And they were all gay. Why not? It was his fantasy as they walked and hid and shivered. Then Austin could truly relax, knowing that he’d never hear a comment about when he was going to acquire a girlfriend. They knew what he was and they were the same. They’d have Sombra C, too. God, Austin liked that idea just as much as the guards being gay. They wouldn’t let anything happen to him, not out of sympathy but identification. A blow to him was a blow to them. He’d pay really, really well, and they’d be loyal.
This was an oasis he never had to leave. A study for when he wanted to read, a pool for relaxation . . . He floated on an inflatable raft and drank a beer, secure that the perimeter of his home was close to impenetrable. Places like that had a name, and he dubbed his Paradise.
Best of all in Paradise was his guy. He was a Marine, a massive slab of muscle and a don’t-fuck-with-me look almost always on his face. A few years older than Austin, his guy had seen action. He knew what the world was about, and how to make it leave him alone. One night a Shepherd breached the perimeter, took down those loyal guards and stole into Paradise. Austin woke to a rustling outside and sat up straight in fear, but his guy was already slipping out of bed and telling Austin to stay put. So Austin stayed put, afraid that someone was going to hurt his Marine, but he should have trusted. It was the Shepherd who got hurt, driven from Paradise and bleeding profusely from the strikes of the Marine’s fists. Fuck with this guy and he’d fuck with you. Austin named him Lucas. That sounded like a don’t-fuck-with-me name. It was even better spelled Lukas. He had Sombra C and Micah’s guts to walk around without a scarf. He wasn’t embarrassed about his stamp. Don’t fuck with me or you’ll be sorry.
Why call the cops? Lukas had this. The Shepherd was dumped broken and cowering onto the road outside the property, begging for forgiveness, for his life. A final blow rendered him silent. Lukas ditched him there to regain consciousness and crawl away, or get run over by a car. He checked on the guards, who were all coming around and embarrassed to have been surprised, and then he came back to bed. It turned Austin on, the relief, the protection, the attitude, and that fist had one more job for the night. In the morning, he made Lukas a giant breakfast. That broke the don’t-fuck-with-me stoniness, the mountain of scrambled eggs and foot high stack of pancakes, the steaming sausages and crisp bacon, the flower in the vase. Austin went overboard and that was funny to Lukas. They ate while watching television cuddled up on the couch. A sound outside made Austin jump, but Lukas put a hand soothingly on his leg. It was just the gardener. The Shepherd wasn’t coming back.
Austin wanted his Paradise to exist. This place wasn’t it.
They came upon the body after climbing past the trees to a vista. The path wended away through hills with nothing taller than scrub growing upon them, and nothing to see but green rolling away in every direction to distant trees. Legs protruded from beyond a bush, all of them stopping at the blue jeans and black sneakers. The legs didn’t move. The person was either sleeping or dead. The smell on the breeze said it was the latter. They moved down the path cautiously.
A runaway. A hiker. Whichever it was, the boy was dead and something had been chewing on him. Something was still chewing on him, a lot of little wriggling things, and the seething movement made Austin sick. Only Micah with her loose screw got closer. The rest of them veered off the path and made a wide loop to go around. Then they waited, and Elania prayed. Austin didn’t understand the words, but he felt the cadence as one of God’s. The boy might not have been Jewish, so Austin whispered the Lord’s Prayer. That bothered him, the mystery of what the kid had been. A soul shouldn’t be sent away with the wrong words.
“I wish we could bury him,” Zaley whispered. Without a shovel or time to spare, they had to leave the body as they’d found it. They couldn’t even alert anyone that a boy was here. Austin didn’t want to end like that himself, rotting on a trail in the middle of nowhere, no one knowing or caring that he was there. That was a terrible way to die.
“This is what the world really is,” Corbin said starkly, and walked away to stand alone. Austin felt that ugliness, too. Like everything in their lives had been a lie, the neat houses and orderly classrooms and books due at the library in two weeks. The truth of this world was braces and abandoned bodies, losing homes and stealing and death ever breathing over your shoulder. Prime ripped away the cover of civilization to show the decay underneath.
