by Steve Wands
She was small, she didn’t fight it much, and he saw her not fighting it much. Then when her mother tried to chase him out of the house, he backhanded her – one blow, hard enough to shut both her mouth and her eyes for a while, so he had time to finish.
Ellen wasn’t the only one. Town to town, girl to girl, sometimes greasing a palm so the law would look the other way, sometimes greasing a parent to let him in the room. Over and over, ‘till they found him dead in a bed in Carson City next to a 13-year-old girl that already had his replacement in her belly.
The vision dissipated, parted like smoke, and he realized he was curled up like a baby, shaking back and forth, with the stranger staring him down with red eyes.
“Whut… I ain’t never…”
“No, you didn’t,” the stranger said. “But you would. If you could.”
He hand drifted to his his, then, and he sighed. “Just once I’d like to see one of you rangers didn’t turn out to be a complete waste ‘o flesh.”
Clem saw what he was reaching for, drawing his gun, pointing it dead between his eyes, and the last thing Clem thought before the hammer came down into the chamber was maybe those flecks on the stranger’s clothes weren’t copper after all.
*
Redemption
By Corey Graham
Trevor stuffed the last tough lump of bread into this mouth, gulped his water, and grinned at Jim. “If I told you the truth about what I’ve done, you’d kill me faster than you’d kill any of those things out there.”
Jim stared at him wide-eyed. The late dinner he had just eaten – hard bread from the local bakery – churned in his stomach. He suddenly feared for his daughter’s safety in the company of their new companion – their only companion now. Sara was in the next room reading a teen magazine Jim found for her the day before.
The candles scattered around the rundown apartment cast soft shadows, making Trevor’s appearance all the more menacing. Silence.
Sucking the rest of the water from his bottle, Jim emitted the best fake laugh he could. A bead of sweat formed at his hairline and slid down his face. Trevor was amused, brushing his unkempt hair out of his eyes and shifting his 275-pound frame in the creaking kitchen chair.
“What’s the worst thing a man could do?” Trevor asked, locking eyes with Jim.
The look sent a chill through Jim, and all he could do was stare back, frozen. Something about Trevor’s eyes said there was something not quite right going on in there.
Sara screamed.
Jim leaped out of the rickety chair, knocking over his bottle and running into the next room. Trevor rose to his feet but stayed in place.
Sara cowered in the dark corner of her room. “Someone’s out there,” she pointed a shaking finger to the window overlooking the parking lot.
Sara wasn’t handling things very well. Jim could see it, and it tore him up inside. The dead were walking around eating those who were still alive – that alone was enough to drag even the most level-headed person to the outer edges of their sanity. Jim hoped they could hold themselves together until they got somewhere safe, with more people. He and his daughter had witnessed three family members being gutted and eaten alive, their house in roaring flames with the rest of the neighborhood, on top of too many other nightmares.
Jim lay a hand on Sara’s shoulder and she flinched, sobbing. He crept to the window and parted the blankets they had fastened over it. Somehow the public lamps still illuminated most streets and parks in town – that meant the power plants were still running, meaning there were still people out there somewhere.
“Do you see him?” Sara breathed.
He didn’t. The view through the window could have been a photograph – everything was perfectly still. The parking lot was set back between the neighboring buildings. Just beyond it was River Street, and beyond that was the river. The lights spilled out past the road to the bank of the river, and Jim saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination?” Jim asked.
“Yes!” she snapped. “Someone’s out there.”
A second scan of the parking lot produced the same results. “Stay here sweetheart, I’m going up to the roof.” He went to the corner and helped her up, embracing her in the most reassuring hug he could give. She cried, not wanting to release him.
He kissed the top of her head and finally pulled himself away. “I’ll take care of things.”
“Dad,” Sara pleaded, her voice breaking up through the tears. “Please don’t go out there.”
He paused in the doorway. “We’re safe up on the roof. We’ll be right back.”
