Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

I killed the engine about a half mile out and walked the rest of the way, taking the same precautions as the fireworks store. I topped the hill with dogs at my back and beheld the sight of two lanes intersecting the path ahead. But there was nothing in the immediate area. No dead. No cars. Just bare roadway. I walked right into the center of 40 and just stood there for a moment. I couldn’t help but picture it as it was every Labor Day when the whole length of the thing would come alive with yard sales. There’d be endless droves of cars moving at a snail’s pace, window shopping, looking for that hidden gem they would attempt to rehawk on eBay. I stared to the east and then back to the west where both paths were swallowed by hilltops. It was eerily silent. The interstate was a mile to the south and even at night it echoed the sounds of bustling cars and semis up through the fields and valleys. But now there was absolutely nothing but the birds and the cicadas singing songs of blissful ignorance into my unnerved ears. So there was only one thing left to do, I laid down in the middle of the road. Why? Because I could. There was just no way, pre-dead, you could lie down on Route 40 and not get run over by a car within minutes. So I just rolled with the opportunity. I recalled doing this exact thing when I was a teenager, only it was late at night on backroads. I would just drop down and stare up at the stars and try to guess how long it would be before the next car came. Sometimes an entire half an hour would transpire. And still other times, I would grow bored and get up before one ever came. Now I was doing it on Route 40 in the late afternoon. It seemed absolutely unreal. I’d like to tell you I laid there for hours and watched the shapes in the clouds, but I was down there for about five minutes tops. Even in the shady spot I’d picked, the asphalt was frying me like an egg. I jumped up and decided to head east for a bit, at least to where I could see over the next hilltop. But before I could even take ten steps I saw Jeff sniffing around something there in the ditch. It was a beaten and weathered pile of political signs peppered with mud and solidified grass clipping. They had been there for quite some time. I won’t even make mention of who the candidates were or what way they swung politically because it didn’t matter any longer, I honestly wondered if it even mattered before the dead. Democrats and Republicans. What the hell was that anyway? Two groups the government invented to make sure we became divided. And it was just getting worse and worse. I just picture all these politicians as actors, they get in front of people and bring up all the opposing views we all love to argue over. Human rights, abortion, the wage gap, immigration, I could go on forever, and then we start frothing at the mouth and tearing each other down ( mostly on social media. Because we wouldn’t have the spines to say 99 percent of that stuff to someone’s face ) while they go pad each others wallets behind closed doors, light cigars, and watch the pandemonium of our stupidity unfold on their Twitter feeds. Humans are puppets. Hilarious creatures. We have to belong to a group or we don’t know what the fuck to do with ourselves. So we’re given these boxes to shut ourselves in, Liberal or Conservative. We lie and spin ourselves this yarn that we are being ‘open minded’ by doing this when really most of us are just further isolating ourselves from opposing opinions. You eventually get so wrapped up in these ideologies that you talk as loudly as possible while plugging your ears. Because god forbid something leak in there that doesn’t align with your “moral” compass. I still remember one of my friends saying something that always stuck with me - “We’re all a bunch of apes drawing imaginary moral lines in the sand.” It was so true. And so sad. People were constantly tweeting and posting to remind everyone that they’re a good person. If you have to keep reminding us all, then you probably aren’t one. I’m curious how many hours were wasted by folks browsing the net trying to prove someone wrong. Because, in the end, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Proving that you were right? It wasn’t about facts, if such things existed. It was about that pathetic, little mental orgasm you got when you knew you’d bested someone. Or at least when you’d tricked yourself into believing you’d bested someone. Lets be honest, did any of us really know what the hell was even going on? All we did was share memes and get pissed at one another. No one had an original thought. I’ll just share this meme, it’s says exactly how I feel about the current political viral thing that were all arguing about. And that current political viral thing would be gone is about eight days, because Americans had the attention span of goldfish, dead ones. I looked down to the dogs surrounding me, they knew nothing of any of that. Wow…I was once again, not missing people. I watched with a grin as Jeff and Pete took turns hiking their legs on the political signs, maybe they did have opinions on the matter.

  When I reached the summit of the next hill, I stopped and looked over the stretch of valley down below. Again, no cars, just a ghost of a road. There was something odd, however, just not in the obvious places. My eyes came to a cemetery that bordered the edge of the asphalt down the hill. This was nothing new, considering my eyes always went to cemeteries. I’m pretty sure everyone’s eyes did that, if they were being honest, but I won’t stray too far into the whys of that subject right now. I saw a fresh grave. You know how it looks, a pile of dirt amongst the otherwise placid sea of grass between the stones. A sight that evokes the same old questions in us all “Who was it? Were they young? Were they old? On and on. But the thing that didn’t make sense was it had to have been over a month since this plague started. The earth from a fresh grave should’ve been settled out for the most part. That was unless someone had JUST been buried. The thought of that wasn’t sitting well with me at that moment.

