by David Smith
"We’re not even halfway yet.” I said, reloading quickly as I could. I looked up at her and could tell she really wasn’t going to make it. I looked all around and there were no dead closing in on us, far as I could tell. I could hear the ones following coming up the trail though, could smell them too. Then there was something I hadn’t noticed the day before. We were on a part of the trail where the underbrush wasn’t so thick and there was a swampy clearing running adjacent to the trail, chest deep marsh grass for about a hundred yards, ending at what looked like a fence row but much taller. If there was a fence row, there had to be some kind of structure nearby. That was our chance, I grabbed her hand and hastily pulled her down behind me as I moved the tall reeds of grass to the side, trying not to break them but make just enough of a path to crawl through before the dead caught up with us.
The ground was soft and moisture began to soak through the knees of my jeans. I crawled about fifteen feet then turned right, about another six feet and turned left. I knew they wouldn’t smell us and hoped this little juke would be enough to keep them from seeing us too. She was right on my heels every inch of the way, looking back over her shoulder every other second and bumping into me every time she did. After crawling another ten feet, I stopped to listen. She was breathing so heavily it was all I could hear. I eased up onto my knees and peered through the ends of blades of grass waving between them and us. They were just passing the end of our little trail and never checked up, just kept dragging their feet in our last known direction.
We made it to the fence row and on the other side, through the thick vines, I could see what used to be a runway, now just at long, flat path of grass and broken asphalt. There were a few small helicopters; paint faded, windows glazed over, runners grown over with vines and weeds. Behind them were three hangars, about as long as they were wide, and one smaller building that looked like an office. Luckily, there were no dead in sight.
I stood slowly, scanning the area behind us, then helped Stephanie up and over the fence before climbing it myself. It was easy as the fence was impregnated with trees and vines that had grown up through the chain link. We walked slowly towards the hangars with guns trained ahead and ready but there was nothing.
All of the hangars were padlocked but the screws of the hasps pulled easily out of their holes, the wood around them rotted with rust from the screws. I slid the door open just enough to slip through and we went inside and sat down. I pulled a canteen of water out of the backpack and handed it to her.
"We’ll rest here awhile.” I said. She looked exhausted. I knew I had to find her something to eat. I moved the backpack to where she could recline against it.
I started to walk around the inside of the hangar. There were some rat droppings in the corners but rats would be hard to catch without anything to use for bait. Then I heard something up in the rafters. Looking up, I could see quite a few bird nests and hoped there would be eggs or even a bird sitting where I could snatch it out. One nest was on top of a steel girder where the roof met the wall about twenty feet high. I scaled it, grasping the lip of the I-beam with my fingers and planting my feet against the wall. God had smiled on us in the form of five small, brown, speckled eggs. I reached up with one hand and took them all, hanging onto the girder with the other. I then realized I had no pockets. I tried to start back down the wall but couldn’t manage to figure out how with only one hand. I looked around for another way down, knowing I wouldn’t find it and it made me dizzy. I tried to call out to her, but couldn’t wake her without yelling loud enough that something else might hear. Finally, I opened my mouth wide and very carefully stuffed them all in. They tasted like bird shit but at least that let me know they were fresh.
I slid down the beam and spit them out in my hand, none broken. I took them to her and waited for her to wake up, thinking about the momma bird that would come back to find her babies gone. I thought about my own mother back at the bunker in hopes that she wouldn’t one day find her nest empty and about the pain I hoped she wouldn’t have to bear.
She woke up an hour later and I talked her into eating the eggs. I think the talking her into it was harder than it was for her to swallow them. As soon as she was done gagging I stood her up and we left. The sun was straight up and the cicadas were singing loudly. We made it the rest of the way to the bunker without seeing a single dead body that wasn’t laying completely dead and busted open, the blackened innards spilling out into the dirt and leaves. There was a light breeze blowing at our backs so we never smelled what we were about to hear and see.
