We drive back through town, trying to find the most suburban route possible to avoid any more traffic holdups or pedestrian run-ins. It’s difficult; in the short space of an hour, the world seems to have gone mad. Dead bodies lie in the street torn apart; others have been half-dragged from their vehicles, their appendages missing at the joints as the dead gnaw on them like chicken on the bone. The living dead are roaming freely and only coming up against a small resistance of the occasional police officer or firefighter. Yeah, it always comes down to these guys coming to save us. However, whatever it is that’s affected these people and brought them back from the dead is spreading too quickly. There’s a fight between good and evil going on, and it looks like evil is winning hands down. Even more reason to get out of here while we still can.
I’m a pretty calm guy when things get serious, but even I’m struggling to keep my calm with everything I’m seeing. I look at Jane to see how she’s coping, but apart from having her Colt ready and waiting to fire, she looks as calm as if we were on our way to church, and not avoiding zombies. This woman is the butter to my bread, I think with a smile.
Four.
The business park, luckily, is near enough empty as we pull into it. Thank goodness for the apocalypse happening on a Sunday—no white-collar workers to contend with. I hate those business-suited freaks more than I hate the city council—and that’s saying something. The boys in suits are always looking down their noses at the blue-collar workers of this town, like their shit don’t stink. Truth is, without hardworking boys like us, these fancy suit types wouldn’t be driving around in their fancy cars and they wouldn’t have their fancy houses—certainly not with the giant swimming pools installed in their back yards. It’s us boys who build all that stuff for them.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Apart from the odd stray car, no one else is around, and for that I’m grateful. Jane is, too, if the long breath she releases is anything to go by. I head straight for the far side of the parking lot, where the service road is, feeling a little disheartened when I see the blockade back in place. I should have guessed, but I was really hoping to get out of here without any more trouble.
I pull up to the chain-link fence, thinking about how to break the large padlock on the gate. I scratch my beard and check all sides of the car before stepping out. Jane walks around to the back of the car and opens up the trunk while I test how strong the lock is. I pull on it, but this thing isn’t going anywhere. When Jane sidles up beside me with a pair of bolt cutters, I stumble back, confused. She nudges in front of me and uses them to clip the padlock open, snatches it up, and throws it into the bushes.
“How? Why did . . . where?” I stumble over my words.
“Be a doll and pull this fence out of the way, will you?” she says with a smirk, and goes back to the trunk of the car.
I watch, dumbfounded and in awe of her, finally grabbing hold of the fence and dragging it off to one side. It’s noisy and it resists, but I get it out of the way eventually and start on the second half of the fence. These are heavier than the ones they normally put up, and the fact that it was padlocked means that the city council is serious, I guess, but nothing is stopping me from getting out of this town.
“We’ve got company,” Jane says, taking aim at a zombie coming across the car park.
How it found us, I don’t know. Maybe they can smell us out. Maybe it was close by and heard the noise. It isn’t really important; what is important is getting the rest of this fence out of the way so the car can get through. I grab it and pull as hard as I can, listening to it screech along the concrete ground. When I think it’s far enough clear, I run back to the car.
“Get in, baby,” I shout to Jane.
“Should I shoot it?” she asks as I reach across my seat and open her door.
“No sense attracting more attention,” I say, looking back at it.
“But it’s one less in the world to contend with,” she says, eyeing it up warily.
Now that it’s getting closer, we can both smell it. It’s starting to stink. This doesn’t seem like a fresh zombie, if there is ever such a thing. This seems a little older, a little deader, and a little more disgusting than some of the ones we’ve encountered so far. Sure it has all its limbs still attached, but the pallor to its skin and the rotting hole in its chest cavity (with internal organs showing) is a far worse sight than seeing someone missing an arm. Trust me on this one. I wonder, not for the first time this morning, how the hell we missed all this happening around us for so long.
“Do it,” I say, through a grimace as the stench reaches inside the car.
She jogs forward a little bit, getting to within twenty yards of it, and shoots it in the head. Her aim is as accurate as ever. She waits a few precious seconds, to make sure it’s not still alive-dead and is actually gone from this world, before jogging back to the car and climbing in.
“One down, another million or so to go,” she says with dry humor.
“Let’s hope it’s not that bad,” I reply.
She nods and I drive through the gate, scraping the side of my car along the fence that I hadn’t managed to open up all the way. I wince at the sound and glance at Jane; she’s staring out the window, but the rise in her cheeks indicating that she’s grinning is unmistakable. Damn she hates this car.
*
The drive is pretty much all clear from there on out to the camper. The roads are virtually empty, and the occasional cars we do pass seem to be vacated—doors hanging open, blood staining the area around them. We don’t bother to check for survivors, and I feel bad for that, but it’s us or them in this world, and right now it’s us. As night falls I see the break in the trees that indicates the turn off leading to the camper. I still remember driving that thing out here. My late uncle had previously owned the land, but after he passed way it was handed down to me as the only living relative. Both Jane and I knew right away that this would be our retirement land.
