He waited in the thickening dark. The sound of the vacant wind tore through the trees at the edge of the field and whispered through the grass as it blew nearer to him.
He had been fighting a cold recently, and without thinking, he inhaled through his nose violently, snapping back the mucus.
The brush stirred, and when he heard the leaves rustle, he realized his mistake.
Then, as they had done before, and as he knew they would, they came out of the trees at the far end of the field. He shuddered. He gripped the pistol tightly. He waited until they were in range.
Gradually, their pace increased until they were running. Their arms hung awkwardly to the sides as though numb and immobile although their legs moved very quickly. Under different circumstances, he might have found it comical.
When they were in range, he opened fire. The pistol shot rang out into the night. The impact of the bullet tore at the shoulder of one, slowing it down so that the pack overtook it. He shot again. This time, he hit one full in the chest. The impact drove it backward into the crowd, but then the crowd pushed it forward again and trampled it.
Now they were close enough that he could make out their faces. Tonight, as every night, he expected the faces to be rotting or decayed like some of the others, or to retain the disfiguring injuries they had sustained from the nights previous when he had fought them off before. But no—always to his horror, the faces remained unchanged, and virtually as they had been in life.
There in the crowd was Treyvon Marsh. In a previous life, Treyvon had been a drug dealer from a gang that was rival to Jude’s. He had shot him to death during a skirmish. Treyvon had been nineteen at the time, although he had already built up for himself a reputation among the gangs for his wild, reckless fighting style. Jude had been on higher alert than normal, and when he saw Treyvon, he had not hesitated. In death, Treyvon had seemed so much like a child, and Jude had wondered if the reputation weren’t some wild fabrication, or if he had killed the wrong person altogether. In any case, he had been able to claim self-defense. Treyvon had become another gangland statistic, and Jude had gone free, only mildly molested by the police, and unprosecuted.
Treyvon, now returned, seemed all the more grotesque for his childlike features. The large lips and poorly proportioned nose stood out on his face in a rotten mockery of childishness, and he, like all the rest, was driven with a singular ravenous intent devoid of innocence.
There was Michael Harris, who had embezzled and lied to the boss about his take; Jude had carried out the hit. He had been an older man, middle-aged, white. Jude had made it look like an accident. He had lured him to a remote location with a blackmail threat. Although Jude had not expected him to, Harris had actually brought money with him, hoping to pay off his blackmailer. Jude disposed of him from a height, making sure that it would seem that he had tripped and fallen; and he had kept the money for himself.
Now Harris was back, more pale than ever, his eyes red-rimmed, his mouth black. His body was still bent from the fall he had taken, but it did not impede him any; he ran as fast as the others, if not faster, and sought for Jude with the same ravenous zeal driving the horde.
There was Arionna Willis, the prostitute who had gotten shot in the crossfire during a deal gone wrong; he had held her as she bled out and died. This was one of the most painful of all his memories. When he had met her, he had felt at first a vague uneasiness and then eventually a burning and profound disquiet. He was certain that she was good, and yet she was doing bad things, involved with bad people. And as he grew to know her better and became more convinced of this, he had begun to reflect upon himself and see himself in the same light. He had been good; how had he gone so wrong? But before this notion had had time to fully materialize in him, they had found themselves in the midst of the fallout of a betrayal, facing down several armed thugs at once. A bullet that had been meant for him had found her.
After her death, he had continued with the thug life, although with an unshakable sense of disquiet. Eventually, he had been charged and convicted for dealing, and gone to prison. In prison, he had met with a pastor ministering there and been converted to Christianity. He had repented and confessed of all these and other sins and had been washed clean. He had put his former life behind him and had moved forward as a changed man. But the faces and the bodies had all returned, and they were coming for him again tonight.
She, too, had come back, a horrible monstrosity, awful in her marred beauty, and hideous in her inhuman intent. He could barely stand to look at her, let alone defend himself from her attacks—but he went through with it, night after night, against her and all the others.
A clammy chill descended on his body. It was not merely the familiar rush of adrenaline he felt before a fight, but also a constricted feeling in his throat and tingling in his forehead and around his ears. These faces, these terrible reminders of his former life, unnaturally living memories—why had they sought him out after they had returned? Why did they continue to seek him out? How had they found him out here in the country, far from the city of that former life and its past sins? Even more strange was that some of the dead he had never been involved with directly; he had not been responsible for their deaths. But sometimes these were even more terrifying than his own victims when they appeared. And why, after countless nights of defending himself and his house from them, maiming them, destroying them—did they return again and again, seemingly stronger than before?
Defense had become as routine to him as clipping his fingernails. As soon as several had fallen from bullets and he had judged the crowd thin enough to manage, he dropped the pistol and drew his machete. They rushed him; he swung powerfully. The machete struck flesh and bone and tore through with great force. Black, vile blood spurted onto his arms and face. He pulled back but the machete pulled at his wrist. It had gotten lodged in a bone; the blade was getting dull. After he had pulled it free, he swung again into the crowd, back and forth, rapidly and haphazardly. The crowd was so thick around him that careful aim was not necessary; every stroke cut deep through the rank flesh. He ducked below the cold fingers that reached for his face and eyes. He thrust forward with the blade and threw his weight into the forward motion. What remained of the crowd toppled over. He rolled to the side, and then got back on his feet and stood over the pile. He raised the machete, and held.
