Land of the Zombies

by Jaime Horio

  I yank the tape off and he squeezes his eyes even tighter.

  “Ow, thanks.”

  “Do you want some water?”

  His eyes get huge and he nods vigorously.

  I feed him some water slowly. He gulps down a couple of cups. He obviously hasn’t had much to drink in a while.

  “So, how about you tell us your story. What brought you to this house and what happened to you and your dad there?”

  “Who are you people?”

  I smack myself in the forehead. “I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced yet.” I introduce myself and each of the others goes around and tells him who they are as well.

  “Ben and I were roommates, but the rest of us just found each other. Our group used to be bigger, but we’ve lost some friends and loved ones along the way.” Julie and Carrie both look down.

  “I see. Well, my name is Rob. My dad and I had holed up in our house when all this, uh, stuff happened. The news, they said it was riots, and we just wanted to avoid it. So we stayed home, just protected everything. Occasionally we would hear gunfire out in the streets, but we just kept to ourselves and boarded up the house. After a few days we lost the newsfeed. All we could do was try to gauge what was happening by looking outside, but we were a few blocks from a main street, so we couldn’t really see anything. I could see smoke up in the sky from some fires that looters must have set. The smoke seemed like it was getting worse and getting closer, so that’s when we decided to head out.

  “Our street was like something you see on the news. Cars were wrecked all over the places and windows were shattered out of homes. He had a gun in the house, so we brought that with us, to protect us from the looters. Looking up and down our block, we couldn’t see anyone, so we figured that either everyone else was just hiding in their houses, or they had evacuated and we just didn’t get the word.

  “It was morning, so we decided to try to get out of the city. My dad figured that rioters were cowards, and they liked to do their work at night when no one could see them. We figured that the daytime was the best time to go. So we grabbed some clothes and took off for my aunt’s place. We tried to call, but the phone lines were down. But we figured she had seen what was going on here, and she lives in a different town, but pretty close.

  “Well, anyway, we took off and didn’t see anyone even after we go out of the neighborhood. We went a couple miles, heading toward the highway, and then my dad realized we needed gas. He pulled into the first station, but no one was working. My dad is...umm...was a really honest guy. He didn’t want to steal any gas. But I convinced him we didn’t have a choice. The place was open, so I went and just turned on the gas. He filled up his truck, but before we took off, he went inside to leave money on the counter. You know, just in case the owner of the place came back. That’s just how my dad was.

  “Well, he was coming back to the truck when we saw some guy coming from behind the gas station. He was wearing a shirt that had the station’s logo, so I think it was the station attendant. We figured he had been attacked in the riots, so my dad went to help him. I just stayed in the truck and watched.

  “The guy was hunched over, and it looked like he’d been beat up pretty bad. My dad went to help him stand up straight, and the guy just bit him right on the arm. My dad shoved him back and just seemed shocked. And then there were more of those rioters, or I guess, what did you call them? Zombies?”

  I nod at him. “That’s the best way we’ve come up with to describe them.”

  “Ok, well, then there was a bunch of those zombies coming out and they surrounded my dad. He made a run for the truck, and I hopped over to the driver seat and started up the truck so we could go quick. He was almost to me when he sort of stumbled. He didn’t go down, but it slowed him enough for some of those things to grab him. They all just were grabbing at him and tearing at his skin, and the ones who were closest were biting at him.

  “I had to jump out I was punching and swinging at them. I managed to fight them back enough to pull my dad up and get him to the truck. I barely got him in there and got around to the other side before they were surrounding the truck. I didn’t want to just go, I thought they were regular people, just out looting or something. But they had attacked my dad and he looked pretty bad. So I gunned it and just went right through those people. As we went down the street toward the highway, more of those people were coming out, and I tried to avoid them, but I’m pretty sure I hit at least a couple of them. I guess it’s not so bad then if they were already dead the way you said.”

