by M. E. Betts
"Gun!" Fauna cried, pushing Shari. Shari did the best tuck and roll she could manage, avoiding the gunfire being issued from the lower limb of a tree about twenty feet away, which dashed into the ground where she had just been standing, knocking up a plume of dirt. Her amateur maneuver had spared her a bullet, but had knocked the wind out her. Not quite like in the movies, eh princess? that inner voice teased. Fauna took out her .357 magnum and fired back. She struck him in the gut, and he fell the twelve feet between the limb and the ground. His .38 revolver fell about five feet away from him, and Fauna easily made it there before he could drag himself over. Shari came up beside her, pointing her bow at Nick's head. He moaned on the ground, looking in shock at the rather sizeable wound in his abdomen. He clutched around the hole, and the intestined bulged slightly between his fingers. Tears flowed down his cheeks.
"Great," Fauna said irritably. "Made me use my gun, ya little fuckin' turd. Every zombie from a half-mile around is gonna be here. Made me ring the goddamn dinner bell." She kicked him in the shin with her cowboy boot, causing him to wince from the additional pain. "So where'd ya keep the extra gun, ya fucker?" He ignored the question, moaning and babbling incoherently in apparent disbelief. She kicked him again, this time in the other shin, and harder.
"Agghh! It was in my car. I left the barn that first night and got it out...” He paused, gurgling and weeping. “Got it out and hid it in the mailbox, just in case you guys searched my car. I knew you'd wanna leave me defenseless, I needed to have something! Then last night after I escaped, I went and got it. I knew you bitches would come after me!” He glared at them, a twisted, unhinged expression overcoming his sickly, gaunt features. “I knew you two wanted me dead! I gave you a chance, but you two just couldn’t be girls, could you? You thought you could tell me what to do!” He laughed, a demented sound. “I mean, can you imagine? Two stupid, delusional SLUTS trying to tell a man what to do? And one Arab slut, to top it off. I would have fucked you up right then and there, if I’d have known you’d never see reason.”
“Hey, asshole, I’m Indian," Shari replied disdainfully. "There’s a difference."
Fauna looked at him neutrally, then turned away, grimacing. “No point in arguin’ with him,” she whispered to Shari. “He’s obviously too far gone mentally. It’d be like talkin’ to a wall.”
“What do we do with him?” Shari asked, her gaze riveted in Nick's direction. “I mean, assuming the gunshot wound doesn’t kill him momentarily.”
Fauna looked off into the distance, looking indecisive and sucking in sharply through her teeth. “I wanna say kill him, but...I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like the humane thing to do. He’s not in his right mind.”
“Yeah, but apparently being in his right mind, in his case, means hiding how sexist and racist he really is. At least we know where the nutjob stands now.”
“Agreed, but--” Fauna stopped cold, looking in Nick’s direction. He was lying all the way back, head on the ground, eyes open.
“Is he dead?” Shari asked, steadying her bow.
“I...think...so,” Fauna said cautiously. “Nick!”
“Hey, asshole!” Shari taunted, kicking a large rock at him. “I think he’s dead. Not surprising. That was a pretty bad injury he sustained.”
“I’m...not...dead, you stupid, cocksucking camel jockey,” he rasped, lifting his head just off the ground.
This ignorant prick. He’s what’s wrong with the world, and his kind can’t be left to ruin what’s left of it. The thoughts crossed Shari’s consciousness before she could even grasp them.
The arrow sailed ten feet, arching down, and pierced Nick in the eye, sinking down through his skull and into the ground, leaving his head propped up at a slight angle...the death mask he exited the world with was the expression of hate he wore before he died.
“Now he’s dead,” Shari said indifferently, turning back toward the garage. She looked back over her shoulder after she had gotten about ten paces away. Again she heard the voice in her head, the words muffled yet clearly distinguishable, with some kind of accent she couldn't place her finger on...You know, from this distance, he looks kinda peaceful.
“What the fuck?” Fauna cried, incredulous. “Did you really have to do that? Because he called you a name?”
