Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  “See all these bodies? I gotta move them away from us. Somewhere out there so that thing doesn’t come around.” I was basically setting her up for a boring day. “I got books you can read, or you can play with the dogs, or whatever, but just please, stay in the yard, okay?” She nodded and then I jumped right into it. I fired up the tractor and moved the first load of zombie waste to the far side of the bridge and that‘s when I got my first look at how much damage the deadeater had done to the pile I’d amassed the night before. It hadn’t taken away quite all of the bodies. There were still about a dozen strewn about like it had been throwing them around, digging for the better bits to haul off.

  I dumped the first load of bodies from the tractor bucket and start looking around. The ground is almost a solid purple from the drag marks leading across the creek and into the cornfield. I start thinking about the numbers involved. If I manage to at least get as many bodies piled here as last night, then it should, in theory, keep this thing from coming into my yard every night until I can get every last body out of here. So I started toiling away. The more the day goes on, the more I start getting mixed emotions about this whole endeavor. I feel like I’m busting my ass just to keep this thing from coming near me and my dogs and it just feels…like bullshit. I feel like I’m paying off a mob boss to keep him from burning my house down. In my mind I go “Well, when all these bodies are gone, it won’t be an issue. Just keep working. It will take a few days, but it will be worth it.” Will it though? Who’s to say that when all these bodies are vacuumed up, that thing won’t get used to the nightly offerings. When it comes back on night four or five or ten or whenever, and there’s no delicious zombies, then it comes right through my house looking for more. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I get this feeling like it wasn’t going to end; I’ll become this slave to the beast and everyday will consist of me rounding up dead things to keep it happy. It was probably all an overly self-concocted scenario that had no place in reality, but I was making it my reality. Every time I went to dump another tractor load, I just got more pissed. I didn’t ask for these zombies to come here. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want trouble. I was sick of everyone and everything. That’s why I destroyed all my shit in the first place. I just wanted to be left alone, but here I was with the trouble of the world always finding me. And it found me YET again when the tractor died mid-run back through the field. At first I think it’s the gas, but no. I had a can back at the house and refill it with about five gallons…nothing. I spent a few hours with Maddie handing me tools in the heat of the field trying to bring the goddamn thing back to life, but it just isn’t happening. And the more that went on, the more angry I became. I started throwing things and cussing till I realize I am scaring her and the dogs. I felt about two feet tall right then. That just wasn’t me. I was scared. There was no way I was going to be able to move the rest of the bodies without the aid of that tractor. I had to find another one. I told Maddie to stay put and gathered June and Jeff and set off in search of a working tractor with a loader. I honestly thought the task would be simple, given the area, but it just wasn’t. The first few I found had no loaders. Then I found one that did but I couldn’t get it to start either. An hour turned to two turned to three. I couldn’t keep that up. I was over a mile away from the house and I didn’t want to go any further out than that. It was around that time I rolled up on one of the larger farms down the road and discover a backhoe. She’s a beaut and to the total joy of my heart, she starts up. I had this huge smile on my face and gave a thumbs up to the dogs as they sat there on the barn floor wagging their tails. They had no clue what was going on, but they’re no less stoked for me.

  I pulled the rig out of the barn and killed the engine for a moment. That’s when I heard the gun shots. Not at me, not near me, but a ways off. They echo up through the valley and send this haunting shockwave through the air. And they didn’t stop. They just kept galloping and puttering. It sounded like someone had opened up a damn shooting range down the road. More specifically, one near my house. I feel a wave of nausea hit me so hard it feels like my guts are going to drop out. I don’t know what the gunshots are for, or who or what they’re aimed at, but I waste no time jumping back in the Bronco and screaming back down the road with Jeff and June holding on for dear life in the back.

