Norm shoots one in the face, stripping it of its left side. It falls in a bloody spray.
My hand finds the door handle of the back seat. I push it open with a grunt. It’s not easy. The Jeep’s doors are heavy, and like I said, I’m a weakling.
“Norm! Let’s go!”
He looks at me, this crazy look is in his eyes, like he’s going to try to take all of them on by himself. Believe me, he probably could, but I love my older brother and I’m not going to let him do something stupid. The baseball bat swings, cracks a short, fat guy on the top of the head. Norm raises the bat again, but my voice stops him mid-strike. “Norm, I can’t do this without you.”
He looks at me, and the crazy mask he is wearing vanishes.
“I’ve gone my whole life without you, man. I can’t lose you again.”
Blood speckles his uneven beard, his forehead, and almost the entire front of his shirt.
“Come on!” I shout.
The crazy look invades his features again. He squares up to me, raises his weapon. My mouth opens in a protest, something like Please, don’t shoot, but it’s lost in the sound of the gunshot. The glass behind my head shatters, showers over my hands which are laced against the back of my neck. I slowly turn, my heartbeat pounding in my chest. A corpse lays in the grass a mere foot away from where my legs hang out of the Jeep. Its head is a mess of blood and brains and bits of bone. I turn back to Norm as he crawls over the backseats. “Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” he says, a smile on his face.
Then we are out of the car and running toward the pond, where Abby and Darlene are little specks on the horizon, barely visible through the now vanishing fog.
Four
We regroup at the pond. Dead fish float belly up near the surface. Darlene watches them as if they are hypnotizing. I squeeze her hand and say, “It’s okay,” even though I know I’m lying.
It’s not okay. We have just lost the car and barely survived. I think about maybe going back there when the fog clears, but there are too many zombies and the car crashed into that old tree pretty hard.
So we shoulder on.
As the sun slowly burns us overhead, we spend much of the day walking, but I am tired come a couple hours past noon. I don’t know the exact time, I just know it’s time to rest. I haven’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. If I take the watch during the middle of the night, I usually sprawl out in the back of Norm’s Jeep while one of the others drive.
But we are so close to Eden I could practically smell the orange groves and taste the clean, alive air. Or so that’s the image in my head from the countless nights I’ve dreamed of the place.
Norm looks over his shoulders at me. I’m walking gingerly as if I’m maneuvering through landmines, the bag of weapons hanging off my shoulders and my machete in hand. His face goes from pissed-off to brotherly concern in a matter of seconds. Abby and Darlene follow his gaze.
I must look pretty bad because even Abby looks worried, and lately, nothing worries Abby.
Darlene stops, her shoes breaking a twig that sounds much louder in my head than it actually is, then she’s on me.
“Oh, Jack,” she says. “Are you feeling all right?” The back of her hand goes up to my forehead, feeling for a fever. I’m not sick, it’s just hot outside. Florida weather is nothing like Ohio weather. My shirt sticks to my sweaty skin, there’s moisture trickling down the back of my neck. It’s not the wheels and mobility of Norm’s Jeep that I miss now; it’s the air conditioning. God, I’d kill for some air conditioning.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Don’t worry, let’s keep going. Gotta get to Eden today.” Even I can hear how weak I sound.
Darlene grips my hand and squeezes. “Let me take the bag. I can carry it, Jack.”
She’ll have to be carrying me pretty soon.
“You sure you don’t wanna rest, little brother? Take a break, maybe a nap. Eight hour power nap, yeah?”
“No,” I say. “I’m fine. Gotta get to Eden before sundown.”
Though we left the zombies behind in the field, we are never safe. When the sun goes down and their yellow eyes glow viciously with hunger and rage, you do not want to be caught around a horde. If we stop now, who knows how long we’ll be walking after dark? I can’t have that. I must keep this group safe, I must keep Darlene safe.
But my body says otherwise.
We go on for another half-hour, walking along a long stretch of road. In the distance, I see the varying ups and downs, the farmland next to it, and much, much farther, I see a town. I know it’s actually not that far, it’s just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. Still, this realization doesn’t help me much.
