Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  He was pretty sure he could make the necessary wiring changes to connect the tower’s pumps to the generator, and knew that the town would have a mostly full diesel tank buried beside the equipment garage. If he towed the generator with the town’s snow-plow, he wouldn’t have any trouble with the sick people wandering around. They couldn’t get to him up in the cab.

  Ryan spent the next three days in a flurry of activity, planning, thinking, planning some more, gathering supplies and drawing diagrams. It felt good to be doing something again. It never occurred to him that the knocking at the door stopped while his mind was active.

  On the morning of the third day, it occurred to him that he would have to search the entire town, house-by-house turning off the water if his plan was going to work. Without people living in and heating the houses, hundreds of pipes would burst over the winter, and all the water would drain out of the water tower again.

  That realization deflated his motivation and reluctantly, Ryan abandoned his plan to refill the water tower. Instead, he risked a trip across the back field to a spring every day. The first trip he carried two five-gallon buckets, placing one under the trickling mountain spring to fill, and leaving the other empty beside the small stream. From then on, every morning he took the full bucket and replaced it with the empty one, giving him about five gallons of water to use every day. After a week or so, things settled down into a new “normal” routine.

  Every day was the same, day in and day out. Fetch the water bucket. Eat a few of Mrs. Wiggins’ beans from a jar, sit in his chair to stare at the blank TV. Answer the door. Eat a few more beans. Some days he slept. Some days he didn’t. But awake or asleep, he was doing pretty much the same thing.

  Knock, knock.

  This was the twelfth round of knocking today – two more than the usual. Ryan had had enough. “Go the fuck away, goddammit! Stop tormenting me! Just let me die!” His voice was crusty because he hadn’t spoken out loud in months.

  “Mr. Fullerton! Is that you?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Now I’m hearing people too?” Ryan got out of his chair angrily and stormed to the door, flinging it open, his eyes looking to Kelly out in the yard, but she wasn’t there.

  “Mr. Fullerton! You’re alive!”

  Ryan focused a little closer and saw Donte standing in front of him. “Donte?” he croaked. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go to college?”

  Donte shook his head and sadly looked at Ryan. “Mr. Fullerton, there is no more college. You need to come with me. We have food and safety, hot water and people.”

  “I can’t leave Kelly,” he replied flatly. “I’m not going anywhere; I have to stay with her until we can be together again.”

  “Was she bitten? Didn’t you see the news after school that day? When people are bitten, they’re dead. The last hour CNN was broadcasting, they showed one of them being dissected; there was no heartbeat anymore, Mr. Fullerton. Once someone is infected, they are dead.”

  “Then I’ll wait here until I’m dead. I won’t leave her,” said Ryan.

  Both of their heads turned at the sound of a shotgun from the bottom of the mountain. “I gotta go, Mr. Fullerton. But I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll be back tomorrow at this same time. Maybe we can talk some, you know, like the old days?” He was already running down the mountain as he finished, yelling the last bit back up to Ryan.

  Ryan slammed the door and locked it. For a fleeting moment, he wished that it was just Kelly out in the yard. At least that was familiar. Moments later he was sitting in his chair, staring blankly at the television. Like an animal sinking into quicksand, an idea occurred to him. It was an agonizingly slow process; a full seven hours after he sat back down in his chair, Ryan had fully thought-out something that never even occurred to him.

  “There might be others alive out there.”

  Chapter 3

  That single thought brought his brain back to life. He started planning immediately, and over the next few days he prepared for his escape from his house, and the torment it contained.

  On the day he was to leave, he poured a sink full of water from the morning’s bucket before sunrise, and started on his face with scissors. In three months, he’d grown a beard to make a lumberjack proud, and his hair, which was normally kept closely-cropped, was out of control. When his beard was trimmed as closely as possible with scissors, he shaved his face and then pulled out his trusty clippers.

