Dead Soil: A Zombie Series

by Alex Apostol

  She stared at herself in the full-length mirror that leaned up against the wall in the darkened closet. Her porcelain skin stood out amongst the shadows. She clenched her jaw to keep her lips from quivering. She was faced with the fact that Liam might not come back. She couldn’t swallow.

  “Don’t cry,” she whispered to herself. “Not now. You can’t.” She wiped at her face and took a deep breath.

  “You want Cheerios or Fruit Loops for breakfast?” Liam called from the kitchen.

  “Fruit Loops,” she called back. They tasted better dry. She walked out and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  At eight o’clock everyone who was left in the building gathered outside Liam and Christine’s apartment, like every morning, except for Sally and Lilly who stayed behind in their own. No one saw much of them since the dispiriting funeral.

  The sun shone through the hallway from one end, lighting it up like a tunnel to heaven. Christine leaned her back against the yellow wood-sided wall next to the opened door to her apartment. She folded her arms, let her head fall back, and closed her eyes for a second as the others joined her. She worried that if they caught of glimpse of what was behind her eyes they’d be able to tell she was scared for Liam’s life, unsure if he could handle himself out there or if he’d make it back.

  “Anyone seen Luke?” Liam asked as he scanned the hallway and stairs.

  Zack was all geared up in his black padding. He’d found a new bullet proof vest that had more pockets and connectors to hang things from while out on his last run. On more than one occasion Christine had suggested he also try to find a razor and trim up his beard. It looked shaggier by the day, like a wooly caveman preparing for winter.

  “I got in late last night,” he said to Liam.

  Jerry just shrugged his bulging shoulders, one hand tucked into his jeans pocket while the other held onto a steaming cup of coffee. He sipped at it. He didn’t look too concerned either way.

  Ralph leaned on the handle of his upside down axe, the one he’d found two weeks ago when he was out searching for more baby food. Luke’s apartment was directly above his and he often heard the comforting sound of footsteps over his head. Last night had been silent. “I haven’t heard anything,” he said. His face was solid, but grave.

  Liam nodded with both hands rested on his hips. “Right, well, let’s head out.” He gave Christine a kiss. “I’ll be back after we sweep the building to say goodbye,” he assured her as he cupped her face in his hands. He kissed her again and let it linger before he turned to join the others.

  “I’ll keep watch,” she said with a sense of duty, her chin raised upward and pointed out.

  As soon as Liam disappeared to the third floor, she went back inside and locked the door. Her shoulders sagged and her chin sank back to its normal level. Dragging her feet, she went out onto the patio.

  The door was left wide open to allow the warm breeze to flow through the apartment. Since the power went out, the air had become stifling inside. Christine had awoken in the middle of the night with sweat soaked into her pillow, gasping for air as if she’d never catch her breath again. As she sat in the plastic lawn chair and kicked her feet up onto the railing, crossed at the ankles, she considered that it could have been from her dream. It was the third night she’d had the same one. Each night, it filled her heart with an ever-deepening dread.

  She leaned over the side of the chair and reached for the binoculars that sat of the ground. Christine had taken up on her own the daily job of keeping watch over the parking lot for people, dead or alive. She wanted to feel like a valuable, contributing citizen again, but it was boring to sit in the heat all day alone. It was just another day in her life as she watched nothing happen in her small, small world.

  She took a long sip from her water bottle. The thermometer hanging on the storage closet’s door handle read eighty-five and it was only eight-ten. It was going to be another hot one. A group of birds flew back and forth, chasing each other through the sky above the lot, singing a song no one had ever heard before. Mr. Alexander walked slowly out from around the side of the building next door and lumbered over to the Dumpster. One of his feet dragged behind him, mangled and squished pancake flat.

  “Ah, someone’s early today,” Christine said to herself.

  She’d never told anyone about the dead Mr. Alexander who wandered around the premises. She reasoned that the group was only concerned with what went on in their own building for the time being, not anyone else’s and technically Mr. Alexander had never shown an interest in their building. No one else had seen him on their way in or out, either.

