A Place Outside The Wild

by Daniel Humphreys

  For that reason, Charlie remained outside while the others began assembling the salvage. Several teams had lost people in the past when the noise of a crew inside a home drew attention from outside. Charlie took a fierce pride in never having lost a team member. They’d had some close calls — usually due to rookie mistakes — but in the end, everyone had come home.

  Satisfied that the others had everything squared away, Charlie slung his rifle over one shoulder and stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat. The wind was picking up, and despite the welcoming brightness of the sun, there was still a cold bite to the early spring air. He stepped forward, and if not for his weapons, he might have been a homeowner taking a morning stroll through the neighborhood.

  He turned to move between the stone fence and the side of the house. He kept his eyes to the left as he went and surveyed the road. It remained clear, and he relaxed as he rounded the rear corner of the house and turned once more. The only fences in the addition were those around the perimeter, so the yards themselves were continuous. Charlie wondered if the people who had lived here had liked each other. Were there community cookouts, or groups of kids scampering through the yards?

  Such thoughts always led to the wrong place, and he jerked his head to the side and tapped his knuckles on his temple. What had gone on before wasn’t important; he needed to focus on the moment at hand. If not for the benefit of his own safety, then for that of Dalton and Corey.

  The yard of this house was empty save for a pair of sagging lounge chairs. The waterproof finish hadn’t stood up to the test of time. The wood was showing vague signs of rot while streaks of rust streamed down from the fasteners.

  Charlie moved on.

  The next house in line had a large play set with several slides, swings, and ladders to a second story. It was in almost as poor of shape as the lounge chairs, but as Charlie’s eyes slid around the yard he saw something of greater concern.

  A pair of large French doors led out of the rear of the second house onto a broad paved patio, but that wasn’t what drew his attention. Past the doors, off what was likely the kitchen, was another door. And where the other rear doors remained shut, this door wasn’t even in the frame — it lay, cracked and splintered, a few feet from the doorway. Half on the patio and half on the grass, it lay right next to the grill just outside the kitchen door. Charlie licked his lips and tried to will away his growing sense of worry.

  Even in the best of times the biters couldn’t break their way out of a house. It was one of the things that made his job so dangerous. A walking corpse too weak to break out a glass window on its own was going to be stuck inside until it gave up the ghost.

  This was something different, though. How recent was this? He eased forward and slid the sling off of his shoulder as he moved. He gripped the rifle in both hands and clicked the safety off.

  He hooked his toe under one corner of the door. A slight flex of his leg and the entire thing slid sideways. The part resting on the patio made a dull scraping sound, but he ignored the noise for the moment.

  The strip of grass that had been under the door was a bright, healthy green, even though the weight had crushed it. This was recent, maybe even in the last couple of hours. Charlie raised his head and the rifle as one, aiming into the house. Some of the windows had the drapes drawn, but the interior of the kitchen was visible. Inside, nothing stirred.

  He turned and noted for the first time a few slight divots in the grass just past where the door had landed. They looked, if anything, as though someone had landed on the sodden ground and left the impressions of their heels. Continuing the turn, he let his eyes follow the line described from the back door to the side fence. The grass rippled in the breeze, and he saw no evidence to show anything had walked across it in recent hours.

  If the lawn had recovered, the smears of mud and grass on the fence remained to tell a different story. They began about a quarter of the way up and continued for the entire height of the fence.

  As crazy as the idea was, it looked as though someone had run through wet grass and mud and scrambled over the fence.

  That doesn’t make sense.

  If it had been a survivor, why make for the fence? Why not left or right, if evading pursuit? And if they'd fled, why wasn’t there any sign of the pursuers? They hadn’t left any tracks, and the part of the tile floor inside that Charlie could see was pristine. Nothing from outside had walked on it in years.

  So — what? Someone blasts open the back door, does a long jump across an eight-foot concrete patio, and then climbs an even higher fence?

  Charlie had seen some crazy shit since everything fell apart, but that was crazy with a cherry topping. There had to be a more rational explanation.

  From behind him came the slapping sound of flesh on stone. Charlie spun and brought the barrel of his rifle around. When he saw the source of the noise, he barked a short laugh. This, at least, was something he could understand. A wandering member of the infected population had found them.

  It had been a woman once, though most of her long hair had fallen out in clumps. The absence revealed leprous patches of graying skin or exposed areas of bone. The rest of the body wasn’t much better. Though no wounds were immediately visible above the top of the fence, rotten scraps of cloth draped its shoulders.

  Questing hands reached over the top of the stone fence, and one arm slapped down as she clawed at Charlie. Not for the first time, he wondered how well they could see out of the blank gray orbs their eyes had become. In this case, depth perception was not a strong suit, given that he was a good twenty feet outside of her range.

  He put the rifle on safe and slung it back over his shoulder. “There you are,” he rumbled, and ignored the pain in his throat. Charlie took one step closer, and then another. As though excited, both arms began to slap the top of the stone fence and her mouth opened wider than seemed possible. For a moment, Charlie imagined that he could hear the creak of tendons in her face.

