This Dark Earth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  I don’t know what to say. Everything that’s happened swims in my head, and I get images of Lucy sitting in the passenger seat of the semi and images of my daughter—images rising like fish to the top of a pond, broaching the surface, then submerging.

  “I don’t—”

  “Because I’m beginning to think I can’t really ask you to go with me. You need to go back up to the bathroom, close the door, and wait. Days, even a week or more. The radiation—it’s going to give me cancer, surely. And you too, if you spend much more time out there.”

  “My girlfriend is too far away for me to do any good. Back in Alabama. My daughter is eighteen and in the army reserve. She’s in Iraq. A half a world away.” I give a little half-hearted laugh. “You’re the only person I have right now.”

  Lucy opens her mouth, and then a tear pearls and traces its way down her cheek.

  “Oh.”

  “There’s no way of knowing what’s going on with the rest of the world,” I say as calmly as I can, hoping the hitch in my voice goes unnoticed. “As far as I know, she’s safer there than we are here. She’s probably better armed and equipped.”

  Lucy looks at me, and then away to the ATV, and then at the wall. She’s working up to something.

  “You should stay. Stay in the safe room. You’ll be better off there. Leave in a few days, and you’ll have much better chances to survive the radiation.”

  “What’s the fallout circle . . . uh . . . the circumference?”

  “The radius. It depends. Many, many miles at the least.”

  “But the wind usually blows west to east, right?”

  She nods, looking at me. I can’t read her expression.

  “So won’t my chances be better if I go upwind, out of the fallout range?”

  She shakes her head, but I can see she’s thinking. “I don’t know. Leaving with me, we’re sure to get some fallout in our system.” She puts her hand to her waist, resting her palm on the pistol’s grip, truly like a sheriff. “But I’m going. I just wanted you to know the risks . . . I can’t be . . . responsible if you—”

  I stand and grab a red fuel tank nestled in the corner of the garage. It’s half full, two gallons’ worth of gas. A smaller can has the word mixed scrawled on it with what looks like a Sharpie. I can only assume what I’ve got is unmixed gas. I turn back to her as I’m filling the ATV. She’s still looking at me, and I still can’t read her expression.

  I sigh. “How the hell are you going to get out of here without me, anyway? I’m a trucker. Being on the move’s in my blood. Do you know how to drive one of these things?”

  “No. But—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you could figure it out. Forget that. I’ll drive. You navigate, and shoot.”

  She draws a lungful of air, holds it, and then releases. She kneels and puts her hands to her face.

  “You don’t—” She clenches her fists, opens them, then rubs them on her jeans and stands again. “You don’t know how much . . . how glad I am you said that. Thank you, Knock-Out.”

  My cheeks burn, and I don’t know what to do with my hands.

  “Shit. I got to move, I said. And we make a good team.”

  She laughs, tossing back her head. Her neck is long and graceful, and I can see the pulse in the hollow of her throat.

  “So let’s get going.”

  I grab the shotgun and put it in the gun rack, strapping it down. I fasten the safety glasses to my face.

  “Here.” She hands me a bandana, bright red, and I tie it around my neck, bandit style. She has a large blue napkin and ties it around her neck. She pulls a couple of baseball caps from the wall and throws me one.

  We stand, look at each other; we resemble gaudy banditos who’ve shopped at Walmart.

  “Well, it’s not quite biohazard suits, but it’ll have to do.”

  I pull the air filter over my nose and mouth and Lucy mirrors me. She slings the duffel bag onto the ATV’s rack and uses a bungee cord to strap it down. I take the screwdriver I stripped the ignition cover with and use it to jump the positive and negative wires, hot-wiring the ATV. It coughs, sputters, and dies. I repeat, this time cranking the throttle.

  It catches and suddenly the ATV is roaring in the close confines of the garage. Lucy goes to the door and lifts it, sliding it back on its rollers. I turn the vehicle, pointing out, and wait until Lucy comes and hops on the back. She wraps her arms around my waist. Her touch is hot and stings some, and it takes me a second to realize it’s from the burns. For a moment, even through the mask and bandana, I can smell the kiwi scent of her. I’m flushed with her presence, and my heart begins to race.

