by Bible, Jake
The pain is coming and she takes a deep breath.
“Okay, C-, uh…,” she says out loud, ready to talk herself into moving. Except she doesn’t know herself; can’t remember her name. “C something. It’s C-, uh, C-…SHIT!”
Her voice echoes along the small ravine the river has cut into the mountains. She clamps a hand over her mouth, knowing she messed up. But why? Why does she know she messed up? There’s something else she’s forgetting besides her name, something so important that a lightning strike of fear slams into her gut. She fell… She jumped? There were…others?
It’s all gone, a dark chunk of fuzz that covers her thoughts.
Another deep breath, this time silent, and she rolls all the way onto her back and sits up carefully. God her head hurts. She reaches back and feels the massive bump that has taken over most of her scalp. Just the little pressure she applies fills her eyes with fireworks and her head with broken, rusty saw blades.
More deep breaths and she pushes backwards with her hands, scooting her ass and legs up onto the riverbank. And she’s out.
The water laps at her feet. Cold, bracing, constant.
Carly hears the birds in the trees, calling to the morning sun that is knocking at her eyelids. She doesn’t want to open them. All that waits for her is pain. But that fear in her belly is gnawing at her, screaming at her, telling her she’s been lucky so far, but she better fucking move ass.
Why?
She wants to shake her head, dislodge the information that’s trapped inside there. But she knows that will mean night-night all over again. She may not know her name, or why she’s terrified, but she knows she’s hurt bad. She knows she needs help.
A war rages inside her, a war over whether she should stay quiet like her gut fear says or call out in hopes someone will find her. It isn’t a long war.
“Help!” she yells, her voice ragged and weak. She coughs up a hunk of phlegm and tries again. “HELP!”
The sound rolls through the ravine, bouncing off limestone and granite that’s hundreds of millions of years old. With each reverb, she flinches, but she’s made her decision. She knows she’ll die without help.
“Somebody!” she shouts. “Hello? Hello! Please help me!”
She carries on for close to thirty minutes before her voice is gone. Desperate, she grabs a hunk of driftwood close by and begins to smack it against the rock. It thunks deep, sending vibrations up her arm and into the water. Ripples shimmer out with every whack.
Another thirty minutes of that, switching back and forth from one arm to the other, and she’s done for. Her body can’t handle any more movement. Carly leans back against the pebbles and grit of the riverbank and closes her eyes. Just a quick rest, that’s all. Just a quick rest.
The water laps at her head. Cold, rough, scratchy. Smelly.
Her eyes shoot open. Above her, bent over and licking the blood from her forehead is a small boy. His hair is a rat’s nest of gunk and debris. The hair that he has left, that is, since half his scalp is missing.
Carly screams. This sends the boy into a snarling rage and he lurches back for a second, hissing, before he opens his mouth wide to show her broken, jagged teeth, crusted with blood and rotten flesh. She reaches above her and shoves, pushing him away, but he’s having none of that. He leaps at her, his cracked and splintered fingers reaching for her soft flesh.
Then he’s not there. Or to be more precise, his head is not there. The rest of him is and it falls next to Carly, black blood oozing from the exposed neck. Where the head was just a second before.
“Damn near got ya, girlie,” a voice says as a shadow falls across her.
Carly looks up and sees a man standing over her, a machete in hand.
“Help me,” she whispers.
“That’s what I aim to do, girlie,” the man smiles. His dental health leaves something to be desired. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t know,” Carly replies, her mind still fuzz and fluff and a humming nothing. “I’m hurt.”
“Well is your name Don’t Know or is it Hurt?” the man cackles, thinking his joke is the funniest thing in the world.
“I…I…I…,” Carly stammers then burst out crying.
“Well, shit, girlie,” the man says. “No need to blubber like that. I’s just playin’.”
