The zombie lowered itself awkwardly to its knees beside Jamie. Jamie stirred and opened his eyes woozily as the ghoul raised the hammer over his head. “Hey,” Jamie said, almost conversationally, and the zombie struck him right in the center of his forehead.
Brent and Ian closed their eyes as the zombie hit him again and then a third time.
Jamie made a wet choking sound, and then no more.
“Take it to be processed,” one of the zombies said.
Jamie’s naked butt squeaked on the tiles as they pulled him across the floor and through the doorway. Brent kept his eyes shut until he heard the rattle of the cell door being locked. Several women cried out on the other side of the partition.
Brent opened his eyes. There was fresh blood on the mattress, blood splattered up the wall, and a trail of blood running from the mattress to the gate.
“Jesus Christ,” he moaned.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Ian said in a tight voice. He jumped up from the table and ran to the toilet, retching.
Brent rose. He walked to the cell door, careful to step around the blood, and looked down the guard walk. They were dragging Jamie toward the front of the building by the arms. His head was bouncing loosely between his shoulders, hair slick with blood.
Brent turned away.
Ian returned from the toilet, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
“You okay?” Brent asked.
Ian nodded.
“You… uh, mind helping me clean up this blood?”
“No. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, man. Are you okay?”
Brent’s mouth worked soundlessly for a second or two. His eyes felt hot and stingy. He set his shoulders and took a breath, “Fine as summer rain,” he said.
24. Kid
The kid arrived some two weeks later.
Time was meaningless in a place like the Manfried meat farm. The days had a way of blending together, like the swill the zombies served to the camp’s internees. Just open some old cans of food—doesn’t matter what they are or if the combination is palatable in any way—and dump them in a bucket together. The slop they served to the living was always a slurry of mixed vegetables and potted meat, with some chili and fruit cocktail thrown in for good measure, and that’s how the days were. Once the events of the current day had slipped into the past, Brent couldn’t be certain if Muriel had delivered her baby two days ago or ten, if Ian had suffered through a bout of the flu yesterday or last week, or how long it had been since their jailors bludgeoned Jamie to death with a ballpeen hammer.
But two weeks sounded about right. Two weeks was close. The days had been getting a little longer, the sun a little brighter, the interior of the supermarket warm enough that they started shutting down the generator during the day. Winter was slowly melting into spring. Brent could feel it in his bones, even though he hadn’t been outside since the afternoon that Jamie stabbed Vickers in the yard.
A chorus of “Fresh meat! Fresh meat!” heralded the kid’s arrival.
Ian and Brent were playing a game of cards when they heard the zombies croaking “Fresh meat!” in the guard walk. They looked at one another with wide eyes and placed their cards down on the table, wondering what sort of fellow would shortly be joining them in the coop. Neither spoke. They didn’t have time. A moment later, the chain securing the cell door rattled as one of the guards unlocked the padlock, and then the door swooped open and a brutal shove sent the kid stumbling into their cell, arms pinwheeling.
He was young, early teens, short, with a compact, muscular body and a shaggy mane of thick, dark blond hair. He was too young to grow a beard, but was obviously post-pubescent. A big bush of dark pubes attested to that. He was completely nude, not even a pair of shorts, and his tan skin was covered in bruises and scratches, as if he had rolled down a hillside covered in briars.
He almost fell, managed to recover his balance, then very quickly, and very angrily, ran back at the door of their cell and performed what could only be described as a magnificent jump kick. The whole partition rattled as the kid rebound from the door.
“Yah, fuckya, ya fuckin’ rotters!” he cried. “Lemme outta here ‘n’ I’ll brain the lotta ya!”
“You’ll settle down or we’ll brain you!” one of the guards snarled.
The kid grabbed the chain link gate and began to shake it wildly, snarling like an animal—an angry badger, perhaps. He was too small to equate with anything more impressive, like a bear.
“I said settle down!” the guard shouted, and smashed the kid’s fingers with the butt of his rifle.
