The Buzzard Zone

by Kelly, Ronald

  “Your mom?”

  Tyrone nodded. “She’s a crack shot. Even better than you.”

  Although he failed to notice, Kate slipped her left hand into the pocket of her jacket. She gripped the butt of the Glock and snaked her finger through the guard. She caressed the curve of the trigger lightly, nervously.

  They passed another patrol car—the first responder—and quietly mounted the steps of the porch. The lawman lying face down on the boards was the sheriff himself, from the looks of his uniform. Tyrone considered wedging the toe of this boot beneath the body and flipping it over but knew that it was probably stuck to the porch, due to decomposition. More than likely he had been lying there for a couple of months. There was no doubt in his mind, though, that the poor guy had a .38-caliber hole in the middle of his forehead, or somewhere in that general area.

  “Look.”

  Tyrone lifted his eyes to where Kate pointed. Rusty red-brown letters, scrawled in blood, graced the white clapboard walls on each side of the front door. The ones on the left read STAY AWAY, while the ones on the right warned ZOMBIES NOT WELCOME!

  “Lord have mercy,” the black man muttered beneath his breath. He recognized the handwriting. The flawless penmanship of his mother had deteriorated into the frantic markings of a savage. “She’s gotten worse… lost it completely.”

  They looked through the screen door and saw another body… a man in his fifties. He was surrounded by canned food and bottled water that had once been toted in a cardboard box, which lay a foot or two away. Tyrone answered the woman’s questioning eyes. “Our next-door neighbor, Luke. He must have brought Mama some supplies… and she shot him down.”

  Kate’s grip tightened on his arm. “Ty… we’ve gotta be careful. She’s not in her right mind.”

  “I’m her baby boy,” he assured her. “She’s not going to hurt me.”

  Kate was doubtful, but didn’t say so. “Let’s go in.”

  Tyrone pushed the door open and they stepped into a narrow corridor. “Mama? Mama, it’s Tyrone.”

  At first, they heard nothing. Then they heard a hoarse voice echoing from a room at the back of the house.

  “The Lord is my shepherd… I shall not want…”

  Tyrone stepped over Luke Tatum’s body and started down the hallway, toward the kitchen. “Mama?”

  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

  “Mama, it’s Tyrone,” he called. “We’re coming on back, okay?” There were three bodies sprawled in the doorway of the kitchen. All were Biters from the looks of them. All had taken headshots and perished instantly. Tyrone nudged them with the toe of his shoe, just to make sure they weren’t playing possum. They weren’t. Then he stepped over them into the kitchen.

  Kate followed. She slipped the pistol from her jacket pocket and held it down, behind her right thigh, where Tyrone wouldn’t see it.

  The narrow kitchen looked like a war zone. There were decaying bodies strewn everywhere. Most looked to be Biters who had gotten into the house one way or another. There were a couple, though, who had come into the house as healthy as Tyrone or Kate. They were big, strapping men, and scavengers, more than likely. Both had suffered multiple bullet wounds and sported well-placed shots in the center of their foreheads. There were flies everywhere… on the bodies, on the table, on the walls. Maggots pulsated in the decayed remnants of empty food cans and dirty dishes.

  “Sweet Jesus in heaven!” Tyrone moaned softly. “Mama?”

  The woman sitting in the chair at the end of the kitchen table was barely recognizable to him. She rocked back and forth, her eyes glazed and focused on some unknown point on the cluttered tabletop. Her hair was frizzy and unbrushed, and was streaked with premature gray. Roaches and lice moved freely throughout the tangled mess. The woman was skin and bones. Her flesh—once dark and robust—had an ashen hue, and Tyrone could see the sunken relief of her breastbone and ribs past her ratty and stained terrycloth bathrobe. The flesh around her eye sockets and beneath her cheekbones looked bruised and caved in, more skull than face. The odor of urine and feces mingled with the stench of decomposition and death.

  Tyrone’s heart ached. She looks like she’s lost a hundred pounds. Maybe more.

