by A. J. Brown
“How?”
“Shoot them. Stab them. We have to get out of this crowd before the rest of them get on top of us.”
We rolled down the windows just enough to shoot the first few surrounding the van. They crumpled away, each one taking a couple with them when they fell. I gave the engine some gas, and we lurched forward, knocking over several biters in the process. The back tire spun on one of the bodies, caught traction, and then we were moving across the lot. Out on the road, we circled around the coming horde, Hetch with his window down and firing away when one of the biters was too close. He missed more than he hit.
I don’t know how we made it out of there, but we did. Back on the road out of Newberry, we sat quietly for a few minutes, the adrenaline rush of the previous hour slowly calming down enough for us to think things through a little.
“What happened back there?” I asked.
“We got supplies.”
“No. Not that. That biter had you. You were a goner. Then it stopped and turned for me. What was that all about?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded like a child. His face seemed to become small, his eyes grew distant. “But it happened in the store too.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a kid. I don’t know, maybe a teenager.”
“Was he alive?”
“No. No. He was very dead. Probably had been for some time. He was near the back of the store. I didn’t hear him at first, but when I did…he was almost too close to do anything. Then, just like the old man, he stopped and turned away. I was so startled at first that I did nothing, just kind of watched him limp away. Then I got mad and knocked him down and kicked his skull in.”
“He didn’t try to bite you?” I asked.
“No. He just turned away.”
“I wonder what that’s all about.”
“You don’t think it has anything to do with me being bit, do you?”
I shrugged. “Why would it?”
“Maybe I’m still infected, but since I didn’t die…I don’t know.”
“Me neither.”
Whatever the reason, Hetch had survived not one but two close calls that day. We were done gathering supplies, hopefully for a while.
That lonely drunk from a few weeks earlier, now completely sobered up, realized one important thing about this new world: Being a loner was a deadly thing. Having someone in your corner, someone who can create a diversion or do the dirty work, was a salvation unlike any other.
Twenty-Nine Weeks and Three Days After it Started…
We never talked about that day at the grocery store again. We may have thought on it, but discussing it was off limits, an unwritten and unverbalized agreement between us. Instead, we focused on protecting the house, keeping the biters at bay. But one thing we didn’t do, one thing that I had held sacred until it became too dangerous to worry about, was bury the dead. We left them around the yard. They made a sort of barrier that protected us from the biters. Maybe they could smell the rotting bodies, and that was enough to keep them at bay even when they saw us out there, which wasn’t too often as it grew colder.
Still, burying the dead was the right thing to do, but I could no longer do it. Sometimes, I would look at the bodies, the flies buzzing around them, the stench of them clotting the air, and feel a heavy guilt settle on my shoulders. I wondered about their lives, who they were before they died, how they died, if they were with loved ones or alone, like I had been for so long. I wondered if they had been in a group, and if so, was there anyone else left from that group? I wondered who they were.
I would stare out the window at them when Hetch wasn’t looking. I would pick one of the bodies out and try and imagine their lives before the fall of the world. I would try and look into their lives if that makes any sense. What were they like before death claimed them the first time? It was a maddening thing to do, but it was almost an obsession, one I kept to myself.
Occasionally, we ran into other survivors, but the world had become a wary place—strangers weren’t to be trusted more now than before the world died a collective death. They weren’t to be trusted at all.
For the most part, we eased into a systematic schedule—a life if that’s what you would call it. Defend the house and scavenge when needed. We made several runs to Newberry, the tactic always the same, the results far better than the first time around. We tried to take out more of the biters each time around in hopes that the next time we went, it would be easier. It wasn’t a bad life, all things considered.
That all changed two days ago when I remembered something we had talked about when we first met.
“Get your shoes on, Hetch.”
It was early morning, and it was cold outside. Winter had arrived, and she came with a vengeance. He was lying on the couch, a cover pulled up to his chin.
We were thankful for the fireplace, but even with it burning low, it was still somewhat cool in the house.
“What?”
“Get your shoes on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To check on your friend.”
His eyes came fully open. “My friend?” He swung his feet off the couch, shoving the cover aside.
“Yeah, your friend. What’s his name? Dean?”
“Dean’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
He hesitated.
“You said as much when we talked about it before,” I said. “Get your shoes on.”
Hetch was wrong about one thing. He said the house he left Dean in was a couple blocks over. It wasn’t. It was around the corner of the U-shaped neighborhood, just beyond the gated boat dock. It was then that I noticed the odd-looking windmill sitting near the water’s edge of the cove. It was around forty feet tall. Its six blades moved slowly.
“What’s wrong, Hank?”
“Nothing.”
“Seriously? You stopped cold. Is it the windmill?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
“That’s how we still have water.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Without electricity, there’s no water. The windmill pumps when the wind blows. There’s probably a rod down the shaft that traps the water and pulls it up as the water pumps.”
