Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  I sprung up and walked on shaking legs back to the house, just leaving what was left of my once wholesome neighbor to further rot in the heat of the midday sun. Jeff was at my heels…my hero. Seriously, that dog had saved my miserable life and I wasn’t even sure if I deserved it. I walk back into the house and its only then my ears are introduced to the sound of an unnerving drip-drop. I looked down and, for the first time, realize my hands are covered in blood. Soaked so bad I cant even see the hue of the flesh beneath. My trembling begins to return, though I feel numb all at the same time. I meander into the bathroom and get a good peek at what I now look like, a pulpy red bi-product of the massacre that took place out in the drive not moments before. My shirt is sopping wet. It’s in my hair. It’s covering my face. There are splinters of bone and brain alike within the mess. And the cherry on top of it all? A lump in my shirt pocket. I reach in and retrieve what’s left of an eyeball. It falls with a sickening splat, turning the white sink into a brackish red, back-alley knockoff of a Pollock painting. If I wasn’t truly numb before, I was now. I had to be or I was going to go into some psychotic break that I am quite sure I wasn’t going to recover from.

  I turned on the water and began cleaning away the blood. For some damn weird reason I start trying to clean the blood in the sink instead of off my hands. As the water fills, I keep trying to smash the eyeball down the sink like it’s a grape that I was too lazy to throw in the trash from an evening snack. Finally it pops down through and a chill of nausea goes through my body. I just wanted it gone. Out of my sight so it couldn’t watch me clean off the blood. Blood doesn’t come off easy. It just doesn’t. I stayed in the shower for what seemed like forever until the water stopped being that tedious shade of light pink. Oh yeah, I had apparently shit myself as well. At first I thought the smell was just the tidbits of Ted clinging to my persons but no, it was my own butt butter filling my underwear to overflowing. Amongst the melee, I had released my bowels in fear. I truly thought that was something that people just said “I was so scared I shit myself.” I didn’t think it could actually happen, but right then and there my memory took me back to the thoughts of the squirrels my grandma would feed daily. If at any point you’d come out and one would be at the far end of the side deck, it would bolt as fast as it could down the hand railing and right past you, shitting the entire way. I used to laugh so hard at that sight. Now that I was throwing my unsalvageable underwear into a trash bag, it didn’t ring so humorous. I was now the squirrel running down the handrail.

  I find myself out in the backyard about a half hour later, naked, drip-drying from a shower during which I nearly scrubbed my own skin off. I throw a sopping, heavy bag of all my clothes into the burn barrel at the far end of the yard and douse the lot with gasoline. I’m once again donning granddad’s gasmask as I light the whole mess ablaze and keep it rolling with handfuls of old newspapers I found. As I stood there, flames reflecting on the glare of glass of my mask, I can’t say a whole lot was going through my head. I was still numb, trying to process everything that had just happened. I wanted every last fabric of that clothing vaporized, cleansed and sanitized from my life. I went back into the house and gathered all the rugs where the blood had hit the floor. I threw them all into the fire as well. I was thinking about the dust, but I was also thinking about the fluids. There was no way his blood hadn’t got into me somewhere. I had scratches and scrapes from that fight and all I could think was, if the dust hadn’t gotten me, this surely would. I was bound to become him…And in that thought, I couldn’t help but wonder how many more Ted’s were out there. All of the sirens and sounds of despair I had blissfully ignored for days on end were no doubt the product of whatever this was. I wanted to say zombie outbreak, but my rational mind wouldn’t allow it at the time. This shit didn’t happen. This was stuff made for movies, comics, and video games, not reality…Right? I needed a gun.

  Five minutes later I’m tearing through every damn closet, corner, and coat rack in the house. I look like a cartoon character, grabbing handfuls of clothes and throwing them over my shoulder, haplessly piling them on top of Jeff who will now not leave my side for three seconds. I don’t know that I consider myself a gun owner. I had technically never bought one my whole life. All of the guns I own were technically bequeathed to me via grandad and honestly there wasn’t a whole lot of them. And the more I dug, the more I wondered if there were any at all. Holy hell, maybe he’d sold them? Nope. As I’m tossing old fishing rods away from the back closet of the spare bedroom, I see it. A shotgun. THE shotgun. The same gun that had put me on my ass when I was ten years old. Granddad used to hunt back then. I think he was hoping I’d take an interest in it too, either that or he was trying to scare me away from it permanently. He took me out one rainy October morning and let me shoot that thing. As I said, it put me on my ass. Butt right down on the muddy ground below. And the sound it made…holy hell. I didn’t know you could feel sound with your soul till that day. Needless to say, I wanted nothing to do with that thing or any shotgun since. He managed to get me to warm up to a .22 rifle and a few handguns later on in life but, again, I never took to shooting or hunting much. I preferred my guns in digital format. You know the ones that take the heads off aliens and have no recoil or deafening discharge? Things were about to change. I’ll take the time to mention that it took me another twenty minutes to find the ammo, then I had to actually load the thing. It was times like that that I wish I had YouTube back, but with some trial and error I figured it out easily enough. As I pulled the action back to arm it, all I could think was I hoped I’d never have to use it. I put my mask down and started patrolling the property close to the house like I was some guard protecting an embassy. I couldn’t help but feel like some militarize fanatic. Pacing back and forth, gasmask donned, and gun ready to blow a hole in something, but after the scrape I’d had with Ted, I wasn’t taking any chances. The next crazy bastard wasn’t even going to get within arms reach. I wasn’t in the mood to shove another eyeball down my drain.

