by M. D. Massey
I stopped to help a woman and her baby, only to see her tearing into its tiny body. Gore splattered the baby’s stroller. When its little cries ceased, the lady looked up with baby bits stuck to her nose and chin. Malachi grabbed me, spun me away to protect me from the unbelievable scene, but it was too late. The lights blurred with the tears filling my eyes, only to stain my cheeks as we ran. The carnival music seemed to slow to a drone and skip beats.
Malachi never made it home.
Yes, you can change overnight. In seconds, and no, you never forget your first zombie. Mine wore a USPS uniform. He killed Malachi.
No, I killed Malachi.
1
Four years later…
* * *
Time slows as the wooden floor protests beneath my boots, right before it collapses. A hoarse scream rips from my throat on the way down into the unknown. I reach for anything to grab. Sharp boards scrape my arms, confirming my failure. My fall ends in a crash as something pierces the back of my thigh. My body is buried in debris. Boards clash as I kick them away. The heaviness on my back is soothing. My big army pack broke my fall. Sighing, I relax my body and take heed of my unexpected situation.
I study the hole my body made. The sun streams in from the first floor of the old house I, unfortunately, looted. Motes of dust float like magic orbs around me. As it settles and reaches my nose, so does something else.
Death. Death so thick I can taste it. Searching for my crossbow through broken wood, I stop when a mud-like substance covers my hand. Bringing it into the stream of sunlight, a maggot wiggles in the decaying blood. Nausea rumbles, flooding my mouth with saliva. I gag and lean sideways, releasing the contents of my stomach. Knowing it was my last jar of summer tomatoes doesn’t help. Swallowing another heave, I shake my hand to fling off whatever coats it. Kicking and pushing debris, I stand so I can get the hell out of here, but not before sticking my hand into the source of death.
“Mother fuck!” I hiss at the dead body through clenched teeth. I can barely tell it used to be a person. I’m not a forensic scientist or anything, but this person just died. With the heat, I’m guessing between two and four weeks ago. At this realization, heavy melancholy settles over me.
Wiping my hands on my ruined jeans, I search for a way out. I want to leave and fast. I’m not so much irritated I’m covered in dead person, as by the fact I’m a three-hour walk from home. I’m not looking forward to the long trek with a throbbing thigh.
Thankfully, my crossbow didn’t land in any decomposition, and I grab it from where it settled from the fall. After checking the wooden stairs for damage, I make my way up. The machete hanging from my pack hits my injured leg. I can assume the machete sliced my thigh during the fall.
Coming into the sunlight, I examine the back of my pants. They are soiled with foul-smelling matter. The cut in my thigh needs attention. It won’t last a three-hour hike without being bothersome or getting infected.
I skirt around the big hole in the living room floor. Closer inspection, the sub-flooring is rotten—the cause of collapse. From the look of newer wood pieces, the owner had been trying to repair it. Everything in the living room seems in a state of decay, from the low hanging ceiling to the moth-eaten curtains and furniture. I check for weak spots in the warped flooring as I head into the kitchen. Smiles in multiple picture frames catch my eye. Old pictures of children in mid-play. Adults with the same smiles as the children. Newer pictures of babies, and kids with their proud grandparents. My throat constricts as I’m reminded of what the world has lost.
Being in a state of grief, most of the time other people and their families are easy to forget, especially when I am alone. How long had this person been here? Surviving? Like me. Alone. I catch sight of my reflection in a cracked mirror among the pictures. The girl looking back couldn’t be me. I am not a girl anymore. My skin is darkened from working in the sun. My dark hair makes my hazel eyes stand out wide, bright, and alert. My light blue tank top is dirty from the fall. The straps of my pack weigh on my shoulders. I can see how my once soft body has hardened with muscle. The contours of my stomach and arms show how much I refuse to give up. They show how hard I work to survive, to keep myself prepared for anything.
Sweat and dust smudge my face. I wipe at it, watching my bicep bulge. In my old life, I would have given anything to look like I do now. I hate my old self. The spoiled rotten, selfish old me never had to garden, chop wood, practice shooting a target, crank a heavy generator, or loot for the things she needed. She never had to look over her shoulder and sleep with one eye open, gripping a weapon.
