Xenia, After

by Joe Schlegel

  Her eyes snapped to Parrish’s thin mustache, “I’m not stripping down for your perverted pleasure, asshole!”

  “Don’t be absurd! We’re only interested in containing the infection!”

  Percival motioned with his rifle, “Step away from the door!” As she trudged closer to them, he stepped sideways away from his partner.

  He allowed her to travel a few steps away from the old restaurant, but kept her between both gun points. “Right there’s good,” he halted her. “Be still and quiet while we sort out this bar. Next one! Step out here now!”

  In Anika’s peripheral, however, she spied a greater threat

  And it sprinted from just behind Percival. Its decrepit arms flailed out to grasp its dinner.

  She drew in a deep, calming breath.

  Then she exhaled slowly, bracingly.

  Anika glared at Percival, at the lavender circles beneath his eyes, but her peripheral attention gauged its approach. “What’s your plan when there aren’t any more people in there, but you don’t believe us?”

  “I guess we start shooting at floor level then, don’t we?”

  “But if everyone is uninfected,” Parrish chimed in, his thin mustache tilted skeptically, “why not come out and prove it? What is to fear from the truth?”

  The restaurant door opened behind Anika, and the other woman stepped out onto the gravel. She squinted into the sunset glare and held her hands out in obedient surrender.

  “Arms and legs!”

  Over Percival’s shoulder, Anika studied the incoming one.

  She took a large, pronounced forward step.

  Poised and with an expectant wince on her face, she watched the gunman out of the corner of her eye.

  “What the hell are you doing—”

  It tackled Percival.

  As he launched forward, Anika ripped the rifle from his hands.

  She swung the sights around to Parrish. And she opened fire.

  Automatic gunfire ripped and shredded through his chest. Pain and fear and surprise numbly contorted his face as life rapidly vanished from his eyes.

  Anika swept the rifle sights down near her ankles and executed it, point blank. She retreated swiftly as she squeezed the trigger.

  Percival panicked from beneath its warm body, “Shoot me! Kill me! Don’t let me become one of them!”

  “They don’t get to claim you,” Anika seethed, “I do! But know that each one of you weak-willed, ignorant assholes deserves to suffer for what you’ve done to Xenia.”

  She leveled the barrel and fired.

  He quickly expired beneath it.

  The other woman rushed to pick up Parrish’s rifle. She surveyed around for more of them.

  Gunshots from the middle of town drew their attention up Detroit Street.

  Anika shouted into the bar, “The coast is clear! Grab your guns! They need our help in town!”

  On his belly, Norman crawled hurriedly away from the return shooter.

  Trapper trained his sights along the roofline. He waited for the gunman to reappear.

  “I didn’t get him,” he grumbled. “He’s still over there.”

  “I can flush him out of I get back to ground level,” Conrad planned aloud, “run right up underneath that son of a bitch, but I’ll still need you for cover fire until I get there. You sure you got this? Or do you want to switch—”

  Trapper pulled his head back from his rifle and shot his friend a fierce, indignant scowl. “I’ve been neck deep in the bowels of Afghanistan and never lost a man! I think I can handle myself against a few untrained civilians just fucking fine!”

  “Then there’s no one else I’d want watching my back, brother!”

  Conrad dashed back along the path of wood doors, scrambled down the strip of dangling chain link, then raced across the basketball court. He shouldered out through the hole in the fence.

  As he descended the fire escape, Vanora sprinted into the parking lot from the street, her pompadour loose and disheveled.

  She noticed Conrad immediately. Not recognizing a polo shirt-wearing member of her congregation, she reactively opened fire.

  Bullets ricocheted off the fire escape.

  Conrad aimed his rifle from his hip, and he squeezed the trigger desperately.

  The duel of gunfire exploded with matching echoes.

  But Conrad’s aim proved truer.

  Vanora stumbled, then collapsed.

  A final bullet sliced along the skin of Conrad’s right tricep. He winced and howled, and curled his arm up tenderly.

  The wound burned and sizzled.

  He forced himself beyond the pain, beyond the agony. Conrad descended the fire escape with his sights still trained on Vanora. Her weak movements dissolved into numb flailing as crimson life poured onto the asphalt around her.

  One of them turned the corner, in chase for her. Its screeches echoed.

  Conrad fired a few more rounds.

  It collapsed a dozen yards short of its would-be prey.

  She had plans to attack, he knew. After the short bout of gunfire in the street, she sought to flank her enemy, to emerge from the underpass behind the jail and attack the contingent again.

  He leapt down from the end of the fire escape, and he jogged in the direction she headed.

  Conrad darted through the jail’s underpass, a wide, squat tunnel that opened up just beside the courthouse. In the small road it spilled into, a small gathering of survivors huddled together. Some nursed fresh wounds while others had their wounds nursed by another. None had expected the side attack from Vanora.

  Ben called to him, “Tell me you saw that psycho bitch!”

  “Yeah, I got her! She’s no longer in the picture!”

  “She managed to pepper a few of us, got some serious injuries in the group already. This fight isn’t looking good.”

  “If anyone can fire a gun,” Conrad implored, “they need to try—”

  Two of them screeched and babbled as they ran through the underpass, in chase of Conrad.

