The zombie plague had still been in its early stages when Peter had been bitten. He had gone to a party down at the reservoir that night, alone, as Annie was still worn out from the effects of the Lyme disease she’d contracted earlier that April. The antibiotics sapped her of all her energy, and she hadn’t been helping her father out with the farm as much as she normally did, leaving Dad short-handed. Her father had been out late, feeding the calves, while Annie and her mother watched a History Channel program on the curse of the Kennedy family that evening.
She and Peter had been dating for six months at that point, having met in the library of Manchester Community College, where they both attended school. She was studying to be a Certified Nursing Assistant, and Peter was working towards his Associate’s in Web Design and Development. She had spotted him on one of the computers while she was studying at a table, and when he had looked up at her and winked, her mouth had formed a perfect ‘O’ in surprise. Peter had immediately blushed, and he came over to apologize.
“I’m so sorry. I thought you were my sister. She’s short with long, blonde hair, too.”
“You wink at your sister often?” Annie had giggled.
“Yeah, why? Is that weird?”
“A little,” Annie had shrugged, and the two sat for a moment at the table, smiling goofily at each other. Peter had soft brown eyes and curly brown hair that hung just below his ears. He had a goatee that reminded her of Robert Downey Junior, which she didn’t consider a bad thing at all. He’d asked her if she wanted to go out for a drink sometime, and she had accepted with a wide grin.
They’d been dating ever since, and she had fallen head-over-heels in love, daydreaming about him in class, text messaging him while feeding the heifers their sileage on the farm. He was charming and handsome and humble and totally into her, and Annie was hooked. They’d started having sex two months into the relationship, and for the first time in her twenty-two years of life, she had actually gotten emotional about sex. Being a farm girl, she’d been very matter-of-fact about the birds and the bees and the cows and the bulls, but Peter had brought tears to her eyes.
“Let me just look at you,” he’d whispered, stroking her hair after they’d made love on an old mattress in the back of his pick-up truck. “You’re so beautiful.”
Annie had grown up pitching hay and hauling grain, and she knew she was lean and limber. She had dark blue eyes and pin-straight, blonde hair that hung halfway down her back, which she usually wore in a pony tail. She’d always thought she looked wholesome. But Peter made her feel like a sex kitten. She loved that rush of power, knowing she could turn him on with just a glance. She had no intention of letting him go any time soon.
When Peter had shown up that night at her parent’s house, she’d noticed something was off, but had chalked it up to too much beer at the party he’d been to. He’d been slurring his words a little, and he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes focused on her. He had joined Annie and her mother in the living room to watch the terrible story of Mary Jo Kopechne unfold on the television, but his groaning had been distracting. It was then that Annie had noticed the blood on Peter’s collar, and the gaping wound on his neck.
“Oh my God! Peter, what happened?” Peter had blinked at her stupidly, and Annie had jumped up. “Let me get some gauze and antibiotic. Peter, you might need stitches!” Annie had hurried to the bathroom for Bactine and Band-Aids. It was when she returned to the living room and saw her boyfriend gnashing his teeth on her mother’s skull that she’d realized something was very, very wrong with Peter.
“Momma!” she’d screamed, but it was too late. Her mother’s eyes were glazed over, and Peter was scooping her brains out of her skull and gulping them down as if he hadn’t tasted a more delectable sweetmeat in his life. Annie had been horrified. Somewhere in her mind, she’d remembered that a craving for brains was one of the symptoms of the recent zombie epidemic, and this spurred her in to action. She’d run to her parent’s bedroom and grabbed her father’s pistol out of his closet. She’d chambered a round and walked back slowly to the living room, carefully taking aim.
It had been hard shooting her mother in the head, but Annie knew that if she didn’t, Momma would turn in to a zombie herself. She couldn’t let that happen to the funny, creative woman who had always made her daughter feel like she was a shining jewel. Momma deserved better.
Peter had looked up, startled when the head he was holding jolted between his hands. He had snarled at her, and Annie had been momentarily taken aback. Peter was supposed to love her. How dare he snarl at her!
