by Brant, Jason
Mad Dog finally pulled the bar free and speared the husband with it through the eye. It made a slurping sound as it pierced through, and clunked against the back of his skull. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, landing in a pile of limbs and viscous fluid beside his wife.
McCall stood motionless for a while, looking down at the dead couple, wondering where it had all gone wrong. It was true that his life couldn’t be called great, but he’d made the best of it. Moving from town to town, constantly ducking those of authority, and never making any friends didn’t seem like something to long for, but he now found himself doing just that.
Before all of this happened, he could look forward to a stiff drink, a lukewarm meal, and maybe a soft woman, if he had the cash. Now he stood over the bodies of a couple he’d just murdered; if you could actually murder someone who was already dead, anyway. Even thinking about such a problem made his head hurt.
A tapping came from behind him, and he spun to see what horror snuck up on him now. Karen stood in the lone window on that side of the house, waving for him to come inside. She looked down at the bodies at his feet and lowered her head for a moment before signaling for him to join her again.
McCall left the bar outside the front door when he entered the house. He walked through a sparsely decorated sitting room and met Karen in the equally poor looking kitchen. She handed him a long strip of salt covered jerky and tried to say something, but bits of dried meat fell from her mouth. She covered her stuffed face with a hand and tried not laugh.
He grabbed the meat greedily and tore a giant piece free, savoring the taste. He swallowed the chunk too quickly and almost choked as it went down, but it didn’t slow him from biting off more. It was poorly made and over salted, but he couldn’t think of anything that had ever tasted better.
Karen must have agreed as she kept shoving more strips in her overloaded mouth with an insatiable greed. They stood like that for a while, watching and laughing at each other as they ate like children eating candy. They locked eyes several times, and McCall became certain that something passed between them.
Rather than deal with that situation, McCall went outside to fill the bucket again when he saw Stephen standing in the front room, sucking on his thumb. His experiences with children were rare and usually unpleasant, and he didn’t have the energy to handle this one.
“Karen, the boy is awake,” he said before going outside.
He dropped the bucket in the water and began the laborious task of hauling it out of the well. The horse ran around the fenced area, throwing his head back and kicking his front legs out in front of him. McCall placed the bucket on the ground and went to see if more moaners had shown up.
After turning the corner, he didn’t see anything but the bodies of the stallion’s previous owners and realized the horse was distraught over their deaths. He dragged the bodies to the back of the house and mostly out of view of the fenced area before opening the gate and approaching the horse.
It calmed down when the bodies were gone, but it didn’t want to come near McCall. He couldn’t blame it – he probably smelled like death. His body felt as if it were about to shut down, so he checked the animal’s trough, saw plenty of water in it, and went back into the house. They would use the horse to try and reach Sheol, but for now he needed rest.
McCall walked through the first floor, doing a quick check to make sure there weren’t any lurking moaners around. He found the horse’s saddle and was dismayed to see its small size. Either he or Karen would have to ride bareback. He hoped it wouldn’t be him, for the sake of Little McCall and his two friends.
In a desk drawer, he discovered a handful of bullets and promptly reloaded his Peacemaker. He had three extra rounds that he dropped in his pocket. A shotgun sat in the corner with both barrels loaded, but he couldn’t find any extra shells in the room. Karen and Stephen thumped around upstairs, hopefully performing the same task he did on the first floor.
A moan came from the closet to his left.
“For the love of all that’s holy... ”
He lifted the Colt from its trusty spot by his hip and cocked the hammer back. Without getting too close to the door, he stretched out and turned the handle. The door pushed open on its own accord and a torso spilled out of the dark closet by McCall’s feet. It didn’t have any legs.
Its spinal column trailed behind it as it slowly dragged itself at McCall. Strips of flesh and sinew hung from its severed waist, lifting splinters from the wood flooring. Judging from the thin, grey skin and lack of blood coming from its massive wound, McCall guessed that this one had been dead for a long time.
He remembered the injuries to the woman’s hand outside and figured that this was how they were infected. It probably dragged itself to their home, and not knowing what it was, they tried to help it. When it bit her hand they threw it in the closet. She would have turned in the next few minutes and promptly turned her husband by chewing on his face for a while.
McCall flipped it over with his boot, and looked at its head. Though its eyes were intact, they had dried out and now looked like old, rotten fruit in their sockets. Mad Dog grimaced at the sight and wished he hadn’t looked.
Not wanting to a waste a bullet on such an easy target, he went to the kitchen and returned with a long knife. The moaner had only made it halfway across the room before he came back. Moving with no legs and dried out muscles and skin looked like hard work.
He buried the knife in its head and went back to the front room. He closed the door, locked it, and then pushed the kitchen table in front of it. After propping a chair against the door in the back of the house, he proceeded to look through more drawers and cabinets in the kitchen.
A leather canteen hung from a nail on the wall. He filled it from the bucket he’d carried inside and placed it at the bottom of the stairs. The rest of the jerky sat on a bench, wrapped in a sack which he also placed by the staircase. If anything surprised them in the middle of the night, he wanted to be prepared for another long haul along the railroad tracks.
