Stepping away from the corpse, he shot it twice more, this time in the back.
For a moment, he walked backward, keeping his eyes fixed on the decapitated body, fearing it would rise up again and come after him. And why wouldn’t it? This day went from zero to about five fucking hundred in a blink of an eye, for there was a good chance the thing would come back again.
He stopped and stared at it.
“Get real,” Dwight told himself and realized it was over.
The headless corpse wasn’t coming back and that was it. Period.
He gripped his gun tighter and ran toward the highway.
***
“I can’t do it anymore…” Becky heard Tom say as he came to a stop. Well, he had run more than she had expected, so she figured she’d take that and be happy with it.
“Alright, you.” She stopped, shook her hands and legs as she turned around to see him already sitting on the ground.
“Damn,” Tom panted and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I need some water. I don’t understand why you just don’t carry a bottle or something, like a sport one, you know the kind I mean?”
“No.” Becky shook her head and gave him her mixture of a confused and annoyed look. She was good at that, mixing emotions into one convenient facial expression. Some called it bitchiness; she called it saving time to express different feels at once. “And why don’t you carry a water bottle? Why does it have to be me?”
“Well, you know, you’re all into working out and shit. I figured you’d figure out a way to hydrate while you run. I guess I was wrong.”
“You’re an idiot,” Becky said calmly, forfeiting this obviously never-ending argument she had no chance of winning. Tom was stubborn and once he realized that he was getting to her, annoying her, he became merciless. “We got to get back now … or did you think we’d somehow teleport back to the car.”
“I know, I know,” Tom said and grunted as he stood back up.
“We can cool off now as we walk back.”
“Still, gotta go all the way back. This shit sucks.”
“God, I forgot how badly you love to complain. I mean, I see you weekly, but mom and dad see you every single day. I can only imagine what’s it like for them.”
“Hey, it’s a tradeoff, I do stuff around the house,” Tom said.
“So, how’s that working out?” Becky asked with a big smile on her face. She was happy to have moved out when she did, or she would have pulled her hair out living with her brother and mom and dad. Sure, she loved them all to death, but she also loved her personal space. She used to say that her family was like salt and vinegar chips, you just have to be in the mood for them.
“It’s alright, could be worse,” Tom said. She couldn’t help but feel like there was more that he wanted, and needed to say, but as always Tom needed a nudge in the right direction and be coaxed to spill the beans.
“Oh yeah?” Becky shot him her investigative look and bit the side of her lip. “How’s the apartment thing going with Tammy?”
“About that,” Tom said. He nervously chuckled and scratched the back of his head. “I don’t think it’s gonna happen for a little while longer.”
“And why is that?”
“Tammy never came up with her part of the deposit, and you remember how my car broke down last month? Yeah, I had to dish out three hundred dollars for that, so that kinda hit the spot in all the wrong ways.”
“Well that sounds just like Tammy. Classic Tammy. Leave it up to her to fuck everything up. I seriously don’t understand why you’re still with her.”
“It’s complicated.”
“There is nothing complicated about it, honestly. She’s terrible. You guys always fight, break up, then eventually make up and get back together. And how can you say that’s love?” Tom was a clingy person, Becky knew that his answer would have to go back to that fact, but that’s what he considered love. He needed someone to replace the role of his mother, Becky said it a million times – to his face that is – and he never truly denied that theory. But Tammy wasn’t that person, and that was another thing that Becky tried to get through Tom’s thick skull.
“We always find our way to each other,” Tom said with a smile on his face and took one hand into the other, his fingers locking as if to portray to his sister what he meant by that gesture.
“You’re a romantic, what can I say? You’ve got it all figured out,” Becky offered sarcastically and shook her head. It was pointless trying to talk sense into her brother.
“It’ll work out eventually. I mean, I really don’t hate living with mom and dad. Free food, free room and laundry. How can you beat that? Sure, dad’s on my ass about doing stuff around the house, you know how he is with his garage and the shed, but hey, I’ll do that if it means free room and food, even if it comes at the expense of my mental state.”
“Well, you are a champion then, because I can’t put up with that. I love you all, but it got too crowded, you remember?” She meant it this time. The sarcasm was gone.
“Oh, I remember, but that’s why it’s so bearable now. You’ve created that vacuum, which I have filled. Someone had to step in.” He tapped her on the shoulder and then playfully pushed her forward.
“Like I said, you’re the champ. I bow down to you for I am in awe of your courage,” Becky said and did a little awkward curtsey.
A gun shot roared through the air and she ducked down immediately to get behind some invisible cover. She saw her brother flinch too and started to look around.
“What the hell was that?” she blew off as she now tried to see where the gun shot came from. “Holy shit!”
Tom was a little calmer. “Definitely a gun shot. Probably some rednecks firing off their guns, you know how that goes. Getting their drink on, getting shitfaced and flaunting their Second Amendment rights.”