When we were almost to the edge of the woods I could hear an excited commotion, chewing, tearing, grunting. It was the first time I had heard anything like it and didn’t know what it was till we came out of the woods. There was a standing pile of them, just a few feet from the bunker door, reaching over each other, all fighting to get to the center. Fresh red blood covered their gray faces and hands. The grass all around them glistened red. There was one reaching underneath the pile, pulling, yanking at something until it came out with a blood soaked piece of the shirt my mother had been wearing the night before and put it to its mouth to suck the blood from it.
Somehow, despite the door that had protected us for years, they had gotten to her. As we watched helplessly from the woodline they gradually tore apart every piece of her that could be torn apart. Each of them walked away with what piece they could get until there were only three of them left, kneeling down in the blood soaked soil where she once laid with their faces to the ground, licking and putting the dirt in their mouths.
I couldn’t cry, couldn’t speak, don’t think I even took a breath the entire time. The first conscious thought I remember having was when I saw one of the two we had let go, sitting with my mother’s lower jaw, scraping its teeth across it to get every last bit of flesh. It was that I would never hide again, never let one get away without a bullet through its head.
It wasn’t long before they had picked her bones as clean as a school of piranha and, one at a time, started to move toward the door. They scratched at it slowly, leaving bloody streaks and hand prints until they were all up and reaching over one another to get at the dull gray steel. They still hadn’t noticed us and, thankfully, nothing had come up behind us, which was good because, in my paralysis, I had forfeited all situational awareness.
As I sat, staring in disbelief, a deer walked out of the woodline down from us with two fawns. It walked in between us and the dead gathered at the door and stopped to graze. The dead took no notice and it was as if the deer had become accustom to them, grazing on the blood soaked grass only ten feet or less behind the noisy mob. Finally, she raised her head and sniffed the air before prancing away, followed by her offspring. She trotted straight toward us and the open trail. Just as she was about to walk past us, Stephanie stumbled back, to avoid being ran into, and spooked her. The deer jumped and clumsily shot off through a thicket next to the trail.
Hearing the violent rustling and snapping of twigs, a few of the dead turned and looked in our direction. Just a few started moving our way at first. Two sudden poorly aimed shotgun blasts brought me out of my trance and alerted the rest of the mob to our presence and they started after us.
"Run!” was all I heard then turned to see Stephanie already ten steps ahead of me. Before I could catch up with her, running and looking back over her shoulder, she ran into one that was standing in the trail. She knocked it down, dropping the shotgun and falling on top of it. Two others closed in as she struggled in the grasp of its bony finger, its teeth snapping inches from her face, the rotted skin of its cheeks and lips drawn back tightly. I shot the second one in the face just as it reached out to me and it fell, tearing my shirt in its dead grasp. The third had fallen down on top of her and was just about to sink its teeth into the back of her shoulder when I shot it and its full weight fell down on her, dark red blood splattering across the dead leaves. I rolled it off of her and helped her up as I stomped the face of the one under her
until it was crushed in and finally released her. The mob was right behind us as we fled down the trail.
I ran as fast as I could drag her, to the opening in the trail and through the high grass. I pushed her up and over the fence, looking back over my shoulder several times to see if they had followed us. I knew they wouldn’t be too far behind. I then climbed over it myself and dropped down to find her on her knees vomiting and gasping for air. Scooping her up under one arm to drag her back to the hangar, I could feel her pulse racing and strong. I dragged her all the way back, through the grass, through the mud, over the broken up asphalt helipad, scraping her knees and into the hangar. Once inside, she lay flat on the floor on her back, breathing fast and deep as I peaked out of the opening toward the fence a hundred yards away. They were emerging from the woods, crossing the marsh grass and gathering, a few at a time, at the fence. They had followed us this time. Whether it was the noisiness of our escape or just a change in direction of the faint breeze, I wasn’t sure. But they knew we were here.
