Iver flushes the toilet then goes to open the door. He’s barely turned the key when Fred comes bursting in, shoving him out of the way.
“Hey!”
Fred heads for the toilet, using the shotgun as a cane for support as he kneels down and vomits into the bowl. He spits and wipes his mouth in his sleeve. “Goddamnit. Knew I shouldn’t have finished that lamb.”
“You feeling sick?” Iver asks, standing there, noticing his heart beating right below his chin as he eyes Fred intently.
Fred glances sideways, as though he forgot Iver was there. His face is pink and sweat is beading on his forehead. “Just had some bad meat for supper, that’s all.”
Iver can smell the puke and something salty, too. It’s fever, he realizes. Fred is burning up.
“Say, you look a little hot—you need me to get you anything? A glass of water?”
Iver goes to leave, but Fred flips the shotgun on him. “You stay right here. I don’t want you out of my sight.”
Iver holds out his arms. “Why? What do you think I’d do?”
“You’d let those dead fuckers in here,” Fred says, burping. “You’d let them fucking have me just so you could get out of here and save your own ass. Don’t you think I’m not on to you, boy.”
“You’re crazy,” Iver says.
Fred burps again, then waves the gun. “Close that door. Lock it. Throw the key over here.”
Iver closes the door slowly. He puts his hand on the key and is about to turn it. But something makes him hesitate. A sudden feeling that if he locks that door, he’ll never get to leave the bathroom. From outside the window, he can hear the zombies groping the glass.
Fred begins to heave, but fights back the vomit. “What are you … waiting for? Throw that … damn key … over here!”
“I can’t lock it,” Iver hears himself say, rustling the key. “It’s jammed.”
“You’re lying!” Fred shouts, then turns his head to puke some more.
Iver decides to chance it.
He rips open the door.
Fred notices and—turning his head to vomit on the floor—shoots the gun still pointed in Iver’s direction.
The sound is like an atomic bomb going off, immediately eradicating Iver’s hearing, the hailstorm of bullets shattering the cupboard just over his head, causing pieces of wood to fly out like confetti.
Iver bolts out the door, ducking down even though it’s way too late to do so, slams the door behind him and runs down the hallway, headed back towards the kitchen. There are no obvious hiding places here, Iver realizes as he looks around, panting.
His ears are still ringing, but he picks up Fred roaring something from the hallway, and as Iver spins around, he sees the old guy come tumbling out of the bathroom, flailing the gun.
Iver runs into the living room, closes the door and tips over the nearest bookcase. It lands with a crash in front of the door, books flying everywhere.
Iver spins around and looks out over the room. Every window is guarded by at least three zombies, and there are no other doors.
The knob begins moving behind him, and Fred starts banging the door.
“Let me in, you little shit! Open that door or I’ll blast it open!”
Fuck!
Iver looks around the living room, trying desperately to summon one last clever idea as the seconds tick by and Fred is still shouting threats from behind the door, kicking it and causing the bookcase to wobble.
What do I do? What do I do?
THIRTY-FIVE
It’s been around twenty minutes since Dan heard the helicopter leave.
Now, the hilly landscape is silent except for a late bird singing now and then. The evening is growing darker around him, and his senses are getting more sensitive. His eyes keep scanning ahead and his ears are prickling for any sounds in the bushes.
So he picks up right away at the sound of running steps approaching quickly from behind, and he spins around, holding up the rod.
Out of dusk comes a big, furry beast which Dan takes to be a wolf, and he screams out.
Just as he’s about to run for his life, the animal gets close enough for him to recognize Ozzy.
The German shepherd runs up to him, sits down and begins barking. He’s looking at Dan, but Dan gets the feeling it’s not him he’s barking at.
He’s calling out, Dan realizes, still too stunned at the sight of Ozzy to say or do anything.
Within a few minutes, he can hear footsteps approaching. Then William appears, jogging along, panting. He’s wearing a backpack and holding the rifle. When he looks up and sees Dan, he stops and rests his hands on his knees, catching his breath.
“Good boy, Ozzy,” he pants.
Ozzy stops barking and begins instead to lick Dan’s hands eagerly.
“I … I thought you weren’t coming,” Dan says tentatively, afraid that William will tell him he’s not really coming, he just forgot to say or give him something. Maybe the extra backpack is for Dan. Maybe William will just throw it to him and run back to the helicopter.
But William sends him a look Dan can’t mistake. “I wasn’t. But I can’t let you have all the fun to yourself, can I?”
Dan breaks into a smile which feels wide enough to split his face in half. Then he drops the metal rod and throws himself at William, hugging him tightly.
“Hey, hey,” William says, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Let’s turn down the bromance, okay?”
But Dan doesn’t let go, and after a few seconds, William hugs him back. Ozzy slinks around them and whimpers happily.
“All right,” William says, finally breaking up the embrace. “We’d better get going, don’t you think?”
“Thank you,” Dan says, picking the rod back up and discretely wiping away tears.
“Don’t mention it.”
They begin walking south, Ozzy running up ahead and scouting, constantly looking around and sniffing the air.
“He’ll pick up the scent of any dead assholes way before we can see or hear them,” William says. “He’s very good with his nose.”
