Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse

by Ryan, Nicholas

  “But can’t you just grab the top between the pincers and yank it out?” I asked. I saw Jed flinch. He was trembling. His eyes rolled from side to side, following the conversation as Walker and I stood over him.

  “Oh, hell no,” Walker said. “That is the worst thing you can do. I saw a buddy try that in the field when I was in the Middle East,” he said, delighting in recalling the details. “A guy’s tooth had become infected, and we were miles from base. My buddy tried to get the tooth out with a little pair of pincers. He practically had to put his knee on the guy’s chest.” Walker shook his head. “No, no, no. You see there’s roots and all kinds of gristle around the tooth, so you’ve got to grip it, then push down hard. Then you twist the pliers one way then back the other way. Then you pull.” Walker made a graphic demonstration with the pliers, close to Jed’s face.

  Jed sat bolt upright. “No fucking way!” he hissed.

  I turned on him. “Quiet!” I snapped. “Remember, the zombies have incredible hearing. Any sound from you is going to bring them down on us and we’ll all be killed.”

  “Better that than this,” Jed growled. “Christ almighty, you bastards are fixing to kill me.”

  “Quiet!”

  Jed threw himself back into the chair, muttering darkly and dangerously. Walker leaned over him again, and Jed’s mouth fell open, showing dull yellow teeth. “Might as well get it over and done with, I guess.”

  I leaned in close, holding the flashlight steady. Walker eased the pincers around the top of the tooth and took up the pressure. His brow was furrowed in concentration. I saw Jed’s throat begin to convulse as if he was trying to swallow. Behind him, Harrigan was almost as white-faced as Jed. He clamped his hands down on my brother’s shoulders and clung on.

  Walker got the pliers in place. Jed’s whole body was rigid as a board.

  “There,” I said solicitously. “Now that doesn’t hurt, does it?”

  Jed made a sound in the back of his throat but it was indecipherable. Walker took up the pressure – and then stopped suddenly. He glanced at me. “Did you find any salt when you searched the kitchen?”

  I blinked. “I think so,” I said slowly, remembering. “I think there’s some in the pantry. Why?”

  “There is going to be a lot of blood,” Walker said. “Most likely it’s going to spray everywhere, and there will be yellow oozing puss from the infection. If the tooth doesn’t shatter completely, and we yank it out in one piece, it would be helpful for your brother to rinse his mouth in salty water for a day or two.”

  I nodded.

  Jed groaned. His face was beginning to sheen in fearful beads of perspiration – and then before I realized it, Walker seemed to lean his body forward and press down hard on the handles of the pliers.

  Jed started to keen – a wailing, moaning noise of terrible pain, a sound low in the back of his throat but rising higher. Walker changed his grip. He twisted the pliers and I heard a sound like bone breaking. Then he quickly reversed the action, twisting in the opposite direction.

  Blood and puss gushed across Jed’s tongue and spilled over his lip. The sound of his agony became a sound like a kettle boiling. Then Walker pulled back on the pliers and Jed’s pain became a long terrible moan.

  For long seconds nothing happened. I could see Harrigan struggling to keep Jed still in the chair. His knuckles were turning white. Jed started to strain. He lashed out with his leg and his big hands balled into clenched fists. He pounded them on the armrest, and I saw the look of murderous rage blazing in his eyes.

  Then I heard another ‘crack!’ – a distinctive sound above the pained noise – and the pliers slid from Jed’s mouth, gripped around a huge decayed tooth with tattered shreds of flesh and root clumped around it. Blood gushed, flooding down Jed’s chin and spattering across the towel, and he reeled away, broke free of Harrigan’s powerful grip, and lunged to his feet, one hand slapped across his jaw, and the other bunched into a fist the size of a sledge-hammer.

  “Bastards!” Jed hissed – and more blood spilled down his chin. The towel fell to the floor. He kicked it away and then bent double with pain. I glanced urgently at Harrigan. We had about three seconds to escape the bathroom before Jed turned his blazing anger onto anything – or anyone – within reach.

