by Lowry, Chris
She nodded, a good student. I know she saw me use the pike at the church when I rescued Hannah, so I hoped she would remember it wasn't a stand your ground and hold the hill weapon. It was a cut and run, slash and dash tool, designed to cut through a crowd of zombies without allowing them close enough to bite, grab, scratch or splatter you with their guts and gore.
The sun was just over the tops of the trees by the time we were done. I wanted to lock up in the house and settle in for the night but I promised her she could pray so we made our way to the front of the church.
The front doors were held closed with a loose chain and padlock, like they do in some small towns when the locks stop working. I slammed the end of the pike into the padlock and broke it open.
Anna zipped the chain through the handle and opened the door.
The sanctuary was full of Z. More than I could count in the faint light filtered through row after row of stained glass windows. They were a mass of shadows standing still in the darkness, all facing the door and the noise we made opening it.
The first one moaned and shuffled toward us. The herd followed after him, their moans added to his.
Anna made a sound like a cross between a chirp and a yelp. Or maybe it was me.
She fumbled to bring her pike up with one hand and unsling the shotgun with the other.
“Door,” I barked and piked the first Z, then the one behind it, stabbing and shoving them back.
They grabbed the pole and pulled and I was yanked off my feet.
I grabbed the doorframe before I lost my balance and fell through and grunted as I hauled myself backwards. My feet slipped out from under me and I plopped on my bottom, scrabbling backwards, slipping in the built-up dust on the porch as the Z filled the empty doorway.
Anna slammed the door shut on them and set her shoulder against it. The weight of the Z inside began inching her backwards as her slick converse sneakers scratched and scrabbled for purchase.
“Help,” she gasped.
I slammed my shoulder into the door and shoved it further back. Anna slipped the chain through and when she couldn't get the padlock to work, wrapped it around the handles again. The Z inside strained against the solid wood doors.
“Wire,” I called.
She ran around to the dog kennel where we left the tools and ran back with the spool of wire. She threaded it through the chains and twisted it down tight a couple of dozen times.
I grabbed her pike and we stepped back to see if it would hold.
It did.
“Are you bit?” she asked.
“You?” I shook my head.
She shuddered and I could see the goose bumps pop on her arm.
“Not even close.”
It had been a close call. Why would someone just lock Z up in the church? I glanced behind us as the sun disappeared and only left twilight behind. The yellow brick church squatted there but it didn't look inviting or menacing. It looked like it might have a gut full of Z too. I wondered if I imagined the moans or if I would even be able to hear them over the sounds coming through the doors of the First Baptist Church.
I started walking back to the kennel. We had just a few minutes to gather the tools and material so I could get another pole to replace the one I lost. Of course I'd have to find another machete, but maybe there was a hardware store in the shopping center up the road we could check out tomorrow.
Anna kept pace with me, helped with the wire and duct tape and pliers and we locked ourselves into the small cottage. I got the hiker's stove lit and the tiny flame cast a small orange blue light around the room as I settled in to make us dinner.
Anna sat on her knees on the mattress next to me.
“I guess I can pray in here,” she said.
I looked up to catch her grinning and couldn't help but return it. Killing Z was serious, and I didn't like it, but after the shock wore off and the adrenaline surge calmed down, I was left with a feeling of gratitude for having survived. I bet she felt the same way. That seemed like a good thing to pray about.
CHAPTER FOUR
I turned the hiker's stove down to its lowest setting and lit the living room with a barely perceptible light that turned us into little more than shapes in the dark. I laid on the queen mattress from the master bedroom and Anna curled up on a twin next to mine, a little gap and pillows between us.
We had eaten two cans of SPAM, cut into little strips and fried in a pan and home canned green beans warmed up in the left over grease. Anna took the pan and cleaned it with a cloth and packed everything away next to the door. We were back to silence again, that feeling of just being together like we had in the car. It was comfortable.
She was younger than me, by a decade at least, maybe more. I thought to ask her at some point and let it go because frankly I liked the quiet.
I lay in the nest of blankets in another person's house and listened to the strange clicks and thumps as the wood settled and the world outside shifted over toward the dark of night. My rifle was close at hand, and I kept a pistol beside it, but I wasn't too worried. With a dresser in front of each of the doors nothing as coming through without making a lot of noise, so I felt a sense of safety for the two of us. I sent a quick prayer up that my children felt the same, but I wouldn't be surprised it no one answered it.
I had killed men, not just Z, and I had done it with no feeling in my heart other than it was something that had to be done, like putting down a rabid animal. I did it to protect the people I was with, but that gave me little comfort.
I was surprised at how little I felt about being a killer. Maybe I was psychotic, or a high functioning sociopath. I grew up believing in the ten commandments, and even as an adult I thought killing and murder were just wastes.
A waste of life, but according to the news that I watched, those wastes of lives were happening to people who were no big loss. Criminals, or drug dealers, drug users, or just plain bad people.
Now I had to wonder.
