This Dark Earth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  It was a bright, blustery morning, with the wind freshening in the west and high, thin clouds skittering across the sky. The gray clouds that blanketed the heavens since the Big Turnover were gone, and the sun was warm. The clear day raised the men’s spirits. There’d been no signs of radiation sickness.

  “There’s I’d say twenty-five of them, north of us a hundred yards. There’s stragglers behind them too, maybe five or six. Don’t know if the barbed wire will hold up if they all come battering.”

  Lt. Quentin Wallis stood, turned, and barked, “James, Blevens, and Roscoe—I want you guys on ATVs. Now. Outriding! Close enough to distract them, draw them off.”

  The three men jumped up and ran to the section of camp designated as the motor pool. The buzz of engines sounded. The men turned their ATVs, the guards lowered the barbed-wire barrier that served as a gate to the camp, and the three buzzed out onto the plains, throwing dust toward the sky. They streaked away, over the rise, moving in oblique angles to the cluster of undead and then around their flank. Tessa shielded her eyes and watched, unmoved.

  Lieutenant Wallis barked, “All men, north wall!” Some of the men snorted at his reference to the wall. “Hold fire until the outriders are out of the field of fire and the zeds are within range. No auto.”

  The men tromped to the barbed-wire barricade, rattling with gear, helmets. Full-battle rattle, the brass called it. Loaded for bear.

  “Fuckin’ trickass hos, these walkers waking me up from my nap,” Keb grumbled. He slapped Tessa’s ass as he walked by her as she worked. She slung the laundry paddle from the basin and hit his own backside with the steaming wood utensil. He jumped, unhurt but surprised, and wiped at the wet mark on his fatigues.

  “They only nap you’re getting, Keb, is them in your hair,” Jasper said, low but not unfriendly. “Get your ass over here and take a target.”

  Moving fast and always out of reach, the outriders circled the cluster of zeds. The undead moaned, groaned half-decayed words. They moved after the loudest target, drawn to sound and smell. One of the outriders peeled away, pulling a pistol, and began executing the straggling zeds.

  Lieutenant Wallis raised his radio and said, “OR1 and 2, over. Lead the revenants within range and await further orders. OR3, continue on their back trail. Exterminate any and all stragglers. SOP.”

  “Copy that,” came the crackling reply from the radio.

  Tessa could see the ATVs’ wheels, turning dust over at a median point between the cluster and the camp. The undead rotated slowly in a group and then shuffled forward. Their moans rose above the whistle of the wind on the plains.

  Tessa put the laundry paddle down and walked over to stand behind the soldiers.

  Keb said, “You come to give me some support, baby, while I kill these motherfuckers? Posted at the trap. The trap.”

  She ignored his words. She didn’t like Keb even though she had to fuck him, and she didn’t appreciate his glibness when dealing with the extermination of what once had been humans. There was something wrong with that, but she couldn’t figure out what was so disgusting about it.

  Wallis came and stood by her. “Steady, men. Wait until I give the signal.”

  Keb snorted. “This some Shaka Zulu shit, Q-tip. Ain’t seen this many of them in a while.” He turned his M-16, popped the clip, checked and replaced it.

  “Agreed. We will exterminate, strike camp, and move on to avoid other clusters. Gas supplies are fine now but will be running low by tomorrow. Montfredi, go notify Captain Mozark of the situation.”

  A young man no more than seventeen, with big ears and a cowlick, flipped the safety on his rifle and bolted toward the command tent erected near the Bradleys.

  Wallis watched the outriders with slate-gray eyes while Tessa watched him. He turned to her, smiled, and said, “Miss Tessa, please get this laundry and the food table packed and cleared away in the mess Bradley, ma’am. We need to be mobile quickly, just in case there are any more of these clusters about. It looks like they’re nomadic. Just like us.”

  Tessa’s stomach turned with the lieutenant’s words; he did not scorn her for what she had to do here with the men.

  God help her, Mozark would pay.

  Montfredi scurried back among the men and said, “Lieutenant, the captain has asked for the whore—” He glanced at Tessa, then back to the frowning lieutenant. “He’s asked that Miss Tessa . . . attend him.”