  “Get out your gun, Lucy. Here they come.” I don’t want to say it, but I have to. I’d rather she stay embracing me.

  Three shamblers—a man, a woman, and a boy-toddler—are coming in from the road, down the gravel drive to the house. Weird, but they’re like an undead family. The kid is straggling to the side, walking on a leg that’s hideously crooked. The foot is twisted to the side, and the child is pushing off the stump. The father totters, a big spill of blood down the front of his shirt and half his neck gone and large hunks of his shoulders. Momma looks almost whole except for where they chewed off her arm, her face otherwise untouched.

  I kick the ATV into gear, and we’re moving, out of the garage and across the drive, toward this undead family. I angle for the kid, away from the parents.

  Lucy lays her arm on my shoulder, gun out, and fires. Another atomic bomb explodes, this time right next to my face. I can’t hear the ATV anymore. The mother shambler wheels, tilts, and face-plants. The father turns and lurches toward us, but we’re already past.

  When we hit the boy, he gets caught in the rack, one hand gripping painted metal. I crank the throttle, and there’s a lurch, the hand disappears, and the ATV jumps, like going over a speed bump.

  Out and away from the family of walkers, we buzz down the road we ran in the dark, past the still smoking rubble of the house we first hid in. Not much left there. The sound of the ATV is loud, and grating, more due to what it might attract than for sheer volume.

  A few dead mill around the husk of the Git-N-Go. The forests are still smoking along with the building. I bank the ATV toward the interstate, tires buzzing on asphalt. After Lucy’s over-the-shoulder gunshot, my hearing returns slowly. Lucy grips me around the middle, and even though the world is empty, I feel a great contentment suffusing me. For that short time, life doesn’t get any better.

  A few shamblers lurch and wheel at the sound of the four-wheeler, but we’re moving fast now, kicking up ash and leaving the undead behind. I take a right and roll down the on-ramp to the interstate.

  The sun is having a hard time piercing the slate-gray skies, and I can’t tell if the clouds are water vapor or something more poisonous, but it’s still morning when we get to her neighborhood. Big houses are nestled in a forest here, overlooking downtown Little Rock. Edgehill Drive. I think of my rented house back in Alabama, pillbox small and shabby.

  This is a rustic but rich exurb where people keep their doors locked because they have things everybody else wants: money, art, big expensive cars, fancy appliances, healthy children. Lucy’s street teems with white shamblers in expensive clothing.

  “Take this left!” she yells and then fires the pistol. The nearest zombie, a well-to-do lady in a business skirt, silky blouse, and what appears to be a scarf but is really the evidence of major trauma from a nasty neck wound, grows a bright carnation of blood in her forehead and pitches over.

  I’m glad Lucy is a crack shot. She should’ve lived in the Old West. I’m convinced if she had, we’d have heard of Doc Ingersol. Maybe someone famous would’ve played her in a movie.

  We’ve seen more shamblers and less fallout the farther away from White Hall we ride. No living walk the streets. I’ve seen some people peeking from behind quickly drawn curtains, but none of them tries to contact us. Except one guy. He shoots at us from the top of a building, shouting
cuss words.

  Even Little Rock has no electricity. No lights, few cars on the roads, and great plumes of smoke on the northern and southern horizons. Lucy had hoped the EMP hadn’t affected the city, but either it has or something has gone screwy at the dam or at the nuclear plant in Russellville. I’m worried what those smoke plumes might mean.

  Now Lucy yells again, “Turn left!” and I follow her directions into an alley—really a rear access road, with leaves and mulch pits lining the shady lane—and then she yells, “Stop!”

  We’re at the gate to a big stone house with a heavily fenced backyard. It looks like an urban fort, cypress timbers two inches thick, impermeable to termites and, I hope, zombies.

  “I can see why you wanted to get home,” I say, but she can’t hear me through the mask.

  She hops off the ATV and, pulling a key chain from her pocket, reaches through the hole cut in the fence door and fiddles with the other side.

  The shamblers have followed us down the alley. They toddle and lurch, making garbled sounds. It’s time to earn my keep and make my grandfather proud.