Maybe they were living in a world much like this Darwinian one we now found ourselves in, only they weren't fighting Z. They were fighting gangs, and poverty and all sorts of other troubles I could only imagine.
Before the Z, I had never gone hungry, except on purpose. Maybe fasting was a privilege of the rich. I had never considered myself rich, but now that I had been hungry, I couldn't imagine not eating for the fun of it.
Before the Z, maybe the poor, the disenfranchised were in a battle with the elements, and influences and the government and I was clueless to this war going on. It was only now, after the Zombie fall that I was part of a war. A war between the Z, a war with the militia, and a war with myself for how easy it was for me to accept it and become a killer.
“Do you want to do it?” Anna asked in the flickering darkness.
“Do what?”
“It.”
“It?”
“Sex,” she sighed. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
For the record, if a beautiful woman asks for sex, I usually jump at the chance, especially in a post apocalypse situation.
“Do you want to have sex?” I asked instead.
Stupid question. Dumb idiot move. The teenage boy in me wanted a time machine so he could fast forward just to kick my ass.
She shrugged.
I could hear it in the blankets, in the movements of shadows on the wall.
“It's what they do.”
“Who are they?”
“Guys. At the Church. They said I had to if I wanted to stay safe.”
I propped up on my elbows and looked over at her in the glow of the light from the burner. All I could make out were two dark eyes staring back at me, pools of black.
“I'm all for having sex with you,” I told her and licked my lips.
I could feel a stirring in my groin at just the thought of it.
“I don't say no as a general rule,” I told her. “And the next time you ask, I will say yes with abundant enthusiasm. So don't ask until you're ready a
nd only if you want to.”
I could see her staring at me. After a moment she rolled over and curled up in her nest of blankets and scooted a little closer my way, her head almost on my arm. Even though she stayed on her mattress, I could feel her breath against my shoulder.
“Okay,” she sighed.
I laid back down, and listened to the litany of curses the primal parts of my brain tossed at me. I was almost asleep when she whispered.
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Anna shook my arms but I was awake before she touched me. The alarms in my head were going off as we both reacted to the voices outside the window. They weren't shouting, weren't even that loud, but in the silence of the darkness they carried.
Someone tried the front door but it didn't budge.
I drifted my hand over the pistol and lifted it up to aim.
“Locked,” they called out.
“Try the Church,” a second voice answered.
We could hear the footsteps clop across the porch and down into the yard. The voices didn't move to the back of the house, or they would have seen the car and tried again.
I sat up and extracted my arm from Anna's vice like grip, and scooted over to the window, careful that it didn't move when I peeked out.
It was hard to see anything but shapes, but a truck was parked on the road between the two churches and men moved between them. Short men, most of them around five feet tall, though a couple of heads bobbed above the others. Details were hard to make out in the dark.
Three of them moved away from the parsonage and toward the church.
“Chained,” said a high-pitched voice, the one that tried our door.
“Hiding something,” the man at the truck called back. “Get a light.”
Flashlights popped on, beams slicing through the night as they zeroed in on the chained door. In the ambient backwash of light, they looked like kids.
“Should we open it?”
The man from the back of the truck hopped out and marched closer. He was the tallest among them and in the faint light, looked more teen than man. He had dark hair, dark eyes and was clad in camouflage, just like the rest of them. Padded camo jackets, padded pants, gloves, like a group of kids out hunting and each of them had a rifle.
The leader walked up to the door and kicked it with a thick soled boot.
Even inside we could hear the Z moan.
“Zombies,” he said.
“Should we ice 'em?” the high-pitched voice asked.
The leader considered for a moment and shook his head.
“They're locked up in there, let them eat each other. We don't have to worry about them.”
“What about the store in town?”
“We'll come back on our next trip,” said the leader. “Load up.”
The boys meandered across the road and climbed into the back of the truck. The leader slapped the roof and they took off down the road in a squeal of tires and slinging gravel. Someone whooped, and they disappeared into the darkness.
“What was that about?” Anna whispered in my ear.
I jumped and almost pulled the trigger on my gun.
“Jesus,” I said.
She giggled.
“I didn't mean to scare you.”
“Damn good at it,” I said and chided myself. I had been wrapped up in what those kids were doing outside, wondering if they were going to open those Church doors and how they would react if I busted out to shoot the Z. Would the boys shoot back at me? Could I stay inside and let them handle it?
I'm glad they didn't give me a choice to make, but anyone could have sneaked up on us while I was zeroed in on them.
Anna put her hands on my shoulders and rubbed some of the tension away. I leaned my forehead against the wall and let her.
“Were those boys or really tiny men?”
“Boys,” I said. “Teenagers maybe.”
“What are they doing out here?”
I shrugged. She kept rubbing my shoulders, kneading the muscle under her strong tiny hands and I let the tension bleed away in a sigh.
“I don't know. We may never know,” I said. “They were headed back the way we came. One said they were on a trip, maybe they come through here again, but we'll be long gone.”
