Audrey withdrew from the room, holding her hands over her mouth and nose. I was drawn to it. To the sunken face, the gaping mouth. The incessant rustle. The stench. “You’re standing,” Audrey mumbled.
“Once I got Lena off my shoulder, I outrun her all through the house. Even led her back into the room. Just can’t let them get close enough to, you know,” he chomped his gums.
“You’re just hiding out?”
He slammed the bedroom door. “I ain’t hiding. I’m waiting. Either I’m gonna turn into one of them, or I’m going to kill as many yahoos as it takes to keep my wife from getting a bullet right here.” He tapped his forehead. “They overrun the police, you know.”
“Yeah. We know.”
“They wanted the sheriff to do something. What could he do? Arrest a bunch of invalids at the hospital? Shoot them?” He shook his head and stared at the shut door. “They took over like we never been civilized. Hauled the sheriff out of his home. A kid, thirty or so. Named Joyce. They shot him and took over. Just like that.
“Shit.”
“They think it’s Revelation, all right. I’ll be damned if they’re taking me from my home. I told that little shit yesterday to get the hell out of here. Told him from twenty yards away as he come up the drive. Told him I was aimed right at his ocean blue eye. The left one. Under the freckle in his eyebrow. And I was. He backed that stolen police car right the hell off my property. They’ll be back.”
“We just want to get out of the mountains,” Audrey sounded distant.
“What you want ain’t what you’re gonna get. Now you have to want something else,” Sewell said matter-of-factly.
Sewell led us through the darkness of his house and onto the porch. He pointed behind the woodshed. “That’s the way you have to go. Through the trees. Eventually, they’ll search the woods. But they’re dumb. It’ll take a while to figure out. Until then, they’ll stick to the roads.”
“Where will that take us?”
“West. Out of the county, out of the mountains. It’s a long haul.” He took out a small mason jar from his coveralls. “I didn’t give it to you with your biscuits, but I want you to take it now. It’s muscadine jelly. Lena made it this summer. If you never had muscadine, you’re in for a treat.”
Audrey took the jar and stuffed it in my pack, wrapping it in a wool t-shirt. We walked into the woods behind the shed, leaving Sewell on the porch with a rifle in his lap.
The forest was uncut by trails. Hiking a hundred yards was taxing. And at the end, we would only be out of the mountains. There was still the business of the animals. The vigilantes. The poisoned locals.
“When it was just me hiking, I would walk for days and not see anyone. And when I did see someone, I guess I tried to act like I was friendly— but I kept to myself. I’d go so long without conversation and I missed it. But hiking with you is different.”
“We still haven’t talked much.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe you spent too much time in the woods. Forgot how to make conversation.”
“Something like that.”
The trek was arduous. We climbed through clusters of fallen trees, snagging branches, and open pits of moist dead leaves and mud. We would be in the woods a long time.
We came to a massive, downed poplar, its trunk at least four feet wide. I helped Audrey climb up and she stayed put, straddling the log and waiting for me. When I joined her, she grabbed me by the shoulder straps and pulled herself closer. The wind was vicious on our faces.
“Thank you.”
“It’s just a log.”
“Thank you for my husband—for Watts.”
“I had to.”
“Someone had to. A long time ago.”
She smacked my chest and kissed me on the cheek. She turned to hop off the log. I pulled her back and put my lips on hers. We sat on that log a long time, our lips warm, pressed together. I didn’t want to leave.
“That looks like a retriever,” she said happily, still on the log.
An emaciated dog climbed through the brush. A stick gouged its open eye and it didn’t flinch. As the dog stumbled along, blood dripped from its snout and left thin red valleys in the snow.
Only twenty feet from us, I raised the Winchester and released the safety. I fired one round into its skull. The snow turned red and dimpled. Blonde fur and gray matter clung to the trunk of a tree. Its skull was split and empty like a grapefruit after breakfast.
That made three dogs. Only two deserved it.