  I pop the straps on the 12-gauge shotgun, snatch it up, and flip off the safety. There’s already one in the chamber, so I raise the gun to my shoulder and take a target: a big shambling martini-and-steak-eating guy in a fitted suit. I wait.

  “Lucy! Hurry the fuck up! They’re coming!”

  I can’t hear her reply.

  The undead dealmaker comes forward, arms out, his mouth working. He’s different from some of the other shamblers. He looks as though he really wants to talk. But all he can say is, “Aowurg.” He’s fresh. His eyes aren’t milky.

  “Fuck!” I hear that from Lucy. I turn to look, and she’s furiously working her hands.

  They’re closer now, so I point the shotgun in the general direction of the suit, do my best to target the guy’s head, hold my breath like my grandfather taught me, and pull the trigger.

  He falls down but starts to get back up. A miss. But after he rises, I see that I’ve peeled the left side of his face. Birdshot is useless if you want to destroy the brain.

  A dead teen in hip-hugger jeans and a baby tee takes the lead. She still has an iPhone in her hand, which makes me think that when she died she kept her most precious objects close to her. Once, I might’ve gawked at her figure, but now not so much. I’m more interested in Lucy and whether she’s opened the door.

  The iPhone shambler is showing copious cleavage, which I reluctantly target. I hate to mar a rack as pure as hers, but destroying the brain isn’t possible at this distance. So I fire at her chest and knock her back a few feet. She sprawls on her ass, losing her iPhone. In John Wayne movies, this is what they call delaying tactics.

  “Knock-Out! Come on!” I turn and see Lucy has the door open. Twisting back to the dead, I quickly target and shoot the dealmaker and the iPhone shambler again, knocking them back into the followers.

  I run back to the ATV and jump on, shotgun in hand, intending to drive it inside the gate. But I’ve forgotten that it has to be hot-wired, so after I get on, I get back off, cursing. The shamblers keep coming, but with more brute strength than I’ve mustered in a while, I push the damned thing through the gate and Lucy slams it shut and padlocks the latch.

  “Let’s get inside,” she says, breathing heavy.

  The zombies reach the gate, and it begins to rattle and jump. I stick the bore of the shotgun in the hole Lucy used to unlock the gate door and pull the trigger three more times, kicking out shells and blasting back the zombies.

  “Save your ammo!” Lucy bellows. “You’re just drawing more!”

  Exhausted, I turn and follow her inside.

  I’m fearful of what we might find here too. I have to be honest, I’ve already grown used to Lucy’s company. Everything we know has gone, with the virus, with the explosion, everything has been taken away—the cars and planes and stores and televisions and radios—and now it’s just Lucy and me, climbing up the back stairs of her house, sliding open the back doors, and entering the dark room. I don’t want to lose Lucy now, like everything else.

  Everything is everything. I still don’t know what that means.

  There are broken windows and shamblers in the house.

  Lucy’s hands begin to shake. I take the lead, shotgun out.

  It’s a horrible feeling to fear coming home; I remember my father, the beatings and the screaming. Of course, this is different.

  It’s dark in the house. There are clouds overhead, and the house is in shadows. I hear shuffling and moans coming from the blackness. I need light.

  Lucy moves away and I hear a drawer slide open and then there’s a beam of light in the darkness.

  “Let’s make sure the doors are shut and then look for Fred and Gus.”

  I nod. She brings out her pistol and moves through the house. I follow her. Again, I’m struck by how much she looks like a police officer, gun out, flashlight piercing the gloom.

  We come to a large room, plasma television on the wall and big bay windows overlooking the backyard, letting in enough light to see the five or six shamblers milling about like they’re at a cocktail party or a football game. There’s dried, brown blood everywhere. They turn toward us as a group and lurch forward.

  “Come on!” Lucy yells, her voice tight with worry. She dashes down the hall, and I jump after her. I can see the front door of her house standing wide open and shamblers in the yard turning to look.

  A zombie steps out in front of her like a jack-in-the-box, and she barrels right into his arms. Lucy screams, and it’s a sound I never thought I’d hear from her: too vulnerable, too scared, too panicked.