“I’m glad to have him,” Dan says.
“Yeah, me too. Thank God this thing doesn’t seem to affect animals.”
They walk on a few minutes in silence.
“What made you come along after all?” Dan asks.
William shrugs. “You already talked me into stupid shit in the past. I figured I’d do you one last favor.”
Dan smiles. “No, really. Do you believe me? Do you believe we can turn it around?”
William doesn’t look at him right away. “Let’s just say I want to believe you.”
Dan nods. “That’s all I can ask for, I guess.”
It’s silly, really, but Dan can’t help but feel the night has gotten a little less dark now that William is walking next to him.
“So,” William says after another moment of silent walking. “What’s the game plan here? We’ve got no map. We’ve got no vehicle and no way of crossing the water. How do you plan on getting back to Denmark?”
“I don’t know,” Dan says honestly. “I figured for now I’d simply follow the coastline. That way at least we can be sure we’re headed south. And once we meet a city, we might be able to steal a boat.”
“Why not? We already stole a helicopter. You know how to sail a boat?”
“I tried it once, on a vacation.”
“What if there aren’t any boats? What if people already took all the boats to sail the hell away from here?”
“I don’t know,” Dan says again. “I guess we’ll just have to take it one step at a time. Don’t you?”
William looks down at his feet, as though taking the question literally, then he sends Dan a smile. “I guess that’s as good a plan as anything. You got the ring?”
“What?”
“Sorry, bad joke.”
“Oh.” Dan smiles. “Lord of the Rings, right?”
“Yeah. I love that movie.” William looks at Dan earnest
ly. “Don’t tell me you didn’t watch it.”
“I did.”
“Good. You liked it?”
Dan shrugs. “It was okay, I guess.”
“’Okay, you guess’? Jeez, dude, it’s only the greatest movie ever made!”
“I thought that was Godfather.”
“That one’s good, too.”
“I didn’t watch that one, though,” Dan admits.
William sighs deeply. “You’re hopeless. What did you watch, then?”
Dan shrugs. “I didn’t watch that many movies, really. I’m more into books.”
“I figured,” William says. “What’s your favorite book of all time, then?”
Dan thinks for a moment. “The Stand, I think.”
“What’s that one about?”
“The end of the world.”
“Oh. Very relevant. Zombies?”
“No, it was a flu. People just died. They didn’t come back.”
“That would actually be preferable. How’d it end?”
“Good, I guess.”
“They found a cure?”
“No, but … there was hope. They began building a new and better society. I remember feeling uplifted when I finished.”
William breathes deeply. “Guess that’s not a bad thing. To end with a little hope.”
Dan looks at him and smiles again. “I guess so too.”
THIRTY-SIX
Dennis opens the hatch carefully and peers up into the vegetable garden.
It’s dark now, except for the moonlight beaming down over everything, making the plants look silvery.
“Grrrraaaaahh …”
Dennis snaps his head around, almost dropping the hatch onto his own head. He stares at the couple on the other side of the fence. It’s a man in a police uniform and an Asian woman with most of her hair torn off. They’re groping the metal fence, trying to rip it open, to bite their way through, but it doesn’t work.
Dennis thought he was prepared to see them up close, but it’s still very different from when he was watching them on the monitor down in the bunker just a minute ago.
“Okay,” he tells himself. “You can do this.”
He peels his eyes off the dead couple and opens the hatch all the way so he can climb up. The smell of the tomatoes is almost strong enough to cancel out the smell of blood and flesh and infection from the dead people.
Dennis closes the hatch gently, then stands up straight and looks at the gun in his hand.
It’s a lot heavier than it looks to be in the movies. It’s also very cold.
It’s a Glock—it doesn’t say so anywhere on the gun itself, but Dennis is pretty sure of it. He spent twenty minutes Googling images of guns and he found a close match which told him the name and the specifics of the gun he’s now holding.
Then he found a video on YouTube teaching him how to put bullets into the gun. And how to fire it. The guy told him repeatedly not to keep the gun loaded before you actually needed to shoot it, and to never point it at anything you didn’t intend to kill or destroy.
Dennis glances over at the dead people and swallows dryly.
They’ve been there for most of the day. On the other side of the house are more of them, but these two seem to favor this side, where the vegetable garden is.
Dennis knows that a lot more will come.
It’s fine. They can’t get inside the house.
But still, he needs to practice, needs to learn. He needs to be able to kill them.
Things don’t seem to be going back to normal anytime soon. In fact, they keep saying on the television how the dead people are taking over country after country. They showed a time-lapse map over Europe for the last five days, and Dennis felt goose bumps crawl up his spine as he watched the animation swallow up all of the countries around Denmark. The news reporter said in a grave voice that if things went on like this, by tomorrow, most of Europe would be infected.
So, Dennis needs to prepare himself. He will probably have to fire a gun sooner or later. Either to protect himself or Mom.
Silas was right when he told him he had to grow a pair—Dennis isn’t exactly sure what “pair” refers to, but he gets the gist of it.
