by Jason White
I turn my head and look in the opposite direction from where we had come from. Cindy is still in my lap, her eyes staring at the sky. This time, however, her chest no longer rises and falls. The snow beside us is covered with chunks of her blood and brain matter.
Above us, just at the edge of the clearing, Max appears. A phantom appearing out of the darkness, he is first a shadow, a silhouette that solidifies into human flesh. He walks slowly, his left hand clutching at his chest where Eve had shot him for the second time, thinking she had ended his life. The right hand holds the pistol he had before when he held me hostage.
“So sad,” he says. He aims the gun at me. “You ruined everything. I only wish it was my bullet that had killed her. I guess I’m just going to have to settle with you.”
He coughs and blood spurts out to paint the snow before him. When he’s done, he raised his gun at me. But it’s too late. I’ve already got mine aimed at his chest. There’s a short moment’s pause as we look each other in the eye, his blood-smeared grin dying.
I pull the trigger. I empty the cartridge. Max twitches as each bullet finds its home in his chest, his cheek, chin, and finally the forehead. He’s dead before he hits the ground, I don’t doubt, but his body releases its last sigh, anyway.
The men in the woods are closer. I don’t have much time and move without even thinking. I head to Eve’s body. Like Cindy, her eyes are half-mast, a stoner’s gaze into nothingness. I check for a pulse and find none. I then search her clothes for extra cartridges.
Finding them, I reload my pistol just in time for Max’s backup to arrive. There are three of them and they stand in the clearing looking at the carnage, their guns and flashlights aimed at the ground for now.
“Jesus,” one of them says. He wears a giant beard that is completely grey. It looks like old, dirty snow. He lifts his gun and points it at me. “The kid killed Max!”
“Bastard deserved it,” another of them says. All the men wear black clothing, black gloves. I wonder which Wal-Mart they had ransacked before coming here. This second man to speak is the only clean shaven one. He spits in the dead man’s direction.
“The fuck you talking about?” the grey bearded one says. “He took us in. Took care of us, man.”
“You’re the one not making sense. He’s been losing it for a while, you know that. We all talked about that just this morning. He’s kept us here for too long, man. Let things slip for too long. The dead’ve found us. We should’ve left when we meant to.”
“What’re we gonna do now then, huh?” Greybeard says. “We’re fucked, and you think it’s a good thing?”
“Let’s kill the kid and get the fuck outta here,” the third man says. His beard is as black as his clothing and his eyes. In his hands is an Uzi, something I doubt that they found in any Wal-Mart that I’ve ever known. He aims the weapon at me. His smile is a terrible thing to behold.
“I don’t think so,” the clean-shaven man says. “There’s been enough of that bullshit.” He raises his gun at Blackbeard.
“What the fuck, guys,” says Greybeard.
While they argue, I stand and watch, waiting for them to make a decision, hoping that they’ll just end my suffering for me. Shadows move in the woods. The moans and groans of the undead have been haunting the forest tonight for some time, but now it’s closer. Much closer. One of the undead stumbles through the woods and grabs Greybeard from behind. Despite the cold, it’s quicker now that it has warm flesh within its hands, its teeth digging into the side of the man’s neck almost as quickly as its hands had wrapped themselves around his head.
Greybeard screams as blood sprays from his neck in great arterial spurts. The guy with the black beard who wanted to kill me turns to Greybeard and fires the automatic Uzi, spraying both Greybeard and the zombie behind him with bullets. Greybeard’s face becomes unrecognizable right before me. As both zombie and man fall to the snow below them, the man with the Uzi does his own dance of death as his chest blossoms with gore. Uzi man screams, but I can’t hear it over the roar of Clean-Shaven’s AK-47. Uzi man lands on his knees, and then face first into the snow. Clean-Shaven walks up behind him and puts a couple more single rounds into the back of Uzi Man’s head, ensuring that he doesn’t come back. It’s something that Eve should have thought of. Then, maybe she wanted him to come back as one of the undead, to live that kind of eternal hunger.
Too bad he came back alive.
“You better get going, kid,” Clean-Shaven says.
“I can’t leave,” I say. “There’s a little girl in the camp, I think. She’s around four years old, blond hair. She was probably taken earlier yesterday. Probably about the same time I was captured.”
The man nods. “You’d be better to head in the opposite direction.”
“I’ve got nothing else,” I say. I hate the way my voice breaks, but it’s all I can do to keep my shit together. Gunshots and screams continue to mount from town. The undead have had the advantage of surprise. They say that they’re braindead lacking the cognizance to plan. I’ve seen them move in hordes before. Like flocks of black birds in the sky. They move in unison. Attack as one.
“It’s pretty bad back there,” the man continues. “They came out of nowhere. Now everyone who’s held a grudge is shooting at one another along with shooting the dead. It’s chaos.”
“I don’t care.”
The man squints and purses his lips. He swears at the night sky.
“Fuck!” he sighs. “I guess I’d better go with you then.”
