Neighbors

by Paul Z. Ford

  “Glove box,” he barked, pointing. Kahn pressed the button and the plastic casing popped open, throwing a small gun into his hands. He held it awkwardly and looked over at Kimble.

  “I can’t shoot him,” Kahn replied meekly, looking back between the gory mess now pounding on his window with open, bloody palms and his stoic neighbor. Kimble’s eyebrows furrowed in anger, but his gaze never broke from the shambling man on the driver’s side.

  “Man, that thing ain’t alive no more,” the big man hit the button to automatically roll his window down, waiting patiently until it was down far enough to aim his pistol. The man on his side reached his arms up, opening his mouth and exhaling a long growl. Kahn noticed both the creature’s hands were missing all their fingers as the brash report from Kimble’s weapon filled the small cabin. The creature was struck in the forehead and the contents of its skull burst into the air. It crumpled to the flat ground as Kimble accelerated away, knocking the other figure down as he turned to the left and drove toward the highway exit.

  Kahn slid into the window as Kimble revved the engine and swerved around a couple of defenseless people surrounded by a handful of the horrible beings, trying to fend them off by hand. Kahn observed the group as one of the men was bitten in the arm, and the other tried to punch and kick his way out of the circle. They were outnumbered and easily overwhelmed. Kahn saw pieces of the fragmented group as they were scattered by the horde.

  Kimble skidded, too fast, onto the frontage road adjacent to the parking lot and sped away from the embattled group in the strip center. Kahn bounced and slid around on the bench seat as Kimble got them away. Kahn was still gripping the pistol, so he quickly placed it back into the glove box and closed the compartment. He reached across and buckled his seatbelt. The distinctive click seemed to snap Kimble out of his mindset. He looked at Kahn and began to decelerate. The tires crunched as he pulled over onto the small shoulder. He stopped the engine, but left the keys dangling in the ignition. Kimble exited the vehicle and walked to the rear. Kahn watched him through the back window of the cab, through the translucent flag decal. Kimble looked up and motioned for Kahn to join him.

  As Kahn unbuckled and exited the truck, he saw Kimble open the tailgate and hoist his large frame onto the back. Kahn peered around nervously, worried they hadn’t made it far enough away from the horde. Next to the truck was a small area of brush and stunted trees somewhat blocking a short chain-link barrier around an even smaller house. He approached the rear of the truck and stood shakily behind the open tailgate. His ears were ringing from Kimble’s gunshot and he felt dizzy with adrenaline. His nose had stopped bleeding, so he felt around his face and ribs tenderly, searching for injury. The two men waited in silence, Kimble breathing heavily through his nose and watching the flat route they had driven, easily able to see back the half mile or so to the turnout from the parking lot. There were no cars, no people, and no walking figures in sight.

  Kahn broke the silence first. “Um… thanks for helping me back there.” He looked sheepishly at Kimble, waiting for a reaction of some sort. Kimble continuing staring ahead in silence for a long moment.

  “You gotta shoot those things in the head. It has something to do with their brain.” He continued staring straight ahead at the road, resting heavily on the tailgate. Kimble tapped his own bald head twice as he said this, then he wiped his massive hand from his forehead to the back of his neck.

  “You said something about them being--” Kahn hesitated. It seemed unbelievable to say out loud, “--dead?” He ended with uncertainty in his voice. Kimble nodded. As he did so he pointed down the road toward the Wal-Mart. Kahn could see that several of the figures were now shambling awkwardly out of the parking lot and into the road. He tensed, but it didn’t look like they were coming their direction. They were aimless now, walking as individuals, and as the two men watched the first ones wandered across the road in all directions. Some walked into the ditch across the road, some bounced and stumbled over the curb, and some staggered onto the abandoned highway. There were probably twenty of them bumping into each other and walking around haphazardly.

