The Haunted Country

by Jason White

  I retch, but nothing comes up.

  When I’m done, Grant is trying to do the job himself. He has placed the flashlight on the car’s trunk, and in the slight glow it offers, I see things moving in the garage.

  “Grant, the zombies found us!” I say, grabbing the gun from the waist of my pants.

  “No shit,” Grant says. “And if you hadn’t’ve fuckin’ failed, I wouldn’t be wrestling one of them right now.”

  He’s got his fingers in the dead woman’s nostrils and uses that leverage to avoid getting bitten, while at the same time he’s got a handful of the zombie’s blouse by her breast. Carrying her out onto the floor isn’t easy, though. She squirms and fights for that all important mouthful of raw flesh.

  He wrestles her to the floor, clamps her jaw with his boot and shoots the woman in the head. Rotted brain fragments spraying all over my Nikes. I remember when they were white. They’ve been dirty for some time, now they’re wet with blackened blood and rotted chunks of brain. I curse at the thought of having to smell the rotted bitch wherever I go. I don’t have the leisure to dwell on it, though.

  The movement by the garage door, the same one Grant and I opened, is getting a little crowded. I raise my gun and aim at what I’m sure is a head. They’re slow and lumbering, so they must be older zombies. I’m too afraid to step closer to them. Even the old ones can surprise.

  Grant, on the other hand, is the calm, cool, collected hero of stories in regards to this. Where I remain behind, aiming my pistol with care, he charges in like Rambo. His shotgun is aimed high and starts shooting as he approaches the zombies. In the shadows, I can see heads exploding, spraying the undead behind them with gore.

  I step behind Grant and aim to my direct right, towards a naked female zombie he either missed or ignored. Her body is a mass of missing skin and muscle, no doubt from how she had originally died. Her face is missing, her stomach an open and empty sac. The only way I can tell that it was a she is the longish red hair and the two flat sacks of her breasts that miraculously survived. Her teeth gnaw and snap at empty air, the whites bulbs that are the staple of the undead eyes fix on me. Or so it seems, as she’s reaching out for me and I’m just standing here, a deer caught in a floodlight.

  “Shoot her, for fuck’s sake!” Grant says. He’s bent over to my left, reloading the shotgun.

  I raise the Colt again, not knowing when I had lowered it, and pull the trigger. Nothing happens and I remember that I forgot to take the safety off. I do this quickly, but not quickly enough. The naked zombie closes the distance between us, her fingers a mixture of bone and skin that’s falling off. Her touch is hard and cold, and still strong. She grasps my wrist holding the gun with one hand and my throat with the other.

  I pull the trigger.

  Just in time.

  The side of her forehead disappears and her fingers let go. She tumbles to the ground in a lifeless heap, the way it should have been from the beginning. More of them stumble from behind, and Grant’s already pumping the shotgun. The blasts make my ears ring, but they also make my heart sing as the bodies hit the floor. I don’t stand idly by. I empty the Colt’s chambers, reload and keep firing until it’s empty again. My eyes clear and I realize that the room’s empty of the stumbling things for now.

  Grant touches my firing arm.

  “Good work,” he says.

  I reload the Colt with shaking fingers. For some reason, Grant and I are laughing. The laughter quickly dies when something grabs at Grant from his right. I realize it’s the little girl from the Plymouth.

  She’s quick and before any of us can react she has Grant by the neck. She climbs his body with her feet, her teeth snapping at his face. He drops the shotgun in order to fend her off with his hands, but she’s stronger than she looks. Her teeth are snapping open and closed inches from his face.

  “Shoot her!” Grant says, struggling.

  She’s wearing a dress with blue flowers stitched in. The dress reminds me of one that Cindy used to wear, and the blond hair that reaches to the middle of her back, despite the mess it’s in, doesn’t help.

  “Shoot her!” Grant’s desperate now, but again I can’t move. I can’t help but think of this little girl as Cindy. I can hear Cindy screaming in the background. She sounds like a ghost of the vision before me, a vicious specter at my front, her screams to my back.