His words didn’t help. Sara pulled herself into a ball in the corner, visibly shaking. Jim forced himself to go out to the kitchen, where Trevor was already shoving shells into his shotgun.
Jim grabbed his 9mm from the back of the sofa. The small gun looked large in comparison to his lanky body. Clicking off the safety, he marched toward the door at the far side of the kitchen.
“Whoa there,” Trevor stood up. “Slow down, give me a second.”
Jim paused, resting the gun on the barrier of furniture and boards in front of the door. The last thing he wanted to do was to leave Trevor in the house alone with Sara – he was probably a child molester or something even worse.
“Yeah, man,” Jim said, still facing the door. “Sorry.”
Trevor sensed something different in Jim. He knew Jim didn’t trust him, and maybe he was justified in being cautious – Trevor never dreamed he would be capable of doing what he did before everything fell apart. The funny part about it is that none of it mattered now. Everything was different – the playing field was leveled.
Jim shoved his gun down the front of his jeans and released the 2x4s that wedged the door shut. Trevor slid the old dresser out of the way with one hand and gripped the shotgun with the other. Jim took one more deep breath and reached for the doorknob.
Trevor grabbed Jim’s shoulder and he jumped. He turned towards Trevor, terrified.
“Remember – don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to. We take them down silently first,” Trevor instructed.
Jim gave a slight nod, looking down at his pistol. Then he grasped the doorknob and twisted slowly. The latch clicked; the hinges whined ever so slightly as the door cracked open; Jim held his breath. He squinted and moved closer. The sea of pitch blackness beyond the doorway gave him no clue as to who – or what – may lurk outside. He stepped out.
Trevor followed, shotgun over his shoulder. The tapping of Jim’s footsteps on the rusted metal ladder up to the roof broke the unnatural silence that was characteristic of the outdoors since the dead rose.
The silence was almost worse than the walking dead – it had just about driven Jim’s wife Tammy insane during the first weeks after the initial panic fizzled out. They had to keep quiet to avoid drawing the dead’s attention, and there was nothing – no cars, no insects, no birds, no anything – to provide that constant background drone. Even though the silence made Tammy crazy, Jim would have given anything to have that crazy woman with him again.
Stopping just outside the door to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, Trevor strained to look into the alley below for signs of movement. Things had calmed down in the town of Walker for a couple weeks, which is why they decided to stay there instead of moving on. They wouldn’t stay there forever, that was for sure. Others were surely out there somewhere, and soon Trevor, Jim and Sara would have to venture out to find them.
The alley was clear. Jim was on the roof already, and Trevor grasped the rusty rungs to begin hoisting his large body up. Holding the shotgun at the same time didn’t help the awkward climb. Finally reaching the top, he tossed the shotgun over the top and swung a meaty leg over. Jim crept along the far side of the roof and looked down into the parking lot, trying to spot the man Sara insisted lurked there. Trevor joined him at the roof’s edge, gasping for breath and mopping sweat off his face.
Visibility was nex
t to nothing beyond the green cast of the parking lot lamps.
Jim grew impatient. “What do we do? I think she was just seeing things.”
Trevor was still for several seconds. Jim didn’t think he was going to answer, and almost asked again, but Trevor finally spoke.
He exhaled slowly, having finally caught his breath. “You know, this is all my fault.”
“What’s all your fault?” Jim asked.
“The people out there, the dead people walking around,” Trevor said, staring toward the river. “It’s because of me.”
Jim thought he was joking. “Because of —”
Trevor turned and looked directly into his eyes, interrupting him. “I’m telling you this here and now so Sara doesn’t have to hear it.”
Jim folded his arms in an attempt to relax and hide his trembling hands. The big man was clearly disturbed, and Jim was terrified of him, not sure if he really wanted to know what Trevor had to say. He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
“But I’m a changed man,” Trevor said, retrieving the crushed pack of Camels from his hip pocket. He put a bent cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it. “Still need to quit smoking, but I’ve come a long way.”