  Her mind often wondered where Mr. Alexander went when he wasn’t Dumpster diving. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she laughed and watched as the rotting corpse leaned over the square window-sized opening and rummaged for something alive to much on.

  A piece of his torn skin caught on the corner of the metal sliding door. When he reemerged, it decorticated like the peeling of an orange until all the gooey underneath of his entire left side was exposed, neck to hip. The sheet of leathery skin hung down at his knees like a long shirt tied around his waist. Christine gagged and hid her eyes behind her hands.

  IV.

  The four men of building six stood in a row outside Luke’s door. They all clutched their weapons tightly in their hands. Liam remained steady with one of his arrows knocked and ready to release. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

  Jerry had his pistol grip shotgun pointed at the exact level Luke’s head would be if some version of him were in the apartment, ready to spring out the moment the door was opened.

  Zack had his sharpened sword raised to the side and behind his neck, eager to roll some heads, almost hoping to see the ravenous corpse of Luke Benson so he could decapitate it with a vengeance.

  Ralph held his axe firmly in both hands, his knuckles white from the pressure he applied to keep from shaking. All he could think about was that one story below his feet his wife and baby girl were having a morning cup of coffee and a bottle of milk. There was nowhere else in the world he would’ve rather been than with them. Sally wasn’t the same after her mother died. All hope had been extinguished from her once lively eyes to leave them dull and lifeless, as if she were making the slow, excruciating transformation into one of the dead.

  “Right,” Liam said softly and cleared his throat, which broke the tension that hung in the air. He leaned forward and knocked three times, then immediately straightened himself back into a readied position.

  They all looked at each other after a few seconds went by and the door remained closed.

  “Maybe he’s asleep,” Liam said and knocked again with more force.

  They heard a thud from the other side of the door.

  “Fuck this,” Zack said. He pulled the crowbar from his backpack and jammed it in. He pushed with all his weight and the door flew open with a crash as shards of wood fell to the floor.

  A bloodied, disheveled body tumbled forward with its arms stretched out to grab whomever it could get its hardened fingers around. Jerry was the first to jump into action. He charged in, using his gun like a bat, and cracked the thing in the side of the head. It did a one-eighty and slammed, face first, into the wall.

  But as the gun swung around, so did Jerry’s cylindrical, unsteady body. He fell against the wall and grasped at the lower right side of his back. His face was stretched into a painful grimace.

  The decomposing body wasn’t fazed at all by what should have been a paralyzing blow. It merely rebounded and continued to come at the group with its red teeth gnashed and its arms out.

  Everyone stood frozen as they tried to get a look at it, see if they could recognize any hint of their missing neighbor in its face. Its skin was light and its hair fell around its sickly eyes in brown waves. It was at least six feet in height. It wasn’t Luke.

  Jerry pushed himself from the wall and charged the corpse again just as its hands were about to claps around the sleeve of Ralph’s
shirt. The two collided in a jumble into the apartment and fell to the floor, taking an end table and a lamp down with them. Jerry writhed as his back muscles spasmed, enough time for the unidentified rotting corpse to climb onto him and grab to pull Jerry closer to its discolored, oozing mouth.

  The smell of its rotting skin was rancid, like old meat left to spoil out in the summer sun. Every time it bit the air its breath rushed over Jerry’s face and made him want to throw up. It gurgled the thick fluids stuck deep within its throat. A pink string fell from its cracked lips onto Jerry’s cheek as it let out a raspy hiss inches above him.

  The shotgun lay over Jerry’s chest, grasped tightly in both his hands. He pushed it up and into the vicious dead thing’s throat so it couldn’t lower itself to bite him. Jerry’s aged arms shook as the heavy body sank down lower. Its teeth snapped at the air an inch from Jerry’s nose, getting ever closer as his arms gave out. He looked into its glazed over eyes, like those of a great white shark on the hunt.