He looked down. On the top of the pile was Treyvon Marsh. He looked into Treyvon’s eyes, which were looking back up at his own from the side, their faces perpendicular. The eyes looked at him with a vacant gaze that seemed almost contemptuous. The mouth opened as though it were going to say something but instead vomited up a gush of black blood.
He struck down with the machete quickly and decisively and clove the face in two lengthwise across the mouth. Black liquid shot upward in fat droplets and the blade cracked against the teeth. The jawbone dislocated and the cheeks split as if in mocking, silent laughter. The rows of teeth appeared small in the now gaping mouth, like a mule when it brays. The eyes, pushed slightly out of the soft sockets by the pressure of the blow, lolled crazily to either side.
The cadaver lay limp and still, yet its mocking, wild-eyed, ass-like gaze tormented Jude. There was no ridding himself of the chill it instilled. Time became recursive and meaningless.
But there were still others. He lifted the machete from the chopped face and swung rapidly at the advancing crowd. He backed away as he swung, going for the door. He had done this so many times before that he did not need to look behind him.
Then, turning around with a final swing, he drew the blade across the horde in an arc that met three of their throats at once. The jaws and heads dropped as black blood gushed from the wounds, and the bodies fell. In the house at last, he slammed the door on the advancing throng, closing them out. Cold, clammy hands clapped at the door and wall. He fell to the floor and clasped the machete, sticky with black blood, to his chest. He closed his eyes tightly and his body shook as the images of the faces raced through his mind, and
the pounding on the walls reverberated through his head.
“God, God…” he pleaded. “What can I do? What can I do?”
#
He woke with a start and shivered. He sat with his back still to the door and the cold machete in his hand. The house had lost heat in the night. He was still drenched in sweat, shivering with a chill. The blood had dried on the machete. He stood up suddenly and the machete fell, the blood flaking off in dry, dark-brown chunks.
He went to the window. An angry-looking dawn had set a dormant glow alight in a distant corner of the horizon, like an orange and red wound on the still deep-blue sky.
He opened the door and went out. The morning was fresh; the day would be hot.
He went around to the side of the house where there were doors to a storm cellar. The weathered white doors were closed and locked with a padlock. He stooped down beside them and put out his hand. He stuck his finger in the padlock and tugged at it; the lock held tight. He reached into his pocket and took out the key, which was on a large ring to prevent it from getting lost. He unlocked the padlock and threw the doors open. Inside was a large stockpile of supplies; cans of food, jugs of gas, boxes of bullets, and more.
He heaved a sigh of relief, as though in the cellar he kept his heart itself.
He shut the doors slowly, with an air of sober gratitude, and closed the heavy padlock. He was always very careful to keep the door closed and locked, and it gave him a measure of satisfaction merely to do so.
He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Leaning over the closed and locked doors of the cellar, he said a prayer of thanks to God that he had been able to keep his supplies safe.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…
He returned to the dead silent house, his limbs feeling weak. He collapsed onto his cot in the bedroom and fell fast asleep.
#
He awoke suddenly. He thought that it had been a noise that had awakened him, but in the half-memory of his emergent consciousness still enveloped by a haze of sleep, he could not be sure that he had heard anything at all. He sat up in his cot. His room was dark; he had boarded up the windows some time ago, and light never entered. He did not know if it was night or day, or how long he had slept. He strained his ears, listening for whatever sound had awakened him in case it repeated itself.
The silence grew to a harsh ring that throttled his ears; the emptiness became a fullness like Loneliness herself who filled all the empty spaces of his house and of his life.
Then the silence was shattered by a soft but definite rustle of the brush that sounded as though it were just on the other side of his bedroom wall. He stiffened and then forced himself to rise, making as little noise as possible. Slowly and cautiously, he reached his hand out for the doorknob and opened his bedroom door.
It was daylight. The sun crept stealthily into the house through the gaps in the boarded-up windows with an indeterminate yellow glow.
So it was not them. But he had heard the noise just the same. An animal? Something attracted by the scent of something in the supply shed?
He took up his pistol from the desk where his Bible lay, snapped a magazine into the handle, and racked the slide. The gun ready in his right hand, he opened the front door with his left and stepped out into the morning glow.
It was mid-morning, and the air was not yet hot. It was fresh and cooling, and it energized Jude despite his fatigue. The yellow sun bathed the field in a pleasant, even light, although he could not see the sun itself. In the distance, the trees stood dark against the brightening sky. A light breeze rustled the brush and the gold-green grass; other than that, it was quiet.
At the side of the house were two figures dressed in rags. The daylight did not seem to become them. The first was a woman, probably middle-aged, although she was so dirty and her rags were so unbecoming that she seemed an old hag. The other was a boy, about ten by Jude’s estimation, covered in the same dirt. But the boy had clear blue eyes that peeped out from under a mess of shaggy hair and that, rather than merely reflecting the light of the sun, seemed to share its illumination.
