Rotten

by Hardy, Victoria S.

  “I brought them,” Rotten said.

  “We couldn’t move them all,” Highland said.

  “We could move some and get it over with,” I said.

  “We’d have to kill the rest, cause when they wake up there’s going to be hell to pay,” Princess said.

  “We’ll take the meanest looking ones, the strongest ones to the nest.” Moonshine walked into the woods with a large male zombie.

  “Hold up, let’s make this easy, if y’all have some rope we can drag them and it’ll be a lot quicker,” Beth said.

  We fashioned a sleigh of a tarp and rope and managed, with four trips, to move twenty deadheads into the fence. We didn’t carry them very far inside, but we did hide them as well as we could under and behind shrubbery and trees and we placed half a dozen in a small ravine. We could see a low flat building in the distance, down a hill and off to the left, and counted a couple dozen vehicles in the parking lot beside it, but didn’t see any activity at all. Then Rotten sewed the fence closed using some thick wire and we ran back to the cars.

  Returning to the cars we had the problem of the other fifty-three deadheads. Highland reached into the back of the sedan, pulled out the thick canvas bag he’d taken from the gun store and dropped it on the ground with the jangle of metal on metal. He unzipped it and exposed at least a dozen knives and blades of every description. “We’re going to have to cut off their heads.”

  “I got an ax,” Beth said.

  So that’s what we did, and we did it as quickly and quietly as possible. Luckily, the carcasses were dry so there wasn’t a lot of spatter or leakage, but unluckily some of them were turning leathery and their skin was damned tough to get through. We finally ended up using the ax and a hatchet and took turns. It was bad enough that we had to do it and no one person should hold all those images in their head alone, so we shared the job equally. We pulled out of the field exhausted and ready to go home.

  We took the long way back using a “shortcut” that Beth knew and our only obstacles were the roadblocks set up by the men in black before the zombies got out of control. We only saw a few slow moving deadheads so far out in the country and left them alone. Our weapon of sound was a double-edged sword. If they followed we’d deal with them later. We went through two other roadblocks and didn’t find any dead men in black or dark sedans, and ended up back at the intersection where we had stolen the cars. Beth jumped out and moved the sawhorses and replaced them after we passed.

  I was tired, we were all tired, the day had been successful and we had achieved a lot, but the fear was thick. All those silent and motionless deadheads suddenly springing to life would haunt all of us for a very long time. The unspoken fear, though, was of the men in black, the gods’ henchmen, who yielded unknown and perhaps unknowable power to control. And with something as simple as a sound they could flip a switch and control the undead as literal and dangerous puppets. And if the henchmen were also just puppets of a higher being, an intelligence so beyond our own, how could we ever hope to win?

  As a self-professed expert on depression I say we were all feeling its heavy oppressive weight as we pulled down the driveway to the cabin. Sully and Will met us as we stepped out of the vehicles. “We were getting worried, everything go okay?” Sully said.

  We just stood there for a moment without speaking, too much had happened and we were shell-shocked. “Unbelievable,” I finally managed to say and broke the hold of the silence sweeping over us.

  “We planted some deadheads at the nest,” Moonshine said.

  “They get faster and stronger after you freeze them, it’s not good,” Rotten said.

  “We had to chop off the heads of fifty-three of them, I’m never going to sleep again,” Princess said.

  Highland just shook his head and started unloading the cars.

  “Sarah has had a bad feeling today, not her usual monster feeling she says, just a bad feeling.” Will looked into the bed of the truck at all the guns. “Cool.”

  “She’s been depressed since shortly after you left this morning, maybe she’ll feel better now that you’re home,” Sully said, just as Sarah came running from the house.

  Sarah threw herself in Princess’s arms and held on.

  “We got Ginger some real food.” Princess rubbed the girl’s back.

  Sarah nodded.

  “We’re back safe and sound,” Princess said.

  Sarah nodded again.

  “Sully says you haven’t felt good today.”

  Sarah shook her head in the negative.

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  Sarah lifted her head and looked at Princess. “I have a bad, bad feeling, not like the monsters coming feeling, it’s worse than that. Bad, bad feeling.”

  Princess nodded. “I think we have that feeling too, sweetheart. Don’t we guys?”

  We nodded.

  “Something’s coming,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, we feel it, too,” Highland said. “Let’s get unloaded, it’s going to be a long night.”

  We loaded and distributed the weapons throughout the house, in every room you wouldn’t have to move more than a couple feet to be fully armed, and then took turns showering the zombie filth and stench off of us only to dress again in our stinky super hero suits. While Highland and Rotten pieced together our own tone generator and modified the cannon, the rest of us reinforced the barrier outside the downstairs door and moved upstairs to stare at the wall of glass.

  “There’s not much we can do with it,” Sully said.