We moved for hours after that, barely trudging along. We spoke little, straining our ears for what could be behind us, beside us. In front of us. The wood is a blind place.
It was then I realized there would be no break from the Trail.
The Appalachian Trail climbs half a million feet over two-thousand miles. That day, it felt like we walked the whole thing. And we walked until dusk.
We cleared a site large enough for the tent and set it up. It went up fast with a second person, but it was a squatter’s tent made for one person lying flat.
“How about a fire?” I asked.
There was plenty of light to gather wood. Audrey and I set out to collect kindling and inch-thick sticks, keeping the tent in sight. Once we dumped the firewood, I gathered several Y-shaped branches and drove them into the ground around our campsite. Then, I stretched long limbs over the crotches for a primitive alarm.
I made a pit fire. First, I dug a small bowl in the earth. Then, I tunneled an airway into it, facing the wind. It’s a good way to hide your location. The fire is hidden in the pit, but you still have a hot cooking fire and some light.
By then it was full night. I lit the fire. We sat for a long time huddled next to each other.
“How long do you think it will snow?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it matters.”
“It doesn’t.”
I tossed on the sticks four at a time. Embers cackled and spit up into our faces. Something on the fire smelled like cinnamon. We opened a can of soup and shared. I swished the remaining whiskey in the flask. Almost gone. We split the whiskey between us. Audrey hung her head.
“I’m glad we went to Daddy’s,” she said finally. “I needed to find you.”
“You’re just lonely.”
“No. I needed someone so levelheaded. Watts was…unstable.”
“I’m just taking it as I see it.”
“Listen. I need to know you’ll do the same for me. If I turn into one of those things, you have to do it.” She took a deep breath. “You just have to.”
“Same for me,” I said. “You ever fire a gun before?”
“A twenty-two.”
“This is the same,” I patted the Winchester.
“That thing?”
“It is. Don’t be afraid of it.”
I built an enclosed box around the pit with the remaining sticks. I stood, brushed off the seat of my pants, and went to sleep in the tent. Audrey joined me, wedging herself into the sack, her face against my chest. There was no more room in the tent, barely an inch or two above our heads. Audrey fell asleep shortly. She snored. Her breath was hot on my face.
I tried to imagine what it was like for Sewell. To wait for one’s own death. To have nothing left of his former life. But I knew what it was like. I knew it long before I met Sewell.
It’d be a lie to say no one expected Dad to kill himself. I figured it’d happen eventually, but I never imagined what the day would be like. I didn’t imagine he’d do it in summer, or how hot it’d be. Finding him. Touching him.
Sprawled under a white oak. His head twenty feet away. I carried his head back to his body. I waited an hour before calling the Sheriff.
What a way to do it. Hanging yourself with a wire rope no thicker than twine.
Sheriff Duncan said Dad knew what he was doing using the wire. He jumped from pretty high up in the tree. Gave himself enough length to pick up speed. The wire sliced right through, burned the veins and
arteries. No blood.
“Elaborate as all hell,” Duncan said it several times.
Dad’s eyes were open and sort of wet looking. Half-closed but still alive.
I struggled to reconcile the two images. Dad’s eyes were lustrous and hinted at the man he’d been. But when those folk woke up from their comas, they had dark, soulless eyes. No matter how good and loving the Human might have been, there was nothing but evil in those eyes.
I fell asleep thinking of Dad. Finding him in the same tree as my swing. Watching the medical examiner drop his head in a red plastic bag. Thinking I ought to sit in the shade. Wiping the sweat out of my eyes and wanting iced tea.
I woke abruptly and rubbed my eyes with a numb hand. I brushed the tent wall and ice sprinkled my face. I wiped my face clear and carefully lowered my arm.
Like so often in the woods, there was no sound except the breathing directly in my ear. The soft snoring. I closed my eyes but I couldn’t sleep. I focused on Audrey’s breath. I caressed the bolt on the rifle.
