Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  About halfway through the B Side, the gears in my head start spinning. For whatever reason, I start thinking about the incident down by the bridge yesterday, the same melee I’d walked away from with a bite on my arm. But it wasn’t the bite that stuck out…it was the fact that the dead were afraid of the dogs. Maybe there was something to that. Or maybe I’d just imagined it. I had to be sure. I pulled off the headphones and wrangled up the bigger dogs. June and Jeff and Tyson. Okay, Jeff wasn’t that big, but he was my right hand man. The smaller dogs I corralled into the house and left behind, They didn’t like that. The sounds of their yapping didn’t fade until I reached the end of the drive, where I started walking up the road, looking for trouble with three dogs at my back. I cant believe I was actually looking for a damn infected person. What the hell was I thinking? Knowing my luck, I was going to run into more than I could handle, but still I pressed on.

  I probably walked over mile and quickly realized my dumb ass should’ve brought water. The heat of the day was only amplified by the asphalt beneath us. The dogs actually started walking in the grass after a bit, panting and looking at me like I was the biggest asshole on the planet. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but I found it hilarious that when I actually wanted an infected person, I couldn’t find one. I started making absurd noises and banging on random trashcans, trying to get something to come out and after me. I even walked through a small neighborhood about a mile and half out. There wasn’t a thing there. I eyed the passing windows, thinking maybe I’d spy someone inside. One of the dead that maybe had been trapped in their house when this all started. But even that proved to be fruitless. Where the hell had they all gone? Disgusted with the stupidity of it all, I head back. More for the sake of the poor dogs than me at that point. It wasn’t exactly their idea to come marching out here looking for a zombie to harass.

  As I get to the end of the drive back home, I hear the dogs in the house yapping away. Had they seriously not shut the hell up the entire time I was gone? It seemed impossible, but then again dogs were some of the most tenacious little bastards I’d ever met. I shook my head as I walked back up the drive, silently cursing them with every step I took. As I rounded the back of the house and started yelling at the mutts, I realize my return isn’t what they’re going on about. My eyes pop wide to see another group of dogs had showed up. This was getting goddamn ridiculous. Were the dogs putting out the word that this place was sacred, that I was some messiah, the only human left to feed them and give them belly rubs? There were like eight of them swarming the back patio having some ass-showing contest between the ones inside through the glass. I wade through the lot of them, cussing, and shooing them away from the door. They were damn near knocking me over, and I was starting to feel like Mr. Parker fighting off the Bumpus hounds right before they destroyed Christmas dinner. “Sons a bitches! Bumpuses!” As I drift into the epicenter of this Category 5 dog hurricane, I catch something out of the corner of my eye, and it’s not another dog. It’s one of the damn dead. Yeah, that’s right, the irony was not lost on me. Apparently, all I had to do was just sit in my own yard and one would’ve come to me. Instead, I walked over two miles and almost got heatstroke for absolutely nothing. I push my way out of the dog pile and run at her. She’s already on top of me. Was it just me or were these things getting faster with every passing day? When I first saw Ted it was like the original Night of the Living Dead speed. Now they were encroaching into Dawn of the Dead speed. Next was 28 Day’s Later speed, and my ass didn’t want to be around for that. I grab her and spin her round, throwing her off me. A task that would’ve been easier had she been wearing clothes, but she was ass-naked and half her skin was just falling off the muscle. And just like the events from yesterday, I’m standing there with pieces of flesh in my hand that pulled right off her body. The dogs take action. Especially June, she’s front and center, putting herself between me and this screaming banshee of a dead bitch that’s hellbent on feasting on my colon. And just like I’d thought, it happened. Fear came to the face of dead in front of me. With each snarl and lunge of the Akita, she flinched and backed away. I hadn’t imagined it, they did fear dogs. So I turned up the volume. I threw open the back door and there’s now over a dozen dogs at the heels of this infected woman in front of me and what I see in her cloudy eyes is terror. Pure panic. It’s right then and there that an unnerving thought crosses my mind. If they can feel fear, then can they feel love? Sadness? Hope? Were they not really reanimated corpses, but the people they always had been trapped in a state of madness, sickness, and insatiable hunger? Could I help her? Could I cure her? In the next second I buried all those thoughts and I helped her the only way I knew how, I decapitated her and watched her headless body crumple into a swarm of angry dogs. You pictured that in slow motion didn’t you? I didn’t have to picture it, because to me it really did seem as if it played out that way. I wasn’t happy with myself. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t. That quivering mass among the mutts was someone’s daughter, granddaughter, niece, best friend, girlfriend, perhaps even mother. I shooed all the dogs away and gathered her up. Well, I tried to. I tried throwing her into the front bucket of the tractor about three times. Each time her skin would just rip right off in my arms and she’d fall back down with a sickening splat. The backyard was becoming an absolute mess. I slipped on the loose skin and fell on my ass twice before I finally lowered the bucket of the tractor all the way to the ground so I could just roll her into it. I hauled her as far away from the house as I thought reasonable, for obvious reasons. If that deadeater was getting a free meal, it wasn’t going to be in my backyard.

