Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  His ankles and knees throbbed from the uphill climb. His heart felt like it might explode. His chopping arm weighed a thousand pounds. He pressed on, hoping the dogs were also growing weary, but knowing it wasn't likely. Also realizing that, once they grew tired of the chase, they'd simply move in and put an end to it.

  To his left, a twig snapped. He twisted around and saw nothing. Then a growl and teeth clicking together. He swung his head around and saw empty space between trees. As he picked up the pace, swinging wildly now in front of him while he twisted and turned at every sound, bushes moved near him.

  And it was then that his foot landed on nothing at all.

  Turtleman pitched forward. He experienced the heart-pounding sensation of falling, as if in a dream. But only for a moment. Then he was spiraling downward, head over heels, toppling down a steep ravine. He rolled over rocks and slammed into trees only to twist around them and continue the rickety descent. He slid the last few feet on his stomach and came to rest at the bottom of the ravine where a thin river of water no deeper than his foot flowed relentlessly.

  Turtleman was never unconscious, but he was disoriented. His body ached all over. He sat up and checked his limbs for signs of breakage and his body for punctures. One of his knees throbbed but seemed to work. One of his shoulders had a stabbing pain, but his arm still rotated in spite of it. He considered himself lucky.

  And then he heard a growl.

  Turtleman had forgotten about the dogs. He looked up to see the collie-like dog eight feet in front of him. Then the two mutts flanked it from each side. All of them were growling, baring their teeth. Slobber drooped from their jowls. Turtleman looked around for his machete but realized it was lost in the fall.

  He turned over and slowly came to his feet. The dogs inched forward jerkily with every move he made, heightening the snarls and punctuating them with demonstrative yelps.

  Once on his feet, Turtleman considered his options. He glanced back up the ravine and knew it was an impossible climb. To his left was a tree. If he could put it between him and the dogs, maybe he could slip past them. Like it or not, he was going to have to make a run for it. Keeping his eyes on the dogs, he twisted his body towards the tree. He dug in his feet. And—

  "Don't…run."

  At first, Turtleman assumed it was the voice he was hearing, even if the gender was wrong. But then the dog's reacted to it, shuffling slightly to face the new foe.

  Turtleman turned his head slowly and looked up the embankment. A young boy was sliding down. He grabbed small tree trunks and saplings to help balance him and tamper his rate of descent. His feet landed on jutting rocks and small outcroppings with purpose. He moved with a grace and precision Turtleman admired. Finally, he reached the bottom of the ravine, took a place next to Turtleman, and extended a machete, handle first, towards him, all without once taking his eyes off the nearest dog.

  "You dropped this up there."

  Mouth agape, Turtleman took the machete. The boy was obviously younger than Turtleman but almost as tall. It took a moment, but Turtleman realized this was the same boy he'd followed a few days ago. The one he'd been looking for ever since. The one with the girl.

  He hadn't recognized the boy at first because this time the kid was dressed in some ridiculous business suit and tie.

  The boy reached over his shoulder and behind his back and pulled an aluminum bat seemingly out of nowhere. Despite his apparent age, the boy was sure of himself.

  The dogs, on the other hand, were not as confident anymore. They were clearly not pleased with the turn of events. Each of them took a step back. The one in the middle, the collie, was confused as to which enemy to take on.

  The boy moved to his right, away from Turtleman, with small sidesteps. "Stay here. We'll try to separate them," the boy said.

  Turtleman did as he was told, hoping at least two of the dogs would follow the boy away. But only the one to the left of the collie moved with the boy. The collie considered it, occasionally moving left several steps, but kept coming back.

  As the boy moved away, the two remaining dogs moved closer. Turtleman raised his machete and his shoulder screamed. Wincing in pain, Turtleman dropped his right arm and shifted the machete to his left, his weakest.

  The dogs, sensing the weakness, made their move. The mutt lunged forward as if to attack and Turtleman raised the machete to swing.

