After the Fall

by Martinez, A. J.

  “Some places are going back to the basics.”

  “Looks like it didn’t help them much.”

  “I’m done arguing with you. Did you take care of the bodies?”

  “Yes, Mr. Councilman. We sure did. We put them up in a pile and burned them up all nice and crisp, just the way you like them.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “Don’t you believe us?”

  “Pretend I’m from Missouri.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Just take me there. I want to make sure they’re destroyed.”

  “Yes, Mr.—”

  “And cut the councilman crap.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I decided to drop it and got back in the truck. They drove back to the site of the skirmish. It wasn’t hard to find. The sharp smell of burnt flesh gave me an indication we were drawing close. I saw the heap of bodies and was amazed at its size. We all got out of the truck and went to inspect the corpse pile.

  “See? It’s just like I told you. They’re dead and crispy,” Jeb remarked.

  Unimpressed, I walked around the pile, looking at the blackened appendages. It looked like some of them had reanimated and tried to escape before the flames finished them.

  “What’s this?” I said as I walked to the back of the stack. It looked as if several of the bodies had been disturbed. I noticed something moving. The badly burned thing ignored me and made a feeble attempt to reach out to my companions.

  “Okay, so some of the bodies fell over and there’s one that’s still got some fight in him,” said Jeb. “We’ll take care of him.”

  I reached into the pile and pulled what was left of the survivor. I held his head out to them. The thing snarled at them and tried to writhe free.

  “You said all of them were dead when you left?” I asked Rayna.

  “Damn right they were.”

  “You see this?” I said, pointing at the large gunshot wound on the zombie’s head. “I believe you. The problem is, they came back.”

  Rayna tried to protest, but it was hard to argue with the evidence before her. The thing she had killed hours ago was trying to kill her once again.

  “I just didn’t shoot it in the right place. It didn’t do enough damage. I screwed up. Doesn’t happen often, but I did.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I argued. “See how it went in? The whole base of the brain should be gone. And yet now the hole has started to seal and the brain restarted itself.”

  “What do you think you are, some kind of zombie expert?” She raised her gun and let the thing have it. It went limp for at least the second time in its unlife. She holstered her gun and walked back to the truck. Jeb seemed a little confused, but he followed her anyway.

  The pile began to move. It was almost imperceptible at first, but soon it was squirming and churning like a bag full of snakes. The reanimated zombies began to claw their way out from under their comrades. Most were too weak to break free, but a few were able to crawl out and start for Rayna and Jeb. I trailed behind them and said nothing.

  “Hey, what the—” yelled Jeb. The thing grabbed at his ankle. He was able to break out of its grasp and finished it with a head stomp.

  Two more reached Rayna. She took out her gun and dispatched them.

  “Why didn’t you tell us they were coming up to us?” asked Jeb.

  “They’re not supposed to come back, remember?”

  I walked back to the pile and dragged back the zombie I had held up earlier. When I threw it in the bed of the truck, Jeb started to object.

  “I don’t care what either of you thinks about this. We’re taking it for observation. I would have you stay out here, but daylight is coming soon and I don’t want you two kids catching any sunburn.”

  Rayna wanted to choke me. I could see it in her eyes, but I didn’t care. I gave her was a smile that only stoked the hatred.

  We wrapped the corpse in a tarp and drove back to the city. Rayna informed the relief about the pile, with instructions to dismember and burn each body individually. There was no mention of their reanimation and no one questioned the order.

  About halfway through our return trip, Rayna’s phone began to ring.

  “Hello?”

  I listened to what seemed like a mundane conversation, but it seemed to go south very quickly.

  “Look, I don’t care what you found. The next shift can get it. We’re already on our way back. It’s just some dead cow anyway.”

  “We are going there right now,” I said to Jeb. He looked at Rayna for guidance.

  “It’s going to be daylight soon. If we go there, we might not get back in time.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re going.”

  “We’re on our way,” she spoke into the phone.

  About twenty minutes later, we arrived at the site of a slaughter. It turned out to be more than just one dead cow. The whole herd had been slaughtered and their insides cleaned out. There was no sign of the culprits except the trail of gore that wore off after some distance.

  “Okay, we saw it,” said Rayna. “So we had a couple fence jumpers. We’ll let the day shift take care of it. Now let’s go before daylight catches us.”

  “You still think they were all dead?” I replied. “This is just a short distance away from your kill site.” She ignored me and got back in the truck.

  After a few minutes, the sky began to brighten. Rayna and Jeb started to squirm in their seats.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have come back. It was a waste of time. Now it’s going to be daylight.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I reassured her.

  “It’s not going to be fine, dammit!” She pointed out the window. “Look, the sun is coming out! We’re screwed.”

  “Jeb, stop the truck.”

  “Are you crazy?” he replied. “I’m not stopping this.”

  “Stop the truck right now and get in the backseat. I’ll take the wheel. Both of you take your jackets off and put them over your heads. Make sure you cover your hands.”

  Since we were out of options, they did as I told them. I put my sunglasses on and borrowed Jeb’s hat. The truck sped away back to the city. Our old enemy sent out its deadly rays from the horizon. It burned the skin a little, but it was nothing compared to what it could do to these two.

