The Lost Gods

by Brickley, Horace

  “Again!”

  Adam let out a primal scream and drove his feet into the plywood in time with Jesse. The sheet popped free on Jesse’s side. Jesse worked his way backwards and to his feet, having to crouch low, and gripped the loose sheet. Adam squeezed into the tight space next to Jesse. They pushed and pulled until the sheet detached and slid down the roof onto the lawn below. Jesse heard the separate thumps of shingles hitting the grass. Sunlight brightened the attic.

  “It's enough,” said Adam. Jesse moved back and let Adam climb up onto the slanted roof. Adam hoisted himself up without issue and stayed on all fours.

  “What's the situation out there?” Jesse asked.

  “Hope you brought your running shoes.”

  “That good, eh?”

  “Yep.”

  Jesse tried to lift himself out, but his jacket sleeve caught on a crooked nail. Adam reached down to help him. His foot slipped, sending him sliding down the roof.

  …

  He grasped at the mossy shingles. When he neared the lip of the roof, Adam kicked his right foot into the tin gutter. His heel caught the gutter, but the flimsy aluminum bent with the impact. Adam slipped off the roof.

  Adam fell hard onto the overgrown lawn. His wind escaped in a violent exhale. A tight line of reanimates pressed up against the sides of the garage a few feet away. They had smashed in a small section of the exterior. They squirmed to get into the opening. A large reanimate clogged the hole. The thing’s cheap, polyester suit had an open back: a funeral parlor standard. Faded tattoos covered the discolored skin of its back. Adam rolled onto his stomach and tried to stand. Vertigo gripped him and he collapsed. Two creatures came down on top of him. Lacking the space and energy to strike them, Adam grappled with the creatures. One of the things pulled at Adam’s arms and dragged itself across his body. It brought itself face to face with Adam. Wrinkles and untrimmed hair textured the purplish skin of its face. Its dried lips parted revealing dark teeth and a swollen, black tongue. Adam freed an arm, grabbed the creature behind its neck, and yanked it away from his face. The other reanimate pulled at Adam's arm. He jerked his arm free. He took in a shallow breath and rolled over. He drove his elbow into the creature's forehead. Unfazed by the hit, it leaned toward Adam's face. Adam pushed its jaw and drove his forearm into the creature's neck. He felt the creature's spinal cord snap. Its mouth closed and its cloudy, gray eyes stared into the clear sky. He looked up and saw the rest of them closing in.

  …

  Jesse worked his way up onto the roof. He slipped as he tried to stand. He bent his knees, set a hand down on a shingle, and regained his balance. Adam was out of sight. Jesse moved across the roof, searching, until he saw Adam wrestling with the creatures below.

  Without a thought for his own safety, Jesse dove off of the roof with his arms crossed in front of his face. He collided with a reanimate that was little more than a skeleton. It crumpled under the force. Jesse tucked into a roll. His roll was graceless and he tumbled into a naked reanimate a few feet ahead. His legs struck the nude creature, and it toppled over like lawn furniture in a stiff breeze. Jesse popped up to his feet. He spotted Adam nearby atop a reanimate. Jesse bounded over to him and stomped on the nearest creature’s head. Its skull collapsed, and Jesse's foot crushed through it releasing dark, coagulated matter into the grass. Jesse reached for his cudgel, but his fingers found only the fabric of his pants.

  “What the fuck?” he said to himself. He patted his belt line and pants in a fury. He groped at his jacket pockets, as if his weapon could have possibly fit in those small spaces. Jesse felt for his pack, but it too was missing. Frustration, terror, and rage coursed through his mind. The vortex of emotion froze him in place. Two skinny hands came down on his shoulders. Without a thought, Jesse grabbed the hands, bent forward, and flipped the creature over his right shoulder. The creature landed on its back and Jesse smashed his boot into its face.

  Adam got to his feet and did the same wild, fruitless search as Jesse.

  “We can’t go back for it!” Jesse yelled. “Let’s get back to the fort.”

