by James Dean
Jeremy and I often discussed whether the zombies were a global pandemic or something more localized to the United States, maybe even just the northeast. The last hypothesis had proven harder to believe with every passing day and then months as the undead roamed the streets and the number of survivors dwindled.
I sat up and looked at Jeremy's crew. Two of them had already left, likely in search of other entertainment after I'd been out of their line of sight for twenty minutes. I debated lying back down and going to sleep to see how many more would wander off, but decided against it. I'd die of exposure if I waited.
I walked over to the back of the house and peered over the edge of the roof. There weren't a lot of options except to take a twenty foot fall or stay put, so I made my way back around the front, looking to see if there were a way to make it down safely.
The front porch roof was only about eight feet below, so I made a lot of noise around back to draw Jeremy and his pals away. After a minute or so, the group of corpses shambled into the back yard.
I ducked low so they couldn't see me and went back to the front of the house. The wind was starting to pick up; I needed to get inside before I got sick. Can't be sneaky during a zombie apocalypse if you're coughing and sneezing.
The ground seemed far away as I lay on my stomach looking over the edge. My balls were freezing where the wind blew through the hole created by the friction of the fabric against the power lines.
Four feet below me was a window. I decided to attempt it. It was that, or risk going back out on the power line to the nearest pole and praying that the zombies didn't see me so I could climb down to the surrounding fields.
I swung my legs over the side, laying my upper body flat against the rooftop. Slowly, I shifted my weight back and forth, scooting an inch at a time over the edge. I stretched my toes out underneath me to try and feel for the window. Then gravity took over.
My fingers dug uselessly into the shingles, dislodging a cascade of asphalt pebbles. I was already weakened, bruised and battered from pulling myself along the power line, it didn’t take much to dislodge me from the precarious hold I had.
As I fell, a tiny shower of asphalt raced me to the ground.
*****
“Glad to see you’s comin’ round, friend.” A raspy male voice drifted through the fog in my head.
“Whath?” I tried to ask, but my mouth was dry and cottony.
“Here, take a sip of water. You ain’t had nuthin’ to drink in two days.”
I felt the rigid end of a straw press against my lips and I puckered around it. I drank deeply.
“Whoa! That’s enough for now. Don’t want you gettin’ yeself sick.”
“Thank you,” I replied and pushed myself upward. My body protested in pain and I had to force my eyes to open. An older black man, maybe in his sixties or even seventies, sat in a simple wooden chair beside the bed. His white hair stood out in stark contrast to his dark skin. He wore a simple yellow button-down shirt and overalls.
The room I found myself in was plain. Old wallpaper covered the walls and the dated popcorn texture on the ceiling threatened to drop balls of asbestos on us at any moment.
“Two days?” I asked.
“Yessir. You’s up there climbin’ on my roof, stompin’ around like a damn fool and brought all them zom-bees with ya. Next thing I know, you done fell off and all them fellers were gonna tear you apart. I ain’t had many visitors since this whole mess started and I wasn’t about to let you get eaten. Ain’t good, Christian manners. Had ta put ‘em all down.”
“You killed them?” The blood froze in my veins and the bottom of my stomach fell away.
Time seemed to stand still. The image of the old man’s weather-creased face paused in my brain. The snowflakes falling outside stopped in midair. Even the ticking of the clock hesitated, unwilling to break the silence.
Jeremy was already dead, the voice told me. Even though he was a zombie, he was the last remaining thing from my former life. I couldn’t believe he was gone.
My rescuer shrugged. “Mostly. They’s a couple of ‘em that got away. Fightin’ them zom-bees off with a shovel is hard work for an old man.”
I clung to the thread of hope and leaned forward. “Did you see one—a new one, just turned—dressed with a tan jacket, jeans and…yeah, I think he still had a beanie cap on his head?”
“Beanie cap? Nah, nuthin’ like that stood out to me. But if it came near me, it got its head bashed in.”
I relaxed slightly. There was still the hope that Jeremy was “alive” and not gone forever. “Where am I?”