“No, not really. But he was dying anyway. I mean, what? Were we gonna take him to a doctor?” Shari turned and looked at Fauna. “Look, I know that life is precious. Every last moment. But that’s only for human beings, and Nick forfeited his humanity when he tried to kill us. You can try and tell me that he was mentally ill, that he couldn’t help himself. But he was a bad man. I could sense it on him from the moment he reared his ugly head around here, and I know you could too. We had two options--sit around pointing our weapons at him until he died, which could’ve taken awhile, while he slung insults at us--or just put him out of his--and our--misery sooner, rather than later. You saw all the blood he lost, you saw his insides torn apart and spilling out of his body--there was nothing we could do for him, since neither one of us are medically trained. There could be more zombies in these woods--especially since YOU BOTH JUST SHOT YOUR GUNS OUT HERE-- and we couldn’t just sit babysitting his evil ass all day, or night, depending on how long it took him to bleed out or die of shock. And I don’t know about you, but I was not willing to try and move him. Knowing him, he’d try and bite us or some crazy shit, or maybe even die and come back while we're in the process of moving him.” She paused, sighing. The shock began to wear off, and she finally started to feel the finality of what she had done. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Fauna, I value human life, you know that. What I just did, I hope to God I never have to do it again. A few weeks ago, I was a librarian, for God’s sake. I never saw myself killing an animal, let alone a zombie or a living human being. But sometimes, with all that’s going on, tough calls have to be made. At least when it comes to people who want you dead. And I made that call. I hope you can forgive me.” She continued trudging toward the garage. Fauna stared after her for a moment longer, then ran to catch up.
“Well, I guess we oughtta take care of his body, hitch ‘im up to Eva and drag him outta the woods,” she said as she caught up with Shari’s stride.
Shari nodded. “Are we burying him?”
Fauna mulled it over for a moment as they walked toward the barn. “Naw, I think we can burn him." She sighed. "I don’t know if I feel right about what you did, but...I don’t know if that makes you wrong for doin’ it, if that makes sense. The point is, I doubt that bastard’d bother diggin’ a proper grave for us. On the other hand, we don’t wanna leave him as zombie bait, now do we?”
They reached the corral. Fauna dressed Eva and led her from the corral, closing the gate behind her. As they entered the woods, they heard graceless footsteps, and after moment, they saw an undead pubescent-aged girl running toward them. Her long, dark hair was in a matted braid, and she wore a softball uniform. Pittville Panthers, the jersey read above the number 31. Shari was ready with her bow, quickly taking the girl down.
“Jesus!” she said, grimacing. “I guess that’s going to be a fact of life now, too--” She steadied herself for the words she was about to utter, a look of anguish washing over her face. “Zombie children. Two words I wish we never had to have in the same sentence.”
“Shit,” Fauna said, "I’m a mom, how do you think I feel? At least you ain’t got kids yet.”
“Yet,” Shari echoed. Fauna noted that the look on her face was one of profound puzzlement. “I always wanted kids, but...” Her words had come out muted, almost a whisper. Her expression changed into one of dull horror. “I can’t imagine bringing children into this world.”
“Well, you never know,” Fauna replied. “Maybe things’ll be different later. It’s only been--what?--maybe a couple weeks since things went to shit? We ain’t got no precadent to judge the situation by, so we don’t know what’ll happen. But the way I figure, these things--" She gestured toward the zombie g
irl. "Their lifespan can’t be very long. Seems most of 'em are just gettin’ to be more and more decayed. I mean, they obviously don’t regenerate or heal like we do. If most of these fuckers get too rotted to walk around, it’ll make survival easier...only so many survivors left to die and turn into fresh zombies. The rest, I can’t see ‘em bein’ anythin’ more than decayin’ puddles after awhile.” She snickered. "And that's one puddle you don't wanna step in!"
“Yeah, maybe,” Shari said wistfully as they reached Nick’s lifeless body. “Maybe there will come a time when humanity can begin to repopulate the Earth more safely...without having to worry about the danger of a crying baby in a world like this, or the possibility of being pregnant with complications and no doctor around.”