The kid jerked his hands away, cursing some more. He turned and noticed Brent and Ian, who were staring at him in mute wonder. The kid sucked his fingers for a moment, then balled his hands into fists and said, “What are you lookin’ at, ya fuckers?”
Brent found his tongue first. “You do need to settle down, kid. Those deadheads don’t fool around. They really will bash your brains in. That’s what happened to the guy you’re replacing.”
The kid put his hands on his hips. “Let ‘em try. I’ll—“ but the rest was indecipherable to Brent. The kid’s speech was mostly slang, or some strange dialect that Brent was unfamiliar with. It had a lot of F-words in it, though.
“Just calm down,” Brent said, eyeing the cell door nervously.
“You calm down! I’mma break outta this motherfucka!” the kid exclaimed, nostrils flaring. He turned toward the partition. “Amy! Amy, can ya hear me?”
From the other side of the wall: “Yah, I can hear ya!”
It was a young woman’s voice, sounded like she was about the kid’s age, maybe a year younger. Her quavering reply incensed the boy, and he began to fling himself at the barrier separating them, punching and kicking until Brent was certain the whole partition was going to collapse.
“Stop it!” Brent shouted, rising from the table. “You’re going to get us all killed!”
But the kid wasn’t having it. He bloodied his knuckles on the boards and panels the partition was composed of. He bounced off of it and flung himself right back at it. He hooked his fingers through the gaps and yanked, putting his whole body into it, muscles straining, head jerking back and forth like a headbanger at an Ozzy concert.
“Max, stop!” the girl, Amy, cried out. “Oh, no! Max! Max, they’s comin’!”
The cell door swooped open and several zombie guards stomped in, bearing firearms and clubs. Brent and Ian scrambled away from the kid as they encircled him. The kid retrained his rage on them, punching and kicking at his undead assailants. One of the zombies went stumbling away, but the rest began to rain blows down on him, beating him steadily and mercilessly until the kid lay prone and bloody on the floor.
The guards withdrew.
Brent went to the boy and checked for a pulse.
On the other side of the partition, Amy was sobbing hysterically, calling out to the young man. Brent could hear the other women trying to still her, but she was as intractable as the kid. “Max!” she cried. “Max, ere ya there? Ere ya still alive? Oh, Max! Max!”
“He’s alive,” Brent called through the wall. “Now shut up and let us take care of him!”
“Should we move him?” Ian asked. He gestured at the bleeding boy. “I mean, look at him!”
“We can’t leave him here,” Brent said. “Come on. Help me pick him up. Let’s put him on Vickers’ bed.”
Taking the boy by the knees and the armpits, they lifted the kid and carried him into the butcher’s station. He was surprisingly heavy for his size, but muscle weighed more than fat, and the kid was all muscle. He had bulging pectorals, a washboard stomach. Compared to him, Brent and Ian looked only slightly more robust than the walking skeletons holding them hostage.
With his new contusions and bleeding lacerations, he looked like a car crash victim. He was bleeding from both nostrils, his mouth, and there were several bleeding cuts on his head where the zombies’
truncheons had split open his scalp. The injuries looked terrific, but Brent did not believe any of them were life threatening. Then again, he was no doctor.
The kid began to rouse as they lowered him on Vickers’ mattress.
“Huzzuh?” he slurred, blinking and looking around. “Whadaya doin’? Where’m I?”
“Just stay calm, kid,” Brent said. “This is our bunkroom. You need to lay still and rest for a little while. You’re bleeding.”
The kid tried to sit up and flopped back on the mattress, putting his hand to his forehead. “Ooh,” he said. “M’dizzy.”
“They whooped your ass pretty good,” Ian said, with no small degree of admiration.
“Fuckin’ rotters,” the kid said.
“What’s your name, kid?” Brent asked. He knew what it was, had heard the girl say it. He just meant to shift the kid’s brain to a different track.
“Max,” the kid answered, blinking.
“I’m Brent. This is Ian. Do you know where you are? What kind of place this is?”