  Like a guardian angel, an arrow shot out from the hallway and landed in the center of the writhing zombie’s forehead. Black blood dripped from the hole onto Jerry’s neck and chest. He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut tight and inwardly prayed that none of the blood made its way in as he rolled the dead weight off of him. He let out a wounded cry as the pain in his back intensified.

  A hand reached down and he grabbed onto it. He heaved himself up with another agonizing groan and stood hunched over as he gripped his back. He wiped his face with the bottom of his white tank top despite the pain it caused to move.

  When he opened his eyes again he saw that it was Ralph who had helped him up. He gave him a nod. Ralph smiled back, his hands still shaking as he held onto the axe. They both turned to look back at Liam, but he was gone.

  “Let’s get this body down with the rest of ‘em,” Zack said as he slapped the back of his hand against Ralph’s chest. “You go home,” he pointed at Jerry, who nodded his head and hobbled out of the apartment without any argument. “On three. One. Two. Three.” They each gave heaving grumbles as they lifted the limp body off the floor.

  V.

  Liam Scott leaned over the railing at the back of the building on the second floor. He thought he could make it all the way home without throwing up, but it crept up on him as he bounded down the stairs. He didn’t want to heave over the side facing the parking lot, because he knew Christine would hear him. Their patio lie just on the other side of the wall. He didn’t want to give Christine a reason to delay him from going out on his first run with everyone else. He was ready, at least he thought he was, before he saw Jerry almost eaten alive.

  He wiped his mouth and spat at the ground twenty feet below him. For a few fleeting moments, he stared out over the wooden fence that surrounded the complex. There was a small group of zombies that gathered on the opposite side day and night, their fingers continually extending up to get to the fresh meat that thrived just out of reach.

  Liam shook his head and beat the palm of his hand down on the railing. How could he have been so stupid to think everyone would come out of this alive? Luke was missing, probably dead, and Jerry was hurt. Two men instead of four, that’s who Liam had to rely on while he was out there. His stomach strangled his insides.

  Christine had only locked the deadbolt so Liam could let himself in with his key whenever he was done with the day’s sweep. She jumped when she heard the click of the lock so soon after he left. Her legs dropped from the railing and she leaned over in her chair to look inside the opened patio door.

  Liam turned several of the deadbolt locks closed once inside before he joined her out on the patio. His bow was still in his hand and his quiver over his shoulder. He set the quiver down to lean against the wall.

  “Everything alright?” she asked as she examined him. “Is Luke OK?”

  Liam stretched his lips into a grim smile and nodded. He sat in the matching chair next to hers and laid his bow across his lap. “One of them was in Luke’s flat.”

  Christine took a sharp breath and sat up straight. “Oh,” she exhaled softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t him. I don’t know who it was or how it got in there. The door was closed.”

  “Did you? I mean…did you have to…?”

  Liam nodded again and stared down at his clasped hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s fine. Jerry’s hurt, but he’ll be all right,” he said with a sniff. He composed himself and sat upright.

  “Do you think someone brought it up there? I mean, from what we’ve seen, those things can’t climb stairs, or at least they haven’t tried to yet, and his apartment is on the top floor. Who would do that?” she rambled on as she tried to work it out in her head.

  “I have no idea.”

  Suddenly, Liam’s back stiffened and hovered inches above the back of the chair as he looked down. “What do we have here?” he asked as he pointed his bow out into the parking lot.

  “Oh, Mr. Alexander,” Christine said casually as her voice lifted again to its normal perkiness. “He likes to come out at least once a day and dig through the Dumpster for some reason. Apparently the crumble of civilization also means the rise of the rats. He has no trouble finding them.”

  She talked about Mr. Alexander as if he were still the old man from the building next door whose mind had started to drift away. As if the zombie state was the inevitable final stage in his advancing Alzheimer’s.