Peter had dropped the remains of Momma’s head, wiped a piece of gray matter off his chin, and licked it off of his finger. Then he’d pushed himself off of the couch, slowly lumbering towards Annie. She had turned on her heel and ran to the back door, which she burst out of, running squarely into her father’s broad chest.
“Daddy! Run! It’s Peter! He’s a zombie!” Her father had grasped Annie by the arms, then caught sight of his best pistol, being held tightly by the muzzle in Annie’s right hand.
“Now, honey, I taught you better than that. You need to show a gun the respect it deserves when you’re holding it. Here, like this.” He’d swiftly taken the gun and folded it against his chest as if he were nuzzling a soft kitten.
“Dad. It’s Peter. He’s a zombie. Momma’s…well …Momma’s gone.”
“Momma’s what?” Annie’s father had looked up, and then his gaze shifted to the blood-soaked, undead figure that was shuffling towards them. “Is that Peter?”
“Daddy, run!” Annie had tried to tug on her father’s arm to prompt him to move, but he’d shaken her off. He’d slowly lifted the .38 caliber Ruger, carefully taking aim at his precious daughter’s zombie boyfriend. “Daddy, no! It’s still Peter!” She’d punched his right arm as hard as she could, throwing off her father’s aim as Peter approached. Her father had put a neat hole in the shingling that covered the side of their ranch house. Peter had grabbed her father by the shoulders and bit into his face with a solid crunching noise. Annie heard her father’s last screams as she’d sprinted to the barn.
When she’d initially escaped to the barn, it was to find a good hiding place to outwait Peter. But she’d quickly realized, as she crept through the metal bars that kept the cows in place while they were milked, that what she had here was a tool she could use. A Grade-A zombie cage, in fact. She’d gone into the barn office and found some heavy leg irons, ones her father and his herdsman had used to hold the cows in place when the vet would come to inspect the herd. She knew she had two advantages on her side—she was faster than Peter, and she could fit between the tapered bars of the milking chute. All she needed to do was lure him into the narrow, barred partition, get a few leg clamps on him, and she would have herself one angry, but neutralized, zombie.
Annie glanced over at Peter now as she milked. He was still facing the wall, moaning softly.
“Peter? You okay?” He glanced at her over his shoulder and moaned again.
Sometimes, Peter would react to her questions, or gaze at her with hunger in his eyes, and this was how Annie knew the man she loved was still inside the shell of this undead ghoul. His flesh was decaying, his hair was rotting out of his scalp, but deep down, he was still her Peter. She flashed him a bright smile and finished up her milking. She would worry about his depression later—right now, she had to feed the cows and the pigs.
As Annie went about her routine, carrying bales of hay out to the trough, she wished she had company. After trapping Peter, she’d wandered back to where her father lay, and chopped off his head with the axe she’d found in the barn. It had been hard, nasty work, and she had cringed with every blow. Then she’d dragged her father’s torso out to the lagoon, where the cow’s waste collected, and waded in. Knee deep in cow manure, she’d allowed her father’s body to sink, slowly disappearing beneath the muck. Then she’d gone back for his head. Daddy’s eyes had popped open at the last second, and his mouth had op
ened in a grimace, right as Annie had launched his head into the lagoon…where it landed with a plop before sinking into the manure pit.
Annie could not allow herself to cry. To her, crying would be like giving in. She couldn’t lose hope yet. Her parents were gone, killed by her brain-chomping, decaying boyfriend, but her heart kept telling her that one day Peter would be cured and they could put this terrible time behind them, living happily ever after. She had to believe this was true.
Annie made her way back to the house. It was lunch time; she made herself a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. She turned on the television to catch the twelve o’clock news. There were riots on the streets of New York City, and Times Square was being overrun by zombies. The National Guard had been called in, and the camera panned out to several young men in full riot gear taking aim at the shambling zombies. Heads exploded on the screen as the camera zoomed in on the crowd. The newscaster, a young brunette woman in a black suit and too much makeup, looked flustered. Annie noticed that the microphone in the woman’s hand was shaking slightly as she turned the show back over to the anchors in the newsroom.