  Kate was more focused on the object she clutched in her right hand, a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. There was an open box of cartridges next to a plate of moldy pork and beans.

  “Mama?” he said softly.

  The woman’s head bobbed aimlessly as she mumbled. “He restoreth my soul… He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.”

  “Mama… it’s me. I’ve come home.”

  She seemed oblivious to their presence. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of walking, shambling, stinking death… I will fear no evil… no bug-infested, flesh-devouring, hell-spawn evil…”

  “Mama… it’s me... Tyrone.”

  The name, uttered in the stillness of the kitchen, gave her pause. She frowned, the muscles of her face working like worms beneath a shallow layer of soft earth. Then her eyes—and gun-filled hand—lifted from the table at the same time.

  Her lips were cracked and dry, and her teeth yellow, as she spoke. “Get the hell out of here, zombie.”

  Tyrone wavered a little on his feet. Kate reached out with her left hand to steady him. The muscles of his broad back were tensed, as hard as iron.

  “I ain’t no zombie, Mama. It’s your boy… Tyrone.”

  Again, her face worked, as though trying to digest the name that was given her. “Tyrone is dead.”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “Yes, he is,” she insisted. Her eyes were feverish and angry. “He was killed. Eaten up by a damned Biter.”

  “That ain’t true, Mama,” Tyrone told her. “Who went and told you a thing like that?”

  Kate watched breathlessly as she directed the muzzle of the gun at her son’s face. “His daddy. That’s who told me.”

  It was Tyrone’s turn to frown. Had his father really told her that? Or was it some delusion of her already off-kilter mind.

  “Are you the one who did it, zombie?” she demanded. Hot tears blossomed in her bloodshot eyes. “Are you the one who ate my baby boy and took his skin to walk around in?”

  Kate licked her lips. Her mouth was bone dry. No spit whatsoever. Silently, she thumbed back the hammer of the hidden Glock.

  Tyrone took a desperate step forward. “Come on now, Mama. You know me. Please… put that thing down…”

  The woman’s body and face trembled, but her right arm—and the gun at the end of it—were unwavering. Kate’s abandoned nursing training from months ago came back to her. She knew which muscles and tendons of the human arm and hand did what, which ones were used to pick up a ball, clutch a fork to eat… or pull the trigger of a gun. It was those latter muscles that she watched carefully. It was no surprise when they thrummed and tensed beneath the skin, and her upper knuckle bulged almost indiscernibly.

  Without warning, Kate lifted her arm and fired. The explosion of the gunshot was deafening in the close confines of the kitchen. Tyrone’s mother rocked back in her chair as a single slug punched a quarter inch above the brow of her left eye. As the woman fell backwards—chair and all—the gun in her hand discharged. Instead of hitting Tyrone, as intended, the bullet cut air six inches above his head. Bits of plaster and white dust rained down on them as the hollow-point slammed forcefully into the kitchen ceiling.

  Tyrone stood there for a long moment, as if attempting to comprehend what had just happened. Then his eyes widened and his jaw grew slack with shock. He turned and stared Kate in the face. “What…?”

  “Tyrone,” she said, reaching out for him.

  The big man recoiled, as though her touch was poison. “What did you do?” He looked back at his mother, who lay on her back on the floor, still sitting in the kitchen chair. “What the hell did you do?”

  Kate flinched. Deep br
own eyes that had recently regarded her with affection—and perhaps something even more—now flared with a growing malice. “Tyrone…baby… please. I… I had to.”

  Tyrone took a couple of faltering steps, then sank to his knees beside the body of his mother. “Had to do what? Blow my mama’s brains out?”

  Gunshots rang from outside. The measured reports of handgun fire, as well as the staccato of her brother’s AR-15. But there was not time to consider them. Their portion of time and circumstance was the only thing that matter at that moment.

  Kate watched as Tyrone began to sob uncontrollably. He lifted his mother’s head and cradled it in his lap. The man’s grief was palatable, like the electrified air before the coming of a violent storm.

  “Tyrone… honey… she was going to kill you. She was going to kill both of us. I had to.”