He went up to the second floor and discovered Stephen sleeping on a small bed in the first room off to the right. Karen slept in the next room in a much larger bed. She was on top of the blankets, completely nude.
McCall looked for a bed, but found the third room mostly empty. He went back to Karen’s room and tried his best not to stare at her small, but pleasant looking breasts. He understood why she stripped down – the heat would make it unbearable to sleep with anything on. His clothes stuck to his skin as he stripped them away. They were so disgusting he wondered if he could stand them up against the wall.
He stood beside the bed in the nude, now trying to avoid the slight stirring in his loins. Even after the trauma of the last few days, he had no control over his moronic male urges. He was too tired to try and find another place to spend the night so he collapsed into the bed and lay on his back.
Sleep took him within seconds.
Chapter 10
Karen awoke the next morning with the sun shining through the window into her face.
She closed her eyes against the harsh light and rolled over, toward the middle of the bed. Her nose mashed against something warm and slick and she recoiled, memories of the past two days flooding her sleep-addled mind. She opened her eyes to see McCall sleeping beside her.
His clothes were missing. She looked down at her own body and realized that she wore nothing as well. Vague recollections of crawling into the bed were all she could remember. Exhaustion had overwhelmed her when she saw the beds upstairs and everything after that was a blur.
She pushed herself away from him a bit and noticed that he had an erection. A snort of laughter escaped her mouth before she could stop it. McCall startled awake and jumped out of the bed. He landed on his feet and spun around in confusion, grabbing at the spot by his hip where his gun usually sat.
He looked down at Karen, utterly bewildered. “What... where?”
“We’re in the house by the r
ailroad tracks, remember?”
“Oh.” His eyes fell to her breasts, which she didn’t bother to cover. “Did we... ?”
“Judging by the redwood you have there, I doubt it,” Karen said, unable to contain her laughter any longer.
McCall glanced at himself, still confused. “Oh. It does that in the mornings.”
Karen laughed even harder at his nonchalance. Being around nude men made her money, so she had developed a comfort level with it, but she found that most males were usually very self-conscience about their bodies. Their dick size in particular. McCall didn’t seem too concerned about it, for good reason.
“I bet it does.” Karen found herself looking him up and down, approving of his hardened body. She liked the look of a man that worked hard.
“How long have we been out?” He started putting his pants on, but had trouble stuffing his hard on in them so he moved onto his shirt.
Karen looked out the window and tried to gauge what time it was by the sun’s position. It had only risen partway into the sky.
“Maybe ten o’clock,” she said.
“Shit. I shouldn’t have slept so long.” He slipped into his shirt and smelled the armpit, grimacing and turning his face away at what he found there.
“We needed the rest. It’s been a rough few days.” Karen climbed out of the bed and stood in front of the window, letting the sun fall on her body. A rough day was the understatement of the century.
It had still been daylight when she crashed into the bed, so she figured they had been asleep for at least fifteen hours. And yet she still felt fatigued.
“We should get moving. I want to stay ahead of the moaners as best we can.”
Karen turned around in time to see McCall finally pull his pants the whole way on. She was surprised to find that she felt a little disappointed at that. Did she have feelings for this man? They had shared a moment downstairs when they found the jerky, but she had dismissed it as her exhaustion playing with her emotions.
Now she couldn’t be so sure. There was no denying that she appreciated his apparent respect for her. Knowing that she whored herself for money didn’t seem to bother him either. His circumstances also intrigued her. The outlaw thing felt like a turn on, though she knew how stupid it would be to get entangled with someone like that. Then again, what did it matter anymore if the world was ending?
“What?” he asked her. He caught her staring at him while she thought things through.
“Well... I was just thinking—”
A sound came from outside the window, low and soft. Karen stopped herself in mid-sentence and cocked her ear at the window.
“What’s wrong?” McCall asked. He looped his gun belt around his waist and buckled it.
“I thought I heard—”
Several moans floated up to her from outside.
“Oh shit!” She grabbed her soiled dress and started wrangling it over her head. “Moaners!”
McCall jumped on the bed and looked out the window, his hand grasping the handle of his Peacemaker. Karen wondered how ingrained that movement had become to him.
“Goddamn it,” McCall said, keeping his voice low. “I can see at least three of them out there.”
Karen pulled her dress on and tried not to focus on the stench. The fog from her long night’s sleep had evaporated and she now began sifting through their options. More of the staggering dead had caught up to them overnight. How many more would be arriving soon?
“I’ll get Stephen dressed. You go downstairs and see what it looks like,” she said.
McCall left the room without a word and she followed him into the hall, veering off into the second bedroom. Stephen sat on the bed, wide awake, holding his knees to his chest and working on his thumb again. He didn’t struggle with her as she put his clothes on, but he didn’t help either.
They joined McCall in the kitchen two minutes later. He seemed less than pleased.
“What is it?” She didn’t like the way he looked at her.
