by McCloud, Wes
I unhooked the generator and watched as the night sky blanketed the landscape with a shroud of ominous clouds. Bolts of light flickered amongst the brackish pale as the remains of the sun were swallowed whole by the belly of nocturn. I could smell the rain coming. That beautiful musk formed when earth and sky made love. I removed my mask the moment I felt the rain begin to patter down. The thunder rolled and just let it consume me. What was it about humans and rain. It was one of the most naturally occurring things on mother earth, yet we took refuge from it. We act like it’s poison tumbling from the sky. We moan and grimace when it hits our bare flesh and we run like our lives depend on it till we’re safe and dry. As the sprinkle began to transform into a deluge, I stayed put, watching the sky get set afire by the storm that was now directly on top of us. Jeff wasn’t thrilled about this one, but he stayed by my side just the same. Him and June, while the others rushed to find cover. This wasn’t the first time in my life that I had done this, and you owe it yourself to do the same at least once. Just let the rain cover you and enjoy it for what it is. Nature. Raw nature. There’s few things that feel so pure.
I sat in the rain for what seemed like an hour until it finally moved on, leaving behind a cooler, far more soothing touch to the flesh. The heat of the day had been whisked away and what was left was nothing short of perfection. I changed clothes and redressed my wounds and fell asleep on the coolness of the back patio, surrounded by over two dozen zombie deterrents. Nothing could touch me.
Dead, White, and Blue
My rise came early, at fault of the dogs of course, because they were like old people in that regard. Up at the ass crack of dawn, ready to take on the day. I will take the time to mention that even more dogs had shown up overnight. At least six, maybe there were ten, regardless, I was losing count at this point. I was starting to think I was on some damn hidden camera reality TV show called “How Many Dogs Will it Take to Make Him Crazy?!” But I welcomed them, fed them, watered them, and I spent the rest of that day re-sharpening Orion and practicing with her. I was becoming a regular swordman, if only in my own mind. It was the Fourth of July, well at least that’s what I thought. Ever since I’d thrown out the electronics, I had been crossing off the days on the calendar just like people used to do before they had machines to tell them such things. Yeah, I was pretty sure it was the fourth, yet I wasn’t going to dismiss the possibility that I may have forgotten to cross off a day or two. That day was rather uneventful, and I wasn’t going to cry about that fact. I stayed on the property, not even bothering to check on the bodies of the slain up the road because I knew damn well they weren’t there. I’m just glad the dogs hadn’t gone chasing after that thing again.
Night came once again, this time it ushered in no rain nor thunder. There was lightning however. Lightning bugs. They’d been here for quite some time, but I just never really paid them much mind until that night for some reason. The sight of them took me back to my youth and of summer days and summer break from school. Wasn’t it funny how summer break felt like a lifetime as a kid? I remember being a shit back then, as most young boys are. I used to run round the yard with a whiffle ball bat in hand and see how many lightning bugs I could crack into the outfield before the night swallowed them up. I think my record was like 156. Like I said, I was a shit. It’s odd though, when I was that age I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as a game, I didn’t see them as living things for some reason. I recall the night my great aunt caught my brother and I smacking those poor bugs into the beyond and she scolded us badly. She told us a folklore tale of sorts, one she obviously made up on the fly. She said if we kept killing off those bugs their leader would come after us. The Lightning Bug King! Yes you read that correctly…And you know what, it actually worked, that same night I constructed a fort made of the couch, pillows, and the end table. I sat there waiting with my bat in hand, wearing a toy helmet, just praying this giant bug wouldn’t come to snuff me out. I pictured this six foot tall bug walking upright, wearing a crown, because what king wouldn’t be wearing a crown? He’s not even there to give me a warning, he’s there for blood. I never killed another lightning bug again, and to this day, every time I free one from my house back out into the yard, I think of all the ones I killed. I could never free enough to be forgiven, but I could try. Looking back, I was honestly, thoroughly disgusted with the things I’d done as a kid. Mainly the killing. It wasn’t just the lightning bugs. I’d shot frogs with BB guns, stoned baby birds to death, and I’d laughed while doing it. Who was I then? They say that boys killing animals is a normal sign of maturity. That doesn’t make me feel like any less of a psychopath. Now, I wouldn’t kill an animal. I just wouldn’t unless it was absolutely necessary. Well, I still killed mosquitoes, they were assholes. And I still killed ticks…and biting flies. Hey, I wasn’t perfect. I always felt the hierarchy humans put on life was hilarious. Someone shoots a lion and posts the pictures on Facebook we all freak the hell out, but someone cuts the head off a snake and does the same, we praise them. “Hey, you did what you had to do to protect your family.”