Dennis digs into his pocket and takes out the bullets. They shine in the moonlight. He takes his time loading them into the gun’s clip one at a time, ignoring the groans and moans from the dead couple and the rustling of the fence.
It was surprisingly easy to sneak out. Mom didn’t even notice him leave the bunk room. If he’s lucky, she might not even hear the gunshot.
Dennis loads the gun and holds it like he practiced down in the bunker: arm straight, grip firm, barrel pointed down.
Then he takes a deep breath to steady himself and looks at the dead couple again.
Which one?
Dennis has no good way of deciding, so he simply whispers an “eenie-meenie-miney.”
He ends the last “moe” on the guy.
Okay. It’s going to be him.
Dennis steps a little closer to the fence. It’s not easy getting his feet to cooperate; just being here, in the middle of the night, outside the bunker, alone, right in front of two living dead people should be enough to make Dennis pee his pants.
He wants nothing more than to run back down to the bunker, put the gun back into the metal cupboard and crawl back to bed.
He could do it. He could call off the whole thing. Abort mission. Mom never had to find out what he’d been up to.
No, Dennis thinks to himself, clenching his jaw. No, I need to grow a pair.
People are coming to this place. People who he might or might not be able to trust. And if it turns out he can’t, he wants to be ready to defend himself and Mom.
So, he takes one more step forward, leaving only five feet between him and the fence.
The dead guy and the dead woman begin to tear at the fence more eagerly, moaning with hunger, trying desperately to squeeze through and get to him.
Dennis feels his legs begin to buckle and makes an effort to tighten the muscles in his thighs, keeping his stance firm.
He then raises his arm up to eye level, keeping it straight all the way, placing his other palm on his knuckles, which are white from clutching the handle of the gun.
“Breathe in, aim,” he recites, closing one eye. “Focus on the sight, let the target go blurry.”
Not having to look directly at the guy’s face actually makes it a tiny bit easier, Dennis finds, as he stares intently at the tiny bump at the end of the pistol.
“Breathe out, pull the trigger.”
Dennis breathes out, but his finger doesn’t follow through with the last part.
“Breathe out, pull the trigger,” Dennis whispers again.
Still, no reaction from his finger. It’s like it suddenly has its own will and refuses to carry out the order.
“Do it,” Dennis urges himself. “Pull the trigger. Pull it!”
Nothing happens. Except his arms start to shake. The guy moves a little back and forth, and Dennis has to move the gun along.
“Just do it,” he croaks. “You have to grow a pair. Do it. Pull the trigger, damnit!” Then, feeling a sudden rage, he cries out: “Pull the damn trigger, you imbecile!”
The gun kicks back hard as the shot blares out into the night. The recoil isn’t as hard as the rifle, but still hard enough that Dennis almost slaps himself in the face.
He lowers the gun and stares at the guy.
His right eye is gone, together with a big chunk of his temple. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, then collapses.
Dennis watches him go down.
“I did it … I did it …”
He can barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. A mixture of wild excitement rushes up into his chest. To Dennis’s astonishment, the dread of seeing the guy he just shot is drowned out by the elation that he was actually able to do it.
Without thinking, he raises the gun again and takes aim at the woman.
“Breathe in, aim. Breathe out, pull the trigger.”
It’s a lot easier this time.
And he’s prepared for the recoil, too, so the gun only points to the sky briefly before snapping back down.
He only manages to take off the woman’s ear, though.
“Darn it,” Dennis mutters, taking aim again.
As he goes through the ritual a third time, he’s amazed to find that he feels hardly any resistance in his body. Driven by the rush of perhaps the biggest victory Dennis has ever had in his life, he feels something which must be confidence streaming through his blood, and he fires the gun again, this time hitting the woman squarely in the forehead, sending her onto her back where she stays absolutely still.
Dennis lowers the gun and looks at the two dead bodies on the other side of the fence. He lets out a trembling breath and realizes he’s shaking all over. It’s not fear, though; at least not all of it.
“Dennis!”
He spins around, almost raising the gun as a reflex but manages to stop himself in the last instant as he sees Mom looking up at him from the open hatch, her eyes big and wide, darting from him to the corpses.
“What in heaven’s name is going on?” She sees the gun in his hand, and her mouth slips open. “Was it … was it you? Did you just … fire that thing?”
“I did,” Dennis says, surprised to find how calm his voice sounds despite everything inside of him being in uproar. “I killed them, Mom.”
She climbs up all the way, not taking her eyes off of Dennis. “But … why?”
“I’m practicing. I need to learn to protect us.”
Mom shakes her head. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll make sure—”
“You can’t protect me forever, Mom.” Dennis is more than surprised at hearing himself interrupt Mom this way—and judging from Mom’s face, she’s just as surprised. “The world is turning to shit,” he goes on. “And I need to grow a pair if I’m going to make it.”
Mom’s face goes through a range of emotions before settling on suspicion. “That language … who told you all that?”
“No one,” Dennis says, shrugging. He can’t believe how easily the lie slipped out. He could just as easily have said “Silas,” but for some reason, he doesn’t want Mom to know. What happened between him and Silas out here in the vegetable garden seems like something oddly intimate. What was it Silas called it? A “rite of manhood.”
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 57