At daybreak, I fell asleep. We slept until almost noon.
We melted handfuls of snow in the pot and drank the remaining coffee. There was little food left. We split half a bear claw and smoked two cigarettes apiece. Then, we packed up camp and headed west.
The shadows of the trees grew longer as we progressed. By then I’d say we were both skeptical of the old man’s directions, but we had nowhere else to go so we kept at it.
We couldn’t see the floodplain. It was covered in snow. The mud was only partially frozen but as soon as my boots cracked the ice I darted backward, dragging Audrey with me. The mud was thick. I hobbled left and right, desperately throwing my body around for balance. As I caught myself the last time, the earth under my foot exploded. There was a snap like a bullwhip. My ankle throbbed sharp and ruthless. I gasped, fell to my knees, and shut my eyes. I couldn’t look at my ankle. I didn’t have to look. I felt the cold pressure of the steel jaws clamped there. I couldn’t look because that would make it hurt worse. Audrey screamed. I felt her fingers pry at the rusty clamp.
The bear trap was chained to a wild cherry tree six feet away. I judged by the thick grease it had only been set a week.
I was victim to a racing heart. I couldn’t focus. I counted my breaths. The pain gave me the tunnel vision. I started over. One. Two. Finally, my lungs followed. The heart reined in.
It is hard to delicately remove a bear trap. Once you open the jaws, blood rushes to the area and magnifies the pain twenty-fold. And when you have opened the trap, it is quite another matter to keep the jaws apart without letting them slip and re-clamp anew. The worst step is removing the foot from the trap. Your instinct is to bend the foot, but you can’t. You’re likely to panic from the pain, release the trap, and do even more damage. You never move the foot.
My foot felt severed. We managed to remove the black steel trap in one go. We packed snow around my ankle. You have to let it throb to let the pain pass. I stared at the snow as it slowly turned red and melted away.
We made a splint with some hickory sticks and long wool tube socks. The skin was broken deep where the small teeth bit, half my shin was bruised. The pain made me nauseated, but the cold did well to numb it.
The only option was to hike on the splint, clutching a walking stick and the rifle. We came to a stream and followed it. Frozen, delicate moss still held its bright green color. The water was winter clear, every rock magnified, crystalline and bright. The stream came to a rusty length of barbed wire and a trampled fence section. We walked up the bank ten feet where the fence was bent even with the ground. The stream weaved sharply left and flowed into a clearing. We followed the water. After the bend, we saw a barn, decrepit and rotten.
The barn was forgotten by generations. Worm-chewed fence posts stood all around, the grass had grown up and died so many times it was like walking on a sponge. There were old hay bales in the stalls. Colorless, formless. The twine had rotted away and left black streaks.
We climbed to the loft. I flopped onto the thick, dusty boards and kept the splinted leg stretched out. The pain caught up to me and churned my stomach. I shut my eyes and kept still. Audrey knelt next to me.
“You have to rest. You have to stay off that foot. Do you agree?”
“Yes. For a while.”
“For as long as it takes. You can’t walk.”
“I can walk.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“We can’t just stay here.”
“They won’t find us.”
“Not here, maybe. But out in that field they’ll definitely find us.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“I don’t feel up to arguing.”
“Good, don’t argue. You can’t walk.”
I opened my mouth, it flooded with hot sweat. She was right. I couldn’t walk.
“Did you pack any meds?”
“There is a large medicine bottle in the front pouch. It’s only for emergencies.”
“I think this qualifies,” she smiled. Audrey unzipped the pack, took out the medicine bottle, and slowly emptied the contents onto a folded t-shirt. Ibuprofen, a needle, thread, alcohol pads, iodine swabs, and a bottle of morphine. She handed me the morphine.
“We need to save this.” I gave the bottle back to her.
She hesitated and counted six ibuprofen for me. I chewed the tablets, staring at the rafters and ignoring the hot bitter powder as it clung to my throat. I looked back to Audrey. The threaded needle dangled from her fingers.
