Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  I swallowed a lump from my throat as I heard the crunching begin. Bones breaking, sinew tearing, and the gnashing of teeth and grumbling and growling behind them. I didn’t even want to breathe. I could only hope that the bounty of death before the beast was enough to keep it preoccupied from my presence. The noises began to get even more ghastly and terrifying. I can’t describe it fully. Like an orgy of death, slithering and slopping, raspy breathing and excited snorts. It was absolutely terrifying. I wanted to plug my ears. I could barely stand the sound of loud gum chewers, let alone this. I was as disgusted as I was petrified.

  Five minutes of the gorging felt like a hour to my beating heart. I felt myself begin to shake. I didn’t think I was capable of that at this point. With all the things I’d seen and done, I thought my nerves had been truly tempered into hardened steel. But no, the presence of the thing reminded me I was still the fragile, shy kid at the back of the class that was too terrified to speak when called upon.

  The feeding, or least that’s what it sounded like, started changing in sound. Chomping led into shuffling and all manner of wet, atrocious noises that led my eyes into staring so hard they hurt. Through the blacks and grays, I swore the thing looked as if it had doubled in size and I shuddered at the realization, but before I could even begin to make my speculations on just what the hell was happening to the beast, I felt the backhoe vibrate. It was oh-so subtle, it reminded me of those nights on the riverbank, fishing with grandad for catfish. You’d feel that little nibble, and your heart would flutter. Was it the current? Was it a stick drifting by, or was it truly the bite you’d longed for? Had all the mosquito bites and sleep deprivation been worth it? Yes, they had. I felt the lines on the end of the front bucket go taught and I knew it was time. I twisted the key and brought the backhoe to life. Every rotation of that engine that didn’t set afire, was one more millisecond that I was about to go into cardiac arrest. The deadeater knew I was there now, unless it was deaf, it surely knew. Luckily, I couldn’t hear a peep it made as the steel monster I sat astride came roaring to life. I quickly threw it into reverse, and whipped the bucket up like I was setting the hooks on one of those catfish. And I felt it…the pull. The dead weight, and then…the aggression. My adrenaline spiked as I heard the most terrifying screeching-roar drown out the sound of the exhaust. It lasted for a few seconds but then was put to rest as I felt the entire backhoe stop dead in its tracks. I was absolutely aghast at the pure power of the thing that I had just hooked into. The entire tractor lurched forwards as the rear tires spun out, kicking up dirt and weed alike. Soon I was being pulled towards the road…This creature, this beast of unknown origin and design, was pulling a reversing six ton tractor forwards, like it was gunning for first place in some otherworldly strongman competition. For the first few seconds, all I could do was just sit there in a growing panic as I heard the roaring come in waves ahead of me. I just kept mashing the gas but it was doing jackshit. Then, my brain actually started working for a moment. I grabbed the levers and activated the outriggers and slammed the rear bucket down, trying to anchor the rig to the ground. And it worked, the whole backhoe stopped dead. I let go of the controls and steering wheel and started fidgeting around, what the hell was I doing? What was the plan again? Oh yeah, the gun. But I couldn’t shoot something I couldn’t even see. I reached down and flipped the lights on the tractor and the whole field became bathed in a sober, dandelion glow. I will forever be ill equipped to describe the thing I saw in front me with any degree of perfection. Frank had been right, I didn’t want to know what it looked like. There it was, angered and destressed as hell, facing me with all my fishing lines buried into it in varying locations. I’ll repeat that, facing me, this thing had been pulling itself backwards and was still managing to move a huge piece of construction equipment. What did it look like though? I know, you want to know, but maybe you already forgot the part where I said I was ill-equipped to describe it. I’ll try just the same. At the epicenter of this blob of a creature was a head, it looked like the mutated head of a cow, yes a cow. Skin gone, and bare muscle and skull exposed. But that’s not all, there were several heads there bemoaning the fact that it couldn’t move anywhere. So a mass of mutated heads of cattle encircled by human heads in various states of decay. The human heads seemed to be more like decoration, they weren’t screaming out ( thank god ). The whole creature was covered from side to side to top by rows and rows of dead bodies and body parts. It was like a giant turtle shell of writhing death crowning these raging cattle heads