  “For fuck sake!” Grant screams. The girl’s teeth clatter close to his cheek. His left forearm is thrust into her neck to hold her back, a clump of her hair in his right fist, but this works about as well as it had when I tried to yank the mother out of the car. Rotted skin from the skull peels off with a terrible wet rip.

  The girl doesn’t even react to this. Feeling no pain. If this were Cindy, she wouldn’t be attacking Grant in this way. Most importantly she’d scream until her throat bled from the pain of being scalped.

  I step closer, not wanting to hit Grant. I step right up the little girl. Grant holds her head as straight as possible to help me get a better shot. I put the muzzle against her forehead. With one last look at this undead who was once a young girl resembling my sister, I pull the trigger.

  chapter seven

  “About time!” Grant says. “I was wondering if you wanted to shoot her or kiss her.”

  He wipes at the sweat on his forehead with a shaking hand. He looks tired, as tired as I feel, but we’re far from finished. More zombies have entered the garage. Hesitancy having fled with that last squeeze of the trigger, I turn around and empty the Colt into the new hoard while Grant fumbles for his double-barrel. He finishes off the few remaining stragglers while I reload.

  “You gotta clear these bodies or we’re not getting out of here,” Grant tells me.

  “Why me?”

  “’Cause I gotta fill the Plymouth with the gas I siphoned and then try to get it going.”

  It all seems too complicated. What if the Plymouth doesn’t start? Why didn’t Grant put the gas in Plymouth before now? I want to go back to the house, back to Cindy. I look outside to make sure that she’s safe. Ten to fifteen undead are at the front of the house, pounding on the ruins of the windows, trying to crawl in. Cindy continues to scream, drawing them more than the violence here in the garage has, but less than the bandits. By the dim light of their fire, I see what was once a young boy wearing a sleeved shirt and jeans, all torn like his skin. Beside him is an older woman in similar clothes. Their plaid shirts are so dirty I can no longer tell what the original colors were. I bet that they were once mother and son. Amongst the many other zombies, these two stand out. They hold ropy intestines in their hands, feeding themselves with frantic fervor; stuffing the flesh into their mouths until their cheeks are puffed out and are somehow successful at stuffing more in.

  We in the garage have been forgotten for what seems like a more readily available victim. Perhaps they somehow sense that Cindy is the lesser threat.

  I realize that there’s no going back for her. Not right now. We have no choice but to move now or it’s all over.

  The Colt goes back into the waist of my pants. The barrel burns as I do as I have been told.

  Ten minutes later I have a path cleared and Grant’s in the front seat of the Plymouth, trying to turn over the engine. It chugs and whines, but doesn’t want to go.

  “Come on,” Grant pleads.

  Now I have the shotgun, which I carry with both hands. I’ve been using it like a soldier would in the battle field to take out any zombie that gets too close to the garage, crushing their skulls in with the stock. My pockets are now free of ammo for the Colt as I had taken out the most threatening zombies at the house, the ones trying to get at Cindy. Grant keeps telling me not to worry about her, that he’ll get he’ll have the car going in no time. I don’t know how long he’s been working the damn thing, but it feels like a lifetime, and Cindy’s screams are only attracting more of the undead.

  “Come on!” Grant says to the struggling engine.

  I watch the mother and son
eating their meal. I had considered shooting them, but didn’t want to waste the ammo. I might have gone over there and battered their skulls to mush if there weren’t so many others. I can’t say why I want to do this. Something about them bothers me. Perhaps, if they truly are mother and son, I’m comparing my own position in life with them, thinking that if Cindy and I were to die together, which we probably will, we might end up the same. Immortal. Together forever. It’s not that that thought bothers me. No, it’s the idea of being dead and wandering the country side, always hungry. That bothers me. It makes my skin crawl to think of doing that with someone you’ve known and taken care of all your life. It just seems wrong. Like eating the flesh of the living is something you’d want to do on your own without loved ones seeing you do it.

  A roar from behind and my train of thought is forgotten. It’s something I haven’t heard in months, but it feels like years. That roar of an engine, like the growl of a tiger that slowly morphs into the purr of a kitten. The garage fills up with exhaust fumes, a stench that used to make me feel as though I were asphyxiating, but now smells wonderful. The joy is poisoned with the memory of the family I had dragged out of the Plymouth’s path. This was the last smell they had ever known.