…It was a garter snake. All life is precious…Is it? Let me replace that cat your cuddling with this tarantula. Yeah, that’s what I thought. The fact was, as much as we bullshitted ourselves, we would never see every lifeform on the same level. I was no exception. Like it’s okay to poison a mouse, but when that poisoned mouse gets eaten by an owl and it kills the owl, it’s suddenly murder. No one gave a shit about the mouse being poisoned, but when it affects a being higher on our majestic pyramid, we suddenly think poison is evil. It got me thinking about a dead deer I’d seen the day I drove around in the Bronco with Jeff. If that deer had been a human lying there, the entire road would be quarantined off, an army of law enforcement would descend upon the area and half a million dollars in tax money would be spent out trying to figure out who or what caused the death. Because humans are important. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But yeah that escalated to an off-subject rant. I would apologize for that but I’m not sorry. Back to the nighttime of the fourth…I sat there with the mask on yet again, watching those lightning bugs. I slowly began to think about how quiet it was. Yes, it was basically the end of humankind, so quiet probably came with the territory, but there were no booms. You know, firecrackers and the like. A fourth had never went by either three days up and three days down without me constantly playing the game of “was that a firework or a gunshot?” And the night would sparkle to the east and then the next night maybe the west from the larger displays at the parks and the town squares. I remember as I grew older, the less I cared about seeing them. As a kid I was always ready to go watch them, and even more stoked about setting some off. But hell, I hadn’t bought as much as a smoke bomb since 1999. I just sort of tuned it all out for whatever reason. Just like I stopped caring about Halloween and Christmas. I was just getting old and curmudgeony I suppose. Though I had to admit, that night I was missing those sights and sounds. Maybe because it reminded me of normality. The absolute silence was a reminder that I was alone. But then…a boom. I shot up from my chair and peeled off my mask as I watched a magnificent trail of crackling light stream across the sky. A firework. And not some department store bullshit, this was one of those $200 one timers that you bought to shoot at shows or to be the envy of your neighbors. I remember just sort of stumbling a few steps as my eyes remained as wide as the glass on the mask I’d just dropped to the ground. And then another exploded. And another. Soon, every few seconds, the night was set afire by the beauty of booms and streamers. I once again felt like a child, watching, wide-eyed and smiling, only this time there was more to it…Someone was out there. Someone else was alive.
I doubt I need to shock you by saying that sleep was minimal for me that night. After the distant light show finally died back to the summer sky, I sat there for at least an hour trying to picture who was out there. Were they bad, were they good, were they trying to lure people like me in to quench their cannibalistic desires, or were they trying to find
other survivors to rebuild society? Who knew…regardless, those thoughts, and many more, kept me from sleeping much. And when I did finally drift off, I’d start into these weird-ass dreams that would shoot me right back awake. There were times I’d thought about jumping into the truck and heading towards the fireworks, but I couldn’t let my excitement blur my judgments. If you could call it excitement, that is. I’m not really sure how I felt about it. There was this small, sick part of me that enjoyed the solitude. That actually relished the idea of being the last person on earth. I would die a ninety-eight year old with a smile on my face, surrounded by hundreds of dogs without a regret in my heart. But no, something lingered…loneliness. Or perhaps I should rather say, I longing for conversation. Or answers. Maybe this person or persons knew what happened. What had actually caused all this. It wouldn’t change the fact that it happened, but there was just something about the knowing that might make feel better…right?