  The majority of the creatures continued pressing against the house, but others were scattered throughout the backyard and forest beyond. Jesse passed the family’s pool in the backyard. Pine needles floated in the filthy water. Below the surface, outlines of a dozen reanimates shifted. They paced back and forth in the slimy water, like nervous tigers in a zoo, unable to escape. Without a weapon, Jesse resorted to shoving the creatures in the yard out of his way as he rushed through the grass into the forest. Adam limped along behind him in an awkward trot. The horde of creatures detached themselves from the house and pursued at a plodding and deliberate pace. Adam and Jesse had laid waste to dozens of them in the skirmish the day before, but the group of walking corpses had grown overnight.

  ...

  A gust of cold wind broke through Adam’s clothes and made his bones and joints ache. Dry, hard pain emanated out of his shoulder, wrists, fingers, and knees. Each pain brought back a memory. The time he sprained his wrist fighting with a dealer that cheated him in high school, or the time he separated his shoulder right after falling off of his friend’s quad. A supernatural scream derailed his reminiscing.

  “Shit, shit, shit, there’s another one of those things!” yelled Adam.

  “Let's get back to the fort,” said Jesse, “Can you run?”

  “No, my ankle is fucked up.”

  Without a word, Jesse hoisted Adam over his shoulder and carried him like a child.

  …

  The tree line thinned and ahead there was a short, steep hill leading down to Newberry Hill Road. Jesse let go of Adam's legs and Adam slid off Jesse's shoulder.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” said Adam.

  The ground was loose, but both of them made it down the hill without injury. They turned onto the road and walked toward town. A deafening scream exploded out of the forest. Jesse spun around and looked up the hill.

  Standing on top of the hill was a single reanimate. The creature stood for a moment and stared at Jesse and Adam. It ran down the hill with a dexterity Jesse had never seen in a reanimate. It wore an ancient garb. The fabric was intact and unblemished. Its skin and features were light blue, instead of the darker tint of the typical corpse. It had a visible musculature on its exposed limbs. Inside its all-black eyes were fiery white pupils. It drew in a breath and let out another high-decibel scream.

  The strange creature came forward with an air of confidence and lethality. Adam stepped in the creature’s path and cocked back his fist like he was getting ready to throw a baseball. With uncanny speed, the creature raked its long, yellow nails across Adam's cheek splitting the skin. It followed up with a backhand that knocked Adam to the asphalt. Adam clutched his bloodied face and turtled into a fetal position.

  Jesse closed the distance between him and the thing. He thrust his boot into its lower abdomen. The kick connected and the creature backpedaled for a few steps. It corrected itself and stood upright again. It locked eyes with Jesse. He could sense its anger. He had stared down thousands of reanimates and had never seen any sign of emotion. This creature wanted to destroy him.

  Adam recovered and lunged for the creature's legs. It responded with a swift kick to his chin before he could close his arms around its legs. Adam cried out in agony and rolled onto his back. Blood spewed forth from his newly broken nose.

  Jesse's rage ignited at the sight of Adam's blood. He moved in and feinted like a boxer. The creature tried to block a punch that did not come as Jesse lunged. He drove his left shoulder into the thing’s abdomen and locked his hands behind its lead leg. He crouched and drove his weight upwards, picking the thing up off the ground. He pushed his head into the creature's chest and slammed it onto the asphalt. Without hesitation, Jesse mounted the fallen creature and hammered away at it. It twisted and tried to buck him off, but Jesse never let an opponent off their back. He felt the creature’s vitality and its strength as it attempte
d to free itself. Its skull did not split easily, nor did its neck snap like a dry twig, as a typical reanimate's would have. This was like he was fighting a human, and a particularly strong human at that. His fists were not up to the task of destroying the creature, so Jesse grabbed the creature's chin and its long, braided white hair and wrenched them in opposite directions. Its neck gave way and the once-fierce creature went limp.

  Jesse rose, winded and stunned.

  Adam was on all fours: blood dripping from the gashes on his cheek, his now-crooked nose, and split lip.

  “What the fuck was that?” Adam asked, his voice muddled by a mouthful of blood.

  “I have no idea,” Jesse said, helping Adam to his feet, “but I think we're in deep shit if there are more of those.”

  Adam spit out a mouthful of blood.