  At least it wasn’t rotting meat.

  I wonder about the kid. My mind creates the family’s final dialogue:

  Daughter: Why are we just sitting here?

  Father: (Sad smile to his daughter) It’s okay, kiddo. We’re just waiting for the engine to warm up.

  Daughter: But it’s hard to breathe!

  Mother: (Tears in her eyes) It’s okay, honey. Just close your eyes. We’ll be on our way soon.

  I erase the thought and turn around at Grant’s hooting and hollering.

  “Get in!” he’s yelling. “Get in the fucking car! We gotta get the hell outta here. I don’t know how long the gas is going to last.”

  I run to the passenger side and hop in, leaving the door open, knowing that we’ll have to move quickly once we get to the house. Grant throws the Plymouth into reverse and storms out of the garage so fast I’m forced to close the door a little so that it doesn’t catch on the side wall as we exit. The rear wheels spin dirt and rocks into the air when we move forward toward the house.

  The sound of it all attracts the zombies. The bandits’ fire had grown in the interim of our garage visit, having caught on to the dry grass, and the whole front yard is lit up with warm reds and oranges. The undead shuffle around the bandits’ truck, their heads tilted or simply hanging, their walk stiff yet drunken. Some of them are on fire.

  Grant slams on the brakes at the front entrance, sliding the Plymouth to a complete stop along the dirt walkway.

  “I don’t wanna leave the car alone with them bastards,” Grant says, motioning to the approaching zombies. “So you’re going to have to get her yourself.”

  The bastard!

  “You’re not coming in to help me?”

  Grant’s eyes focus on mine. His stare is hard and cold. “Listen,” he says. “We cannot leave the car behind. Those dead fucks will just crawl in here and we’ll be eaten while trying to get them out again.” His eyes grow colder. “If you’re not in there and back out in one minute, I’m leaving without you. Do you understand?”

  I have no choice but to nod, though I’m certain that my eyes are stabbing daggers into the asshole’s flesh.

  “Then you’d better get moving. Clock’s ticking.” He raises his arm, showing off an actual watch he’s wearing. He smiles, hands me some shells for the double-barrel, which I’m still holding, then takes his eyes off me and begins studying his watch. It looks like it might have been expensive one day.

  “Huh,” he says, surprised. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

  I slam the door behind me, hoping that the stench inside the vehicle from the rotted family is enough to suffocate him.

  This close to the house, there are more zombies than I had thought crowding the perimeter. I’m not sure when Cindy’s cries had stopped and the silence from inside the house fills me with dread. She usually doesn’t stop crying until long after the disturbance is over. Unless, of course, she has Grant to coo and caw at her.

  One of the zombies must have made it in. I’m betting that they were finally successful at crawling through the window, as the door, as damaged as it is from the bandit’s gunfire, is still closed. I step up to the window closest to me and raise the shot gun. The stock, full of grime from previous clubbing, is sticky against my shoulder, and it stinks, but I try to ignore that. In front of me there are five zombies, two of them are trying to crawl through the window, while the remaining three pound on the first two’s backs and the holes along the window frame.

  I aim and squeeze the trigger. The shotgun slams my shoulder painfully, but the shot is effective. Four of the undead hit the dirt with the fourth spinning around, confused and damaged from buckshot. I save the second shell and take the fifth down with the stock, smashing its head against the wall. Black, maggot-filled ooze leak from the cracks in its skull, and the monster slowly slinks down to the earth, motionless.

  I climb through the window and pain immediately stabs at my fingers. Sharp and fusing my vision in white-hot adrenaline.

  “Fuck!” I yell, and look at my hand. It’s bleeding, with shards of glass sticking out of the flesh there. I pull the biggest ones out quickly and move on.

  “Cindy!” I yell. “CINDY!”