And that was the thing about Tom; sure, he was a goofball and not exactly where he should be in life at the age of twenty-nine, but when the situation called for it, he got his thinking cap and a more serious and calculated Tom emerged. This was one of those times, and Becky was glad that he had just surfaced to put her mind at ease.
“Let’s try not to run into any,” Becky said, her tone slightly shifting toward a more serious one, her smile leaving her face as concern slowly settled in. She didn’t really like guns. They made her uncomfortable. This was always ridiculed by Tom, always prompting some sort of anti-liberal sentiment. She just didn’t care for them, that was all. All that talk about liberals being hell-bent on taking away guns annoyed her to no end, as she believed that would never happen, but Republicans needed to be angry at something or someone, so that was always a safe target.
“I’m sure we won’t,” Tom said as they continued to walk.
Becky looked once behind her to make sure there was no one following them and when she was reassured that they were the only two people around, she calmed down a little.
But then, as her heart returned to its steady, normal beat, another shot came. She flinched and so did Tom.
“Alright, that one was a little too close for comfort, let’s get out of here,” Tom said and pushed his sister in front of him. “This just adds another element of creepiness to this place. Rednecks or not, this is somewhat crazy, even I have to say that.”
“Seriously,” Becky said as she broke out into a slight job. Tom followed her.
***
Phyllis was gone and it was probably for the best. She was definitely in a better place now, Bob thought as he went down the street, toward the run-down house. He made sure the idiot soldier was gone first. He had heard the gun shots and then a minute later, he had seen the idiot running away, holding his neck. As far as Bob could see, he was bleeding.
When he got to the house, he saw a bloody mess, the result of the soldier’s encounter with whoever was there on the ground. And whoever it was, Bob couldn’t tell since the head was completely blown away. The man’s brain and skull decorated the dirty floor
all around. It was like some odd, bloody mosaic in a surreal artist’s work.
He started to remove the body and as he turned it over, he saw the lesions on the man’s hands. They were scarred, and the fingernails appeared yellowed and dirty, cracked and receding. If he didn’t know any better, Bob would have said that this poor bastard had been dead for a while.
It was all true; whatever they were doing in that building was causing all this mess. He wished to see all those people who called him crazy now; those who stopped talking to him because he voiced his opinions. He’d like to give them a piece of his mind. When would they all just open their eyes and see the world for what it really was? There was no free thought, people weren’t asking questions anymore. Those damn liberals, it was all their fault. They brought the country to what it was today: a sad excuse of a nation with a bunch of pussies.
Now he was in the middle of it and he had to fight it all on his own.
He managed to push the body into the bushes. Without a head, there was no way the thing would come back to life, but it was just that he couldn’t look at it anymore. It was an abomination, a heathen thing, a Devil’s spawn.
And that’s why he carried his bible with him at all times. It was a cleansing presence in such a dirty and disgusting place.
He licked his dry thumb and started to flip the pages over. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Yes, it was Revelation that needed to be read, for the world was being judged now. There were righteous out there, waging the good war, the war in His name but here, he was all alone. This treacherous, Godforsaken place was teeming with vermin that needed to be exterminated.
The gates of Hell had opened and all the dead had crossed onto the plane of the living, and they were here to claim their souls. The wicked would perish by his hand; he would take down as many as he could before his own life came to an end.
“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all the liars-they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
He began to read in the dead silence and walked over to an old work bench that had seen better days. There were old rusty tools on it that hadn’t been used in ages. There were cans of cat food, too; some were empty, other’s half eaten with a thick layer of mold over it. Probably some homeless people who’d swallow whatever they could find, he thought as he continued to read.
With one swoop, he cleared off a portion of the work bench and placed the Bible on it, then took two bullets from the pocket of his gray worn out trench coat that Phyllis got him for his thirtieth birthday. The color had all but faded, and the fabric began to tear on the elbows.
His words carried on the breeze that blew through the wrecked garage, the words of the Lord that he needed so badly by his side in this war.
He placed one bullet next to the Bible and kept the other one, looked at it closely for a second, then began to carve a cross into it. They would soon become holy bullets, projectiles with the power of God.
“Then the Angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…”
He read, carved crosses into metal, turned red in the face and foamed at the mouth. He felt as if he were appointed by God himself to exact the vengeance on the sinners. It was as though God called him to face the wicked dead in their rise and take the stray sheep out along with them.
Bob would do the good Lord’s bidding even if it meant his certain death in the end. There was nothing else to lose. Phyllis was gone, and with her, half of his being.
He read two more passages until he finished the cross on the second bullet, then placed them both by the good book and observed them.
Yes, holy projectiles.
Picking both bullets from the bench, he brought them to his lips and kissed them.
