Dawnland (Book 2): Hella Kills

by Karen Carr

  “Fine. Get going. Stick to the side of the road. You see anything, duck in the woods. We’ll do the same.” Zeke picked up items from the stock pike and started handing them out to everyone until the last one was gone. I ended up with a rifle and a handgun.

  Zeke handed me a compass. “You know how to use one of these?”

  I snatched it out of his hand without a reply, and put it in my pocket. “I wish I had a pair of track shoes,” I mumbled to Huck as I lifted my boot covered foot. I never had to run in steel toes before.

  Before we left, Zora took one more trip through the corpses, grabbing a colorful scarf from one and tying up the rest of her hair, and pulling off several pairs of sunglasses from others. She handed a pair of sunglasses to me and one to Huck, before placing another one on her eyes.

  “Sun will be setting into our vision,” she said.

  I had to wipe globs of flesh from my pair of mirrored aviators before I put them on.

  “Oh, wait,” Zora said. “I forgot to get you a shirt.”

  She dashed out, one more time, into the field of the dead like it was her own personal boutique. She picked and poked and prodded the corpses until finally taking a jacket and then a shirt off a suitably sized body.

  “Here you are, not too slimy.” She handed me a surprisingly clean and white tee-shirt with the American flag emblazoned on the front of it.

  “American woman,” Huck said as I put it on.

  “You know I got to go,” I said and picked up my rifle again.

  Zora came up behind me and tied a red bandana around my head. “Now you are ready, you war machine.” She laughed. “You remember how to fire that thing?” She motioned to the rifle.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll figure it out if I have to.”

  Most of the zeroes were coming from Sanford, so I didn’t think we would run into many on our jog. I had killed enough by now, but it still sped my heart up when I saw them. Just in case I forgot how to use a gun, I picked a large knife, sticking it in my boot and a canteen which I strapped to my back.

  Huck, Zora and I said goodbye to the others and started to jog down the road. Huck and I wore boots, which made a pounding noise on the road with each step. The boots were heavy on my feet, but they had been practical back at the village in the green and walking through corpses. Zora had found a great pair of running shoes and was jogging circles around us.

  “Rub it in,” I said. “You couldn’t find a pair like that for me?”

  “Sorry babe, found a nice pair of Nikes but it had a bite taken out of it.” Zora smiled.

  Soon, I found my rhythm and sucked the fresh air in and out of my lungs, clearing them of left over bad energy. Jogging along the road made me feel free. I didn’t want to live in Haverlyn Village anymore. I should have set out on the road a long time ago. This is what I was meant to do. Rescue my friends and save the world, one massively clunky step at a time.

  The sun lowered on the horizon, shining a brilliant bright red across the sky, highlighting the clouds that would soon block the stars from view. It was so peaceful, nature far and wide, purple flowers and daffodils blooming, bees and wasps floating through the air.

  I wondered what the land would look like in five years, after nature cracked the roads and structures with growing trees expanding their branches through windows and roots pushing up through the ground. Holes in the road, made from a snowy winter, would never be fixed. Trees that had fallen down due to blustery storms would never be removed. Fallen power lines would never be replaced, useless in a time without electricity.

  Which predator would take over now that humans were mostly gone? We had already seen the deer population run through the village. The wild dogs were out there howling. Foxes, badgers, ground hogs, would they expand their territory? We had found chickens, but what about all the other farm animals covering the south? Cows and ducks and goats and the animals in the Asheboro zoo. They were all penned up with no one to feed them.

  I felt the skin of my heels rub against my boots and bubble away from my flesh, blisters were surely forming. Each step became a half a shade harder. We had the map and I had my compass, but without GPS and any kind of hand-held it was impossible for me to know where we were and how much farther we had to go

  “Left side, three o’clock,” Huck said, raising his gun and keeping his pace.

  A nearly naked zero staggered out of the woods. I slowed down and took out my knife as another one appeared, this one completely naked. They were both males and looked so strange together, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to blush.

