Rotten

by Hardy, Victoria S.

  “Luckily, we won’t need this tomorrow, but the more I think about it I think it will be that easy. Wow.” Highland shook his head.

  Later, Rotten and I were on guard duty, snuggled up in blankets in the rocking chairs, he sighed deeply and said, “It’s been a hell of a day.”

  I nodded, feeling my natural depression raise its head with the typical desire for a long sleeping jag.

  “Moonshine and I were ready to kill him, too. We talked about it before we came up. It was like he just walked in, without a weapon, and began destroying and taking things and hurting the group. Crazy. But tonight I felt some hope that we may just survive this thing.”

  “It sounds promising.” I yawned. “But I just want to sleep for about three days, literally.”

  “You’ll have time to be depressed later, Dove. We can’t afford to have you disappear on us because you’re depressed. It’s irritating enough when things are normal and you stand us up. You can’t do it now, we’re almost there. I understand. I get it. We saw a man killed today, not a zombie, not some weird eyed man in black, but a man. An ignorant, bully of a man, but a man nonetheless, we should feel bad about that. But you can’t curl up in the fetal position and zone out.”

  “I know.” And I did know and I sat up trying to push back the sleeping sickness that was pulling at the corners of my mind.

  He laughed. “We’re in the zombie apocalypse just like we always knew we’d be.”

  “I know, right?” I laughed, and felt my mind expand and begin to fight the creeping darkness.

  “You know I said the other night that nothing changes and you can’t fight the evil alien undead gods?”

  I nodded. That had been a depressing thought.

  “I may have been wrong. Their henchmen, their puppets here, are those men in black, so if we hit them, we are fighting the gods. But this will be a battle, like a real battle, and it’s fucking scary to think about. But then I think of how happenstance brought us all together, and threw master marksman Sully in with us.” He laughed. “Who in the hell would have seen that coming?”

  “Not I, hard to imagine that the man throwing a temper tantrum in the warehouse a few days ago is the same man who shot Ron today.”

  “And then we found Will, who just happened to know a survivalist prepper millionaire. And then monster detector Sarah comes along, and now Beth. There are godlike things working in our world. And then I think how we all happened to be together the night it started. When was the last time we were all together? Maybe once this year?”

  “Yeah, and we watched Zombieland.” I laughed.

  “And when Moonshine opened that trunk and we have an actual way to affect them, it’s mind blowing. All stories are basically just a battle between wrong and right, or good and evil, but maybe the world and fiction just puts names on it like wars, famines, genocides, pandemics, aliens, zombies, werewolves, vampires, demons, and on and on, to define the same power that’s always been, the same fight of good and evil.”

  “So not much has changed, we’re still fighting undead alien demon gods, and we’re nothing but a bunch of slacker hipsters.”

  “Seems to me a lot has changed, we’re getting help, we just didn’t see it as it was happening.”

  “So we’re super heroes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can live with that, and have you seen what Princess can do with duct tape? She’s already made us super hero costumes.”

  Day Ten

  Saturday

  December 20, 2014

  We woke before sunrise, buried Ron in the field beside Grady, and then sat around the table planning our day and pouring over the map spread on the table. We imagined all kinds of weapons the men in black could possess, futuristic laser guns that could zap us into goo and other things, before Sully pulled us back with a laugh. “Let’s focus on what we know.”

  “I just saw automatic machine guns, no lasers,” Will said.

  Beth pointed out where her sister lived in relation to the Johnson place, and showed us the road that passed the gate. “You used to have to go down this road and turn in to the Johnson’s, my family lives at the end of it.” She pointed. “But when they fenced the land they put their own road in, so now you have to pass the gate to get to where I grew up.” Her fingers moved across the page. “There’re cameras on the gate, so we couldn’t go by that way, but there’s a field back here about a half mile from this side of the fence. We used to have a deer stand there, and the cameras are spread out further on this part of the fence, ain’t much back there but woods, deer, and squirrels.”

  “Okay, today we’re just going to look, provided we can get there.” Highland folded the map and slid it in his pocket. “And we pick up guns, a tone generator, and hopefully some amplifiers from the pawn shop, and the stuff on the list. Then we’ll head out to this field.”

  Moonshine unloaded the sound machine from the trunk of the stink mobile, but left the riot gear and shotgun. “I know it stinks, but they have guns and the windows are bullet proof, we have to take it.”

  “I’ll ride with you,” Beth, wearing the duct tape zombie proof gear, volunteered when no one else did.

  “No, Beth, I need you in the lead car,” Highland said.

  “Damn it, I’ll ride with you. I really hate you right now, Moon Man.” Princess opened the door, wrinkled her nose, and slapped one of the scented cardboard Christmas trees that hung from the visor.