  The biters didn’t make noise, of course — that was one thing the movies got wrong. It made logical sense considering there seemed to be no real need for them to breathe. Of course, there wasn’t a logical reason for them to eat the uninfected, either. In that regard, Charlie had long since stopped questioning the reality of his situation. A typical corpse rotted away in around a month out in the open, so said the doctors, and here was a typical example of the infected. It was doing just fine after dozens of months.

  The docs had also had noted that once killed, they rotted away at an accelerated rate. Whatever it was that kept them going was staving off decay, somehow. In the early days, they’d smelled of excrement and blood, but years of exposure to the elements had washed the stench away. The lack of decay meant that the older ones didn’t smell at all, which made them all the more dangerous — quiet, odorless, and unwavering.

  Charlie moved closer, pausing after each step. “Beautiful day today,” he murmured. “Was a long winter.”

  The biter’s teeth clicked together as she strained over the top of the fence. She wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but that was just fine by Charlie. He much preferred the quiet. Just out of arm’s reach, now. He raised his own hands, palms up in mock supplication, and took another step.

  Her hands contacted his own, first one, then the other. Her fingers scrabbled over his bare palms in a frenetic fashion, as though she were so excited that she didn’t know what to do. Finally, they clamped down, vise-like. Charlie stood still. She jerked once, twice, trying to draw him closer. Despite his resistance, his boots began to slide across the grass. It wasn’t so much that she was particularly strong, it was just that what little strength she had, she exerted at full output without ceasing.

  He took a step and her fingers quested up the sleeves of his jacket, seeking a better grip. Her jaw opened wide, and Charlie got an up-close and personal look at the inside of her mouth. The strange, gray traces that filled the eyes and lined the skin were more evident inside. They lacked any sort o
f advanced medical facilities to test just what the gray shit was. It was pliable, difficult to cut, and seemed to strengthen the tissue. It corded muscles, tendons, and anchored teeth when they might have fallen out as the body dried. Whatever ‘it’ was, it was likely either responsible for, or a symptom of the plague, but they didn’t have a definitive answer either way.

  Charlie reached out, avoiding her questing arms, and brought his hand up underneath the gaping jaw. The skin was dry, almost leathery, and he felt the play of tendon and muscle under his hand as he have her throat a gentle squeeze with one hand.

  I could let you have a bite, you know. I know you’d like that.

  The scars lining his fingers and the back of his hand whitened as he squeezed harder. Bone rubbed together under his grip. Her own hands had found his shoulders, now, and he sighed. Even stymied, with his grip keeping her from achieving her purpose, she’d never quit. Like the walker in the bedroom, she was single-minded and robotic, only responding to certain stimuli. He looked into the storm cloud orbs of what had once been a living, breathing person with hopes and dreams. Maybe she’d once had children like Charlie had. The only reason he stood here instead of on the other side of the fence was sheer luck.

  Sometimes in his darkest hours, he wondered if it had been luck at all.

  He found the knife with his free hand and brought it up. Charlie pushed her arm with a delicate grace and brought the tip of the blade to the thin bone at her temple. There was still no change in reaction — she would not abandon her quest to reach the meat before her.

  Without a word, Charlie drove the knife home.

  The east and west walls were both taller and more robust than the fences on the flanks. This design had come about in simple recognition of geography. There were no helpful terrain features here to depend on. The east and west border crossed ruler-flat farm fields and the two-lane highway that cut through the center of the settlement.

  The initial construction was on utility poles. In his former life, Gary West had driven a pole truck for the phone company. When Z-Day came, he knew where to access stacks of unused utility poles, and had the keys to the equipment used to plant them. In those days the zombie population was more, well, problematic, so the people putting the wall together had to be on a constant lookout.

  The closest major city to the eastern border was Cincinnati. They’d rushed to erect the first line of defense on that spot, parking vehicles and piling debris to form a temporary barricade. Though the much-smaller town of Lewisville, Indiana was closer to the west, rivers and other natural obstacles slowed foot travel from that direction. In the early days, the zombies trickled in from the west. They came in waves from the east.

  The temporary barricade gave them enough breathing room to complete the first wall, and then they repeated the process to the west. The walls were far enough apart to provide them with a decent amount of interior farm ground — encompassing several homesteads as well as the farmhouse where Miles and Pete lived.

  The west wall was right at a thousand feet wide. The creeks spread apart as they traveled, and as a result, the east wall was several hundred feet longer. The perimeter the fencing and walls defined was shaped like a squared-off airplane wing. With telephone poles planted every four feet, it had taken just shy of six hundred poles to form the basis of the walls. The sheer number had cleaned out the phone company depot, and then some. In the end, they’d ranged far and wide, cutting down poles with chainsaws and dragging them back to use as horizontal members. Even then they’d lacked enough raw material to complete the walls to their planned ten-foot height.

  The survivors were scavenging lumber yards for outdoor-rated wood when the military began their air campaign to sever Interstate, highway, and access road bridges. Blocked from many of the locations they’d planned to raid for materials, they hadn’t known whether to worry or celebrate. As Miles had told Alex, it should have been the former.