  “I'm already in deep trouble, man,” he said. “Look at me. My ankle is destroyed, I'm exhausted, and that thing just turned my face into a blood faucet.”

  “It looks bad, but you'll be fine.”

  “I'll be fine? Did you see those nails, man? I'll get infected for sure.”

  “Then we'll find antibiotics.”

  “I had antibiotics in my fuckin’ bag, along with a nice, new knife and a bunch of other shit I needed. Shit we both needed.”

  Adam pointed back toward the house and continued, “But there're a whole bunch of dead fucks between us and our stuff. I can't fight them like this.”

  “We don’t need that stuff as much as we need to survive.”

  “We aren't surviving!” Adam yelled and threw his hands into the air. “We're just dying slower than everyone else, and you a lot slower than me.”

  “We need to move, now.”

  “What's the fucking point?” Adam asked as he put his hands on his knees and bent over. He spit another mouthful of blood onto the asphalt.

  “I can’t argue that there is a point to living,” Jesse said, and he put his hand on Adam’s back, “but unless you want to get eaten by that horde back there we need to start moving again. I can carry you, if you'll let me.”

  “I'll walk,” Adam said and he stood up as straight as he was able to, “At least I can die with a shred of dignity left. Not that anyone will know either way.”

  “I'll know,” said Jesse, “and you aren't going to die. Neither of us are.”

  Adam's words reverberated in Jesse's head. They sunk deep into his gut. On some level, Jesse agreed with what Adam was saying. He had his doubts about the state of things as well. Why bother fighting if this miserable life is all that is left? Jesse would ask himself, and he never had an acceptable answer for that question. He did not know why he fought, only that he would never stop fighting. He was determined to survive, but he had no logical basis for his will to persist. Adam lacked Jesse's strong convictions. Jesse had talked Adam down from a suicidal state during their first long siege at their fort.

  It was the unknown that Jesse feared, not death itself, or the pain of evisceration. He feared he would become undead. He also feared that hell, or something like it, was real. Not the fire and brimstone hell that most Americans had believed in, but a dark place filled with hapless creatures like the ones he killed to survive. Whatever force was behind this apocalypse was crueler than the adversary he was told to fear as a child. It was even scarier than the grand creator he was told to love. His recent dreams had complicated matters further. He wanted answers, but each dream only created more and more questions. He longed for sleep, so that he could meet with this queen again.

  They walked in silence, occasionally broken by curses that Adam leveled at no one in particular. Having trouble negotiating the steep descent, Adam's pace was slow. Jesse walked behind Adam and checked for threats. A small group of reanimates followed at a lethargic pace, but the horde from the forest was nowhere in sight.

  After the long and quiet walk, the two men entered the town. They had not seen Silverdale in the sunlight in months. Clouds had hovered over the doomed town, as if they were waiting to watch Jesse and Adam fail. Dyes Inlet, a murky and bone-chilling body of water, bordered the southeastern part of the town. Jesse wondered how many of these screaming creatures, or worse, there were in the world. The thought turned his stomach into an iron ball.

  They passed gas stations, liquor stores, and a discount supermarket. Jesse caught glimpses of faded billboards, brandishing their weathered advertisements. Jesse thought about the world that he grew up in: a world that no longer existed. Unlike when civilizations had collapsed in the past, no new force, equipped with superior technology or tactics, had arrived to replace the old guard this time around. The reanimates brought only death and did not care for advancement. Those things lived for blood, flesh, and bone; and they had reduced Jesse and the remaining humans to primacy.

  Ahead, a Japanese sedan was up on its side: smashed against a light pole. A random thought came into Jesse head, as he stared at the sedan, and he blurted out, “My car insurance was due.”

  “I don't think you have to worry about that,” Adam replied.

  “That was the last bill I remember paying before I went back home.”

  Adam said nothing and wiped some blood from under his nose.

  “Do you ever think about all the stupid shit we don't have to do anymore?” Jesse asked.

  “No. There's plenty to do now.”

  “I'm relieved by it. I just wish it didn’t take all this to change everything.”

  “I'll make sure to inform the next screaming zombie I see.”