The afternoon light coming from a window shines behind me, showing my ratty hair. The dark brown hair has, at some point, become a matted mess, creating thick dreadlocks falling down my back to my waist. They are tied away from my face. The woman peering at me seems callous and impenetrable. My face is no longer pretty. I give myself a genuine smile to see if it will lessen the effect. Straight teeth flash white before the smile fades to a grimace. I haven’t seen my reflection in a long while, not since I busted my mirror, resulting in ghastly scars across my knuckles.
Being alone has kept me alive. That and being prepared for any disaster. I owe it all to my dad. I tear my gaze from the reflection and fixed smiles of the pictures to keep from thinking of him, but the faces are still in my peripheral vision, haunting me with the ghosts of happier times.
I ransack each kitchen cabinet. The deceased one has an impressive stash of non-perishables. I stuff several sacks of rice and homemade canned food in my pack. In the last cabinet, I come across a gold mine.
“Well hello, old friend.” I lift a bottle of gold liquid. I blow at the dust, reading Jose’s name across the metallic label, glinting in the light. A second bottle of tequila and one of Jack Daniel’s go into my pack. By the time I’m finished foraging, my pack is heavier and weighs on my leg. No way will I be able to walk the whole way to my bunker before dark.
I hobble to the old couch to remove my boots and jeans to clean the cut. I take a big swig of Jack and dump some on my cut, hissing through my teeth from the burn in my throat and the sting of the cut. It’s not deep and will heal without a scar. After a makeshift bandage is in place, I redress and take my leave.
I step from the old, slanted porch and hike into the vast farmland of rural Tennessee. The heavy, overgrown brush skims across my legs as I navigate through a field surrounded by rusted, barbed-wire cattle fences. The late afternoon sun beats down on this hot, fall day. I hate to be so far from home, but looting is a necessary evil. Staying in one place during the winter is a necessity. Zombies are most active at night and during the cold months. I don’t know why, but my educated guess would be staying out of the sun has something to do with their decomposition. It’s weird because when the outbreak occurred, they didn’t give a damn about the sun. They were hungry for flesh, guts, blood, and bones. In the past few years, they’ve ran in packs—only appearing in the cooler night. I guess everything adapts, but adapting usually pertains to the living.
An hour into my walk, sweat beads down my back and my thigh is at a steady throb. I find a car with gas at a small house. I'll need it to get closer to home before nightfall. When the door won’t open through the rust, I bust the window with my double-sided hatchet and toss in my pack. After sweeping glass off the seat, I slip Bo Duke-style into my newly acquired General Lee. It’s only a beat-down Toyota, but one can dream. After all, it’s a stick shift.
In a movie, one would find the key stashed in the flip-down visor. I’ve never been lucky. Instead of wasting time searching for an imaginary key, I jerk the wires from under the dashboard. After I strip the correct ones with my teeth, I hold the clutch and shift to neutral. Taking a deep breath and hoping it works, I touch wires. The engine sputters. It’s so loud it roars in my ears, but it dies. I give it more gas.
After a few tries and curses, it spurts to life. I hit the gas, flinch from the loud backfire, and watch through the side mirror as smoke
spits from the muffler. The old gasoline guarantees the car won’t make it far, but far enough. A smile spreads across my face as I shift to reverse. In a spray of gravel, I speed from the weeded driveway.
I park about a half mile from my neighborhood because I don’t want to draw any zombies. It’s the main reason I like to stay isolated, attracting a few of them, if any at all. To keep my home zombie-free, I’m meticulous about the noise I make.
There’s an estimated count of a hundred houses in this rural neighborhood. They are secluded, well out of the city, and down country roads. They range in size from twenty-five hundred square feet to four thousand square feet and are on an acre of land each. The huge yards allured my parents, so they said. Now, the landscaping and grass are overgrown. It’s not grass anymore, excessive brush so thick it covers the once trimmed and pruned bushes.