  I went up the road a piece and lowered her into a deeper section of the culvert and then took the bucket and covered her over with rocks and dirt. It was a shallow grave to say the least, but it was better than just leaving her in the middle of the road, which oddly I could’ve done because its not like anyone was using the road anymore. As I headed back home, something took my attention away. I killed the tractor at the edge of the cornfield by the run and observed the huge section of mashed down crop that the dogs were giving hell to the night before. It probably wasn’t the best idea on earth, but I jumped down and made my way over there because, obviously, I liked the idea of being more stressed out than I currently was. As usual, June and Jeff had followed me out, they never wanted to leave my side. They were close on my heels as I made my way down over the bank and stopped at the water’s edge, trying to make sense of what I saw in front of me. The muddy areas of the embankment held the obvious signs of dog tracks, I already knew who those belonged to, but the other tracks that lie there weren’t so welcoming. Mainly due to the fact that I had no idea what they were. I swear there were human footprints in there and maybe even handprints, though those could’ve been from the bodies being dragged across the streambed. I was no animal tracker, but the deeper impressions I saw were what appeared to be hooves. Which made me feel relieved, because now I had thoughts of some demon or the devil himself, cloven hooves and all, carrying a pitchfork that he stabbed through the dead and carried off to the cornfields to eat…Made total sense. So my next move would be to leave and pretend I didn’t see those tracks that made absolutely no damn sense. But that’s not what happened. With some much needed reflection ( 4 seconds ) I decided to go ass-deep into the corn, following the trail of the hooved deadeater, because those are the kind of dumbass decisions you make when you think you’re the last person on earth. Only a few paces into the mashed corn, I pull out the sword and let the blade lead the way, because that’s what you do in these situations for dramatic effect. If I do a good job pretending I’m a badass, maybe the deadeater will believe it. It will hear the slice of the blade from the sheath and my confident steps approaching, and retreat to another county where hopefully it will be someone else’s problem. If someone else even exists. My confidence was only elevated by the fact that my most loyal canine companions had decided to not even bother crossing the stream to join me. They sat there on the ot
her bank with a look of “We’re just gonna stay right here. Good luck with that,” painted on their faces. I could only hope to achieve half the level of bravery those dogs showed towards the dead, and now they were staying put in the face of traveling the path of the beast. What the hell was I doing? The path of the crushed corn was only made eerier by the fact that it was stained in reds and purples from the blood of the infected. And if that wasn’t enough to run me off, I started seeing body parts. A severed hand here, a chewed up leg there. This thing was taking ‘lunch on the go’ to heights even the surliest of Americans could hope to achieve. I remember the words “Shit.” And “Jesus Christ” slipping from under my mask over and over every time I spotted a body part on the path. I started shaking my head in the stupidity of this venture. Like what in the hell was I hoping to achieve? Did I just want to see this thing? Was that really all? Like I was gonna catch a glimpse of this creature and say “Oh, cool, I can sleep better now,” and just walk back home. Your guess was a good as mine. My heart just kept beating faster and harder. I was actually starting to be able to feel my own pulse thump out a beat inside the gasmask as I kept a pace up so slow that it would’ve pissed off a two-hundred year old tortoise. Have you ever been in a cornfield, or at least near one? The way the wind would caress the stalks, belting out a tender symphony of peaceful bliss? You may not believe this, but the sounds of the wind slithering across the corn wasn’t exactly music to my ears right then. It sounded like whispers, and worse yet, it occasionally would sound like movement. And I’m not talking about the movement of birds or squirrels, I’m talking about the movement of bodies, human bodies, stumbling through the maize, right beside of me. That’s because they were…Just like something right of a nightmare, the dead just start popping out through the rows right into the path I’m treading. I didn’t even run at first. It’s like my mind wouldn’t even process the gravity of the shit-storm I was now in the middle of. Or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t