“You’s in Alstead, son. Now, how the hell’d you get up there on my roof?”
“I got stuck on a power line in a field outside of Langdon where my buddy and I were holed up for a few days. When the zombies didn’t leave, I used the lines to go from pole to pole. Eventually, they brought me here. I thought the farmhouse was abandoned. Sorry.”
“Power lines, huh? What the hell was you doin’ up on a pole? Seems like a good way to get yeself kilt.”
“Yes, well, it was an accidental ascent. The creatures surrounded us and I barely made it up. My friend—the one in the tan coat—didn’t make it.”
“Sorry to hear ‘bout that, feller.” He stuck out his hand. “Ezekiel.”
“Andrew,” I replied, and shook Ezekiel’s hand.
“I don’t think you got any broken bones; nuthin’ that I can see, leastways.”
I tensed the muscles in my lower back, testing the old man’s claims that I was whole. It seemed like I was alright, so I swung my legs over the side of the bed.
“Whoa! Where are my clothes?”
“You done mess yeself several times over. Had to throw ‘em outside.”
“I, uh… Thank you.”
“No problem t’all, Andrew. The Good Lord watches everythin’ we do. Wouldn’t be right o’ me to let ya sit in ya own filth.”
He turned to give me a small amount of privacy. “They’s a bucket o’ water in the washroom, there. It’s cold though, I didn’t know you was gonna wake up this mornin’ else I’da heated it up on the stove.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, thank you.”
“Alright. You get to it. I’ll go make some eggs and bacon.”
The thought of food made my mouth water. How long has it been since I’ve eaten? I wondered as I shuffled stiffly into the bathroom.
A five-gallon bucket of water sat on the floor beside the toilet and a cup sat on the counter. I puzzled through a handwritten note from Ezekiel that would have made poor old Erica Goodell's eyes bleed. Finally, I determined that I could manually add water to the tank in the back of the toilet to flush away my stool and that I should stop up the sink and wash myself there instead of directly from the bucket.
I flushed the toilet and a thump on the floorboards under my feet in the bathroom made me jump. I waited to see if there would be another, but it never came. I laughed softly to myself at my paranoia. This house was likely built long before indoor plumbing and the pipes were added later.
“What would Jeremy say about you getting jumpy?” I asked my reflection in the mirror.
He’d say that you were gonna give yourself a heart attack and needed to mellow out.
Dammit. I couldn’t afford to start talking to myself—or listening to voices in my head. I dressed in a pair of Ezekiel’s overalls that were too small for me and followed the sounds of a pan scraping across the top of a wood-burning stove.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat to let him know that I was there. “I feel much better, thank you.”
“Ain’t no worries, son. Now, come eat and build up some strength. I need help clearin’ them zom-bees from the yard. My chickens is so worked up, they’s stopped layin’ eggs.”
I ate in silence while Ezekiel explained his operation. He had chickens, pigs and two cows for milk that he kept in a barn that I hadn’t noticed because it was set back in the tree line to help protect it from the elements. All his p
rovisions were stored in a cellar that stayed in the low forties—not ideal, but much better than no refrigeration at all. Whatever he couldn’t eat was fed back to the hogs.
The remoteness of his farm had kept him isolated from most of the zombie scourge. He’d learned about them on the radio before the power went out and had only dealt with three of the wandering creatures in the months since the outbreak.
“That’s probably because they tend to stay near the place where they died—unless they’re led away by something interesting.”
“Like you up there on the wire?”
I nodded. “Yeah, like me up on a wire.”
“You believe in Jesus, our Lord and Savior, Andrew?” Ezekiel looked sidelong at me and I was reminded of one of those circus game masters surveying their next mark.
“Yes, I do. I was raised Catholic and went to Mass every week.”
“Catholic, huh? Well, I can work with that. We’ll talk more ‘bout the particulars of what we believe later on. It’s time we moved them bodies away from my house.”
Fully satisfied, I pushed the plate away. “Okay. Are you ready to go now?”