  “Had to?” he screamed angrily. “You didn’t have to! You just…you just… did it. Put a damn bullet in my mama’s head!”

  “Ty, baby… please…”

  “Get out of here!” The hatred in his eyes cut deep into her heart. “Get the hell out of here, you lying, murdering bitch!”

  Tears blurred the girl’s vision. Regret and sorrow were swallowed up by hurt. “Ty… no… please.”

  “GET OUT OF HERE!!”

  Feeling as though there was nothing else to be said or done, she turned to leave… and ran smack-dab into her father. Crying, she buried her face in her father’s broad chest.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened here?”

  “She… she was going to shoot us.” Kate’s voice was muffled and mournful against his shirtfront. “I had to shoot first. I had no choice.”

  Levi looked over his daughter’s shoulder at the big man. Tyrone was embracing his mother, kissing her staring face, oblivious to the blood and brains that were soaking into the fabric of his trousers. “Lord have mercy,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  Gunfire from outside jolted Levi back into the urgency of a moment ago. “Kate… I know this will sound mean and uncaring… but I need you to get outside and help your mama and the others. We’ve got company. A lot of unwanted company… coming at us from all sides.”

  His daughter pulled away from him and stared at the Glock in her hand. She shuddered and tossed it to the floor. “No… I don’t want it… I… I can’t!”

  Levi sighed, bent down, and picked up the gun. It was still warm around the ejection port. He pressed it gently into her hand. “Not trying to be ugly or anything, don’t want you to think I don’t give a damn… but get your ass out there, young’un, and help your mother and brothers before they get overrun. Now ain’t the time to go pacifist on us.”

  Kate’s freckled hand closed tightly around the butt of the 9mm. She pulled the Glock’s mate from her other pocket. “Okay, Papa. I’m sorry.”

  “Just go out and keep those bastards at bay, and me and Ty will be out directly,” he told her. “Gonna have a little talk with him now.”

  Kate wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket. “Yes, sir.” She disappeared down the hallway. A moment later, he heard the steady report of his daughter’s twin pistols and knew that dead meat was hitting the ground.

  Levi laid his shotgun on the kitchen table and crouched next to Tyrone. He had brought the Thompson along and he set it beside the big man. “Son, I know this is a bad time… a hard time… but we gotta go. Now.”

  “Go?” Tyrone seemed confused. “Why do we need to go?”

  Levi laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Because the sky is black with buzzards. There’s about three dozen Biters around us, closing in, and more on the way. They’re coming across the fields, down the road, out of the woods. Listen… the others are out there trying to drive them back. Waiting for me and you… so’s we can get away from here.”

  “But… my mama,” Tyrone said dully. “What about her?”

  “It’s a hurtful thing, I know,” Levi said, “but you’re going to have to leave her. Say your goodbyes and go. She wouldn’t want you here right now, don’t you think?”

  Tyrone closed his eyes and sighed. “No. She worried about me all the time in life. Sure wouldn’t want her doing the same in death.” Heavily, he got to his feet and laid his mother gently on the floor. Then he walked over to a china cabinet in the corner and opened one of the glass-paned doors. He took an antique coal oil lamp and a box of matches that sat beside it. Tyrone tossed the glass chimney to the side, unscrewed the wick assembly, and doused the woman’s frail body with kerosene.

  “What are you doing?” asked Levi.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna eat my mama,” he told him flatly. Then he lit a match and tossed it onto her fuel-drenched body.

  Outside, the big .50-caliber on top of the Humvee was going full-force. “We’ve got to go now. Sounds like the shit is hitting the fan out yonder.”

  Tyrone watched his mother burn for a long moment, then picked up the Tommy gun in one hand and the half-full container of kerosene in the other.

  “What are you taking that for?” Levi asked him.

  “I got a use for it,” he replied grimly. Tyrone stepped out onto the front porch, set the kerosene on the rail, and began spraying a wall of Biters on the west side of the property with a steady stream of .45-caliber slugs. He fought the machine gun’s recoil and kept the muzzle aimed low enough to obliterate everything above their necks.

