The Rising

by Eli Constant

  With the way the once-a-kids were hitching rides on the back of the adults, we’d have to go through two bodies at once. And that, thank Texas, wasn’t an issue for the M-60s.

  One of the men, his body positioned so that his feet rested in the beat-up bed of a truck and his upper frame stretched around and over a smashed-down red sedan, looked at me. I nodded. And that’s all it took for the two men doing the firing of the pigs to let loose a consistent popping of bullets.

  Pop, pop, pop. Over and over.

  Rapid succession fire that tore through the body of an adult child combo, felling them to the ground. The other duos began to move, keeping themselves from being directly in front of the M-60s.

  It was easier for me to maneuver the smaller, less powerful M-16 than it was to constantly move the M-60 and resettle it on its leg supports. So I did. I moved, the firing teams around me taking lead from my actions, and I concentrated my efforts on shooting through the adults that were giving the small monsters piggyback rides. It was a crapshoot though, aiming for the chests and hoping to hit the heart or the head nestled behind.

  I lowered my M-16 after a dozen shots. Out of my periphery, I could tell that AJ had moved a yard further from me, her rifle still loosing rounds. I scanned the terrain, assessed the situation, my brain working as rapidly as the M-60s fired. There were still too many standing. We were shooting, drilling holes in them like an oil field, but they were still moving, still coming towards us.

  “Light it up,” I barked, directing my orders at a group that had formed behind me, standing on the ground on the fort side of the wall. We’d talked about what to do, practiced how to handle attacks. Each time the ZULUs had hit us, we’d gotten a little more efficient. Mollie, a woman with dark artificial auburn hair and a smile left lopsided from a stroke, started given directions to the others that accompanied her.

  They moved towards the edge of the wall to where a duo of barrels sat. Both were loaded with Molotov cocktails courtesy of the glass soda bottles the clubhouse had once stocked, fuel from the golf cart gas station, and motor oil from the maintenance shed. One woman whose name escaped me began handing out the makeshift bombs. Mollie held the refillable lighter, the long-nosed plastic kind normally used for lighting gas grills, and started scaling up the ladder-which had been moved to another part of the wall. Behind her, her companions followed, creating a shipping line from cocktails to wall.

  The glass bottles, filled with flammable solution and donning ripped bits of candle-dipped cloth to act as wick, began moving fast, passed from hand to hand. Once atop the wall, the guns around me stopped what they were doing and began taking them as soon as they were lit by Mollie.

  It was a finely-tuned machine despite how short a time we’d been established as a community. It helped that the troublemakers had been tossed out, made an example of in the first few days. Threat of being banished into the land of zombies was enough to keep most in check. There were some, of course, who toed the line. Like Don. He was a breath away from being out on his hindquarters. Didn’t know how much more I could stand from him.

  AJ didn’t throw the bombs. She kept firing, pushing the monsters in different directions, trying to slow their approach to the fort.

  They were so close now, yards away from the wall.

  Around me, flames were flying like small, misshapen phoenixes toward their targets. The bottles slammed into the ground, some well-aimed at the feet of ZULUs, some poorly-aimed and igniting the tired, sun-raw brush.

  One adult zombie wearing a floral dress went up in fast, bright fire. The boy ZULU on her back jumped down, rolling against the dirty ground to put out the fire that wanted to burn him up. The flames licked upward on the adult zombie, consuming her obviously-not-flame-retardant dress in a hungry, crazed fashion. She screamed, her jaw opening too wide, like a snake undoing its jaw. The sound carried on the smoke, filling my lungs and choking me. It affected the others around me, stunting the tossing of the bombs, the sound of the gunfire.

  “Keep moving, people!” I cough-shouted.

  I realized then that the sounds of Dana wailing, that haunted, heart-wrenching sound, had quieted. I hadn’t heard gunfire from the Hen House. I wondered if Don had picked up his blade again, had sliced their throats to silence their mouths.