He leans down close to her and Carly can see that his left eye is swollen shut and oozing yellowish liquid. She reaches up and touches his cheek.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Ain’t nothing,” the man says. “Got into a tussle. I won, but came away with this. It’ll heal up. Or it won’t.” He shrugs. “Don’t matter since I got a perfectly good one on the other side, right girlie?”
“Yeah,” she says, “you do.”
“Thank ya,” he grins. “Now how’s about we get you up outta the crick and back to my cabin? Sound good?”
“No,” Carly says, “I can’t move.”
“Can’t move?” the man asks then looks her over. He spies the leg. “Oh. That. Well, I’ll do the moving. All’s I need is for you to keep your mouth shut. It’s gonna hurt fierce, but you’s have to stay quiet. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Carly nods. She tries to smile, but her lips won’t obey.
“You having a fit?” the man asks. “Oh, never mind.” He crouches and scoops his arms under her. “On the count of three. One, two.”
He lifts and Carly doesn’t stay quiet. She starts screaming at the top of her lungs as the bone stretches the skin of her leg.
“Now that ain’t gonna do,” the man says.
The last thing Carly sees is his forehead coming at her face. Fast.
***
The pain drifts in and out of her dreams, but it’s the smell that brings her around.
The smell of cooking meat.
“There ya are,” the man says. His face illuminated by a large fire set into a good sized stone hearth. “You been sleeping so long, wasn’t sure you’d come back alive or as one of those things.”
“One of…?” She trails off, the words unable to form from her dry throat.
The man smiles and fetches a cup on a table shoved into the corner of the room. Carly glances about and sees she’s in a small, wood cabin. A real cabin, not some prefab thing she used to vacation in. Vacation…? With who?
“You okay there, girlie?” the man asks as he lifts her head and puts the cup to her lips. She tastes the cold, clean water and sucks at it greedily. “Look like ya seen a haint.”
“Thank you,” she says as the cup is taken away. “What’s a haint?”
“A ghast, ghost, ghoulie,” the man says. “Where you from, girlie? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
“I don’t know,” Carly says, “I can’t remember anything.” She thinks for a second. “Wait, what did you mean by one of those things?”
“The dead folk,” the man replies. “The flesh eaters. Zombies. Like in them movies. The mountains is overrun with them.” He glances about the cabin. “But we’re safe here. For now. Don’t see too many up this way. Not unless some fool girl goes screaming her head off.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Ain’t no thing,” the man smiles. Carly is glad he’s helped her, but there’s something to that smile. He cocks his head. “What?”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she replies.
“Nothing to understand. Except that you have to do what you need to do to survive nowadays,” the man nods. “Whatever it takes. But I’m used to it. Been up here for years now.”
“Are you alone?”
“Not now, I ain’t,” the man smiles. That smile…
“But you have been?”
“Nah, I’ve had company. There’s always company when you go lookin’ for it.”
He gets up and goes back to the fire. He pulls an iron poker from the fire, looks at the glowing tip, and smiles.
“You say you don’t know your name?” he asks her as he rotates the
poker in his hand. “That so?”
“I…I don’t remember,” she says, “I don’t remember anything.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Very good. ‘Cause I have a name for you. It’s the name you were meant to have.” He walks over to her, poker still in hand. “Elsbeth. That’s your name.”
“I don’t think so,” Carly says, her eyes drawn to the glowing iron. “What are you doing with…? Hey. Hey! Why am I tied down?”
Carly realizes that her body is strapped to the cot she’s lying on. Before she can say anything else, the man jams a large, smelly cloth into her mouth. She tries to scream around it, but just chokes on the pungent material.
The blanket that’s covering her is torn back and Carly can see she’s completely naked. Her leg is splinted and bound, but that’s all that covers her. She looks back up into the man’s eyes, seeing the hunger there.
“Now, my sweet Elsbeth, time we made you pretty,” he says. He starts to lower the poker to Carly’s belly then stops. “Damn, if I ain’t rude. I know your name, but you don’t know what to call me.” The smile. The smile. The smile. “You can call me…Pa.”