Clean-Shaven isn’t wrong. As we head back into town, the undead are all around. You can tell the difference between the living and the dead. Out from the woods, the half-moon in the sky provides enough light to see by. The dead, although not completely frozen, walk as though on stilts, silhouettes walking stiff-legged and slow. Some of them fall and struggle to get back up. The living, meanwhile, try to avoid the zombies, while others run between them, shooting them in the head or taking them down with blunt or sharp objects.
What’s stranger are the fights of man versus man. I suppose I should be used to this by now, considering Max, the bandits, and of course Dahmer. But it does surprise me. As far as I had known, these people were travelers, comrades, a tight knit family. Perhaps that was only my own experience and I had projected it unto them, no matter how crazy Max was. Then I think of Max and his madness, the tyranny he must have forced upon his men. How would living in such conditions affect the living conditions, the communications between the community’s members?
I guess I will never know.
I don’t want to know.
Clean-Shaven and I stick to the sidelines, so to speak. We hide in back yards, avoiding gun battles and zombies alike. The task seems an impossible one. The undead are everywhere, and you can’t always tell their shadowy figures from the trees, posts and cars, where they seem to enjoy hiding behind.
We cross the Sobey’s parking lot, and come too close to an old rusted Ford truck. A desperate groan joins forces with a set of arms and curled fingers that wrap themselves around my coat. All I see for the next second or so is a set of rotted teeth coming for my face, a giant, gaping black abyss between. The typical stale stench of long ago rot fills my nostrils and I gag.
The teeth come within inches of my face when the barrel of Clean-Shaven’s rifle jams itself into that gaping abyss and my ear explodes with pain strong enough to match my ruined ankle.
The zombie falls back as I fall to my knees, clutching at my ear, which is hot and wet with blood. Clean-Shaven creeps into my vision, his mouth working, but all I can hear is a loud ringing that won’t stop, yet I can read his words just fine:
“Sorry,” he says. “I had to.”
I know he had to shoot the rifle that close to my ear. It was either that or my own death. I push him away, anyway. I get up and, with my hand clamped to my ear, I head across the parking lot, not caring if Clean-Shaven is following me or not. My limp must make me look insane, but I don’t care. The
gunshot not only deafened me, it has also attracted more of the zombies. They come stumbling through the neighboring McDonald’s parking lot. Some of them are fresh, wearing winter jackets, their skin more silvery white in the moonlight, rather than the shriveled old mummy look of the others. Blood stains their necks and chests from fresh bite wounds. They move faster than the older ones.
Much faster.
Almost like jogging. One thing I’ve learned over the months of travelling is that they can catch you off guard if all you’re used to are the older ones.
I raise my handgun as a woman wearing what I bet was once a white winter jacket, now a mixture of silver and black crude oil, comes close. Her face is paper-white, her hair bleached blond. I wonder if she were once one of Max’s slave whores or if she played a different role. It doesn’t matter. I raise my handgun and put a bullet through her skull. She drops like the dead weight she ought to have been in the first place.
There are two more, moaning and stumbling their greedy way towards me. I take them out without a second thought. The gun explodes in my hands, but there’s little relief that I can still hear its detonation. It’s muffled, as though I’m wearing some seriously powerful earplugs.
Clean-Shaven comes up to my side. He looks at the mess and nods at me looking impressed.
“Good job,” he says, his voice so very far away I can barely hear it.
I don’t know if it’s the violence I just imposed upon the undead or the fact that I can now hear things other than the constant ringing. The anger melts and suddenly all I feel is an incredible exhaustion. I’ve never felt so alone. Cindy should be beside me. Her body lies in the forest behind me instead.
I should go back for her and give her a proper burial. Rationally, I know that there’s no time for that right now, besides, the ground is frozen solid. A fire then. A pyre of wood. I will do it after I’ve found the child and it’s safe to come back.
We walk. We pass men and women who don’t care who we are or what we’re doing. They’re too busy trying to get away. What happened here between some of these men and women still confuses me. Maybe we weren’t meant to survive. We do well in taking care of what all the zombies in the world cannot do, in cleaning up their sloppy seconds.
We reach the section of Mill Street with the old houses where Cindy and I were held in slavery. Zombies shuffle around, notice us and change their direction. Clean-Shaven takes out the ones closest to us. My hearing slowly returns, though the pain in my right ear does not subside. Pops and explosions of submachine gunfire fill the night with the odd scream or barking order. People run through the street, taking out the undead and trying to find a way out or a place to hide. I don’t know where they’re all going, the ones not trying to kill each other.
Clean-Shaven and I pass the house Eve had led us out from … how long ago now? An hour? Two?
We’re almost at a set of street lights and a gas station when we come upon a mass of the undead knelt around crimson snow with arms and legs of the recently deceased poking between the rotted and dried out bodies. I can’t hear the tearing sounds, the chewing, and am glad for it. As we pass, I can’t help but to look. The undead hold ropy intestines in their hands, raw and torn meat that they shove into their mouths with an intense hunger even the living can’t possibly feel. I can’t tell if their victim was a man or a woman. There’s too much blood, too much torn skin and meat. What bothers me most is that the body still trembles. I don’t know if it’s still alive or it’s twitching in death, as some corpses do, or if the body has come back to life but there’s not enough muscle for it to move properly. I doubt the latter, because once a body has reanimated, the dead usually lose interest.