I seem to stare straight ahead for hours.
None of us talk. There’s a time and a place for talking and it’s not now, can't let any dormant dead things in the surrounding forest know where we are.
The sun is halfway down as Norm turns around to look at me. Him and Abby are about a hundred feet ahead of Darlene and I.
I look up to the sky, sarcastically thinking Wow, time flies when you’re having fun.
I’m not too out of it to know it’s nowhere close to nine in the evening. The darkness overhead is a storm brewing. Gray and black clouds swell, pregnant with rain and thunder and lightning. We will have no choice but to find cover. It looks like it’s going to be a hard one, too.
Norm points to a farmhouse. It’s on a stretch of farmland which hasn’t been farmed in the better part of a year. Beyond this wooden fence that runs the length of the balding patch of land, crops litter the field like trash, looking as unenthused as I feel. The farmhouse is a squat two-story building. Its red brick chimney sticks up into the air like a middle finger. The roof is also red, though I don’t think that was its original color. Maybe brown or black. Age and muggy weather have made it rusty, and now it’s the color of the chimney. The lawn is overgrown. There’s a bicycle leaning up against the porch with its handlebars turned at a neck-breaking angle, grass threatening to swallow it up. But beyond this, there is a large tree with all of its leaves. It’s the most alive thing I’ve seen in a long time. It is a beautiful tree.
Darlene shudders next to me. “Creepy,” she says.
“Yeah,” Abby agrees.
They must not notice the tree.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Norm says, a sarcastic smile on his face. “We’re only staying until we all get rested, then we’re back on the road. Who knows? Maybe the previous owners of this place left us a car or some honest-to-God food. I’m sick of eating old Twinkie’s and stale potato chips.”
“And bugs, don’t forget bugs,” Abby says, a disgusted look on her face.
Yeah, Norm has been eating bugs. It was a habit he picked up in his military travels. Some foreign country or other where dinner’s main course is grasshopper soup and eating beef, pork, or chicken is frowned upon. I won’t knock it, but I won’t try it, either. I understand where he’s coming from. We haven’t had meat in awhile, and men need their meat. During the fall of American civilization, when there were more people than zombies (this was just a very short time, looking back) you could still find a pound or two of frozen hamburger, chicken breasts, a nice pot roast. Cook them over a fire, get some buns, barbecue sauce or ketchup and mustard, and enjoy. But now, every working freezer has probably stopped.
So yeah, a man needs his meat, even if it is bug meat, and Florida has a lot of bugs.
“Hey, if you guys ate some once in awhile, maybe you wouldn’t be so weak,” Norm says. “I mean, veggies can only take you so far.
Abby rolls her eyes.
Darlene is looking at me, ignoring all of this banter. “Jack, you don’t look all right,” she says. “Really.”
“I’ll be okay once I get some sleep,” I say.
I, and the rest of the gang, were lucky to not catch the virus that killed most of the world, but we’re never lucky enough to catch a full eight-hours. That kind of shit catches up to a guy, no
joke.
“Then let’s go,” Norm says.
Five
The wilted crops watch us as we walk up the long, winding gravel driveway — or at least it seems like it. I can’t complain. I’d much rather deal with dead crops than dead people.
Norm leads the way, the baseball bat in hand, but his Magnum not far off. One of the rules I’ve brought forth from my old zombie book (Sitting on dusty, abandoned shelves at a local bookstore near you!) is never shoot a zombie if you can bash its head in. They are attracted to sound. This is something I learned the hard way back in Woodhaven when I was still trying to get a feel for these creatures, still testing the waters. And like in my book The Deadslayer, this proved to be true, among other things: zombies craving human flesh, can only kill them by severing the brain, the putrid stink of rotting bodies, and much, much more.
Norm goes up the stairs first. I am right behind him. Any other time, I’d be there neck in neck with my older brother, but he has the gun while Abby has the other, and I’m pretty beat.