  We pulled out of the driveway with Highland and Beth in the lead sedan, Rotten and I in the truck with the cage on back, and Moonshine and Princess bringing up the rear with the stink mobile. We didn’t stop as we usually did, listening for road noise, but pulled out on the highway heading into Arlington. We drove slowly, and both Highland and Moonshine switched the car radio to play the tone we couldn’t hear over the public address system.

  The houses this far out were few and far between, mostly older structures with pick-up trucks in the driveways and fenced yards that looked like they had held livestock at one point. I made a mental note to stop at one of the houses where I saw chickens scratching in the front yard. We didn’t see any zombies until we got near town, where the houses were closer together and the yards smaller, and they stood frozen in their various tasks.

  The road was blocked by cars just past the city limit marker and we had to stop and push them out of the way, while several frozen zombies stood nearby, one with a carcass of a cat in its hand. Moonshine approached the cat man slowly. “Damn, this is crazy.” He waved his hands in front of the thing’s eyes.

  “Don’t play around,” Highland said.

  “I’m not, remember we’re going to have to move these things soon.” He walked around the deadhead and lifted it up. “It’s stiff as a board, but not very heavy.” He set it down a few feet away and the thing toppled over, falling to the ground in the same stiff position with the dead cat clenched in its hand. “It shouldn’t be hard to relocate them,” he said, returning to the car. “We should keep our eyes out for some moving trucks.”

  We were just approaching Main Street when Princess came over the radio, “Guys, when we pulled away and the zombies woke up, they were moving faster than before, not like they did in Blacksport, but close, like they’ve just had a long rest.”

  “Not good,” Rotten muttered, looking in the rearview mirror.

  I turned in my seat and saw the thing with the dead cat running toward the sedan, freezing once again when it got in range of the sound. “They’re going to follow us home, aren’t they?”

  “Probably. I guess we’ll have to kill them out on the road so they don’t get to the cabin. I’m worried that the freezing regenerates them, that’s not good. I’ve been counting as one of our blessings that they are slower than they were when it started.”

  The intersection on Main Street was blocked, so we stopped again, pushing the cars out of the way to an audience of the ugliest mannequins ever created. We were surrounded and observed more deadheads moving in our d
irection and halting unnaturally when they stepped into range of the tone. I counted at least twenty of the undead on Main Street with more appearing as we worked.

  “The stores we want are on the next block,” Beth pointed to where the zombies were still shuffling around, unaffected by our weapon.

  We pulled forward watching the deadheads in front of us go dormant while the ones behind sprang out of their trance with renewed energy until hitting the force field and becoming inert once again. Highland passed the gun store, Rotten bumped up on the sidewalk close to the door, and we climbed out of the cars and stood for a moment taking it all in.

  “This is so not good,” I said.

  Marshall’s Guns was a low brick building with a locked door fortified by thick metal mesh. “We’re going to have to shoot it,” Moonshine said, pulling the shotgun from the trunk. “Y’all get back.” He raised the gun, fired, and then kicked the door open. Beth, Moonshine, and Highland ran in the store, while the rest of us occupied our time with freaking out as more and more of the undead, drawn by the noise, joined the immobile mass surrounding us.

  “This is creepy. Like way creepy, if that tone goes out, we’re screwed.” Princess said. “We should have thought of this, tested it or something, before just driving into town like we know what the hell we’re doing.”

  “I know, but it’s too late for that now.” Rotten held the door as Beth came out with an armful of rifles. She dropped them in the space in the back of the truck beside the cage, and pulled a canvas bag off her shoulder, setting it on top of the guns. Moonshine came out of the door carrying another heavy satchel and had a sword secured in a sheath hanging from his waist. Finally Highland came running out with a bag that he dropped on the backseat of the sedan.

  We pulled the cars forward and stopped at the pawnshop. And again Moonshine had to use the shotgun to get past the locked door and the noise seemed to work like a dinner bell for the undead. Highland and Rotten ran in while we watched more and more zombies enter the dead zone around us.

  “I’m going to have nightmares about this.” Moonshine rested his hand on the handle of the sword. “I feel like fresh meat in the butcher’s window.”

  Rotten and Highland began piling things on the sidewalk, amplifiers, speaker stands, and cords secured in cardboard packaging, and boxes of other odds and ends, and we distributed the gear into the cars.

  “We have to go up to the corner and turn left,” Beth said. “The feed and seed is on the way to the Johnson place.”

  “We’re going to have to run them over to get out of here.” I looked at the group of ten or more deadheads just in the road in front of us.

  “We could move them, we’re going to need them later,” Rotten suggested.

  We looked at each other in confusion, unsure what we should do. “They are pretty light, we’ll just move the ones in the middle so we can get through,” Moonshine decided. He walked into the crowd and picked up a man in overalls and work boots and carried him to the sidewalk. “Move the ones that look like they’ll cause the most damage,” he said, picking up another man.

