by C.G. Banks
like a road had sprung outta nowhere right through the crowd to the fence line. The big dude, still with the baby held high above his head, walked through the crowd of people, a couple of them reaching out to touch the baby as he passed. The mudheads started to cluster up. The two guys who’d dragged the woman from the church were having hell holding her down now and I thought no, no.
And before another thought crossed my mind, the big dude threw the baby over the fence into the crowd of mudheads waiting on the other side.
I just turned my head away. Looked at the ground for awhile as the organ music washed over me. Wondered what could bring a buncha Live-ers to this point, throwing their own children over the fence to be eaten by the dead? It was too much to get a hold of. The world had definitely took another turn for the worse, even here at the shit-end of the stick. What could they be hoping to get from this? Did they think the mudheads would start to understand them now? That they could work together? It just made me sick to the core.
After another few minutes I turned away from the scene below and wandered off into the woods.
The next coupla days were nothing but time. I walked through woods, crossed a coupla shallow streams, ate a dead something I found along a trail at some point. It held the chicken bone down a bit but not much. It was always the constant throbbing reminder of what I had become. But I didn’t look for Live-ers. Between the little girl the Red Eyes had caused me to kill and the baby thrown over the fence I was just about at the end of caring. Didn’t know where I was going, what I was trying to do. I just kept walking. Trying not to think about anything but the next footstep.
I came on the town right before dark some days later. It wasn’t much different than the one with the graveyard a while back. Same set-up, small town job with a main street running right down the center. It looked like it hadn’t been doing great before the Change and now it was just deserted, dead-looking. Maybe there were mudheads dug in somewhere nearby but I got the notion that there weren’t. This was just a dead place, waiting for the years to pass so it could fall into the dirt.
I started down the main street, not paying much attention to anything really. Watching my feet as they slapped along. It was as quiet as a tomb. I got about halfway down the street and stopped. To the left there were a couple of buildings that had burned down not long ago, I could still smell the stink of burning wood in the air. But it was as I turned to the right that I received the shock that has sense changed me as deeply as the Change did before.
Because you see, the building on the other side was in better shape. It was standing quiet in the night and incredibly most of the windows on the ground floor were still in place. And that’s when I saw. I was reflected in the glass, standing lonely in the middle of the road.
And my eyes were burning a blistering red.