They clawed at the vines and pulled at the fence, rattling the chain link, but made no attempt to climb over. I supposed they were either too dumb or too weak to try. Through the vines I could see their emotionless faces covered with my mother’s blood, mouths gaped open wanting more, eyes staring up blankly and unaffected by the brightness of the setting sun. The whole scene had a red hue like I was looking through a filter of blood red anger.
I closed my eyes for a moment to take in the sound of my second sunset. The noise of the cicadas almost drowned out the wiry clanging of the chain link fence and Stephanie sobbing and begging me to take her back to the store where she grew up as she lay on the dirty concrete floor, her face and chest spattered and smeared with the blackened blood of the dead, her knees bright red with fresh scrapes. Her hysterical crying was close to what my own voice sounded like inside my head as I thought about Mom and Dad, and my sister, still trapped inside the bunker, or at least I hoped she was.
Finally, I lifted my head and went to Stephanie to try to comfort her. I knelt down beside her, tried to pick her up and hold her but she shoved me and scooted away and against the wall.
"Just take me back, please!” She cried.
"I can’t do that!" I yelled at her and sat on the floor with my arms folded around my knees.
"Why? I don’t care if I starve, I just want to die in piece…and clean.”
Arguing just didn’t feel appropriate at the moment or like it wouldn't do any good so I just sat, awkwardly distant from her. I dreaded having to tell her we were going back to get my sister, so I decided to wait till morning so she wouldn’t have time to argue. She could either come with me, stay here by herself or risk going back to the store on her own.
We sat in silence and eventually I laid out flat on the concrete, my head near her feet so I could feel if she moved or if anything changed at all. A few hours after dark, it was still too hot to sleep, sweat rolling down my sides, my arms and legs feeling sticky every time I moved. Suddenly there was a cool breeze from the west that penetrated the rusty metal building nicely. I could feel the temperature drop and just as I was about to doze off it started to rain, suddenly and very heavily. It was the only thing that finally smothered the persistent sound of the chain link fence.
#
After some time of lying awake, the rain lightened up to a steady, low hum on the tin roof and I could hear the chain link rattling again interrupted now and then by the rumble of distant thunder. Just as I started to doze off again, I heard the squeal of twisting metal and a rattling crash. It took a moment for my mind to clear and realize that it was most likely the fence coming down.
I sat up and got to my feet so fast my head spun, then grabbed her by the arms and had her up to her feet before her eyes were even open.
"What’s going on?” she asked sleepily.
Peeking out the crack in the door, I could barely make out the shapes in the drizzling rain and what little bit of moonlight was peeking through the clouds.
"They’re coming!” I said and grabbed the backpack and her. We ran out into the night, perpendicular to the approaching horde, down the remnants of the asphalt runway, cracked and penetrated by tall grass and pine saplings. Hearing our footsteps or smelling our scent, they turned slowly to follow us, moving like cattle chasing a feed truck. We made it to the end of the runway and Stephanie was already dragging her feet. Loosing sight of the horrors behind us as we entered a stand of young pine trees and thick underbrush, she tried to slow down. I tried to hurry her along but she was spent this time. She’d completely had it and fell to the ground like a piece of wet rope. My heart was pumping with adrenaline and fear but I had just enough time to be thoroughly annoyed.
I snatched her up and leaned her against my leg, strung her arms through the backpack and heaved her up over my shoulder, her remaining limp as a wet rag the whole time. If not for the density of the underbrush, the horde would have been all over us by now but the first of them had just lunged in through the bushes when I took off and it fell to the ground, pulling as my sleeve. I struggled to run through the dense tangle of bushes with her draped over my shoulder, not even sure of what direction I was heading anymore until I bounced off of a particularly thick stand of vines and bushes. I couldn’t push my way through so I stuck my hand out to try to separate them and, elbow deep in the tangle, felt another chain link fence.
I grabbed a handful of foliage to see if it would support our weight and it just pulled down to me. I could hear the horde stomping and fighting their way through the bushes so there was no time to weed my way to the actual fence and climbing it, even if I hadn't had her over my shoulder, with guns and gear hanging everywhere, I would have ended up tangled and hanging like a buffet.