The drive up the steep incline is as bumpy as ever, but relatively better than when we had first come to inspect it after the reading of the will. My Uncle Sam—God rest his soul—had never done anything with it and it had become not so much an eyesore, since you couldn’t see it through the thick oppression of the overgrown trees, but it was a definite hazard. We had spent many a weekend up here with hired equipment to chop back some of the forest and create more of a roadway. The final piece had fallen into place when we purchased our second-hand camper and towed it up here. The foundations for our own log cabin were in place; it was all just time and money now. Until then, our little camper was our home away from home. I realize as I think these last thoughts that perhaps this is now our only home.
It’s dark on the drive up, but thankfully it opens up at the peak of the hill and the land flattens out. Everything is as we left it a few months back, and there seems to be no sign of breaking and entering. We sit in silence after I turn the engine off, both of us contemplating what to do next. Eventually I open my door and Jane climbs out on her side.
“Tonight we need to eat and get some sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to need to secure this place even more,” I say, unpacking the trunk of the car.
Jane leans back against the trunk and nods. “Yeah,” she agrees.
I take her face in my hands and kiss her soft lips. “You okay?” I ask as I pull away.
“I am if you’re here.” She smiles.
“We’ll be okay now. We have everything we need up here.”
“I hope so, Steve. What we saw back there was . . . horrifying. I don’t think I’ll be able to close my eyes without seeing those things.” She swallows and looks away. She’s my little tough cookie and hates to show any signs of girlishness, but being afraid of those things isn’t girlishness, it’s common sense—and I tell her so.
“I was scared too, baby. Hell, everyone was—is.” I look down at my feet, wondering if we should have tried to contact some of our friends—neighbors, even—and helped them get out of town
too. Neither of us have any family anymore, and for the first time I realize what a Godsend that is. There’s no way I would be able to live up here without worrying about them.
Jane nods, too tired to reply. Or perhaps too sad, I’m not sure. It’s not like her to be this quiet about things. She’s an expressive woman and speaks her mind—one of the many things I love about her.
I drape an arm over her shoulders. “Come on, let’s get this stuff inside and cook something good to eat.” I smile. My stomach grumbles in response and I realize that not only have I missed lunch, but my stomach is still hankering after a ham and mustard sandwich. “Say, did you pack the mustard?” I ask as I lift a heavy box from the car.
She nods and smiles. “Sure did.” She unlocks the camper’s small door, opening it wide for me to go in after her, and flicks on the lights along the way. The generator is the best thing we ever bought, I think, not for the first time. It was one of Jane’s must-have items for this place.
Later that night, after finally unpacking and eating supper, we lie in bed together, both of us trying to sleep, yet both of us scared to actually close our eyes. The door is locked tight, and our guns are on the little nightstands next to the bed, ready to grab in an instant. We even stayed fully dressed, barring our shoes—Jane wouldn’t allow shoes on the bed—in case we needed to get up and out in a hurry. Yet still neither of us feels safe. I wonder if we ever will again.
The wind-up radio we have doesn’t provide us with any more answers than the previous broadcast. It’s the same message: “Stay inside, lock your doors and don’t approach the sick.” Oh, and if the sick approach you, it’s okay to use extreme violence against them. The radio also doesn’t say what’s wrong with them, and they never use the Z word, but without a shadow of a doubt, that’s what they are. Every time my eyes close, I see images of the sick and injured screaming at me to help them, or screaming for my blood. I can sleep through that, but what I can’t sleep through is when I see them catching Jane and eating her alive. That I couldn’t live through, never mind sleep through.
Five.
Dawn broke a little over an hour ago, but I still lie here with Jane’s arms tightly wrapped around my torso. She begins to stir around seven, and the warmth of her body against mine makes me smile in more ways than one. She looks up at me with drowsy sleep-filled eyes and yawns, a small smile lighting up her face. I lean down and kiss her lips, softly at first, but when she returns the favor the passion I have for her pours into us both, and before long we are both naked beneath the covers.
*
“Even the end of the world can’t calm your libido then?” She grins widely as she slips back on her clothes.
“Not with you by my side, baby.” I lean back on the bed, arms behind my head, and close my eyes, feeling relaxation spread through me and sleep finally beckoning. Her words ring in my ears—something about making coffee for us both—and I grunt an “okay” and sink further down into my pillow. Sleep finds me as Jane’s scream breaks the morning silence.
I dive out of bed, grab my Colt, and run butt-ass naked out the bedroom door. The camper door is wide open and I dash outside to see Jane struggling with a zombie. She is pushing against its chest as it lunges repeatedly for her, snapping its jaws and growling. I take aim, but can’t get a clean shot because of their fighting; instead I run up behind it and grab the back of its clothes.
I drag it backwards until it releases her and we both stumble and fall over—me on my back and the zombie on my chest facing the sky. I push it off me and to the side, and stumble up to my knees. It crawls toward me on hands and knees, drooling and gurgling blood. Clearly its primal need to feed on my flesh is more important than table manners. I scoot backwards as Jane stands behind it, takes aim, and fires a bullet into its skull. The thing drops immediately, its face hitting the dirt.
