by McBain, Tim
It ripped Erin from the ground. Folded her impossibly and devoured her.
Down into the chasm.
A final squelch slurped from the wet earth, louder than the rest, a sloppy smooching sound like the mud was kissing her shoes goodbye.
One violent thrust, and she was gone. Plunged into the hole.
And the darkness overtook the backyard all at once. The gloom blossoming outward from where the shaft had swallowed the lantern.
Izzy felt her breath hitch and then freeze in her chest. Throat suddenly gone dry.
She blinked. Blinked again. Gaped at the emptiness hung up around her like black velvet.
Erin was gone.
The lantern was gone.
She trembled. Alone in the dark.
Louis
Rogersville, Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
Don’t panic.
Don’t panic.
Don’t panic.
When dawn came, he could finally see them in full color.
The dead.
Twelve corpses surrounded the car. Shuffling their feet. Bumping into the fenders. Their upper bodies swaying, shimmying. Strangely limp atop the legs. Something almost reptilian about these movements, though he couldn’t decide how.
His heart pounded hard at first, knocking against his ribcage, but it occurred to him quickly that they were safe in the car. Sheltered.
Everything about this group looked gray. Water logged. Like the rain and humidity had bloated them up and leeched the color from their flesh and clothes. Loosened everything, too, so it almost looked like they were comprised of flaps. Things seemed to be falling off of them little by little — hair, nails, teeth, one nose, a couple of ears. In the case of the tallest of the bunch, an eyeball hung out of its socket, dangling between the cheek bone and nose like a yo-yo.
It struck him, as it always did, how mindless the corpses were. Up close, he could really get a sense of this. The blank faces. The aimless tottering. The long stretches of listlessness that held them still. Something animated them, but they did not live.
He kept his eyes on them as his fingers found the key in the ignition and turned it.
The starter whined. Gargled out its sound of metal chewing on metal. It didn’t turn over, though.
And one of the corpses wheeled. Jammed its face against the passenger side window. Hissed.
Lorraine leaned away from it, almost laying flat on her back on the center console.
The corpse smushed its lips against the glass. Smeared them around.
It was an ugly one, he thought. Uglier than usual. Hair all falling out. Skin so saggy it looked like the face had melted and oozed down toward the neck. Yellow bags of flesh hanging from the jaw. And most of the teeth had rotted out of the mouth, the fragments that remained all pointy and blackened. Shards.
The others moved as well. Cinching that circle of them tighter around the car. Closing in.
Trying to start the car seemed to rouse them, rile them, agitate them. Seemed to remind them that food lurked within the cabin. Fresh meat. Hot meals.
And yet Louis couldn’t resist cranking the keys in the ignition now and then. One of these times it would start. Wouldn’t it?
He licked his lips. So far he wasn’t panicking, though he didn’t know why that was.
Maybe they were OK for the moment.
They had plenty of water — six gallons in old milk jugs in the backseat. Some food, too.
And they were secure physically — a layer of steel and glass between them and the mindless threat milling around out there.
Unless the dead figured out how to unlock car doors with a coat hanger, they’d be OK for the immediate future. Breaking a window seemed beyond the capacity of these creatures.
“Maybe if you just leave it, they’ll wander off,” Lorraine said. She’d sat up a little, though she still leaned away from the dead creature mopping its face over the window.
“What?”
“Stop trying to start the car, I’m saying. The noise… They’ll forget why they’re here and leave us. Wander off. If we’re lucky.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
The exchange of dialogue only made him want to try it again, though. He could feel it like an itch in his right hand, an ache to grip that key and crank it. One of these times it would work. Maybe the next.
He leaned into the back instead. Grabbed a jug of water. Took a big swig.
After a beat, he offered it to Lorraine, but she shook her head.
It dawned on him a beat too late that maybe she would want her own bottle. She could be shy about swapping spit with him or something. Grossed out or whatever. That’d make sense. He needed to remember to offer her own bottle next time.
He thought about eating something but figured it better to wait on that.
He took a breath. Held it. Let it out slowly.
Again, the voice in his head urged him: Don’t panic.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t panicking. He could feel some tension in his chest, a little extra electricity behind his eyes — energy ready to turn to anxiety. But not yet.
He was fine. They were fine.
Raindrops pelted the walking corpses. Wet bursts exploding against their skulls and shoulders. The rain had tapered off to a sprinkle just before dawn, but now it was picking up again. Building and building.
At least they were dry. Dry and not panicking. It could be worse. Much worse.
When he looked over again, Lorraine’s eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell in slow motion. Peaceful. She might not be sleeping yet, but she was on her way. It was a good idea, he knew.
The corpse had peeled itself from her window, and though it was still standing just there, it had shuffled back a step. No longer a direct threat.
Again, he considered cranking the ignition, his thumb tracing the curved line of his index finger right where he’d grip the key.
But no. He’d wait.