"The time will come, rest assured," Fauna agreed. She laughed. "Humanity, we're like cockroaches. If the universe wanted to kill us off, it'd have to try a little harder than this. Billions of people on this planet, we ain't all gonna be done in by zombies."
"Let's just hope," Shari mused, "that we can be better than we were before. Learn from some of our mistakes. So we can at least say that something positive came of it...so all this isn't for nothing."
It was mid-summer, almost three months since the undead had invaded the Earth. It was easy to tell which of the undead were around since the beginning, as those ones, by the time July rolled around, were festering corpses milling about. Luckily for the survivors, the decayed ones also had much more difficulty moving. Besides the obvious fact that they were rotting away, most of them had also ruined their ligaments and tendons long ago as they wholeheartedly chased their prey, undeterred by the fact that they were destroying their mobility. From what Shari and Fauna could tell, they didn't feel pain, or at the very least had no discernable reaction to it. They only had their tunnel vision, and at the end of that tunnel was a meal of living flesh. Only the very fresh ones had the speed and enthusiasm to potentially outrun living survivors. As time went on, and more and more people were turned, the fresh ones got to be fewer and farther between. Fauna and Shari had rekilled roughly a few dozen zombies since the whole thing started, burning the bodies as they went along.
There was still plenty of food for the time being, but it was visibly dwindling. They hunted regularly to stretch out their food supply, and had planted a vegetable plot beside the garage where they had planted carrots, leaf and romaine lettuce, tomatoes and red potatoes. Shari bowhunted for deer, and Fauna occasionally fished in the nearby river. Shari had gotten to be proficient in dressing and butchering, and even acquired a stomach for it.
"We can't be relyin' on manmade food," Fauna had explained. "Even when we leave here, who knows how much'll be left? I'm sure everythin's already been looted all to be damned, dependin' on how many people survived. If we both know how to hunt, and prepare the meat, we'll have a much better shot at survival."
Fauna had been in contact for the past few weeks with a man named Jon, with whom she had been speaking over the radio. He had told her that his group consisted of himself, his wife and son, and his wife's sister, and that he didn't know how long they'd be safe where they were at.
"I think we're outside of a town called Crayne," he had told Fauna the first night they spoke. "You'll understand if I don't get more specific than that. We're all a little paranoid these days, and who knows who'll show up to start shit if I broadcast exactly where I'm at? Two young women with me, on top of it, my wife and her sister." He had snickered ruefully and continued. "Anyway, we're not from the area. We were passing through on our way up to Illinois, headed for Springfield. We had to get off the highway because of all the pileups. Some places, it wasn't even crashes clogging up the road. It was just where people abandoned their cars...I guess maybe some of 'em ran out of gas or whatever. I saw one guy at the beginning of all this...the lady sitting in the passenger seat next to him was slumped over in her seat...probably his wife, I'm guessing. Then I watched from my car while she sat back up and tried to eat him. She had turned in the car, probably while he was on his way to the hospital or whatever, thinking like a lot of people did, that they could get help, that they could save their loved ones." He had paused for a moment and snickered again. "Man, it didn't take long to figure out that that shit wasn't gonna work, did it? But anyway, I watched that man get out of his car and abandon it with her inside of it. I don't know if he didn't have a weapon, or if he just couldn't bring himself to re-kill the woman, but for whatever reason, he left the car right there, in the middle of the road, and ran off. I got a little further down the road, in the direction he had run, and he was lying face-down, and..." He had stopped, cleared his throat, and sighed before continued. "There was nothing really left of his neck. Just his spine...there were a few zombies piled on top of him, and they had chewed away all the goddanm flesh on his neck, like it was a chicken leg. I couldn't believe it...that man had just been alive moments ago. I told my wife to cover our son's eyes, and then I drove over the four of them...then I threw it in reverse and drove over them again...and again and again, until I couldn't tell where one body stopped and the next began. Shit, I couldn't even tell which body part was which by the time I was done. The way I figured it, that was four less zombies to get up and kill anyone." He laughed. "I'm glad I was in my big off-road pickup, or else I'd have messed my tires and undercarriage up. I can't tell you how many bodies I had to drive over, how many ditches I had to drive down into and back up out of, just to make it to somewhere half-way safe."