  But it was a distraction. With his attention and defenses focused on the one dog, the collie leaped towards Turtleman's midsection, jaws open. Even in mid-swing, Turtleman was somehow able to react to the collie's attack. He bent at the knees and swayed left. The dog's teeth closed on air. Turtleman put up an arm and the dog bounced off his side and forearm, slamming to the ground.

  It was enough to knock Turtleman off balance. As he tottered and tried to stay upright on exhausted ankles and bang-up knees, he raised the machete over his head to try and strike at the down dog. Then his leg went out from under him when the mutt grabbed him by the pants leg and pulled him over.

  Turtleman hit the ground hard and the air went out of him. The dog continued to yank fiercely at his leg, wrenching it from side to side. Instinctively, Turtleman rolled onto his back and swung the machete towards it. The machete hit home, but he didn't turn his wrist with the swing and only the dull side of the machete made contact. But it was enough. The dog yelped in pain and released his leg as the machete slammed into its shoulder blade. Turtleman twisted the handle of the machete in his hand and raised it to deliver a decisive blow.

  The collie was on him.

  Turtleman's arm was on the downswing when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dog launch itself. Turtleman tried to change direction with the machete too quickly, caught a nearby limb by mistake, and lost his grip on the weapon. It landed several feet away. In spite of the pain in his right shoulder, Turtleman managed to raise his other arm just in time. His forearm went across the collie's chest, stopping its snapping jaws just inches from his neck.

  Turtleman was pinned. With his left hand, he searched the ground blindly for the lost machete but found only dirt and leaves. The dog's breath indicated it hadn't eaten live meat in a long time. Its teeth, yellow and green, stabbed at him. Slobber, warm and sticky, dripped on Turtleman's chin and neck. Something cool and metallic rapped against Turtleman's arm—a dog tag that read, "My name is Buddy" with a phone number below it.

  Turtleman's damaged arm was giving out under the weight of the animal. It inched closer. Somewhere he could hear a dog crying in pain and the sound of the aluminum bat thumping home with a deep series of thuds.

  Eventually, he felt the tips of the collie's teeth wrap around his neck. Turtleman closed his eyes.

  And then the weight was lifted. Turtleman didn't realize it at first. He assumed this was what death felt like—a literal weight being lifted off.

  He opened his eyes to see the mangy collie rising into the air above him. The dog, just as surprised as Turtleman, twisted and sank its teeth into the gray arms that hauled it up. Of course, it did no good. The zombie pulled the dog to its chest. While the dog ripped viciously at the corpse's arm, the zombie turned and walked away, lowering its head as he went.

  The dog howled.

  Turtleman sat up and watched the zombie fade into the foliage, bits of fur falling around it. Turtleman recognized it as the same zombie that had been following him earlier.

  There was a whimper and Turtleman turned to see one of the dogs, the one he'd whacked with the dull edge of the machete, huddled at the foot of a tree and nursing what looked to be a broken leg. Turtleman stood up slowly, ignoring the pain riddling his body, and picked up his weapon. He strode the few steps to the dog confidently and stood above the mutt, machete at his side.

  "I'm gonna teach you that I'm not somebody you mess with, Reg."

  Turtleman raised the machete.

  "What are you doing?"

  Turtleman turned to see the boy behind him, the baseball bat in hand, red and dripping.
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  "This stupid mutt tried to kill me," Turtleman said as if the boy didn't already know.

  "Yeah. He's hungry. But he's not gonna hurt anyone now. Let's leave him alone."

  "Alone?"

  "Yeah, come on. Let's get out of here. My name's Brandon."

  One side of the ravine sloped more gently than the side Turtleman had fallen down, and he watched Brandon head up it. He wondered if perhaps Brandon chose that direction because he knew Turtleman was too banged up to make it up the steeper side.

  He probably sees you're too much of a fat ass to make the climb.

  "Not now," Turtleman responded.

  "What?" Brandon stopped and turned around.

  "Nothing."

  "You comin'?"