“Oh, I ain’t goin’ back out there. I wrenched my back somethin’ awful swingin’ that darned shovel.” He pointed out the window. “See that ol’ bale of hay out beyond the fence line?”
I followed his finger and saw the big, round hay bale at least a baseball field’s distance from the house. “Yeah…”
“That’s where I dumped them other ‘uns. It’s far enough that the chickens can’t smell ‘em. That’s where they need to go.”
“That’s awfully far away to be dragging bodies and creating noise. What if the others come back?”
He shrugged. “We need food and the chickens make that food. Take my shovel. You ain’t gonna shoot ‘em with that pistol of yours. If you done that, we might as well ring a dinner bell for every darned zom-bee two miles of here.”
The old man had a point. The damned things knew the sounds humans made—and gunfire was definitely a human sound. We’d be trapped. I’d brought the creatures here. It was my responsibility to clean up my mess.
“Fine,” I relented. “I’ll need my coat and boots. Where are they?”
“By the front door.”
I pushed away from the table and he grabbed my arm. “Thank you, Andrew. I couldn’t’ve moved all them things by myself.”
“You’re welcome. Without you, I’d be dead right now. It’s the least I could do.”
*****
“…thirteen, fourteen. I don’t—ah, there you are. Fifteen, sixteen… Son of a bitch, the old man was right.”
I’d counted sixteen dead zombies and Jeremy didn’t appear to be among the bodies. “Where’d he get off to, I wonder?”
Looking for you.
“Gotta stop talking out loud to yourself, Andrew,” I chuckled, ignoring the voice. “Ezekiel’s gonna think you’re crazy.”
Shit. I couldn’t even chastise myself for talking to myself out loud without talking to myself.
“Does that mean I’m not crazy?” I asked the pile of bodies. “I mean, I realize that I’m doing it. Isn’t a sign of mental illness that you don’t know what you’re doing?”
I wasn’t going to figure it out standing in the fresh snow, so I bent to the task of making sure all the zombies were truly dead first. He’d done a fine job of hitting them in the back of the skull where the bones aren’t as tough as in the front.
I grabbed the tattered pants leg of the creature nearest the hay bale and began dragging the corpse toward the dumping ground a few hundred feet away. The smell hit me when I was still the distance from home plate to second base and a wave of nausea swept over me.
“Ugh, God! These things smell even worse when they’re not walking around.”
I pulled the body a few feet and the voice answered, Be glad it’s not summertime, Andrew. This place is going to be horrible then.
It was right. Not only the smell of rotting, rancid meat, but the flies, the buzzards, the maggots. Ugh. I didn’t want anything to do with that.
“Stop it! Stop talking to yourself!” I screamed in frustration and then clamped my hand over my mouth. What had I just done?
Jesus, I really need to get a grip. It wasn’t the end of the world; just the world, as we knew it. I didn’t think that a crazy person would survive long in this new world. I needed to keep it together—and not talking to myself, especially not answering myself, was the first step. Next was figuring out the damn voice in my head.
I really missed Jeremy.
We’d been best friends for more than twenty years, now I was alone, dragging a corpse through a snow-covered field. The world was fucked.
When I made it to the hay bale, I saw that the land formed a small depression on the far side. Near the center were the three bodies that Ezekiel had piled up on one another. I struggled through the final few feet of snow to the frozen pile. I consoled myself in the fact that each successive corpse should be easier to drag as the snow became packed. Only a few more feet and then…
“Ungh!” I grunted as I pulled the zombie over the top of the others and fell into the snow on the far side. “God dammit, Andrew. You’re an idiot. You could’ve just put the damn thing beside the pile. You’re lucky you didn’t sprain ankle—or worse.”
I rolled over onto my stomach to push myself up and something hard poked me in the ribs through my old coat. I reached down to push it out of the way and the offending item broke free of the snow.
It was a bone.
I picked it up and casually examined it. The bone was about eighteen inches long, straight and had a ball socket on one end. It was a human femur.