  They tumble, and I can see the shambler’s mouth opening to take a bite. I can’t let that happen.

  Something smashes behind me, and I know that the zombies from the living room are coming and I can see the shamblers outside making their way toward the open front door. Lucy lies just inside, with a big motherfucker snapping at her face and neck. I reach them and kick Jack-in-the-Box with everything I’ve got and he flips over, but he’s still holding onto Lucy so now she’s partly on top. So I put my boot on his face and stomp as hard as I can. I can feel some dental work crack, but it’s not enough because he doesn’t let go. I stomp again. And again.

  Finally something gives, his head flattens a little, and Lucy jumps up. She turns and looks back down the hallway.

  “Knock-Out! They’re everywhere.” She kneels on the floor, recovers her dropped pistol, turns, and starts firing. I’m looking out the front door. The shamblers have made it to the stone steps and are working their way forward. I raise the shotgun and fire into the group, at the chest of a middle-aged woman wearing green gardening gloves and knee pads. She must’ve been in the yard when all hell broke loose. She takes the birdshot in the chest and falls backward onto her ass, taking two more of the things with her. It’s like bowling, but with the undead. And if you lose, you die. Or not really die.

  Lucy’s gun is still popping, and my ears ring. I raise the shotgun to shoot again, I fire, and this time a zombie’s head explodes. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

  More of the shamblers are coming from the street. Soon there’ll be fifty or sixty. I’ve got to get the door closed.

  But Jack-in-the-Box is lying dead in the doorway. I grab his feet and start to pull him away. The front-stoop shamblers are back on their feet, looking tattered and quite a bit worse for wear. I must’ve ruptured something in the gardener’s body cavity, because black and green goo wells and drips from her mouth.

  I give a great heave and pull Jack aside, hook the door with my foot, and slam the door shut with a crunch, but it sticks and rebounds a little. There’s a green glove peeking from behind the lip of the door. I shove the shotgun in the gap, pull the trigger, shaking the house, and the green-gloved hand is gone and the door shuts. I throw the dead bolt as the door begins to shudder. The Welcome Wagon has arrived.

  I turn back to Lucy and realize it’s
been ten or twenty seconds since she’s fired. But now I know why.

  She stands, heaving, gun out, eyes wide and frantic. There’s a veritable dog-pile of shamblers on the floor. Seven or eight of them, all lying at her feet. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her, murdering people in the front hall of her own house.

  “Luce. Come on. Reload, and let’s see if we can secure the house and find your family.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Luce. We’re gonna be okay. Gus and Fred will be okay.” I try to keep my voice low. And she looks at me. Some of the shamblers must’ve gotten pretty close when she popped them because a fine tracery of blood spatters her face and mars the beautiful hollow of her neck.

  “Reload.” I pull shells from the bandolier and feed them into the shotgun. I check my hammer; still hanging from the belt. She pops her clip, slowly feeds bullets into it. I know she’s got another clip, full, but she’s doing the right thing, keeping two loaded.

  I go into the room Jack-in-the-Box came from and see boards have been nailed over the windows there.

  “Lucy! Come here.” She turns, gun in hand, and comes to me. “Looks like Fred had time to take precautions. He’s boarded these windows. This is a good sign.”

  She’s sluggish to respond. And that frightens me more than anything, really, that she might be losing it.

  I put the shotgun on a table, grab her shoulders, and shake her. She looks annoyed and tries to pull away.

  “Lucy! This means he wasn’t caught flat-footed! He was prepared.” Her eyes lock on mine. At first she’s pissed, but then she understands what I’m saying and nods.

  “So let’s check out the rest of the house.” I say, grabbing my shotgun again. I walk to the other rooms. It looks like Fred did a fairly decent job of boarding up the ground-floor windows. He ran out of lumber—who has that amount of lumber lying around anyway?—and started using doors. Bookcases. Tabletops. It must’ve been pretty hairy around here.

  But where is he now?

  Lucy stands beside me, looking at the ruin of her house.

  “Lucy, if you were Gus, and scared, where would you go to hide? Your room?”