I glance over my shoulder at Darlene. Her fingers are up to her mouth, her teeth working on the nails she once cared so much about. I smile at her, letting her know it’s going to be okay.
The front door isn’t locked, but it’s cracked. This is a good sign. If it was locked, whatever dead things inside of it would still be here.
Norm pushes it open the rest of the way, eases it really. The hinges squeak. I’m not hit with the smell of rotting carcasses. Thank God for small favors, right? But I am hit with the smell of someone else’s house. You know what I’m talking about. The smell of home cooked meals and cheap candles from Bath & Body Works, and maybe even cigarette smoke and dog piss. A smell that hits you full-force once you enter, but then disappears about five minutes later only to resurface when you’re back in the comfort of your own house, peeling your clothes off while the shower is running, and you’re thinking, How the hell did I stomach that stench for so damn long?
It’s that kind of smell, and in this farm house it’s the smell of decaying potatoes, old manure, and maybe rotten eggs and other foods leaking out from behind the closed doors of a refrigerator long since defunct. These are not pleasant smells, either, but I inhale deeply. It’s so much better than dead bodies.
“I think it’s clear,” Norm says.
I lean back to Abby and Darlene, give them a nod, letting them know they can come in. They do and they stay in the foyer area, closing the door to the outside world.
We aren’t even inside and he thinks it’s clear, that’s how good we’ve gotten at this. We are human after all. Humans adapt. I swear my sense of smell is heightened, I can see better in the dark, and I’m almost impervious to fear — almost. That’s cool and all, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the old way of life. Staying up in an air conditioned house, writing, watching TV shows and movies that were once regarded as fiction but have since become the real world, eating whatever I like at whatever time I wanted it (Craving cheeseburgers? McDonald’s is open twenty-four hours and it’s just down the road). What I miss most of all is the docility. How people weren’t always so high strung all the time. You could walk around (at least around my neighborhood in Chicago) without having to worry about people robbing you for your car, your food, your weapons, or your women.
I miss not being a killer. I miss my mother, too, and it’s not that if she was still alive I would go see her; it’s just that it was nice knowing she was still here, and I could talk to her whenever I wanted to, even if that was only on birthdays and Christmas.
We walk inside, past the little foyer area where the mud caked on the boots next to the door has turned into piles of dust. There’s a coat rack with light jackets, workman’s gloves, a John Deere hat, then we are in a hallway. There is a washing machine with a load of moldy, mildewy clothes still inside of it. Pictures of Christ on the walls, behind these pictures, a striped wallpaper of earthy colors: brown, a red clay, land-green. Norm takes the left, I take the right.
The right is a family room. The left is the kitchen. There’s more though, this place is huge. Apparently farmers make bank and I definitely pursued the wrong career by going into writing. Doesn’t matter any more, though.
Darlene trails behind me, grabs my hand. We walk together in this strange house, both of us on edge, our eyes narrowed, looking for any sudden movement, our breathing low so, we can hear every creak and groan.
Inside of the family room is one of those wrap around couches. It stretches wall to wall. There’s a folded blanket over the arm. Pillows in the corners, picture-perfect, like a display couch. A film of dust covers the blank screen of the television. It’s got to be around fifty inches, and it will most likely never be watched again. There’s a large cobblestone fireplace that takes up the bulk of the right side of the room, the type of fireplace I always wanted when I was younger. On the mantle is a framed picture.
They are this house’s last owners. God knows where they are now. I take one off of the mantle, the smallest one. The frame is golden and jagged. This was a happy family. An older man in a button-up shirt and black slacks, the shirt tucked in, with his arm around a woman in her mid-fifties wearing a flowery dress, both with deep suntans, both looking like they’d never worn formal wear in their entire lives. Next to them, locked at the elbows is a pair of twins, young men in their caps and gowns, perfect white teeth on their faces. A billowing water fountain is behind them in the shape of an open rose bud. The little stenciled date in the corner of the picture says FSU 2013. They graduated from Florida State. This moment, frozen in time, is now in my hand, and I feel like crying.
