by C.G. Banks
take it, the whole time drooling all over like a dog eyeing a bone.
I eased past a couple piles of scattered bones in the hallway and made my way up the stairs to where I figured I’d find a coupla bedrooms. I guess I was feeling a touch nostalgic. Regardless, it didn’t get much better upstairs. The blood-spray was a bit less but the stink was rancid and hard and there were more body parts up here than down. I’m not kidding, it was like everybody in the damn neighborhood had decided to come over here to rip each other to pieces.
I kicked through a pile of clothes and rot to the first door on the left.
It was slightly ajar and I pushed it open.
This was where all hell had obviously reached its high-point. It was like a bomb of blood had exploded in there, all thick and clotted on the floor and walls; even the ceiling was black with it. And right there on what was left of the bed were two bodies all torn to shreds. At first I thought it was only one but when I counted the arms and legs it all added up to more than one person. It fact, it was a leg shy of two but I didn’t find that leg anywhere. And I looked, under the bed, in the closet. The bedroom window was shattered and I guessed that could have been where it went but I looked out and didn’t see shit down there. Maybe a dog had dragged it off. Maybe one of the mudheads…I don’t know.
I turned back to the room and walked over to the mess of a bed. Flies were pretty thick and they buzzed and dived me as I stood there. Big blue-bottle motherfuckers, the kind that shine in the sunlight. I waved them away best I could and squatted down on my knees. Bent over to look under the bed again (maybe I’d missed that leg the first time) and just crawled underneath there, pushing all the funk out ahead of me. The floor was sticky as molasses but I squeezed in anyway. Found some pieces of clothing that were all gnarled up with filth and made a pillow. Then with the dead resting above, I closed my eyes and faded into oblivion.
When I came to it was total dark. I could hear a big bullfrog croaking through the broken window and wondered what that motherfucker might do if some live flesh happened to walk by. Chewed on that a second until I let it drift away. Then I pushed out from underneath the bed and stood up in the room that had become an abattoir. Decided it was time to move.
I shambled downstairs, my feet sticking in the muck with each step, and left through the front door. Paused a minute in the yard trying to get my bearings. One direction pretty much looked like any other: dark, empty. It was a helluva change since the Zombie Holiday, I got to say. No screams or shattering glass. Nobody tumbling off rooftops or being eaten in the streets. Just a whole lot of silence. Even the bullfrog had stopped. I craned my neck and looked up at the moon. Thought for a moment about how strange it was, that the moon was still the same, all white and full in the sky, while everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket down here.
I walked down the center of the street until I saw the fire burning up ahead.
Well…even though since I became a Red Eye I ain’t had a whole lot of fear, the sight of that fire gave me a little chill. I moved off the street to the ditch and then crossed over to where the trees got thicker. Decided to make my way over through the screen they gave. I moved through as quiet as I could and it wasn’t long before I came to a clearing where the fire was burning.
A bonfire with a whole host of hell standing around it. Even from where I was I could make out different sets of Red Eyes among the crowd. There were two small dump trucks idling far back from the fire and that didn’t seem to make no sense. The regular mudheads were surely not up to driving and I’d never even seen a Red Eye with that much sense, but then again, I’d driven when trying to save the girl. Even if that hadn’t gone off as I wanted. But I had to remind myself: I hadn’t been a Red Eye when I’d attempted that stunt either.
It was right about then I saw the wheel barrows. Not gardening ones but carts almost, about ten feet long and five wide. Just looking at em brought back memories of the time at school when we had to learn about the Holocaust. And even though these were a lot more iffy than the ones I remembered from school, their purpose was obvious. These fucking zombies were unloading bodies from the dump trucks and piling them on these gurney-looking things. All under the watchfulness of the Red Eyes. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, or trying to, but the point was clear. They were throwing the bodies onto the fire. And from what I could see some of the bodies appeared ripe as apple pie. But no feeding frenzy. No rending and tearing. Just a buncha goons working.
Cleaning up a mess.
