The voice had come from a middle-aged man across the other side of the small green; he was out walking his dog, a small Jack Russell that was straining to get off the leash. I knew how it felt. Its owner was kneeling down beside it, fiddling with the leash, and then glanced up at me again; he was clearly expecting a response.
“E-evening,” I replied, halting. This was the first conversation—such as it was—in a long time, especially with someone living.
I assumed that would be the end of it—that he was let his dog run loose and that would be that. As the Jack Russell darted off across the green to the few trees that were scattered around, I turned to go.
“Are you new to the village?” the man called over to me.
I looked over my shoulder and, before my brain caught up, replied; “Erm, no, I’m...just a visitor. I’m passing through.”
In the rapidly-fading dusk light, I could see the man’s open, friendly face nodding. He was walking towards me, and my stomach did a back flip. Quickly adjusting my hood, so that it covered as much of my eyes as possible, I took a step back and looked down.
“A lot of people do,” the man said. “Visit, I mean. It’s a nice little village—always has been, despite the recent...prob-lems.”
Oh God, he knows, I thought. Panic started to set in; al-though it was still strange not to get any of the physical symptoms now—rapidly beating heart, flushed cheeks, etc.—I still felt uncomfortable.
The local stopped a foot or so away from me and glanced out over the green, searching for his dog.
“I can’t even see Henry now,” he muttered, peering into the gloom.
Neither could I, but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to engage the man in any more conversation than was absolutely necessary. The sooner I could get away, the safer I would be. I began wishing that I hadn’t paused to look at the pub.
“It was a terrible time, wasn’t it,” he said quietly. “All those...dead people, just walking around and killing everyone they could get their hands on. We lost...well, we lost more than we deserved.”
I was glad I had hidden my hands in the pockets of my jeans; I really didn’t want to get recognised here, not when I was so close to home.
“Yeah,” I replied, “they were bad days.”
“Did you lose anyone?”
“What? I—er, what?”
The question had been so out of the blue that I hadn’t got an answer readily to hand; it wasn’t one I had expected to be asked.
As I fumbled for a decent lie, the man glanced over at me, obviously thinking I’d just missed the question. “I asked if you’d lost anyone during the outbreak?”
“My wife,” I said, hating myself for the lie, “and my two children. They all died.”
“I lost my brother and his wife,” he replied. “They were butchered, just over there by the post office. I didn’t see it happen, thankfully.”
I remained silent, looking out over the green. Dusk was quickly giving way to night; I heard the Jack Russell barking away excitedly in the distance and found myself wishing I could be that carefree.
The man a breath and turned back towards me, a faint smile on his face. He stuck out a hand.
“Samuel Hiller,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr...?”
He deliberately left his question—as well as his hand—open, obviously expecting a normal response to both. Inside, I felt a surge of panic; the second I put my hand in his, he would know what I was. The cold clamminess of my hand was a certain giveaway; I had managed to keep my skin in fairly good condition, but already pieces had been starting to flake off.
Shit, I thought. I’m done for—he’ll raise the alarm and I’ll be attacked again. I don’t want to keep fighting. Please... don’t keep doing this to me. Please.
A slight look of confusion had appeared on Hiller’s face —I realised that the pause had gone on for a fraction of a second too long and my awkwardness was more palpable than ever now.
I was saved from making a choice by Henry, the little Jack Russell. He came bounding back across the green, still full of energy and excitement. Both Samuel and I looked around at the barking and yapping; the dog appeared from the gloom and, his own sight obviously impaired by the darkness, barrelled into my legs. He immediately righted himself and began weaving himself in and out of our legs.
I laughed at this little dog, full of energy, obviously happy to be back near his owner after losing sight of him. I knelt down and reached out to stroke him. As soon as I touched him, however, he yelped in shock and jumped back, quickly moving behind Samuel’s legs to hide.
“Henry?” Samuel said. “What’s wrong with you, you silly boy?”
He knelt down and grabbed hold of Henry, stroking him to stop the little dog from shaking. Samuel looked up at me and smiled.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into him. He’s never normally like—”
I instantly knew why he had stopped. Knelt down there opposite Samuel, my hands were visible. Pale white with occasional purple patches showed up even in the darkness of the evening, and Henry had managed to bite and puncture the skin of my left hand; a row of tiny teeth marks were embedded in my skin...but no blood was coming out.
Henry, emboldened by being in his owner’s arms, started to growl; his teeth bared and his eyes took on a wild aspect that scared me. Samuel, however, kept a tight grip on his dog; he obviously didn’t trust me anywhere near the pet, despite the dog’s obvious willingness to attack.
“You’re an abomination,” Samuel whispered angrily. “You don’t belong here.”
“I don’t belong anywhere!” I exclaimed, a rush of emotions suddenly coming to the surface. “I’m scared and I just want to go home!”
Samuel scoffed. “You don’t have a home—except in a cemetery. You belong in hell.”
He stood and began to back away, being careful to keep me in his eye-line.
“Freak!” he spat.
“Please don’t raise the alarm!” I begged, standing up as well. “Please...just let me leave. I don’t mean you any harm. I just want to find my family.”
