Thou Shalt Not Kill
Caleb leaned against his patch of wall and shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable enough to doze off. How useless am I, he thought. After everything that's happened, I sit here missing my bed.
He could imagine the feel of it now, the way the memory foam warmed and conformed to his body. On a Saturday morning like this, he would snuggle into his pillow, cocooned in his comforter, and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist. Or that he didn't exist, depending on how bad his depression was that week.
Now he made do with a thin sheet, and a spot of hard floor against the wall. He had given the comforter away to one of the few families who still had surviving children. They needed it more than him. Deserved it more than him. A sharp wave of shame flooded him at the thought, and he pulled up his knees, trying to take up less space.
Stupid lump, he thought. Sitting here in the emergency shelter, taking up space that someone else could use. As usual, he wished he was dead. It would be easy enough; just walk outside and wander around until he found a zombie. Except that would be suicide.
Thou shalt not kill, he reminded himself, as he did every time. He wasn't much for church, but it didn't get any simpler than that. You didn't take a life, not even your own.
Of course, these days he had a more immediate reason not to kill himself. If he died, he'd become one of them, killing the living with no concern for sin or God's will. If that happened, would he still be him? Would he know the evil he did?
He wished that he could talk to the zombies. Find out why they felt such a need to kill. They never ate the bodies of their victims, so it wasn't hunger. Were they doing God's will, punishing the world collectively? If so, which sin had been so great that it merited such a punishment? Or were they puppets of Satan, victims just like the people they killed?
Not that it mattered. He couldn't inflict a zombie as big and strong as himself on the other survivors, not even to free up resources. Better just to be a lump...
"Just launch it from the roof, and BOOM! We can kill a ton of them, all at once!"
The excited discussion across the room had already drawn a crowd of spectators over to examine whatever it was that the tech school students had come up with. Now their raised voices made even Caleb muster enough curiosity to raise his head and look over.
Georgie, the most prolific of the weapon-makers, was holding what looked like a stock pot, with the edges crimped over and some sort of complicated lid. "The test blast destroyed an entire house," he said. "Nothing left but splinters. Drop one of these babies in the middle of a horde, and all that's left is the clean-up."
Caleb rested his head back in his hands. Just another bomb design.
"Yo, Caleb!"
He looked up again to see Bill, their self-appointed operations manager, standing in front of him with a massive sledge hammer.
"The streets look pretty clear, so we're sending out foraging parties again. You're going to guard Jamie's team, ok?"
He wanted to say no. He wanted to explain that he was useless and he'd just let him down, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He was a big guy, even though he'd dropped at least twenty pounds since the beginning of the disaster. And because he was big, big enough to easily swing the sledgehammer that made Bill look like a child, he had a job to do, no matter how small and useless he felt inside.
He levered himself up and took the sledgehammer listlessly before wandering out to the vestibule where the foragers were loading up with bags to fill.
"All right," Jamie said when she saw him. "Let's go!"
The grocery stores were already picked clean, so they headed to the northern suburbs, to break into houses in search of canned goods and medicines.
Caleb kept watch outside when they reached their target neighborhood. Zombies never stayed, if they rose inside a house. They always went looking for the living, so the foragers, breaking into long-vacant houses, weren't taking much of a risk.
Besides, each of them carried a crowbar or something similar - useful for breaking into houses and locked cabinets, but also enough of a weapon to fend off a zombie long enough to run for help. Crowbars didn't do damage fast enough to take a zombie down cleanly, though. That's what Caleb was there for.
In theory, anyway.
He knew what was expected of him, though he hadn't had to put it into practice yet. The tech school kids loved to go on and on about the best ways to kill zombies, as well as arguing about what caused the zombies to rise in the first place. They never really agreed on much except for the fact that you had to destroy the head, spine, and all four limbs before you could confidently call a zombie dead.
So far, he had played guard for three foraging trips, and the only time they'd seen a zombie had been in the distance, when they were already heading back to the shelter. He didn't know what he would do if they ran into something he had to fight. Just the idea of laying into a human body with the sledgehammer made him feel sick.
Thou shalt not kill, right? But what about zombies? They had died once already – did that make killing them a second time better or worse? Did people stop being people after they died the first time? Besides, God allowed them to exist, so who was Caleb to say that they couldn't?
A scream cut through his reverie, and he took off at a run. The shrill noise of an emergency whistle sounded out, followed shortly by a slim woman running out of the house he had been running to. She dodged him, narrowly avoiding a collision, and then stood in the middle of the street, blasting out the emergency retreat signal until the rest of the team appeared from their houses.
"Zombies, coming out of the forest all along the road from the west," she said as they gathered in the street. "We've got to run, or we're going to be cut off."
They ran.
Caleb kept to the west side of the street, hoping with every step that they would make it back without having to fight. Without having to see if he could kill.