  He turned, raised his rifle—

  “No,” Ben shouted. “We’re only luring more straight at us, and the wounded can’t move fast enough to escape!”

  From the discarded dregs at his feet, he picked up a metal baseball bat.

  And he charged the first one.

  He reared it back, sideways.

  Stepping into his swing, the bat glanced off its skull in a diagonal arc. Its temple shattered and caved in as its feet swept out from under it.

  It crashed to the ground.

  Ben swung down into its face. It crushed inward, and it flailed numbly, slowly as it expired.

  He faced the second. Gripping the end of the handle with one hand, he swung the bat level, sideways into its jaw.

  Its face cracked upward, and rotted blood squirted and oozed from its busted mouth.

  It stumbled sideways into the wall of the squat underpass, dazed.

  Ben wound up the baseball bat with both hands, his elbow stuck out in perfect batting form.

  He swung into the back of its head.

  Decayed brain and curdled blood splattered onto the wall as its skull shattered. Its body collapsed and convulsed helplessly.

  “Scare up a little less commotion around the wounded,” Ben demanded. “We can’t invite more trouble than we can handle.”

  Conrad motioned up to the jail’s nearby corner. “If Trapper spots any trouble, his cover fire will do that all by itself. Get the injured back into the library, and get everyone else strapped with a gun! Watch every corner in case they’re moving in on us!”

  The contingent followed Jake and Ben to the library, and the maimed survivors leaned on others for support.

  They snuck between the city trucks.

  Mohammad joined them, the feasting coyotes far behind him.

  Conrad split off from the group, and he ran toward Detroit Street.

  He aimed up and down the cluttered road, suspicious of every vehicle and chunk of debris th
at possibly hid a homicidal cult member. And under Trapper’s protective sights, he advanced across the four-lane street, toward the parking lot sandwiched between the two L-shaped strip malls.

  Norman ducked out from the access ladder in the corner and squeezed past the peeled-away fencing.

  He bolted around the parked cars, sideways toward Main Street.

  Conrad caught a glimpse of him.

  At the corner just before he entered the parking lot, he shouldered himself against the wall.

  He peered around cautiously, alert for a trap or a second gunman.

  Norman dashed away, halfway across the lot.

  Conrad searched fervently. But no support gunman appeared.

  He crept around the corner.

  And he maneuvered up beside a leftover pickup truck.

  Conrad scanned the lot again.

  Then he advanced further.

  Up ahead, Norman sprinted out onto the sidewalk, ran away from the central intersection, and followed it out of sight.

  Conrad edged around the pickup and surged to a van a few spots away, alert for any enemy movement.

  Still, the lot appeared empty.

  He neared the sidewalk.

  And he checked the central intersection.

  No one posted near the generators, not contingent nor cult.

  Conrad pivoted away, and he spotted Norman further down Main Street. Rifle in his hands, he chased.

  He pushed himself into a mad dash.

  Norman heard the footsteps.

  He peered around him. Conrad charged angrily, his own rifle swung in his hands.

  Frightened, Norman charged faster. He spotted one of them. It rushed from the expansive parking lot on his right.

  It noticed both humans, and it ran on decomposing legs.

  Another shrill screech announced the approach of yet another. From further along Main Street, it scrambled toward the central intersection.

  Norman tossed his rifle aside, and he veered left toward the smaller businesses. His speed increased without the weight of his weapon.

  He targeted the aluminum ladder which leaned against the old jewelry store.

  Conrad lobbed his gun over his head too, determined not to be left on the ground once the gunman reached the safety of the roof.

  They converged closer.

  And their screeches attracted still another.

  Norman slowed only a few feet from the ladder.

  He climbed the rungs briskly. It shook and wobbled with each frenzied step.

  Then he bounded desperately onto the roof.

  But he didn’t pause for even the smallest breath of relief of victory.

  Norman scrambled back toward the ladder.

  He leaned over the edge to knock it away—

  Conrad gripped the aluminum frame. He lifted it sharply into the air.

  The top rung smacked Norman’s jaw.

  He stumbled backward, away from the ledge.

  Furiously, hurriedly, Conrad climbed the ladder.

  Only a few paces behind him, the first one slammed itself bodily into the bottom of the ladder.

  It smacked into the building.

  Then the second one dove sideways into the first. Their angry, hungry flailing knocked the ladder sideways and off-balance.

  Conrad jumped for the ledge.

  His palms gripped the concrete.

  The ladder fell away, and he dangled.

  He lifted himself up from the side of the building, and he pushed through the pain of his singed tricep, courtesy of Vanora’s final bullet.

  Conrad rolled out onto the roof.

  Mostly recovered from his daze, Norman scurried, frightened, to the other side.

  The two of them screamed and babbled from the ground. They attracted several others within earshot.

  27.

  A Bid for Purgatory

  They faced each other from opposite sides of the old jeweler’s roof.

  Conrad appraised Norman’s side part haircut, shaggy and oily. The grown man grew only a faint mustache above his lip and patches of hairs on his cheeks, the timid offerings from a feeble puberty long since passed. His clothes hung from his frame, a size larger than he needed from his somewhat chubbier life before the outbreak.

