The Haunted Country

by Jason White

  We remain silent. Unmoving. I can’t see Grant, but Paul is beside me, his wrinkled eyes no longer wrinkled. They stare at me wide-eyed. It’s almost comical the way he holds his finger up at his pursed lips as he stares at me, signaling for me to remain quiet. He must think I’m about as smart as my sister.

  A few more bullets spray the bushes around us, and then the woman says, “Come on. You’re just wasting time and ammo. We’d better finish this division, or Max will have our heads on stakes tonight.”

  I imagine they search the rest of the house finding no more zombies. They finally exit the house and move on to the house on our left.

  We wait for what feels like hours. There are more SUVs out there, more men and women with guns. There are more gunshots and hungry moans and the odd “Waahoo!” of excitement. Voices carry through the afternoon, excited, speaking of some party they’re having tonight after finding a fairly well-stocked liquor store. Some bullets are fired uselessly into the sky.

  We wait until we’re certain that they’ve moved on to another division, or at least the other side of this one. We climb through the shattered wood of the fence, stepping into the backyard. Undead bodies lie in odd positions, some with their arms reaching for the sky. I’m reminded of old World War II pictures of dead Nazi and American soldiers in similar positions. I can see how zombies would fall dead that way, all stiff and reaching for the sky. I never understood how warm, soft flesh did. Were they that tense when the final bullet took them down? A sort of immediate rigor mortis?

  Two wooden fences block our way around the house, Paul tells us. He also says that he had to go through the house to get to Bill’s. “It’s the easiest path to the man’s house,” he says. “Even with the zombie those fuckers just took out it was a slow one. So long as you had light and knew where it was, you had no problems getting around it.”

  “Why not just take the zombie out?” Grant asks.

  “I don’t know,” Paul says as we step through what was once the rear sliding glass door. Now it’s nothing but shattered glass under a sheet of snow. The shards crunch below our boots. “I guess I just never bothered. It never hurt me. It was stuck in the living room just wandering around in there. I don’t think it wanted to eat me, like the others. Whatever. It’s the house with the least amount of undead along this street. I found that one out the hard way,” he says with a short laugh.

  Winter has invaded the innards of the house, with snow and ice all along the floor, counter and cupboards of the kitchen. In the corner diagonally from me, between the fridge and stove, two legs stick out of the snow that had drifted past the counter and up to the cupboards above. Between the snowy legs was what looked like the stock of a shotgun or rifle.

  Grim endings.

  I shudder.

  We move into the living room. The front windows are all shattered as well, with snow drifts covering the couch, the coffee table and easy chair. More bodies in here, including the zombie the soldiers had taken out. It lies nearest the kitchen, its head up against the wall. A massive hole on the side of its head where the bullet exited. Black muck had sprayed the wall beside it . Slowly it drips down refusing to freeze. Black tears of Hell with chunks of rotted brain and slow lethargic maggots.

  All of the bodies stink, but it doesn’t overwhelm the frost and snow, the scent of winter that invades this home. Gone, however, is the scent of the people who lived here.

  We move on, past other frozen bodies. Gunfire erupts to our left and I remember that living, breathing humans are the bigger problem right now.

  Once we’re back outside, we stick to the bushes, the drainage ditches. Although we stay off the roads, we do follow their path. Nobody talks and we stay close to the front of the houses. We cross a street. Down the block, on our right, is a set of traffic lights, so we must be close, or are at least running parallel to the main street Paul talked about. Truck engines are louder here, the sound of peoples’ voices. Laughter and cries bounce off the walls of the houses within the subdivision. The deeper we go, the closer we get, the more I want to turn back.

  They sound organized beyond our control or capacity to break in and out. We’re not military trained. We have no idea what we’re doing. Yet forward we go, into a subdivision older than the last one. We stick to the backyards, and Paul turns to us and says, “We cleared these houses out ages ago. Were using them for food and whatnot.” Evidence of the so-called army men having swept through here is strong, though. Busted front doors peek at us from across the street between properties we pass. There’s a lot less fences back here than the other subdivision, and Paul explains why.