  Picking up the binoculars, the cocktails resuming their arced flight through the smoky air, I turned and focused on the Hen House. I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell anything. I knew the windows would still be boarded, the door still closed…

  But it wasn’t closed.

  The front door to the Hen House was wide-open. And in front of that opened entrance, slow-walked my granddaughter, my Dana. And she was weighted on one side by something heavy in her hand. I lowered myself from that cocked-down shoulder and found her grip tightened around a wad of fibers that were brown. Oily.

  Not fibers.

  Hair.

  Human hair.

  Don’s hair.

  I swallowed a lump that sprung into life, blocking my airways. “Fuck,” I breathed, too low to be heard over the constant sound of exploding glass, bestial cries, and gunfire. There wasn’t a choice now. I had to say goodbye to Dana.

  I moved swiftly, binoculars still against my face, to look out into the mass of still-moving zombies.

  Ten children and sixteen adults still standing.

  Most of the large ZULUs were so ruined by bullets and fire that they’d fallen to the ground at the base of the wall. Too many. Still too many. I didn’t need the glasses to see them, their burnt hands clawing at the metal wall, looking to gain purchase, but for some reason I kept them to my face, depressed against my eyes, pushing hard against my sockets. Something was bothering me. Something I’d seen but refused to recognize.

  There.

  There she was.

  Elaine. My daughter. What used to be my daughter.

  As if drawn by a magnet, her eyes found mine.

  Her body was scorched, burned black and crumbling from the Molotov cocktail that had eaten her floral dress. She was naked, yet not. The flakiness of her skin acted almost like material as she moved, bits flapping upwards to give a shot of bright red meat beneath the charcoal.

  She opened her mouth, that too-elongated expression that set my teeth on edge, and screamed again. This time, it almost sounded like a word. It almost sounded like ‘Dana’. And I fucking hoped it was my imagination.

  But behind me, another scream sounded.

  And this one, most definitely, sounded like Mom.

  “Jesus Christ,” AJ shouted beside me. “Did you hear that?”

  I didn’t respond. I was frozen.

  For the first time in my life, I was frozen and didn’t know what the fuck to do. This was my shadow.

  This was my shadow and I was fucking jumping at it.

  Dropping the binoculars, not caring that they fell and slid down the roof of the bus making a sound not unlike nails on a chalkboard, I aimed the M-16. I was going to shoot my daughter. I was going to shoot Elaine.

  Dammit, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shoot her in the face, in the eyes and mouth that looked so much like her mother’s.

  “Fuck,” I breathed; the exhalation of the word taking longer than it should, like a stringy piece of cheese falling away from your mouth as you try to take a bite of pizza. And then it finally separated, hanging from my lips and swaying. Swaying like I would never be rid of that one word.

  That one realization.

  All the careful planning, everything I’d done and others had done to make this safe haven.

  All ruined because I couldn’t say goodbye to my granddaughter?

  Yeah, maybe.

  “Fuck.” Once more I said the word, blowing away the first use of it with the more forceful second.

  “Hunter, what’s wrong?” AJ was still aiming, still looking for a target. That’s what I needed to be doing instead of wallowing in the ‘what ifs’.

  “That’s my daughter” I pointed down, at the charr
ed body that was once Elaine. “And that,” I shoved a thumb over my shoulder brutally, as if I wanted to injure myself in the process, “is Dana carrying Don’s head.”

  AJ’s eyes widened and she turned around, forgetting the cat and mouse game we were paying with the ZULUs trying to scale the wall. “Oh, my God,” her words were nearly a whisper, nearly lost in the chaos. Her gaze moved to my face once more. “That’s why Dana’s been screaming, that’s why, Hunter. She knew her…her mother was nearby.”

  I nodded, that slow sort of nod that means you’re still trying to avoid the truth.

  A yell brought our attention back to the wall activity, to the child-sized monsters that were now using the adult bodies as step stools to gain higher ground. The girl in the ruffled dress stood on the shoulders of the boy in khaki overalls. His own feet rested on an adult male’s shoulders who’d lifted his body to stand on the one leg that was still connected to his body. They were positioned four yards to my right, next to the gap in the cars.