  “Yep, those people. Those people died and came back. They came back as something else.” Kahn wanted to tell Kimble about the man over the radio. He wanted to say that he went into the house looking for Kimble’s help, desperately needing his help, and instead heard the suicidal man give the same information Kimble was sharing now. He wanted to explain that he didn’t know how to protect his family and coming to the Wal-Mart today was an attempt to keep them alive and safe. But he didn’t know how to say any of this coherently. Instead, he said nothing.

  After a moment, Kimble jumped down off the tailgate and walked back to the driver’s side. Kahn followed on the opposite side and watched him across the open cab of the pickup truck, trying to keep an eye on the faraway walkers. Kimble checked the pistol he had left on the seat, unloaded the magazine and the round in the chamber, then placed it back in the hidden holster under the dashboard. Kahn watched, then spoke.

  “Kimble, I need to get home. To my family. I had gotten supplies for them. Food. We don’t have anything left. I need to get to them.” Kimble’s face stayed neutral and quiet as he pondered his neighbor’s words. He grabbed the dangling set of keys and started the truck.

  “Home is the wrong way right now,” he jutted his chin back the way they had come. “Too many of those dead things that way. You got any place we can go this way?” He looked and gestured forward, the way the truck was facing. Kahn thought about where they were and how they could get back around to retrieve the Escape and his supplies. He thought they would have to wait until the dead dispersed far enough for it to be safe, if it would ever be safe. Then, the issue was that he didn’t have the keys either. Suddenly, it dawned on him where to go first. He climbed into his seat and closed the door.

  “Get in,” he declared, “I know exactly where to go.”

  Chapter 19

  Isolation

  It was dusk when Ash finally approached the back entrance to Boomstick. He trudged along the shoulder of the road, pack on his back and carbine slung over his shoulder, for countless miles. Each step sent painful shockwaves through his swollen feet and up his tired legs. The temperature today had fortunately been mild, but his constant trek along neighborhood roads, shortcuts through open fields and wooded areas, and the final long march along the highway shoulder had exhausted and dehydrated the man. He was staring at the ground ahead of him and breathing heavily, willing himself to place one foot in front of the other.

  Ash had taken a break a few hours before, already drained after walking along the ravine he escaped into and back up a steep embankment into a neighborhood. He walked along one of the roads, only vaguely aware that the direction was correct, and decided to stop at one of the houses. He desperately needed water. The CamelBak in his ruck had emptied as the midday sun bore down on him. The subdivision had a series of hilly roads winding around and combining with each other. The houses looked similar to each other, nice neighborhood, and there were some cars parked here and there throughout the area. Ash stopped next to a house and surveyed the area closely. There was a van in the driveway in front of a closed two-car garage. The front door was solid wood, and there was a small, translucent window to the right of the door. He spotted black smoke billowing far away on the northern and western horizons. He was heading east and south, away from whatever fires raged to his rear.

  Ash walked toward the front door of the house carefully, not wanting to alarm anybody that might be around. He hit the doorbell firmly. The silence of the area surrounding him was foreboding, and he felt strange at every loud step and movement he made. After the experience earlier with the dead horde, he tried to stay as silent as possible, until now.

  Ash wasn’t sure if the doorbell would ring with the power off, but he tried again. This time he held the button down and placed his ear close to the small window. When he didn’t hear anything he released the button and ope
ned the screen door. It made a deafening creak as he pulled it along the hinge. He hesitated, but then pounded loudly on the wooden door with his closed fist. He felt the echo of the effort down his arm, and felt the reverberation in his ears over the hush of the neighboring homes. No answer. He tried the doorknob but it only clicked back and forth with the lock.

  He turned and looked at the van and the side of the house. There was a little bit of landscaping here, some overgrown decorative bushes and trees, and a large window built into the brick sidewall of the quiet home. Below the window was a hose bib with a soaker hose attached for the plants. Ash let the screen door close with a screech and a loud bang and stomped through the plants to the hose bib. He dropped on his knees and leaned his rifle against the house, swinging his pack off in the process. He turned the knob and water began to flow into the hose. He pumped his fist once in the air to celebrate. The hose seemed to admonish the racket he was making crunching through the dry brush.