He settled his head back against the head rest, let his eyelids drift close, a surprisingly pleasant sensation.
The dead shuffled along in the rain, their feet scraping against the wet asphalt. Some seemed to be close but others sounded like they were moving away. Maybe they’d wander off like Lorraine said. In time they had to, didn’t they?
The rain poured and poured and poured.
Izzy
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Izzy sprinted over to the hole. Thrust her face into the gaping blackness of the tunnel.
“Erin!”
She waited, holding her breath, but there was no answer. No sound at all coming from inside.
And it was pitch black down there. Shadows thicker than mud. Erin’s lantern must have busted on the way down.
But there was another one around here somewhere. The one that had been going dim as they excavated the pit.
Izzy went to the edge of the pit and flailed about. Her hand collided with something solid, and she grasped the handle, fumbling for the switch.
She fumbled with her lighter. Lit the lantern.
The glow bloomed and spread over her. A circle of light sliced out of the night.
But small. Weak.
The lantern was almost out of oil, she saw. Even cranked up, the light was pathetically dim. But it was better than nothing.
She squelched back to the hatch, dipping the lantern into the darkness, but the paltry glow barely reached past the second rung of the ladder.
“Erin?” she whispered.
Again there was no response.
Izzy waggled the lantern back and forth, as if she could sweep away the top layer of blackness like the scum on a pot of beans.
Why wasn’t she answering?
“Erin, are you OK?” she said louder, her voice echoing in the chamber. “Answer me!”
And then she did hear something, and her blood ran cold.
A sound somewhere between a hiss and a growl. A sound she’d heard on
ce before, from one of the zombies they’d killed while scavenging an apartment building in Radford last fall.
The thing had lumbered out at them from a storage closet, arms outstretched, reeking of death. And just before Erin shot it square in the forehead, the thing had opened its mouth and let out that terrible rasping screech.
The full gravity of what she’d heard took a moment to settle in.
There’s a zombie in the bunker with Erin.
Izzy nearly choked at the next panicked thought.
We didn’t bring our weapons.
Her eyes darted up at the house. She did a split-second calculation on how long it would take to go for the guns.
Too long. No time. Need to get in the bunker now.
The mere thought of going down there set her heart to thundering in her chest. Breath heaving in and out. Eyes wide and unblinking.
But she had no choice. Erin could be hurt.
Izzy spun around. Grabbed the shovel from where Erin had tossed it aside. Then she spotted the crowbar.
Which one?
And then, something Erin always liked to say…
Two weapons are always better than one.
She tucked the lantern handle between her teeth and scooped up the crowbar. Slid it in her belt.
Izzy paused for half a second after scrambling up onto the lip of the hatch. She did not want to go down there. But she knew she had to.
She climbed down onto the top rung of the ladder. Hoisted the shovel into the cramped space with her.
Izzy inhaled, her breath shaky. And then she began her descent.
Down into the darkness.
Lorraine
Lorraine
Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
She could feel the baby kicking or elbowing. Tiny stabs assailing her middle. Usually it was an odd kind of pressure in her gut that ultimately wasn’t unpleasant. This time it hurt.
Adjusting in her seat seemed to appease the little one, and the jabs cut off. The more she thought about it, the more she thought it had been all elbows this time. That sharp bony joint made a nice weapon under these circumstances. Effective.
Louis looked to be napping next to her, the driver’s seat tipped back, eyes closed. At least that kept those idle hands of his from trying to start the car, for Christ’s sake.
The rain still pounded its rhythmic drumbeat on the roof, and the dead still shambled around outside. Nothing to report. No news was bad news, in this case.
She sucked in a big breath and huffed softly as it came out. In the moment, this sounded like a pouting child, which almost made her laugh. God, she needed to get a hold of herself. Fight off the restlessness.
The rain would pass. The corpses would clear out. Louis would fix the car, and they’d move on. So keep it together, for God’s sake. She could do that.
He’d fixed the car before, though she couldn’t remember all the details. He’d changed the oil in the South Carolina. Replaced something else in Georgia. Not the alternator, but some kind of cell that had to do with the electrical system. In any case, he’d get them rolling again as soon as he could.
In the meantime, a terrible boredom had fallen over the car. Louis had gotten all quiet after she snapped at him, and that hushed atmosphere had swelled until the quiet turned impenetrable. The doldrums, she thought. That unbearable stillness that settled over things from time to time, a lull that always seemed to take on a life of its own. It made sense. They were stuck. When the ship sat still, a restlessness crept over the crew, over everything, wormed its way deep into the flesh of things, into the meat.
She was so bored that she couldn’t even stay mad at Louis anymore, no matter how many times he’d cranked the goddamn ignition. A little irritated? Maybe. But the anger had cooled and faded.
In a way, this bout of stillness came as a relief. Better than the panic, the fear, the frustration. Yeah. Especially that last one.
