The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree

by David Andrew Wright

  Gray daylight streams in through the gaps of the barn boards. Rain is pounding overhead. My stomach says it is mid-morning.

  I reach in my pack and pull out a can. “Pumpkin pie filling,” I say out loud to myself. “Or,” pulling out another can, “lima beans… or… the mystery can.” I roll the shiny can with no label around in my hands. “That’s right, Bob, this vintage, 2011, all stainless steel 14 ounce can could hold any number of fabulous prizes. If….the price is right.”

  The last house I checked out had been emptied already, except for this stuff, the stuff nobody wants. The cans of crap that get donated to canned food drives for the homeless. Why waste chili on the starving? Let them eat creamed corn.

  I give the mystery can a shake. It could be something wonderful. Or it could be sauerkraut. It might be a delicious beef stew or canned spaghetti. Or it might be a stinking tin of butter beans. It goes back in the pack. “Ya gotta have something to look forward to in life or it just ain’t worth live’n,” I tell the barn. I place my hand on the pack for a moment. “My shiny little lottery ticket waiting to be scratched off.”

  I put the lima beans back in the pack also. Maybe I’ll meet someone and trade them. Or pull the label off and make it a lottery ticket for them. “Hell, some people actually like lima beans. I’m not sure how hungry I’d have to be to actually eat them. However hungry that is, I ain’t there yet.” My voice sounds hollow in the big empty barn. I set about opening the tin of pumpkin pie filling. Pie for breakfast is fine. Even though I hate pumpkin, it is still better than goddamned lima beans.

  A large spider is slowly plodding across a web slung between two posts, its long hairy black legs stepping carefully from strand to strand. I shovel in a mouthful of sickly sweet pumpkin puree and shake my spoon at the spider as I speak. “It’s all Star Trek’s fault, I figure. The original series, not that Captain Picard bullshit. I’m talking about the real deal with Kirk and Spock and McCoy. Know what I mean?”

  The spider has stopped moving. I don’t think it likes my spoon waggling. I put another mouthful in and park the spoon in the half-full can while I talk and chew. “Sorry. Bad manners. And god knows what spoon waving means in the animal world. But like I was saying, it’s all about Star Trek, my little friend. Those guys were highly moral and disciplined soldiers, out exploring the universe, all dressed in primary colors. You weren’t around in the 70’s but it wasn’t a decade for pastels. Christmas tree lights were the big ceramic bulb type, all in primary colors. People wore red, white and blue clothing, or tie dye or those insanely stiff dark-blue blue jeans. Orange shag carpet. Avocado green stoves. Harvest gold refrigerators. Things had a certainty to them. None of this wishy-washy pastel nonsense. And then you had Star Trek. All those uniforms in dark blue, dark red, and gold. Half-naked green women. My god what I wouldn’t give for a half-naked green woman just now.”

  The spider has resumed its building. It is black with dark yellow streaks. It must understand what I’m saying. “Yup. Star Trek did it.” The spider pauses for a moment and fiddles with something intricate. I choke down another mouthful of pumpkin.

  “How? How, you ask? That… is a very astute question, my little hairy friend. You see, when I was a kid, we didn’t have automatic doors. Some places had doors where you stepped on a mat and the door opened, but nothing like on Star Trek. Lo and behold, a few decades later, boom… doors that open just like on Star Trek. No guys with push sticks off camera sliding the doors open and shut. This is real technology. And it ended up everywhere. Right? Am I right?”

  The spaces in the web are wide. Big spider, big web. Big web, big catches. Big catches, big meal. “They had these little communicators they used to call up the ship. ‘Hey Spock, you pointy eared fuck… send down some hot wings, goddamn it. We’re have’n uh… Neptunian green woman orgy and these bitches are wild for hot wings.’ You know, like that.”

  “And so a lot of things that the science fiction writers thought up, well man… that shit eventually came into being. Tricorder scanner thing? We end up with ultra-sound and MRI and NMR. And you know, there’s probably a million other examples out there. But Star Trek man, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  I finish off the pumpkin gruel and toss the can down off the loft. I lick the spoon clean and take a long pull of water. Pumpkin farts all day. “What am I talking about?” I ask the spider as I round up my gear. “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the zombies. All these writers come up with shit in stories and then the shit really happens. Everybody kept writing about zombies and well… here we are.”