I’ve looted the neighborhood of all necessities. Most of the people lived comfortable and therefore didn’t feel the need to stock up for anything. This was middle-class suburbia at its best. My neighbors have long since left, or they’re dead. Some I killed. It was kill or be eaten alive, which is not on my top-ten list of ways to die.
The sun sets, streaking the sky with swirls of cotton candy clouds. Honeysuckle bushes are still blooming and bring a sweet scent in the dusk breeze. How can the world be so beautiful but dreary at the same time?
The roads and driveways crack with growing weeds. SUV’s and basketball goals are the only adornments. Rusty trampolines and play sets sit undisturbed, littering backyards surrounded by weathered fences, not having seen children in four years. They are forevermore the homes of wasps and carpenter bees.
The houses don’t have any overflowing newspapers or mail. All of that just stopped. Bushes and trees cover windows, and vines lace up bricks. I’m sure if I step onto a front porch, it would be covered with webs. All the while, the glass windows still sparkle from old life. The neighborhood isn’t old and crumbling. It’s empty, like me.
Fast movement catches my eye, startling me to pause. A squirrel sits, frozen, about three feet on my right. Its beady eyes watching me. I can do nothing but stare. It’s rare to see an animal, and this little guy must be getting ready for winter. I take a small step toward him and he scatters away.
Animals have gotten smarter over the past four years and make themselves scarce. They’re a typical food source for zombies. Even though I love the small glimpses I catch of them, I’m glad they stay hidden. If not, it would draw attention. The birds are the only brave ones, but they can fly.
Luckily, animals don’t turn into animal zombies. I experimented once with a deer I stumbled upon being eaten alive. I hated watching it suffer, but I needed to know. I can’t imagine what would happen if animals could turn. After I killed the dead, I watched the deer until it died. It didn’t come back.
Trees canopy over my weathered privacy fence. The yard is now a large garden, practice targets, and a water pump. Years ago, my mother wanted the water pump for decorative purposes. Dad said if we had one, it might as well work. I remember him drilling into the ground in several places before hitting water. Dropping my pack and remove my clothing, I grab the lever. The water pumps into a large basin. Sometimes I have problems pumping water when it doesn’t rain for a while.
After scrubbing off the dead-man gunk, I head underground into my makeshift bunker, located underneath my family’s home, to put on some clean clothing. I dress and slip my boots on. No matter how safe and careful I am, I sleep clothed with the crossbow at my side. Just in case.
The bunker was a project my dad undertook when he developed his end-of-the-world theories, but never had the time to finish. He started steps at the crawlspace and dug the rest with a rented bulldozer. It was as far as he got, but I finished it by bricking the entire room with bricks and blocks I found near other houses under construction. The assortment of bricks gives the walls a calico effect.
I start a fire to boil water and give me light. I sit at the desk in front of a few computers and a radio, but I don’t bother turning them on. It’s too late to crank the generator sitting in its home in the original crawlspace. Not to mention, the same broadcast has been playing for around eight months. It isn’t a good sign. Used to, the broadcast changed monthly, giving updates, survival tips, and advising any survivors to get to a quarantine. Instead of worrying about the rest of the world, I take a huge gulp of Jack.
My home’s not much, only a bricked-in room with one way in and out, and with everything I need. I have a smoker for cooking. The galvanized range hood collects smoke so it can travel out through a PVC pipe, escaping three hundred yards away—a trick I use so I don’t draw the dead. An aluminum tub for any kind of washing sits beside the bricked-in smoker. There are hoses I’ve rigged to bring in water from the pump with ease and to siphon dirty water out. It’s a pain to do but works.
Blankets are piled on top of the mattress on the floor beside the desk. Plywood and sawhorses give me some counter space. Beneath them is a deep hole to store food at cooler temperatures. A locker holds tools, weapons, and other emergency supplies. A loveseat sofa I can’t see anymore, due to mounds of clothing, and a dinette table in the middle of the room complete the furnishings. The table is used for a gigantic toothpick bridge—a sure sign of boredom in my attempt to survive alone.
