by Brown, TW
It was no surprise that a lot of anything useful had long since been picked clean, but people always left something behind. In one of the little diners, we found a few cans of stewed tomatoes, along with a few boxes of individually wrapped crackers. It might not seem like much, but beggars could not be choosers in the apocalypse. We also found seltzer water in the liquor store.
Before long, we were on the move again, passing an opened bottle of the carbonated water back and forth. This led to one of my lesser moments as Marshawn and I engaged in a belching contest where we mimicked zombie moans. It wasn’t something I’d be proud of, but in the end, I was declared the winner, so there was that.
All day long we walked. Every zombie we passed lay motionless. We even passed a trio of zombie children and I was strangely relieved to see they were suffering the same fate.
The quake had by no means been ‘The Big One’ that local media always liked to trot out and scare people with every single time some other location had a large-scale quake that did heavy damage. But we did see plenty of signs of damage as we walked along. There were more than a few toppled chimneys, cracked pavement, and a few older homes looked like they were leaning one way or the other.
Knowing where we were, I guessed that we would reach our first target destination sometime tomorrow. The road we were on was a simple two-lane affair that wound through lots of wooded countryside. There were a few houses, and they all looked abandoned. We were about to pick one when I saw a sign that caught my eye.
“Jed’s gun repair,” I mused aloud.
“Think old Jed is still there?” Marshawn asked as we stood in front of the obviously old house that had a large wooden structure attached that was likely a workshop.
Looking around, I was willing to guess he was not. The yard had a few zombies in it, one that was in the throes of the earthquake-induced catatonic state.
We approached the door to the shed since it seemed the most likely location to find firearms. If we could add to our arsenal, so much the better.
Sadly, we were only partially correct. The shed was indeed the workshop. However, the guns we found were in various stages of having been dismantled. Neither Marshawn nor I had the inclination nor the experience to piece things together.
We moved on to the residence and went around to the back since the front door and every road-facing window had a steel grate in place that would defy any of our abilities to break in without some sort of power saw. The back yard was fenced and obviously set up to deter intruders with the heavy-duty chain link topped with three rows of razor wire. The gate was secured with sturdy chain and a massive padlock.
“Maybe we move on,” Marshawn suggested.
“Hold up.” I dashed back to the shed and returned with a set of massive bolt cutters.
It took both of us using every bit of strength we possessed, but we eventually cut the chain. I’d only taken a few steps into the overgrown back yard when I heard a low rumble. My eyes scanned the tall grass and stopped on a large doghouse.
“Crap,” Marshawn hissed.
We were both frozen in place. My eyes were locked on the grass, waiting for it to show signs of what had to be a guard dog that was on the move. Time seemed to freeze as we waited, both of us gripping a machete and waiting for the source of that noise to rush us.
After a long wait, nothing approached. Together, we began our advance into the yard. I saw it first and gasped.
“Poor bastard,” I said.
We’d found Jed. Well, more likely, what remained of him. He’d obviously turned. The open back door indicating how he’d arrived here in the back yard.
A massive dog that looked to be some sort of cross between a Pit Bull and a Rottweiler with a spiked collar that was attached to a sturdy chain was staring up at us with undead eyes. It had a few rips and bites out of it, but the remains of the man we guessed to be Jed had been savaged. In the process, the undead duo had gotten all tangled in the chain and neither could hardly move.
Marshawn and I advanced and spiked them. Once that was done, we headed for the house.
The inside smelled musty and rats scurried away as we entered. The floor was stained with old blood and an open refrigerator had been ransacked by the rodents and whatever other creatures had found their way inside.
As we passed though the filthy kitchen, we flipped open cupboards and cabinets to find nothing worth scavenging. The vermin had been enjoying a bounty here and left little for anybody else.
Heading down the hallway, we entered the living room with two open doorways that revealed what had to be a bathroom and the bedroom.
“This place is smaller than my first apartment,” Marshawn quipped.
The smell of rot and decay was heavy as we ventured all the way into the living room. I don’t know how I’d missed it, but my eyes now locked on a pair of legs I could make out in the doorway of the bedroom. Unable to resist, I was drawn to take a closer look much like passers-by at a terrible car accident.
I reached the doorway and peered into the gloomy bedroom kept dark by the drawn blinds. On the floor was a woman perhaps in her late fifties. Her white hair a shock of brightness in an otherwise dismal setting. Her throat had been ripped out and her belly torn open. Her thin form had been brutally mauled, and every bite mark stood out on her arms and legs. Missing fingers on both hands indicated to me that she had perhaps tried to fend her attacker off. The single bullet hole in her forehead had a dark halo and a dried pool of blood had mostly either evaporated or been collected by the multitude of flies and vermin that still buzzed around the corpse or skittered in the shadows.
“We aren’t staying here,” I said as I backed out of the room. “And it looks like there is nothing for us to take. This guy has either been looted or did not have anything much that wasn’t in some state of repair when all hell broke loose.”
“Seems strange that a gun repair guy doesn’t have any guns,” Marshawn lamented. “Sort of like a tattoo artist without any ink, ya know?”