  I hold up my wet, bloody, mud-covered jeans. A chunk of black rotten skin is stuck to the back of the calf. I spread them out on the straw floor to dry. Washing machines were nice. Dryers were cool. Electricity… clean water… cans with labels.

  The pumpkin-pie-filling-lima-bean-mystery-can house had yielded some extra duds as well. I pull on a worn out pair of brown cotton duck pants and a brand new black t-shirt that says, “Her mother was better” in big white letters.

  I pace around the loft and think about what to do. A slat in the barn wall is missing and I jam my face up against the opening to look out across the muddy cornfield that I crossed last night. I have no idea where I’m going. Just heading west, I suppose, out to the mountains. “Manifest destiny,” I mutter. Kill the natives. Rape, pillage and destroy. God’s will.

  The spider continues working on its web. A strand, a joint, an arch, a long slide down to the next part. So intent in its purpose and I find myself with no purpose other than survival. Which puts us in the same proverbial boat, I guess. Except its chances are better than mine. “No more pesticides, no more pollution. The whole place is yours, man. We’re done fucking it up. At least for now.”

  It’s pretty comfortable up here. I chew on my bottom lip as I think. The spider has settled down in the middle of its web.

  “Course, there’s that tree full of Zeds and god knows what else back in that woods. Could be gravy. But, it would be nice to hunker down here for a while. Cept if some kinda truck load of idgits pulls up, then I’m fucked. That’s why I had to leave the farm in the first place, you know.” I pick up a small flat board and fiddle it around in my hand. “Let themselves in real quiet, prowl’n through the house. I listened for a while. They talked about the big wave of zombies come’n. How the disease spreads through bites. They had a lot to say till they saw the cigarette I left burning in the ashtray. One was just start’n to say something when I cut’em down. They never felt noth’n though.”

  I remember emptying the .45 on all three of them. Two skinny dirt bag hippie types and some young girl. She was pretty good look’n. But somehow, that made me feel even more right about it. Not that it mattered, right or wrong. It just had to be done.

  “You think I should stay, yeah?” I ask the spider. “Hang out all day, have a few laughs, pals forever?”

  I look around at the nothingness. The no-one-ness. Images of people I used to know flash through my mind. Then the loop starts. The pictures I always see when I stop and think. The mud, the big red International Harvester tractor laid over, the crushed red wooden feeder trough, the red metal barn, the red pool of blood and cow shit. Ringing in my ears and the smell of shotgun smoke in the air. Little pile of goo where a head used to be.

  No sense living in the past. Although I decide to tell the spider, “When the weather started to turn and the Zed started to get more frequent, Mom left with Aunt Wanda and Uncle Merv. They all headed down to Wanda and Merv’s 160 acres in Missouri. She only asked me once if I wanted to go with them. She knew I wasn’t going to come. She knew that after everything that had happened, I was better off on my own in a way. And besides, Merv is an asshole. His hand on my shoulder as they were leaving, ‘You should come with us. We could use somebody like you down there.’ Big stupid smile on his big empty head.”

  The pumpkin puree churns in my stomach and I feel ill. I watch the spider string another piece of l
attice across the arc of its web. I try to concentrate on the spider and ignore the picture in my memory. But the harder I try not to see it… well, there it is. The little brass bb soldered onto the end of the barrel. Everything beyond the bb is a blur.

  The board in my hand lands flat against the bulbous body of the spider, smashing it flat and dead in a nanosecond. The shattered web and broken legs of the spider stick to the end of the board as I pull it away. “That’s the way to go,” I tell the dead spider. I look at the bottom of the board. I look at the death and the guts and the pieces and the parts. A calloused heart takes work or it softens into useless tenderness.

  The board lands with a thud in the corner of the loft. On the bottom floor of the barn, I unsling my little rifle and slip my poncho on over my head and pack. My new pants are a little big and I have to hike them up and retighten my belt. To hell with that other pair. They’ll be walking around under their own power in a couple of days.

