The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “You’re welcome,” Zaley said. Her arm was back in the sling since they weren’t scaling the hill.

  He hoped that she felt better than she had at the party. “Are you still suicidal?”

  Surprised at his question, she said, “No. It changes. Right now I’m just hungry and disappointed the trail is so thrashed. How are you feeling?”

  Feet kicked in his mind. “Freaked out about tonight.” That didn’t sound so manly. Sometimes it was hard to find the line between what was okay to say and what wasn’t. But no one disagreed or looked at him askance. It was stupid how he worried about this when Elania and Micah knew the truth, the dog wouldn’t care, and the only ones left were Corbin and Zaley. He just didn’t want how they looked at him to change, and he especially didn’t want Corbin thinking that Austin was trying to cop a look. Corbin was a nice-looking guy, he was a nice guy all around, but he was straight and that killed any interest in its tracks.

  “Where’s a smart place to hide out here?” Elania asked. “We should think about that now. In a groove among the hills?”

  “I’d think the top of a hill would be better,” Micah said. “We’d hear them coming. It’s harder to sneak up quietly when you’re going uphill. And we’ll be able to look out over a wider range. There might be Shepherds out here, too, looking for sport.”

  The highest hill was the one with the washed-out trail. They packed up and were back on the move, fighting their way up hills to cross the narrower incisions. Austin held onto the grass and plants tightly. The ground was further eroding under the pressure of their feet.

  A human skeleton rested far below in one of the gashes. Gauging the hill and the position of the bones, Austin thought it belonged to someone insensible with Sombra C who climbed over the top at night and tripped into the incision without seeing it there. That was a fall great enough to break a neck, whereas if Austin let go, he’d just slide a little ways.

  The skeleton had rags of clothing on it, no backpack or Book. There weren’t any shoes either. This was what people did, hid their Sombra Cs and then loosed them in the wild. What did they tell people who asked where that family member was? Oh, little Johnny is living with his grandmother now in Massachusetts! Oh, my mom got a horrible case of pneumonia. She was gone so fast. It was shocking. The truth was that they were brought out here by families ashamed to have a zombie in their midst.

  Crossing over the incision with the skeleton, Elania said, “I don’t agree with it, but I know why it happens.” She’d been thinking some of the same thoughts as Austin.

  “Then enlighten us, because it’s fucking cruel,” Corbin said. “They aren’t evil; they aren’t movie monsters; they have a virus causing brain damage. If my parents got Sombra C and weren’t responding to Zyllevir, my solution wouldn’t be to drive them out here and push them out of the car!”

  Austin’s mother would do that. Sitting on the slope to rest as the others came across, each taking a look down to the skeleton, Elania said, “Corbin, I said that I don’t agree with it. But just having a sister with Sombra C changed my brothers’ lives completely. Kids wouldn’t play with them. They weren’t invited to the biggest party of the year. Brennan’s mother lost her house to arsonists with her son’s diagnosis. People get fired from their jobs for having spouses with Sombra C. There’s a huge stigma. So if you’re really protective of your place in the community, worried about your job and how your family is going to be upended, all over a stamp . . . it’s cruel, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Still, I see why some people end up here, dumping off their Sombra Cs to protect what they have. Admitting that the person has the virus and getting him or her a stamp ends everything for them. This is a way out. The wrong way, but a way. Once the brain damage is bad enough, you don’t have to worry about them finding their way home.”

  “I bet a lot of people dumped out here are relatives of Shepherds,” Zaley commented once over the divide. “You can have one community or the other. Not both. My father would have dumped me in a hot minute had I tested positive after the party.”

  The last one to cross, Micah held onto grass for balance and stared at the skeleton. She said, “I’d come out here myself if Zyllevir made me ill all the time, or if my stamp was at a number that stripped me of human rights. I don’t want to live in a government confinement point like the one in Blue Hill, keeping me alive in a cage. This is how I’d rather go, out here.”

  “Attacking people,” Corbin said.

  “Hey, anyone in his or her right mind can read those signs at the trailhead. Stay the fuck out of here. Some people still decide to play cowboys, it’s not my fault if I chomp on them.”