  “I just feel free now,” said Jesse, “Sometimes, I mean. I never felt free before all this happened. I felt trapped into this cycle of nonsense that I didn’t believe in.”

  “Free? Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Free?” Adam said with a cutting tone, “We're in prison, man. Wake the fuck up, all right? We're fuckin’ surrounded. They're going to catch us, I mean, they’ll get us eventually. It's not like we're eagles or some shit. We're three-hundred yards from where we went to high school, and we're probably going to get beaten half to death and eaten by a pack of screaming, super zombies in a couple of minutes. And that makes you feel free? Well, good ‘cause we’ll both be free in a bit when we’re lying face down in our own blood.”

  “I didn't say I felt good, just free from all the useless stuff we used to have to do. Aren't you relieved that you don't have to find insurance, or apply for jobs, or try to find a way to justify your choices or whatever? Didn't that shit tire you out?”

  “Not nearly as much as running for my goddamn life every day,” Adam said, “I can't believe the things you think about. The way you think boggles my mind. I haven't busted a nut in months, and I've had to fight for my life every day. I haven't felt worse, ever. No matter how bad of a hangover, withdrawal, or whatever I had — that was never as bad as this shit. Here you are taking deep breaths and waxing philosophical about, what, about not having to do your fuckin’ taxes? I didn't do that shit back when I was supposed to, so maybe I just don't feel the burden that's been lifted. I'm guessing that it beat the shit out of having a fistfight with a rotting corpse because you — never mind. I’m done.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Whatever, man. It's not important.”

  They came to the intersection in the middle of town. The mall was up ahead, but trees and overgrown bushes on two narrow strips of landscaping blocked their view of the fort.

  …

  “Almost home,” said Adam in a voice too low for Jesse to hear.

  Adam sucked in another pained breath. His face throbbed and pain radiated through his body. His ankle swelled, his face bore gashes, and his nose and mouth leaked blood. He was a sorry sight. The last bits of adrenaline and endorphins had left his system and unbearable pain had replaced them. He was run down in every sense of the phrase. The only thing keeping him going was his long-standing habit of not being dead. Jesse was a few paces behind him, but he was still fresh and had no injuries besides a few scrapes and
bruises. Adam squinted and saw the outline of the fort through the green belt.

  “Those motherfuckers,” said Adam. He forgot his pains and hustled toward the fort.

  “What do you see? Hold up!”

  …

  Jesse moved up and tried to catch Adam. He put his hand on Adam's left shoulder, but Adam shook it off and kept walking. On the south platform of the fort stood two large reanimates. Dozens of creatures milled outside the fort.

  “Hey!” Adam yelled. “That's our fort. Run along now and get your own.”

  “What are you doing?” Jesse asked.

  “Being brave and stupid. Isn't that what you wanted?”

  “No!”

  “Today's the day,” Adam said, and he looked into Jesse’s eyes. Jesse could see the desperation and pain on his bloodied face.

  “I'm tired of this shit,” Adam said, “But I lost my gun back in the field.”

  “Don't do this.”

  One of the reanimates on the platform was staring at them. She raised her head up and screamed. Another screamed in kind. Adam looked over at Jesse with fire behind his glassy eyes.

  ...

  “I’m tired, Jesse,” he said and turned toward the fort. “Come on, you rotten fucks! Come get a piece of this.”

  Adam went into an awkward run toward the fort. Jesse followed trying to come up with a plan as he moved. A nearby reanimate raised it arms and grabbed for Adam. Adam snatched it by the wrist and dragged the skinny creature with him. It chomped its teeth together and moaned as he pulled. It grabbed Adam's hand with its free hand. Adam clutched its elbow with his other hand. He spun the creature around and flung it toward the other shambling corpses. It stumbled a few steps and rolled in a flailing mass. The off-balance creature smashed into three reanimates causing two of them to trip. The third tripped and fell onto its hands and knees. Adam walked over to the doubled-over reanimate and kicked it in the head. It fell onto its back and Adam's stomped it into oblivion. More creatures descended on Adam. Adam went into a frenzied state and punched, kicked, and pushed the creatures.