Fauna had talked to him almost every day after that, until one day it came down to what Shari had seen as inevitable...Jon asked if he and his group could come stay with them. Shari overheard the conversation from the loft.
"I can't keep my group safe much longer," he had explained to Fauna. "We've been as quiet as we could, but they're starting to swarm around the place...not right outside our building, but down the street. They can tell we're nearby, they just haven't figured out where. Not a lot of them yet, but there are more of every day. Plus we're starting to run out of food. I might as well tell you at this point, we've been staying in a small convenience store, and there's not much left. Enough food for maybe another week, if we really stretch it. It's on city water, and even though we filled up as many bottles as we could before the water stopped running, we've only got a couple dozen 20-ounce bottles left. All the bottles of juice, soda, everything's gone. There was only so much left when we got here, on top of it. I have the truck parked next to a window in the back of the store, right up against the building, with the driver's side window open, so that when we're ready to leave we can open the window in the storeroom and crawl right into the truck, make a break for it. We just need somewhere safe to go. You told me you have a reliable water source and a safe place. I'm begging you, for the sake of my son...please help us."
"So they want to come stay with us?" Shari asked the next morning as she washed the breakfast dishes.
"Yeah," Fauna replied quietly. She was silent for a few moments. "You know, they got a kid with 'em. From what they said, they ain't safe where they're at. Now, I know we never met 'em face-to-face, but well...I'm of the opinion that you get to know more about a person from talkin' to 'em than from lookin' at 'em, bein' in the same room with 'em. What a person says, what they stand for...that's what ultimately matters."
"I can't really disagree with that," Shari said as she dried her hands.
"And from what they've said...I think we've gotten to know them well enough to have some idea of what kind of people they are. I don't know much about the women, it's normally Jon on the radio doin' the talkin'. But I think we should give 'em a chance. If they make it out here okay, they'll have a much better shot than where they're at now. They ain't from around here, they don't know the area. I don't blame 'em for not wantin' to pick somewhere out of a hat to try and stay. Yeah, they might find somewhere that's not too overrun...but here, they know they'll be safe, and so will their child. I mean..." She held out her hands out to the sides, palms up, lo
oking around the loft with a grin. "I don't mean to brag, but you have to admit...there ain't too many places safer than the one you're standin' in now, 'cept maybe a missile silo!"
"That's true," Shari said. "I guess it's only right that we try to help a family with a small child." She shook her head. "But it does worry me a little. I mean, not that Jon or his family will do anything to us, necessarily. But what if somebody else is listening in? What if we tell them how to get here, but they're not the only ones and someone less trustworthy shows up?"
"That's a very valid concern," Fauna concurred. "Best we can do is meet 'em somewhere else, and try and make sure no one else is following us back here. But we have to try. Jon, he seems like a good man. I don't want to leave a good man without a helping hand, not when I have a choice." She lit up a smoke, inhaling deeply, then continued as she exhaled. "I didn't tell you this 'til now--didn't feel the need to--but I got a hidden room up in my attic. Got some AK-47's and more ammo'n you'd believe. Also a few sniper rifles. I wanna get you usin' those AK's before we breathe a word to anyone about this place, make sure we can handle ourselves in case trouble rolls on up."
Shari smiled. "Is there nothing you didn't think of, Fauna? This loft, the food reserves, the weapons and horses--you were truly prepared for the end of the world. And me, I just wandered in here off of the road. I just happened to wind up in what has got to be the safest possible place. It's a haven, that's what it is."
Fauna shook her head. "Just think of it as an incubator...to safely grow you into the woman you were meant to be."
"You know what I miss?" Shari said as they walked from the garage to the house.