Annie missed the company of other living people, but there didn’t seem to be anyone left on their rural country road. She’d thought about going into town to see what was happening and who was left, but Annie was scared. The television broadcast images of putrefying zombies lumbering through the streets of towns all across the country; Annie herself had seen more of the undead than survivors just looking out the window. Two or three reanimated corpses would drag themselves down the road each day.
The closest neighbor, Annie’s old high school French teacher, had wandered past about a week ago. Annie had adored Madame Bestow, and had almost called out to her when she saw the familiar figure walk by with her wiry, gray hair tightly wound in a bun and wearing a cardigan, skirt, and sensible flats, but Annie had hesitated. Madame’s bun seemed straggly; a few wisps of hair were out of place and flying wild. Her skirt was ripped on the side, and her leg had what appeared to be a large, festering wound gashed into her calf. Something was not quite right with Madame Bestow. Annie had put her hand to her mouth, afraid to move or make a noise. Madame had shuffled along past the house, towards town, and Annie had breathed a sigh of relief once she was out of sight.
Annie didn’t have high hopes that she would find many living people left. She turned her mind to the task of cheering Peter up. Maybe a fieldtrip outside of the cage was in order.
There was a major downside to this, Annie knew. To solve the problem of getting Peter out of the barn without his attacking her, she could only think of one solution. She was going to have to put a cold steel ring through his nose, much like a farmer leads a bull. There seemed to be no other way, and Annie dreaded the task of installing the ring itself. She’d found a ring in the barn office, as well as a hook to help lead him around, but nothing to help numb the pain. She had debated trying to puncture his nose with a holepunch to get the thick ring in, but decided that was too cruel. She was going to have to restrain him and push the ring through, just like she’d done to herself when she’d pierced her own ears. She still remembered how much that had hurt. She shuddered to think how Peter would react.
She decided to go back out to the barn and visit with him, to see how he felt about the idea. Annie strongly believed that sometimes, with his series of grunts and moans, Peter was desperately trying to communicate with her. She would see how he felt about her idea.
Peter was sitting cross-legged on the cement floor, rocking slowly back and forth. Annie’s eyes welled with tears to see him reduced to such a state. Blood crusted his filthy, grimy clothes, and maggots squirmed in a hole in his cheek that was widening by the day. He was falling apart, and Annie could do nothing to stop it.
She struggled to remember the gentle young man who had traced soft patterns in her arm, caressing her as they spoke of their dream jobs, the type of home they’d like to live in (they both agreed that an in-ground pool would be heavenly,) even possible names for their future children. Her heart skipped a beat as she remembered his touch. She was so—well, let’s face it, Annie, she thought, you’re so horny it hurts.
She swallowed hard and let out a short bark of a laugh at herself. Peter looked up at her and attempted to smile. Annie thought it was a smile, anyway. The flesh around his lips had rotted away, so it was more of a gaping maw through which his teeth and gums loomed large. Annie’s heart soared at the sight of it, though. He recognizes me, she thought. He remembers that he loves me.
“Peter? Honey? How are you doing?” Peter continued to stare at her, blinking, and she continued. “How would you feel about going outside? Get some sun, maybe?”
Peter unfolded his legs and stood up quickly; his speed alarmed Annie. She hadn’t thought he could move so fast. She supposed, though, with the proper motivation, even the lumbering undead could show flashes of speed. Like chickens, who mostly walked and pecked at the ground, but took flight in bursts of flurried feathers when alarmed. She continued on.
“Here’s the thing, though, honey. I don’t know that you won’t try to eat me as soon as I let you out, so, ahh, I have to take steps.” Peter tilted his head slightly. A long line of spittle stretched down off of his chin, reaching towards the ground. “I’d like to…well…I’d like to give you a nose ring. How do you feel about that?”