  After taking care of sixteen or seventeen, he took the kerosene and walked over to the shed with the chain wrapped around it. When he stood before the door, the grunting began again, belying the frustration and hunger of the creature trapped inside. Several massive fingers, dark and riddled with decay, forced their way through a crack between the door and the wall that bordered it. On one of them was a gold wedding band big enough to drop a half dollar through.

  Tyrone laid his hand across the fingers. They were cold… the skin coarse and cracked. They felt both alien and hauntingly familiar to him.

  “I’m sorry I left you holding the bag,” he said softly. “If I’d stayed, maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe Mama would be alive and you… maybe you wouldn’t be the way you are now.”

  Tyrone stepped back and saturated the front of the shed door with the remainder of the kerosene. Then he lit it with a match. The wood of the building was as dry as tinder. The fire spread swiftly and soon the structure had changed from a simple tool shed into a flaming funeral pyre.

  “Come on, Ty!” hollered Avery, standing in the bed of the pickup truck, firing his assault rifle from the hip. “You’re the only one who knows what’s what around these parts.”

  Tyrone made it to the road and regarded the head of the Hobbs clan. “So, where are we headed?”

  Levi remembered James Newman’s suggestion. “How far is it to the Biltmore?”

  “Four miles.” The black man looked down the country road, in the direction of the main highway. The lane was choked with Biters. To get through would take a bulldozer. “We’ll have to take a short cut down the east end of the road. There’s a logging road that cuts off to the left, It will take us a little longer, but there’s less chance of getting swarmed the way we are now.”

  “Let’s head out everybody!” called Levi. He glanced back toward the Jackson household. The back of the house where the kitchen was located was beginning to burn. The tool shed was totally engulfed. He looked back at Tyrone. The big man stared at the place where he had spent his childhood. There was a weary, pained expression on his face. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the past thirty minutes.

  “Do you mind I ride in the back of your truck,” Tyrone asked him. “I think it’s best if I steer clear of your murdering bitch of a daughter for a while.”

  Levi felt his temper flare, but said nothing. Given the circumstances, he supposed Tyrone’s feelings were understandable. He nodded toward the open bed of the Dodge. “Help yourself.”

  Kate snapped another couple of shots, reloaded with fresh clips, and hea
ded toward the driver’s side of the Yukon. Levi caught her before she climbed in. “You okay, hon?”

  “Yeah,” she said dully. She looked like she was shell-shocked… as though she’d lost an important piece of herself back in the kitchen of that house. “I’m just dandy.”

  “Jem!” Levi called out. “You drive and let your sister ride shotgun.”

  “I said I was okay, Papa.” A spark of the girl’s red-headed temper flared for a moment and then was swallowed by pathos once again.

  “Just do as I say!” He steered her toward the passenger side. By the time Levi reached his truck, brother and sister were inside the Yukon and ready to roll.

  The big pickup took point and they headed out. Jem followed. He glanced over at his sister and frowned. She sat silently in the passenger seat. Her green eyes stared through the windshield, but she seemed to be looking inward more than outward.

  “Are you okay, Sis?”

  “He hates me,” she mumbled.

  “Who hates you?” he asked.

  “Tyrone.”

  Jem shook his head. “No way, Kate. That man is flat-out in—”

  She turned tearful, burning eyes toward him, causing his tongue to freeze in mid-sentence. “He HATES me. Now just shut the hell up and drive.”

  Her brother said nothing else. Jem focused on the shadowy road ahead and kept pace with the others. He wasn’t sure exactly what had taken place inside the Jackson farmhouse, but whatever it was, it had altered some things mighty fast. And weakened, perhaps even destroyed, a bond he had seen strengthen, day by day, since they had left the little church in the town of Woodrow.

  Chapter 24

  In 1889, George Washington Vanderbilt II, grandson of railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, envisioned an ambitious project—a project that only vast wealth and a propensity for luxury could have brought about.