  “Private, what do you mean by ‘attend’?”

  Montfredi blanched, shook his head wildly as if denying anything relating to the request. “The captain is . . . he’s, well . . .”

  “Montfredi! Report!”

  “He’s vomiting, sir. Looks like shit, sir!”

  “Miss Tessa, please see to the captain.” He gave her a look, searching, and then added, “Montfredi will pack away the laundry and foodstuff.” Montfredi swallowed, looked from Tessa to the lieutenant, and saluted.

  Wallis raised his walkie and pressed the button. “OR 1 and 2, return to camp.” He lowered the device. “Men! Once the outriders are clear, take aim and fire at will.”

  The ATVs buzzed across their view and circled around to the gate, having lured the zeds into the field of fire. A soldier moved the barbed wire out of the way once more and they rolled into the camp. Tessa paused, now watching the soldiers raise their weapons and begin to fire. Behind the men, with the wind at her back, the reports of the rifles sounded like popcorn in a microwave, small bursts and crackles, gaining intensity and dying like kernels in hot oil. The black figures of the undead stumbled and fell. Some kept moving, but with each revenant down, there were fewer targets and the remaining undead began to mist and slough off parts of themselves in the rain of bullets.

  Tessa frowned, felt her gorge rise, and spat into the fire. That the dead could walk was bad enough; that they oozed and smelled like rotten pig and turned dark and noxious in the sun was worse. That they had once been human—had been children, had loved, owned houses and cars, bought tissues and bed linens, made desperate midnight runs to stores for milk and cheese—it was beyond imagining. God! It was awful. If they’d just turn into some other form less like humans, it might be all right. That they wanted to devour her made Tessa feel small and betrayed, and she couldn’t sleep well anymore, not like when she spooned with Cass, even when they had been trapped in the convenience store.

  The execution of the undead was so impersonal it nauseated her. These men could easily do the same to living people, she knew. Captain Mozark had been in Bosnia and Iraq. She’d heard the men talk.

  Montfredi took the gloves from her and began to paw at the laundry pot. He’d retrieved trash bags. He popped one open and, with a grimace, began to paddle hot, steaming fatigues and underwear into the shiny black plastic containers. The clothes would have to be washed again, Tessa saw. She sighed and turned to Mozark’s tent.

  Once out of sight of the lieutenant and away from the rest of the men, rifle fire still crackling behind her, she put her hand into her skirt, felt for the bottle. She withdrew it, popped the cap, and removed one of the d-Con pellets, kept it curled in her palm, now a little sweaty from her own excitement.

  The stench of bile assaulted her as she entered Mozark’s tent. Her eyes grew accustomed to the low light, and she saw he was on his knees beside his cot, retching.

  Tessa approached and stood above him, looking at his crooked shoulders, his bent back, as he retched into the dull green mesh of the tent floor.

  “You’re . . . you’re a terrible cook, woman. You’ve sickened me.” He pushed himself from the floor and slumped heavily to the cot. “Bring me some water, whore.”

  For a moment, Tessa stared at Mozark, thinking she should kill him then and there. Her body filled with a tremor that went from her feet to her hands, and she felt herself filled with an almost obscene strength. She flexed her fingers and leaned over the captain.

  A little grin creased his ashen face, showing white gums and bloody teeth.

 
; “You hate me, do you?” He coughed, and his nose began to bleed. “Niggers hate their betters . . . always—” He turned his head, partially rolled to the side of the cot, and vomited again over the side, a weak stream of pale yellow bile.

  This is what it must be like to be unafraid. But I’m not. I don’t want to die now. And the men will kill me, for real, if I strangle him. But I could . . . I could wring his sorry-ass neck . . . tell them he choked to death . . . but on what? Montfredi saw him throwing up.

  Tessa moved to the card table that served as his command post. There were road maps of Kansas and the Arkansas Ozarks, cigarettes, a bottle of wine, a battery-powered lantern, and a canvas-wrapped plastic canteen of water. Tessa crushed one of the pellets between forefinger and thumb, twisted off the cap of the canteen, and dropped the powder remains of the pellet into the canteen. She swirled it around and turned back to Mozark.