“I… I know where I am. We was running for Home when the rotters caught us.” He blinked up at them, looking a little more cognizant of himself and his surroundings. “There was four of us. There was me ‘n’ Amy, Cool Luke ‘n’ his split Bree.”
“Split?” Ian said.
“Yeah. Split. Pussy. His girl.”
“Ah,” Ian said, looking a little revolted.
“What happened to Luke and Bree?” Brent asked.
“Dead,” Max said. “They both got shot when we run away. First, Bree, then Luke when he went back for her. Dumb fucker. We had a car, but the rotters run us off the road. So what is this hole?”
“This place?” Brent said, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s a farm, I guess. For living people.”
“What’s a… farm?” the kid said, frowning.
“A farm? A farm is where people used to raise cows and pigs and, you know, grow corn and stuff. For other people to eat.”
The kid looked at Brent like he was speaking Latin.
“You don’t know what a farm is?” Brent said.
“Is it something from the Before Times?” Max asked. “Like teevee and the interwebs? Luke tole me about teevee. How it worked, I mean. I seen them, for sure, but I never knew what they was for. Luke said they showed pictures that moved. And talked. Is that true?”
“What, about TV?”
“Yah.”
“Yeah… that’s what they did. Just how long have you been on your own, Max? Didn’t you have a mom or dad or something?”
“I never been on my own. I always had Amy. Then Cool Luke and Bree come along.”
“No grownups?”
“When I was real little. Like four or five, I think. He was mah Grampa. We lived in a bunker under the ground. Grampa died when I was still little, though. Then it was just me ‘n’ Amy fer a long time.”
“Is she your sister?”
“Nah, she’s my… uh, cousin. But we’re married now, so that makes ‘er my wife, too. We had a wedding ‘n’ ever’thing. It was her dolls ‘n’ stuffed animals, but she says it still counts.” The kid narrowed his eyes. “Hey… Why you askin’ alla these questions?”
Brent shrugged. “Just getting to know you, I guess.”
“How long you been here?” the kid asked. He sat up, this time without dizziness. “Why ain’t they et you guys yet?”
“They will, if you keep making trouble,” Ian said.
“And if’n I don’t make trouble?” the kid asked.
“They keep us,” Brent said. He scowled, reluctant to detail the entirety of their situation, the dirty truth of their survival. “They, uh, breed us,” he said, his cheeks flushing. “They keep us like animals and take the babies.”
“’N’ eat them?” the kid asked.
“Yeah,” Brent said, looking away.
“That’s barf,” the kid said. “Why don’t you break outta here?”
“We try, but they have cars and guns.”
“Shoot fire! This place is barf. Totes barf.”
Yes, Brent had to agree, it was, indeed, “totes barf”.
And then the kid said something that sent cold chills racing down Brent’s spine. “Well, the yucks on them,” he said, grinning at Brent in a very spiteful manner. “Cause there’s a herd of rotters headed this way. Biggest one I ever seen. Stretches all the way to the end of the world, it does. They’s gazillions of rotters in it, I bet. Maybe more.”
“Say that again,” Brent said, goosebumps rippling up his arms. “You saw a herd of deadheads that stretched all the way to the horizon?”
“Not just seen it,” the kid said. “We was riding out ahead of it, trying to get away from them. That’s what we was doing when your rotters run us off the road.”
“That many?” Brent said, asking again because his brain could not quite process the idea.
Again, the kid nodded. “The ground shakes if you get too close to ‘em. ‘N’ there’s smart ones with ‘em, too. Ridin’ in trucks ‘n’ tanks ‘n’ stuff. Sort of… herdin’ them along, I guess.”
“What are they doing? Where were they going?” Brent asked.
The kid shrugged. “Cool Luke said they was probably headed fer Home. He said they was gonna take it over. Conquer it. That’s the word he used. I guess that means smash it or something. Anyway, that’s the direction they was movin’, ‘n’ why else have all the tanks ‘n’ stuff? We decided to go there ‘n’ warn ‘em, that way they gots the chance to run away. Or fight ‘em off. Whatever they wanna do.”
