by Frank Tayell
The stalled traffic grew worse, lining both sides of the road, reducing it to one lane, then to less than that. Metal scraped against the side of the truck as he forced his way past one car after another. The shambling figures drew closer as he was forced to slow. Hands and fists beat against the bodywork, and the road ahead filled with those twisted mockeries of humanity. Finally, he was forced to give up, reverse, and go back.
It took another half hour before he was on a clear road, heading toward the Lake Champlain Bridge and the border with Vermont. Frustration added to growing uncertainty of what he would find at journey’s end. His only comfort was the fuel gauge.
“Three quarters of a tank. Should be enough.” Something was wrong. “Three quarters?”
After he’d crossed the bridge and entered Vermont, he was sure. The needle on the fuel gauge was stuck.
The truck ground to a halt twenty minutes later. There were no cars in sight, no buildings, or even a distant trace of smoke from a welcoming fire. A light dusting of snow covered the ground. It was barely deeper than a heavy frost, but it hadn’t melted. All he had for protection was the cheap suit Addison had provided. It didn’t take him long to make an inventory of everything else in the truck. One road flare, the .45, the rifle, a half-filled canteen, and two candy bars that only brought on a sudden wave of hunger. He ate them both and didn’t feel satisfied. He wasn’t going to survive a night outside, though from the position of the sun, that was still some hours off.
“No point putting it off.”
Yet he hesitated. He knew he couldn’t linger, but he felt he was missing something.
In the bag in which he’d found the .45 was a cheap paperback. He stared at the front cover on which a cowboy rode across purple sage toward a distant homestead. He wondered at the nature of the assassin who’d thought it as much a necessity as the gun, before tearing out the blank page from the back. He wrote a short note:
“This vehicle might be contaminated by radioactive particles. It was close to the location where a bomb was dropped. It was south of here. I’m not sure where.”
He hesitated, uncertain why he was leaving a message, and finally decided that it wasn’t for anyone who might come this way, but for himself.
“It survived the EMP, so if you have a Geiger counter to check it’s safe, and fuel to put in the tank, it should work. Good luck. Stay safe.” After another, brief hesitation, he signed it Sholto.
It was a name he rarely used, a pseudonym that was more of a private joke than a secret identity. More thought had gone into its selection than the name he most commonly used. Tom Clemens had been chosen simply because he’d read a lot of Mark Twain during his first few years in America. Sholto was different. Within it was a message the recipient had failed to understand. Now, here, it became something else.
“A new name, for a new world, for however long I survive in it.”
He left the note on the passenger seat and opened the door. The cold hit him like a wall. It almost made him retreat back inside. He slung the rifle, slammed the door closed, thrust his hands into his pocket, and forced himself to walk.
His head bowed forward as the residual warmth ebbed from his body. After what felt like an age, he finally allowed himself to look around. The truck was still in view. He’d only managed a few hundred yards. Forcing one foot in front of the other, he trudged on.
As it often had during his captivity, his mind turned to Britain. Had it survived the bombs? Had London? Had Bill? There was no way to answer that. Instead, he flicked his eyes left and right, looking for buildings, for cars, for anywhere that might offer shelter. Occasionally he heard noises that might have been nothing, or which might have been the undead, but he saw none. Nor did he see any cars, abandoned or moving. At first he thought that was strange, then he wondered if he was already dead, walking some twilight path in the realm between life and death. His numb brain toyed with the idea until the empty fields became a desert; the cracks on the road became carved intentions.
“Remote,” he growled, realizing he was slowly freezing to death. The rest of the words wouldn’t form, but that was the real answer. This was a place people from the cities would have fled to, not one from which the locals would escape. He knew that might be wrong, but he had to focus on reality, lest his fantasy became true.
