Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  "What's the difference between the Amish people and the Mennonite people?" Brandon asked as they trekked through the slumping, brown corn stalks that were losing the battle for the nutrients in the ground to weeds and other growth. As they discussed the family vacation, Lizzy had brought up both groups, the Amish and the Mennonites, almost using the two terms interchangeably, although she was pretty sure she shouldn't.

  Every hundred yards or so, they'd stop and peel back rotting corn husks to see if any of it was still edible. So far, nothing.

  "I don't know," Lizzy said. "Maybe one is less strict about the rules than the other."

  "Well, how do you tell them apart? Does the one with the easier rules dress differently? Like, wear blue jeans and stuff?"

  They'd been moving steadily through the center of the field, keeping their eyes low so as not to step on a snake or something while keeping their ears perked to other movement among the rows. If a zombie were hiding here, odds are they wouldn't know it until it was right on top of them.

  They'd have been walking completely blind were it not for the corn silo (they assumed the silo held corn since they were in a corn field) they kept constantly in front of them. For a long time, they didn't seem to be getting any closer to it, as if it moved away from them as they moved towards it. But now they were clearly getting closer, its shiny dome growing taller and taller.

  "I don't think so. The way I remember it, they all dress pretty much the same."

  "Huh," Brandon added.

  As it turned out, snakes weren't a problem, but mice and rats were plentiful, feasting on the fallen, dried-out corn. And where there were mice and rats in abundance, there were also cats. Lizzy and Brandon would see them occasionally. Some of them would be fat from frequent hunts, but others were thin from disease. Many were feral and had splotchy coats riddled with scabs and scratches. Darting between the rows or lying camouflaged among heaps of downed weeds and stalks, the cats were anything but friendly.

  After the fourth cat bolted away from them, hissing and spitting at them as it did so, Brandon pointed out they could eat them if necessary. Weeks ago he'd found a wilderness survival guide and spent hours pouring over the chapters on foraging nuts, berries, roots, and mushrooms, as well as capturing, purging, cooking, and eating everything from ants, worms, and snails to lizards and frogs. It even told how to build traps and snares for small game and fish.

  He told Lizzy that it was hard to tell which plant roots or berries or mushrooms were edible and which were toxic, and he was too frightened of making the wrong choice.

  Even caterpillars and snails, he'd explained to her, could be deadly if not properly purged, as they may have eaten plants that are deadly if consumed by humans.

  Brandon hadn't put anything from the book to good use other than cooking up a single worm until it was dry and crunchy. He had swallowed it quickly before he really had a chance to taste it.

  Truthfully, though, although food was more scarce and hunger pangs were becoming common, they were hardly starving. Rather they just had to be more conservative with the food they scrounged. Spread it out and eat it slower.

  Lizzy didn't think they were to the point of needing to eat cats yet, but she knew that someday even canned goods would be rendered inedible, and they'd have to be a lot less finicky about what they ate.

  Brandon did impress her, though, when he managed to follow the directions in the survival guide to build something he called a bow drill, which he used to light a fire. He built the bow drill using a sturdy, angled tree limb and some twine (it looked to Lizzy a lot like an archery bow when it was finished).

  He worked at it for two agonizing hours before he finally got it going. Still, it was impressive. Of course, matches and disposable lighters were easy to find, so it was an exercise that likely wouldn't be repeated anytime soon.

  About fifty yards from the silo, the field opened up. The corn stalks were replaced by simple grass, unmown but more easily traversed. Between Lizzy and Brandon and the silo, twenty feet from the edge of the ruined corn, a cart sat, its spindly wheels partially sunk in the dirt. Stalks of rotted corn poked over the sides. They approached the cart cautiously and climbed onto it to get a better look at the silo.

  And then they saw their first Amish dead.

  At least a dozen zombies milled around the base of the silo, and there were probably more on the other side out of view, drawn to it by mice and rats shooting in and out of the holes and cracks periodically dotting the rotten boards at the bottom.