  “We’re almost at the city. Just hang tight, guys.”

  Jeb mumbled something in agreement. Rayna was silent, but I could picture her glaring at me from under that jacket.

  That was when the back window shattered.

  Foot Soldiers

  The moaning figure smashed through the window and felt around the backseat. It was undeterred by the shards of glass that remained around the frame. They cut away at its arm and still it continued to reach in. Rayna was smart enough to realize what was happening and stayed quiet and very still. Not so much with Jeb. He let out a surprised yell that brought the thing bearing down on both of them.

  I watched the thing tug away at their coats in utter helplessness while I drove. It grabbed a handful of Rayna’s jacket and she struggled with it. The only advantage she had was her strength, but that only went so far. When I heard the sound of cloth ripping, I knew things were desperate. I steered the truck hard to the right, throwing the creature off-balance, but that only lasted so long.

  It seemed that the creature was not satisfied with having one hand in and squeezed its thin body through the small window. The shards scraped and cut its skin open and still it continued to force its way inside.

  “Hey!” I shouted at the thing. It looked up to find the source of the sound, but it was not interested in me. I used the moment of confusion to reach back and push the thing out of the cab. That only bought a few more seconds before it was back at it.

  I heard the ripping sound, followed by the scream. The thing had taken Rayna’s jacket and she was fighting to get it back, all while our old enemy burned her with its rays. There was no time to waste. I looked around for something to use and f
ound Jeb’s shotgun.

  Click.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” I yelled. The thing had jammed when I needed it the most.

  “There a little trick with the catch!” yelled Jeb.

  I pulled back the hammer by hand and aimed it to the back when I heard a gurgling sound. Rayna had stabbed the thing in the throat, but it must not have severed the spinal cord, because it was still reaching and leaking its fluids all over them. I jammed the barrel of the shotgun into its face, all while trying to stay on the road, and pulled the trigger.

  The world went blank for a second. All I could hear was a loud ringing sound in my ears. The smell of gunpowder filled the cabin. I almost drove the car off the road. It was a miracle we weren’t overturned on the side of the road. The thing lay slumped over the two of them. Rayna had gone back under cover and was trying to figure out how to get the thing off her.

  “Can we pull over and get this thing out of here before it comes back?”

  The smirk drew across my face. “Oh, I thought they don’t come back.”

  “I would punch you if it wasn’t daylight.”

  “You’re welcome to try.” I shoved the thing out the back. “I don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon. Most of its head is gone.”

  “I don’t care. I want it out of here.”

  The smirk drew a little wider on my face.

  We drove the whole way back before I found a parking garage where I could destroy the thing to the point where it would not come back. The other two helped me siphon gas out of the truck and we set fire to the remains right there in the garage. Surprisingly, no one came and no one seemed to care. After the deed was done, nothing remained but ashes and bits of bone that Rayna crushed to dust under her boot. I drove us back to Rayna’s apartment, where I examined my companions.

  Jeb had sustained minor burns. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said. Rayna’s arms were a different story. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but she had sustained second-degree burns, with ruptured blisters on her forearms and hands.

  “We have to disinfect that,” I said. She objected, but I would hear nothing of it. It would be a lie if I said I did not get any satisfaction out of it. I ended up pouring a bottle of alcohol on her arms. She screamed in rage and took a swing at me that went wide. I wasn’t angry at her for wanting to hit me. After bandaging her arms, I dragged her upstairs and put her to bed. I took off her boots and left the room. I was fairly sure she wouldn’t be singing any praises to me right now. Jeb had taken himself to bed while I was upstairs, which left me with the mutilated couch to sleep. Call me paranoid, but that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t sleepy anyway, so I decided to read for now. At some point while I was sitting on the armchair with a book at my side, my good friend sleep came and took me.

  “Wake up, councilman!” said Rayna as she kicked me in the shins with her boot.

  “Do that one more time and you will lose that foot,” I said with no particular emotion. She backed off at once without even a witty comeback. There was a little bit of reserve about her that I had never seen before. Maybe she wouldn’t be as annoying today. Probably the wrong thing to say, but I wish she’d get sunburned every day.

  Speaking of sunburn, her wounds had healed nicely. Her skin had regenerated without any scars. The only indication that she was ever burned was in the pinkish tone of her skin. Even that would soon fade.

  We took our breakfast out on the counter. No one said anything. We definitely did not discuss what had happened earlier this morning. There was that sense of an elephant being in the room, only in this case it felt more like a mastodon.

  I put my head down and sank into my thoughts when I was startled by a fist landing on the counter.

  “Damn it!” said Jeb. “That’s just what I was talking about. I told you, Rayna. Don’t say I didn’t.”

  “What are you talking about, Jeb?”

  “Look at your arms! That’s what I’m talking about. Everyday we’re risking our lives, and for what, a few cows. A plot of wheat?”

  “We’re protecting our food, Jeb. That’s all.”

  “Yeah, but where’s the teamwork? I don’t see any of those stuffy Elders getting off their ass and doing some work. I damn sure don’t see any of them getting sunburns to save a few cows. Those idiots—no offense, Mordecai—”

  “None taken, I assure you.”