The temperature in my dead body dropped about another hundred degrees. I slunk back into the trees and inched my way out and around that bonfire, worried every second one of those fucking Red Eyes would get onto me. I had to get the hell out because I had something completely new to consider.
I didn’t stop moving until daybreak, the whole time looking over my shoulder in case those bastards were following. Dealing with what could be considered thoughts running around like rats in my brain. Come sun-up I was still in pretty thick woods but the flames had faded out of sight hours before. I sat down next to a big tree and tried to figure this new thing. Up until last night I’d never seen the mudheads doing anything like what I’d seen around the bonfire. Those motherfuckers were clockwork idiots. They saw bodies or Liv-ers and they came running. It didn’t take no thought. But now here I was considering a constructed bonfire. Dump trucks full of bodies and then the make-shift gurneys to cart the dead to the flames. Hell I didn’t see how some of those bodies hadn’t been up and about as usual. Headless, sure, you’re dead in the water, but I hadn’t never seen one that looked dead, and stayed dead, with the head still on.
It looked like even more things had gone screwy lately but I had no idea where they were headed. And like everything else in life there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about none of it.
And sitting there in the woods with my thumb up my ass didn’t qualify as a working plan. I decided to get up and get moving. Towards afternoon I still hadn’t seen anybody or anything. Not even a bird in the sky. Then, right about the time the sun began sinking through the trees I heard an engine. A big one from the sound of it. I hunkered down beside the road I was trailing and waited. Then, around the bend, here it come, a big dump truck like the ones I saw the night before. I couldn’t see who, or what, was driving, but when it went past I got a glimpse into the bed and saw it was empty. Then it trundled around another bend in the road and was gone. I waited there off to the side of the ditch a coupla more minutes, and not hearing any more engines, I started moving again.
Now I ain’t ever lived in a big city but I knew what they looked like from pictures and the TV. And it wasn’t like it was a mystery anyway. The thing I didn’t know was how long it actually took to get to one. First the woods started dying away like they’d caught some kinda sickness. Then I run up on miles of neighborhoods not any different from the one I used to live in with Momma. The whole time I passed through these deserted, haunted graveyards I made damn sure to stick to the shadows. Something was definitely not right and I didn’t want to have come through all the bullshit I had and get sucker-fucked now. Those damn trucks and the bonfire had really ruffled my feathers. But all through those neighborhoods, again, I didn’t see shit. It was like everyone had run off years back and left no one to clean up the mess.
Most of the houses had been broken into, along with a good many cars, and blood was still as common as ticks on a dog’s ass. A coupla times I passed actual graveyards but they was all dug up like the one I’d seen beside the church a while back like a bombing raid had gone on with the sole intention of flinging dirt outta holes. That whole day and night I walked in the shadows. I didn’t go into a damn one a those houses, though. I’d been in enough lately and couldn’t speak much for the high-points of any of em.
Dawn of the second day I begun to see the outlines of the city. I don’t have any idea which one it used to be. As I said, my brain don’t seem to work much good any more if it ain’t set on ripping and tearing somebo
dy a new asshole, but that didn’t matter to me no how. There it was set against the sky like some snaggle-toothed monster lying on its back with its teeth in the air.
I stopped when I saw it and thought about why I’d come. Couldn’t seem to get no set point on that one though. And it had seemed like such a good idea just a little ways back. Now that it was staring right down my throat, well…
Regardless, I continued on. Still sticking to the trees with my old stinking self but moving on. Just on the threshold of the city itself I began to hear sounds. More engines, and really out of the ordinary, voices. Or to put it more particular, sounds that people could have made. To me they didn’t make any damn sense at all.
At first I thought I’d come up on some sorta refugee camp for Liv-ers, but when I edged closer I saw that wasn’t it at all. Or at least not like I’d expected. Because it did appear to be a protected camp but all the voices was coming from Red Eyes yelling through bullhorns.
A big-ass fence had been put up that stretched outta sight both ways I looked. The city was on the other side and the only way in was through a huge gate about four hundred yards ahead where a four-lane
