by Chris Lowry
I looked down at her corpse.
At least it was a head shot. She wouldn't be coming back Z.
I needed to bury her, but not in the dark.
First things first. Fix the fence.
It wasn't a job to do by moonlight. It took longer than I expected, but I found wood, and kindling and a couple of wooden matches in the soil next to the cabinet where she kept food, and got a fire going.
It was in the pit, and I rolled the log seats around it to block the flickering flames.
Then I fixed the fence, though without tools, it was more like propping it up.
It wouldn't hold much out, but it would serve as an early warning for anything that tried to come through.
No tools meant I'd have to find something to dig with tomorrow. No food meant a night spent hungry, but it wasn't the first time.
I settled with my back against a log and hunkered down.
The still of the night haunted me. I knew I wouldn't sleep.
I'd been dead a few hours ago, and now the trauma of being hung was playing out in my mind.
I watched it three, then four times in my head and shivered.
Then the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I glanced around.
Something was watching me from the woods, two red eyes glowing in the dark.
It wasn't afraid of fire.
I thought bear.
The fence wouldn't hold it out for long. Maybe I could make the cabin, but even that was paper thin to razor sharp claws.
I actually hoped it was a mountain lion. If I could beat it to the cabin, I stood a chance.
Whatever it was, the animal was drawn by the dead body, thinking it was dinner.
I felt around in the dirt, wishing for a stick, a branch or anything, but nothing came to hand.
The eyes moved, bouncing closer.
I tucked my legs under me and got ready to sprint.
Bark.
My heart leaped.
The bark was loud in the darkness, cutting through the night and seemed like it would carry for miles.
But I smiled too.
Because Kinji was on the other side of the fence, tail wagging.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
There were pieces of the puzzle I didn't have.
But when the sun came up that morning, I found one.
A boot print.
It looked like a motorcycle boot. Could have been the Mayor's size. Could have been one of Mag's men.
No way to know, and for as much as it mattered, I didn't care.
He was going to die. I was almost convinced she would too.
The how was the hard part.
I scratched Kinji's head as I mulled it over.
I wasn't sure if anyone inside would help me, except Brian and Peg if they could.
I’ve always had trouble turning my brain off sometimes.
The lack of oxygen from earlier in the night was doing something to my thought process. Add to that the stress of my kids, the fear of being a bear burrito and a Z fight all combined to make sleep impossible.
Which is why I was surprised when I woke up and it was daylight.
Kinji rested against my leg, a low rumble in her chest like an alarm clock.
I put my hand on her back to hit snooze and saw why she was growling.
A Z pressed against the fence, mewling and groaning to get in. Better than any alarm clock.
I scratched around for a branch with a sharp end walked over and hit snooze by shoving it in the thing's eye.
I turned around.
Kinji was staring at me.
"I don't know," I said. "I'm going to get my kids. I don't care what you do."
As if that was explanation enough for a dog. She tilted her head to one side, in that way dog's do as if to ask, "Are you an idiot."
"Of course, I am," I sighed.
I don't know if you could call it a good night's sleep, but a couple of hours of REM can change your perspective.
I still needed to rescue the kids.
But I needed to rescue my friends too.
Sophie's choice did not have a King Solomon's solution.
I saw something in the dirt. A boot print. Not mine, a motorcycle boot.
Like the one's worn by the Mayor and his cronies.
They found her. They followed my trail back and killed her.
I don't know how I knew it, but it made sense. Mel had hidden in the woods for months, untouched, unbothered and survived.
Then she took me in, and I didn't cover my tracks, which led the bad men right back to her where they did bad things.
I could see in the rising sunlight. Her pants were ripped off, her legs at odd angles. Claw marks in the dirt, under her nails. Muddy tear streaks on her face.
My throat didn't hurt as much anymore.
But my gut did.
She had suffered because of me.
And the sons of bitches who did it were going to pay.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
It would have been simple to just drive through the gate. Barrel the ATV down the road, smash through the layers of metal and unleash hell.
It was still hidden in the woods on the other side of town.
Simple was not always easy.
The first gate would slow me down from however fast I was going to now we can shoot him speed. That's if the second gate didn't stop the forward momentum completely.
I tried to do some mass times acceleration in my head to come up with force, but it was not with me as I leaned against the tree.
"There is no try," I said to the dog as she sat next to me and watched me in that canine way that suggested she had the answer but wasn't going to share it.
I pushed off the bark and moved through the trees, circling the town in a serpentine path. I was trying to figure out why I was back, why getting revenge on the Mayor was so important.
Too much thinking, I sniffed and ran my fingers over the welt on my neck.
It still hurt.
He tried to hang me.
Nope, he didn't try. He had a large force of men with him and they did it. No try to it. They do.