  “Keep going,” Huck said, prompting me to go forward with a soft nudge to my back. “We can out-run them.” Zora was jogging ahead of us and had not noticed the zeroes.

  “What about the others? The Professor and Stan?” I asked in heaving breaths.

  “Shit,” Huck said. We both slowed down. Huck raised his knife. “You take the one on the right, I’ll get the left.”

  The one on the right had a missing arm and a poked-out eye, it was a safe bet that he would be painless to kill. He was also, at least, wearing boxers. The one on the left was stark naked, but closer to me, so I proceeded to charge him with my knife held high. I plunged my knife into his head just as he grabbed my hair. The blade slid off his skull—it was harder to penetrate than I thought. Everyone else made it look easy. The thing grabbed my neck with his other hand. I staggered backwards with its weight and fell over.

  The naked zombified man was now smothering me with his weight. His rancid flesh came in contact with mine when my shirt lifted up. The feeling was putrefying and I had to hold my breath so that I wouldn’t puke. Huck ran toward me with his knife extended.

  “No,” I yelled. I wanted to kill this one myself.

  I pushed the thing off of my body and plunged the knife into its skull one more time, right through the eye. This time I made contact with the brain, and the undead man turned dead.

  Zora jogged back to us. “What are you guys doing? We can’t waste any more time.”

  “Trying to save the others from being eaten,” I said. I put my boot on the man’s neck and tried to pull my knife out, but it was wedged tight in his eye socket and his neck gave way beneath my foot.

  Huck came over, twisted the knife free, wiped it off with a large leaf and handed it back to me. “Good job, Hella killer.” He smiled. “You gave me the easy one.”

  “I needed the practice.” I looked down at my American Flag tee, which stayed remarkably free of gut stains.

  “Get the bodies off the road. We don’t want them to be seen from the air.” Huck dragged the one he had killed into the tall pine trees lining the side of the road.

  “Help me?” I asked Zora. Zora threw a piece of cardboard on the corpse’s private parts and then we dragged him into the trees.

  When we were done, I sat down in the grass and took off my boots. “I can’t walk in these things anymore.”

  “We can rest for a minute, Hella killer.” Zora smiled and sat next to me. “Looks like you got a new nickname. Rest. One minute.” She raised her index finger.

  Huck sat down next to me and regarded me with a gleam in his eyes and a knowing grin. “We’re going to get through this, aren’t we?” he asked. He took off his sunglasses, wiped them with his shirt, and put them back on.

  “Yea, we are,” I answered. I opened my canteen and smelled the contents. It was water. It smelled fresh enough, so I took a sip and handed it to Zora.

  Zora drank a deep swig. “Walker Bright Road is just ahead. I saw it.”

  I slid the sunglasses from my eyes to the top of my head so that I could examine my feet. I took off my sock and saw gleaming read blisters covering both heals. “I’m going barefoot. I can’t put my boots back on without Band-Aids and Neosporin.”

  I stood, smiling as a warm breeze wafted over my face and through my tangled hair. We were almost there. We jogged along in silence, this time at a slower pace, the texture of the ground making my feet f
eel like they were a part of the earth. Thankfully we didn’t see any more zeroes, nevertheless I thought about the one I just killed. I reviewed what went wrong and rehearsed what I should have done instead.

  We turned down Walter Bright road and slowed down to a walk. It was quiet and lonely and isolated out here in the middle of the tall trees. My profound sense of freedom was replaced by a profound sense of loneliness as the sun settled onto the horizon, making the shadows longer and the woods creepier.

  Once we were sure we were over a thousand feet from the 15/501, we stopped. Up ahead, there were three houses, a brick ranch, an old two story farmhouse and a trailer home. The trailer home had a collapsed awning and the farm house had no windows, but the ranch looked reasonable to inhabit.

  Before we could check to see if there was water in the well, out from behind the farmhouse staggered a family of zeroes with open arms as if to greet us. Even in their undead state, they had a family resemblance. Three generations dragged their feet toward us, with two sets of grandparents, a middle age couple and several teenagers.