“Why shouldn’t I call for help?” Samuel demanded. “That would be the best thing, wouldn’t it? Getting rid of one of your kind...it’d be one less the government has to hunt down and exterminate.”
I flinched at the word exterminate; it sounded so harsh and final.
Except that it wouldn’t be, would it? I thought. Even if you dismembered me, I wouldn’t die...I’d just be a living corpse with his limbs scattered across this bloody green. Then I really couldn’t get away.
“Please...” I pleaded, the begging in my voice palpable “please, just let me go. I’m travelling to Dover to find my family. I don’t want to hurt anyone. The virus cured me of all that hate.”
Samuel was looking at me curiously; not in the fearful, hate-filled way of a moment ago, but with the look of someone who was truly surprised at something.
“Dover?” he repeated. “You’re going to Dover?”
I nodded. “That’s where I lived before...well, before this happened to me. It’s the only place I can think of to start looking for my wife...and my children.”
I knew I had just shown up the lie that I had made earlier about my wife dying, but I didn’t think that would be much of an issue now that Samuel knew who I really was. He was still looking at me in that same curious way.
“You...you haven’t heard?” he asked. There was a quaver in his voice. His fear seemed temporarily forgotten.
I frowned. “What do you mean, I haven’t heard?” I asked. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m a goddamn zombie, Samuel! I don’t really keep up with the news!”
Samuel backed away some more, the terror and fear showing in his eyes. His grip on Henry tightened; the dog itself kept snarling at me, although in that instant, I didn’t care.
As quickly as my anger started, it dissipated again. I realised how it must look to a living human; a zombie getting angry, just
like it had done in the beginning of Armageddon.
“No, look, I’m sorry,” I said, holding my hands up to show that I didn’t mean any harm. “I’m...tired. I’m tired of everything. I just want to see my family again.”
Samuel swallowed, a hard lump in his throat clearing as his fear receded slightly.
“I don’t think you’ll find them,” he said quietly. He seemed frightened to tell me anymore, as if that simple act would somehow bring back the virus that I had been so recently been cured of.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
I was trying to be careful with what I said, and how I said it, because I wanted him to keep talking. There was something I didn’t know about – and that something affected my family.
“Please tell me, Samuel,” I asked. “What do you know?”
Samuel swallowed again. He glanced down at Henry, almost for reassurance. The dog had stopped growling for the moment, as if it had somehow picked up on my desperation. He looked back up at me.
“Dover was badly hit by the virus,” he said. “Over two-thirds of the population were affected by it. We know that some ...zombies left the area, went onto the killing fields in London, but a lot stayed.”
I nodded; I knew all this. I was one of the zombies that left. There were too many other zombies there, and it seemed pointless staying in an area where there wouldn’t be enough good hunting to go round. I had travelled to the countryside, where I had thought I would be able to pick off isolated bands of villagers. When the virus was cured, and I regained control, I was in the far north of Scotland, feasting on back-water hamlets.
“What happened after I left?
“The government couldn’t control them all,” Samuel replied. “The army was overwhelmed; there were just too many of them. So they scorched the town.”
My knees buckled and I fell to the ground. The earth and grass were soft beneath my knees but I didn’t notice—or care.
“They...scorched...” I tried to process what Samuel had said, but I couldn’t. “No...they can’t...my family...”
Samuel stood there, a few feet away from me, unsure of what to say. He nodded. His eyes had suddenly filled with tears; it was clearly a painful memory for anyone who had seen it happen, but in that moment, I didn’t care. All I could see in front of me were the faces of my wife and my gorgeous children—burning in flames.
“No one survived,” Samuel went on. “The zombies all burned. Anyone trying to leave the town’s boundaries was shot on sight; human or zombie. They couldn’t tell who was who. I’m so sorry, my friend.”
I doubled over in agony, wishing in that instant that I could cry—my tear ducts had stopped working the moment I had died.
I’ve got my wish, I thought. I feel alive again. But I wanted happiness. Instead, I get this...this pain!
I had what I had been searching for: answers, and an end to my apathy. Suddenly, I wanted neither.
I screamed in grief.
I want to die.
Jerry Enni lives in a small house in the center of the San Joaquin Valley with his beautiful family. By day he makes signs, and by night he writes stories; one of which you’ll find in this anthology. He hopes you enjoy reading it as much as he enjoyed writing it.
Despite what some people may think, zombie stories are not about the guts and the gore and the brains. The real horror of zombie stories comes from what that terrifying, post-apocalyptic setting reveals about those humans that remain behind. What Jerry Enni has managed to do, is to write a heartbreaking story about the lengths we’ll go to in order to save the people we love. He forces the reader to ask what they would do if they were faced with the trials of a zombie apocalypse; who would you save and what would you sacrifice to do it? What separates the humans from the zombies is their ability to love and to hold loyalties, and the situation in which Mr. Enni has put his characters demonstrates this in the most tragic way possible. It would be easy to write a zombie story all about the gore and to conveniently ignore all those human messy emotions, but this story successfully accomplishes a more difficult feat: it embraces them.