exactly know what I was looking at…the dead, they were changing. None of them wore clothes. It’s like they’d stripped them all off because they too hated the heat of the day. And beyond that, their flesh was coming off. I had two right on top of me that had no skin at all, just a canvas of viscous muscle that gleamed wet in the daylight. I felt like I was being attacked by Bodies: The Exhibition. I took action. I hacked the leg right off the first one coming at me and pushed another one down. I started running as fast as I could, back the way I came as I heard the dogs barking become louder and louder in the distance. The dead were appearing in droves, one right after the other, popping out of the corn, clawing for me as I sped through the path. And the sounds they were making…The woman I had just dumped in the culvert had been making the same, a terrible flurry of screeches and squalls and honking that no human could’ve ever produced when alive. All I could hear behind me now was a deluge of falling corn and screaming that curdled my blood and doubled my pace. I probably broke a county high school long jump record when I cleared that streambed. Jeff and June were right there, following me as I made my way up the embankment. I fired up the tractor and threw it into the highest gear which was barely fast enough. I looked back to see at least a dozen of the dead stumbling over one another as they ran full tilt, reaching for the back of the tractor with a look in their eyes that I’ll never forget. It was pure, unbridled rage. A rage that was only quelled by the anger of the dogs. Those dead bastards parted like the Red Sea when June and Jeff went into them. They fell over and whimpered, their screams of anger turning into screams of terror. With a look of insanity, I pulled a fast u-turn and went head-on, right back into them. I crushed three right off the bat and then killed the machine. I jumped down and decapitated two more, carefully going after the ones that the dogs had riled. It was odd watching them, when they saw me they would go berserk, but then when the dogs would get within a few feet of them they’d back off and scream like they were about to be murdered. So I stood right there between June and Jeff, we kept our ground in the grass, I only ran away from safety long enough to drop another one. It was a good tactic, but, as the minutes trudged on, I started getting worn out. Fear began to displace my anger. I became too tired to even swing that damn sword anymore. And then it happened, one of the dead came rushing at me, a bit braver than the rest had been, and June just lit his ass up. I’m talking teeth to arm, like one of those police takedown videos where a German Shepard clamps down like a vice. A could barely move as I watch her shake around while this dead shithead wailed like a mother in mourning…And then it happened. She let go and…well, this zombie exploded. It’s the only simple way I can describe what happened right then and there after her teeth left its flesh. It began diggin at the fresh bite wound like it was trying to rip its own arm off, but apparently it was too late. In absolute awed disgust, I watched as the muscles began writhing and pulsating up the zombie’s arm, into its neck, and around its skull. Everything from the shoulders up began to swell and within the scope of a few seconds, its head was the size of a damn beach ball. It was an undulating mass of violence that was hard to watch, yet impossible to look away from. Its eyes filled with fluid and exploded as it screamed out a death knell that sent the other zombies running back twenty feet and me covering my ears as the dogs howled. And then the explosion came. Its entire head detonated under the intense cranial pressure. It sent a deluge of skull and brain matter raining down on me and the dogs…and right at that moment, an epiphany came. I looked at June and realized just why she had been locked in a high security cage in a military chopper. She wasn’t a General’s pet. She was a goddamn bioweapon. I barely got the chance to process that fact when the last few of the dead came charging back in. I jumped up and knocked one down right in front of June. I held it down and screamed “Get ‘em! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” to entice her to attack. And it worked. She laid into this one and I jumped away, once again watching the horrifying result of her bite. The zombie writhed around on the ground, giant boils emerging and exploding everywhere across its body as its head too inflated and denoted all over the grass. I smiled. I just didn’t know what else do right then. I smiled the most wicked smile that actually hurt my face beneath the mask. I then felt it, confidence, sweet, maddening, confidence. I also felt teeth sink into my shoulder.