  The once-a-girl was high enough now that her fingers could claw and grip at the top of the third car level. She gave a small jump, upwards and to the left, bouncing off the boy and coming to land in a crouch atop the wall.

  Mollie was in front of the diminutive ZULU when it landed. She screamed, trying to back away. But there was only so much space the roof of the car provided. Only so much separation it would allow. Mollie had been about to throw a lit Molotov cocktail down at the advancing monsters. It became a forgotten thing in her hand, the wick burning away. I opened my mouth to yell, to remind her to throw it before it blew up and killed her.

  I wasn’t fast enough with the warning.

  Moving like lightning, the ruffle-decorated monstrosity jolted forward, grabbing the makeshift bomb away from Mollie. With her free hand, the once-a-girl pushed Mollie hard in the stomach, sending her backwards, over the wall, to fall the twenty plus feet to the hard ground. Then, as if that pain was not enough, the girl gave a twisted, murderous smile and she threw the bomb down… down to land on Mollie’s chest.

  Mollie didn’t have enough time to roll away or toss the bomb a safe distance. It exploded right after contact. It exploded and she screamed.

  This time, it was not fear that opened her mouth, it was agony. The agony of glass shards slicing her skin and flame catching her dyed hair on fire.

  I rushed forward, balancing across the edge of the tilted bus like a mountain goat on steep terrain. The M-16 was up mechanically, pressed against my shoulder and aiming as if it held a life of its own, a freedom of its own, to shoot and kill what it wanted.

  This was training- this was what it felt like. This is what it meant to walk through the shadows like you were part of the darkness.

  The gun fired when I was about ten feet from the girl who was hoisting the overall-wearing boy monster up onto the wall. Behind me, I heard AJ shout and fire. If we didn’t control this now, right fucking now, then the fort was going to be a goner. I knew it in my gut.

  The first bullet caught the boy in the temple, the entry hole looking like a cigar burn on a kid’s arm and the exit hole infinitely larger, the bullet leaving the skull in a spray of black fluid and meatier things.

  My second bullet caught the ruffled monster in the chest directly where her heart should be. She froze when the shot entered, froze in surprise like she’d made it so far and this shouldn’t be the end. In slow motion, her small body turned to me, her mouth hanging open in surprise.

  Monsters should not be able to look shocked. They should not be able to look so innocent as the life drains away from them.

  I shot her again, this time finding home between her eyebrows. She fell as the bullet exited, further splattering the banged-up white metal of the car beneath her. That was for Mollie, bitch.

  I barely gave myself time to think the words before I spun around, finding AJ going hand-to-hand with a freckle-faced demon with short, blonde, blood-tinged hair. They both held the M-16, battling for dominance. I rushed forward, only giving my footing enough focus not to fall.

  They were too close together to risk shooting. I shifted the M-16 to one hand and I reached for the knife strapped to my ankle. It was small, sharp, the sheath soft enough that I often forgot it was there.

  It was awkward moving and extracting the knife, but I managed.

  And when I was near enough, I reared back my arm and I sunk the four-inch blade down to the hilt, embedding it in the kid’s baby fine buzz-cut scalp. His body fell away from AJ’s and she straightened up, brushing sweat off her forehead that was threatening to spread to her eyes. We said nothing. We just kept fighting.

  The way the bus was positioned, tilted and lying on the Jeep, created a gap in the wall. A gap that could be crawled through if one hoisted themselves up to the V-shaped crack. I found Elaine now.

  I found her body as she pushed into that space.

  And then I turned and found my granddaughter just on the other side, her free hand outstretched and Don’s head still held by the hair swinging like a sickly pendulum from her other, occupied hand.

  ***

  SHERRY

  AJ had been gone about an hour or so, maybe longer. Juan thought about going after her at one point to see what she was up to but he’d decided to stay with me and Marty. It’s funny how much my feelings were changing towards Juan. I could be his friend, but any romanticism was gone, withered and dead like the flowers I planted outside my house every year but forgot to water.