  The captain dry heaved onto the crackly fabric of the tent’s floor. His once mocha skin looked gray and sallow. Tessa smiled.

  She came to him, placed a cool hand on the back of his neck. He groaned and feebly turned his head toward her.

  “Here, Captain. Here, baby. Here’s some water.”

  “Ah . . .” His mouth looked red and bloody.

  She held the canteen to his mouth, and he lapped at the water like a car-struck dog. Tessa looked at him for a long while. Her chest felt tight, and her heart hammered against her ribs as if it were too big for her body. She found herself smiling.

  “That’s it, Captain. That’s it. Okay.” She took the canteen, stood, and went to the entrance flap of the tent. Mozark fell to his knees, then slumped on his side. His chest rose and fell slowly.

  “It tastes . . . it tastes . . .”

  Tessa pulled back the flap and yelled, “Lieutenant Wallis! The captain’s sick! Really sick!” She turned back to the captain. “There ain’t nothing as sorry to look at as an ashy black man down on his knees.” She squatted, gripped his hair, and turned his face toward hers. This man would suffer for what he’d done. “You ain’t no better than me. You a black-hearted nigger. But the difference between us is you’ll be dead soon, like the zeds, and I’ll watch when they put you down. Like you did my Cass.”

  But he was too far gone to hear. When she let go of his chin, he slumped to the floor.

  Standing, she cursed. Then she moved outside the tent and turned the canteen over, pouring out the water into the Oklahoma dust.

  It was dark and starlight washed the streets of Vinita in a blue glow. The growling, ratcheting sound of engines grew louder, and from the shadows of a doorway, Tessa watched as the corpses stumbled through the streets toward the fields only blocks away. She clutched her broken mop handle. One zombie moaned right next to her, and she gasped as the undead man lurched, belching putrid gas, and grabbed her.

  He smelled like a sewer. Waves of septic stench and the rank odor of rotten meat made her gag and she felt her gorge rise in the back of her throat. Clutching the jagged handle, Tessa raised her fists instinctively, half to defend herself from the undead and half to cover her mouth from retching.

  The pointed end of the mop handle caught on the zombie’s chin and sank five inches into the rotting skull—through lower mandible, black rotten tongue, sinus cavity—tilting its head back. Something gooey snapped, and the head lolled to the side, dripping black ichor. Tessa twisted out of its grasp, yanked the handle free, and ran.

  She flew past a few zombies who had turned to follow her despite the growing noise from the unseen vehicles. Tessa, feet stinging as they slapped on pavement, banked down an alley, ducked into an open archway, through the door there, and began groping her way upward in the dark. Out in the open and away from the cloying stench of the convenience store, her nose had cleared and now, in the dark, she felt hyperaware, every sense sharpened to a razor’s edge. In the darkness of the unknown building she’d entered, she could only faintly smell the dead. It was musty and stale, and she found herself climbing black stairs upward, many stories.

  Must be in Farmer and Merchants, she thought. The only building in Vinita with more than two stories.

  She came into a large room, what must’ve been an office. The cubicles seemed mazelike in the light coming from the bay windows on the north wall of the room. She made her way through the dead, dull computers and overturned desk chairs. No zombies here. No living either. Just the husks of civilization.

  At the window she could see north, out over the shorter buildings, into the fields. Banks of bulbs on big, mechanized tanks—or what looked like tanks—cast blue light in heavy arcs across the fallow land. ATVs and motorcycles circled the tanks like bees buzzing around a deadly flower.

  And in the center of the flower, perched on the back of a war machine, stood a man pointing and yelling into a walkie-talkie.

  Tessa’s gaze followed to where he pointed.

  At the edges of the light, a figure, desperate, burst through the corn, throwing long shadows behind her.

  “No!” Tessa screamed. “Cass! No, baby!”

  Even from this distance, Tessa could make out her daughter’s form. Even if it had been miles, she would’ve know it was Cass, her run, the way she held her body, the arc of back and the long, muscular legs; she’d know her daughter anywhere.

  It felt as if her heart stopped, dead still, in her chest. The zombies were ravenous and remorseless, most assuredly, but these methodical men drove a sinking feeling into the pit of Tessa’s stomach.