  “Son of a bitch!” I screamed out as I leaned into the zombie that had bit me. I hip tossed its ass and began to bring Orion down over and over. Fifty rage-fueled hacks later I’d turned that fucker into what resembled beef stew with legs. It was an end that would’ve had any other zombie begging for a bite from June. When I finally finished my insanity, I pulled up my mask and spit on what was left of its remains. So much for my poetic humanization of these things. I grit my teeth and grabbed my shoulder as I slowly walked back to the tractor. The dogs followed me, panting as they went.

  The journey back was odd to say the least. I kept scolding myself for my own stupidity as I felt the bite wound sting on my shoulder. Trust me, it wasn’t lost on me that if this had been a classic zombie movie scenario, my ass would’ve been dead TWICE. I still remember those “How long would you survive a zombie apocalypse?” tests on Facebook. I think I recall mine saying eight months, so much for that accuracy. But for whatever reason, the bites weren’t doing a thing to me, besides pissing me off at this point. Of course, all that was overshadowed by what I had just bore witness to. A dog biting a zombie and that zombie internally liquefying and pressurizing till it exploded. It was unbelievable. And frightening. Why was it frightening you ask? Think about it, did her bite only do that to the infected, or to anyone? And if the answer was the latter, that smile I had donned after she killed that second zombie wasn’t going to be there any longer. She was obviously a valuable asset in the current situation, but I knew things just wouldn’t be the same.

  We were greeted back at the house by a merry band of dogs that welcomed us home like we were war heroes. It felt pretty rad. I washed off all the brain matter and god knows what other fluids, and went right to dr
essing the damn wound on my shoulder. Even if I was somehow immune, I wasn’t immune to general infection. Human’s mouths were some of the dirtiest things on the planet, so that being said, I couldn’t even imagine what kind of poop-stained, paramecium butt-sex orgies were going on in the mouths of the dead. The thought of that made me scrub the wound just a little bit harder. I went back out into the yard, shirtless, with my new wound fully dressed and just plopped in the chair out front. It was slowly becoming my new favorite spot to keep my eye on the ever-unpredictable apocalypse. June came up to me and started licking at my hands as I stared off. I winced a little bit and jerked my hands away, but then realized how ridiculous as I was being when I saw that look of hurt in her eyes. Her actions were obviously meant to console me, a simple gesture to see if I was okay. I really wasn’t. But having my brain filled with the idea that this dog’s spit could kill me became absolute hogwash as I started recalling the times she’d literally jumped up on me and licked me right on the lips, in this very same chair no less. She’d shared food bowls and water dishes with all the other dogs, so if her saliva was so deadly surely I’d only have one dog left at this point. There was more to it. There had to be. Either she had hollow fangs and venom she could inject when she felt like it, or her fluids were only deadly to the zombies. I started believing it was the second choice. The dog was a damn zombie killer. Apparently raised in some lab for damage control…right? But where were they taking her? And why the hell did the pilot stop it all? They were questions I’d probably never get answers to, but I was okay with that.