A smart man would have walked away.
A smart man would have spent time and energy going the fifty or so miles back to Mags compound and saving his kids. There were homes between here and there I could raid for supplies. I could kit up a truck or a car and just make it happen.
Then why was I outside of Livingston, working through scenarios in my pounding head, worried about killing a man who almost killed me.
Anna. Brian. Peg.
Step. Step. Step.
I used to do that in the before time, think while I ran. There was something to the exercise that released chemicals in the brain, or the repetition of the action that turned autonomous and allowed the mind to function on a different level.
I wasn't a smart man, but movement, like hiking and running let me have smart moments.
And sometimes a smart moment is all you need.
That and a graveyard on the edge of the woods where one of the pokers was burying a headless body.
He didn't hear me coming.
The dummy had earbuds in as he dug a shallow grave, the body of someone from the inside lying next to it.
I stopped behind a tree and watched for a moment.
He put a booted foot on the blade, jammed it into the ground and scooped up a shovelful of dirt and tossed it onto a small pile. He moved like he had all the time in the world to get it done, and paid attention like it was just some afternoon, not a kid working outside a fence line in a world full of zombies.
I scanned the fence to see if there was a sniper playing overwatch, but it looked like he was out here alone.
Then panic seized my gut.
What if the body was Brian?
Did he get caught helping me escape?
I couldn't see all of the corpse, but it was the right size. That was as much as I could tell from the trees.
The panic slid over i
nto anger and it was time to stop trying.
I reached down, picked up a branch and waved it in front of Kinji. She perked up, ready for a game of fetch so I tossed it in a large arc over the gravedigger and his pile.
She sprinted after it, past his line of vision.
The poker startled and jumped, a small scream piercing the graveyard.
He must have heard me or felt me pounding the ground out of the woods, cause he turned as I got closer, swung the shovel.
I got lucky.
The flat of the blade bounced off the side of my shin.
It hurt like hell, but if it had been sideways, he would have chopped a chunk out of my leg.
As it was, I stumbled and my well-planned kick to the side of his head turned into a toe punt to his nose that sent a crunching waterfall of blood down the front of his face, snapped his head up and back and dropped him in the hole in the ground.
I jumped in after him, but luck was with me again.
He was dead.
"Damn," I muttered.
Kinji dropped the stick in beside him and looked at me as if to say, "Get on with it."
I picked up the fallen shovel and hopped out beside the dead body.
It wasn't Brian.
I didn't know who it was, but the guy gave me an idea.
It was back into the hole again, thankful it was only a couple of feet deep. I bent over and yanked the ballcap off gravedigger’s head and put it on mine.
He had a tiny head, or mine was just too big, and I grinned as I adjusted the strap to fit over my noggin.
I did have a big head.
What kind of idiot thinks he can just keep getting away with all of this?
Go save your kids, I sighed.
Go save everyone, the other side of me argued back.
This is stupid. You're stupid. He killed you once. You might not be so lucky the next time.
I pulled the ball cap lower, used a knee to get out of the pit where once I might have just jumped out, and shoved the other dead body inside next to my hat donor.
I hefted the shovel over my shoulder and stared at the fence. There was a small gate on the line.
My eyes weren't good enough to see if it was padlocked, but I was going to play it by instinct.
"Stay," I told Kinji and she sat.
Then I started marching toward the gate.
Halfway there I turned around and marched back.
Kinji thought we were going to play and stood up to wag her tail.
"Sit," I said again.
Then I jumped back in the pit again. Dug through the poker's pockets to fish out a key.
Crawled out of the grave and giggled again.
I didn't know if it was irony or symbolism, me coming up out of a grave after the Mayor had killed me, or came as close as he did, but I had the keys to his kingdom, a shovel and a plan.
Plus, I was probably still a little loopy from the dying and not eating much.
I couldn't stop grinning as I strolled back toward the compound, a memory bubbling up to the surface unbidden.
It was from a movie about Billy the Kid from my youth, where they take Peyote and ride their horses through enemy territory. Billy tells the natives who watch them, "We're in the spirit world."
I couldn't help but feel that way.
Surreal.
Spiritual.
And after I was through the fence, the grin fell away when another memory popped up.
I didn't have a pale horse to behold, but I knew who I was.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
There are five cards in a full house, which made me wonder why the Mayor only had three. Did he keep chopping off their heads?
It took a minute for me to orient to the town from this direction, then I kept my head down, shovel ready and kept up a steady pace for my destination.
No one bothered me.
Human nature makes most people tend to ignore or overlook it when someone seems like they belong and are intent on business. It was a confidence thing.
Look like you know what you're doing and need to get somewhere and people will generally believe it.
If I had a clipboard, it would have completed the look.