Jim faked a smile. “What did you do?”
Trevor held his gaze. His lips formed a smug smile, and the cigarette bobbed.
*
February 2nd. Trevor decided to pile the dead bodies along the windowless wall. He did a half-assed job of wrapping each one in clear plastic from a roll he had stolen from the UPS store. He hoped the plastic would help contain the smell of death.
There were going to be more bodies. He hadn’t intended on there being this many at the beginning, but once things got going, they just kept rolling. If you’re going to do something, you might as well take it as far as it will go. There was one the first day, two the next day, two more the next… and he just hit number 11 after dinner.
His apartment was the second floor and attic of a big old house on the outskirts of Walker, a depressed rural town that was a shell of what it had been thirty years ago. The guy downstairs who smoked all hours of the night and was a general asshole was given the honor of being victim number 2 – mainly because he saw Trevor drag victim number 1 into his apartment. Trevor didn’t even know his name, and didn’t even bother to take the wallet out of his pocket to find out. He pulled that kill off so well that when the police knocked on his door after a few days of his neighbor being missing, they only asked him if he had seen or heard anything. When he said he hadn’t, they thanked him and left. That was it.
There was another thing really funny about number 2: he was the only one of the 11 that was over the age of 10.
The attic was damn cold. Trevor opened one of the warped windows and lit a cigarette. He thumped his big ass down on the filthy carpet and blew smoke outside, admiring the way he piled the bodies. Then he glanced out the window, down to the sidewalk below. The mailman shoved envelopes into the box at the dentist’s office across the street, and the fat retarded guy who did nothing but roam the streets all day stood at the corner waiting for the light to change.
What an easy kill that fucker would be, Trevor thought. But he’d never be able to kill the retarded guy – he’d feel bad about that. Kids, on the other hand, were pesky little fucks. Spoiled and loud, always running around without a care in the world. The look of terror on their little faces when you grabbed them around the neck, squeezed, and thrust a blade between their ribs was unmatched. After the first one, Trevor was addicted.
It was too cold in the attic for a second cigarette. He rolled back to his feet and went downstairs, locking the flimsy attic door behind him. He threw his coat into the corner of the hall, pulled his creeping t-shirt down over his gut and kicked off his work boots.
“Son of a bitch,” he grunted when he saw no beer in the fridge. He didn’t bother to put his coat back on, immediately marching downstairs and out the front door. Turning left, he headed for the corner bar for a twelve-pack.
Trevor walked fast for a man of his girth, but he was freezing. A line of traffic headed north on his street – going toward the interstate, no doubt. He wondered what had been going on in town to produce that much traffic on a Tuesday night. Then an ambulance appeared, zipping around traffic, its deafening siren filling the air as it went halfway onto the sidewalk to get around the crowd.
Strange.
But beer was on Trevor’s mind – not the heavy traffic. As he continued down the sidewalk, three more ambulances and two police cruisers sent by in different directions. After five minutes he pushed through the thick oak door of The Chief.
The place was dead – not even the bartender was in sight. The worn TV on the wall behind the bar was muted – it looked like a news report about a fire. Trevor didn’t pay much attention, going straight for the cooler in the far corner.
The selection was pathetic. Settling for two six packs of cheap swill, Trevor clanked the beer onto the bar in hopes of drawing the attention of the bartender, wherever he was. He watched the TV while he waited. Now it showed the scene of a pileup on the highway. It must have just happened, Trevor thought. The reporter on location looked panicked and disheveled, and cars were pushing through the accident scene like the wreckage was just in the way.
“Probably where those ambulances were going,” Trevor muttered, annoyed that he had to wait. The Chief had been his second home for the better part of two decades, and he never had to wait around for someone to help him. It was also odd that no one else was there – every night the same pack of drunks arrived to drink up the government’s money.
Horns honked outside. More sirens came and went. Trevor thought he heard a gunshot in the distance, but dismissed the thought. Everyone knew you couldn’t fire a gun within city limits.