The two started at the sight of Jude’s large frame and at the gun pointed at them. They must have seen the house and probably assumed it to be uninhabited, as he had when he had first arrived. He lowered the gun.
For a long time, no one said anything. The kind thing to do would be to invite them in and give them something to eat or drink; but he had spent a long time building up his own resources and was loath to simply give them away. They, on the other hand, were probably intimidated and unsure of his intentions; even though it was no longer pointed at them, the gun was still held by him.
At last, he muttered, “Well, come inside—quickly.”
They scurried along the side of the house, clinging to it as though it would protect them on the outside as well as in, and slid in at the door as though compelled by gravity. He closed the door behind them. He watched them and kept his gun gripped firmly in his large hand.
In the main room, they stood close together, looking about the house. It was dirty, but livable; it invited living. The furniture that had come with the house had been pushed back against the rear door that no longer latched shut or locked. In the past, the rear door had opened out to a deck, but the deck now no longer existed; Jude had long ago chopped it into firewood. An old rug covered most of the main area and was thick with dust. The house had a musty smell and an insurgent patch of angry-looking mold was festering beneath the peeling paper of a wall that had suffered water damage. Still, the kitchen was functional and over the dank baseline mustiness floated the savory smell of frequent cooking—of grease and fried hash and seasoned iron. The light of the sun creeping through the air in thin bands from between the gaps in the boards seemed to catch itself up in the haze of the air. The light hinted at something long-forgotten—of easy summer days, of rest, perhaps even of joy.
The two abject figures exhibited an apparent relief by the dropping of their hunched shoulders. They still remained silent. The woman’s head was bowed, and she did not make eye contact with the man. Her gesture seemed to convey a sense of humility and gratitude, and yet something else about her still implored him for something more.
After a long silence, he anticipated the request she might have intended him to infer and said, “You can’t stay here. I don’t got enough room for you.”
The woman’s eyes fell to the floor which was empty except for the large, bare, dusty rug. Then suddenly she looked back up at him and darted her eyes about the room.
“Are you here alone?”
“Yes, it’s just me,” he said. He folded his arms across his chest, thick and muscular.
“We need help,” the woman said at last, her voice weakened with the fatigue of travel and hunger but with a firmness and dignity that cut through.
“There’s just not enough to go around. You know—you could sleep on the floor or something, but… then what? See, that’s what I’m always thinking. What happens then? I’m just going to have to kick you out sooner or later. I’m always thinking what happens down the road, what’s gonna happen a long time from now. Most people, they just think about tomorrow. Or maybe even just tonight. But I’m trying to think bigger than that.”
The woman tried to conceal the fact that she felt impugned by what he had said but failed. “Tomorrow is important too. So is tonight.”
“But that can’t be just all we think, you know? Yeah, yeah, tonight is important, and we have to plan for tomorrow. But the tomorrows just go on forever if you ain’t thinking about the last tomorrow.”
Her face now evinced disgust. “The ‘last’ tomorrow.”
Jude had already been feeling defensive, and now he drew his arms tighter across his chest as he inhaled, drew his head back, and looked down at her seriously.
“You think this will ever end?” she said.
“Yes.”
She nearly scoffed at him. “This will never end. All we have are a bunch of tomorrows�
�tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow…and nothing else. There is no ‘end,’ except, maybe, when we die.” She sighed and her shoulders dropped. “And that’s not even an end anymore.”
“That’s not all,” he said.
Her disgust morphed into contempt. “So you’re one of those who’s still holding on to hope, eh? One of the hopeful ones.”
Jude steeled himself with willpower. He searched deep inside himself for the strong iron surety to which he always clung. He reframed his argument.
“I can’t keep you safe here. That’s the honest truth. They come at night mostly, and sometimes during the day. Sometimes they stay away so long I think they’re gone altogether, that I got rid of ’em. But then they come back. I can’t predict it, but they come back. You see—I kill ’em, but it doesn’t matter. I even chop ’em up and stuff—I do whatever I want, but it makes no difference. It’s like nothing ever happened to ’em.” He lowered his voice intensely, letting her in on a secret that he wasn’t quite sure she would believe. “They followed me here. Used to be I could just blow their brains out. But now I can do any damn thing to ’em I can think of, and they—they just come back! I think… I think I must be going nuts. I wish I knew how to make it stop!”
His voice had intensified feverishly and the woman looked frightened—of what he didn’t know; of them, or of him, or perhaps both.
The whole time, the boy had been staring intently at him. The boy’s features were disproportionate as is common to boys in the middle stage of their maturation. His ears were large and flat on top, and his nose had grown too big for the rest of his face, all of which gave him the semblance of a lamb. There was something familiar to Jude about his eyes, but also something completely alien at the same time. His eyes suggested the potentiality of some sort of intimate connection while being at the same time totally unreadable and unknowable.
Then, in a wave of acute awareness, Jude realized that the boy and the woman were unrelated. The boy seemed oddly aloof to her, and she to him; although they stood close to each other, no bond existed between them. They were probably strangers who had met through circumstance and had ended up traveling together out of necessity.
The Imminent Scourge: A Zombie Novel Page 9