  I went down a side road that rounded the backside of the property and took a detour right through the neighbor’s yard. This is about a half mile from my house. I turned the engine off and began creeping through the woods where the downed helicopter was now being overrun with weeds. The gun shots are less frequent, but getting louder which was a sickening revelation that they are, in fact, near my house. I then hear the dogs barking and people yelling. Another gunshot resounds. Not long after this, there is silence. June and Jeff are whining beside me. Something is terribly wrong. The scenarios are playing through my mind at random, each one more devastating than the other. I end up tying the dogs to a tree at the edge of the woods and then started creeping up the row of pines that led to the backyard. I stop and listen, repeat, there’s nothing at first. I then hear some grumbling and windows being smashed. My fears started turning to this fire in my gut. I hadn’t brought any of the guns. All I had was Orion, so I draw her out quietly and walk out from behind the ivy trellises I’d been cowering behind. That’s when I see the bodies. I drop my sword. My yard is littered with downed dogs. Some of them are still whining and trying to get up from the gunshots they’ve taken. My heart starts racing. It’s inside my head. I cant even hear anything over the thump-thump of my panicked sorrow as I ran to the back patio. There’s Pete. He’s gone. He hasn’t been shot. Someone stomped him out with their boot. He’s a goddamn mess, and right then and there I lose my mind. I can’t even see straight. I stumble around and my world is spinning. This has to be a nightmare. I walk around the house to see a group of men escorting Maddie in chains down my driveway. They have bags with them which I assume is all my food and supplies. I scream at the top of my lungs through my gasmask. Not even sure what I said, but it almost tore my throat. I’m literally shaking at this point as this group of assholes turns around and start smiling at me.

  “What the fuck?” One of them said. The sight of a masked man had them slightly entertained. One of them steps forward, clearly the ringleader, clearly, Maddie’s Daddy. He grins through this grubby beard.

  “Well hey there…you must be Cleaver. Maddie can’t shut up about you.” I said nothing, I start looking around the yard at all the dead dogs, and I began trembling even more. “Yeah, sorry about that. They were being…difficult. I just came for my girl. That’s all. They got in the way.” Still, I said nothing. I physically couldn’t. Have you ever been so upset that you just can’t even formulate words? I was about ten miles past that threshold. Daddy finally talks again.

  “Okay…well, I guess we’ll just be going now. See you Mr. Cleaver. Good luck.”

  I ripped up my mask. One of them starts chuckling. “Is he crying?” I was. It was one of the reasons I’d pulled down the mask in the first place, but I no longer cared. I was a man. Men cry. These things before me, they weren’t men. I had more respect for the zombies.

  “You’re not going anywhere, you fucking worm.” I’d had never said anything that sinister to a living thing in my life. His eyes grew big.

  “Oh, really? What do you…” And before he could say another word, I was pulling the mask back down and marching away from him. “Hey asshole! I’m talking to you!” I was finished talking. I heard two gunshots erupt, a bullet barely grazes my shoulder, but I just kept walking. I didn’t even flinch. If I died, I died, if I lived, they died. It was a win-win in, my head. I was in the dark place. A cage forged in shades of cast-iron wrath. All I hear is angry shouting as I walked to the giant crate in the backyard that I’d disguised as another shed. Remember that thing I said I found in the chopper that I was saving for dramatic effect? It was a gun. The likes of which I’d never seen. The name C.E.R.B.E.R.U.S. was
stenciled on the side of the weapon in the same crude, military font as June’s crate. I was only familiar with the name as the three-headed dog from Greek mythology, but it was an acronym for something. What, I don’t know. All I knew was it was huge. So huge in fact that it came with its own seat. I sat down and threw the switch on the side. It hummed to life with a terrifying magnetic resonance. It’s a sound that makes Daddy and the other daddies stop in their tracks. I reached up and flipped the latches and kick down the side of the crate revealing the full breadth of the war machine I sat astride. Daddy’s scowl turned to a grin.