“Lord, please give me strength,” Bob whispered and closed his eyes. Before loading the bullets into his pistol, he crossed himself and looked up. “I need you in this moment of uncertainty, during this time of peril. I shall give my life for you, as it was you who had given it to me. Please watch over Phyllis until we are at last reunited.”
There was work to be done, the dead to be put to rest, and to arrange the meeting between God and the sinners.
He put the gun back into its holster and walked out of the garage
***
Right before Jill and Jack decided to head back to the car, she felt something grab her arm. Startled, she quickly turned her head and saw the man she had shot hours ago crawling out of the fucking hole they had dumped him into. Before she could even scream, she heard the man’s agonizing, painful guttural moan.
Then she screamed.
“Oh my fucking God! Jack!” She pulled her arm out of the man’s grasp, just before he could reach her with his other one. By the time she was on her feet, the now walking corpse was already on his and shambling toward her.
“Holy shit!” Jack exclaimed in terror.
“Shoot him!” Jill yelled, then watched him struggle to pull the gun out from the small of his back. “Hurry and shoot him,” she yelled again.
Jack finally pointed the gun at the dead man and fired off two shots in his chest, but to both of their surprise he kept walking. Sure, the bullets stopped him in his tracks for a mere second or two before he continued to drag his feet and groan at them.
“Why isn’t he dying? What is wrong with him?” Jill’s voice was filled with terror and what she could closely describe as awe. She thought of how she had shot him the first time and the bullet had just grazed his head, after which she had shot at him twice more and had watched the bullets rip through his stomach. If that didn’t kill him, he sure as Hell should have bled out, but no, he was up and walking around like a new man.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Jill, the bastard just isn’t dropping dead!” Jack said, simply stating the fact, something she could clearly see.
“Well keep shooting at him!”
Jack fired off three more shots: one hit the neck, ripping a good chunk of flesh in bloody explosion, the second hit the shoulder, and only when the third bullet went through the man’s forehead and exploded through the back, sending chunks of the brain flying, the corpse finally fell down.
“I think we just killed him … again,” Jack said in disbelief as he still held the gun fixed on the former walking terror.
“Damn, he just wouldn’t die! What the Hell was that?”
“The fuck I know?” Jack said without even looking at him.
There weren’t many things that could scare Jack, Jill thought as she grabbed his arm. As always, her fingers tightly locked into his. She squeezed tight. Now that she thought about it some more, she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Jack scared, and now here he was, paler than death itself.
“So how many times was that? How many times did we shoot him? Six? Seven?” he asked and finally lowered the gun.
“I don’t know, babe, maybe seven…” Jill didn’t even think about how many times they shot him, she just said the number for the sake of saying anything. Why did it matter how many times they shot him? If it actually were seven times, that was five or six too many. He should have been dead a long time ago.
“That was messed up,” Jack said and let out a long sigh of relief. Was it really relief, though? Jill couldn’t shake the terrible feeling of dread and the fact that they had killed their contracted target again. There was nothing to be relieved about.
“Something’s definitely not right here, babe, I say we get out right now. Let’s just go.” She tugged on his arm and began to walk.
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said without taking his eyes off of the bloody corpse.
“Well you have to move, not just stand there.”
“We should dump him back into the hole,” Jack said and started walking carefully toward the cadaver.
“Waste of time, c�
��mon, let’s go.”
“Not until he is good and gone.”
Jack was already dragging him to the hole. He pushed him back in and then began looking for something.
“What’s up?” Jill asked confused.
“I wanna drop something on him, something to keep him down…” Jack answered her, though made no eye contact. It looked like he wasn’t even acknowledging her, just answering some voice that spoke to him. She didn’t like this Jack. He being like this made her nervous, uneasy.
There was a rock, a decent sized one, by the tree that loomed over the hole, so he grabbed it and dropped it in. It hit the corpse on the head and turned over until it rested on his back. He found another one and dropped it in, then collected a few branches and dropped those in there too. There was some garbage lying around, some old and rusted pots and pans, a tire in the bushes and an old chair without a seat. He collected those too and dropped them in.
Jill just stood there and watched.
When the chasm was finally filled, Jack walked over to Jill and grabbed her by the hand.
“You doing alright?” she asked as they walked away from it.
He finally looked at her this time. “Yeah, yeah, I’m alright, no worries.” Jack attempted a smile but Jill could still see that it was just a façade that he had put up to ease her mind. She took it and accepted it. She’d rather have him put on an act that have him freak out. Only one of them could be a neurotic mess and that was her job. Jack was there to keep it together.
“I only want to kill people once from now on,” she said and quickly realized how stupid that statement sounded.
Jack just grunted in approval … or was it agreement?
Whatever it was, it was over.
Jill shook her head as if to clear her mind and squeezed her boyfriend’s hand, though she could not rid herself of that lingering feeling of dread.
Rise of the Dead Page 7