Regeneration (Mad Swine Book 3) by Steven Pajak

and
planning for the future, thinking about how to make things better,
was the one thing that kept you motivated. To my own ear, nothing
sounded better than taking back the land and uniting the living
against the dead. But it could not be done.
    “A 12-mile safe zone sounds good,
Phil, it really does, but that’s almost impossible. Twelve miles is
a long way for trade. It would be very difficult to secure the area
in between. Even if we shared responsibilities, there were not
enough men and women to secure such a long stretch.”
    Phil didn’t respond. His shoulders
slumped and his head hung. He was no longer that excited ball of
energy he had been a moment ago. I felt horrible for shitting on
his dream, but that’s all it was. All it could be.
    “Listen Phil,” I said. “I’m not
saying that what you propose will never happen. It’s just going to
take a very long time to get there. We can start by combining our
people. You come to Finnegan Farms. We already have viable crops.
We have the equipment, but lord knows we can use more hands to work
the farm, to make it more successful.”
    I put a hand on his shoulder now. “We
can take you in,” I said. “We can take you all in.”
    He looked at me then and said,
“We don’t want to be taken in. We want to take back . We want to get out there
and take back what the walking meat has taken away from us . And it’s not
just about taking back land, it’s about rebuilding society. It is
about taking back our humanity. We can’t keep cowering. We can’t
keep hiding from those foul creatures, holed up in our little hidey
holes, scavenging food where we can. That’s no way to live. That’s
just waiting to die.”
     
    * * *
     
    “So why not move west first?” Brian
asked. Now that his hands were free, he fished a cigarette out of
the dwindling pack and lit it. “I mean, you guys had your fingers
in all the neighbor’s pies. Seems like they’d be a good place to
start.”
    Phil was quiet for a second, then he
turned and walked toward the map. He stood in front of it and
looked it over for a moment, then said, “We had major footholds in
all of the new subdivisions to the north of Providence, as well as
those to the west and southwest.”
    Joining him now, we looked at the
large area he indicated with the sweep of a hand. “Senior had
worked out deals with all of the leaders that brought us more than
enough supplies to last us for years to come.”
    “You mean he swindled and stole from
them,” Brian said. He dragged on his cigarette and exhaled smoke in
Phil’s direction. “And killed. Right, Phil?”
    “What happened was an accident and
you know that. We were all there?” Phil said. Now his face was
beginning to flush. “Things were crazy then, and things got heated
and it just happened. He didn’t mean to kill Charlie.”
    “Is that what you tell yourself so
you can sleep at night?” Brian asked. “We thought you were good
people, but you turned out to be just like Senior and Frank. You
fucked us, Phil. You could have helped stop the war before it
started but you made your choice and you picked the wrong
side.”
    His face fully red now, Phil
took a step forward. “You can’t honestly stand here and pin this
shit on me. It was you who taunted Senior when he came to you with a
compromise. It was you who laughed and spit in his face when he offered you
a way out.”
    “ A compromise? He wanted our
supplies and in return he offered nothing .” Brian spat.
    “You wanted too much in return. Did
you really expect he would turn over one of his men to you, to be
executed or worse? Would you, if the roles were reversed?”
    “I wouldn’t have tried to extort
supplies from my neighbors. I would have put a killer on the
road—”
    “He wasn’t a killer!” Phil
shouted.
    “He pulled a gun out and shot Charlie
in the face for nothing!” Brian said and before I could react, he
shoved Phil hard enough for the other man to lift off his feet.
    Phil