Maybe they’re still happy. Maybe they’re out there somewhere, doing what Darlene, Abby, Norm, and I are doing. Surviving.
Darlene’s hand is on my back. I feel the slight tremors going through her body as if she’s holding in sobs.
I turn to her. “It’s okay,” I say. “It’s okay.”
I know it’s not.
“They sat here,” she says. “They sat right in here and laughed, watched TV, opened presents on Christmas.”
“I know, Darlene, but they’re in a better place, now,” I say.
“How do you know they’ve gone to a better place?” Her eyes are glistening.
I don’t answer. She just hugs me, wraps her arms tight around my neck. Her hair no longer smells like cherries, but that’s okay. I am home when I am with her, that’s all that matters.
“Uh, you guys want some privacy?” Norm says from the doorway. Abby is right behind him, a smirk on her face.
There’s no longer any privacy among us, and even if me and Darlene went upstairs to an empty room, locked the door, and got our privacy, I wouldn’t like it. It’s too quiet in here. No hum of air conditioning, no sounds of cars going down the road. Norm and Abby would hear everything. Besides, this is not our house. It belongs to the family forever frozen in happiness in my hand. I don’t care if they never come back to claim it. It's just not right.
“No, it’s okay,” I say. I go to the couch, sit down. The cushions are rigid as if no one has ever sat where I sat, but a smell of stale body odor and old manure wheezes out. “Everything clear?”
“Yeah,” Norm says. “Downstairs is good. Abby checked upstairs. Basement is locked, but I’m not about to break the door down to find out what’s down there. This place isn’t our home, it’s just a temporary haven, and it’s as empty as a graveyard, far as I’m concerned.” He smiles at me.
That’s one of our inside jokes. As empty as a graveyard. It means that all the dead have risen and nowadays people don’t die. Therefore, no more graveyards. The whole world is one.
“Were there any…” I trail off.
Norm shakes his head.
Abby does the same. “Nothing,” she says.
I want to ask if she found the family from the pictures, but I don’t for Darlene’s sake. When the plague swept the nation, then the world, it did so with brutal force. The government didn’t do wha
t you’d expect, what they do in every zombie movie and book from here to China. They didn’t declare a quarantine because it was too late. They didn’t develop a vaccine as quick as possible because they couldn’t. By the time they realized how far this disease spread, it was everywhere. So they pretty much said, ‘Hey, well I guess we’re all fucked. So you’re on your own!’
Anyway, when the news broke, a lot of people — families like the family who owned this house — took to solving the crisis themselves. Some of them fought, and maybe ended up in places like Eden, but some of them put the barrel of a shotgun in their mouths.
Sad but true.
“Well, what do we do now?” Abby says.
“We rest,” Norm says. “Until we’re ready to get back on the road again. I’ll do some scouting. See if they left anything of use.”
“Let me help,” I say.
Norm shakes his head. “No, little brother. You need to rest the most.”
“I can rest when we get to Eden.” The images of orange groves and smiling people from my dreams come to me.
“If you don’t rest now, you’ll never get to Eden,” Norm says.
Also sad and also true.
Six
Today, for the first time in a long time, Darlene and I will get to sleep by ourselves in an actual bed, mattress and all. No Norm. No Abby. No cramped and uncomfortable folded-down backseats of Norm’s long lost Jeep.
We all get our own rooms, our own beds. These rooms are not what I expect. They seem lived-in. Ruffled blankets. Mattresses with the previous owner’s body imprinted in the sheets. I go into the bathroom of the one Darlene and I take. I think it might’ve belonged to one of the farmer’s twin sons because of the Star Wars posters on the walls. A dead video game console connected to the equally dead television. But in the bathroom my heart stops. Crest toothpaste, the blue kind with the thin squares of breath-freshening mint strips dispersed throughout, sits on the lip of the sink, its cap open. A toothbrush sits next to it. My heart stops for two reasons. The first is that maybe whoever was here before us is still here, only out and about on a supply run, and the second is that maybe this house has running water, maybe it comes through the pipes from a well somewhere nearby. God, I’d kill for a hot shower.
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