Austin had already known that some of it was a lie, like how mothers loved their sons no matter what. That wasn’t always true. Sometimes they loved themselves more. He should have been able to tell his mother that he was gay and have her love him regardless; she should have defended him from the world hating his Sombra C rather than agreeing with it and saying that he should be put down. Parents did not always cherish their children. That was a dirty secret of this world. It was a truth that everyone pretended didn’t exist.
The truth was that each and every one of them was alone, even in a crowd of seven billion people. That was a hard thought to have in his brain, even with him a step farther down that path than Corbin with what Mamma had done. Elania and Zaley rested on rocks across the path from one another, and the dog sat down miserably in the middle of all of them. She was happiest when they were together. Austin petted her head and she pressed to his leg. Dogs didn’t grasp existential loneliness. They only understood the physical. Having a dog with them made this not so bad, and he liked when she chose him to sit by. At meals he slipped her a bite of his food so she would think of him as a special friend. He wanted the dog to like him.
“Idiot,” Micah said about the dead boy when she came back to them. “Call off the sads, people, he was a baby Shepherd hunting zombies in the wilderness.” That didn’t erase Austin’s sadness, although it did for Micah. The boy had been all of thirteen years old.
Micah was poking through a diary that she had found close to the body. Belonging presumably to the boy, it had a slightly putrid smell. There were handwritten entries on the pages she flicked through. When she went back to the first page, cleared her throat dramatically, and started to read it out loud, Austin whipped the book away. These words shouldn’t be read in mockery, even if the boy had been their enemy. Now he was just a dead body. Their group came back together and continued to walk.
“January 21st: My name is Boomslang, I am in eighth grade, and this is my Book,” Austin said. The handwriting and spelling were childish for a boy in junior high. “We are going to the wild soon, me and Komodo and Crocodile. They have gone before, and they tell me that I must keep this Book as they do. I hate to write.”
“Clearly,” Micah said about the scrawls.
“Micah, this is his elegy,” Corbin said. “Let it alone.”
“So this is my little Book of War! January 24th: Raymond and Mara won’t let me go to Fun Nights with my friends. I hate this foster home! I want to go back to the Hayes. They were nicer. But her cancer came back bad and he lost his job. I would have stayed there anyway, except they have to move out of state. They cried when I left, and I cried. I only tell this to the Book. I am the Hayes’ boy! But now I have to be someone else’s boy. Raymond says I should be grateful, but I’m not paid to be here like he is and I’m not paid to watch his kids all day. Where’s my check? Komodo says a Book is always truth and so here I write it: I hit them! Take care of yourselves, you bratty shits!”
Their feet crunched on the gravel path and Corbin whispered, “Jesus.”
Turning the page, Austin read, “February 1st: It is my sister’s birthday. Where is she? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MONICA! I LOVE YOU! She is eighteen now. That means she’ll be here soon to get me, and we can live together. February 3rd: I’m grounded for sneaking out to do my paces. Mara cries that the little kids could have swallowed her pills since I wasn’t watching. Who cares? Then they’ll shut up and die. There is a new zombie at my school, a girl named Felicia. I spat on her locker. She should be dumped in the wild to die. I want to go to the wild and kill her.”
; “Fuck you, Boomslang, love, Felicia,” Micah muttered.
“February 5th: We are going! On the ninth. Komodo says walk out that door when the car comes up and do your duty! If anyone tries to stop you, knock ‘em down. That’s what he says to do and I will. I’ll knock Raymond into next week. The ninth is the day that Moose gets his new car. He will drop us off and pick us up in three days. I’m packing all the food in the house and a blanket and a knife. Crocodile is bringing her father’s gun.” Austin paused to take it in, having assumed that Crocodile was another boy.