  Registering the man, the Shawnee moderator felt as though he truly looked his way for the first time. An enemy hid among the ranks outside the cult.

  And he appeared far less of a threat hand-to-hand than the late David.

  “Dusk is upon us,” Conrad observed. “And that means that no one will look for us until the sun comes back up in the morning. It’s just you and me ...and them. I promise you this right now, whoever falls asleep first, dies.”

  Norman withdrew a sharpened, drop point knife. He held it down by his side, “Don’t you touch me, asshole.”

  “You know how to use that?”

  He slipped his own hunting knife from a sheath, and he raised it to point at Norman.

  The menacing glint spooked the cult’s gunman, “Just leave me alone!”

  Norman stifled a yawn.

  Conrad smirked.

  “One of us won’t see sunrise,” he taunted, “and you’re already tired. That bodes very well for me.”

  “I’m wide awake!”

  “Nah – always hanging around in the back, never mixing it up like the rest of us? This is the most action you’ve seen in a while, isn’t it? You’re already worn out from the adrenaline.” He crouched and rested his hands on his knees, yet kept his knife gripped firmly in his fist, “Rock a bye baby, on the tree top—”

  “SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!”

  Norman advanced several steps.

  Conrad postured into a striking pose. He readied the knife for a savage fight. His battle expertise hardened his gaze and sculpted his predatory posture.

  It withered Norman’s prospects.

  He withdrew and lowered the knife to his side, as nonthreatening as a sharpened weapon might appear.

  Conrad stood back up, his shoulders relaxed yet confident. “When the wind blows, this cradle will rock—”

  “SHUT THE HELL UP!”

  Covering his ears, Norman tilted his head sideways, and he quieted the world between his shoulder and his free hand. He clenched his eyes momentarily, terrified.

  He opened them quickly.

  Conrad halted. He had taken two steps.

  Norman pointed his knife threateningly, “STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!”

  But his opponent merely lowered himself back into attack position.

  Conrad smirked, confident. “When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall.”

  Norman retreated several steps.

  He glanced back to check his distance to the ledge.

  Then he snapped his head back in front of him.

  Conrad stood upright and perfectly still – but he had advanced two more steps just that swiftly.

  “Down will come baby, cradle and all.”

  A tear formed in the corner of Norman’s eye, “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!”

  “Says the man who opened fire on us first. And no, asshole, your alliance has taken the lives of too many good men and women – your tears do not earn you a pass here.”

  “I had no choice—”

  “You always have a choice. And you chose to buy into some half-cocked bullshit. Now I choose to survive this rooftop alone.”

  Norman digested the words, and he debated his options.

  Desperately, he raised the knife point to his own chest. More tears streamed down his face when he felt the point’s pressure through his shirt.

  Conrad tilted his head slightly, curiously. “Suicide is a mortal fault, though. Not much will save you from the sins you haven’t cleansed through confession, right? Straight to Hell with ya, no appeals possible.”

  Norman, defeated, dropped the knife to the ground.

  He whimpered.

  “Pick it back up,” Conrad ordered.

  But Norman shook his head.
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  Conrad advanced. The gunman’s posture sank even lower. It deteriorated with each passing moment of his last seconds on Earth.

  He stopped within a couple feet of Norman. “Pick it up.”

  Still, he only managed to whimper. He silently refused to accept his weapon.

  Conrad stepped up to within a few inches of Norman’s nose.

  He stared fiercely into the terrified man’s eyes.

  “Go wander in Purgatory, bitch.”

  Conrad shoved him in his chest.

  Norman stumbled backward two steps.

  His heels smacked the ledge.

  He toppled over and fell.

  When he slammed into the concrete, he cried out briefly from agony. It rang loud enough to attract them from around the corner.

  Conrad stepped away from the ledge as soon as they scrambled into view. He chose not to watch that carnage unfold ...again.

  He surveyed Main Street, with the central intersection in the short distance and the courthouse overlooking it.

  Below him, they feasted greedily, noisily. “I have to listen to that all fucking night...”

  28.

  The Complacent Flock

  Amid the unspoiled silence, Aaron raised his head. He opened his eyes from prayer.

  The sun sank below the canopy of gray clouds, and it shone dark yellow across the evening horizon.

  He knelt respectfully on a small porch, hidden in early dusk shadows by the line the thick trees just past the driveways. Just beyond the foliage, Detroit Street rested, silent. On either side of him, Emily, with her skeletal features, and Edward, with his eyebrow wart, mimicked his bowed posture.

  “It is done,” Aaron observed.

  They raised their heads and gazed upon their leader. Patiently, they waited his bidding.

  “The Lord has shown me our deserving victory, and the flock proves complacent and ruly once again. This town may just survive Winter after all!”

  He rose. And he motioned Emily and Edward up as well.

  On their feet, they readied their rifles.

  They followed Aaron off the porch, along the narrow walkway, and beyond the driveway

  From between the thick foliage, they emerged in the middle of Detroit Street.

  Side-by-side-by-side, the trio paraded up toward the central intersection, still and uninhabited. They searched up and around for their fellow believers.