  “He’s getting especially good at finding these little field mice,” Christine laughed as the decrepit zombie leaned in at the waist with its legs ready to leave the ground. “I don’t know what he’d do if he ever actually fell in there,” she chuckled. “Probably take him a week to get out again.”

  She heard the flick of string and fell silent. When she turned to look, Mr. Alexander was lying still on the ground, face down, with an arrow sticking out from the back of his head.

  Liam glared at her. His lips were pursed tight and his eyes flamed with an angry passion. There was a wildness to him that Christine had never seen before. An icy chill ran down her spine. She shivered in the hot, summer air as goosebumps rose from under her fair skin.

  “You shouldn’t have let him live this long,” Liam said as he got up. “If you can even call that living.” He stalked off into the house and shut himself in the bedroom.

  Through the window, Christine heard the rustle of boxes as Liam stuffed supplies into his backpack. With the way he looked when he got home, almost catatonic, she hadn’t been sure if he was still going to go with the others on the run. But after witnessing the seething burn behind his once sweet hazel eyes, she knew there was no stopping him.

  It was wrong, but for a moment she had let herself hope that he was in too bad of a mental state to leave her alone for the first time in six weeks. As she listened to him prepare to leave, a twinge constricted her throat. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry.

  She attempted to keep her eyes averted from Mr. Alexander’s body, but they couldn’t stay away. Dark, thick blood had pooled around the head and stained the wispy white hairs. She quickly looked away again and bit her bottom lip. There was no reason to feel sad for Mr. Alexander. She knew that. He’d died a long time ago.

  Liam came bounding out of the bedroom with his bag packed and a new crossbow clutched in his hand where his longbow had been. He gripped the door frame to the patio as he leaned his head around. “I’m heading out now,” he said casually, as if he were going for some take-out dinner.

  Christine nodded and stared ahead at the cloudless blue sky. Her mind felt numb. The limbs of her body refused to move.

  When she didn’t say anything in return, Liam disappeared from the doorway and began unlocking the front door.

  “Liam, wait,” Christine finally called as she rushed back into the apartment.

  He continued to unlock the deadbolts, but stopped before he opened the door. He turned to look
over his shoulder with his hand on the doorknob.

  “I was thinking…now that you’re down a man maybe I could join you guys…out there.” Her voice petered off at the end when she saw the intensity of his glare.

  “You want to go out there?” he asked as he jabbed the menacing black crossbow through the air at the living room window.

  She swallowed, let her shoulders drop, and stretched her neck out a bit. “Yes. I want to go out there.”

  “No.” He turned back for the door.

  She grabbed him by the shoulders and whirled him around. “You need me,” she said through her teeth. “I’m not weak! I can help!”

  Liam’s eyes grew wider the louder her voice got. He clenched his teeth and ground them slowly as he let out a long, heavy breath. The day he’d feared had finally arrived. He felt like a fool for thinking Christine would’ve ever been satisfied with a life of being tucked away, safe behind the walls, doors, and locks of their home. He’d hoped. He’d even prayed, though he had no God he believed in anymore.

  None of it worked apparently, because there she stood, heaving in a frenzy over going out into the changed world. “We’ll start training you tonight.”

  Christine’s heart gave a giant leap, not from the thrill of having Liam agree to let her do something, but from the relief of not having to leave right that minute. There was no way she was ready and she wasn’t going to argue otherwise. In fact, the moment she suggested it, she mentally kicked her own ass. She would whoop herself into shape, though, if it meant her days of sitting, bored and sweating, on the patio to watch the leaves rustle in the almost non-existent breeze were over.

  Before Christine could thank him, Liam was gone.

  VI.

  Anita crouched down in front of a thick, green bush with red berries. She plucked one of the spherical fruits off with her thumb and index finger and inspected it, held it close to her eye and then pulled it far away. She stuck her tongue out and licked it, but wasn’t able to taste anything. Her eyes narrowed as she scrutinized some more.