“May I?” Elania asked, extending a hand. Austin passed it over. She would read it in the right cadence. Her voice wrapped around them in steady beats. “February 6th: They can live for weeks out there, until the virus takes them to Hell. I will send them faster. Komodo and Crocodile have seen them many times, but they always run away too fast. Komodo got poison oak on his hands and then he had to take a piss, so he got Itch Dick. His mom had to take him to the doctor. I don’t want to get that. February 8th: I can’t wait! I hate school. My backpack is packed and ready under my bed. If the kids touch it, I will bash their heads into the wall and tell Mara they tripped. Too bad, how sad, bye-bye. Mara says I should love my brother and sisters. They aren’t mine! I have a sister.” Elania turned the page. “It is a crime to read someone else’s little Book of War without permission. Truth can be private. Crocodile is a reverend’s daughter. She is supposed to wear long skirts and never raise her voice. In the wild, she plans to shout. I want her to go out with me, but she is in tenth grade. She likes Komodo. No one likes me.”
“This is just pathetic,” Corbin said. He motioned for the Book. His pace slowing, he read out loud even more slowly. That was okay with Austin. This kid sounded sort of slow. “February 9th: We are here! They left the kids with me while they shopped. And then I left them in front of the TV. I hope they get Sombra C and I’ll report to Recluse their names and that they need to die . . . Zaley, will you read the rest if I hold it?”
“I can hold it,” Zaley said. Their pace increased. “So I will get the special patch with a silver musket for loyalty. I want that patch so bad! Moose dropped us off by the gate and said Monday evening, hunters. I like to be called that. It has respect. We climbed over the chain and went into the trees. My heart was pounding so hard as I held out the knife. Zombies hide in the trees since they are dark. We walked and walked and now we are camping for the night and updating our Books. So far we haven’t seen anything except birds. But I feel free.”
Austin looked over the rolling green hills. He felt like he had a target overhead for anyone to see. Zaley’s voice washed over them, displacing the sound of their feet on the gravel. “February 9th/10th: They were doing sex things out there in the dark, Komodo and Crocodile. I heard them giggling. That made me mad. We are here to hunt zombies. Or else it’s just camping. It is hard to write when holding a flashlight. This Book is truth and this is truth: I am scared to sleep out here. There are noises in the darkness. When the fire crackles, I think it is twigs snapping under a zombie’s foot.” Awkwardly, Zaley braced the book against her stomach and turned the page. “There’s only one more entry. Micah?”
“No, she can’t,” Austin said, and took the book back. The handwriting was even worse for this entry, like it had been written hastily. “February 10th: There are four of them out here in the wild. Crocodile spotted them first and shot her gun. Two of them ran away in fear, and two of them ran for us in craziness. Crocodile shot again and hit one in the chest, but he kept running. I was scared, so I ran out of the trees to the hills in the sunlight. Crocodile screamed. When I looked back, Komodo was trying to save her. A zombie dragged him into the dark. Crocodile was on the ground and her feet were kicking as the zombie man ate her. His teeth were in her flesh. He bit and bit and punched her. I screamed and the zombie looked up. Then he ran for me. I am hiding behind rocks. He is still out there. I hear him. I know where the trail is, and I am going to run back to the parking lot now.”
“And he didn’t make it,” Elania said when Austin rifled through the empty pages and closed the Book.
“His face and neck were all messed up, and good riddance,” Micah said.
Austin wondered which patch of trees encircling the hills had witnessed this battle, which rocks shielded the boy about to die. He didn’t want to feel so sorry for those kids, yet he did. It was the fear in the last entry that forced the emotion upon him strongly. Just an angry kid out here doing a stupid thing. Austin felt sorry for that, even if he’d never feel sorry or forgive people who appeared right now to try and shoot him and his friends.
“We should bury his Book,” Zaley said.
They should. It wouldn’t have to be a big hole for a diary. They chose a spot to the side of the trail. The ground was softer in the shadow of a rock, recent rains still working down through the soil. Austin and Elania crouched down to dig while Corbin and Zaley picked flowers. Micah rolled her eyes and played fetch with the dog.
Austin dug deeply into the dirt, grass roots snapping as he pulled clumps away. It stuck in his head, the image of a girl’s feet kicking. Those kids should have stayed home where they were safe. Did their families know what had happened? The guy named Moose showed up Monday evening and waited . . . how long had he waited before he understood no one was coming? What did he do then, drive home and keep quiet? Had anyone but that guy known where these three were? The boy would have been found had it been reported to the authorities. His body was impossible to miss by someone on the trail.