  Marty and I had colored and colored and colored, having found art supplies stuffed beneath the couch cushions, in pocketed areas we didn’t know existed. We should have guessed though. RVs always have such inventive storage solutions.

  A delightful rainbow was now spread out across the unattractive carpeting that could still be seen through the thin loose sheet the previous owners of the RV had stuffed into a dollhouse-size linen closet in the bathroom. I ignored the slightly darker portions of carpet showing through the sheet, the dried blood, the memory painted on the carpet.

  It reminded me of these photos our history teacher had shown us junior year of high school. Pictures of Hiroshima that showed the shadow figures—the only proof that a person had once stood in a singular spot and died in the blast. Imprints, he called them.

  The blood stains were imprints, the only proof that a family had once been in this RV and that they had died.

  “I really like that one, buddy. What is it?” I pointed at a particular picture alive with swashes of turquoise, sage, and sunflower yellow.

  “Mom’s garden,” he quietly said, putting the finishing touches on a white house with red shutters. “And this is Grandma’s house.”

  “They’re really beautiful. Did you like art in school?”

  He nodded. “It was my favorite class, although Mr. Spumnick wasn’t always nice.”

  “Spumnick, that was his real name?” I laughed, picking up the one he said was his mom’s garden and trying to gently press out a crease that had whispered through the paper, giving the flowers wrinkles.

  “Yeah. Some of the older kids changed it. Made his name sound…” He hesitated.

  “Let me guess, they made it sound dirty and sexual.”

  He nodded again. “Do you think I’ll see my Grandma’s house again? Do you think she’ll care that I lost Louie?”

  It took me a moment, but soon I remembered who Louie was—the three-foot stuffed dinosaur that liked to cause trouble. Imaginary trouble. “No, I don’t’ think she’ll care, buddy. I think, more than anything, she’ll be glad that you’re safe.”

  Juan was leaning back against the sofa, his legs outstretched, crossed at the ankle. His arms rested loosely across his chest. A weapon was nearby, ready to fire I’m sure, and his eyes were closed. A few times I’d heard him grunt softly, caught in a brief period of dozing. Then his lashes would separate wide and fast as if he hadn’t meant to fall asleep and danger could come into the RV at any second.

  I was glad to have a moment awa
y from that, away from the terror of the fight. Away from the monsters. “Do you like mine?” I let the garden fall against my crisscross legs and I leaned forward, picking up the misshapen horse with the pink saddle.

  “It’s a little girlie, but it’s nice.” Marty’s voice was full of placating innocence, the way a child that’s telling a lie sugarcoats things so it won’t be so cutting, so adult.

  Knock.

  Knock.

  A quiet tapping sounded at the door. It wasn’t tentative or shy, just purposefully soft. I don’t know why, but that fact made it send my heart thumping up into my throat. I’d much rather have been startled by an abrupt, loud banging.

  “Coming!” Juan called, jumping up fast from the sofa as if he hadn’t been dozing only seconds before.

  He opened the door and moved to one side enough that we both could see Martha. “You folks need to come into the club house for a while.” Her gaze flicked to Marty on the floor and I could tell she wanted to say more but didn’t want to scare the boy.

  “Sure,” Juan said, slow nodding. “We can do that.” His eyes also shifted, finding me and Marty on the floor. Marty wasn’t paying attention, adding a thick black outline around his grandma’s house. It made the whole picture seem dark, less cheery. Maybe that was the point.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the question, knowing the two other adults were purposefully trying to sidestep whatever was going on, for the boy’s sake.

  “Oh, just something we do every now and then. Nice to get everyone together and inside,” Martha said in a clear, authoritative voice that clearly told me to ‘come along and stop asking questions’. There was urgency. Something bad was happening. Of course something bad was happening. We couldn’t just have a peaceful stay here and move on our merry way without incident.