  Rain will provide a good cover for slipping across the road and into the trees. Maybe there are people back in the woods. Maybe there’s an old truck with a tank of gas. Maybe there’s a half-naked green woman. I look back towards where the spider was. The world seems so flat and empty and limitless.

  The sound of the rain on my plastic hood is deafening as I step outside into the deluge.

  Chapter 3: Calvary

  “One little, two little, three little Indians.” I mouth the words almost silently to myself from under my poncho. I’ve spent the morning slowly working through the honeysuckle and multiflora rose bushes to get behind the hanging tree. There are only three Zeds still kicking. The others have gone pretty rotten pretty quick. Their bodies have bloated and they swing from the tree like bizarre alien Christmas ornaments. Some show strange honeycomb growths hanging out of their wounds. A couple of the ropes are empty. I’m guessing they went full Pez and their heads came off, but I can’t see any bodies lying under the tree.

  The three remaining contestants are on low branches and easily reached. The center one hangs slightly higher than the two on the sides. His arms hang outstretched, caught in the wild grapevine. Tiny twigs from the collapsed branches are intertwined in his matted hair. I know he’s not dead because of the twitching movements of his fingers. The one on his left has a restless leg. The one on the right makes a high pitch whistle when it breathes.

  I need to be quiet about it today. I pull out the cleaver and approach them from behind. “Smooth and fast,” I whisper to myself, “flow from the first one to the last, then pick up the middle.” If I take too long, they’ll start moaning and howling their heads off. If anyone else is around today, I’ll probably get the air let out of me.

  I grip the cleaver tightly and step behind the first one. I swing through, just below the ear, with a back-handed delivery. I jump away as I do to avoid getting zombie spray all over my new clothes. Reloading as I pass the middle, I deliver a decapitating blow to the one on the other side. The two bodies and two heads hit the ground about two seconds apart.

  My foot tangles in the undergrowth, and I go pitching off forward, trying to regain my balance. I’m taking too long. I spin around and lunge at the middle one ready to carve his noggin like a jack-o-lantern but he isn’t making much noise. He groans and rolls his head skyward. A broken branch has pierced his throat, robbing it of any use. His rope goes up to a broken branch that is caught above. Another broken branch has pierced his rib cage. He must have taken a tumble from his previous perch. I walk around in front of him. You don’t get a chance to look at them close up and still alive-ish very often.

  As I step in front of him for a closer look, his teeth snap together and his hands jerk forward. But he remains fastened where he is. His eyes are all one color; the same matte gray, lifeless-dead, nobody-home gaze as the rest of them. But something is alive in there. Maybe not the former tenant but certainly some kind of mutation or parasitic life form. I look closer at the hole in his throat. A golden, porous, spongy type of growth has sealed around the branch preventing the loss of liquids. “You like all of this rain and damp, don’t ya, buddy?” I ask the hanging Zed. “You thrive in this environment with all of the rain cuz you can’t run without juice, am I right?”

  I push against the flesh of his cheek with the dull side of the cleaver. It is squishy and strange. Like human flesh but not. A gray tongue covered in a white film pokes out from the Zed’s mouth and tastes the air in front of him. Air escapes from the hole in his neck as he struggles against the branches to get closer.

  There’s something odd about the dress of this one though and I can’t quite make it out. His clothes are so mangled and dirty I can’t quite… ah, I see the collar now. The rain is letting up so I slide the top of my poncho hood back and smile broadly at the right Reverend. “Morning, Padre,” I tell him. I can’t help but giggle a little. “I don’t remember any mention of this in the book of Revelations, there Reverend,” I tell him. “Is this one of God’s ‘mysterious ways’? Huh? I bet you prayed your ass off along with the rest of the congregation here and now look at cha. Just a buncha cans on a string, howling at everything that walks by. Can’t sneak up on nobody with you here.” I take the end of the cleaver and tilt his head up as far is it will go. “How’s bout I deliver you from evil and you go find out if any of that bullshit was real? How’s that sound?” I lean in and look more closely at his eyes. “Or maybe you’re already there.”