  He pauses and thinks. He must have thought he had hurt or killed people on his way out of town and that was eating away at him. He was probably trying to process the fact that the people he hit were already dead. He was probably accepting it a little easier since it was helping to ease his conscience.

  “Anyway. We drove for a while, my dad was pretty bad. I guess he made it for a while before he stopped talking. I’m not really sure if he was breathing or not. I kept checking him, but maybe he was already gone. Looking back, yeah I guess he was already dead and I was just trying to convince myself that it wasn’t true.

  “I drove down the highway as quick as I could, and then I saw this house and I thought I saw movement. So I figured that if someone was here, maybe I could find help for my dad. And you know the rest after I pulled up here.”

  As terrible as his story is, there is one part that is really sticking out to me. “Which direction did you come from? Which direction is your town from here?”

  “I live a ways south of here.”

  That was what I was afraid he would say. So that means the infection is spread pretty far south of here. From what he said, that he drove for a couple of hours, I’d guess that’s another hundred miles, even if his sense of time was a bit off, which it probably was considering the circumstances.

  “Well, Rob, that’s a pretty rough story. Look, I’m sorry about the welcome you got, but we’ve got food and water here. And it’s pretty safe. We’ve got space, so you can join us here if you’d like. But first, I do need to ask if you were bitten.”

  “Bitten? Me? No, just my dad. Fortunately I had this sweatshirt on, so they couldn’t even get a random scratch in on me.”

  “OK, I just had to ask.”

  Ben unties him and we get him some food. Since he is new to our group, I’m not really comfortable having him sleep with us just yet, but there is separate room downstairs. It has a door and looks like it was just used as a private study. There are lots of books on the shelves and a desk in the center. We rearrange the room so Rob will have room to sleep. We give him some candles and head upstairs.

  Rob knows we are armed, but never asks about a gun for himself. I would be worried, but we did pat him down while he was unconscious and he was not armed. But since he did not ask about a gun, I don’t offer him one. He should be safe anyway. We haven’t seen any zombies around here, plus we still have someone on watch all night. Tonight we decide to beef it up and have two people on watch. That way we can keep an eye on the outside as well as the inside of the house.

  The night goes by without anything happening. While I’m on watch, I do hear Rob making some noise down in his room, but I think it’s just him moaning some in his sleep, probably trying to process everything he has seen today. And losing his dad on top of all that.

  The morning comes and I head downstairs. Ben comes with me, and I ask him how his watch went. He relays hearing the same sort of things from Rob that I did. The room is quiet now, so Rob must have finally been able to get to sleep.

  Lani and Julie come down to join us. I ask them their opinion of Rob.

  As a reporter, Lani has developed a sense about people. She just had to learn to decide if she could trust a source or if she should be wary. She speaks up first. “I think he’s OK. It’s kind of hard to tell since he was pretty shaken up when he got here. He saw his dad get attacked and pretty much drove around with the dead body next to him all morning. And then he get
s here, sees his dad get shot again, and then wakes up tied up by a bunch of strangers. He doesn’t seem like the brightest guy, but I do believe what he said about the town he came from. They probably did report that it was just riots, just like my station did, and they probably believed it.”

  “I agree,” says Julie. “He’s not the most emotionally stable person right now, but I think he can be trusted.”

  “And that’s why I think we shouldn’t trust him.” Both of the women shoot a look at Ben. “I know we’ve all been through some pretty emotional stuff, but we already had an idea what was happening. We saw death, we were already hardened a little, and then we started watching our friends and family die. What I mean is, he probably is telling the truth, but I’m not sure I trust him not to flip out and attack us. I’m not saying we dump him in an open field, I say we let him join our group, but just let’s keep an extra close eye on him for a while.”

  The ladies look annoyed, but I think they understand what he means.

  “I agree. Maybe we just don’t give him a gun for the time being. He’ll still be with us and be protected, but then we don’t have to worry about him deciding to start firing off rounds at us because he thinks we’re the ones who killed his dad.” I look to each person and get a look of approval for our plan.