I stare at it until I’m sure it’s definitely dead and then stagger back up to my feet. Jane runs over, wraps her arms around me, and hugs me tightly as she sobs into my chest. I try not to cry too, but the image of her fighting that thing and coming so close to being its breakfast fills me with horror, and I can’t stop the salty tears that fall silently down my cheeks.
We eventually stagger back to the camper and shut the door behind us, and I take some of the bottled water to wash away the zombie’s blood from my arms and legs before dressing—even finding some small amount of humor in the fact that I just fought a zombie while naked.
As we finally drink our morning coffee by the little fire pit outside, we make plans to make this place more secure.
“Trenches and fences will have to be built, as well as covering that road entrance so no one thinks to come up here. Those zombies don’t stick to paths as such, but they do tend to follow roads and pathways more than anything. Maybe if they can’t see the road, they won’t bother to come up?” I shrug and take my first sip of coffee. Damn, it’s good. “I also want to get some traps set up around the perimeter. We’ve got some old chicken wire in the back, still. I’ll use that and dig some more trenches. It’s a lot of work.” I scratch at the day-old scruff on my chin and neck and take another sip of my coffee. “I think we can do it though, baby.” I turn to her and smile before another thought crosses my mind. “What about food? We’ve got some canned stuff here already, but how much did you bring?”
“There’s enough food to last two or three weeks. We may need to ration it down more, though, to make it last. Eventually we’re going to have to do something more permanent though—I mean if we want to stay here until whatever this is passes over.” She pokes the fire pit with a stick, sending fresh flames up under the bubbling water.
“Well of course we’re staying here. No sense going back to that death trap of a town. We have everything we need,” I say hotly.
“The things I brought won’t last forever, Steve.” She pulls our guns in front of her and begins to take them apart to clean them. “We need to ration, be careful, and yeah, we could make this work.” She pauses in what she’s doing. “As much as this was our dream—to live out here—I never wanted it to be like this. I can’t help worrying about all those people back in town.”
“I know, I haven’t forgotten about them either. But we have to look out for us first off. If we can help others, then great, but we have to come first, baby.” I take her hand in mine.
“I know that, it’s just that this is day one, and I don’t want either of us to become hardened to it all. One day someone’s going to need our help and our hospitality, and that’s what separates us from the animals . . . from those things out there eating people!” She shudders and pulls her hands from mine. She picks up her gun and continues cleaning it, huffing out a breath while she does.
“Well, when we do finally venture back out there, we’ll be sure to help anyone who needs it—as long as it doesn’t endanger ourselves,” I say, tilting her chin so she looks at me. “We can even make room for a couple more people to stay up here with us if need be. There’s safety in numbers.”
She smiles and pulls her chin free. “So, where are we going to get food from?”
“There’s a way to survive out in the wild, and it doesn’t include going to some fancy grocery store.” I throw the last of the coffee to the back of my throat as the cogs in my brain whirl.
“What are you suggesting?” she asks.
“Farms.”
“Farms?” Jane repeats, looking puzzled.
I nod, satisfied with my idea. “Yes, farms—ideally, just the one. If we can get to a farm, grab some chicks, a pig maybe, some seeds . . . we could grow our own food. We’d have eggs, bacon, and our own fruits and vegetables. We’d be sitting pretty at the end of the world.”
“That’s a clever idea.” Jane smiles. “First things first, let’s get this place secure.”
I smile broadly and stand up to stretch, looking around with a small smile. This could actually be a blessing in disguise—just me, Jane, and our little home in the woods.
Th
e Hero.
One.
“Johnathon Timothy Daily, you are found guilty of first - degree assault with a deadly weapon. You are therefore sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, with the chance of parole after a serving a minimum of eight years.” The judge looks down at the papers in his hands before looking back up to me, his cool gray eyes full of disdain. “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that someone of your caliber could do such a thing. For whatever reason, on July seventh, you decided to take matters into your own hands, not only attacking a man before finding out if he was actually guilty of the crime which you were accusing him of, but using a heavy object to repeatedly beat him into unconsciousness.”
The courtroom erupts into whispers around me. Maybe they think I’m lucky, maybe they think Mr. Fucking Davies is lucky that I didn’t kill him. I don’t know and I don’t care. That’s wrong—I do care, but it doesn’t mean I’d change a damn thing about what I did. My cheap shirt sticks to my muscles, making me even more uncomfortable, my anger making me sweat.
“Silence!” Judge Corresdone yells and slams his gavel down onto the wood block repeatedly. “You have left me no choice but to carry out this sentence, since you have shown no remorse whatsoever for your actions. If it were not for Mr. Davies’ neighbor calling the police, I do not think you would have stopped until he was dead. Fortunately for you, the police arrived in time to stop you from committing an even further barbaric assault on an otherwise innocent man.”
The Dead Saga (Novella Part 1): Odium Origins Page 8