  Turtleman glanced again at the dog at his feet. It ducked its head and looked away after it made eye contact.

  That's more like it, Turtleman thought, then he started up the slope following Brandon.

  Chapter 14

  T HAD PULLED HARD ON the padlock, to see if the latch he'd bolted to the door would come loose. He was no carpenter.

  The lock was the same one that had hung on the barn door for decades. The same one that was never locked because who locks up anything way up here? Thad moved it and its whole mechanism onto the door to the basement because down in the basement there were things people might want to steal. Of course, if they ever got this far, Thad doubted a simple padlock would stop them.

  Thad didn't have to put his ear to the door to hear the incessant thumping of the corpse in the lab struggling against its bonds. He often needed test subjects for his research, but there was never a way to secure them so they didn't make any noise. He'd tried everything he could think of. Putting a gag on their mouths to stifle their moans, tightening the straps to limit motion, hanging thick blankets on the walls inside the lab, piling cartons of food along the outside walls of the lab. Nothing had worked, not completely. Muffled, yes. But everywhere he went in the house, the noise was there, and it was unending.

  "It's not going to get out, is it?" Karen asked.

  She'd been standing in the kitchen doorway as he installed the lock. Were it not for her, he might have considered that the noise was all in his head. That he heard it because unconsciously he knew it was there to be heard. But, of course, Karen heard it, too.

  "No, honey, it can't get out."

  It was actually his first test subject, and although many others had followed, it had proven to be the best. The progress he'd made using it for research was astounding, so Thad had kept it around.

  Karen had never cared for the things he kept in her Papaw's lab, which was just two floors below her bedroom. Among the upper floors, her room was barraged by their constant clamor more than any other.

  Lately, Karen had been having nightmares. They were always the same. Karen standing in the basement doorway at the top of the stairs, holding Bun-bun and petting her. Staring down into the darkness, she can hear the thump, the never-ending thump (which she was probably hearing in real life as she slept, interpreting it subconsciously in her dream) of the corpse slowly climbing the stairs.

  She can't really see it—just a specter of a thing as it moves closer—but then it crawls into the light cast from the open doorway. The thing sees her for the first time, too. It reaches for her, moans. Karen tries to run, but her feet are glued to the floor. She opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

  Night to night, nightmare to nightmare, the zombie changes. Usually it is male, but sometimes not. It usually had some noticeable defect: missing limbs, a broken back, knives or axes or other weapons sticking out of it (ideas she could have gotten from any number of corpses she watched Thad quiet). Worst was when the corpse turned out to be someone she knew. A teacher or classmate she knew from before. Papaw. Her mother. Thad.

  The nightmares end in various ways as well. Sometimes she wakes up as soon as the corpse comes into the light. Sometimes she wakes the moment it reaches out and touches her bare toe. But all too often, she doesn't wake up until it has grabbed her ankle. Until it's pulling her down the stairs into the darkness. Until it's sinking rotten teeth into her leg, her stomach, her face.

  Thad used to gauge the severity of the dream on how she woke from it. If she woke up screaming and he needed to run to her room to calm her down, it was really bad. He would pick her up and carry her to his room. If he woke up to her sobbing next to his bed, then the dream was bad, but not as bad. He'd fold back the covers and she'd climb in next to him. Other times he'd wake up in the morning to find her already in bed with him.

  Now he just let her go to sleep in his bed. It cut down on the nightmares, probably because the sound, the incessant thumping from the thing in the basement, wasn't as bad from his room. But she still had the nightmares and she still sometimes woke up screaming next to him. Sometimes he had the dream, too.

  The padlock wasn't to keep the thing from getting out. Not really. Thad was confident the thing couldn't wriggle out of its bonds.

  The lock was installed to keep Karen from getting in. To stop her from facing her fears by descending the steps, opening the lab door, and seeing the source of the nightmares head on. He'd already stopped allowing her to go down to retrieve food and other supplies. He hadn't wanted her curiosity to get the best of her.