  They cut down the slope to a fragment of trail. There was one more big incision to cross before they reached the hill where they’d stop for the night. Testily, Corbin said, “He was just a kid, Micah.”

  She played with the switchblade, pressing the release to make it snap out, pushing it back and pressing the button again. “If a thirteen-year-old stands on railroad tracks to moon the oncoming train and gets hit in the ass, who’s at fault? The train? Boomslang couldn’t have missed the signs. He knew how to read. He knew zombies were dangerous. He came out here anyway. So why the pity party? Thirteen isn’t three. He was held accountable for his bad decision just as he should have been. I hate in the news when everyone whines about how teenaged murderers shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions because they didn’t fully grasp that killing is a crime. Seriously? I knew that at thirteen. I knew that at eight. The next time Boomslang reincarnates, his soul will be a little smarter.”

  Austin wanted to think about happy things, but none came to mind. He pushed ahead from the group to not listen. The grass had gotten tall around this last gash, and he was aware that at any step, he could find another body. Komodo or Crocodile, a feral Sombra C, a Shepherd, a random hiker who scoffed at the warning signs . . . He wasn’t ever going to hike in his life after this, fearing the curves in the trail and the tall grass. No, Austin sat back on his couch in Paradise and watched movies. Reaching out for Lukas’ hand, he was disappointed that he couldn’t hold to the imaginary sensation. His body was firmly rooted in this wilderness with its rotted hills and destroyed path. A few oak trees stood up at the top of the hill they wanted. They were scraggly things without too many leaves, nothing to provide enough shade to look alluring to a light-sensitive zombie.

  What was going on in the world? The newspaper that Zaley had bought in Salmon Park showed insanity on every page. Shepherd Prime rising, the government falling . . . but that wasn’t current now. Austin wanted to turn on Sombra C News and catch up with those indefatigable reporters. They felt like friends, just like the pretend guards of Paradise were his friends. The rest of the world was enemy territory, and Austin wanted all of the allies he could get.

  Checking down the incision, he was relieved to see no bodies. Maybe that meant there were bodies higher, since he’d been given the grace of none here. His heart formed one line of logic while his mind formed another. Climbing back down to the path, he waited until the others caught up.

  The washed-out part of the trail was long, a giant heap of dirt covering the gravel from a collapse up higher. It had happened long ago, judging from the plant life growing on the heap. Putting a foot to it tentatively, Austin discovered that it was hard as rock. He crossed without problem to the continuance of the trail. Though it cut down the side of the hill, he turned to climb up through the grass to the ridge.

  It did give a good view of all three hundred and sixty degrees. Hills extended south the way they had come. To the west, hills rolled down straight into thick trees and in the east, the hills suddenly smoothed to a strip of meadow and more trees. In the north, the hills gave way to meadows and terminated in a heavy cluster of trees. It was good they were stopping here. He didn’t want to be moving toward those trees as the darkening sky drew the zombies out of them.

  If Mamma came to him with Sombra C that Zyllevir couldn’t hold at bay, would he du
mp her out here? Austin was afraid to answer that question. She tossed him away like garbage and she deserved the same. Then she’d know what that was like, except her brain would be too addled for the lesson.

  He didn’t believe that wound was ever going to stop hurting. If his mother could turn away, anyone else could, too. That was why he couldn’t picture Lukas’ hand; Austin couldn’t even hold on to an imaginary boyfriend. Anyone could reject him for anything, and now he wanted to run for those trees! Let himself be picked apart and spread around the wild for someone else to find.

  That was suicidal. Like Zaley said, sometimes it was there and sometimes it was not. She didn’t look suicidal at the moment, sinking into the grass under a tree and speaking to Elania. But Austin hadn’t known that she was suicidal at all last December until after the bullet. She’d looked fine as always, scurrying around from class to class, always happy to see him. That almost felt like a betrayal, that the outside hadn’t matched the inside. You couldn’t tell from looking at her just how deep she ran, and no one could tell from looking at him either.