  Moving them proved easy as they were light and dehydrated, as Sully had said, but getting them to stand back up on their feet after we repositioned them was impossible. It reminded me of trying to get a Barbie doll to stand up in those cute high heels that come as an accessory in the box. Finally, we quit trying and laid them on the sidewalk.

  We moved forward through the opening we made, but we still had to run over quite a few because they kept coming and stopping in our way. Behind us the waking ones moved with far more vigor and strength than they possessed before the induced stupor, and continued to follow. They’d shuffle into the field moving slowly and freeze up, and then they’d spring to life and run, then pause abruptly in strange positions before erupting into motion again. The next corner was blocked with cars and I was getting nervous with how long it was taking us to just drive a block and the growing horde of the undead surrounding us. The others must have felt the same anxiety because we quickly cleared the path without speaking.

  We finally turned on the road that led to the feed and seed and to the nest of the men in black, passing fewer zombies than in town, and behind our convoy the crowd was still following and steadily increasing in number. We passed brightly colored bungalows decorated for Christmas, which would have been a lovely picture except for the littered body parts scattered on the lawns. “Looks like they had quite a battle on this side of town,” I commented.

  The houses became sparse and the view opened up revealing farmland and pastures. Thankfully the road was clear and we could increase our speed. The crowd following us out of town had no trouble keeping up - springing forward, freezing, jumping, and freezing again - and seemed positively reinvigorated by their brief respites.

  We stopped at the feed and seed, the mob behind us crashing to a halt, with the stragglers joining them quickly. “We have to move fast, the longer they rest, the stronger they get,” Rotten said, jumping out of the truck.

  “Follow me, I know this place,” Beth said, bypassing the door and hopping up on the concrete loading dock. “I need muscle, y’all, I can’t carry all this by myself.”

  Princess and I stayed with the cars as the guys followed Beth. “This is insane. Remember those nights we talked about how boring life had become, work and school and no excitement?” Princess pulled her eyes from the silent horde, and leaned against the car. “We don’t have that problem anymore.”

  “Nope, I’m pretty sure from here on out life is not going to be boring and if it is we’ll be throwing a big ass party.”

  “It’s true,” Princess said, and the rest of the group appeared carrying fifty-pound bags of chicken feed and cat food. Beth carried a couple plastic bags stuffed with assorted goods and an armful of hoes and other wood handled gardening tools, and we helped unload the supplies in the back of the sedans. We were only at the feed and seed for just a few minutes, but the zombies were really getting their second wind when we pulled out of range.

  After what felt like hours, but was in reality only minutes, the lead sedan pulled into a field of tall grass. We bumped slowly across the acreage coming to a stop where the tree line began and out of sight of the highway. The zombies followed, freezing up suddenly about fifty feet behind us. Quite a few shut down in mid jump and fell to the soft grass in crazy positions and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “This is too insane for words,” I muttered.

  “Me, Beth, and Moonshine are going to go check out the fence, you guys stay here and if anything happens, call us on the radio. Hopefully, we won’t be long, maybe twenty minutes.” Highland looked at Beth.

  “Maybe.” She shrugged.

  It was probably the longest twenty minutes I’ve ever experienced, okay, it was actually twenty-seven minutes before they reappeared from the woods and we were all nervous wrecks.

  “What did you see?” Rotten said, as soon as they ran out.

  Highland held up a finger to catch his breath. “We see a spot to cut through, there’s a couple trees that have fallen against the fence and knocked the camera. Didn’t see any patrols, we weren’t there that long, but we didn’t see any worn down areas in the grass on either side that would indicate a regular foot patrol.”

  “Let’s get out of here, we’ve got to figure out what to do with our fan club, I can’t imagine how fast they’re going to be after this long of a nap.” Highland climbed back in the sedan.

  We bumped back across the meadow and I was turned around in my seat, anxiously watching through the back window, expecting the explosion of seventy-three zombies (we had counted them earlier to distract ourselves while the others were off in the woods) suddenly bursting in action. I waited, my stomach tight, and waited. “Wait a minute.” I picked up the hand held radio. “Stop, y’all. They should be moving.”

  “She’s right,” Princess replied.

  “Moonshine, turn off your PA, but be ready to turn it right back on,” Highland said.

/>   “It’s off now,” Princess said.

  The deadheads didn’t move.

  “I’m turning mine off. It’s off.”

  Nothing moved.

  “It must be the signal from the nest,” Rotten said, and I relayed his comment to the others.

  “We can’t just leave them there, you can see them from the road,” Princess said.

  “Let’s go back.” Highland turned around and we followed.

  We parked and stepped out cautiously, knowing that it had to be the signal from the nest that kept them bound and terrified to trust it. “We have to move them into the woods and out of sight.” Moonshine walked behind one and lifted it by the elbows, his teeth gritted in fear, not effort.

  “Did y’all bring some wire cutters? We’re here now and we could put some inside the fence.”

  We glanced around at each other as we do and all spoke at once.