothes you wore, even how much money you had,it's all meaningless. Yet at the same time people like Steve and that Caroline woman, they're stuck in the past. Theyseem to think what they once were matters to the rest of us, that it somehow makes them better or more worthy to survive. I was a stripper, andSteve knows it," she sawAna's surprised look. "He used to come to the club where I danced all the time, the girls always bitched about how small his tips were. But he was big on trying to take some of them out on his boat fora weekend."
"Somehow that's still crazy sounding, even after what we've been living through," Ana commented.
"Tell me about it," she smiled. "But what I'm getting at here, we spend our whole lives caught up in this trap that we have to accumulate things, fancy houses, designer clothes, money, without ever realizing that in one instant it can all be taken away. We've all lived our lives with someone looking down on us as being beneath them for one reason or another and it takes the end of the world for us to realize that we're all really equals. To me that's funny," Monica finished.
Ana was quiet, not understanding the humor in the subject, but still surprised at how insightful Monica's opinions were. She acknowledged to herself just how much she'd underestimated the other woman, and for precisely the reasons Monica had outlined to her. It was an eye opening discussion for both of them, formingthe start of a bond that went beyond their mutual need for survival.
At last they reached the stable and saw several of the soldiers along with the civilians Briggs had assigned to the task of moving boxes filled with supplies from the stable to the helipad with the help of Felix's jeep. There the boxes sat, awaiting to be loaded on the helicopters. Out at the helicopters themselves, Briggs could be seen manning the fuel pumps and arguing with CJ.
"Look's like there's trouble in paradise," Monica quipped, gesturing towards the couple by the helicopters. "Come on, let's go see what they're talking about," she said, dragging Ana along behind her.
"Damn it, what the hell are you thinking? You just want to abandon us here?" CJ demanded.
"I'm not abandoning you. This is a safe place where you can wait out the end of this thing," Briggs said, not meeting his eyes.
"You're leaving us here, that's abandoning us in my book," he said angrily.
"What do you want me to say CJ?"
"I want you to say that you'll take us with you when you go."
"I can't do that."
"Can't or won't?"
"Okay CJ, I won't do it. I'm not going to be responsible for taking those two kids and a pregnant woman back out into a goddamn war zone, not when there's a better option for them," she replied. "Imagine the life, scrambling from one rooftop to the next, hoping we don't get overrun at our next pitstop for fuel."
CJ was quiet for a moment before speaking. "I know it's dangerous out there, but how can you be so sure that leaving us hereis a better option? What about all that stuff you were spouting off to the old broad in there? Do you honestly think she wouldn't use us against you somehow after all that? And you told me yourself that you didn't trust 'Scarecrow' completely, why should you believe he wouldn't hurt us now?"
Sighing, Briggs closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the side of the helicopter. "You might have a point," she conceded. "But I still don't think taking a couple of scared kids back out into the thick of things is a good idea either. And deep down I don't think Caroline could endanger those kids that way, or let Scarecrow do anything to hurt them either for that matter. And I don't know what the hell we'd do if that Fran woman has some kind of complications having that kid."
"Fran's a lot tougher than you give her credit for. And those kids, they'll be all right going back out there, they're just a little scared is all. Haven't you ever been scared before?" he asked her.
"Yea. Right now, all the time," she replied, surprising him.
"I kinda doubted you even knew what the word meant," he told her.
"Am I really that much of a bitch? I know what it's like to be scared CJ, I feel it every minute ofevery day. But I have all these people depending on me to keep them alive so I can'tallow myself the luxury of showing any kind of fear." She laughed bitterly. "You know, I once touted the merits of Darwinism to Cowboy, only the strong survive and that kind of shit. I must have sold it to him really good too, the way he looked at me...anyhow, the whole time I was telling him this stuff, I was just trying to convince myself that it was true."
"Why?"
"To hold myself together. If I can make everyone else think I'm a bad ass bitch with no fears in the world, then maybe they'll believe that I know what I'm doing and that I can keep them alive."
"Did anyone ever tell you you're crazy?" he asked, only half jokingly.
"Yea, just about every psychologist who ever tried to profile me," she grinned. "Well, at least the ones who didn't retire immediately afterwardsdid."
"So you'll take us with you when you go, right?" CJ suddenly said.
Briggs groaned. "I'll tell you what, we'll give your group the choice. They can either stay here, safely behind the fences with all the luxuries they could ask for or they can come back out into the world with us knowing we could run into trouble at any time."
"You make it sound so appealing."
"I'm just being honest about things. We don't know for sure where we're going, and we don't know what we might run into along the way."
"But you'll give us the choice?" CJ pressed.
"Yea, the ball's in your court on this. But remember, whoever chooses to come along, they will be under the command of me and my men, no arguments."
"Count me in," he said, looking towards the stables where the others were working.
"I kind of figured as much," Briggs told him, meeting his eyes.
"You can count me in too," Monica's voice called out from the other side of the Stallion. Briggs whirled around, watching as Monica and Ana both came into view.
"Get an earful did you?" Briggs asked grumpily.
"Oh yea, but, don't think that it was a bad thing," Ana told her. "I want to go with you too, when you leave here that is. And I'll follow your commands, but I also want to have my say in things."
"I must be losing my fucking mind. Agreed. We'll put CJ's idea out to everyone tonight, give them a chance to sleep on it, decide what they want to do come morning. Now, if you'll excuse I need to go check on Cowboy's progress with the Senator's files. CJ," she said, thrusting the fuel nozzle towards him, "since you kept me from getting this done, finish it up for me. You two go see Henry, he'll find something for you to do, unless you prefer going back to the house to work."
"No thanks, I think we'll go talk to Henry," Monica said, and the two women headed off towards the stable.
Looking to CJ one more time Briggs said, "I hope I live to regret this decision."
Before he could answer she started the long walk back to the house, never noticing the way Dennis followed along behind her.