The poker is thrust flat against Carly’s, now Elsbeth’s, abdomen and she shrieks against the gag until it is all too much.
All. Too. Much.
Pa smiles down at her as she screams and squirms and prays for it to stop.
“You know any good jokes, Elsbeth?” he asks. “I love me some jokes.”
***
Z-Day plus one hundred twenty.
“Ain’t no game left in the woods, pa,” Elsbeth says as she kicks open the door of the cabin and throws down two dead crows onto the table. “Oh, who’s this? Didn’t know we had company.”
“Elsbeth, girl, this is your Uncle Jeb,” Pa says. “Come say hello proper. Show him what a good girl you are.”
The man sitting against the wall looks her up and down as he twirls something in his hand. Something metal, something glowing.
Elsbeth closes the door slowly and starts to take her shirt off, knowing what’s coming next.
***
Z-Day plus three hundred fifty-five.
“They killed him, Pa!” Elsbeth cries as she runs along the French Broad River. “They shot Uncle Jeb right in the eyehole!” Her face is scrunched up with rage. “I’ll kill all them! All them!”
“Shut it, girlie,” Pa snarls as he tries to keep up. He coughs and shivers at the pain in his chest and face. Reaching up, he worries at the hole in his right cheek and a hole that keeps getting bigger and bigger, smelling of rot and puss. “You’ll bring the dead down on us.”
Elsbeth looks around, her eyes scanning the woods. She shuts it. Doesn’t want to anger Pa. Not while he’s sick. Not while the green stuff keeps eating his face.
They don’t stop running until they hit I-26. Then they see the horde of Zs that shamble and shuffle between the wrecked cars that litter the interstate. Elsbeth ducks low, as does Pa and they crouch by the side of the road, waiting for their chance. After a few minutes, they see an opportunity and sprint across, scrambling up the hillside and back into the cover of trees.
A few Zs turn and start to follow, but they can’t get purchase on the loose soil. They stop after a few minutes and join their fellow undead, going back to the familiar artery of lives they can’t remember.
***
Z-Day plus three hundred seventy.
“What do we do now, Pa?” Elsbeth asks, huddled into the corner of the basement, a damp tarp wrapped around her to fight off the cold as Pa tries to get a fire going. “None of the houses have no foods left. We picked ‘em clean. No foods up in the woods, had to leave. No foods down here in the city. That mean we haves ta leave too?”
“Quiet,” Pa hisses.
“But I’s just...”
“Quiet!” Pa snaps. “Listen!”
She quiets and hears what he hears. Screaming.
“Some woman needs help up there,” Elsbeth says.
“She does,” Pa says. Then smiles.
The smile. The smile. The smile.
Elsbeth shudders.
“Let’s go help her,” Pa says.
They do.
They fight off the Zs that have the woman and her wounded husband surrounded. They help her carry him back to their basement. They help her have a seat on the floor by the fire. They help her watch as Pa bashes her husband’s brains out. They help her with her grief by bashing her brains out.
Then they help themselves.
To her.
Chapter Two
“Elsbeth?” I say. “Hello? Earth to Elsbeth? You gonna help me here or what, dingleberry?”
“Sorry,” Elsbeth says. “I was dreamdaying.” She frowns. “Don’t call me a dingleberry. That’s shit that hangs from your butthole ‘cause you don’t wipe right. I know that.”
“I’m just messing with you,” I say. “Calm down. And it’s daydreaming, not dreamday...”
“You want my help or not, Long Pork?” Elsbeth frowns as she holds a board out to me.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” I say. “Call it whatever you want.”
Long Pork. It’s what cannibals call human meat.
It’s also what my good friend, Elsbeth, calls me. My name is actually Jason Stanford, but I prefer to go by Jace. Like most things in her life, Elsbeth ignores what she wants to. So she calls me Long Pork. I let her because she’s saved my ass more times than I’d like to admit.