  The men were dressed plain, as had been their custom, with hooks and eyes to latch their garments where average people would have buttons. Most of them still had semblances of full beards, though matted with bald splotches. A few still wore broad-brimmed, black hats, tattered and sun-bleached and probably welded to their heads by decay.

  The women's dresses were torn and mottled by dirt and weather, the floral patterns all but erased. Some wore shawls loosely covering their heads. Others still had capes partially drawn over their shoulders. One wore a bonnet that had fallen down over her eyes. That one walked aimlessly, bumping constantly into the curved silo wall or other of her dead brethren. All of the women had black shoes, muddy and worn, with ripped and fallen stockings.

  There were two Amish children there as well, both boys, both miniature examples of the older men in their dress and look. One of the boys had a broken handle protruding from his abdomen from a pitchfork or some other farm instrument. It prevented the boy from bending over when he reached for a mouse.

  Not all of the corpses were Amish. One man and woman were among them whose clothes were more modern. The woman's shirt was shredded and brown, probably old blood. A gray breast drooped through one of the tears. The man might have been a pilot of some sort from his color-coordinated, formal attire with numerous pockets. Some type of helmet had fallen just behind his head, its strap straining against his neck tight enough that a living human would have choked. His ensemble wasn't as threadbare as the others nor was it bleached with age, suggesting he hadn't been dead nearly as long.

  All of them stayed close to the wall, chasing after the constant influx of rats and mice moving in and out of the silo, but moving so slow that it would seem fruitless, the deads' prey so spry. Even so, occasionally one of the zombies would stand, its hand going to its mouth, and it would crunch down on one poor, unlucky creature, blood pouring between the corpse's shriveled fingers.

  Without communication or planning, Lizzy and Brandon crept down from the cart and retraced their steps through the grass as inconspicuously as possible, blending back into the corn, moving deeper and beyond the outer rim where their movement among the stalks might be detected.

  Unconsciously, they noted that the cat population was thicker here, closer to the silo. They hadn't noticed before. The cats likely wanted to be closest to where their prey was clustered without venturing into the open enough to become prey themselves. Even the lowest of creatures learned to adapt in the new world of the dead.

  Lizzy and Brandon made their way towards the roof of a farmhouse several hundred yards west of the silo, moving cautiously, stepping quietly.

  Eventually, they once again reached the edge of the corn to find the farmhouse rising above them. It was a typical prairie-style house in many ways. A two-storey home with a partially-wrapping porch supported by massive fluted columns, possibly hand-carved but otherwise lightly ornamented. The roof was steeper than usual, and gabled rather than hipped, offering a more Dutch-Colonial feel with its slight eaves and double-hung windows with small panes. The front door, though, was not the two-halved Dutch style, but a more conventional wooden panel door. Three evenly spaced dormers jutted out from the steep roof, and a stone chimney rose from beyond the ridge. On the left side of the front of the house was a big window with ariel supports, and on one side of the house a low, lean-to roof with half-gables disappeared into the wood siding—probably a room that was added on later to the original construction.

&nbs
p; Lizzy and her brother circled the yard, disguised among the stalks until they were on the western side of the house. Then they broke cover and approached guardedly, watchful of movement. They planted themselves flat against the wall of the lean-to and peered into the window to see a small nursery doused in floral patterns and a delicately handmade crib and rocking chair draped in matching upholstery.

  From there, they made their way to the front of the house, walking gingerly up the steps of the veranda. There they separated to look in windows on opposite sides of the porch. Both offered views into the same room, a long living room with mundane, rustic decor.

  They looked at one another and shook their heads. Nothing threatening that they could see. They should have walked the entire perimeter of the house and checked every window as they usually did, but something about the Amish way of living lent a sense of tranquil security, and instinctively they met at the door instead. They found it unlocked.