  Amazed that they still held a charge, and hoping that it would last through his hair cut, he started buzzing his head. He clipped the sides and back first, leaving a Mohawk strip down the center of his head. A little of Kelly’s mousse stood the strip straight up, and for the next hour, Ryan paraded around his house feeling like a bad-ass. In his garage he found his old halligan. It was a half crow-bar and half axe; the tool was left-over from his days as a volunteer fire-fighter the summer before he left for college. He stood in the mirror and admired himself, and for a minute, thought maybe he should start a journal.

  “I could call it “Ryan’s Undead Diary,”” he said out loud and laughed. He allowed himself to laugh for a long time before deciding that it was time to get moving before he did anything else ridiculous. He set the halligan down on the entry table and went back upstairs to remove the rest of his Mohawk. He didn’t want people to see him and think he was some hoodlum.

  Just after sunrise, Ryan stepped into the garage and rummaged through years of collected sports equipment. He donned a black plastic chest and spine protector; a hold-over from riding motocross all over the mountains as a teenager, and the matching black motorcycle helmet.

  From a huge blue and white duffel bag, he put on his old football shin, thigh, and kidney pads, and then strapped a pair of soccer shin-guards around his forearms. Finally, from the rack of metal shelves by the door, he pulled out his softball bat. It was used in the yearly “Staff Vs Seniors” school softball game. The staff lost every year, but it was great for the kids. He felt a pang of sadness as he realized that he would never participate in another game.

  Ryan rolled the garage door open, and moving quickly, pushed his old 4wheeler out onto the driveway and closed the garage. The battery was long-dead, so he pulled the choke and looked around him. Kelly was on the opposite side of the driveway, and had started towards him. He yanked on the cord, the old Honda sputtered and died. Kelly was now seventy-five feet from him.

  He pulled again, heard the motor turn over on its own a couple of times and then it died again.

  “Come onnn, baby,” he said, yanking the cord a third time. Kelly was closing quickly, less than fifty feet away. Once again the engine sputtered, sounded like it might catch, and then died.

  Ryan pushed the choke in and pulled it back out, reached down and ripped the cord one more time, yanking with all his might. The engine sputtered, missed a few times, but kept going. Kelly was twenty five feet away. He hopped on the quad and gave it a little gas. The engine bogged down, not ready to run yet, so he quickly let off the throttle. Seconds passed as Kelly closed the distance. When she was ten feet away, Ryan tried the throttle again, and the engine responded.

  He shoved the choke in, hit the thumb lever to put it in first gear, let out the clutch and gunned it down the gravel driveway, spraying rocks out behind him. Kelly’s cold, outstretched fingertips brushed his helmet as he roared past. Ryan rode down the mountain with tears running down his face. He was grateful for the black-out visor on his helmet. To be so close to her and so afraid of her at the same time was torture. He had to find some people, or next time he might not come back from his depression.

  It was a beautiful summer day. The temperature was in the mid-eighties, and the sun was shining. Even with the heat, Ryan was glad he’d opted for long sleeves. After being cooped up in the house for so long, sunburn would have been a guarantee. The quad rolled along about thirty miles per hour, making good time down Highway 7 towards the city of Gander Valley.

  At the corner of Highway 7 and 61
3, he made a right, and rode the four miles into town. It was weird being out on the road on a quad, and even weirder not seeing a single thing moving. Usually this road was packed with cars. The houses along the highway were all overgrown and the grass in the yards had all grown tall and spindly. Every fourth or fifth house was boarded up. Some of them had the boards torn down but some of them still looked sealed. The ones that looked sealed up would be the most promising houses.

  At the edge of the town proper, the speed limit dropped to twenty five, and Highway 613 became Valley Street. Two blocks later, he pulled the quad into an old 1950’s strip mall and stopped at the front door of Thornton’s Hardware.

  His family and the Thornton’s went way back. Mr. Thornton was a little older than Ryan’s grandfather, and the two of them had practically built this town together. When times were tough for Ryan’s family, Mr. Thornton always extended them a line of credit for whatever they needed to make it until the harvest. In addition to always paying back the loans, the Fullerton’s kept the Thornton family well fed; no Thornton ever paid for produce at the local farmers market.