  “Everyone out!” I said urgently. I could quite easily have said ‘run for your life!’

  Jed’s temper was like a volcano. I’d seen him erupt before. We scrambled through the bathroom door while he was bent over, moaning in pain, and I slapped Harrigan on the shoulder. “Grab hold of that door handle and don’t let go for the next five minutes,” I said.

  It was fifteen minutes before I finally got up the nerve to go into the bathroom. Jed was pale-faced, grim, leaning over the bathroom vanity, staring at his reflection in the mirror. The murderous blaze of anger in his eyes had died. He turned and glared at me. I handed him a plastic bottle of water I had poured salt into.

  “Rinse,” I said.

  The bathroom looked like murder had been done. There was blood spattered on the floor and on the sink, and more blood on the towel. Jed took the bottle from me without a word. His eyes were clear and steady, and it looked already as though some of the swelling had gone from around his jaw. He took a swig from the water bottle and spat a bloody mess into the sink.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Jed looked at me hard, and his lips compressed into a thin pale line. “Fucker,” he said.

  Walker leaned in through the open bathroom door and surveyed the area. “We had better clean this up,” he said. “Just in case.”

  I looked alarmed. “What? Could zombies pick up the scent of Jed’s blood – through walls?”

  Walker shrugged. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Maybe. Maybe if they were outside the house…” his voice trailed off. He didn’t sound like he believed it. “But there’s no point taking chances.”

  I rinsed the blood away and wiped down the walls and floor. Harrigan helped me. Walker took Jed back into the living room and by the time Harrigan and I had rejoined the group, Jed was asleep on the floor, snoring.

  It was late. Outside the storm seemed to be finally exhausting itself. We could still hear rain spattering against the windows, and the low mournful moan of the wind through the nearby tree tops, but for all that, the elements seemed to have lost their venom.

  I looked at Walker. His daughter was asleep, curled up into a ball on the sofa like a kitten. “You should get some rest,” I said. “Harrigan and I will stand guard during the night.”

  Walker bridled at that. He shook his head. “I can pull my weight,” he said with dogged resolve. “I’ve got military training. I’m used to long hours and long nights on sentry duty.”

  I nodded slowly. “I’m sure you are,” I said carefully. “But you’ve been in a helicopter crash, you have a bump the size of a golf ball on your head… and, quite frankly, I don’t trust you yet.”

  His eyes snapped to mine, and went hard as stone.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t trust you,” I measured my words and tone carefully. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just how things are. We don’t know a damned thing about you, Mr Walker – and until we do, I’m not willing to put my life in your hands.”

  His expression became flinty. “But you expect me to trust you?”

  “No,” I said, and got to my feet. “That’s your choice. You’ve always got the option of leaving. The front door is right there.”

  * * *

  I took one of the candles with me, and went out into to the kitchen for the first watch. My thoughts were black and bitter. Dark depression filled me, for I had a strange sense of impending disaster. It was like a heavy blanket draped across my shoulders – I just couldn’t shake the feeling off. Common sense told me it was a reaction to the stress, the fear and sheer exhaustion – but a tiny warning voice of instinct wouldn’t go away.

  My thoughts started swirling in an unbreakable circle
, going over the same questions, the same doubts. It was like trying to catch smoke. There was nothing substantial to grasp, and I realized I would get nowhere without more information about Colin Walker. Eventually I gave up.

  Some time in the early hours of the morning, Harrigan appeared at my shoulder, silent as a ghost. I was at the curtained window, staring hard through a chink in the material at the night, watching the trees swaying until the storm finally blew itself out and the darkness became eerily calm and silent.

  “Anything?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said.

  There was a can of soda on the kitchen counter that I had been drinking from, and beside it an empty can of beans. Harrigan picked up the soda and drank thirstily until it was empty. He burped.

  “What do you think about Walker?” Harrigan asked me.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just have this feeling about the guy. Something doesn’t add up.”