  Cass ran and Tessa could make out the zombies pursuing her, moving into the long light, moving as fast as their desiccated limbs could carry them. Cass limped and as she drew nearer the tank, Tessa could see she was nude from the waist up. And bleeding from her arms. They must’ve grabbed her, and she shucked her shirt to escape.

  “No!” Tessa’s voice cracked, and she banged on the thick office building window. She slammed her hand against glass. “No, baby!”

  Helplessly, she watched as one of the ATVs drew near Cass and circled her. The masked driver dismounted, grabbed Cass’s arm, and twisted, turning it over. He was looking at her wounds. He yanked her toward the ATV and pushed her roughly into the seat, and then he mounted behind her, one gloved hand roughly grasping her breasts and pulling her torso hard into his body. The zombies were gaining ground, and he popped the ATV into gear and approached the flower’s center, moving away from the undead.

  At the tanks, the ATV driver pushed Cass off, dismounted once more, and held her in front of the man standing on top of the tank. Tessa couldn’t make out his face. She saw Cass stiffen and straighten her back, and she didn’t have to see her child’s face to know the expression on it—defiance.

  The chief—the man standing on the tank—said something, and Cass replied, and the chief’s body tensed a little with the words, and Tessa knew that Cass had smarted off.

  “No, baby! Just hush.” Tessa splayed her hands on the glass and breathed into it. “Hush, baby. Beg, honey. Beg for your life.”

  The chief said something else, and the ATV driver grabbed Cass’s wrist again and twisted her arm, showing her wounds. She twisted and struggled in his grasp, but he didn’t release her.

  Everything Tessa knew ended then.

  Four small explosions of crimson blossomed on Cass’s body, across her back, and she slumped to the ground. When Tessa looked back to the chief, he was holding out a smoking pistol.

  She slumped to the floor of the office, her back to the wall between her and the man who had murdered her baby. In the dark, musty air of the office, she cried and cursed; she cursed herself, her God, and Cass for her foolishness.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, but the sun filtered through the streets of Vinita, casting long shadows into the corn, and when she stood, it was dry-eyed and with purpose. Looking out the window, she could see where Cass’s body lay, and the path the men took.

  I will kill that man, she thought as she moved back down the dark stairs. If it’s the last thing I do.
He’ll die at my hands.

  She moved into the street, making her way toward the clatter and light of tanks and the pop and crackle of gunfire. She adjusted her shirt, ripping the collar, showing more skin. She straightened her hair the best she could. Some undead had spotted her and she began to run, run to the tanks.

  When she cleared the streets and entered the lights, keeping easily out of the reach of the zombies scrabbling after her, Tessa waved her arms and shouted for the attention of the chief.

  An ATV intercepted her before she could reach him.

  Barging into the tent, Lieutenant Wallis let Tessa and Montfredi know they’d be Captain Mozark’s keepers and nurses until the G Unit could find someplace more secluded and stable.

  “Ten minutes, people, and we’re out of here. Understood? That means I want all the captain’s things packed and ready to go, immediately.”

  Montfredi barked, “Sir! Yes, sir!”

  Lieutenant Wallis turned and looked at his superior officer lying on the cot in the corner of the tent. He pursed his lips.

  “We’ll leave the tent behind. We’ve got three others just like it scavenged from a Walmart in Lawrence. Get the table, the maps, and his personal accouterments.”

  Montfredi hesitated. “Accuter . . .”

  The lieutenant shook his head. Tessa could see that Montfredi’s stupidity exhausted the young lieutenant’s patience. Even if she’d never heard the word before, she could gather what he meant. But Wallis continued. “His things. Get his stuff. Pack it for him. The things he’ll need.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Lieutenant Wallis peered at Montfredi, then squinted and shifted his gaze to Tessa. He looked her up and down. She raised her eyes, glanced at Montfredi’s vapid face and then back to Wallis.

  “You. Miss Tessa. You’re in charge. Make sure Montfredi . . . make sure this . . .” He waved his hand. “Make sure this is all taken care of.” He peered at her. “You are responsible, understand? I know you aren’t army, but . . . the world has changed and you’re with us now. I’d rather you be . . . this . . . than the men’s . . .”