  A quarter of the survivors died when the swarms overran the incomplete walls. Even then victory created a vicious cycle. Defensive gunfire attracted more zombies, which required more gunfire, which attracted still more. There was a reason Trina was obsessive about noise; she’d grown up in the aftermath. But they’d endured to make it to the aftermath, Miles reminded himself. They’d learned from it. They’d completed the walls and the fences. They’d identified low spots in the surrounding creeks, installed their own make-do bridges, and gated them off to prevent easy access.

  After the extended period of terror and mayhem, there was something almost like peace.

  Many of the survivors tended to cluster together. Miles didn’t know if it stemmed from a desire to huddle up in the event of another wall breach, or something else. It was a practice that came about in an organic fashion rather than from some decree. In the case of Val’s older ‘students’, it made more sense for them to bunk together if only to make caring for them easier.

  In spite of that tendency, there were still some who preferred living in relative isolation. Many of the wall guards, for example, had made use of the wall to form the initial construction of small cabins and shacks. These were generally sited around the bunkers located every few hundred feet — six on the east wall, and four on the west. If nothing else, it made rotation easier as guards who weren’t on shift could take the opportunity to nap or prepare a meal. Many still lived in ‘town’, but quite a few chose not to. It worked and hadn’t caused any serious problems, so they went with it.

  Henry Flanagan was one such survivor who preferred to be a loner. He was also one of the few who lived on the wall but didn’t guard it. Henry was a farmer, and a pretty good one. The greenhouses and fields he tended were in much better condition than the ramshackle cabin he lived in. Miles would have made a significant bet that the only straight wall in the home Henry had built was the outer wall itself.

  What was not up for debate was the fact that most of the community regarded Henry as an irredeemable pain in the ass. If not for his skill at producing fruits and vegetables, none of the other survivors would ever have dealt with him.

  This morning Henry had a legitimate reason to be that pain.

  “How am I supposed to fix this?” the older man demanded, waving his hand at a small greenhouse. The door hung on a drunken angle by its lone intact hinge. If that wasn't enough, whoever had damaged the door had also shattered the glass on the side of the door lock. The hole itself was large enough for most people to fit through, so Miles didn't understand the reason for the rough treatment of the door. Then again, the more experience he got with law enforcement, the more he realized that people who broke the law were most often dumber than a box of rocks.

  Miles lowered his head and rubbed his mouth with one hand to keep himself from laughing at the absurdity of the situation. “Larry?” he managed.

  The other man shook his head. “Good grief, Henry, get the stick out of your ass. You act like we’re the ones who messed up on your crops. Talk to Jim Piper, he’ll pull supplies from storage so you can get fixed up. Hell, if you ask him the right way I bet he’ll get a work crew out here to help.”

  “Oh.” Henry deflated a bit. “Well. All right, then. I guess I’m just mad at myself, fellas.”

  Miles’ moment of levity had passed. He managed, with perfect seriousness, to say, “Did you hear anything?”

  Henry had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Well, if I’m being honest, no, I didn’t. I traded Tom Oliver a bushel of sweet corn for a six pack of his home brew. I was three sheets to the wind not too long after the sun went down. That stuff has a real kick, and I can’t hold it like I used to, you know? I went outside to take care of some business just before dawn and saw the mess. I hit up one of Gary’s guys down the way and he radioed in a report.”

  “We’ve all been there, Henry,” Larry said.

  “Oh, you bet,” Miles said. He was not completely successful at keeping the mirth out of his voice. “Henry, if I’m guessing right, I bet there wer
e a few folks who saw you bartering last night.”

  “I’d say that’s so,” he allowed, then gave Miles a wary frown. He had the look of someone trying to figure out if he was the butt of the joke. “Tom opens up a little after five and I walked down a bit after that to make the trade. My first crop came in and I decided to treat myself.”

  Miles walked over to the greenhouse and glanced inside. The thief had trampled most of the stalks of corn; the vast majority were missing the cobs. It hadn’t been a big plot, but considering their bland diet, any change of pace was welcome. “So, somebody sees you make your trade. They put two and two together and realize you’ve got a greenhouse of sweet corn ready for harvest. After dark, they come around, bust their way in and pack up all they can carry.” Miles’ voice trailed off as he looked down. “And track dirt from the plots right out the front door and across the field.”

  “You’re kidding,” Larry said and moved up beside Miles. He leaned his head back and laughed as he saw the tracks. Henry’s plot of land was a few hundred yards south of the county road. Henry had let the grass grow for hay, and that plot stretched a good bit west. Beyond that, the fields opened up behind what had once been Miles' next door neighbor’s house. Instead of moving on the paved road, Henry’s corn thief had dragged his haul through the hay field. Even though it was just over ankle height, the path was clear as day hours later.

  Miles nodded to Henry. “Talk to Jim, he’ll get you set up. And we’ll see if we can’t get at least some of your corn back for trading, all right?”

  “Works for me,” Henry said. The grumpy so-and-so actually sounds grateful. Miles chuckled. Time to catch a thief.