  I can hear Greg and Carrie moving around upstairs. We all chuckle at how they think they are being sly. Through the wood floors we can hear Greg walk across from the guy’s room over to the girl’s room.

  Julie has a big smile on her face. “I’m really glad they found each other. It makes me so happy to see two people find happiness in this crazy world we're living in right now."

  We all smile knowing that Julie is right. I shift my eyes and catch Lani and Ben giving each other a little wink and a grin.

  We sit around the table chatting a bit then decide that Greg and Carrie have had enough time. I make an overly dramatic statement about needing to go upstairs to grab a gun to do the morning sweep outside to make sure everything is clear. Then I make my way slowly up the wooden steps. Ahead of me I can hear Greg scrambling out of the room and when I reach the top, he is standing very nonchalantly in the hallway, acting as if he was just about to head downstairs.

  I give him a light punch in the shoulder as he goes by and I say a good morning down the hall to Carrie as I head toward the center room with the weapons.

  While I’m in the room making sure the gun is properly loaded I hear a scuffle and some shouting. I run downstairs and see that the room where Rob was sleeping is open. Ben is inside and it looks like he is wrestling with Rob.

  “What the fuck?” I run across the room and pull Rob off of Ben and throw him back. “Oh, shit!”

  Rob is no longer Rob, but he is now one of those undead creatures. Fortunately I through the gun over my shoulder when I came down the stairs. I pull the weapon into my hands and fire a single shot through Rob’s head and he drops with a thud.

  When I turn around, Julie and Lani are tending to Ben. Greg had been sitting at the table when this all started, but he has jumped up and run over to see what is happening. Carrie is standing at the bottom of the steps, gun in hand. No matter what she was doing ten minutes earlier, she is all set to attack right now.

  I shake my head at her to let her know that it’s all over. But what is it?

  Ben is on the ground bleeding badly. I kneel down next to him. Julie is holding a towel down over the spot where Rob bit into Ben and tore a chunk of meat out.

  I want to ask what happened, but I can see that Ben doesn’t have much time left. There is a huge pool of blood below him. The towel that Julie is holding is soaked and not really doing much. He is losing color quickly.

  Lani is holding his head and running her hand through his hair. I grab onto his hand and squeeze. Maybe I’m imagining it, but he squeezes back just a little.

  Lani leans down and gives him a kiss on his forehead as he gasps a last breath out. I feel his hand go limp in mine.

  “Son of a bitch.” I look to Carrie on the stairs. I don’t need to say anything and she runs upstairs to bring me back a large knife. “You guys can leave for a minute if you want to.”

  No one budges. So I roll Ben onto his side and put the tip of the knife to the back of his head, just at the top of his neck and quickly insert it. He won’t be coming back now.

  No one says anything, and I walk outside to the shed and find a couple of shovels. I bring them back and give one to Greg. He is hugging Carrie, who he releases when I give him the shovel. Carrie goes to join Julie, who is hugging Lani from behind as she sits over Ben’s body.

  Greg and I go into the back of the house and start digging. It takes some time, but the ground is not too hard, so we are able to dig a hole deep enough for Ben’s body.

  When we get back inside, Ben’s body is wrapped in a sheet that one of the women brought downstairs. Greg and I lift the body from each end and take it outside. We gently place the body in the ground and bury it.

  Lani is crying, and tears are running down the faces of the other two women.

  I’m not ready to go back inside and see the aftermath of whatever happened, so I just sit down in the dirt and stare at Ben’s grave. “I’m going to miss you, buddy. We’re all going to miss you.”

  We sit out by the grave for about an hour. Finally I speak up.

  “What happened?”