  “Hey…What you got there, Cleaver?” It was the last thing he ever said. I pulled the trigger and his head turned into a red mist that rained down in a ten yard radius. Blood and brain covered everyone in his troop including Maddie. Their crimson peppered faces all turned to looks of awe and dread. I have to admit even I paused for a moment. The round had not only vaporized his head, the force had split him down the middle to his waist. One of his arms fell off as what was left of him toppled over onto my sidewalk. I was now a murderer. All the slaying of the zombies hadn’t prepared me for it. But I wasn’t finished. When the proverbial smoke clears, I heard one of the men scream and raise his gun. I draw a fast bead and less loose more bullets. I don’t even know that I can call them bullets. I have no idea what this thing is even shooting. It’s not loud enough to hurt my ears. Every time I round flew out, it let loose this screaming thump of a noise that almost made my skin crawl. I now have bullets whizzing by me, but I just keep mowing down every single man I see, turning them into pulled pot roast across my entire lawn. It reminds me of that movie The Island. Not the Ewan McGregor clone flick, I’m talking about the one in the 80’s with Michael Caine and the pirates. Spoiler Alert. At the end you think the pirates have won, but Michael Caine finds this giant machine gun mounted on the bow of a boat and lays every last one of them to waste. It was one of the best scenes no one has seen. But yeah, it was like that. I was possessed. At the time I don’t even reflect on the fact that I am mowing down living, breathing human beings, but they killed my dogs, and it turned me into a frothing at the mouth, bumpkin John Wick. Dogs aside, I felt they didn’t deserve to live. I’d already painted this dark picture of what kind of people they were, judging by Maddie and her sisters enslavement. I was doing the world a favor…Wasn’t I?

  In less than a minute, the property is littered with body parts of actual humans. I’m still trembling. I managed to release the trigger, but I cant even let go of the handles on the gun for quite sometime. It’s as if my anger has me permanently glued to it. Everything happened so fast. All this death, human and dog alike, it all seemed pointless…sickening. As reality starts to fall back into my brain, I jumped down off the machine. I start looking around at the murder scene before me and I suddenly go right back into the dark place. One of the men…he’s not dead. He’s out there in the far part of the front yard, trying to crawl his way out into the field. I didn’t bother going back to the gun. I grabbed up Orion and marched out to him. I went into hysterics. Like the same mindset when I reduced Ted’s head to corn beef hash. This man rolls over and puts out a hand above a face of absolute terror. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. Back when the world was zombie-free I might have exchange pleasantries with him. Held a door for him. Had a beer with him. Hell, maybe he was a sci-fi fan and we could’ve talked about how badass that Bladerunner sequel was. But I don’t even give him the chance to beg. I just start chopping. He’s screaming, and the only way I know this is because his mouth is wide open, I can’t hear anything but the dulling hum of the wrath inside my head. I’m not proud of that moment, nor should I be. And if there truly is a hell, I’ll surely be headed there on the same boat he took that day. I butchered him like a pig, hacking over and over until he looked like the mounds of the zombies surrounding. The only thing that makes me stop swinging that sword is a scream from behind. It’s Maddie. I stop and turn around, I can’t even see her through the blood stained lenses of the mask, but I know she’s there. Part of me wanted to stay behind the mask forever. I didn’t want her to see my face ever again. I was lucky I didn’t mow her down in my blind rage. Finally, I lift the mask and do the only thing I can as the darkness of the bad place begins to fade. I start crying again. I throw the sword aside and hit my knees. I’m crying for so many reasons. My dogs are dead. I’m a killer. Maddie hates me, the list keeps compounding on a mental scroll of lead penned in steel ink. I was a mess for quite some time. I didn’t even know how long I sat there, but the only thing that brought me out of it was a hug. I had killed what was left of the only family she knew, but she still had the heart to hold me in my pathetic state of self loathing and mourning. She cries with me and it feels like we’re the only two people left on the goddamn planet. The only words she manages to finally squeak out to me are,

  “I’m sorry.” What did she have to be sorry for? She did absolutely nothing wrong. I just whisper it back to her. She helps me to my feet. My legs are trembling, I can barely walk. It’s like all the stress has almost rendered me useless. I limp back to the house and start letting the carnage fill my senses again. There are so many dead dogs. I don’t know if it’s all of them or if some ran off at the time. I just know not only does it make my heart break, but it fills me with a sense of dread. They were my friends, but they were also my line of defense against the dead. How I am going to keep Maddie and myself safe?