And she can kill me with her bare hands at any moment.
Especially since I only have one arm. Well, not technically true. I haveone and a half arms. My left arm, good ol’ southpaw, is fully intact. It has all parts, especially that handy-dandy, well, uh, hand. Makes for gripping things well. Which I am doing with this hammer.
The other arm is severed at the elbow. I did the severing. Not too bad of a job, if I do say so myself, thank you very much. Kinda had to. Since a Z took a liking to my right hand and gave me a love bite. It was either chop off my arm or turn into a walking, moaning, slobbering, flesh-eating monster. Not much of a choice there.
So now, eight months, three weeks, and four days later, I have an array of prosthetics that I can strap to Stumpageddon. Yep, I named my stump. It keeps me from curling into a ball and crying. Yet, even with a variety of hooks and clamps and spikes and stabby-stabby bladey things, I’m still a guy with one arm. Sure, Reaper and Dr. McCormick have done their best to outfit Stumpageddon, but the reality is that because of where the arm is severed I just don’t have the right leverage.
You ever have elbow fights as a kid? You know where you bend your arm so your hand touches your shoulder and wave your elbow at your friend while they do the same thing? It’s like that. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned how to fight, just in a totally different way than before.
Before I became an extra for The Pirate Movie, I had a bat I called The Bitch. The end was reinforced with long spikes driven through it. I could swing that thing and pierce some serious Z skulls. Dead went the Zs. But I don’t have that kind of leverage anymore. Now my go to weapon is a long spike that I thrust using the momentum from my shoulder. Kind of a lunge and thrust, pull back, lunge and thrust, attack.
It works. Just not as well as having two arms.
However, good old fashioned manual labor isn’t so bad. I don’t really need Elsbeth to help me as I nail the last few boards in this fence. I have my clamp attachment on. By extending or withdrawing my shoulder, I can work a short, wide clamp on the end. Helps me grip stuff like boards, or just brace things. I’ve gotten good enough with it that I can even twist the end and hold a nail.
No, the real reason I wanted Elsbeth to help is because she has been disappearing from work duties here in Whispering Pines. We’ve been rebuilding the subdivision I blew up about a year ago. I didn’t want to blow it up, but this guy Vance was all like, “Argh! I’m a psycho and I want your shit and I have nefarious plans!” I was all like, “Natural gas go boom, bitch! Suck it!”
Or something like that.
“What?” Elsbeth asks.
“Huh? I didn’t say anything,” I reply.
“You have been acting like you need to pee,” Elsbeth says. “That means you want to say something. Most people it means they need to pee. Not Long Pork.” She shakes her head. “Means he has something to say, but is too much of a pussy to say it.”
“Well, now that you’ve buttered me up, I guess I’ll spill it,” I say.
“I didn’t put butter on you,” she frowns. “I don’t eat people anymore. Why are you being so mean?”
“Whoa, whoa, it’s just an expression.”
“Stupid expression.”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I say. “Wonder where it came from? Who was the first person to decide that you should put butter on someone? What the hell is that…”
“Long Pork!” Elsbeth shouts.
I can hear a few hammers close by stop. People get twitchy when Elsbeth shouts. Not without reason. She is one badass cannibal savant even if she has given up her taste for thigh meat.
“Sorry,” I say. I set the hammer down by the stack of fence boards. “I do have something to say.” The impatient way she looks at me hurries my ass up. I think she’s actually ready to pop me one. “You’ve been going off on your own a lot lately. Just wondering what’s up. In fact, I’m not the only one wondering.”
“I’m looking for cannies, like you all want,” Elsbeth says quickly. She had that one planned. I don’t buy it.
“We’ve cleared out all of North Asheville as well as downtown,” I say. “There are still random survivors in West Asheville, as well as out in East Asheville. But you’re going south.”
Elsbeth just stares.
“And I think Lourdes and her people have South Asheville covered,” I continue. “They’ve said so. So, still wondering where you’re going.”