  I stood watch with Jeff until the sun set over the hills. I couldn’t help but notice how glorious and beautiful it was that night despite the horrors. A kaleidoscope of pink and purple cotton candy stretched across the sky seemingly for the delight of the human eye alone. There was a deceitful serenity about the whole thing. It tried hypnotizing me into believing that the world was not going to hell in a handbasket; that my neighbor wasn’t still out in my drive, mangled and no doubt being consumed by flies and all matter of insects. I’m not sure why, but I never went back out to his body that night. I just kept watch close to the house, secretly hoping something would drag him off in the night so I could pretend it was all a dream.

  Night came. And for once in my life, I actually dreaded it. For with the darkness came new fears amongst the shadows. I had since shut down the generator and every single light on the property for fear of drawing unwanted attention. My ass was firmly placed on the front porch, gun across my lap. Not sure why, but I felt safer outside. I was waiting for more Ted’s to storm up the drive. It was one of those crisp and brisk nights with the lightest hint of humidity. One where you feel like a rain could blow up, but it never quite makes it. The swirling clouds above blotted out the moonbeams atop a comforting yet unnerving breeze that made it increasingly difficult to hear danger rustling. It’s funny how the eyes play tricks on the mind at night. I remember that being the case clear back to my childhood. You’d swear you’d see something in the darkness. Over by that tree. A figure of sorts. And you’d watch and watch. Was it an animal? A person? A monster forgotten by time? It moved! Yes, it definitely moved! And a chill would course through you, because you now knew it was something alive. But then you’d watch and watch some more. Stare and stare and strain till your eyes actually hurt, waiting for another move that didn’t come forth. Finally you’d get the balls to yell or throw a stick in its direction and it would be a damn bush or bucket. And you wouldn’t dare tell anyone that story for fear of sounding like
the paranoid wuss you were. Those same shadowy buckets and bushes of the past seemed to haunt me that night like no other night before. I couldn’t tell you how many times I was convinced someone was walking up that drive or around that tree or over by the truck. I actually pointed my gun several times, taking a bead on nothing but masses of flittering shadow. It took me far longer than it should have, but I finally realized that if something was actually coming, Jeff would no doubt be on edge, releasing that bone chilling growl. Even that did little to curtail my paranoia and petrifying fear.

  I’d occasionally look towards the drive, trying to make out the form of Ted’s body by the edge of the gravel. It was too dark to see, but I kept picturing him rising back up. Reanimating or mutating into something new and even more sinister. A headless, four-legged creature with tentacles bursting from his guts. After all, I had no idea what I was dealing with. Maybe this virus or bioagent or whatever the hell it was, had the capacity for something like that. But no, I’d smashed his head. Killed the brain. That’s how zombies die, remember? Was I really going down that path now? Going off “facts” from movies? What was I going to do next? Hunt for vampires? Gather silver bullets to take down the army of werewolves that were probably headed this way? Jesus Christ, was this all really happening? Yes…yes it was. Ask me how much sleep I managed to get that night. Let’s put it this way, I hadn’t watched the sun rise since I was about nineteen years old.