“So why did you say the yucks were on the zombies here?” Brent asked.
“Cause that herd of rotters will tear this place apart,” Max said. “There was another place like this, just across the big river. The one Luke called Missus Ippy. A place where rotters kept living people in fences. The herd just… rolled right over it. We watched with binoculars. The rotters walked into the fences and then just sort of piled up until they spilled over the top. They swarmed over the place. Ate the people. Probably ate the rotters who was keepin’ ‘em, too.”
“How long until they get here?” Brent asked.
“I don’t know,” the kid said with a shrug. “They’re kinda slow, you know. This many, maybe.” And he held up one hand, fingers splayed.
“Five days?”
“Maybe,” the kid said. “Maybe less. I’m not too good at tellin’ time.”
25. Advice
Brent wasn’t certain he believed the kid. Not completely. He was sure the kid was telling the truth when he said he and his companions had been fleeing from a herd when they were captured, and maybe it was even an unusually large herd, but the boy had to be exaggerating the size of it, and the destructiveness he claimed the herd had displayed in Missouri. Brent had seen large herds himself, had once had to climb a tree and stay there for two days while a massive drove of chompers shuffled slowly past below, but a herd that stretched all the way to the horizon? It wasn’t possible!
After the kid fell asleep that night, Brent went to the partition to consult Muriel.
Muriel had delivered her child without incident two weeks ago. Just as she expected, the zombies had taken the infant away-- “to be processed”-- but a thing expected could not soothe the pain of a thing hoped for, and the loss of yet another child had sent Muriel spiraling into depression. Her voice was dull and lifeless when she replied to him through the wall.
“Muriel?”
“Yes?”
“I know you’re not feeling well, but I was hoping we could talk,” Brent said. “I need some advice.”
It took her a moment to reply, and then she said, “What is it, honey?”
“It’s about the new kid. Something he said…”
So he told her what the kid had told him, and then he asked her what she thought of his tale, if she thought he was exaggerating. And if she thought the kid was telling the truth, did she think he should warn their captors?
“I know I shouldn’
t be prejudiced,” Brent finished, “but he talks like some kind of weird hillbilly. I’m not even sure I understood him correctly.”
“Don’t think he’s ignorant, just because of the way he speaks,” Muriel said after a moment of thought. “The girl, Amy, has the same speech patterns. It’s a thing called idioglossia. They’ve been alone, living in isolation so long that they’ve developed their own language, almost like twin talk. Did you ever see that movie Nell, with Jodie Foster?”
“I think I remember it. It’s been a long time.”
“They could both be quite intelligent. In fact, I’m sure they are, considering they’ve survived on their own from a very young age. We’re just not hip to their jive, if you catch my drift. I’m sure that’s going to be something we encounter more and more often as the children of this new world grow up in insulated communities. In just a few generations, the English language as we know it will be just as extinct as the dodo bird. Everyone will have their own regional dialects, maybe even whole new languages will arise. They won’t have the foggiest idea what a TV or a microwave oven are. They won’t remember the internet or video games. And cars will just be these mysterious shapes rusting away in the grass.”
“It’ll be a new Dark Ages,” Brent said wonderingly.
“Well, unless the zombies act to restore the world to the way it was, preserve the things they remember from their lives. I don’t see that happening, though. From what I’ve observed, even at the best of times they’re hanging onto their rationality by their fingernails. They slip into mindless violence at the least provocation.”
“So what do you think about the kid’s story?” Brent asked again. They had gotten sidetracked somewhere.
“He’s probably telling the truth. He described the herd as stretching all the way to the horizon. He didn’t speak in abstracts. I just wonder where he was when he saw them.”
“Why?”
“Well, it would tell us how close the horizon actually was to him at that moment. The distance of the horizon would depend on his elevation and whether the earth was hilly there or not. If he was standing in the plains, I think the distance is like three or four miles to the horizon. If he was on a big ridge or mountain, somewhere up high, then you’re talking a lot further. It’s all relative.”
Cattle (The Fearlanders) Page 15