  The door squeaked their arrival a little louder than they'd have preferred, but nothing came running towards them. The room was huge and dull. Probably best described as functional. However, the ceiling was higher than most average homes, as well as coffered with two oversized, exposed beams. The furniture was bleakly covered with fading blues and purples and the upholstery displayed recurring images of flowers that might have been tulips.

  In the middle of the room was a long coffee table that stretched the entire length of the couch. On it, a well-used Bible was turned to the fifth chapter of Leviticus.

  Everything was covered in dust. The couch and coffee table were practically the centerpieces of the room, sitting atop a large rug that was likely hand-woven.

  Deep behind the couch, inlayed in the center of the only completely stone wall in the room was a wide fireplace, tall and deep enough to walk into without ducking. Inside, above the spent ash and wood remnants, a large cast-iron pot hung from a rod. To the right of the fireplace, in the far corner of the room, a staircase vanished into darkness, along with its balustraded stair rail.

  From somewhere, an endless creaking floated mildly through the stale air, distant but certain. It might have been nothing at all, but both Brandon and Lizzy were still, listening, indicating it was real.

  Then there was a sudden loud clomp and the brother and sister looked at each other. Lizzy looked down the hallway on the opposite side of the living room from the stairway. The hallway itself had a barrel-vaulted ceiling and looked to open into a kitchen at the other end. Lizzy started to move that direction in search of the source of the incessant creaking, but Brandon caught her arm and shook his head, pointing towards the ceiling. He rolled his eyes that direction.

  "Hello?" he called.

  Lizzy jumped and then slapped his shoulder for encroaching on the silence.

  He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders. What?

  They moved to the bottom of the staircase, themselves creaking wooden floorboards beneath their feet. No sooner had they reached the bottom of the stairs than they heard the clomp again, louder this time.

  Both flinched as if ready to bolt, but stood their ground when nothing appeared at the top of the stairs. The stairs ended at a plain, white wall on which hung a wood-carved rendition of Christ's crucifixion, his body limp, his mouth agape, and his eyes raised to the skies.

  The creaking continued.

  "We should go," Lizzy mouthed.

  "It's probably just a raccoon or something." As if to punctuate his surety of what he said, he took the first step. Lizzy, wrapping her hands around his arm, followed. At the top of the stairs, an array or doors lined a long, thin hallway that stretched in either direction. Some of the doors were closed. Others stood open. At least one of them was obviously a bathroom as they could make out a mirrored reflection of a free-standing, claw-footed tub.

  They were unsure which way to go. They could hear the creaking, but couldn't make out a distinct direction from which it could be coming. They were about to begin debating in whispers when the clomp sounded again, making their decision for them.

  They followed the sound to the right. Brandon reached behind his back and pulled the baseball bat from the makeshift sheath he'd made for it. Lizzy let him take the lead, their eyes trained on the door at the far end of the hall.

  "Hello?" It was Lizzy this time. "We're just a couple of kids, okay? We're not here to hurt anyone. We're just hungry."

  No response.

  They passed the bathroom, scanning it quickly along the way. Then there were two doors, each across the hall from one another. Lizzy started to reach for one of the doorknobs, but Brandon stopped her, shaking his head.

  "Closets," he whispered.

  She raised her eyebrows, looking from the doors and then back to Brandon. How do you know?

  "They open out."

  She looked at the doors again and noted the exposed hinges. She nodded. The only door left was at the end of the hall. As they moved closer, the stench of death was everywhere. They looked at each other and pressed on until they stood in front of the door.

  Brandon reached for the doorknob slowly, wrapping his fist around it and holding it there as if testing for heat, fire possibly on the other side.

  Lizzy put a palm over his fist. "We don't have to do this."

  "Yes, we do."

  The clomp sounded once more, inviting them in.

  Brandon turned the knob and pushed the door open. The door didn't squeak at all. Not once. But the two of them would have sworn their pounding hearts would betray them anyway.

  At first, they were struck with the awful smell of decayed flesh as well as an onslaught of flies, a swarm of the insects taking flight from every inch of the room.