“How do you know that?”
“I grew up in the country—it’s similar to the concept of a hand pump near a well.”
“So as long as there is water and wind, we’ll be able to take baths?”
“Yeah,” I said then added, “but I wouldn’t drink the stuff unless it’s boiled.”
And there was a lot of truth to that—who knew how many biters were in that water? Thinking about it now, I don’t know how I didn’t see it before or why I didn’t even question why there was actual running water in the house. I guess I just trusted the letter that had been left behind. But to never actually see the windmill—as if it were a background prop in a movie—I don’t see how I could have missed it.
We moved on and dispatched of what few biters we saw along the way.
“Right there,” Hetch said and pointed to a yard with no fence, the house a quaint little structure with three steps up to the porch and a wooden door painted white. The windows weren’t boarded up—the inhabitants of that particular house either fled early enough or died way before they had a chance to run.
“Come on,” I said.
“I’m not going in there.”
I started to argue but bit my tongue. I had seen loved ones change, and I understood how he felt.
“Okay,” I said. “Stay on the porch. If you see any biters, let me know.”
Hetch stared at me, blinking several times.
“What?” I asked.
He gave a shrug. “What if he’s…?”
I lifted my machete. “Then I’ll take care of it.”
I went up the steps, tried the knob.
“I locked it behind me,” he said.
I have to give him credit; he was thinking when h
e left his buddy behind.
Back to the door, I kicked it hard just to the right of the knob. The jamb didn’t splinter, but it gave. The next kick split the wood, and the door snapped open, striking the wall hard enough to make it bounce back. I stood in the doorway, listening, waiting. Nothing moved from inside.
Dust motes swirled in the sunlight. A slight breeze blew in off the lake, sending a shiver along my spine. I stepped inside, the clops of my boots echoing off the hardwood floor in the silent house. Three steps in, I stopped and listened. Nothing. No sounds at all.
The house was neat and clean, and the furniture wasn’t dusty—it looked like the family would come home that afternoon as if nothing happened.
I peered down the hall. An axe hung from a bar in a doorway. There was a small splotch of blackish red blood beneath it. A few steps later and I was by the door, my heart beating hard. I felt like a crime show cop, one about to break in on the bad guys, gun drawn, except I had a machete.
I silently counted to three, spun into the doorway, machete above my head. A biter lay dead on the floor, his head split open. I gathered he had been Dean at one time.
I let out a slight chuckle, one of relief.
Back outside, Hetch looked at me with raised brows. “Well?”
“Did you rig that hatchet?”
“Yeah.”
“It worked.” I clapped him on the back, a “good job” gesture.
We started back toward where we were staying. In my mind, it was my house. The owners would never be back. That much I was certain of. But it was still just where we were staying, a rental but for free and with no eviction date.
We were barely passed the boat ramp when the screaming started.
I spun around. Across the water on a road not too far away was a child. She was running from a mass of biters. The road was a hundred or so yards away by boat, but I had no clue how far on foot.
“Come on,” I yelled and pushed the gate to the boat landing open. The houses didn’t butt up against the water, and I made my way through the backs of the yards, stumbling and almost falling several times. The embankment circled around into a cove. I could see the road going in the same direction—they would eventually meet at some point.
The girl’s screams grew louder. I looked up. She was so small, maybe five or six. I thought of Humphrey, of the little girl I never met who had loved that little bear so much that it appeared in a family portrait. And the girl’s screams held me in desperation.
I ran harder. I could see the last yard coming up on a street. Then I realized I could have run up the road Hetch and I had been on, and I would have run right into the same area.
Hindsight…
My boots hit the road, and I had my pistol out. The girl had slowed, and they were gaining on her.
I fired my pistol…
…
…
…
…and her screaming stopped.
…
…
Her screaming stopped.
…
…
…
Like so many times before, time slowed. I saw the girl’s head snap back. Her arms went out to her sides and then trailed behind her as she fell. She had long, brown hair that probably hadn’t been brushed in months. She wore a pair of stained pink pants and a white shirt that was more dirt than anything else. Her skin was just as dirty as her clothes. If not for her screams, I would have mistaken her for a biter.
And that’s what my hand and eyes had done.
I’m almost positive of that.
Almost.
I stared at the little body lying on the ground, red blood pooling beneath her head like a halo. My heart stopped. My brain stopped. My breathing stopped.
I believe I dropped my gun before I fell to my knees.
The little girl was dead.
I had killed her.
…
…
Not for the first time, all I wanted was to die as well.
Tears welled up in my eyes, making everything blurry. But I could still see that red halo around the little girl’s head from a hole I put there. Seconds earlier, I took aim and fired. Seconds before that, she was a living, breathing child who had somehow made it this long through the end of the world.
And she was dead.