“Hey,” he shouted, pressing his bulging gut against the sticky bar in an attempt to lean over and look into the back. Grunting, he pushed away from the bar and went around to the end, where he lifted the hinged counter and walked behind the bar. He looked down and almost threw up.
Trevor was used to violence and blood – 11 cadavers in his attic proved that – but he wasn’t ready for what he saw on the floor leading back to the kitchen. Blood was everywhere. Pooled on the floor, smeared on the walls, flung on the counter. In the middle of it all, Cigar the bartender (Trevor had never seen the man smoke a cigar – that’s just what he was called) lay disemboweled, permanently staring at the ceiling.
“Son of a bitch,” Trevor said, backing out through the bar, colliding with an unsteady table and knocking over a stool.
I’m a killer, I should be able to deal with this, he thought, feeling cold sweat begin to seep from his brow. But what kind of sick bastard does something like this?
Grabbing the two six packs from the bar and one more from the cooler – hey, what the hell – Trevor eased out the front door as calmly as he could and scampered around the corner into the alley. The street was still bustling, and Trevor was sure that a lot of eyes were on him, but a guy carrying beer out of a bar was forgettable. At least, he hoped so.
Hugging the beer to his chest, he took alleys the whole way back. He didn’t notice the stinging cold as much – he was shaking because of Cigar. Because of the pile of flesh and organs soaking in the pool of blood.
“I fuckin’ hate guts,” Trevor puffed as he walked as quickly as he could through the dark alleys. Town was loud that night – louder than Trevor had ever known. It seemed as though everyone had jumped in their cars and drove around town all at the same time. Something was going on, but Trevor wasn’t interested in finding out what it was.
What he needed was a lot of beer. And when he finally barreled through his apartment door, he set the cans right down on the floor and cracked one open. Damn near the best beer he’d ever tasted.
Finishing it in seconds flat, he let the can fall to the floor, took off his boots and scooped up the remaining beer. He opened another one on the way
up the rickety staircase, chugging before he reached the top.
Throwing the remaining beer in the refrigerator, Trevor sat down in the middle of the living room floor in silence. Cars, trucks, vans and buses rumbled outside. Trevor tried breathing slowly and deeply in between long swigs of foamy beer to help calm himself. The image of Cigar’s splattered innards swam through his mind, turning his stomach. The second beer was gone, then a third and a fourth. By ten o’clock, six pack number two was nearly kicked and Trevor had almost forgotten the gruesome scene as he stared out the window at the clogged street. Traffic had come to a halt. People were yelling at each other now; one man in a dirty suit jumped out of his car and kicked the fender of the car ahead of him. A fight broke out between two people farther down.
Something was definitely going on. But Trevor was getting drunk and cared even less than before. He still wasn’t to the point of being sloppy – he had a disturbingly high alcohol tolerance – and was sure-footed as he lit a cigarette and headed to the bathroom.
A loud knock on the wall behind him scared him in mid-piss. “Whoa,” he blurted, thrusting out a hand to steady himself. “What the hell?”
Another thump, but not as loud. Trevor finished his business and tried to figure out what kind of animal could get into the walls and thump around like that.
That was it. The attic. The noise was coming from the narrow stairs to the attic – he had forgotten to close the window again. A bat or a bird must have flown in and was thumping around in a panic. It had happened a year before – Trevor was drunk, the bat flew down the attic stairs, and he spent nearly an hour chasing it around with the laundry bag. A lamp and the rocking chair had both suffered fatal damage in the process.
WHOOMP! The wall shook more violently than before. Whatever thumped around was definitely bigger than a bat.
“Shit,” he said, and hurried out of the bathroom to the attic door, letting the cigarette fall from his lips. He reached out to grab the knob, and just as his fingers came in contact with the cold metal, the door burst open, ramming his face and landing him flat on his ass. His head snapped back when he hit the floor, and the back of his head bounced off the corner of the wall.