“I count at least two dozen.”
“Oh my God.” She looked down at the boy, trying to fight back the despair that threatened to overtake her. She didn’t know if she could watch those monsters go at him. No matter what, she wouldn’t allow that to happen.
“I found a couple of rounds in the other room,” McCall said, pointing to his pistol. “And a shotgun with two shells in it.”
“Do we wait here? There’s no way we can outrun them in the desert. We’ll tire out in an hour or two and they’ll be on us.”
McCall didn’t answer her. Instead, he walked into the other room and returned a moment later with a saddle and the shotgun. His grim expression was worse than it was when they came downstairs.
“We need to do this fast. The two dozen I saw were just those around the house. There are a lot more coming in the distance.” He pointed toward the bottom of the stairs. “Grab the canteen and that sack, we’ll need them.”
She grabbed both without question. Now wasn’t the time to argue about taking orders.
“Pick up the boy too. I’ll take care of the ones standing between us and the fence, but I’ll need you to carry him. We can’t take the chance that he’ll trip and fall or freeze up.”
Karen threw the strap of the canteen over her shoulder. She placed the sack in her right hand and scooped up Stephen in her left arm. He didn’t respond to anything, even as he looked at the moaners out the windows. She wondered if he would ever recover from this – if any of them survived, anyway.
Mad Dog stomped past her, through the kitchen, and dropped the saddle at the backdoor. He looked out the nearest window and nodded in silence as he counted how many of them were outside.
“I still only see three of them by the fence. The horse looks pissed – it ain’t gonna be fun trying to get this damn saddle on him.”
Karen felt her heart pound in her chest. The odds of this working seemed infinitesimal. She watched him as he placed the shotgun by the door, picked up the saddle and reached for the door handle.
“McCall, wait.” She stepped forward, stopping less than a foot away from him.
He looked into her eyes, but said nothing.
“If it looks like we aren’t going to make it...” She glanced down at Stephen and then back at McCall.
She saw the recognition in his eyes and was surprised when he shook his head. “We’re going to make it.” His tone left no doubt as to his convictions. He actually believed it.
He reached for the door handle when she stopped him again.
“McCall.”
When he turned back to her this time she kissed him. His lips remained rigid for a moment before he kissed her back. She felt the stubble of his week old beard against her chin and sighed as he eased her mouth open with his own. His breath smelled of the jerky, but she didn’t care.
He pulled away and gazed into her eyes, inspecting her, studying her. At that moment, she felt as if he could see her soul. Though she’d been with hundreds of men, that kiss felt like the most intimate moment of her life. If this would be her end, she was glad to have spent it with someone she finally connected with.
“Are you ready?” he said.
“I don’t have a choice.”
He moved his face a few inches closer to hers. “Trust me.”
With that he turned and threw the door open. In a blur of movement he skinned his Peacemaker and shot down the first cannibal, putting a bullet between her beady eyes. He threw the saddle over the fence and spun on his heels, fanning the hammer of the Colt as he put down the next two.
The moaners looked like mummies. Their skin had blistered and peeled from the desert sun. Puss ran from open wounds, glistening on their necks and arms. Bone fragments and blood showered the packed dirt as McCall dropped them in quick succession.
He dropped the pistol into its holster, sandwiched the barrel of the shotgun in his armpit, and grabbed Stephen under the arms. In two steps he was at the fence where he lifted the boy over the highes
t piece of wood and placed him on the ground. With a grace that a man his size and age shouldn’t possess, he hopped over the fence and picked up the saddle.
Karen took the easier route and stepped between the lower and upper rails. She grabbed Stephen by the hand and followed McCall. Just as he had in the house, he complied with her in a blank, meaningless way.
McCall raised the saddle toward the stallion, letting him see it, and clicked his tongue. To Karen’s surprise, the horse responded in a positive manner. It dipped its head and pranced in two circles before approaching Mad Dog with a few cautious steps. He gave it a pat on the shoulder and said something in a soft voice into its ear.
The horse stood still after that and let him throw the saddle over its back. He placed the shotgun on the ground and went at the ties and buckles that would secure the saddle in place.
Karen looked over her shoulder at the house and saw the rest of the decaying people coming around its sides. There were too many to count. She quickened her pace until they stood beside McCall.
A few moans reached them and the horse reared on its hind legs, letting out a long, frightened whinny. Mad Dog reached up and patted its shoulder again as it landed on all fours, and did his best to calm it down. When it looked like it would stand still again, he went back to work.
The sound of wood cracking forced Karen to turn around. As ten of the moaners pressed against the fence, it began to give way. It would soon collapse and they would be through.
“McCall?”
“I know.”
The upper rail snapped at one end and the people fell forward, tripping over the lower piece of wood and landing inside the fence.
“McCall!”
“I know!”
He finished attaching the saddle and raced to the other end of the fenced off area. A series of hard kicks broke the upper rail. He quickly pulled the two halves out of their slots in the posts and threw them to the ground before sprinting back.