…
…
I didn’t see the biters descend on her, each one taking a pound of flesh for what it was worth. It didn’t register that those who couldn’t get to her were coming for me. I didn’t hear Hetch yelling my name—or maybe I did, but it didn’t get past my ears.
I did hear the gunshot.
It was enough to drag me out of my sudden stupor.
Another gunshot followed, and one of the biters dropped beside me.
They were near—so close several of them had dropped to their knees and were crawling toward me.
I tried to get to my feet, fell back on my butt. I scrabbled away like a crab but not putting much distance between the biters and me. I had to stand. I had to run. I had to pull out my gun and shoot as many as I could. But there was no gun. I had dropped it.
The machete was in my hand, like an extension of my arm. I didn’t realize it until the first of the dead were right on top of me. I went to punch him. The blade split right through the old man’s skull. I pulled the machete free. I’m not sure if I was more surprised I still had it or that I had just split open the skull of another biter who had been inches from me. It didn’t matter.
I tried to stand again, but something was wrong. There was a pain in my thigh that screamed at me—like being hit by a baseball coming at you at ninety miles an hour. I swung the machete, clipping the dead at the knees and then slicing off the tops of their skulls after they hit the ground.
There were so many of them, coming in droves, their groans so loud I could hear them in my skull.
“Get up, Hank,” Hetch yelled. He sounded so far away. Part of me wondered why he wasn’t helping me. Why was he sitting back while I got swarmed?
Somehow, I managed to get to my feet. The pain in my thigh intensified. The biters kept coming.
I swung the machete.
There were a few gunshots, but really, what did I expect? Hetch only had a pistol with fifteen rounds in it. There were a lot more than fifteen biters. And, as he said before, giving him a gun was just a waste of ammo.
My arms grew tired, but I swung and swung, felling as many of the dead as I could. Somehow, I managed to get further from Hetch than closer to him. I had gotten turned around with each swing and thrust of the machete. I struck something with my foot as I turned to take down what had been a young man in life but was just another soul-trapped, rotting corpse now. The metal sound of my gun skittering across the hard scrabble road caught my attention. I drove the machete into another skull and limped toward the pistol.
Pain caught up to me, and I stumbled and fell to the ground inches from the gun. It was all I could do to grab it, turn, and fall onto my back. From there, I emptied the pistol into the dead as they approached.
One. Two. Three. Four. They went down, my aim true, the bullets as deadly as ever. I sat up and spun on one knee. Another went down by the blade of the machete. Then another one. I fired another shot and then circled around the bodies and the thinned-out group of biters. The hoard was manageable, but still, there were a dozen or so left. Six shots took out the closest to me. My machete took out the rest.
But there were still two more. Two more…
They crouched over the little girl, the terrified little child who might have escaped if not for my intervention.
Bile rose up in my throat, and heat filled my face. Anger flushed through my body. I stepped over the corpses, now forever at rest, and came up behind the closer of the two leaning over the girl’s body. It had been an older woman in better times. I brought the machete down across the back of her head. She collapsed onto the little girl. The other one—a teenaged boy with just a shirt and underwear on and miss
ing half his face—looked up at me, his eyes completely white. He growled and made to stand. He fell back to the road. I pulled the machete from his skull.
I was tired. Forget that. I was exhausted. My arms felt like rubber bands. My legs were weak. My body ached, and there was that throbbing in my thigh. I didn’t care about any of that. I cared about the little girl.
I moved the old lady from on top of her. There was still plenty of flesh on her bones, but there were chunks missing from all over her body. Most of her face was gone as well. All except for the bridge of her nose and up. I could see the bullet hole in the center of her forehead.
I knelt down, fresh tears falling from my face. One of them landed in the mangled mess of one of her cheeks. I shook my head.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry. I’m…”
On my knees among the bodies of dozens of the dead, I cried. It was an ugly cry. I can only imagine how bad I looked, my face all screwed up, snot rolling from my nose, my shoulders hitching up and down, wails coming from my throat.
I looked up at a sound I thought—I know—I heard. The groan of a biter. I looked around, spinning on one knee, a pebble from the road grinding in it through my jeans. There was no biter there, but the groan…I still heard it in my ears.
I looked back down at the ruined child. Slipping my hands beneath what was left of her body, I picked her up, and then I stood. I stumbled up the road, which was a steady incline, the little girl held tightly to my chest, her blood soaking into my clothes.
Hetch was there, and I could see then why he had not rushed to my aid. There were probably a dozen or more corpses at his feet. He held a hammer in his hand—it was bloodied (as was Hetch), and there was still a piece of scalp on the claw end.
“Hank,” he said as I walked by him.
I said nothing and continued up the hill.
“Hank, listen to me.”
Again, I continued to walk.
“Hank!”
I turned, nodded toward the dead. “Do me a favor,” I said. “Get my gun and machete for me.”
Then I started walking again. I wouldn’t stop until I reached the house. There, I lay the girl on the ground and made my way to the tool shed in the back.