  “What are we waiting for?” Zora said. She ran toward the teenagers and started slicing away with her bowie knife.

  “I’ve got those two,” I said, pointing to a tall, skinny woman in a flowing blue dress and the man staggering along next to her. I was still out of breath from the jog and barefoot, but I dropped my boots and sack and plunged forward with my knife.

  “I’ll take the old folks,” Huck said. He walked toward the elderly couple with no sense of urgency. I caught him grinning at me again, like he was enjoying my new sense of pride in killing the zeroes, in taking away their sickness so that they could be dead in peace.

  I let the woman come toward me and drew her away from the others. Her blue dress was ripped revealing a white petticoat below. Nobody wore petticoats anymore. Her eyes matched her dress and were striking. They penetrated mine as she walked toward me. Her hair blew with a gust of wind, covering her face in the process. She still moved forward with no intention of swiping the hair from her eyes. A simple human gesture would have been all I needed to stop. She traipsed forward and I traipsed backward over a pile of firewood.

  As she tried to traverse the firewood, her dress caught on a log. Again, she showed no signs of trying to free it, of being human, and instead just tried to move forward. The force of her weight caused her to fall over. Instead of killing her that instant, I used my knife to free her.

  She continued to walk after me until I led her into the woods. There, away from the houses, I took my knife and raised it to her skull. This time I was patient. I waited until I knew I could get a good shot, and plunged the knife into her head. Once I retrieved the knife from her skull, I ran back to do the same with her mate. I felt like a serial killer luring my victims into the bushes. It worked like a charm, and I was able to kill the man in the exact same spot as the woman. He landed right on top of her.

  I walked back to the center of the yard, too exhausted to run anymore. My harms hurt from wielding the knife and getting it unstuck. My back hurt for the same reason. My legs hurt from jogging close to two miles. All I wanted to do was sit on a log. I was happy to see that Huck and Zora had done their jobs and the rest of the undead were dead.

  “Good idea,” Huck said. “Hiding them in the woods.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “We’ll have to haul these corpses over there later,” Huck gestured to the pile of bodies out in the open. “I’m going to go get the others.” Huck looked around. “I don’t see any more zombies.”

  “I’m coming too,” Zora said. “You going to manage on your own?”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “I’ll be super safe in another few minutes.” I took off my bandana and used it to wipe my face.

  “Right you will, Hella killer. We will make sure the others are too.” Huck smiled and gave me a swift pat on the rear before he took off down the road with Zora.

  I regarded the bodies lying on the ground and looked for something to cover them. Zora and Huck would probably only be gone for a few short minutes, but I didn’t want to stare at the blood bath. Zora’s kills were particularly gory, apparently she had found a new weapon because the corpses’ heads were hacked by an axe.

  A tarp rested next to the wood pile. I walked over to it and grabbed it, hoping to use it to cover the corpses. When I pulled it, a large rat snake slithered out from under it, surprising me so much that I dropped it again. I let it slither off into to the woods, and then tried again, pulling at the tarp until it came free.

  I dragged the tarp over to the bodies, but Zora’s kills were too far apart from Huck’s. Not wanting to stare at the mess Zora made with her axe, I covered her victims first. I’d either have to pile Huck’s bodies on top of Zora’s, which I did not ever want to do again, or find something else to cover the rest. When I looked around for another tarp, I noticed a face staring at me through the trailer’s window.

  Surprised that I wasn’t scared or even startled to see a zero at the window, I watched him. The face was of a man’s, bloated and fat with signs of obesity, but sagging so much it looked like his skin was melting away from his skull. The man was bald with the exception of tufts of hair above his ears and on his chin, making him look like a grotesque clown.

  I decided to watch the zero, to use his unnatural life as a barometer for my virus. His head explodes and we’re safe. Thinking that there might be food in the trailer, or other useful things that I didn’t want covered in guts, I pulled the handle and opened the trailer door. The oaf didn't even realize I had set him free, so I had to whistle for him to come out. Taking a few steps back, I waited for him to descend the steps and come out into the yard. I would then lure him into the bushes like the others.