The sun was lost behind a thick bank of dark blue clouds, so he wasn’t sure how close it was to nightfall when he saw the farmhouse. The building wasn’t immediately ahead of him, but just visible beyond an unplowed field. Behind it were other rooftops, but he couldn’t tell if they were barns and outbuildings, or the beginnings of a town. There was no smoke, no lights, no sound other than his stuttering breath. The temperature was plummeting. He had to take shelter, and trust to the kindness of strangers. Even as he thought the words, his hand came out of his pocket to tug on the rifle’s strap. The cold wind biting into cracked skin made him aware of the gesture, and of what his instinct was telling him. Trust wasn’t the right word. Hope for kindness. Expect the opposite.
The field’s uneven ground slowed him. His feet felt like leaden weights. Before he was halfway across, he knew he wouldn’t be able to pick up his pace. The farmhouse was where he would stop regardless of what he found there. Three-quarters of the way across the field, he heard an irregular banging. Someone fixing the fence that seemed to get no closer? He couldn’t see anyone, and, of course, no one would bother with routine chores at times like these. Chopping wood? Perhaps, but the sound didn’t seem right.
He reached the low fence separating the yard from the fields. The sound was still there, but there was no sign of people. He opened his mouth to shout a greeting, but all that came out was a shallow plume of vapor. It took him three tries to climb the fence, and he almost lost his footing as he clambered over. The sound was louder, and he recognized what it was, and realized he should have known long before. With frozen fingers he fumbled the rifle off his shoulder. His vision blurred as he raised the weapon, scanning for the zombies he knew were nearby. Dreading the coming confrontation, he crossed the yard, nearly slipping on the icy concrete. The sound grew louder. He turned the corner and saw them. Six zombies beat their fists against the door and walls at the front of the house. He watched, his brain slow to process the scene. Their hands left dirty stains against the winter-worn paint as they tried to reach through the walls. Were they farmers? Locals? They were dressed casually, but only one wore a jacket. The others were in shirtsleeves. On the arm of the nearest, a bloody bandage unraveled with each downward swing. Frozen neurons sparked. The zombies were trying to get into the house. There were people inside.
“Hoy!” he croaked. It was barely a word, and it came out weak, inaudible against the undead’s pummeling racket. Rage blossomed, sending a last reserve of furious heat through his numb limbs.
“Hey! Hey you!” It was barely loud enough to carry across the yard, but it was loud enough. The bandaged zombie turned its head.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s right.” He aimed. Fired. The shot missed, but the sound carried. Almost as one, the other five turned away from the house, and toward him.
He fired again. The bandaged zombie fell backward as its brains sprayed over the creatures behind. The zombie in the quilted jacket stumbled into the body, falling to the ground, but that still left four, and they moved as if they were heedless of the cold. He shifted aim.
“Haven’t you heard?” He fired. A zombie fell. “The cabal’s dead. It’s over. You can stop.”
But they didn’t stop. The three creatures staggered closer. Tom tried to take a step backward, but his legs wouldn’t move. He fired. A zombie in a red flannel shirt collapsed. He shifted aim, fired, missed. He could see mud and blood and worse clotted inside those gaping maws. He fired, not aiming now, just emptying the magazine into the hideous creatures. More by luck than aim, one of the shots slammed into the brain before the rifle clicked empty. He dropped the weapon, fumbling for the .45, but his fingers wouldn’t work.
He couldn’t get it free.
“Down!” a voice called. “Drop. Get down!”
He let himself collapse. It wasn’t hard. There was a booming roar. The zombie fell. Tom rolled across the icy yard away from the creature. He pushed himself to his knees. An old woman stood in the doorway to the house, a shotgun in her arms.
“You okay?” she called.
Tom forced himself up. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“You’re alive. I didn’t think any—”
Before Tom could warn her, before he could draw his pistol, the zombie in the quilted jacket reared up from the ground and clamped its mouth on her leg. The woman screamed, firing the shotgun at point blank range. The slug took the zombie in the back, but the creature didn’t stop. Tom stumbled over to her and dragged the zombie off. Its left arm was limp, its legs didn’t work, but its right hand reached for him. He dragged the pistol out and fired into its skull.