Peter blinked again, but gave no indication that he understood. He wasn’t grunting or groaning, though, which Annie took as a good sign. She held up the ring. The cold steel circle looked black in the dim light of the barn, and Peter’s eyes shifted to the loop in her hand. His forehead creased, but he didn’t turn away. Annie moved closer and started unhurriedly pulling tighter on the chains that attached to the clamps on his arms and legs.
“I just have to make sure you’re restrained, darling,” she prattled on, tightening his binds. “I’ve seen some bulls go crazy during this procedure, and that’s even after the vet shoots their nose with Novocain. I know it will hurt,” she said, as Peter began to tug back, resisting the constricting of his chains. “But it will all be worth it in the end, right?”
Peter was stretched tight now, his arms and legs fanned out in an “X” with his back against the steel bars. He wailed at his predicament, struggling to pull free. Annie slipped between the bars and gently touched his face.
“I love you, sweetheart,” she whispered, and unclamped the ring.
Annie struggled to stab the ring through the soft flesh of his septum, and Peter howled in pain and rage as she pushed. The ring was making a deeper puncture wound than she realized, and she was having a hard time getting it to poke through the skin. Peter began to yelp—loud, agony-filled wails—and Annie squared her shoulders and tried again. This time, the ring broke through the sensitive tissue, and she was able to clamp it shut.
She was breathing heavily, and she realized she had been clenching her teeth tightly. She stretched out her jaw, opening her mouth wide, hearing it crack near her ears.
“That was tougher than I thought it would be,” she laughed, looking at Peter.
He had his eyes squeezed shut tight. His yelps had been reduced to a low keening, and for a moment, Annie felt guilty. She had just mangled him, after all. Dead or undead, it had to have hurt.
“We’ll go out in a little while,” she murmured in his ear, before squeezing through the bars to loosen his chains. “In the mean time, I’ll bring you a nice pig.”
Peter tore in to the pig’s brain with less enthusiasm than normal, Annie noted. There were tracks in the grime on his face, and she realized that he had been crying. She hated to see him like this, but she was at a loss for what else to do. It was all for his own good. She decided to wait a couple of days before bringing him outside, to let his nose heal a little bit.
When Peter finished cleaning out the pig’s brain from its cranial cavity, he leaned back against the wall, giving the boar’s corpse a little kick. He closed his eyes. Annie could see his eyes movi
ng back and forth beneath his lids.
She leaned in to tug at the pig’s hoof, trying to maneuver the corpse down to the other end of the chute where she could pull it out of Peter’s cage and pile it with the other animal bodies just outside of the barn door. She’d used a sort of winch that she’d crafted with ropes and a hook to move the cows’ corpses once Peter had fed on them, but she’d been unable to pull them very far, even with the winch.
The smell of the dead animals was unbearable, and Annie invariably vomited every day when she had to move a fresh body to the pile. She had taken to swiping Vick’s Vapo-Rub under her nose before this task, but the nauseating stench still permeated her sensibilities. It was her least favorite part of the day, and she tried to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Annie had to open a metal gate to pull the corpse through, and Peter often made a stab at escaping when he heard her rattle the chain to unlock it. She kept her father’s pistol tucked in to the waistband of her shorts, and had had to fire more than one warning shot in Peter’s general direction over the past month. Today, however, he made no move to escape, and Annie figured his nose was probably still throbbing. She cleaned up the pig remains, hosed Peter’s cell down, and closed the barn door. Another beautiful day spent in the company of the zombie she loved.
Peter seemed excited when Annie pulled out the hook a few days later, and she was encouraged that he recognized that the gaff meant that he was going outside. If he could still reason out this association, she figured, then he was still Peter-the-man, not all Peter- the-cannibalistic-monster. He winced as she hooked his nose ring through the bar, but waited patiently, moaning faintly from the back of his throat as she unhooked the clamps that held his neck, arms, and legs.
Hell Hath No Fury... Page 19