  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

  He turned it off and quickly unscrewed the hose connection. It took a little bit of effort, but came loose and quickly flopped to the ground. Ash opened the Velcro at the top of his pack and removed the empty bladder of the CamelBak. He unscrewed the large opening and placed the empty drinking hose in his mouth. As he held the bladder and turned on the hose, he started drinking in refreshing cool water, breathing heavily through his nose as he imbibed as much as he could. He finally broke the seal of his mouth and panted with the hose pinched in his teeth. He took an occasional sip as he slowly worked the air bubbles out of the bag, now half-full with water.

  A surprisingly loud bang sounded at the window to Ash’s right shoulder. He straightened his knees as he jumped away, dropping the CamelBak bladder and spilling most of its contents to the ground. The faucet continued to hiss and spill onto the bladder and his knocked-over pack. He stood, on edge, and spun toward the window. A small figure was standing behind the broken blinds. As he watched, wide-eyed with terror, the figure raised a hand and once again smacked loudly on the glass. He could hear a muffled low growl as the figure pulled its hand back to hit again. It got tangled in the venetian blind and ripped at it until the blinds fell away from the window.

  He was confronted by the slow-moving figure of a child through the exposed glass. It was a boy, no more than 6 or 8 years old, and its slack jaw and vacant eyes told Ash that it was dead and reanimated as a biting corpse. The boy ground his teeth from side to side and took a tiny bite out of the air as it reached up and smacked the window a third time. Blood was caked around its neck and Ash saw torn muscle at either side of the collarbone each time it raised a shoulder up to strike. He felt sorrow for this poor kid, violently killed and acting as an automaton for some disease that compelled its body to seek live flesh after death. He thought of his sister and tiny nephew, worried about their well-being and hoping Hal was able to keep them safe. Finding and helping his family gave him the resolve to step back toward the window and finish the task of filling his water. When it was full and repacked, he watched the dead boy through the glass before briskly moving away from the house.

  Now, hours later, he was wary as he walked to the back door leading to the office and storage area of his shop. He looked carefully at the edges of the dusky parking lot, trying to spot shambling bodies in the trees lining the employee lot. He hadn’t seen any other reanimated dead on his long walk to this point. He avoided populated areas and took advantage of the wild areas in between developments, and he did not detect any threats now. He remembered the only scare he had on the walk, two loud pickup trucks that he could hear zooming toward him as he walked on the shoulder of the little highway leading to the shop. His mind had quickly come into focus as he dove off the road into a patch of prickly pear and brushy trees. He watched from the prone position as the noisy trucks barreled past him. There were people standing up in the back of each, young kids that looked like teenagers or perhaps in their early twenties. Each brandished a long gun and leaned forward on top of the truck cab. The engines faded quickly and Ash got back on his path.

  He felt in his pocket for the keys he had thoughtfully taken from the ignition of Kahn’s Corolla. Ash had attached the borrowed car key to his keyring, and he now used the set to open the heavy lock of the rear metal door. He swung it open and was confronted with the evening shadows dancing down the narrow hallway, air from the building escaping and warming his chilled flesh. He shut the door behind him, sealing the darkness into the building.

  Lowering his pack and rifle to the floor he quickly pulled out the small utility flashlight he had packed. He clicked it on and illuminated the hallway. The doors to the bathroom, office, and storage room were closed. He left the pack on the ground and the rifle leaning on the wall. He unfastened his heavy vest and gun belt, holding his pistol and extra magazines, and left it on top of the pack. After shaking his uncomfortably sweaty shirt, he went down to the office first. Inside, he pulled a bottle out of one of the cases of water stacked along the wall. He guzzled it quickly, crunched the bottle and dropped it into the trash can, and grabbed a second bottle. He took a sip of this one and walked back out into the hallway, shining the light at the storage room door.