  Arms went around his waist. They were softer than Lukas’ would be. Micah was pressed to his back. Austin said, “I need to have first watch.”

  “It’s yours,” Micah said.

  “And you need to feel sorry for that kid.” Loneliness drove that boy out here. It was the same loneliness that made Austin want to run for the trees.

  Micah sighed into his shirt. “Do you want me to lie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Poor kid. He should have been able to kill every person with Sombra C on this planet, including us, and go home to a parade and a shiny Shepherd patch.”

  “He should have found nothing out here and gone home, grown up a little.”

  “But the truth, Aussie, is that I don’t care. He got what he deserved. It’s us versus them.” She let go, and he sat down. It was the only thing that kept him from running to his death.

  Dinnertime. He didn’t want to eat. His body made him do it.

  It was evening when the sudden, violent shaking of a tree to the east caught his eye. He wasn’t even on watch yet officially. The others were chatting and he hushed them. They heard the tail end of an eerie baying.

  “Oh my God,” Elania whispered. Austin followed her gaze to the west where figures were emerging. They were too far away to make out much feature. More were coming from the north, one here, two there, one over there. If anyone was coming from the southern tree line, they were too far away to see.

  A dozen, that was how many Austin was counting in all three directions. Trills, hoots, and chatter filled the air. His eyes lighted on the oaks growing upon this ridge, the only place they had to go. In an instant he was at the base of a trunk, finding a spot to wedge his foot in and climb. The bark scratched at his hands as he pulled himself up to the lowest branch, swinging his legs over to straddle it. He leaned over the side and said, “Give me Zaley!”

  It wasn’t a big tree, and the branches much higher than this one weren’t strong enough to hold his weight. Micah and Corbin boosted Zaley to him. She swung over the branch and sat up, taking the backpack they pushed into her hands.

  “Oooo-AAAH! Oooo-AAAH!” It sounded like a strange monkey. Austin got the backpack from her and slung it over his shoulders. Getting to his feet, he swung onto the next highest branch. That was as high as they’d be able to climb, about eight feet off the ground. Slowly, Zaley moved up to it. The other three with the dog bolted to the second tree.

  “I can’t,” Zaley grunted, struggling to get to her feet.

  “Come on, honey, you can. You have to,” Austin said. A cascade of chit-chit-chit calls made his voice break in panic. They got her onto the branch and she settled back into him. He put his arms around her. There was nowhere else to put them.

  The other tree was taller than this one, offering more thick branches to sit upon, but it was harder to climb. Elania was pushed up first and given the backpacks, which she tucked into crooks high up. Micah assisted Corbin to a lower branch. Once his legs were twined around it, she struggled to push the heavy dog to him. Finally Bleu Cheese was up there. Corbin shined the flashlight down to help Micah climb up last. She lost her grip and slipped onto her back in the grass, Zaley and Austin gasping as one.

  “Motherfucking tree,” Micah swore. On the second attempt, she hauled herself successfully onto the branch by the dog and climbed to a higher one.

  The moon was coming up, transforming this wild into truly wild with animal noise and unsteady forms. Figures were walking about the meadows, some coming in the direction of the hills. It was a jungle with the hoots and hollers and screeches.

  “Can they climb trees?” Zaley whispered. All Austin knew was that he wasn’t going to sleep. The branch was hard under his ass and zombies were out there in the growing night. He thought of the trees they’d walked through before the hills, how that gloom was filled with people and they hadn’t known. No, they’d walked along chatting about food.

  The largest number of figures was lurching in the east and north. The moonlight was bright, but it was still hard to see everything. A pair of zombies came together in angry screeching down in the meadow. It sounded like a fight. Other figures fled stiff-legged from the commotion, and only one of the combatants walked away from the battle. The screaming of a wild cat came from his throat as he cut through the grass with the loser invisible on the ground.

  Maybe little facts of their old lives remained in their brains, though not enough to string together to cohesiveness. They might know their age but not their address, that they were hungry but not what food was. They made animal sounds and did the others understand it? Austin sure didn’t. Zyllevir prevented him from comprehending this language, from tilting his head back and singing like a creature to the night.