Saving Mirabel
By: Jerry Enni
Charlie stood at the window watching the men in the yellow rubber suits load his neighbor into the back of an ambu-lance.
The old man lay strapped to the gurney, his eyes wide with terror. They slid him in and slammed the doors shut.
The sirens wailed as they sped off and Charlie had to wonder why they bothered with them anymore.
“Charlie, who was that?” Mirabel called, her voice raspy from all the coughing.
He let the curtains fall, obscuring the view outside, and then walked into the room where his wife lay.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” Charlie said.
“Who did they take, was it Bud?”
“Yes.”
Mirabel looked away from Charlie, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Don’t do that, don’t cry. He was old, it was his time.”
Mirabel turned back to him. She looked worse.
“I’m next, Charlie. When they come and do count tomorrow they’ll see me. Then they’ll take me away.”
“No. You’re getting better.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Charlie! Not you. Not now.”
“Then let me go to the square, I can get you help!”
The baby cried in the back room.
“You can’t take Anna to a place like that. And you can’t leave her with me. What if I died while you were gone? She’d be the first thing I went after.”
The baby screamed louder. Charlie looked down at his wife, tears clouding his sight.
“I can’t—”
The doorbell rang.
“Oh my God,” Charlie said.
He wiped the tears from his eyes, and rushed over to Mirabel. He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom. He turned on the bath, removed his wife’s nightgown, and laid her into the tub.
“You can turn off the water, right? I mean, you have enough strength?” Charlie asked.
The doorbell rang again. The baby screamed.
“Yes, go!” Mirabel said, and Charlie was out the door.
He scooped Anna out of her crib, wrapped her in a light blanket and popped a pacifier into her mouth. He walked to the front door and peeked through the peephole.
He leaned his back against the door and stared off into space, frozen with panic.
They’re not supposed to be here yet.
The gentle roar of the bathwater ceased, and the bell rang again.
A young man, twenty-ish, stood on the porch. He had on a black jacket with bold yellow letters emblazoned across the front—CENSUS. He was scribbling on a binder sized notepad when Charlie opened the door.
“Ah, Mr. Tabern, I was just about to give up on you.”
“Yeah, sorry, you caught me in the middle of diaper duty,” Charlie said, raising Anna in his arms slightly. “You’re not due until tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” the Census man said, extending his hand. “I’m Norm. This route’s mine now. I’m getting acquainted with my new flock. I’ll be back tomorrow for the official count.”
“Ahhh,” Charlie said, retrieving his hand from Norm’s overzealous grip, “what happened to Samson?”
“Pneumonia. They didn’t think he’d make it, so…well, you know.”
Charlie nodded.
“Yeah…well. Hey, since I caught you at home would you mind signing in. The more I get out of the way today the better.”
“Sure, but I’m afraid you’ll have to come back anyway. My wife’s in the bath.”
Jesus why’d I tell him that, why didn’t I just say she was out?
“That’s alright. If you’ll let me in I can just get a verbal confirmation. I can initial her in.”
Charlie looked back through the crack in the door.
“I don’t think so, she wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
“It’ll be quick. Please. If
I can clear your house I’ve got every block in this quarter. I won’t even have to come back this way tomorrow.”
Charlie hesitated. Then he thought this might work out for the best. Norm could come in, hear his wife speak through the door, and then she would be cleared for the week. A whole week. The next time he came around she’d be better.
“Sure, if it’ll be quick,” Charlie said, then stepped back and held the door open for Norm.
He rapped on the bathroom door and called out to his wife.
“Mirabel, we’ve got a new Census man. His name is Norm. He’s here a day early. He just needs to hear your voice so he can clear you for the week.”
“Hi, Norm,” Mirabel called through the door.
Charlie felt relief wash over him. Her voice barely hiccupped. She sounded better than she had in a couple of days.
“Sorry to intrude on your bath, Mrs. Tabern. I appreciate you accommodating me like this. I’ll stop in on you next week so we can meet properly.”
“No trouble at—” Mirabel coughed. “Excuse me,” she said, the rasp in her voice coming back. “See you next week, Norm.”
“She okay? She sounds…ill,” Norm said.
“Nah, she’s fine. Used to smoke a lot back when they were legal. She’s sounded like that since high school.”
Norm flipped open his binder.
“That’s odd,” he frowned, shaking his head slightly. “I’ve got the both of you down as low risk. Says here that neither of you ever smoked—don’t drink much—exercise regular, the whole nine.”
“Weird,” Charlie said, panic ebbing away at his sense of relief.
Mirabel let out a single small cough and Norm closed his book.
“Damn. You know I hate to have to, but I think I’m gonna come back tomorrow after all.”
“Why?” Charlie asked, wearing his best perplexed face.
“She doesn’t sound very good, Mr. Tabern. As a precaution I’ll need to see her in person. If you want I can wait around now.”
“Nah, better you just come back tomorrow. Sorry you have to.”
“Me too, Mr. Tabern.”
Charlie closed the door and went to his wife.
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