  In the background is the hum of the Plymouth along with the moaning of the undead. I can’t tell if the pounding comes from my heart or the zombies, but I move through all the rooms until I reach the living room. That’s where I hear her cries. They’re terrified whimpers now, the fear so bad that she is probably frozen, unable to move or scream.

  I curse myself for not bringing Grant’s flashlight, but the fire from outside casts a glow inside the living room. It’s strong enough to detect movement to my right. It’s one of the undead. He’s wearing overalls I imagine were once blue denim but now they are black with old blood and flecks of meat. He’s stumbling towards Cindy, who sits huddled in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees. She hides her face and I can hear her muffled cries, low and paralyzed with panic.

  I act quickly and swing the shotgun like a club. It catches the zombie on the side of the head, knocking it against the wall. With one hand on the pump-action, I slide the shotgun through my other hand and grasp the gory stock and again. Like a soldier I pummel the overall-wearing zombie’s head as it leans stunned against the wall. I hit it until there’s a loud crunch, the wet crack of a broken melon, and the zombie collapses.

  I then grab Cindy by the arm and swing her up to her feet. She screams a lungful and I’m again surprised that my ears have never grown used to it. It hurts, but I wrap her in my arms. She struggles and fights until she realizes it me and she slows down, gripping my ribs with her own arms that make it hard for me to breathe.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, but she still cries. Zombies have broken the glass of the living room windows, and one of them is crawling through, falling onto the floor and morbidly reminding me of the time my father thought it would be funny to demonstrate how easy it would be for someone to break into the house if someone left the window open. He was drunk, of course, and after he had crawled through the window, one leg before the other, he had tripped over his own feet and lay in a confused heap, his limbs reaching and swinging at the ceiling as though he had wanted to fight it. Just like the zombie was doing right now, fighting to get back onto its feet.

  Cindy’s cries are only exciting the monsters. Remembering what Grant had told me, I grabbed her chin and raised her face to mine. At first she wouldn’t look into my face, and so I say nothing. Looking at her, I’m surprised by how beautiful she looks. It’s something I’ve never thought of before. She does have a really pretty face.

  “I need you to be quiet, Cindy,” I say. “Grant’s outside with the Plymouth and we’re getting out of here, but I nee
d you to be quiet.”

  It doesn’t work. She continues to cry. I remembered something else Grant said when he got her to calm down.

  “Your crying like that only brings the bad guys. Understand? You need to be quiet.”

  Her eyes find mine, her face frozen with an expression of fear and panic that has become so common these days. She looks at me for only a second or two, but something registers in that time. It’s almost as though she’s agreeing, remembering, and her face relaxes. Her mouth closes into two tightly pressed lips.

  “It’s going to be scary,” I say. “But it’ll be over soon.”

  I pull her against my body and we start for the living room door, bypassing the zombie that had crawled through the window. In life it was an old man, in death it’s an old zombie. Its clothes are so tattered that it’s nearly naked. The dim light of the fire, which I notice is growing bigger outside, illuminates the thick bite wounds on the zombie, now festering with crawling, wriggling maggots.

  Cindy and I run into the kitchen, and from there, the front sitting room with the shot-up windows, the couch and shot-out walls.

  This room is not empty of the undead. There are at least two of them shuffling their way towards me. Then I feel the bony hand on my shoulder, the sudden stench of rotted meat. I turn quickly, knocking Cindy to the floor, and I’m caught in the zombie’s grip. It has my shirt in one hand, my hair in its other. The zombie is missing the flesh of its face and so a skull with stringy rotted meat and a gaping, fully toothed mouth comes at me. I raise my hand up into its chin, my fingers crawling around the insides of its mouth. I can feel the cold slimy slug that is its tongue squirming around in there and I gag. It’s enough to keep the zombie from biting me.

  Cindy begins screaming from behind, but the zombie I’m struggling with has too tight a grip on my hair and I can’t turn around to see what’s happening. In my other hand is the shotgun, the barrel pinned down by my leg so my finger does everything to stay away from the trigger. The last thing I need right now is to blow my own leg off. I struggle and move, finally releasing the gun and I raise it, planting the stock against my right hip for leverage and stick the barrel into the undead’s torn and empty nasal cavity.