  “We had to tear down all the fences to make it easier for us to get around,” he says, the words coming in puffs. “Those zombie bastards liked to keep to the streets last summer for some reason, so getting supplies from here was sometimes trying work.”

  Slogging through the snow is trying, as well. My lungs burn with exertion. Beside me Grant huffs and puffs, the big bad wolf with no expression of discomfort on his face. He plows through the snow like a warrior. He must have been an athlete back in the day. Or maybe he was a military man himself. A cop? Whatever it was, it always surprises me his seemingly complacent endurance even when faced with hunger and no hope. I can picture him slitting someone’s throat with that calm, unamused face, a man gutting his thousandth fish.

  We come to a sharp turn in the road and the end of houses for this area. Before us lies a field. Across from that stretches a street wide enough for four lanes. Past that stand another row of houses, but these ones look much older than the ones we just came from. There’s also a Petro Canada gas station over there. Black SUVs, buses, and military trucks line up all the way out into the street to fill up. The Petro Canada sign glows in the daylight. I try to remember when I last saw electricity.

  There are people everywhere. Men with guns stand around on the street and sidewalk, wearing heavy winter clothes and woolen caps, smoking cigarettes and talking. Vehicles pass by. Aside from the guns it reminds me too much of when things were normal. I ache for it all to come back. If it did, I doubt I would recognize it or be able to slip back into the easy life I had lived. Whatever the case, three squares a day and none of this continuously running for your life sounds like a dream to me. I envy these people. Perhaps Eve was right. Maybe they are only here to clean the world of the undead and get things back to normal.

  “I live right over there,” Paul says, pointing to a house with dirty white scaffolding and actual windows. It sits closest to us from the gas station, right next to a veterinarian. “Looks like the bastards have taken it up, the fuc—”

  Gunshots echo, and it takes me a moment to realize that they are meant for us. They find their mark very well, snapping me out of my daydreams. The back of Paul’s head and back burst, spraying me and Grant with his gore. His body convulses on his feet, and he’s dead before he hits the ground. A group of men across the small field are pointing fingers and guns at us and they fire again.

  chapter seventeen

  Snow kicks up to our left and right. Grant and I fight for a spot behind a tree, kicking our legs so that our bodies press hard together; our arms uselessly cover our faces. The gunfire is loud, and it has to be close, because when it stops, the men’s voices are clear.

  “Are you sure they’re not ours?”

  “No,” is the response. “One of ’em was that old bastard that got away from us.”

  That old bastard lies just before the tree. His body riddled with bullets , lies face down in snow that slowly absorbs his blood, turning the area around him red.

  “Hey, yeah,” says the first man. “I remember that lumber jacket. Fucking hick.” He fires another couple of shots, hitting Paul in his back and head. More men are approaching, wanting to know what’s going on.

  “I can’t wait to tell ’em that we caught the old fucker,” says the first one.

  “Where’d the others go? I saw at least three of ’em.”

  “They ran
back into that yard, there. We’ll get them in a minute.”

  Grant swings around the tree taking less than a second to scan the area. He returns to his sitting spot, his head facing up. Then he says, “Give me your rifle, you take the shotgun.”

  We switch, and before I can say anything, Grant is around the tree again, looking through the scope. He fires two, three, four rounds, and then we’re both up and running with his hand clenching the shoulder of my coat.

  Behind us, men scream and fire their weapons but the bullets come nowhere near us as we take the sharp turn back to where we came from.

  “Fucking bastards aren’t even trying to make contact with us first,” Grant puffs as we run. “You were right, kid. It was a mistake coming here.”

  Bullets zip and take bites out of tree trunks, decks, and parts of broken fence. They’re getting closer.

  Grant’s trajectory changes, his hand still on my shoulder he pulls me in between two houses. It’s like a large alley that offers no safety. If there are men on the road, we’re dead. Grant doesn’t take us right into the road like I thought he would. Instead, we run along the front of the house, jumping overgrown hedges and snow-covered bodies.