“You need it,” she said.
I nodded. I was bleeding through the wrappings on my leg.
I watched as she untied the wet and bloody socks. Steadily, blood pumped to the dusty planks.
She put the needle against my skin.
“Give me a shirt or something.”
She tossed me a pair of clean socks from the pack. I put them in my mouth, clamping as she swabbed the meat with iodine. Without warning, she stuck the needle into my skin and fed it through. I bit the socks. My pulse trembled behind my eyes. Slowly, the pain faded, replaced by a slight burning. I watched as she weaved the needle in and out of my flesh, pulling the gashes together. She made crescent moons with the thread.
“Done,” she smiled at me. “And we’re both alive.”
Audrey curled up next to me as I slowly pulled the wad of socks from my mouth.
“We can both use more rest,” she said. “You especially.”
“I need the sleeping bag,” I shivered.
She rolled over, pulled out the sleep sack, and covered me with it.
“You’re not burning up? You have on so many layers.”
“I think it’s the leg.”
Ice moved through my legs and chest. I shook uncontrollably.
“The emergency blanket,” I pointed to the pack. She found the foil blanket and helped me wrap in it. She also covered me with the sleep sack. She hugged me, her chest pressed against my back. She pressed her hands flat on my chest. She didn’t stop the shaking, but she took my mind off the pain.
I WOKE HOURS LATER WITH VOMIT IN MY MOUTH. I rolled over and heaved, but there was nothing to throw up. I shook it off. Audrey sat cross-legged several feet away, staring at the ground and shaking her head. She held the Winchester across her lap.
“How long have you been up?”
She turned to me. Tears ran down her cheeks. They fell quietly to the planks.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have to wait. You have to give me time.”
“Time?”
She choked back a sob. “Please just give me time.”
She rolled up her sleeve, revealing a dark bruise and deep bite marks on her forearm, streaks of dried and oozing blood curling around her elbow. It was impossible to tell how old the wound was.
I crawled toward her, my ankle screaming. “Where did you go?”
“I just went down there,” she pointed down the ladder. I scooted to the edge and looked over. There was a sw
arm of pale, decaying bodies shuffling around and falling into the stalls.
“I was just looking for—I don’t know. I was just looking. There was one in a stall. I didn’t see it.” Her voice cracked. “I had to beat it with a shovel. That one,” she pointed to a man in plaid pajamas, head snapped back, staring up at us with empty eyes. His neck skin was torn. I looked down into his windpipe.
Audrey collapsed next to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to need the rifle,” I said.
“Please just give me time. Please.”
“I need the rifle.”
Her face was dark red. I could tell she was trying not to beg, not to plead for her life. I took the rifle from her lap. Audrey slouched. In no hurry, I removed the boxes of ammunition from the pack and reloaded the Winchester.
Click. Slide. Click.
Our stalkers went down in twos and threes. I made a game of getting them in clusters. Audrey sank away from me. Ashamed. A slow and steady procession of our limping, bleeding followers slipped through the barn doors.
Click. Slide. Click.
I was the hand of God.
The enlightenment.
My voice was the thunder.
It cracked the barn.
Opened the Earth.
Showed them Hell.
It was their only redemption, having their brains sprayed across the trampled dirt.
There were forty bodies laid out. Audrey cowered. I knew she was waiting to be next.
“Get the pack,” I told her. “Unless you want to run out of bullets and die up here.”
My leg was worse than useless. It was nothing. And it hurt like Hell. I climbed down the ladder. Audrey followed, fumbling with the pack. She was shaking and I couldn’t tell whether it was nerves or—or.
Reckless.
We sloshed through the gray matter. I slipped at the threshold and landed on my hip. My mangled leg jammed against the well pump. The cotton wrapping and splint came loose, a hot flash burned in my face. Audrey began to rewrap the splint.
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