“Well, if he had anything, it’s long gone.”
We went to the front door and were about to leave when a peculiar sound caught the attention of us both. At first, I mistook it for a car or truck.
“A helicopter?” Marshawn blurted as I realized what I was hearing and began to fumble for the door.
We both emerged onto the front porch and began scanning the sky. With the quiet so overwhelming, the source of this sound seemed to come from every direction at once.
At last, we spotted it. It was definitely a military helicopter. One of those big two-rotor rigs. It was flying high above everything and well off to the north. I knew it was north because I could see the glacier-capped top of Mount Saint Helens in the distance and Mount Hood was to my right. The helo was towards the direction of Saint Helens.
I raised my arms and began waving frantically for a few moments until I realized I was alone in my actions. I turned to Marshawn, confused as to why he simply stood there. My face must’ve given away my thoughts.
“There is literally no way they would see us from that far away, Evan.”
I dropped my arms in defeat with the realization that he was correct. That didn’t stop us both from standing on the porch of the rickety old house and watching as the helicopter shrunk to a dot and finally vanished off to the east.
We continued up the road a ways and ended up seeking refuge in one of those drive-thru coffee shacks. On the plus side, we were able to stuff a few bags of the ground goodness into our packs. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d had real coffee. In fact, we’d been almost out of instant, so that even that had become a rare luxury saved for the communal breakfast we held every so often.
Morning came and brought the typical drastic weather change I’d experienced every spring. Yesterday’s sunshine was replaced with a chill, wind, and rain showers. I missed having a weatherman give me at least some idea of what to expect each day. I hadn’t realized what a luxury that happened to be.
I was about to open the door and step outside to relieve myself when I froze. A lone figure was making its way along the road. The jerky movements of its head and the slow shamble told me right away that the undead—at least this one—had resumed being mobile.
I relayed my discovery to Marshawn who snorted something I couldn’t make out. With a shrug, I very cautiously opened the door and peered outside. Sure enough, I could see a few of them moving about.
“I guess it’s just a temporary thing,” I groused as I moved over behind a large truck and unzipped my pants.
I was staring up at the sky as my bladder emptied itself when I heard the crunch of gravel at the same moment something sharp and cold pressed against my throat.
“Don’t move a muscle or this is how you die,” a raspy voice hissed in my ear.
I was wracked by the bizarre sensation of feeling like I had to piss at the same time my muscles contracted to the point of cutting my current activity off in midstream. The sharp edge of the blade at my throat shifted without losing contact with my skin and I felt the sting of being cut a moment before I sensed a trickle of hot liquid roll down my neck.
“You ain’t out here without supplies…where they at?” the voice insisted.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I started.
“Well that seems to be ‘zactly what you found,” the voice wheezed.
I caught the whiff of foul breath this time and had to stifle a gag. This person didn’t seem to have brushed their teeth since probably before the undead rose, I guessed.
“Put them hands up and turn around nice and slow,” the voice ordered.
“Can I at least tuck myself away?” I asked.
“You think I ain’t seen a man’s pecker?” This was followed by an ugly, braying laughter. “Just put your hands up in the air and turn around slowly.”
I turned to see a woman who’d obviously not ever considered sunscreen as an option and most likely chain-smoked. Her face was leathery and heavily creased with wrinkles that cut dark crevices in her skin. Her eyes were rheumy and squinted in a perma-glare. Her cracked lips were split with skin tags that looked ragged. Her graying hair might’ve been some kind of brown once, but it was hard to tell since most of it was stuffed under an oily beanie.
The blade in her hand was a long, sharp Bowie knife. A pair of pistols were dangling from her bony hips and a shotgun jutting up over one shoulder. If I had to guess, I would say she might weigh ninety pounds if you included the gear she was packing.
The man behind her matched her haggard and malnourished appearance. His leering smile revealed a few missing teeth, and the ones still present were shades of yellow and brown. Somehow, despite his scrawny appearance, he managed to sport a pot belly. His coveralls were filthy and looked as if they might disintegrate if exposed to water. He was wearing a floppy brimmed cowboy hat with a pack of cigarettes stuck in the band.
“So…gonna ask once more and then I might just shoot that little dangler of yours off if’n I don’t get no answer,” the woman rasped. “Your gear…where is it?”
I glanced over at the coffee shack and caught a brief glimpse of something in one window that might’ve just been a trick of the overcast morning light. I cursed myself as the man spun on his heel and started for where I knew Marshawn to still be.
I could do nothing as the man grabbed the door and flung it open. Time stopped for just a split second as the man took that first step up to enter the shack.
The sharp ‘pop-pop’ of what I had to assume to be one of Marshawn’s .45s sounded. The woman’s nasty smile turned to a look of surprise as she spun instinctively to the sudden sound. I knew I only had a heartbeat or two to react and lunged.
I’m not a big guy, but her scrawny frame almost folded over backward when I slammed into the small of her back. We hit the ground hard and her knife skittered away. I heard something crunch as her face bounced of the gravel and took the opportunity to grab her by the back of the neck and slam it down again.