I glanced back at the pile of zombies. There were three of them, like the old man said, and they seemed intact.
“Where did…?” The snow was uneven and mounded all around me. I’d been fixated on the zombies when I first saw them, but now I was more interested in what was hidden in the snow around the creatures.
I kicked at a high mound and uncovered a head. The hair was still attached to the scalp, but most of the skin seemed to have rotted away. I thought it was a male.
More worrisome was the concaved depression in the back of his skull.
Another large mound revealed a second head and more bones. This one had her skull bashed in as well.
I remembered that I still held the femur bone and brought it up close to my face. Long scratches along the surface that might have been made by a knife marred the ends. The flesh had been cut away.
“Oh my—”
Movement out of the corner of my eye brought my attention up to the edge of the pit. Ezekiel stood there with a shotgun cradled loosely in the crook of his arm.
“Gotta eat, son.”
I retched. The “bacon” from this morning… I lost it and vomited into the snow at my feet.
“You’ll get past it.”
“You sick bastard. You’re eating zombies?” I wiped my mouth and pointed an angry finger at him.
Old Ezekiel chuckled softly. “No, son. I ain’t eatin’ those abominations. The Good Lord wouldn’t permit it. Heck, the meat’s probly poisoned anyways.”
I surveyed the dumping grounds again quickly and then looked up at the farmer. My emotions threatened to overwhelm me as his words sunk in. “You’re eating people, you sick fuck!” I screamed, uncaring if any of the creatures were nearby.
“Don’t see it that way, Andrew. The Lord told me that I had to survive to spread his message. I need food to make it through winter and my hogs ain’t mature yet. Eggs only go so far, especially with them darn zom-bees creepin’ round all the time and scarin’ the hens.”
“Did you ‘help’ these people too?” I gestured violently toward the two skulls I’d discovered. “Were they also road-weary travelers fleeing from one nightmare into the open arms of another?”
“They was a family, lookin’ for shelter. I discovered they was Atheist. Can you believe someone doesn’t b
elieve in God this day and age? The Lord told me they was evil and had to be dealt with. Anyways, they wanted to eat all my food. Seems like a fair trade to me. They ate through most of my canned goods, so now I’s gettin’ a return on my investment.”
The odd thump on the bathroom floor that I’d attributed to the ancient farmhouse plumbing surged to the forefront of my mind. “Family?”
“Yeah. The ma and pa is already butchered and in my cold cellar. Tryin’ to put some meat on the bones of the little one, but she refuses to eat. Mayhap just need to quit tryin’ with that one.”
Ezekiel paused and adjusted the shotgun. “Well, now you know where the meat that you liked so much came from. I need a pair of good, strong hands here to help me out—like with haulin’ all them zom-bees off. What do ya say to stayin’ on as my farmhand? Then, when spring comes, we can begin spreading the message that the Lord is coming back before next winter.”
He’s crazier than you are, Andrew.
“Shut up!” I shouted at the voice. “Are you fucking kidding me, old man? I would never help you. You’re a goddamned cannibal. I—”
He pointed the shotgun barrels at my head. “Thou shalt not take the Lord, thy God’s, name in vain, Andrew. If you ain’t willin’ to stay, I’ll let you live since you’s a Christian, but you gots a whole mess more of them zom-bees to haul down here.”
I laughed. It was a good, hard belly laugh that frustrated Ezekiel. Finally, I recovered enough to say, “And then what? I do all your dirty work and end up with a stick shoved up my ass and an apple in my mouth, roasting over the fire? No thank you.”
BOOM!
The earth erupted beside me as the shotgun blast echoed across the clearing. “That was a warnin’ shot. You know how much pain a twelve gauge slug to the gut would be? You’ll do what I tell ya and then we’ll decide what to do with ya.”
You should keep him talking. He’s coming.
I turned to look over my shoulder and then back the other way. “Who?”
“What’s yer problem?”
Ezekiel looked almost as confused as I likely did. “Did you?”