and god knows how many appendages that I assume were legs ushering this thing across the earth. And that’s what it looked like. Are you happy now? I know I wasn’t…I don’t quite know how long I sat there and just stared at that thing, trying to make my mind believe that it was real. I only snapped out of it when I felt the backhoe begin to lurch once more. This thing had become so pissed from the headlights that it found a new sense of strength and was now moving the tractor again despite the outriggers and rear bucket being dropped. Pure panic sat in and I jumped from the rig, running back to where the giant gun sat patiently. I’m pulling at levers and messing with this thing until I hear that horrifying death hum it emits and I know it’s ready to lay this creature to waste. But I cant even get a bead drawn when the deadeater does something I didn’t expect. It charged. The thing apparently had an epiphany, “if I can’t pull myself away, I’ll just go forward,” and so it did. I managed to get a few shots off but they hit absolutely nothing and the next thing I see is this behemoth running head first into the backhoe as fast as it can go. The entire rig goes blasting backwards; about a dozen dead bodies dislodge from the monster’s back and fly across the field. The tractor spins and rolls and I go jumping off the gun as it connects the weapon and turns it on its side. Chaos is the furthest thing from the proper word to describe what is now happening. This thing is bucking and screaming, thrashing and spinning. The lines are tangled around the tractor and the gun, and I’m just trying to get away from it, but I keep tripping and rolling as I go. I don’t even know what is happening. Bodies are dislodging from the beast and flying in all directions. One flies into the back of the Bronco; another lands on top of me and almost knocks me unconscious. This goes on for what seems like five, whole minutes as I finally cower beside the Bronco with the creature still raging less than ten feet away. Soon, I hear the sound of whipping steel and the thing somehow unlooses itself from the lines I set. I’m clutching my sword and honest to god waiting for this thing to flip the truck over and come at me. I’m just picturing myself whipping Orion up and trying to slay this thing old-school style like the timeless knight and the dragon parable. And I’d thought the zombies were now the scariest damn things in this world, I was so wrong. I very clearly remembered praying, but I wasn’t praying that I’d live, I was praying there wasn’t anymore of these things out there. And then I prayed it would go away…and it did. Within moments of freeing itself, it roared out and took off, back towards the road, leaving me there shaking beside my truck. I had pissed myself. My jeans were soaked. As I heard it bound away my clutch on my sword began to wane and my heart tried righting itself. It was over…but it really wasn’t. I hadn’t killed it. I hadn’t rid the world of its scourge. I had managed to piss my pants and seemingly ruin a backhoe AND a priceless gun, all within minutes.

  About the time I heard the creature blast back into the cornfield, conflicting voices are screaming inside me. One half of me is saying “stay put” and the other half of me is saying “go after that goddamn thing!” In that moment I felt I was far too traumatized to make any rational decisions, let alone move, but then I heard the barking. It was June. She’d gotten out of the house, and she wasn’t alone. In the ghostly glow of the toppled headlights of the tractor I see about a dozen dogs trailing her as they make this mad beeline for the road and beyond, chasing that thing down like it’s a fleeing fox. There was no more time to think. I jumped into the Bronco and fired it up. I go flying, rally-truck style, bouncing thro
ugh the field and ramping onto the road. My headlights hit the corn just in time to see the dogs disappearing into the rows, and all I can do is just clench my teeth as I plow right through the stream bed, following their lead. Everything is swallowed by pandemonium. Corn is smashing my grill. The truck is bouncing over bodies that have fallen from the deadeater, and I’m barely hanging on. My heart is once again racing at twice the RPMs of the Bronco that I’m now piloting blindly along the mashed path of the escaping monster ahead. My fear is more founded in the fate of these dogs rather than the creature itself. I no longer care about my safety, it’s all about them now. I know there’s no way to stop them, so all I can do is keep the gas mashed, hoping I reach the backside of that walking carcass processor before they do. The main thought going through my head is “what the hell am I going to do when I catch up with this thing?” It was a question that was hard to swallow. It toppled a backhoe with a headbutt. What exactly was I going to pull out of my ass that would put it down for good? My only hope was now on the dogs. If their bites could vaporize the dead, then maybe they’d do the same to this thing.