  Ryan removed his helmet and cupped his hands to the window, peering inside. He was looking for any sign of movement or struggle, but with the power out, it was so dark inside that he couldn’t see more than a foot or two inside the glass.

  The armored man pushed on the door and was relieved to find it unlocked, although the sound of the brass bells hanging from the handle sounded as loud as the bells of Notre Dame in the silence. With a cringe, he wrapped his hands around the bells to silence them. Ryan tightened his grip on his bat and stepped inside the store, gently closing the door behind him.

  Ryan grew up in this store. All through middle school and the first year of high school, he spent most of his free time sitting on a stool behind the counter talking to Charlotte Thornton. When they were little, they roamed the shelves, playing hide and seek or tag, but later Charlotte’s father put them to work stocking the shelves, probably at the behest of Ryan’s father. Ryan never got paid for the work he did at Thornton’s, he considered the time he spent with Charlotte payment enough.

  The two of them shared their first kiss at MacDougal pond, laying in a field of dandelions on a day much like this so many years ago. Ryan was convinced the two of them would get married, until the middle of their freshman year of high school when Charlotte met that moron Josh Binghamton. Josh and Charlotte started dating, and she virtually never spoke to Ryan again. Ryan was crushed, and swore off women until he met Kelly, and his life was completed.

  He crouched and moved slowly, keeping his head below the shelves. If there was something in here, there was no reason to let it know where he was. He scoffed at himself. The bell on the door was like a damn dinner bell. Bon appetite. Even though it was pointless, he kept his body low. It made him feel better.

  Due to the years spent in the store, there was no question in Ryan’s mind where he was going. He crouch-walked down the center aisle to the third row, then halfway down the third row he stopped and picked all five rolls of duct tape off the bottom shelf. On the way out, satisfied that he hadn’t heard any noises inside the hardware store, he stopped at the front counter.

  Thornton’s was an old-fashioned store. You paid at a bar rather than a conveyor belt. At one end of the bar was an old fashioned cash register, one of the first electronic types. Ryan set the rolls of duct tape on the counter and opened the first one. He tore off five strips, each about eighteen inches long, and stuck them up and down his chest protector. He put one more strip down each forearm, and two strips down each thigh. When he was finished, he put the remaining half-roll in the cargo pocket of his canvass work pants and pulled out his wallet. He dropped a twenty on the counter, and slid a pen and paper over. On the paper he wrote:

  5 Rolls of Duct Tape @ $3.49 each.

  God Speed, Thorntons. – Ryan

  He slid the paper under the cash, and tucked both under the edge of the cash register. Even in these times, taking the tape felt a little like stealing. Just before he left, he stopped at the information rack and pulled out a three-fold map of the city of Gander Valley.

  Chapter 4

  Ryan rode his quad to the far side of town, towards the newest subdivision. It was a fancy place. A huge brick wall surrounded the entire subdivision. The area even had a pool and a golf course. He passed the guard shack, where normally he’d have to tell the guard his name and which family he was visiting, and pulled onto the circular road that followed the edge of the central lake.

  He drove to the back of the subdivision, all the way on the far side of the lake and parked his quad. His plan was to move like a postal worker, parking the quad on the corner, walking down one side and up the other looking for survivors.

  “Special delivery for Ms. Watson,” he muttered to himself.

  It was odd that he hadn’t seen a single infected person on the entire trip. He figured, when he was making his plans, that he’d see dozens of them wandering out on the street. Kelly had survived outside this long; it didn’t make any sense that there weren’t any others.

  “Quit stalling, Ryan,” he said to himself as he turned to walk up the walkway to the first house. “It’s gonna be fine. No one will be in there.”

  He knocked on the door, and called out, “Hello? Anyone home? I’m looking for survivors!” Ryan’s hopes were momentarily up when he heard the sound of footsteps coming towards the door. He opened the glass front storm door and stood in the doorway waiting for the people to answer. Then there was a thump on the door, and some scratching. He waited, but it became very clear to him that there wasn’t anyone uninfected inside.