  We did, however, move the furniture against the inside of the glass and flipped the heavy dining table to work as a shield. We had dinner on the floor sitting in a circle beside the upturned table. For a while the only sound was of our chewing and Ginger crunching away in the kitchen.

  “Okay, guys, we need to snap out of it,” Mrs. Williams said. “We’ve made it this far because we’ve kept a good attitude, we can’t lose that now.”

  “I think the men in black saw us today, or at least now they are aware of us,” Moonshine said. “I don’t know if they saw everything, because wouldn’t they have stopped us?”

  “They could have wanted to see where we are staying, but if they didn’t already know of us and where we are, they’re not as all powerful as I have given them credit for being.” Rotten looked at the kids who had headphones around their necks and ipods attached to their clothes. “If you hear any tone, be sure to slam those things on, we have no idea how this is going to work.”

  The cat darted out of the kitchen, the hair on its back stood on end and it ran up the stairs into the loft. “It won’t be long now,” Sarah said, scooting closer to her sister.

  We quickly moved the dishes into the kitchen and Sully and Moonshine pulled on the riot gear we’d found in the back of the sedans. Mrs. Williams and Connie took the girls into the master bedroom, and Princess and Moonshine went downstairs to guard the door. The rest of us stayed in the dark main room peering through the glass and waiting.

  “I hear an engine, maybe a few.” Rotten stared through the glass into the darkness. “I don’t see them though.”

  “Tone,” Will whispered and pulled on his headphones.

  “Floodlights!” I whispered down the stairs and Princess hit the switch.

  I ran back to hide behind the table and saw that deadheads, easily a hundred, surrounded us and stood unmoving in the yard and in the woods. And then a voice came over a loud speaker. “Please step outside and surrender your weapons, as you can see you are surrounded.”

  I peeked over the table and saw an armored vehicle in the driveway, not quite a tank, but pretty close, and a man stood up through the hatch on the roof with a bullhorn in his hands. In the yard, scattered among the dead, were a dozen men in black, their weapons trained on the house. It was my first time seeing the henchmen, at least live ones, and they looked much the same as they had been described to me. They were big, muscular, and each had a severe crew cut. I couldn’t see their eyes, o
f course, and for that I was grateful because the description of unnaturally blue eyes brought images of night shine to mind. I ducked out of view.

  Sully, truly looking like a character from a comic book in the all black and padded riot gear, opened the door onto the porch and stood in the opening. A spotlight from the mini tank illuminated him and he didn’t speak. I imagined him standing with his hands on his hips like Superman, but he didn’t do that, the rifle he had aimed at the man with the loud speaker occupied his hands.

  “Looting during a national emergency is a felony. You must surrender your weapons and come with us. You are under arrest,” the man in the tank announced.

  “Under whose authority?” Sully yelled back.

  “The government of the United States of America.”

  “Which branch?”

  “The only branch that is left. We’re it and we’re rebuilding. You will be treated fairly. We have a safe community for the survivors where we’re working together to rebuild and we will have a place for you. You must come with us now, stealing is a crime, but we will be lenient as we do understand the circumstances that pushed you to break the law.”

  “I think we’re going to pass on that, we’re staying here.”

  “You do not have the choice to stay, you are under arrest and you will be taken by force.” The men in black pointed their weapons at Sully.

  “Now!” I whispered and Rotten hit the switch on a small box that was wired to two amplifiers on the porch and Sully fired, knocking the man with the bullhorn out of the hatch. Then the screams began.

  Sully ducked down, scooted back in the house, and shut the door. The spotlight that had focused on the door darted around frantically for a moment and I looked down in the yard to see total chaos. The zombies moved so fast the henchmen never had a chance. The armored vehicle attempted to pull away but lost control and crashed into a tree, becoming wedged between the trunk and Mrs. Simpson’s pink Cadillac. The engine roared and the gears grinded and the tank pushed the caddy across the dirt, spilling it over on its side. Then the tank backed up again and hit a different tree.

  “Kill it,” Sully said. “You guys be ready, some may still be alive.”

  Rotten hit the switch and the zombies froze, many while in mid air and those fell crazily to the ground. The tank slammed into the caddy one more time and then stopped, the engine still rumbling. The men in black who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the deadheads were no more, there wasn’t even enough left of them to make a zombie, and a few of the zombies themselves had succumbed to massive injuries received in the brief and violent melee.

  Sully opened the door. “Out of the tank!”

  We waited.

  “We can turn off your signal again,” Sully warned.

  “No! No, don’t do that!” We heard a muffled voice. “There’s one in here. I’m coming out.”

  “Let’s see your hands first,” Sully said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” We saw one hand, and then the second. “I’m not armed, I’m just the driver.”

  “Come on out.”

  “I need to use one of my hands, I swear I’m not armed.”

  “Do it fast.”

  With one hand the man climbed up a small ladder and stepped awkwardly out of the hatch. He stood on top of the machine with both hands in the air, and turned slowly showing he had no weapons. He didn’t look like the other henchmen, he was much smaller and his hair was longer.