Taking another drink, I lean to look at my ceiling. It is hardly a ceiling at all. Nothing but exposed plumbing and air ducts of the house gleaming in the firelight, but I can also admire my work of genius. I’ve rigged blocks held steady by two long steel poles—one tug of the connected chain and it’ll tumble onto any threats. I’ve thought about making a second exit. A crawl-through tunnel for extra security, but it must be dug manually.
The pot over the fire hisses as water boils over the sides, extinguishing half my fire. Luckily, I don’t need to rid the water of any contagion. Broadcasts long ago said water was safe to use and drink, except for the obvious reasons not to use water. I suppose the latter meant not to drink from a puddle with a rotting corpse in it.
I stumble, shifting to dump a half-cup of rice into the water and move the pot onto a flame still burning. The water sloshes and dashes it out. I can’t help but laugh. I laugh at myself, my perpetual situation, my inevitable demise, my succumbing to a bitter drunkenness. I titter my way to find a lighter to light a small candle for some light.
I sit at my desk and wait for my rice. When my dad prepared for an apocalypse, he taught me non-perishables last a long time after an expiration date. I still eat canned goods from the old life. Dried beans and rice last even longer. Packaged cakes, like Twinkies, can last decades, and the same with dehydrated food. Chocolate has no expiration date. If food is stored properly, it can last a long time. I still have plenty. Non-perishables like rice, beans, oats, flour, cornmeal and my canned goods I use sparingly. When everything runs out, I know what I can eat from the land. I’m reading a vegan book of what kinds of grasses are edible and fiber rich.
Before I find myself in the middle of a pity party, I open the book.
“Damn.”
The words seem to branch off into mirror form and are fuzzy around the edges. After flinging it on the desk, I take a bigger gulp of Jack which seems quite easier to drink now than when I first started. Leaning the old office chair back, I’m thankful for not thinking of the old life. My memories are good ones, but they can bring on physical pain. Grief is a strange thing when you don’t let yourself move on, when you don’t deserve it. I smirk, holding the bottle and tilting the liquid back and forth. “Jack, you’re the bestest friend a girl can have.”
2
Vaguely aware of something, I wake with a start, sitting so fast the office chair rolls backward. Even though I’m still drunk, there’s no mistaking the shuffling and groaning of what can only be the dead outside, close. I grab my crossbow and arrows, along with my machete from the pack. I don’t know if they’re in the yard, it’s hard to tell.
Putting my shoulder an
d upper back to the bunker door, I push to peek around the yard. It’s pitch black with no movement, which means they’re beyond the privacy fence. I sigh at this small relief.
Sneaking and climbing my fence, I look into the field beyond, seeing slow movement. The smile on my face feels a little awkward. This should be easy and I'll gladly take care of it. I head into the bunker to crank the ancient generator. It’s loud, but necessary to switch on a spotlight. I can’t get rid of them if I can’t see them well.
Stocked with my arsenal, I climb my fence, this time jumping over it, but landing unsteadily because of Jack.
“Hey, uglies,” I greet my two unexpected visitors. I can tell right off they’re old zombies—slow and rotting. Old zombies are nasty creatures. One is a man. The other is much slower and female. I can’t tell the age of the person. The clothes they wear can give an indication of age. She’s wearing almost nothing. I can always tell how long they’ve been zombies, by how they look, their speed, and how fast I kill them.
They have dried crusty blood and old festering wounds, leaking thick fluids. They resemble moving skeletons. Their skin is paper thin and translucent. Their eyes, sunken hollows, are bloodshot with milky-white pupils. One of the woman's eyes is missing and leaking greenish pus. The blood seeping is dark and thick.
When the smell hits me, it hits me hard. “Sick.” I gag, tasting death, infection, and soured milk rolled into one. My throat contracts, trying to get my stomach to come up. Keeping it down, I move forward.
I lift my pistol crossbow and shoot the male. It goes a little off-target, to the left side of the forehead, but he drops to the ground with a light thud. I shoot her and it hits dead on, right in the middle—easy. The burning coals must’ve attracted them. I might have a leak in my ventilation system, but fixing it will have to wait for tomorrow.