  Harrigan said nothing for a long moment and we stood in the silence both staring out into the night. I watched the big man’s face out of the corner of my eye. He looked thoughtful.

  “Maybe you’re judging him unkindly,” Harrigan said at last. “Trust is a two-way street, Mitch – and in fairness, you’ve told him nothing at all about who we are. Maybe that would be a good place to start.” His tone was gentle and placatory – but still I felt my anger rising. “As the Good Book says…”

  I rounded on him. Perhaps it was because he had a point, or perhaps it was because the last thing I needed right then was another one of Harrigan’s sermons. Clinton was a good man, but his sense of Christian faith and charity were diametrically opposed to my instincts for survival.

  “You turned up at the safe house unarmed, covered in blood and carrying a Bible, Clinton. And it took me three days before I felt I could trust you. Walker was in a crashed helicopter with a dead pilot and a teenage daughter. And a gun. He says he’s an ex-military janitor, and that he bought two seats to freedom for twenty grand each. Now, how many janitors do you know that have a lazy forty thousand dollars conveniently laying around their house at the precise moment the apocalypse sweeps across the country?”

  I had other suspicions about Colin Walker too – ones I didn’t mention to Harrigan right then, but fears nonetheless that troubled me deeply. Little things. Big things.

  Perhaps they were all just a result of my own paranoia.

  Harrigan took a step back. Maybe he was surprised at the extent of my sudden anger. His expression went blank.

  “And the girl bothers me,” I went on, mollifying my tone just a little and keeping my voice to a hoarse whisper. “She hasn’t said two words since we rescued them. Doesn’t that strike you as a little unusual?”

  Harrigan’s brow furrowed. “She’s scared, Mitch. After all she has been through tonight, I would think it’s perfectly normal.”

  I raised my eyebrow to make the point. “Exactly,” I said. “She is scared, Clinton. She’s scared shitless – but of who? Is she scared of us, scared of the zombies – or scared of her father?”

  * * *

  I came awake slowly. It was still dark, and I lay there for long moments, listening to the sounds around me. Jed was nearby – I could hear him still snoring softly. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

  It was light enough to see cracks and flaked paint around the light fitting. I turned my head and looked at the full-length window near the front door. The curtains were still drawn tight, but there was a soft halo of light around the edges. It was morning.

  Another day in an undead world.

  I sat up.

  Colin Walker was sitting on the living room floor, and his daughter was beside him. The girl had her legs folded beneath her in that distinctly feminine way that only a woman can manage. They were both eating from open cans of cold spaghetti, and there was a can of soda on the ground between them. Walker’s gun was resting in his lap.

  They looked up at me, stared for a moment, then turned their attention silently back to their food.

  I heard Harrigan’s heavy footsteps in the hallway and looked round just as he entered the room.

  “Morning,” he said, his tone polite but brusque. He handed me back my Glock, which I had left with him throughout his stint of sentry duty.

  “Morning,” I said, and scraped my hands down my face, feeling weary and worn. The stubble on my jaw and chin cracked and crackled under my fingers. “Any idea what time it is?”

  Harrigan shrugged. “Sunrise was a few hours ago,” he said, making a face like he was considering the question carefully. “So… maybe nine o’clock.”

  I got to my feet slowly. My body was stiff and sore. I hobbled to the window and edged the curtain open an inch.

  It was a blindingly bright summer’s morning – so bright it hurt my eyes. The sky was clear brilliant blue. Across the street, the narrow fringe of nature strip we had run through the night before stood like a dappled green wall, beyond which I could just see the pointed roofs of houses. One of them was the safe house we had spent the last three weeks in.

  The road between the house and the nature strip was empty, and still damp from the storm, glistening in the sunlight. It was as if the rain had washed the world shiny new and clean.

  But I knew that wasn’t the case.

  I let the curtain fall back into place and turned round to face the group. Jed was making soft throaty sounds. I nudged him with my foot. He grunted, then came awake in a single instant, his eyes sharp and alert.