  “Jump down and walk toward the house. That’s it, stop right there. Michael, search him, Princess cover them.”

  “He’s clean,” Moonshine called up from downstairs.

  “Bring him up here,” Sully said, scanning the yard for movement.

  Moonshine pushed the man up the stairs and tied him in one of the heavy wooden dining room chairs.

  “I was just following orders,” the man began and upon closer inspection he seemed not such a man, but more of a teen and he had acne on his face.

  “Are there any more of you out there or any more in that tank?” Highland said.

  “No, there were only two of us in the Mrap, the tank, and there were four men each in the three jeeps. That was all of us, I swear.” He looked around at us, his brown eyes wide with fear and something else I couldn’t name, maybe excitement. “Oh, and the deadies, but you know about them. Pretty cool how you cancelled the signal, I knew someone would figure it out, at least I hoped someone would. And you pushed the button at just the right time, another second later I would have been zombie meat, that thing almost had me.” He spoke fast and I couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or if it was just his natural disposition.

  “We need to kill the zombies so we can turn off the signal.” Moonshine looked at the girls standing in the doorway with the headphones over their ears. “Just because they can’t hear it doesn’t mean it’s not doing them any harm.”

  The soldier looked over his shoulder at Rebekah and Sarah, and then turned to look at Will. “No, it’s not good for kids. The headphones are pretty smart, though.”

  “There must be a hundred of them,” Princess said.

  “Eighty-one at last count,” the teen said.

  “Are you always this helpful?” Sully pulled off the helmet.

  “Man, I had no idea what I was getting into, no idea. They recruited me out of college, I’m a techno geek, and I thought I found the dream job and the pay - wow! No one I know makes that kind of money. I’d been with them for six weeks when I got shipped here and they make me drive the Mrap? It’s not what I signed up for. Especially in a zombie apocalypse, it’s definitely not what I signed up for.”

  “You don’t really look like the rest of them,” Princess acknowledged.

  “The muscle heads? Those guys are just for show. Oh, they’d shoot you as soon as look at you, but they count on the fact that they look so intimidating, the baldheads, thick necks, and the blue contact lens. It’s psychological, and it works. You guys are only the second ones to fight back, that’s why they sent me out on this mission, the other Mrap guy got killed.”

  “Come on, we’re going to need everyone to get this done fast,” Highland grabbed the bag of knives. “Bring him. What your name?”

  “John Paul Brinkley, everyone just calls me Binks,” he said, as Moonshine untied him.

  “I sure hope all the men in black are dead,” I whispered.

  “Me, too.” Binks laughed nervously.

  “Get as much light as we can find and lets go kill some zombies.” Moonshine pulled Binks down the stairs and we followed. “Knock ‘em down and chop ‘em quick.” He shoved Binks against the truck. “Stay there.”

  “You know that thing can be remote controlled, don’t you?” He pointed at the tank on wheels. “And the deadies follow it, especially these guys, they’re programmed too.”

  “Wait. What?” Moonshine turned and looked at the tank. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, and I could have the deadies back to the compound before you could finish chopping them up.”

  “They follow it? Like in the trance, or like stopping and starting?” Rotten said.

  “In the trance, they stay zonked out, harmless, but they walk, and even jog along with Mrap as long as the signal is going. If you’ll let me get the controls we can move them out of the way, at least far enough to get the signal away from the kids, it’s not good for kids.”

  We looked at each other, we knew it could be a trick, and finally Highland spoke. “Where’s the remote?”

  “It’s in a case on the passenger side seat, big black thick case, you can’t miss it.” Binks held his hands up in the air. “I can get it if you like and get that thing out of here, it’ll be a lot easier moving it with remote than from inside the thing anyway.”

  “We’ll help you get it,” Sully said, nodded to Moonshine, and together they walked through the deadheads to the mini tank, their guns aimed at Binks.

  “I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t trust me either, especially since I’m wi
th these guys, but I swear I had no idea what was happening.” He opened the door and pulled out a large rubber or plastic suitcase. “I was hired to make toys, you know robots, remotes, stuff like that, I didn’t know about the deadies until I got here. Can we move back to the house? These things make me a nervous wreck.”

  Sully motioned him with the gun. “Everyone in the house. Not you,” he said. “You do your magic out here and if it works we’ll think about letting you inside.”

  “Okay, okay. I don’t blame you.” He set the case down on the concrete under the porch overhang and opened it, revealing a computer screen. The box unfolded as if it were made of cardboard, instead of electronics, metal, and plastic and Binks took a remote control in his hand. The armored vehicle backed up and smoothly turned around, pulling between the trees and the crushed caddy, and began to move down the driveway. Sully edged closer to the barrier in front of the door, but kept his gun aimed at the soldier’s head.