  “Shit. First house,” he groaned. He knew he couldn’t leave the infected in there. If they got out, they could bite someone else. He reached down and loosened the tape on his chest and then turned the knob on the door. He shoved the door, hoping to push the person back. It worked. As his eyes adjusted, he first saw a middle aged black woman in a ruined pant-suit moving towards him. The second thing that hit him was the smell. The house reeked of death. The stench almost knocked him off his feet as he tried to control the urge to vomit right there on the doorstep.

  Almost out of instinct, he ripped the tape off of his chest and held it out horizontally in front of him. When the zombie crashed into him, he wrapped the tape around her head, sealing off her mouth. The length of tape made almost two complete wraps around her head. The two of them struggled; she was much stronger than Ryan had anticipated. She pushed him backwards into the door frame, bouncing his head off the edge of the doorway, cutting his scalp.

  It wasn’t a major cut, but the sight of blood on the door jamb seemed to excite her. Her foggy eyes got a little bigger, and her nostrils flared as she fought on. He finally got the tape secured over her mouth, and was able to use the wall to push himself off and gain the upper hand.

  Ryan reached up and grabbed one of her hands, twisting it off of his neck. He ripped the strip of tape off his forearm with his other hand and wrapped it around the wrist he was holding. Once the tape was on one of her wrists, he deftly brought her other hand down and wrapped them together, rendering her almost completely harmless. He thought briefly about taping her feet together, but decided against it because he only had five rolls of tape. Instead, he shoved her backwards through the house to the powder room under the stairs to the second floor. Ryan pushed the woman into the small bathroom, closed the door and wrote “INFECTED INSIDE” on the outside of the door in big, black letters.

  Then, he surveyed the rest of the first floor, deciding to start with the kitchen. Surprisingly, it was much cleaner than he’d expected. The closest thing to a sign that there was an apocalypse going on was an overturned chair at the eat-in table and a plate with a dried out waffle and a dark stain of what was probably syrup sitting on it.

  He went through her cabinets and piled all the food on the counter before he moved through the den, office, dining room and living room. Ryan ascended the stairs,
absently thinking about what nice carpet they had, like this was some kind of home tour. He refocused himself, and pushed open the first of four doors on the second floor. He assumed there were three bedrooms and a bathroom up here.

  This bedroom appeared to be for a young teenage boy. Clothes, books, magazines, and other odds and ends covered every available surface, sometimes in layers of books on top of clothes, and sometimes the reverse.

  The next bedroom was probably for a little girl, based on the pink bed linens and rainbow colored pony dolls that filled the shelf. This room was clean, and empty, so Ryan headed to the third. As he neared the third bedroom door, he realized that’s where the smell was coming from. Ryan forced himself to open the door. Inside was a large master bedroom. Against the center, opposite wall was a king sized, mission style wooden sleigh bed with matching dresser, night stands and a huge chest of drawers.

  Ryan sank to his knees right there in the doorway. On the far side of the bedroom there were three people sitting on the floor. A man, a young teenage boy, and a little girl, all three of them dead of gunshot wounds to the head. Ryan crawled closer. Something inside him needed to make sense of this horrific scene as tears flowed down his cheeks. The two children were sitting in the father’s lap. His face was covered in blood, except for two streaks, where tears that were now long dried washed the blood away. Behind them, a white leather couch was coated in gore, with three spots where stuffing had exploded out of the back.

  In one hand, the father had a gun, some kind of pistol, like a police officer would carry. His other hand was resting on his daughter’s lap, with a bloody bandage wrapped around his arm.

  There was no way to know for sure what happened in this house, but Ryan would have bet money that the bite mark under that bandage would fit the teeth of the woman downstairs. She’d bit her husband. He locked himself and the kids in the bedroom, and when he started to turn he shot his children and then himself.