  “We need to make a plan,” I stated the obvious. “Clearly, we can’t wait here until help arrives. Based on what Walker told us last night, help isn’t going to come – ever. So we have to help ourselves. Sooner or later we are going to have to strike out and find other survivors – maybe find a safe place that hasn’t been affected by the virus,” I paused and swept my eyes across the faces before me. Everyone seemed somber. “But before we do anything, we need to check this house again. We have to go from room to room, gathering everything that might be useful, but nothing that will slow us down. My guess is that we missed plenty last night when we cleared the house. Today we’ll find it.”

  It certainly wasn’t a Churchillian speech. No one got to their feet and applauded. Everyone sat in bleak, listless silence. I glanced at Jed.

  “How do you feel?”

  He nodded. “Better,” he said grudgingly. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and then rubbed the side of his face with his hand. The swelling had almost completely gone. He dragged his hands through his hair and opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a man making sure his jaw was still hinged after being punched. He got to his feet and went down the hallway towards the kitchen.

  I turned back to Colin Walker. The man’s eyes swung to mine like the double-barrels of a shotgun. He was wary.

  I forced a smile. “It was pointed out to me last night that we know very little about you, Mr Walker, but that you know even less about us,” I said, glancing at Harrigan’s suddenly smug expression as I spoke. “Let me fix that right now.”

  I crossed the living room and held out my hand. “Nice to meet you,” I said. Walker reached up and we shook hands, suspicion still creasing his features.

  “My name is Mitch Logan. Up until a few weeks ago, I owned a small appliance store in Forresterville. It’s a little town about thirty miles north of here. I sold refrigerators and television sets, and I had two sales staff helping me and an office girl. None of them survived the plague,” I shook my head with genuine sadness. “And if I live to reach my next birthday I’ll be thirty seven years old. I’m single, but not by choice. My wife divorced me three years ago and I hope like Hell that the dragon-slaying horror bitch was dead and mutilated by the first wave of the zombie plague – but knowing my luck, she will have survived, only to bite them back.”

  I stepped away, turning to Harrigan. “Now you,” I said. “Since you’re the one who thought we needed this lit
tle love-fest.”

  Was I being sarcastic?

  Yep, it was. Harrigan’s self-congratulatory little smile slipped from the corners of his mouth.

  He introduced himself to Walker and nodded his head politely to his daughter, like a refined gentleman might, back in the days before the Civil War.

  “My name is Clinton Harrigan,” he cleared his throat and stood quite straight. “And before the terrible plague, I owned the town bakery,” he said. “I was married, but my wife was killed by the undead when we tried to escape into the country. We were never blessed with any children.”

  I watched Walker’s face carefully, but his expression never changed. He would have made the perfect poker player.

  “You don’t have a gun, Mr Harrigan?” Walker asked, and he sounded bewildered.

  Harrigan shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t. I carry a crow-bar and a Bible. They are my weapon and my shield, along with God’s infinite grace and mercy.”

  Walker said nothing. He rolled his eyes to me. I nodded.

  “Mr Harrigan is our resident devout Christian,” I confirmed, making my voice sound bright and conversational. “But not the kind that will beat you over the head with Bible quotes until your ears bleed.” Then I paused for a beat.

  “Not if he knows what’s good for him.”

  Walker nodded. “And what about your brother?”

  Jed was still out in the kitchen. I could hear him rummaging through cupboards. I shrugged. “Jed is two years younger than me,” I said, “and what you see is exactly what you get. You’re a smart enough man to work out the rest, I’m sure.”

  Again Walker nodded.

  He glanced at his daughter then back to me. “So what now?”

  I forced another tight smile. “Now you take the gun from your lap and put it in your pocket. It makes me kind of nervous. I’m sure you understand. Then we start searching the house in the spirit that Mr Harrigan here believes we should – with choir music in the background and little blue-birds on our shoulders as new-found life-long friends… for as long as life lasts.” And then I muttered dryly, “Praise the Lord.”