  Julie answers, “When you went upstairs, we realized that there was still no noise coming from Rob’s room. Yeah, he was pretty exhausted, but we needed to get him up, show him around so he could help with being on watch. So Ben and I went to his room to wake him up. When we went in, he was on his side, facing away from us. Ben tried to tell him to wake up, but he got no reaction. He even leaned down to shake him a little, but still no response. I left to go get some water, I figured I could splash it in his face. It always worked with Terry when he had a long day and didn’t want to get up. He could ignore me all he wanted, but if I got water in his face, then he couldn’t ignore me anymore.”

  A look of sadness suddenly fills her face. She pauses, then gathers herself and continues the story.

  “Then I don’t know. I was walking back to the room when I heard the screaming. Rob was attacking Ben and he was fighting back, and I just don’t know. Then you came down and broke it all up.”

  “Well,” I replied, “that leaves two choices. Either he was just flipping out about everything that happened, or more likely he got bit. And he turned overnight.”

  “I guess that’s all the better that we didn’t let him sleep with us.” Greg is shaking his head. “Who knows when he actually came back, maybe he was just laying there because he had no reason to move. Or maybe he didn’t actually come back until Ben was there, and it was just terrible luck.”

  I go inside to check on Rob’s body and it’s still lying where we left it. My shot was clean through his head, so he’s not coming back. I pull up his sweatshirt and see nothing. But when I roll him over I see a pretty good sized bite on his back.

  “Damn, he lied to us. I guess maybe I freaked him out when I told him about the bites turning you. I should have asked him if he was hurt before I told him about all that.”

  Lani puts her hand on my arm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You couldn’t have known.”

  I know she’s right, but I can’t help but feel like I’m responsible for my best friend dying. But I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself.

  Carrie comes running into the house. “We’ve got trouble.”

  I run outside and see what she means. At the top of the hill behind the house are at least a dozen of the zombies. The shot and the sound of digging must have drawn them here.

  “Everyone grab what you can! Hurry!”

  Everyone scrambles inside and comes running back out with guns, blankets, clothing and food. We are loaded and ready to go when Greg asks, “What should we do about the house?”

  I know what he means and I run back inside. I remember seei
ng an old kerosene lamp in the study where Rob had slept. It’s only about half full, but that should be enough. I slam it down onto the wood floors in the main room. There is a large rug and couch there, and I light a match and toss it down to the fuel.

  I don’t bother looking back as I run out the door and jump into the truck. Lani is already in the driver’s seat with the truck running, and we immediately take off before I even get my door shut.

  We’re cruising along in silence when we reach a town. We don’t even bother to slow down. This is clearly the town where Rob came from, and we already know it’s overrun with the undead.

  Once we clear the town Lani pulls over to the side of the road and stops the truck. Greg pulls up next to us in the van. Lani leans her head against the steering wheel and I see tears start to form in her eyes. She takes a deep breath and holds the tears back, then hops out of the truck.

  I follow her around to the van where we discuss our next move.

  “So what’s next? Where do we go from here?” Greg looks tired. Carrie is curled up in the passenger seat and Julie is out of her seat in the back and leaning into the front of the van to take part in the conversation.

  I just stare at him blankly. My mind is shot, I can’t come up with anything. I know that we need to keep moving, find shelter if we can, but I can’t even get myself to say that.

  Fortunately Lani speaks up. “I guess we just keep moving. We need to either find a good secure spot up high, or find a place we can fortify. Ideally, we need to find another place like that house we just left.”

  Hear this helps me focus. “She’s right. This infection has spread everywhere. That much is pretty clear. Besides Rob, we haven’t seen another living person for how long now? We need to find another place where we can protect ourselves. And we need to find more food. Our supplies are limited, and it’s only going to last so long at this point.”

  Greg points to the gauges in the van. “And I think we need to find more fuel. I’m more than halfway down, and we don’t have any extra anymore.”

  Suddenly Carrie perks up. "Wait! I think I remember going out of town for a meet one time. If we keep going south, there should be another highway that will take us to the coast. And there are some little islands in the harbor. They're not huge, but it's something. If we can get out there and clear out any of those things, then we'll be safe. And being on the ocean, we'll have plenty of food if we just fish!"