Sunrise came. It was the longest night I’d ever experienced in my entire existence. There was no way that was eight hours. My eyes peeled back to the sight of the all too familiar sunrise through the rolling hills in the east. They also took in the sight of at least a dozen more dogs I knew damn well weren’t there the day before. I had lost count, they just kept showing up. I think there were almost forty of them at this point. Honestly, I had stopped bothering to even give them names anymore. I could barely recall the names of them beyond the original eight. I had resorted to addressing the lion’s share of them now as, “hey you” “shithead” and “stop that.” As long as I had a finger to point, most of them got the picture. Fun fact: did you know that dogs were one of few animals on earth that understand pointing? Not even chimps get it…Or most people.
For whatever reason, I was trying to chase away the thoughts of the fireworks from last night. I needed to stay put. So I spent the first half of that morning trying to figure out which dog had the worst breath. Then I was trying to put an exact smell to each. This pug came up and jumped in my lap - Shit, walnuts, and leather. It was rough and tumble. It was like hanging out with Clint Eastwood, only he had shit his pants and refused to clean himself up. And there was nothing you could do about it. You wouldn’t dare ask the Pale Rider to clean himself up, because the only thing he’d be cleaning was your clock. The next bad breath candidate was Pete, the asshole Chihuahua mix - Dead fish, rotting wood, it was like an orgy had broken out on a crab fishing boat, only the whole crew was dead, and it was the crabs having the orgy. I started assigning them names that sounded like bro body sprays. Wolf Shit. Fish Disco. Hermit Crab Crunch ( that one sounded more like cereal ) Colonoscopy, okay that was just a medical procedure, but that’s what I pictured it smelling like.
The breath smelling game quickly got old and I finally jumped up and began rummaging through the drawers in the house. I can’t believe it even existed, but I managed to find a road atlas. I sure as hell didn’t buy that thing. I didn’t need to know how to get to places, my phone had been there to do all that thinking for me. I flipped to the local county roads and start trying to line things up with the sky-show from last night in accordance with where I was. And an odd thing struck me. As the crow flew, that spot almost seemed to line up with the ma and pop fireworks store out on Camp Ridge Road. It’s where I had always bought all my fireworks as a kid, or should I say it’s where my grandfather used to take me and my brother to set his money on fire. I remember still seeing their signs up. I couldn’t believe in this day and age of mega fireworks chain stores out on the interstate that that place was still even alive out here. Someone had to have been there last night letting off that inventory. Hell maybe it was the owners. I started deliberating with myself. Soul searching for entire sixteen seconds on whether or not it was a good idea to go investigate. I donned my mask, grabbed my guns and sword, and loaded up June and Jeff into the Bronco. I had a large herd of dogs following me up the road a piece till finally they gave up and headed back. As I cleared the cornfields down by the bridge, I saw a sight I hoped I wouldn’t, all the dead from the last showdown had been vacuumed up, no doubt courtesy of the deadeater. All that remained were brackish pools of reds and blues where we’d left them to further ferment. If it weren’t for that and some choice cuts of meat still lying about, a passerby wouldn’t have known anything happened there.
I wasn’t even at the first hilltop when I spotted dots running in the road in the rearview. I pumped the brakes and looked back to see the dots were dogs. Apparently not all of them knew when to quit and go home. As they came within a rocks throw, I see it’s Pete, the asshole chihuahua mix, and a miniature pincher I decided to name Zoey. I noticed the two were becoming chummy the last day and apparently they’d made up their minds they weren’t letting me leave without them. The thought had crossed my mind to just hit the gas and leave them behind as quickly as possible, but I learned from a young age it was hard to ditch a dog that didn’t want ditched. I recalled having a mutt come up to me while riding my bike at the age of ten. The dog acted like I was his long lost compadre, but I didn’t want him following me. I blasted those pedals as fast as they could turn for two miles straight. When I finally thought it was safe to stop, I stood there about ready to die from exhaustion, and all I could see on the horizon was a dot of a dog getting bigger with every labored breath I took. I figured this car excursion would be more of the same with these two, so I just grabbed one up in each hand and threw them on the back seat.