  The undead man was almost too large to fit through the trailer door. He was also wearing a woman’s dress, a long maxi dress covered in stains that emphasized his weight. The thing finally pressed through the doors and landed on the ground.

  “Come on, get up,” I coaxed. I did not want this thing to explode where it landed.

  The man-undead-thing managed to get to his knees. I reached forward and grabbed his arm to help him to his feet. Once he was walking, he came after me like a predictably empty headed zero. His weight and heavy dress made it hard for him to walk, but I managed to entice him into the woods. He stumbled over a rotten log and plunged to the ground. This time, I left him where he lay and rested against a big tree trunk a distance away from him and waited and watched for any sign of my virus.

  CHAPTER 4

  The sun was gone but a red light still glowed low on the horizon. It would be pitch black in a matter of minutes, maybe half an hour. My stomach rolled with the noises from the woods, the others were close but every second I waited made my fear grow. The night birds were out; owls and frogs and other loud creatures were singing their tunes in the forest.

  A small pop from above made me scream. Dark clumps of flesh hit my head and fell on my knees and I jumped to my feet in an instant.

  The man’s head had exploded, but his position on the ground would not have reached above mine. I looked up in the tree and gasped when I saw another zero high above draped over a branch, guts dripping from the remains of his head. How stupid I was not to have looked up before I sat down.

  Just then Huck came racing into the yard followed by the others. “Hella,” he called.

  “I’m right here,” I said, emerging from the woods.

  “We heard you scream,” Huck said. “Are you hurt?”

  I smiled and blushed. “No,” I said.

  “What’s on your head?” Zora asked.

  “Zombie guts,” I said. I placed a hand on my head and wished for a bucket of water to wash my hair. I never should have taken off my bandana, but once again, my American flag shirt was as red, white and blue as ever.

  Zeke eyed the setting sun and then scanned the yard, surveying each house separately. “Let’s get what we can from out here and hole up in the ra
nch for the night.”

  “I’ll take the trailer,” I said.

  “Stan and I will take the farmhouse,” Zeke said. He smirked at Stan in a friendly-joking way. I wondered what the two of them talked about on the way here.

  “I’ll take the yard,” Huck said.

  “That leaves me and the Professor with the ranch,” Zora said. “I’ll make sure it’s nice and homey for us.”

  “Let’s go,” Zeke said and clapped his hand for emphasis.

  I was surprised to see Stan pat Zeke on the back and keep his hand on his shoulder on the way to the farmhouse. Stan seemed to have no trouble making friends with Zeke, a man who I couldn’t read to save my life and a man whom hated me when we first met. Stan and Zeke were opposites, but they must have found something in common to share. The apocalypse did that to people, made friends out of strangers instantly.

  I regarded Huck and remembered my feelings when I first met him. We both thought it was love at first site, but now I wondered if it was something else. My feelings for Huck were still strong, but my feelings for everyone else, and for all of humanity were growing stronger. I wondered if the love I felt for him was more like a feeling of hope that we could rebuild our world together, all of us from Zeke to Stan to Saudah to Zora.

  Huck was searching the yard, his body hidden in shadows from the setting sun. His tan face gleamed with sweat, the stubble on his jaw making him look like an animal. He smiled and waved and gave me the peace sign with his fingers. I waved back in a two fingered salute before entering the trailer.

  The trailer was a mess and stunk like the dead. The small living quarters were jammed with piles of magazines, empty beverage cans, and dozens of junk food wrappers. My hope of finding anything edible was rewarded when I went into the kitchen. When I opened the kitchen cabinet, bags of Cheetos, chips and pretzels bursted out of them and fell to the counter. Behind the chips, left in the cabinets, were several rows of canned Spaghettios, Cheese Ravioli and Beefaroni. One quick look through the drawers found not one but two can openers. I grabbed both. Looking under the sink, I found some garbage bags and stuffed one full of the food.