The shovel was a decent substitute.
No one bothered me on my way to the garden.
I reached it in ten minutes and circled the fence on the block, looking for a way to get in. But the Mayor had it built without a gate. They just tossed the heads right over the top.
I could dig under, but that would attract too much attention.
Instead, I went to the nearest house and leaned against the wall in the shadows and tried to think.
Would it have what I needed in the garage?
The first house didn't.
The second house didn't.
The third house had a workbench against the backwall and what I needed hanging on a pegboard. I pulled the bolt cutters down, their shape outlined in black marker against the grid.
"Thanks, guy," I whispered to the owner, wondered if he was dead and if he wasn't, would the missing tool be an OCD nightmare for them.
The hurricane fence was easy to cut.
I was afraid someone would walk over and ask me what I was doing, but the street I was on stayed empty.
Folks were hiding in their homes, I guessed. The dead body sent to the graveyard might mean the Mayor was on a rant.
I popped open a square in the metal, large enough that I just had to bend over to get through.
Then I stepped in the garden and used the shovel to roll three dozen of the gaping, clacking, rotting zombie heads through the hole.
I wasn't much of a ding dong ditch guy.
But I did play golf every so often.
I lined up the shovel and started sending the heads into doors.
They would slam against it with a meaty thunk, leave a trail of black ichor as they plopped to the ground.
Then someone inside would open the door, and instead of a flaming bag of poo to stop out, it would be a soundless zombie head.
Maybe even of someone they knew.
I wish I had a trebuchet.
When knights would lay siege to a medieval castle, they would chop off the heads of soldiers and shoot them back over the wall in a form of psychological warfare.
I had to do it slower, just a few at a time.
The effect was the same.
People screamed.
People panicked.
It was just a zombie head, no way to chase, no way to hurt them unless they happened to stick their foot or hand inside the Z mouth.
But people freak out. It's what we do.
Watch someone with arachnophobia spot a spider, especially a big one.
They scream, dance and prance as if the spider is going to launch itself off the web and latch on their face like that scene in Alien when the egg opens.
There was a lot of screaming.
I didn't hang around to check on dancing.
There was a game of kick the heads like soccer balls or tin cans as I booted as many as I could manage up the streets, pausing to launch a few at houses.
Then a crowd came to investigate.
I turned to face them, and played my best golf ever, launching six heads into the row of advancing men.
They almost broke and ran.
But I ran out of heads, dropped the shovel and surrendered.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
"Would you look at who we have here, Phil. Funny Guy is the one screwing up my whole town."
"Not so funny now," Phil mumbled.
"No Phil. No he is not."
The Mayor grabbed a machete off the table and stalked across the room toward me.
"I'm going to chop your freaking head off myself," he growled.
I read in a warrior philosophy book a tenet that stayed with me. If someone is worth threatening, then they are worth killing. Skip the words and just do it.
It fit nicely with my approach to this new post Z world. Why waste ti
me telling someone what you plan to do with them, when you could just be done with it.
I jerked the toothbrush out of my pocket and rammed the shiv sharp end into the eye of the kid next to me.
Juice popped on my hand and the floor as he froze, the impulses to his brain taking time to catch up.
Before the second was up, I yanked the pistol from his waist as the body hit the floor.
I gave the Mayor a third eye and swung the gun on the second Spearman. They both fell at the same time.
Phil clawed for the gun in a shoulder holster under his seer sucker, but couldn't get it up fast enough.
"Sorry Phil."
I aimed and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Phil grinned and finished lifting his gun.
"You've got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky punk?"
He squeezed the trigger.
Snick.
He tried to thumb the safety off. My stolen weapon bounced off his forehead and sent him reeling.
Then I plowed into him.
I know Karate, Kung Fu and about eight other Chinese words.
Phil knew Aikido.
He bent and twisted, flipped me over his hip and tossed me into the wall.
"Ouch," I tried hard not to groan as I climbed up.
I watched him slither out of the suit coat and drape it across the back of a chair.
"I wondered if I could take you before," he said as he circled and sized me up.
I leaned against the wall and watched him back.
"You look tough," he danced in on his toes and popped an open fist against my chin.
"Brute force never wins against strategic elegance."
He tiptoed in and sent three more rapid punches into me.
I shoved off the wall and circled with him, trying to stay out of reach.
Held up my fists like a boxer. Shuffled to the right and let him get in close.
Kung Fu is deadly in the right hands.
In the left hands too.
If the person doing it has done more than spar. And doesn't get tired fast.
I'm not an elegant fighter, but there is nothing pretty or poetic about being in battle.
Phil came in fast, a flurry of punches to my head and torso.
He grabbed me by the wrist, twisted, turned and launched me face first into the wall. Plaster rained down on my head.