  Then their eyes alighted on a grisly, shocking scene. It looked to be a master bedroom, and on the bed lay five bodies, four children (three girls and a boy) and an adult woman. They had obviously been arranged purposely and carefully. The woman (the mother, logically), was in the center of the bed lying flat, her arms crossed over her chest.

  The children were laid on their sides and facing her, two on each side. Their hands were in front of their faces as if clasped in prayer. They were various sizes and ages. The oldest, a girl, was furthest from the mother on the right. She might have been fifteen. The youngest, the boy, laid closest to the mother on her left. He could have been three.

  They might have been sleeping, except each was missing a chunk of its head. Blood and brain matter was splattered on the pillows and headboard, radiating from each of the bodies.

  On the bedside table was a porcelain pitcher and a glass, a quarter filled with a liquid the color of which was lost to mold and dead, floating flies.

  Beside the bed, a rocking chair swayed—the source of the never-ending creak. In the chair, a living-dead Amish man slowly flopped and flailed. He was tied to the chair with a belt strapped around his chest. In his lap, a large, leather-bound Bible was in turn tied open to his legs. A shotgun lay at his bouncing feet.

  He didn't have a face.

  Lizzy tried to piece the scene together based on the evidence as she saw it. The mother and children drank from the glass, obviously laced with some sort of poison. At some point, they were posed on the bed, probably as they died. Lizzy wondered if the mother was last to drink. Very likely.

  After they were dead, the father, the one in the rocking chair, went to each systematically, spraying their brains with a single shot to the head to prevent them from rising again.

  It must have been anguishing work.

  Once his entire family was dead…completely dead, he belted himself to the chair, tied the Bible to his legs, then shot himself with the shotgun, intending to create an otherwise tranquil scene of a loving, God-fearing father reading scripture to those of whom God had placed in his care.

  But something went wrong.

  He put the shotgun to his head, probably under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

  But he missed.

  Rather than destroy the brain, the shotgu
n's spray blew off the front of his face—eyes, nose, teeth and jaws, and a portion of the left side of his head. A piece of his brain was missing from the front of his head, behind where his forehead would have been, but most of it was left intact. It was enough to kill him, but not enough to keep him dead, leaving the father a faceless living corpse destined to rock and flop in his chair through the rest of time.

  Back and forth, endlessly creaking the floorboards.

  Back and forth.

  Clomp.

  His flailing body eventually gained enough momentum to knock the back of the chair against the dresser behind it. Then the chair slumped forward, used up, rocking more slowly, but building again as he tossed around.

  Lizzy knew that for even the most neglectful of Sunday Christians, suicide would be considered the most grievous of mortal sins. She imagined those feelings were compounded a thousand fold in a people who had dedicated so much of their lives to the service of God. The horrors this family must have witnessed to push them to make such a drastic decision.

  Lizzy also imagined it was the father who placed the glass to each of his family members' lips, disallowing them to take their own lives, thus saving them from eternal damnation while adding multiple murder to his list of unrepentant sins; sentencing him, as he would have certainly believed, to an afterlife of fire and eternal torment.

  Brandon started forward, hefting his bat, but Lizzy was already holding him steady.

  "No," she said flatly.

  "We can't leave him like this."

  Clomp.

  "We can, and we will."

  He showed her the bat. "Just one good swing and—"

  "No." And with that, the argument was ended. They crept backward into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind them.

  * * * * *

  The creaking and clomping never ceased, but they grew accustomed to it as the days passed. Lizzy and Brandon made the decision to stay at the farmhouse as long as they could once they discovered the store of food in the kitchen and basement. The Amish were experts in food preservation, and the cupboards were brimming with jars filled with sealed fruits and vegetables, jams, preserves, honey, and jerkies. There were bottles of olive oil and cooking oils. In bags, Lizzy also discovered milled wheat flour and corn meal, sugar and brown sugar, beans of all types, corn, rice, and other grains.