  He cranes his neck and almost trips over a frozen corpse with no head lying on top of the snow. Nobody’s on the road behind us. Not yet anyway. We sprint across, kicking snow up with our heels. We enter a yard and then disappear between another set of houses. Once more we’re faced with backyards.

  Bullets chip at the brick from the alley we just ran through and Grant curses.

  The fences back here separating the houses are not torn down as they were across the street. Grant’s hand clutches the shoulder of my coat. He takes me to a tall wooden fence at the end of the yard.

  “Climb it,” he says. I jump and he pushes on my rear. I grasp at the top of the fence. What about you? I want to ask, but I’m up and over before any words can come out. Landing hard on my feet I fall over. I lie there for few seconds, catching my breath, watching as Grant’s fingers find their way to this side of the fence, then his body and his feet come right for me.

  I roll. Landing harder than I had, Grant lets out a scream of pain when he lands. His face is all teeth and scrunched up eyes and he holds his left foot with both hands.

  “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

  Wood from the fence explodes to splintery shrapnel. This is no time to worry over wounds. I stand and grab Grant by the arm. My face stings hot and wet with blood from the flying splinters. Grant climbs up onto his feet using my body and wraps an arm around my shoulder. There’s a river flowing to our right. Most of it is frozen solid but I can see water moving in the center where the ice is thinnest and, in some spots, unfrozen.

  We’re moving a lot slower now with Grant hobbling. He’s trying his best, but the pain is too much.

  “I’ve fucked up this time,” he says. “My ankle is twisted to hell. You’d better go on without me. Take Cindy and get the fuck out of here.”

  “No,” I say. “Not without you.”

  “You won’t ge—”

  Grant is then swept from my grasp as though a sledgehammer had knocked him free. He lies on the ground, a gaping wound in his shoulder that’s pouring blood into the snow.

  “Fuck!” he says. He holds the wound, his eyes blinking away tears and shock. “Fuck!”

  Down from where we just came from, men climb over the fence and run towards us. I grab the Colt from my pants and fire off six shots. A few of the men fall down. The rest take cover, offering return fire of their own.

  I plant myself flat on the ground near Grant, behind some bush. I reload, grab at Grant’s shoulder, the one that’s not been shot, and pull him towards me. He screams in pain as bullets zip, kicking up snow and blood as some find their mark, puncturing Grant’s legs and stomach. When I finally get him behind the bush with me, he’s coughing up blood, his teeth are red with it. His breathing is shallow.

  My eyes tear up. How has it come to this? After all we survived together?

  “You’re gonna be okay,” I tell him

  He laughs. “You’re full of shit. I’m a dead man, and so will you be if you don’t get out of here now!”

  He coughs. Bright red blood jumps from his mouth into the air to land on his cheeks. He’s right, but I don’t want to leave him. The gunfire slackens. I lean over and empty another clip in the soldiers’ direction. They curse and swear at me and it buys me some time.

  But not enough.

  I drag Grant through the snow. He gasps. He’s trying to say something.

  “Yu … yu … Arlie.”

  I look down. Grant’s eyes are relaxed, staring up and half-lidded. He looks like the kids I used to know who came to school so stoned they walked with their eyelids nearly closed.

  He stops breathing.

  The blood on his cheek begins to freeze.

  “No!” I punch at his chest, the vision of his body blurring with tears. “No,” I say, calmer, trying to catch my breath.

  I knew it would come to this. Why didn’t I try harder to stop it?

  Gunfire interrupts my regrets, my mourning, my lethargy, the black cloud that has covered me since day one of this new fucked up world.

  “Thank you for all you’ve done for me and Cindy,” I tell Grant. He stares at the sky, and I can almost hear his voice yelling at me from a distance to get my ass moving.

  Snow kicks up from my right. Some bullets make it through the brush, sounding like angry wasps zipping past my ear.