  I pull a branch down with my left hand and pull back with the cleaver in my right. “For the Lord is my shepherd… that I do not want.” The cleaver swings mostly through his neck before sticking in the limb behind him. The spinal cord is cut and he looks even more dead now. The flap of skin and muscle still attached to his noggin acts as a hinge and his head flops over to one side. “No time to be stingy, I guess.” The cleaver swings again and I lop the rest of his head off. It bounces down through the branches and lands at my feet. I boot it out of my way and make a cross motion with the cleaver. “Ashes to ashes Padre, mush to mush.”

  About thirty yards away, behind the wall of thorns, bushes and undergrowth, I hear a loud snap. My heart stops and a flood of adrenaline hits the top of my chest. I drop into a crouch and breathlessly listen. My eyes scan the brush for any sign of movement. My mind empties every thought outside of the scene in front of me. Time slows and the old expression, ‘you never hear the shot that kills you’ darts through my mind.

  After a few seconds, my mind starts to process. I guess it could be a deer. Not a lot of those left these days. Could be some rogue farm animal. More than likely though, it’s a two legged problem.

  I continue to listen and breathe as shallow as possible. I’m somewhat protected by the dangling remains of Reverend Zed. Minutes pass without another sound. If it was an animal, it would have probably moved again by now. I lay the cleaver down flat beside me on the ground and begin the task of slowly sliding the Ruger off my shoulder. Twenty five yards away, the top of a sapling wiggles slightly. Instead of bringing the little rifle down slowly, I opt for one fluid movement. The shape of a person begins to emerge from the brush.

  My legs are killing me. I can’t sit like this for much longer. The ground beneath me is wet and muddy and silent. I have only a moment to move if I’m going to. The trunk of the big oak is close and will provide protection even if I am spotted. I spring up and over without making a sound and stop behind the trunk of the big tree. The Reverend Zed’s head lies just a foot away, the teeth still moving slowly up and down. I pick him up by the hair and turn his teeth away from me.

  The figure coming out of the brush inspects my handy work on the three previously undead hangers. His finger remains on the trigger of the pump shotgun held across his chest. He’s short, maybe 5’7”, but I can’t size up his build through the clothing. And I can’t see his face for the balaclava and scarf wound round his head under his hood. He is close. His head snaps to a stop and freezes, looking straight ahead. He is looking where I had been crouched previously. My cleav
er is still lying there. Shit.

  He creeps towards it, checking left and right. The shotgun swings with his eyes. As he looks left, I am blocked by the headless preacher’s body. The stranger looks right to see if I am in the brush and then forward at the cleaver once again. His hood all but eliminates his peripheral vision and I know he can’t hear much all covered up like that. With one arm, I train the rifle on the intruder. With the other, I loft the reverend’s head high and wide behind the guy with the shotgun. It lands with a healthy thud on the ground.

  The intruder spins and pulls a bead on the head with the shotgun. I move in a leap and land behind him with my rifle barrel pressed into his neck. He freezes.

  “Lose the shotty,” I tell him. His shoulders and elbows never move a millimeter as he releases the shotgun. “Hands behind your head, fingers interlaced.”

  He does. I kick the back of his straight leg and drop him to his knees. “Normally, your ass would be D-E-A-fucking-double-D dead. But it is your lucky day my friend.”

  I move around to the side and slide his hood back. The scarf comes off in one pull, snapping his head around. I need to see his face. I need the true language of human beings, the nonverbal, the twitch, the blink, the tell. “Yup, you’re a lucky, lucky bastard,” I say in a high British falsetto voice.

  I push the rifle barrel into the V of his throat where the collarbones come together. His eyes glare up at me with a deep seething hatred. “Let’s have a look at ya,” I tell my captive. “Take that bag off’n yer head, buddy.” I smile at him as wide as I can, then cross my eyes and make a bubble popping sound. Even in a world full of zombies and cannibals, there’s still nothing scarier than a happy crazy person.

  As the balaclava slides off, a long blonde ponytail uncoils out the back. The face in front of it has smooth skin and high cheekbones. The soft pink lips are pursed together in a grimace of determination. Her eyes continue to bore a hole straight through me. A single tear falls from her left eye and I watch it slowly trail down the side of her reddening cheek.