  Hours went by in his uncomfortable perch in the tree. The roaming was aimless. This was what they did: wander around until they lay down to die. The animal cries grew louder when the ferals mounted the hills. Something in the backpack crackled every time Austin shifted his weight, and the sound made him nervous. Zaley leaned forward so he could take off the backpack. Then she leaned back and threaded her arms through the straps. With her hands holding it at the base, the crackling stopped.

  Their legs ached from dangling over the sides of the branch. Somehow Zaley fell asleep, her cheek to his chest and her breathing even. She was keeping his front warm, and he didn’t dare open the backpack to take out more clothes for the rest of him.

  He heard the swishing of the grass long before a head crested their hill. The dog growled in the other tree. It appeared, tufts of hair on its head, a mouth hanging open. Walking between the trees with eyes set to nothing, it continued down the other side. Austin’s arms tightened around Zaley, waking her. She pressed back into him in fright. More heads came to the ridge.

  The first belonged to a tall black man in a business suit. His cheeks were wet with seepage from gouged out eyes. The smell of urine hit Austin on a breeze. Blindly, the man stumbled through the grass on his way to nowhere. The sound emanating from his throat was one long, high-pitched sob. His shoes were gone and his suit was torn, but his belt was still on. He’d just been pissing himself inside.

  The next zombie was a chubby white woman, with a dark stain on her neck of a stamp. Her hair was in a straggling braid. One lock had come free and was hanging over her face. The only clothing she wore was a pair of socks. The man was going over the side of the hill as she came to the crest and stopped there. Austin and Zaley kept still. The zombie’s head cocked to the side. She looked up to the branch and directly at them upon it. “Whooo-AAAHH?”

  A third head was approaching, belonging to a girl. At the call of the woman between the trees, the girl turned away in silence and went back down. Insistently, the woman repeated, “Whooo-AAAHH? WHOOO-AAAHH?” She was demanding something of them. Wandering closer, she peered through the lock of hair. There was a splotch of a tattoo on her hip, and another one on her f
labby breast. The others had been lurching, but she wasn’t. Her mind had gone to shit, but randomly, her muscles had been left untouched by the virus. Zaley trembled in his arms.

  The dog growled louder. Austin wanted to draw up his legs. Yet that could agitate her, an unexpected movement, so he didn’t. Reaching up, she touched the bottom of his sneaker. He felt the press of her fingers on his heel. Then she pulled at it. Oh, sweet Jesus . . .

  A gunshot rang out in the wilderness far away. Her head jerked around to track the sound, which was coming from the south. The pull on his shoe fell away. Grass rustled as she went around the tree, calling, “Whooo-AAHH?”

  They had walked right into a live battlefield and taken shelter there for the night. That had to be a Shepherd come to kill zombies on the trail. Austin closed his eyes and concentrated on the sounds in the grass. They were growing fainter. Still he heard that blind man in the suit wailing, the drone going on and on without cease.

  Once the rustling stopped, he whispered, “I bet you wish that you’d stayed home.”

  “No,” Zaley breathed. “I had the gun to my head, Austin. I kicked out the boards on my window and ran instead.”

  She’d been that close. That desperate. It was amazing how they had known one another for years and not really known each other at all. How did you have lunch with a girl three times a week for four years, occasional classes and parties together on top of it, and not know her? She could say the same of him. Austin said, “Sometimes I want to die. It’s what my mother wanted for me after the diagnosis. If that’s the only thing that would make her happy . . . then I want to give it to her.”

  “Don’t. It’s your choice, but please don’t. We would miss you.”

  “Then the zombies come up the hill and I don’t want to die any more. How does my brain turn that on and off so fast?”

  From a comfortable distance came a whoo-AAAHH! Hesitantly, Zaley said, “I think it depends on the immediate situation you’re in. And how badly at the moment you need the pain to stop. Once I kicked out the boards, I wasn’t in the same amount of pain. I wasn’t trapped any longer.”