Instead, I turned left and started pushing my way through, following the fence. With her on my shoulder and the dead close behind I pushed and struggled against every vine. My legs, the backpack, my shirt and my arms all seemed to get caught in every thorn and tear, blood trickling. As for the dead behind us, I couldn’t see a thing and kept waiting to feel their teeth sink into my back or my legs or hear her scream when they grabbed her and I would have to leave her behind.
Suddenly, I was stopped in my tracks and yanked backward as she screamed. I had no choice but to drop her to be able to turn around to see what the problem was. She went to the ground softly, dead leaves and branches and briars breaking her fall. One had gotten a handful of her hair and she held its arm with one hand and beat at its grasping fist with the other as what seemed like a hundred other arms reached for her from behind it. As it knelt down with its mouth wide open, the others fell over it like a wall coming down on top of her. I grabbed the backpack and drug her out from under them by it, praying she hadn't been bitten. The dense underbrush that had slowed us down and bled us was the only thing that kept them from climbing over each other and over us as we fought to free her. The only part of the one that held her that I could see was its arm, sticking out from under the pile as they writhed and struggled to be the first to take a bite. It still had a firm grasp, blonde hair sticking out between its fingers in every direction, so I unslung the shotgun and stuck the muzzle against its arm, just above the elbow. When I pulled the trigger the woods were illuminated by the muzzle flash just long enough to freeze frame the image into my mind. There was the pile in front of us and many more in my peripherals, only inches away and held back by branches and thick vines. But she was free now, the dead arm still hanging from her hair like a pony tail.
I thought she would get up and run but she went limp again, laying in the trail as a few started forcing their way out of the pile up, inches away from her. She really wanted to die and I suspected she had never truly fainted before. She was never unconscious, just being stubborn, pitching a fit like a three year old. I wanted to cock the shotgun and shoot her myself. Instead, I grabbed her by the backpack and started dragging her. If she was going to be that selfish, I was going to save her life again
if only for spite.
She was no help at all, still dead weight and crying, arguing that I should leave her.
My thighs burned. My back ached. My spine felt like there were two bones scraping across each other every time I took a step. I knew it would take the dead a moment to untangle themselves and get moving again but I also knew that, at this pace, they would be catching up once they did.
By the time we reached the clearing near the end of the runway, she had gotten tired of being dragged over briars and stumps and decided she wanted to walk. With the mass of bodies trapped in the thicket, we had a clear shot back to the downed section of fence and made a break for it. The clouds started to clear as we ran and I could see several of them in the moonlight, that weren’t part of the horde, scattered far and wide across the open field and gathering gradually toward the sound of the gunshots but they were no more a threat than the distant thunderstorm. We made it through them, to the hole in the fence and when I turned right, she stopped.
"I'm not going." she said as she stopped and the scattered few down the runway started turning back to the sound of her voice.
"You're coming along if I have to drag you all the way!" I was angry now. There was no point in keeping quiet. I grabbed her arm and she jerked it away.
"Don't you get it?! I don't want to go! I don't deserve this!" She screamed back, her damp hair swinging stiffly.
"I don't care what you think you want or deserve! I need you to come with me! I need you to live!"
"You need me?" She said, calming down a little. The dead were getting closer now.
"Yes, okay? I need you." The dead were close enough now that when I turned and fired the shotgun at the closest one its head disappeared.
She just stared at me for a moment and dropped her arms, hands slapping her legs. There was a moment of hesitation and it was as if she was physically being pulled in two directions by some invisible force. After two and a half long seconds, and with a few of the dead only an arm’s length away and closing in fast, she caved and ran towards me, twisting out of their grasp like a football player coming through the line of scrimmage. We ran the entire way back to the bunker at a reckless pace and when we got there she didn’t seem nearly as tired. I think the relative coolness brought in by the rain and the night made a big difference, although we were still drenched with sweat by the time we got there.