  A new day had dawned. I ate breakfast…barely. And then I went to a new task. Taking Ted home. To my disappointment, nothing had managed to drag him off that night. I stood above what was left of him, talking in some silent whisper to him like people do when they talk to gravestones. Wishing he could hear me. Wishing he could hear how sorry I was. And I was. I don’t know why, but I decided to take him home. I had no idea where Phillis was. That was Ted’s wife. Not sure I’d mentioned her by name yet. I could only imagine she’d met the same fate off down the road somewhere. I loaded him into a wheelbarrow. I know, that sounds about a disrespectful as you can get, treating him like he was a bag of mulch, but I was short a casket and five pallbearers at the time. I wheeled him down the drive, up the road a slight piece, and right back into his own driveway; Jeff was leading the way. Both their cars were there…that wasn’t good. I left Ted outside and walked onto the porch. The front door was locked. I went around back and saw the door was wide open there, hinges creaking in the breeze like something out of a damn horror movie. The door was smeared in bloody hand prints. It was about this time that I pulled the shotgun up and start tracing the blood trail back through the house right into the kitchen…that’s where I found her. Phillis. She was hollowed out like a jack-o-lantern, eyes still staring at the ceiling. Well, one of her eyes. Half her head was missing and her brains had spilled out onto the floor. The little bit of breakfast I did manage to get down came right back up in their kitchen sink. She had no insides left, the macabre scene reminded me of when granddad would field-dress a deer and just remove everything out the bottom of the ribcage, guts, lungs and all. The poor woman was a mess. I knelt down and took a closer look, pulling my gasmask back over my face to drown out the smell. I had to surmise she never turned like Ted did. I’m quite sure her current state was the fault of her own husband. I noticed a handgun near her body, looked back at the condition of her head, and then onto the crimson-sprayed ceiling where a bullet hole glared back down at me. I could only gather she was attempting to hold him at gunpoint and, somewhere along the line, shot herself as they were getting into a physical altercation. And it was a thought I couldn’t wrap my head around - Having someone you love trying to murder you. I understood why she had trouble pulling the trigger on him. The emotions would just paralyze you.

  I rose back up and sighed, letting myself fall back against their fridge, I never felt so helpless. Like I could’ve done something to prevent it. They were good people. I know I bitched about them, but they were truly good people. Folks that just didn’t deserve to die this way. I guess in times like this your first thought is to pick up the phone and dial 911. It had been so long since I even looked at a phone that the thought was lost on me. It only hit me when I looked over and saw a portable phone lying at the far end of the kitchen. Phillis must have dropped it at some point during the whole scuffle. I grabbed it up, it was covered in dried blood…Of course it was dead. My attention turns to their wall phone, an actual corded landline, something I joked about the 50 plus crowd still having around. But again, nothing, dead silence. The panic begins to set it. I mean REAL panic. It’s like all the shit I’d suppressed and ignored was flooding into my bloodstream and going straight to my brain. I get a wave of uncontrollable emotions and I just start throwing shit, anything I can get my hands on, all while cursing to make the devil blush. When I finally settle down, I noticed tears are running down my face. I don’t even know if it’s from sadness or anger, and all that does is piss me off even more. But before I can go off once again, a sound startles me. I whip the gun down towards the floor as I see a piece of Phillis’s clothing begin to writhe with a whimpering sound beneath. I have to be honest, there was some weird shit going through my head right then. I’m waiting for a mutant baby human to come ripping through her clothes and latch on to my neck. God, I’d watched too many 80’s horror flicks. Right then, a head pokes out from under the fabric.

  “Shit!” I yell, my finger is about to depress the trigger but I stop as the sight of a tiny dog comes full circle. Oh Jesus, it was their dog. They did have a dog. Gypsy. She was a shit-zu, and a tiny one at that. I watched as the poor thing trembles and lays down on Phillis’s shoulder, cuddling her dead master’s neck like she’s waiting for her to wake up. She whined and looked up at me, as scared as anything could ever be. It was heart-wrenching. I didn’t want to know what that dog had seen. I’m not going to lie, there was that part of me that wondered if putting her down was the humane thing to do. But I didn’t have one bone in me like that. I was the man who would put spiders outside and save beetles from drowning. I gently scooped her up.

  “C’mon, sweetheart.” Jeff was waiting for me outside. Of course, he was jumping up and sniffing and pawing, wanting to know what I had under my clothes. Gypsy’s head popped out overtop of my shirt collar and he started going berserk.

  “Shut the hell up! Stop!” I try wrapping my irritation in a whisper. And right then it happens. As if Jeff’s barking called it forth, I round the corner and I’m nose to nose with another infected person. And you know what came out of my mouth right then? ‘Ope.’ For those of you who aren’t from the Midwest, ( or those of you who are and don’t realize you use it on a daily basis ) Ope is a one syllable expression that means, “I am startled” and/or “Excuse me” The best I can figure it’s some kind of hybrid of “Oh” and “Oops”. And it has to be some kind of learned behavior, either that or it’s just a bi-product of being around too much corn. Anyway, I have a zombie in my face, I don’t know if they were once a neighbor or some passerby, but I never would find out because I blew their head clean off with the shotgun. I fell on my ass like I did when I was ten years old from the recoil, and watch the body in front of me slump over. It was right then that the tiny dog under my shirt flies out and goes running as fast as she can.