  The body. He pictured the decomposing corpse of their violent customer on the floor inside the room, wrapped in the store’s logoed banner. He needed some of the camping gear that they kept as inventory for overnight hunters, the lightweight plastic cots and dehydrated food were stacked on the rack behind the dead man. Thinking of the food made his stomach grumble. He stood in front of the door, shining the narrow beam at the lock, and used his key to open it. The stench hit him immediately when the door swung inward. Ash retched and tried to keep the watery contents of his stomach from evacuating. He held his free hand over his mouth and nose and tried to see inside the room with the flashlight. The tarp was there, bulging with the bloated, decomposing body of his victim, undisturbed from when he hauled it in here several weeks earlier. It took all his willpower to step into the rotten air of the storage room. The atmosphere was still and humid, heavy and difficult to breathe. Ash stepped toward the banner, white light reflecting and dancing around the small space. The roll of duct tape he used to secure the banner around the corpse was still on the ground nearby. He waited, half-expecting the body to lurch toward him, biting through the thick plastic with sharp, yellow teeth. Nothing happened. The figure lay still.

  “Good thing I shot you in the head,” Ash commented dryly as he pondered what to do with the body. He had to put it outside. Should he bury it? Burn it? Ash suddenly felt heavy guilt in addition to the nausea from the smell, and grabbed a shelf to prevent him from swooning. He tried to regain his balance but tunnel vision was starting to cloud his senses. He gripped the shelf tightly and tried to fight the vertigo that was suddenly threatening him. The flashlight dropped and clattered under a shelf, dimming the room and casting long shadows on the far walls. Ash staggered back out of the room and tried to get away from the intense smell. He made it to the dark hallway and shut the door, closing off the shine from his handheld light and casting him into the nighttime darkness.

  His shoulder hit the opposite wall as he searched for the office door. He needed water, and he needed to sit down. The smell of the corpse seemed to stick in his nostrils, and he gulped in fresh air. Overwhelmed by the foul smell, but blinded by the lack of light, Ash staggered into the door. It swung wide open and he fell onto his knees on the carpeted floor. He sucked air through his nose, anxious for fresh air, as he whirled from fatigue and nausea.

  His ears perked and he caught his breath, holding it and keeping quiet. Was that a noise? He waited and listened again. There it was. Steps? Someone or something behind the building.

  His senses cleared as adrenaline freshened his mind. He leaned back, still on his knees, and looked down the hallway toward the back door. Now, he thought he heard voices. The door, he thought, I didn’t lock the door! He shifted so he was on all fours, looking and listenin
g. Muffled voices whispered from outside and he thought they were getting closer. People. Live people, not dead creatures. That means they could think. That means they knew if they needed guns, they should break into a gun store.

  Ash got up onto one foot, intending to stand, when a thin crack of blue light illuminated the hallway. The small amount of evening light seemed bright to Ash, and he was suddenly frozen in fear. The crack widened and he was able to see his pack and his rifle, too far to make a difference.

  “It’s unlocked,” a whispering voice stated. Ash watched as the door opened fully, silhouetting a human figure. The shadow walked in the door and held it aside for his partner. The second man was an enormous dark shape, blocking most of the glowing cobalt light of the outdoors. The second man reached down and came up with a weapon. Unbelievable, Ash thought to himself, watching both men step past his pack. They let the door swing shut with a bang, and they were in darkness again.

  Despite the fact that he was in a gun store, there were no loaded guns accessible for defense. Ash backed himself slowly into the office, thinking the two men might skip the administrative room and head out to the showroom to loot the merchandise. Most of it might still be unavailable to the looters. He had checked the cable locks and glass cases and locked them all before he left the store a few weeks prior. He huddled into the dark room, coming to a rest in the gap between the safe and the desk and hoping they wouldn’t find him.

  “There should be a flashlight in the office,” the voice whispered again. His armed partner grunted in annoyance. Ash heard them stomping and scraping along the hallway in the darkness.