  “—Those idiots up there don’t give a damn about us. You know this, Rayna. You sat with them for a while, until you pissed them off.”

  “I was just speaking my mind about the same things you’re saying.”

  “That’s right. And where did that get us? They kicked your ass to the curb and now you’re out there fighting for your life. And what the hell is up with those zombies? Why do they keep getting back up?”

  “I told you about them. I let you get all your jokes out of the way. For a while there, I started to believe you. Now they’re here, and we have to deal with them.”

  “Yeah, we do. Not those damn talking heads up there. It’s us down here that have to deal with those things. Dan died so those humans can have their couple heads of cattle. Where’s his reward?”

  I laid my head down and said no more.

  “That’s right. None of you have anything to say. I’m getting out of here. Tell them I’m taking a day off, Mr. Councilman. Those guys can kiss my—”

  “Jebediah!” Rayna yelled.

  “What?”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  He made a saluting gesture with his hand and walked out the door.

  “I should go talk to him,” said Rayna.

  “You just did. Look at all the good it did,” I replied. “He needs time to cool off. He’ll come around.”

  “Okay. Let me finish up here. I have to get ready for work.”

  “I’ll join you,” I said.

  “No, you can’t be doing this work. You’re a council member.”

  “Says who? Did anybody actually make that rule?”

  “Well, none of them ever do it.”

  “That’s their choice. Besides, I can’t let you go out there alone, can I?”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Sure you can.” I ran my hand over her pink arm. She recoiled and almost slapped me. “Come on, let’s go get geared up. Let Jeb have his night. He’ll be better tomorrow night.”

  Jeb had the night off while we covered for him. It was actually an uneventful shift. There were no cattle deaths or incursions. Neither of us sighted a single zombie throughout the patrol zone. All the way until dawn, I was expecting a surprise attack or signs that one of them had broken through the fence. I was pleased that my expectations were not met.

  Rayna had said nothing else about staying with her. I supposed she had made peace with it. In fact, she seemed quite disposed to let me stay another day. I would have stayed, in fact, if something had not happened to derail things.

  Lucretius was at the door waiting. He pulled his pocket watch out and checked it. I’m not sure how long he had been waiting, but he seemed to think it was too long. He pulled up his cane and aimed it at me.

  “You. I need to speak with you privately,” he said.

  “I’ll see you later,” I told Rayna before going.

  “Mordecai,” she said, tugging at my sleeve. “Thank you.”

  I gave her a nod and went to speak with my fellow council member. His face was contorted like he had something disagreeable in his mouth he wished to spit out.

  “Just what exactly are you doing?” he asked me.

  “I am speaking to you,” I replied with all sincerity. For once, there was no sarcasm in my lips. He did not see it that way.

  “You know what I mean,” he snarled. “Going about on patrols, almost getting yourself killed, and for what? To protect a couple of peons?”

  “They’re good people,” I argued.

  “They’re the foot soldiers. It’s their job to go out there and protect the realm, a
nd it’s ours to tell them what’s good for them.”

  “I’d like to believe you.”

  “Mordecai, I know the times that brought you about. It was a simpler time, more structured. Those of us who were smart enough rose to the top. All the others stayed at the bottom, where they were happiest. It’s the order of things.”

  “Well, since you put it that way.”

  “Now, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about you going about on patrols. Our lives are far too valuable to throw them at the front lines. Let the others do that. We have a meeting tonight. I expect to see you there.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, with a bad taste in my mouth.

  “Good.” He handed me a set of keys. “These are the keys to your apartment. It’s only a few doors away from here.”

  “No mansion for me?”

  He chuckled. “Unfortunately, those are reserved for the highest members. There are not too many of those available.”

  “I see. Well, a place to sleep is a place to sleep, whether it’s a crypt or a mansion.”

  “That’s the spirit!” He patted me in the back. “Now, I must go. The sun will be upon us soon. I will see you tonight?”

  “Of course. Sleep well.”

  “I always do.”

  The Return of Politics

  Lying on a bed I could call my own, I should have felt happy. Call me crazy, but I missed the couch. Yes, the same one with the axe mark right through the middle of it. I wondered when she was going to replace it, or if she meant to leave it there as a reminder. Don’t let pompous nancy-boys crash at your place, I imagined it would be. It doesn’t matter. I had not had three days as a council member and already I was sick of it. That was awfully early for someone that had nothing but time to sit in meetings. At least a human could take comfort in knowing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, that their frangible bodies would one day cease to exist.

  Okay, enough of that. If I keep ruminating on this, I will certainly drive myself insane. It’s not like I don’t have enough on my plate to add lunacy to it. The best choice—the only choice—is to go to the meeting. I could always walk away, leave this place forever, but where did it take me last time? It took me here, to a handful of stuffy gasbags who deigned to recognize me as one of their own. Do I really come off as that buttoned-down and insipid? If I ask Rayna or any of her companions, the answer would be yes. She’d probably call me a lily-livered mama’s boy, or whatever insult she happened to dig out of her seemingly infinite database of back-country wit.