She stopped what she was doing with her hands and checked the time on her watch..
“It's two,” she said. “Do you want to go now?”
I did the math in my head and shook it no. If we left now we'd still need to hunt a new ride in the dark, or be stuck in the car for a few hours in the dark. We had enough supplies in the car that I didn't want to abandon.
“Let's get some more sleep,” I suggested. “We'll wait for light and take off.”
I moved back to the bed and settled in. Anna slid under my arm and pressed close to me, her nose touching mine. This time she didn't ask what I wanted, just held me and breathed with me, and in seconds she was asleep. I followed soon after.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning, we were up with the sun. Or rather the square patch of comforter we had nailed across the windows had a bright outline of light around it that bathed the room in a soft morning glow.
I opened my eyes to find Anna staring at me.
“Morning,” I croaked.
She crinkled her nose and sniffed out.
“Breath?” I rolled away.
She nodded and I did the breath out into cupped hands thing and smelled. There were some habits we lost after the Z showed up and the world went to hell. Daily showers were one of them. Oral hygiene another. I made a mental note to get back into the habit of brushing twice a day. It just cost a couple of sips of water.
Anna rooted in her pack and handed me an unopened toothbrush as if she could read my mind. Then I saw she was doing the same. We brushed in silence for a few moments standing over the kitchen sink and spared a little water to rinse and swish.
“Better?” I asked.
She leaned in and kissed me.
“Minty fresh,” she said and left me standing there with the taste of her lips on mine.
It took less than five minutes to fold the mattresses against the wall in case someone else needed them, stack the blankets and load the car. Anna settled in behind the wheel, and I rode shotgun.
She turned right onto the road, opposite of the way the truck full of boys took the previous night and cruised through town.
We had only gone a few hundred yards when I spied a couple of Z bumping against a wrought iron fence around a cemetery and the object of their attention kneeling in front of a tombstone.
“Stop,” I said and Anna pulled over. She followed my gaze.
“What's he doing?”
“I don't know. Praying?”
A man knelt in the cemetery over a grave, making funny movements with his hands. Maybe he was shovelling the dirt with his hands to plant flowers.
I stepped out of the car and shut the door. A couple of Z noticed me and began to shuffle around the fence line in my direction. Anna grabbed her shotgun and followed me as we stepped through the gate and pulled it tight.
I held the rifle low but ready to swing toward him if he did something I didn't want, like pull a gun. I could hear Anna breathing next to my shoulder and motioned her a few steps away. If he aimed at me, she could get him, and vice versa.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure the gate was secure. The Z couldn't follow and they didn't try. They banged their rotting corpses against the wrought iron fence, thoughtless, mindless, moaning.
“Hey,” I called to the guy.
He didn't move.
I took four steps to the right to come even with him and saw he had in earbuds. Closer now I could hear a hair metal band screaming and saw he had a scrub brush in his hands, sudsy water sloshing across a black moss covered tombstone. He was cleaning the old marble and rocking out in the town cemetery.
I squatted down on one knee so we were on the same level and made motions with my hands
. He caught sight of the movement out of the corner of his eye and jumped, spilling the bucket of water as he lurched up and tried to run. He saw Anna then and changed direction but his feet got caught on a raised piece of marble and he pitched forward onto flowers and grass.
“Hey! Hey!” I yelled and held up a pacifying hand, the rifle stock in the other so he could see I didn't mean to shoot him.
He popped the earbuds out and shuddered through a sob.
“Good Lord, you like to scared me to death,” he sat up and worked to catch his breath. “I think I almost had a heart attack. I thought one of them had gotten in.”
He gave a distracted wave toward the fence line.
I reached down a hand and helped him to his feet.
“We were calling out for you, but your music was too loud.”
We could still hear it blaring out of the dangling ear pieces, a guitar riff asking about Dr. Feelgood.
The man pulled out the player from his pocket and cut it off, then turned to us with a smile.
“I don't think I've seen people in weeks,” he had a boyish grin under a shock of white blond hair. “Except for them.”
He motioned to the fence again.
“What are you doing?” Anna asked as she stepped over to examine the tombstone he had been cleaning.
It was from the late 1800's, the marble chipped and weather worn, but in the places where the moss had scrubbed free, the inscription was clear and easy to read.
“I'm cleaning their stones,” he said as if it were the most self-evident thing in the world.
“Why?” asked Anna. “Is he a relative?”
“No,” said the man. “Just doing my civic duty.”
“Are you a vet?” I asked. The inscription was for a Civil War soldier.
The man rapped the scrub brush against the bottom of his still shining boots.
“Flat feet.”
“Then I'm with her,” I said. “Why?”
“I don't think they should be forgotten,” he answered.
“Have you seen these?” I pointed to the things he kept not looking at around the fence line. There were a few more showing up so that seven were lined up around the cemetery now. I could see two more on the road and following the moans like a siren song to food. Us.