Three trucks come rumbling out from a plaza parking lot down on an adjoining street. They speed through the street lights and pass us, going where we just came from.
Clean-Shaven leads me past the gory scene and through the gas station, the Mac’s Milk it’s adjoined to, and then another street with old, run down houses.
The second one across the street is our destination. It’s the only one with lights still on, soft candle flames doing nothing to hide the shadowy figure of a head and set of shoulders. They shift and disappear after noticing us crossing the street, coming straight for them. The candle light is snuffed.
Two zombies come from a neighboring yard, from the silvery darkness like fleshy phantoms, specters with old and torn clothes. One of them is missing its jaw, I don’t doubt that if it were to get its hands on us it wouldn’t still find a way to shove the meat down.
“Clean-Shaven!” I say, not realizing I just called the guy what I was calling him in my head. He looks back at me with scrunched eyebrows, then turns on the zombies. He puts his AK up to his shoulder and takes them out with a single burst to each head. They fall and lie still.
“Clean-shaven?” he says, looking back at me. “Are you all there, kid?”
“Maybe you should just tell me your name,” I say, glad that he can’t see my cheeks burning in the dim light. “I’m Charlie.”
He nods, as though understanding. “I’m Palmer.” And he turns to the house. Pounds on the door.
“Let us in,” he says. “I’m here to help.”
chapter twenty-three
“What’s going on out there, Palmer?” A woman’s voice, scared and near tears, says. From somewhere inside, the whispery sounds of a child crying wafts its way into my damaged ear canals, and I wonder if it’s Bill’s daughter.
I remember the morning when all this began, when Bill stood in the kitchen of his neighbors with his old friend. I staring at his daughter held firmly in his arm, his other arm busy at brushing away her hand that continued to go for the hair of his beard. I remember thinking that I still didn’t know his daughter’s name at that time and thought it was probably the wrong time to ask, what with Paul going on about public shootings and whatnot. I still think that it was the wrong time to ask, but considering it was the last time I had thought about her name, that it was the last time I’d see Bill alive, I regret having never asked.
“Chaos,” Palmer answers the woman. “We stayed here too long. The undead from other towns have come. I told you that Max was beginning to lose it!”
“I didn’t argue with you!” The woman says. “So what are we going to do?”
“We’re getting the fuck out of here, Maggie, that’s what. This here’s Charlie. He’s looking for the girl they took from the outskirts of town. He can’t hear too well right now. I kind of shot too close to his ear. It’s bleeding. His ankle’s all fucked up as well.”
“I’ll take care of it,” she says moving over to me. A sudden flash startles me. It’s a match she’s lit. She uses it to reignite the candle she had lit near the window before she saw us.
“Good,” Palmer says. “I’ll go see if I can’t get us a truck or something.”
The crying continues after Palmer is gone.
“Is that Bill’s daughter?” I say. “The kid crying?”
Maggie is cleaning the blood from my ear and cheek. She pauses to look in my eyes. She’s young, but at least ten years older than I am, with soft, caring eyes. When they look into my own I don’t feel so alone, so hopeless.
“I imagine so,” she says. “What’s her name?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I just met them. We were just passing through town when you guys came in.”
“Ah,” she says. Her breath smells of candy canes. She must see the recognition on my face, because she reaches into her pocket and produces one still wrapped in plastic.
“Want one?” she says.
I take it and tear the top of the plastic off with my teeth. I doubt Maggie minds when I spit the tiny piece onto the carpeted floor below. The candy itself is a conjuror of simpler, long ago days. I think of Cindy and how she’d gobble candy canes by the fistful if you let her, and my eyes water. Maggie looks concerned, her brown eyes studying my face.
“Brings back a storm of memories, eh?”
I nod.
Next, Maggie pulls out a vial of ear drops. “I don’t know if this will help,” she says. “It’s for infections, but it has Polysporin in it, so it should help the tearing in your ear.”
She dabbles some in both ears, then wraps my ankle in a support band. When she’s done, she gets up with her supplies and disappears into the room’s shadows. While she’s gone, I realize her importance. She was the doctor, the mother nurse of Max’s army. The crying in the other room stops and Maggie returns with a two year old girl in her arms. She recognizes me and reaches her arms out to me.
“Where’s Dadda?” she says.
My eyes blur, a knot deep in my throat makes it difficult to talk. “He’s … ” I don’t know what to say. How do you tell someone so young something they can’t possibly understand? “He’s gone to a better place. He’s waiting for us there.”
She accepts this and curls herself deeper into my arms. Within seconds her eyelids grow heavy and she’s falling asleep.
My face scrunches as I fight the tears. I’m so full of hate and anger right now I don’t know how the little girl doesn’t notice. It should be infectious, this grief, this wanting it all to end so that I can finally sleep, maybe with Cindy in my arms.
“The pain will never go away,” Maggie says. She’s sitting in front of me again. “It will settle down, become something different, but it will never go away.”
I nod. There’s nothing else to do and I’m afraid to speak for fear of my voice breaking.
“You should give her a name,” she says.