Back to what, though? A life of being a fraud, depended on to protect people who he was just going to let down? And no matter how much he cut down what he ate, he was still using up food that other people could have used. Like those kids he had given his comforter to. He slowed a little, letting the others edge out ahead of him.
Then he sped up again, remembering that he couldn't let himself become a zombie. He caught up to the slowest of the foragers and paced her, determined to at least make sure that no one fell behind.
Zombies never seemed to move at anything faster than a walk, but for the entire run back they saw knots of the shambling bodies breaking out of the trees to their right. Caleb knew that more zombies had disappeared than the survivors had destroyed, but he didn't think anyone had expected zombies from other cities to show up here, flooding into town like a tidal wave.
The foragers stayed ahead of the flood of undead all the way into town, but then Jamie slid to a halt, bringing them all up short at the sight of zombies straight ahead. There were only ten in view, but that was enough to cut them off from the safety and supplies of the shelter. "We can hole up in one of the apartments," she said, looking around wildly for a good prospect. "Hope they go away before we starve, maybe signal the others for help?"
"Keep running," Caleb shouted, pushing past.
He raised the sledgehammer, running straight at the knot of zombies. He swung it, not to kill, but to move. Its massive momentum made it easy to sweep the nearest zombies off their feet, knocking them out of the foragers' way long enough to run past safely.
"Caleb!" Jamie shouted, slowing as another group came into view. Caleb barreled ahead again to sweep them away.
It was a clear shot the rest of the way to the shelter door, no more than fifty yards, and he grinned as Jamie and the others sprinted past him. They were going to make it!
Then a scream rang out from behind.
He turned so fast that he skidded, catching himself with one hand against the ground before he could fall. Three yards back, the slender woman who had blown the whistle spr
awled on the ground, struggling to get her leg free from the zombie that had tripped her.
Caleb was there in seconds, swinging the sledge hammer to shatter the bones of the zombie's arm. Then he grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her to her feet, shielding her with his body while she tested her balance and broke into a limping run.
"Go!" he shouted when she looked back at him and hesitated. He faced the zombies, backing away slowly while he listened to her uneven footfalls growing further away.
The zombie that had attacked her rose and took a shambling step towards him, holding out its ruined arm and moaning.
"I'm sorry," Caleb said, a sudden wave of shame catching him by surprise. It had felt so good to swing that sledgehammer and shatter its bones. He had freed the woman, but he had also done violence to another human being, undead or not.
"I had to," he whispered, but it felt like an excuse. "I had to!" he insisted, more to himself than to the zombie.
Behind him, he heard the sound of the woman reaching the shelter and being welcomed in. "Caleb, come on!" someone shouted, before the door slammed shut again.
"You were going to kill her," he said, gaining a little confidence from the knowledge that she was safe. "God says 'Thou shalt not kill,' so I'm not going to kill you," he said, walking slowly backward as he spoke. "But I'm not going to just stand here and let you kill either. Understand?"
The man's partially decayed face twisted into a grimace, and he waved his ruined arm angrily.
A chill settled into the pit of Caleb's gut.
"Do you understand? Are you still in there?" He looked around to the others, who had stopped advancing and were now just standing and staring at him. Some looked away as soon as he met their eyes, while others stared back, almost defiantly.
"You are," he whispered. "You're not just mindless monsters, you're still in there."
He hugged the sledgehammer close, frozen in place by the horror of that realization.
"Why?" he asked, staring at one of the women who dared to meet his eyes. "Why do you kill us? Why are you here?"
She let out a slow, clumsy chuckle and looked past his shoulder just as a cold arm wrapped around his neck and clamped down on his throat.
For a moment, he felt a sense of relief. He had longed for death for so long that he almost forgot what death meant now. But then he remembered. If I die, I'm one of them. I'll kill like them. I can't let that happen!
The sledgehammer fell to the ground while he struggled to loosen the arm holding him enough for him to get a breath. He jabbed his elbows back and felt something give, but the grip on his neck stayed strong, even as more hands took hold of him, dragging him down.
He spun as he fell, and found himself looking up at the shelter. He fought, drawing in another breath and trying to feel around for the sledgehammer. The whole time, he kept his eyes locked on the shelter, on the reminder of why he couldn't let himself become a zombie.
Lack of air made him lightheaded, though, and his gaze wandered up. Motion dragged his eyes back to the roof, where the tech school kids had set up their trebuchet. Figures moved around, though he couldn't tell what they were doing.
I'm sorry, he thought at them, feeling his body go weak from lack of air. I didn't mean to…
The trebuchet arm snapped up, launching an object into the air that arced up and then down, straight at Caleb and the horde of zombies that now surrounded him. Recognition struck, and he had just enough time before the bomb landed for a smile, and one last thought.
Thank God.
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