Rolling off her, I reached down and snatched one of the pistols from its holster at her hips. Shoving the business end against her side, I squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
Glancing down, I saw the safety toggle and flipped it with my thumb. She was just starting to moan and try to roll over when I fired off two shots into her side.
I scrambled to my feet as the woman tried to roll over. With one booted foot on her shoulder, I pinned her down and fired another shot into the back of her head.
The sound echoed through the large, empty lot. I stared down at the splatter stain that oozed across the ground with slow sureness. It was like watching an oil leak in a way. Or…maybe that was what I told myself as I pushed down any feelings of guilt that threatened to rise up.
“You okay?”
Marshawn was at my side, his own pistols still in each hand. I looked up at him and shrugged. Again I was struck by how easy I’d been led to believe taking another human life could be. The reality was that this woman and her companion would most likely have killed me. If I hadn’t killed her, then I would be dead.
As the adrenaline seeped from my system, I felt a sting on my throat and wiped at it with the back of my wrist. Looking down, I saw a crimson smear. She’d cut me. Not much, but enough to draw blood. Proof that she was obviously not nearly as concerned about injuring or killing another person.
“You did the right thing,” Marshawn offered. “There is no scenario where she leaves you alive if I hadn’t been here. They were gonna take your stuff and leave your corpse behind without a second thought.”
Maybe he was right, but if that were the case, why hadn’t she just killed me when she got the drop on me? I wondered.
Gathering our gear, we moved out before the undead could converge. Already I was seeing a few of them wandering out of the woods and from around the corners of houses. We hit the road and I realized not for the first time how strange everything seems when you don’t zoom past in a car with your stereo cranking some AC/DC or Van Halen.
“We should be in the area where those people were last spotted in a few hours,” I commented as we paused to eat some dried meat and sip some water.
“You think those people are still there just wasting their time trying to harass that Evans prick?” Marshawn asked after capping his canteen.
“It ain’t like they got anything better to do.” Even as I said it, I heard the foolishness of that statement.
There were plenty of things to do. For one—and this was a big one—there was survival. The look on Marshawn’s face said he wasn’t buying my response either.
We continued along, taking the back roads as we went as they wound through the wooded, sparsely populated boondocks out in this part of the area that surrounded Portland. The undead were almost totally absent as we traveled, and only once did we have to engage with them.
There was one moment where I had a chill travel down my spine like I was being watched. I stopped and turned a full circle but didn’t see anything.
Eventually, I could see a familiar sign that informed me I was entering “Boring—but never dull—Oregon”. I felt a lump rise in my throat when we rounded the lazy curve of the highway.
Suspended from the power lines that ran alongside the two-lane highway were over two dozen people. None of them were struggling which meant they’d been the living, hung by their necks until they died.
As we neared, we saw signs dangling from around their necks. Each one was a derogatory term used to announce their non-white heritage. This could only be the work of Don Evans.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe there were more people like him, and I certainly would not be foolish enough to believe he was the only one to make it this far into the apocalypse, but I had no doubt whose work we were witness to.
I overcame my initial desire to cut them down. For one, they were too high up and we had no means to reach them. That didn’t mean the desire wasn’t there.
“This is why we are out
here risking our asses,” Marshawn muttered as if to himself as he stood below one of the dangling corpses, staring up at it with his hands shielding his eyes.
The sound of gravel crunching behind us made us both spin around. I had a pistol in my hand, Marshawn whipped the shotgun he’d taken from our last encounter up to his hip.
There was a tall hedge blocking our view into the parking lot of a small mom and pop café as well as one of the countless drive-thru coffee carts. The greenery rattled a bit and then a hand reached through.
I didn’t need to see the body attached to it to know a child was about to emerge. Sure enough, a moment later, a boy of perhaps seven or eight peered out at us. As soon as his gaze locked on us, he froze. I didn’t move, but my eyes began to scan the area.
No encounter with zombie children had ever gone the same way twice. I’d also noticed a trend for the child version of the zombie to travel in groups. I still hadn’t figured them out, but I was at least starting to learn some of their tendencies.
Sure enough, movement to our left got my attention. A pair of children were peering from behind an old pickup truck. One of them even pulled back and vanished as soon as it realized I’d spotted them.
Realize? That would imply cognition, and that would screw with my head if it came down to having to kill them.
“Evan.” Marshawn’s voice broke into my thoughts and I glanced over.
“Oh fuck.”
A small park was just a little farther up the road. Emerging from it were at least twenty zombie children. I was not surprised when I spotted several cats weaving in and out of their legs. Dragging itself along in their wake were a few of the adult versions. Oddly enough, they were all missing one or both legs. I didn’t want to dwell too long on that.
I backed up a step, my head now on a swivel. Marshawn and I both had the same idea. There was some sort of equipment rental place almost a half a block away up a street that branched off from this one. It had a tall chain link fence around it with no barbed or razor wire on top. We shouldn’t have any trouble outdistancing them and getting over without a problem. From there we could probably just exit from a different side and be away from them without any actual confrontation.