“It’s deep enough,” Elania said. “Austin, stop, it’s deep enough.”
He’d been subconsciously digging a hole big enough for the boy. The others came back with handfuls of white flowers, each one with a purple streak on the five petals. Austin set the diary into the hole and they covered it up. The chunks of soil and grass he patted back. It was hard to tell the ground had ever been disturbed. The flowers were laid down and he fixed them to look nice. He and Elania wiped their hands in the grass and on the rock to rub off the dirt.
They left the Book’s grave to walk on. Micah’s eyes swept from west to east, from east back to west. The gun was in her hand. Every few minutes, she looked behind them. She couldn’t understand the boy and his diary, but she understood keeping watch. Her sperm donor must have been a strange dude. Except Shalom had the same father, and she was normal. Micah was just missing a piece for some reason.
No, this was not Austin’s Paradise. Lukas had seen bodies in combat, so Austin wouldn’t have to describe this to him. He wanted to dig a grave in his mind and bury this part of his life forever. There were parts of Lukas’ life that made him want to do the same thing. The two of them had an understanding. They’d only focus on the sweeter parts of their lives, and let the rest go.
Thirteen miles should have been the walk of one hard day, but that was with a trail in good condition. Erosion had wiped it out in heavy gashes around another hill, bits of the gravel visible in places below. The gashes extended far out. Micah went to the edge of the first gap and the ground crumbled under her feet. She was gone with a scream. The drop was only five feet and she landed without injury. Austin was mad at her for going so close. If she’d broken her leg out here, what were they supposed to do about it? He asked her exactly that.
“I’m fine, Aussie,” Micah insisted. Crossing to the other side of the gash, she tried to climb it. There was a thin span of ground there before the next gash dug into the hillside. The dirt fell away under her hands. She came back and Austin pulled her out. The only choice was to go around.
The gashes widened the farther they went, branching out and becoming more numerous. They walked up the hillside to where the incisions narrowed. That was slow going with the steep incline. At the top, they cut through the grass to skirt the gashes. Austin came to the ridge of the hill and looked down in dismay to a short stretch of whole path, and equally bad erosion beyond it. Farther away, the trail wended up a hill to pass around its midsection. I
t was entirely washed out there.
They descended carefully to take what of the path was there. Now afternoon, they stopped on it for a late lunch. Austin peeled the lid off the top of a cup of chicken and egg noodles soup. He drank it down, hating that it wasn’t heated, and opened a second with beef and vegetables. Bleu Cheese ate one of the beef chunks eagerly. Then he had a pack of peanuts and another of cashews. Food wasn’t a problem for now, but water might be. He wished Zaley had taken more. They had filled up their bottles at the reservoir and she’d gotten an additional four bottles at the store. The bottles were big ones. Yet the trail was shattered, and every extra step they took to bypass it was going to build their thirst back up.
He ate a candy bar and thought about Paradise. Micah pulled him out of it by saying, “If there are feral Sombra Cs out here, we’re risking an attack by having a fire tonight. It could drive one crazy.”
The ones who had killed those three kids were dead by now. It had been a month. There could be more, however, roving around the trees beyond the hills. When night fell, they had no reason to stay in the trees. Austin would volunteer for the first watch.
The sheets on his bed in Paradise would have whatever the highest thread count possible was. The memories of sleeping on the hard ground under a damp blanket would be buried under so much mental soil that he never had to worry about accidentally unearthing them. Here in the hills was grass, so it wouldn’t be as bad as the night before.
It wasn’t nice to be wishing Zaley had gotten more. That basket she had been hefting was stacked to the top, and even he had had a hard time lifting it away. Thirteen miles and they’d walked five or six of them. The trail was going to suck from now on, yet they hadn’t even cracked those four bottles open. So he had to not make a bigger deal of this than it was. He bent Zaley’s head to him and kissed it. “Thank you for lunch.”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 72