  But today he had a mission that would take him away from the house for the first time since before his father died, and Karen wouldn't be able to come with him. Thad was certain she would be too scared to go anywhere near the basement, but he couldn't take the chance.

  On the kitchen table was a backpack with supplies scattered around it. Thad began shoving them into it in no discernible order: two bottles of water, a sandwich, a small first-aid kit, his father's 9MM along with two extra clips, a compass he had no idea how to use, his multi-tool, a clean shirt, the binoculars, a cigarette lighter. Karen watched him.

  "How long will you be gone?"

  "I told you. Hopefully no more than a few hours."

  "Why can't I go with you?"

  "Because it's dangerous out there, sweetie. You'll be safer here."

  "But what if you don't come back?"

  Thad stopped packing and looked down at his daughter. Her face showed genuine concern. It made her look twenty years older.

  What she'd said reminded him of a book he'd read when he was a kid. It was called Day of the Triffids. Thad couldn't remember who the author was. In the book, people all over the world go blind overnight and suddenly have to figure out how to survive without the ability to see. Little things usually taken for granted, like finding food to eat, become nearly impossible tasks. People would starve to death simply because they couldn't see the food they needed to survive.

  At one point in the story, a set of parents wanders blind from their farmhouse seeking food for their children who they are desperate to save. They tie a string to the house, then hold onto it and unroll it as they walk blindly (literally) into the unknown believing that the string would lead them back. But they never come home.

  It was a frightening novel throughout. The few who can see form roving gangs that steal and kill to stay alive. They abuse and enslave the blind. Then there were large, mobile plants (the triffids) who pulled themselves along the ground by their unmoored roots and whipped the defenseless blind masses with poisonous stingers.

  But to a young Thaddeus Palmer, a boy completely dependent on his parents for his everyday survival, the most frightening part of all was what the children in the farmhouse must have felt when their parents left and never returned.

  At the time he read the book, his mother hadn't yet passed. He would think about the book when she did. Those kids on the farm. How he was halfway to being alone himself.

  Thad knelt down in front of his daughter and brushed her hair back. He stared into her eyes, which were welling with tears.

  "Honey, I'll always come back. You believe me, don't you?"

  Karen nodded. The motion loosened a tear and it st
reamed down her cheek. Thad brushed it aside with his thumb.

  "I'll always be there for you."

  "But there's a lot of those things down there."

  She was talking about the number of zombies surrounding the prison below. Their ranks had continued to swell over the weeks.

  "There aren't enough of those monsters in the world to keep me away from my little girl. Besides, I'm not going down there. I'm actually not going very far at all. Just over and down the other side of the mountain a little ways."

  He stood and put the last two items in his backpack, then zipped it up.

  "Now just play with your toys, and if you get hungry there is some cereal. You know how to mix the milk. And there are those strawberry granola bars you like. And some chips and cookies, but not too much of those, okay?"

  "Okay," she said weakly.

  "In a little while, look in the cabinet and pick what you want for dinner. And, hey, have Candyland set up when I get back so we can play. I'm gonna beat you this time."

  Karen smiled. "Nu-uh."

  Thad smiled back. He shouldered his backpack and stooped down next to her. "You're probably right."

  He pulled her close, and she hugged him tight. It took him a while to pry her loose.

  * * * * *

  Outside, Thad discovered four corpses had fallen from above overnight, and so he quieted them with his stab stick and rolled them over the edge of the cliff before he left.

  Karen had mentioned the zombies around the prison, and so while he was at the edge, Thad couldn't help taking one more look down below before he left. The mass of the dead had grown so large that Thad could no longer visibly tell if it had grown in number from day to day, but he knew it had. More of the creatures were coming in constantly, drawn in from all around by the horde's collective groaning.

  Lamentations.

  The word popped into Thad's mind for the first time and it surprised him that it was so new. Groaning sounded like grieving. Moaning sounded like mourning. He'd never thought of the dead as a species bewailing some loss, but he did now, and why not. Each sounded like someone mourning something important.