  Before I can even process it, we break free from the corn and are now speeding down a hill and right through a toppled fence line. I now realize I’m flying blind. I no longer have a beaten path to follow so I’m forced to slow down and let the dogs take the lead once again. I have no clue how far we are from home; I’m thinking at least two miles if not more at this point. The pack leads me across this bottom and then right into a treeline. We then head up what I assume is an old oil well road. It leads us deep into the belly of a woods and this sets me even more on edge. It’s just dark. I have no idea how it could’ve been anymore dark, but it just was. If we weren’t out of our element before, we were now neck deep and sinking. Just the feeling of being swallowed up by the forest in the middle of the night, knowing what lie ahead, was enough to make me want to make a fast u-turn and get the hell out of there, but I stayed the course. And it wasn’t long that I saw a flicker of something ahead, but it wasn’t the deadeater. The dogs are all converged into a tight pack right in front of me and I barely have time to bury the brake. Even though I’m going uphill, I manage to slide some thirty feet before the dogs all spread out to the sides to avoid getting run over by my stupid ass. As soon as that final stomach-in-chest lurch passes by, I get this feeling of absolute dread creeping in. I’m stopped, and I feel vulnerable as all hell. My head is darting around, trying to make heads or tails of just what’s going on, but all my focus soon drops down to the forefront. The front tires are right on the edge of a rocky drop off that I now realize spans as far as my weak, diurnal eyes can process on either side of the truck. The dogs are all squared up along this ledge, staring down, going absolutely berserk. I swear some of them are about to just leap off of it. I quickly grab the shotgun from the floor and jump out. I start in with that SWAT team bullshit stance, like I’m some highly trained specialist who’s ready for action, when in actuality my soiled underwear are ready for an encore. My first thought is to tell these dogs to shut up, but I know that’s not going to happen. I’ve never seen them so pissed. As I’m trying to peer over this ledge, it hits me full force…the smell. Rot…and I’m not talking about the rot I’ve almost become immune to, this is next level. I can actually feel it going into my lungs and just sitting there like the unwelcome visitor it is. I start to shake. I can’t fully make out what’s below because the truck is on an incline. The spotlight I brought along is soon in my other hand and I light up the darkness below…all my hairs stand on end. The chills come in waves and nearly nauseate me. I am now staring into a giant hole the likes of which I can barely estimate the size of. It looks like an old quarry pit of some sort. It’s hundreds of feet wide and about forty feet below me is a solid floor of rotting bodies and body parts. It’s an abstract of interwoven flesh painted in the shades of meat and macabre. The entire breadth of what I can spotlight is nothing but a solid sea of death, and just like the sea, it almost appears to have waves. A sickening undulation is coursing through the masses of bodies as I illuminate what I can only assume is the source of the kinesis. The dogs eyes are all burning with madness, pointed to the center of the pit along with mine as we witness the ass-end of the deadeater disappear slowly into the depths of the rot and ruin. A sickening suction echoes across the walls as the beast fully retreats from sight into the mess below and then the all is quiet. Even the dogs just stop barking, like someone had pulled the proverbial batteries right out of them. I can hear my own terrified breathing as I keep the light still pointed right where the monster had vanished. All the bodies are still now, and this gives way to the dogs once again making noise, but it’s not the vicious barking, it’s now a symphony of distrusting whines that somehow manages to send me even more into unease. I kept the light shining in that same spot until my arm actually began to tremble from exhaustion. I was just waiting for that thing to come flying back up from the depths right up onto the hood of my truck…but nothing. As much as I was beginning to fear that beast in the bloody mire below, it was becoming increasingly evident that this thing wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything. It was a pussy, if you will. At any time it could’ve turned round and laid me and these dogs to waste, yet it chose to retreat into a lake of bodies knowing damn well we weren’t coming in after it. It was right then that I was beginning to think maybe, just maybe, this thing wasn’t worth my time. It really meant no harm. It was some bizarre freak anomaly that spawned from the outbreak that had no desire for living flesh. It was simply a scavenger. It just wanted to reap the dead and bring them back to add to its lair. It just wanted to be left alone…And I understood that. I was that deadeater right before the world went to hell, sans the cozy home made of corpses, of course.