  I touch Grant’s face. He looks as calm in death as he did in life. Only in his last few moments had I seen his face truly animated. Perhaps he wanted this in the end. All the running became too exhausting. It never seems to end.

  Run! says Grant’s voice. I’m certain it’s his voice. Don’t get tired.

  I get up, the world still blurry, my cheeks hot and cold with blood and tears, and I run. I run through a forest that explodes around me with chaos and violence. Branches snap and hang on threads. Pieces of bark explode outward, spraying me. How I don’t get shot, I don’t know, but soon the shooting stops, and I run into something.

  Something hard, and yet soft. Like flesh.

  I land on my rear-end and find myself looking up into a large man’s cold blue eyes. He’s wearing all black: black woolen cap, black winter coat, black pants and boots. He smiles as he looks down at me.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a new one,” he says. “A feisty one, too. Max’s gonna love you!”

  I go to raise the Colt, but my hands are empty. I must’ve dropped the damn thing somewhere during my sprint.

  The man’s smile grows bigger, his face pale with red spots on his cheeks from the cold of the wind. He raises his semi-automatic, as I had with so many of the undead, he thrusts its stock down into my forehead. Sharp nauseating pain and the world spins. It goes blurry. Then black. Then nothing..

  chapter eighteen

  I awake confused and in a lot of pain. Fingers rake through my hair, a constant endless flow. Have I died and gone to heaven? I doubt that. If heaven were a true spiritual place, and if I’m there right now, I wouldn’t be feeling the agony I do right now. It feels as though I’ve been battered by a blunt object. Then it comes back to me. All of it. My voice is full of anguish, saying nothing and yet everything with no syllables. It’s the language of true suffering, and nothing, no words, can replace the sound.

  “Shhh …”

  The hair stroking pauses and another hand sweeps at my cheek. I open my eyes to a candlelit room, blurry and spinning and I sit up suddenly, my stomach heaving.

  “Here, in here,” the voice says, and I recognize it.

  A metal pot sits on my legs, and I dry heave into it. The only thing that comes up is thick saliva that hangs from my lips as I continue to heave.

  I’ve never known such agony before. One knock to the head and my entire universe is one spinning ball of pain.

  Finished, I lie back down. The pain in my
stomach is gone for now, but my head still hurts. Thankfully, though, the room has found an anchor.

  I realize that I’ve been laying my head on someone’s legs. I look up. Green eyes and strawberry hair greet my gaze, a concerned look that’s full of guilt. There’s something tied around her neck, her face is dirty with either mud or dried blood. I can’t tell. Tears fill her eyes.

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she whispers. “I was so wrong.”

  She’s right. She was wrong. All I can say before passing out again is her name.

  “Eve.” The name comes out like a hiss from between my lips.

  A good man’s last breath.

  When I awake again I am alone. The pain is less severe, my body a little less shaky. Here I lie, on a cot of some sort situated in the living room of some strange house. The room is lit with candles that cast off not only some heat, but a golden glow that nearly fills me with comfort.

  The only problem is that my arms are handcuffed to the sides of the cot, limiting movement and comfort altogether. After a few minutes have passed I realize that I’m not alone after all. There are people upstairs, the sounds of pleasure that remind me of the other night when Grant and Eve slept together. Except, the more I listen, the more I realize the sounds are not that pleasurable. There’s a strained undercurrent to the moans and grunts. The male grunts sound violent in their delivery.

  There’s also somebody crying in a different part of the house. I can’t tell if it’s from upstairs or some other room down here with me. It’s ghostly and reminds me too much of Cindy whimpering in her sleep whenever she has nightmares.

  I look up. The room’s shelves, the old tube television, the coffee table, are all covered with lit candles. If one of them were to fall and catch fire, I’d be toast. Not a pleasant way to go, but perhaps better than what’s planned for me.

  I guess I hold my head up too long. The room begins to spin around, to tilt and tremble. My stomach wants to spasm and dry heave until it hurts. So I rest my head back down and close my eyes. The headache returns, but slowly, ever so slowly it eventually goes away.