“She killed me,” the woman said, staring at her bloody leg. “Louise killed me.”
“Inside,” Tom said, pushing the woman back through the open door. The warmth of the interior was like a blow.
“She killed me,” the woman said again.
“Bleach,” Tom said, leaning against the wall. “Clean the wound.” The words came out stilted.
“There’s no point,” the woman said, limping away from him, down a short hallway, and into the kitchen. It was lit by the flickering glow of a wood-burning stove and candles that gave off a heady floral scent. The windows were covered with thick blankets.
Tom dropped the .45 on the countertop and pulled himself over to the sink. He opened the cupboard underneath and found a bottle of disinfectant.
“It won’t work,” the woman said. “We tried it on Fred.”
“We’ve got to try,” Tom said. He pushed himself back to his feet, and saw stars. He had to grab the counter just to keep his feet. “Got to try,” he said again.
The woman gasped as he doused the wound with the bleach, but she didn’t protest. There had to be something else he could do, something more scientific, but his strength was now completely gone. Dropping the bottle, he collapsed into a chair, next to the woman.
“You should get your gun,” the woman said, gesturing to the counter, eight feet away. “I’m going to turn. It always happens.”
Tom nodded, but didn’t move. The woman stood, limped over to the pistol, and put on the kitchen table, next to his hand.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
“South,” he said. “Pennsylvania. I saw a mushroom cloud. Felt the shockwave of another bomb. Or I thought it was Pennsylvania. It might have been New York. I’m not sure.”
“Nuclear bombs?” The woman limped over to the stove and moved a kettle onto the plate. She sat down again. “The power went out this morning. Fred said they’d try using bombs on the zombies. I said it was madness.”
“I don’t think they were using it on the zombies,” Tom said. Though, of course, he had no way of knowing that. Perhaps someone had. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. You didn’t see any mushroom clouds here. No bright lights?”
“Nope. Just the power going out.”
She looked down at her leg. Tom did the same. Something in her words slowly fed a thought that blossomed into a question. “You’re on the electrical grid, here?” he asked.
“Fred’s place is,” she said. “That’s five miles west of here. I’ve got a generator. Took all the fuel to his place. All the food, too. Abigail Benford,” she said. “My name. What’s yours?”
“Tom Clemens,” he replied automatically. “Except it’s not. My mother called me Thaddeus.”
“Oh yes? And what do your friends call you?” she asked.
That was a hard question to answer. “I don’t know if I have any left,” he said. “But if I do, I guess he’d call me Sholto.”
“That’s worse than Thaddeus,” she said. Her eyes went back to her leg, and then to a clock on the wall. It had stopped. “Took Fred an hour to turn. Took Louise only a minute.”
“You might be the exception,” Tom said.
“You mean that I might be immune?” Abigail said. “We talked about that, when we were waiting, watching, hoping that the world would right itself. Thought it just might before Maxwell gave his speech. Should have known the world couldn’t get back on its feet. Nuclear bombs? You say you saw two of them?”
“I saw one mushroom cloud. Felt the shockwave of another. They had to be close. Not sure if the second was nuclear. Don’t know. But I saw one mushroom cloud. I know that.”
“Huh. And that was this morning?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what time it was.”
“Have you changed your clothes?” she asked.
“What?”
“It’s what they told us, back when we thought the Ruskis were going to drop the bomb. Radioactive particles stick to your clothing. You have strip and wash, but don’t scrub so hard you break the skin.”
The fallout. He remembered now. He’d known it. He’d said as much on the note he’d left on the truck. He stood.
“There’s clothes upstairs. The cupboard in the second room off the landing,” she said. She looked at the .45. “Maybe you should take the shotgun with you.”