  I walked back around the house and find Pete’s little broken body again. The sight is as devastating as it was when I first laid eyes upon it. I almost felt like running over to Daddy’s body and setting it on fire…but I don’t. I’m done. I’m done being the person that I’m not. I gather Pete up and hold him against me. I start crying again. He was quite the asshole in life, but he saved me multiple times. I wondered who he’d been before all of this. Had he had a family who loved him, or was he just a cur? And it was obvious that that same ill attitude had gotten him stomped out of this life and into the next. But I respected it. He didn’t back down and I thought of that fact when I walked away to fetch that gun and had bullets flying by my head. I wasn’t backing down either. This is what Pete would’ve done. I’d done that shit my whole life. Let people walk all over me. Talk down to me. I let kids physically abuse me in school.

  I pulled down my mask and held one of Pete’s little, bloody paws between my fingers. I bent forward and pressed it against the rubber covering my forehead, leaving a crimson pawprint there like it was some ode to his bravery. A reminder that he hadn’t died for nothing. A moment later, I realize Maddie is standing there. She either had the footsteps of a ghost or I had just completely lost all my situational awareness from the hell that surrounded me. She held out a blanket she’d fetched from the house. I kissed Pete’s head and placed him into the fabric and watched him disappear as she wrapped him lovingly. It was right about then that I heard dog’s barking. It was June and Jeff. Jesus, I’d forgotten. I went back into the property and retrieved them both, they went running back to the yard faster than I could’ve ever run. When I got there, they were sniffing the bodies, whining, pacing. I plopped down on a patio chair and just watched them take it in for a moment, wondering what was going on inside their heads. Humans always had a tendency to over anthropomorphize animals. Especially dogs. And especially on social media. But still, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were feeling any sense of woe or angst at the sights and smells of the murder before them. They probably weren’t, at least not on a human level. But they were visibly stressed and it didn’t sit well with me. I felt I’d failed them. Hell, they could’ve very well been amongst the fallen had I not chose to take them along that day. I was grateful for that. At least it was a small, silver lining. Soon, they perked up and started barking, headed towards the field, and that’s when I saw it. A dog and another dog, and another. My heart warmed as I watched dozens of dogs climbing back over the bodies of the zombies back into my yard. All wasn’t lost.

  I
gathered myself and went back up the road, fetching the backhoe I’d been about to bring back before the gunshots rang out. I used it to dig a mass grave in the back yard which we somberly filled with the bodies of seventy-six dogs. That number of animals alone told me the assholes I’d laid to waste were killing just for the fun of it. There was simply no way that many dogs were giving them a hard time. I placed Pete’s body on top of the others and stepped back. I didn’t even say anything aloud. Maddie and I sort of stood there in this sick silence for about a minute before I jumped back on the tractor and returned them all to the earth. It had been years since I’d felt the sting of losing a pet. And I lost over seventy in one day. There’s just no describing that feeling, so I won’t even try. I then fetched Maddie’s sister’s body from the barn and buried her by the pines. Laurie. Laurie was her name.

  As the evening hours passed, more and more dogs returned. I wasn’t even completely sure if some of them might not have been newcomers, but regardless, they were a sight for literal sore eyes. As Maddie watered and fed the remaining members of the pack, I gathered up what was left of the Maddie’s Daddies ( god, I really hate that that rhymes ) and loaded them in the backhoe’s front bucket. I dropped their remains at the mouth of the cornfield, a fresh offering to the deadeater. By my count, there were ample bodies to appease the beast that night, so we rounded up the dogs and repeated the actions from the previous evening, hunkering down in the house, waiting out the terrible night.

  I whispered the story of Empire Strikes Back to Maddie and she fell asleep with her head on my lap. I didn’t sleep that night. I just stared towards the front windows, trying to imagine the horrors that were going on out there beyond the fields as the dogs growled in agitation. For those horrors were better to be in my head than the nightmarish replays of that day. I wasn’t quite sure how that girl had managed to drift off, but I was happy she could. I stroked at her hair and wondered what she dreamed of. Hopefully it was of green fields and blue skies, pink posies and Pegasus, any number of things that would drown out the stains of death that always surrounded her. She was just a kid in all of this. I couldn’t imagine being that age amongst this darkness. I probably wouldn’t have made it. I was lucky I was making it at this age.