The frustration built and built until the tension was too much. Why wouldn’t the rain stop? Why wouldn’t Louis stop making noise so the fucking dead would wander off? Why couldn’t they just drive on?
But what would any of that really change, anyway? They didn’t know where they going. Most of the time they were driving just to drive.
They couldn’t outrun their problems. They couldn’t take random highways until one led to a better place, a better world.
There was no better place. No better world. Not anymore.
For now, the only thing to do was watch the soggy dead mill around outside the windows. So she did.
Sopping flannel hung off one thick torso. The face was weirdly indistinct, but she could make out what must have been a dark beard covering the cheeks almost all the way up. A reanimated lumberjack from the looks of him.
Another looked like a prepubescent girl with pigtails, stretch-mark-like lines running deep purple zigzags in the most rotten places, the skin all bruised looking.
On and on it went. Morbid details. Grotesque and somehow dull at the same time. Rotting bodies had mostly become routine, in some ways banal, and yet the gross-out factor wouldn’t quite go away. The smell alone retained its full punch, though thankfully they only got the periodic whiff sitting here. Lorraine smelled rain more than she smelled death, for now anyway.
Taking a step back and viewing the group of dead things instead of the individuals was more interesting in a way. The symmetry in their behavior told the story. These were mindless creatures. Directionless. They walked in circles. Seemed to set their mind to something and then forget, hesitate a moment, veer off toward something else. And they bumped into things — each other, the car. Over and over.
Words occurred to her then: no signs of intelligent life.
Still, there were quirks to be found among these beings. Traits and ticks that marked at least the illusion of individuality.
One hunched over at the waist at all times, either unwilling or uninterested in standing upright. It reminded her of homeless junkies she’d seen in the roughest parts of Houston. They huddled in parks. Some passed out on the ground. Others somehow on their feet as they nodded in and out of consciousness, buckled at the waist so their limp arms almost reached the ground, just like this dead thing.
Another corpse touched the tips of its fingers to the glass often. It circled the car in a slow motion spiral like a vulture waiting for them to die, periodically bringing up that hand to brush its blackened digits on each window along the way, the pair of remaining fingernails clicking a little whenever they made contact.
One looked fresher than the others, still something human in the pallor of its skin. A rosiness, she thought. The pink undertone would go a gray green eventually. Like a dead fish floating in pond scum.
Another kicked its feet out when it walked. A strutting corpse with a goatee that made her think of a frat guy. The big dead man on campus.
Louis’s voice startled her, shook her out of her focus on the corpses.
“I think it’s letting up,” he said.
She wheeled to face him, somehow stifling the gasp that passed through her lips.
The man in the driver’s seat sat upright now, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes.
“The rain, I mean,” he said, maybe taking her surprise for confusion. “I think it’s letting up finally.”
They fell quiet, listened to the patter of the wet coming down. Maybe it was slowing. She wasn’t sure.
Part of her found relief in Louis’s waking, saw some hope that it would ease the boredom a touch to have someone to talk to again. But when she tried to think of something to say, nothing came.
She sat back, rested her shoulders against the back of the seat. Tried to look past the walking dead to see if the rainfall seemed lighter. Hard to tell.
The water was starting to pool along the sides of the road, puddles forming along the edges of that sheet of wet laid over the asphalt. She tensed up for just a second as she took the image in. That didn’t seem like a go
od sign to her.
She took a deep breath, though. Let it out in slow motion. Felt the tightness ease in her chest.
The rain would end eventually. It had to.
Erin
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Absolute blackness.
And a buzzing in her ears.
This was all Erin was aware of for several seconds. Then she shook the stunned feeling from her head.
What happened?
And then she remembered.
The pit. The hatch. The ladder. Leaning over the opening and then… someone had grabbed her.
Oh god.
Had he — whoever he was — gotten Izzy?
Erin was sprawled on her back, and she pushed up to a sitting position.
Dizziness washed over her, so strong she had an urge to throw up. She held very still and waited for it to pass.
Fuck. Had she concussed herself?
But she didn’t care about that just now. She only cared about finding Izzy and making sure the kid was OK.
And then a voice rang out.
“Erin, are you OK? Answer me!”
Izzy. She was alright, thank Christ.
Erin opened her mouth to answer, but before she could get the words out, something shifted to her left.
A telltale rasp. A phlegmy, half-breathing sound. Except it wasn’t really breathing. Couldn’t be. Because it wasn’t alive.
Erin’s hand strayed to her belt, but she’d taken her holster off when they went to bed and stupidly hadn’t put it on for the dig. Not that it would do her that much good in the pitch black.
There were sounds from above now. A scrape and clang from the hatch. And then she spotted the faint glow from the other lantern, and Erin realized too late that Izzy was coming down.
“Izzy, don’t—”
As soon as the words left her lips, something latched onto her ankle.
Erin screamed.
Louis
Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
Wet sounds formed the soundtrack to Louis’s dream.