The clothes were worn, old, and in the back of a cupboard in a spare room. Her brothers, maybe? He didn’t want to know. Back-story just meant more people who were dead. He went into the bathroom and ran water over his hands. There were no flash burns on them, nor on his face. Perhaps that bright light had been nothing more than him hitting his head as the truck crashed. Or was that just what he wanted to believe? A wave of nausea swept over him. For a moment he thought he was going to pass out, and caught hold of the sink for support. The moment passed. He rinsed himself with cold water. It wasn’t much better a wash than he’d managed with the bucket and bar of soap that morning. Morning? It seemed far longer ago than that.
In darned socks, mended jeans, and a thick shirt, he picked up the shotgun and went back to the stairs. He paused halfway down, listening. There were sounds from the kitchen, of metal knocking against metal, but somehow he didn’t think it meant Abigail had turned into one of the undead. She hadn’t. She stood by the stove, stirring something in a pot.
“You look just like him,” she said, turning to look at his approach. He didn’t ask whom. “Sit down before you fall,” she said. “I hope you eat beef stew, because that’s all we’ve got. Not much of a last meal for either of us. Came from the school.” She pointed at the industrial-sized can sitting on the counter.
“I’ve spent the last week… No, it was longer than that, but I’ve spent it a prisoner of the people responsible for all of this,” he said.
“You have?” She turned around. “How so?”
“I was trying to stop it. I failed.”
“Ah.” She gave him a more measured look, then turned back to the stove. “It was Fred’s idea that we should all sleep under the same roof. Security in numbers, you see.”
“Against the undead?”
“No. Against the refugees. They didn’t come. Not in any great number. We saw a few cars, and saw off a few small groups, but the hordes we were expecting never arrived. You know why?”
“The roads south of here are blocked,” he said. “All it takes is a couple of vehicles to run out of fuel and you get a bottleneck that no one’s going to unstopper.”
“That’s pretty much what we thought,” she said. “After we’d seen no one for a couple of days, Fred went out looking for supplies. He got bit, but made it back. We thought he was immune until he died. I went out this morning. We needed more food. It’s amazing how much gets eaten when there’s nothing else to do but play cards. I thought the school would be better than the town. It was. Lots of food in the kitchens. Enough to keep us all fed until harvest. When I got back, there were zombies outside the house. Don’t know where they came from, or how they got there, or why they arrived just then. Doesn’t matter, does
it? We shot them, but Louise had been bitten. We tried cleaning the wound, bandaging it and… Well, you saw them outside, you can guess the rest. I got in the truck and came back here. I suppose I should have kept going, but to go where? This is my home. Our farm. Don’t suppose there’ll be a harvest, not this year, nor any year hereafter.” She took out a bowl, filled it, and placed it in front of Tom.
“You’re not going to eat?” he asked.
She opened a cupboard, took out a dusty bottle, and poured herself a very small measure. “Nope.” She took a sip, put the glass down, and leaned back in her chair. “Some strange world, this one,” she said, closing her eyes. “Tell me about these people holding you prisoner. They were responsible for all this? The zombies? The bombs?”
He swallowed another mouthful of stew. “It’s a long story,” he said, deciding that he would tell her the entire truth, right from the beginning. “It began with my father. I suppose calling him a government assassin is closest to the truth. It wasn’t glamorous enough work to call him a spy.”
Abigail grunted. Tom looked at her. Her eyes opened. There was no life left in them. The zombie’s arms swept across the table, knocking over bottle and glass. Tom stepped back, grabbing the shotgun. He aimed it straight at her head, and hesitated, but only for a second. He pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Neither of them had reloaded the weapon.
Abigail lurched out of her chair, arms outstretched. Tom jabbed the shotgun at her. There was little force to the blow, but it was enough to knock her back in the chair. He grabbed the .45, and fired. She died.
He stood there, watching undead brain drip down the calendar behind her shattered head, obscuring the red-ink hearts denoting dates to remember and which would now be forever forgotten. The gun felt heavy in his hand. Infection. Radiation. It was all too much, yet he couldn’t give in, couldn’t give up. He put the gun on the table, went upstairs, washed, changed, and then sat down on the bed in that small room. The future, however brief it might be, weighed heavily on him. So heavily that he soon fell asleep.