Though the sun was glorious that day and the temps had died down a bit, the ride was still far from enjoyable. I held my breath at every damn curve and hilltop, saying a silent prayer that the road wouldn’t be blocked off by a horde of infected. But to my surprise, there was nothing. When I finally got to Camp Ridge Road, I saw the sign for the fireworks shop on the corner. It was like a flashback to 1993 and before. Seemed like nothing had changed on that corner. A sprawling forest of pines lined the right side of the road and a dilapidated barn and pasture graced the other. I still remember as a kid mashing my face against the glass and watching that pine forest go by with some trance-like state abounding. The place was dark, even on the brightest of summer days. I just pictured creatures running through the gloom. Monsters waiting for someone to take a shortcut through the maze of trees. Sadly, my childhood imagination was probably reality that day.
A few hundred yards passed and I pulled the truck off the road into a oil well path. I killed the engine and all the dogs piled out the sides before I could even get out myself. Even the two tiny mutts jumped down. It’s a wonder they didn’t break their damn legs. They all kind of circled round me as I gathered the sword and my shotgun. We were hoofing it from here. The store was still at least a mile up the road and I wasn’t about to draw attention to myself by gunning a truck, full-bore, right into their parking lot. If there were people there, I was going to come in as quietly as possible. For all I knew, the display from last night was to bait poor dipshits in to rob them.
The trek up the gravel road was eerily quiet, a far cry from the noise of the truck and the road beneath it. Not a crow cawed nor blue jay shrieked. At least the birds still sang where I’d come from, but there was nothingness here. I looked ahead as the road began to incline up through the pines where it eventually plateaued out into a field. The store parking lot was located there. It was about then that I took a detour through the forest, creeping slowly up the backside of the property. I jumped a rickety fence line at the edge of the pines and the dogs followed underneath it through a hole. I stood there for a good bit, surveilling the open field between the forest and the store that lay about a hundred feet away from me. The place was just a glorified steel pole barn that had been repainted since I’d last been there. I pulled the gun to a point and started making my way through the knee-high grass at a steady pace. As I rounded the back of the building, I saw the remnants of last nights shenanigans. Paper tubes and smoke rings peppered the gravel of the parking lot in such excess it looked as if someone had set several small c
amp fires there. Just like the pine forest below, the place was dead quiet. The polar opposite of the way I remembered it as a kid. The lot was always jam packed and alive with the faces of folks that couldn’t wait to get their hands on shit that could blow those same hands right off. That day a car was nowhere to be found. Maybe the person/s had moved on, or maybe they were sneaking around like I was. There was only one way to tell. I walked up to the front door and carefully entered, making sure to leave the dogs outside. I wasn’t sure what kind of fresh hell was going to be waiting for me inside that place, but I knew it wasn’t going to be fireworks because, by the looks of the lot, I doubted there were any left. Things had changed a bit inside. Before it was a wide open floor plan. You could see from front to back. Now they had it partitioned off with sort of an office area there at the front. For some reason, I expected the place to be ransacked and ruined, but it really wasn’t. Most of everything seemed in its place, though the shelves were quite bare. I drew up the shotgun and let it lead the way, finger on trigger. Not sure how it was possible but it was even quieter in there. The kind of quiet that becomes deafening because of the ringing in your ears. It’s like your ears are actually screaming out, trying to make sense of the nothingness. But there was something. The cock of a shotgun. I froze with my gun pointed towards the back corner, drawing a bead down on something that wasn’t a zombie. My heart rejoiced yet pumped with terror at the same time. Staring down the barrel of the other shotgun was a disheveled, older man in his late 70s. His eyes were steadfast. They had seen things. They were the perfect mixture of anger and fear that let me know he would have no problem taking me out. It was the kind of stare you only read about in books or saw in movies. A pensive gaze rife with the tribulations of life and all the spectrum of nonsense that comes with it. A stare within a stare, cold and cast-iron like the underbelly of a rolling summer storm. Are you sick of me talking about his stare yet?