  I was minutes away from gathering the dogs, leaving, and never coming back to bother the beast, when something caught my eye. In fact, it was several somethings. No, dozens. I shined my light off and down the edge of the pit and then down the hillside and I start seeing them. I thought they were stump clusters at first. Trees someone had logged away from the quarry edge. I walked closer. Most of them were nearly six foot tall, a system of vein-like tendrils ran across their smooth surface. I moved even closer to one; It was almost waxy looking to the touch. The light hit the face of it and it seemed to glow in the dark with a faded, greenish-white hue throughout. It was long and ovalized in shape, like a giant grain of rice, or a fly egg. As I got within a step of it, I soon realized that, perhaps, that’s exactly what it was…an egg. A huge, writhing egg incubating only god knew what. My terror once again elevated, but my curiosity pushed on by it with the blithe of a schoolboy. I now had my spotlight pressed directly into the face of it and my imagination is flashing to me these sights of mini-deadeaters within the sack. This thing is a female, or perhaps more likely asexual and has managed to replicate an entire army of itself. And the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm ring through my head “Life, uh, finds a way.” Or was it death?...it was. As my eyes adjusted to the glow within the membrane, I see it. A human form. I shudder. I know what I’m seeing yet I don’t fully understand it. It’s a full size human, fleshless, much like what the zombies had become. Only the red and rose tones of the musculature are now an unnerving shade of green. The only part of this creature not painted in the mossy hue is its skull. The bare white bone gives birth to a beaming death-grin and eyeless sockets, blacker than black. Oddly enough, the flesh is still present along the sides of its head where ears reside to match the green muscles below. The ears are human in appearance, which, for some reason, makes them subtly off-putting. As I keep shining the light with my lip uncontrollably curled in disgust, I see what might be the oddest part of all. Its finger tips are long and pointed. No nails are present, it’s as if the tip itself has formed into a solid claw. In some bizarre universe, maybe one page away from our own, I stand there, staring at this thing like I’m looking into a mirror. I see myself. I see humans. The next jump in evolution, perhaps. Surel
y these creatures were birthed from the beast below me. But why? As with all humans before me, my curiosity is far beyond driven. I’m shaking, but there is the large part of me that looks on in wide-eyed wonder. I could only imagine the elation in the heart of a scientist who would stumble upon such a thing. The questions, the unending and beautiful questions. But there was no time for all that, my thoughts were erased with fight or flight as this thing rips through the membrane faster than I can even react. Fluid from the membrane spills all over my legs as I am tackled to the ground and pinned there by this newfound, humanoid monstrosity. It’s strong. Stronger than any zombie I’d ever crossed paths with. I throw away my gun and spotlight so I can grab onto its arms, trying to release the death grip it has on my neck. It opens its mouth and I’m expecting the same screams as the dead, but all it lets out is this raspy gasp that is undoubtedly its first breath of air. I’m kicking and tugging, thrashing with every last bit of precious oxygen my blood still has, but nothing is shaking this thing. Just as I see the stars of unconsciousness twinkling in my eyes, the dogs converge. From all sides, they rip into this green fiend and it lets go of me instantly. I roll back and then spring up to a stand, expecting the threat to be erased by an explosion of green goo…but no. What I now see is the heartbreaking sight of the dogs getting thrown and chucked away like ragdolls despite every attack being executed. Their bites are doing nothing. Fight or flight smacks me across the face once more and I choose fight. I unsheathe my sword and go charging into the mess. I don’t get a swing in. Within seconds, this thing and I are entangled on the ground once more and we’re rolling back down the hill on the service road. A tornado of rocks are wailing at my bones and all I can see is the faint red illumination of my taillights reflecting off a screaming skull inches away from my nose. Suddenly we collide into a tree and the creature goes flying off of me. We’re both up within seconds and at it once more. I can’t let this thing get me on the ground again. It’s like a goddamn MMA fighter gunning for that championship title. I try swinging the sword and it evades my attack. I’ll say that again, it evaded me…it reasoned. It had tactical thought. No zombie ever tried avoiding my blade before. I find myself dancing around with this bastard. I swing and swing but can’t as much as even wing him ( I’m calling the thing a him now because I’m sick of using ‘it’ ) He’s like a well-oiled killing machine right out of the womb and the more I miss him, the more vulnerable I feel. I am officially right back at the bottom of the food chain.