  With caution, I strode down the hill to investigate, but the closer I got, the more I realized something, that fresh grave was not alone. I once again stopped in my tacks and let my eyes take in the sight of dozens more dirt piles peppering the landscape around the markers. A chill ran through me. I’m not going to lie, I almost turned right around and ran back up the hill; who was going to see my pathetic ass doing it? But as most idiot humans do, I stuck around till I finally found the courage to just dive right into the boneyard.

  When my foot had finally touched the grass, my longing to get the hell out of there got even worse the moment I realized the fresh grave closest to me was not a freshly filled hole. It had been dug up. A giant, misshapen hole was crudely trenched down six feet. I walked up to it and looked down to see a mangled coffin split into pieces at the bottom. It was as empty as my colon wanted to be at that moment. The dogs spread out and began sniffing suspiciously all around the stones while I let myself take in the sight of at least twenty graves dug up in the immediate area. I started walking along, looking down in each pit, seeing the same sights of empty coffins and torn bits of clothing. The smell of rot hung in the air. It was a bit faint but it hung there like some phantom force, just daring me to keep my curious gawking up.

  I stopped by the nearest hole and began inspecting it closely, looking for shovel marks or tread patterns in the dirt from a piece of heavy equipment. To my utter delight, there was none of that. The only thing I could find were hand marks and hoof marks…just like back at the run near the house. The deadeater had been here. This was undoubtedly its handywork. Apparently it was resorting to grave robbing to quench its insatiable urge for dead flesh. I started looking at the headstones at the edge of each hole. Every person had died all within a year or less. Some of them had been gone a bit longer, but all in all they were the “fresher ones” of this plot, I guess. I started picturing this thing coming through here, digging holes like a one-ton, rabid groundhog, all for the sake of feeding on what was the equivalent of human beef jerky. It was getting desperate, and I didn’t like that. It had to be only a matter of time before it found out fresh meat was ten times better than graveyard scraps.

  I was beyond ready to get the hell out of there. I whistled for the dogs. They all came running, zig-zagging through the maze of dirt piles and granite. Pete came trotting up with a damn human bone in his mouth. “Really, dude?!” I smacked it out of his teeth. He seemed super bummed about it, b
ut I figured there was already enough bad juju in this place without him taking a souvenir. I quickly herded my four-legged zombie-deterrents in a line and we two-timed it back up the hill, leaving the defiled graveyard behind us. Soon, I reached the intersection where I had originally entered the national road. I took a few steps in the direction of the truck, but stopped. My curiosity was burning to know what lay over the hill to the west. There was just something eating at me, daring me to look. Against all better judgment, I planted my feet right back on 40 and headed that direction. And what I saw when I reached the peak of that next hill made me completely forget about the carnage at the graveyard. Like something out of a movie, a patchwork of steel lay ahead of me. Cars, hundreds of them, stitched together in an abstract of eerie silence that disappeared into the hazy horizon ahead. It was a traffic jam the likes of which I’d never seen. A mass exodus of seemingly every living being that could still grasp a wheel and mash a gas pedal. The vehicles were three, four, and even five wide in places, spilling off the main road onto the berms and fields beyond. There were even some abandoned clear off in the properties bordering the main stretch. Up ahead, Route 40 intersected another main route which led to the interstate at the south. Obviously, everyone was heading that direction, why, I couldn’t ponder. I’m not exactly sure where they thought they were going to go.

  As I made my way down the hill to the back end of the jam, it reminded me of a junkyard, cars in uneven lines, waiting to be picked through till only their bones remained. The closer I got, the more my heart began to thump. I was being stupid, and I knew it. But, hey, it never stopped me in the past. As we reached the very back end of the silent traffic, the dogs began to act uneasy. They started letting out little growls and then began snaking in between the cars, sniffing away with suspicious noses and perked ears. I began to follow, cautiously looking through the patchwork of windows for movement of any kind. The vehicles were all a mess. Windows broken, dents on hoods and fenders alike, doors left hanging open. Glass peppered the ground beneath and crunched under my forwarding steps. The sight of it all up close was absolutely unreal. Up until that point the only evidence I had of the world going to hell was empty homes, random country zombies, and one man who blew out his brains. Now I had the scraps of what was left of the world right in front of me…and it was more frightening than all the dead I’d encountered, combined.

  As I walked on, I began noticing something even sadder than the thoughts of the folks who’d abandoned these cars, it’s what was piled into the backs of them. Most of them were full of flat-screen TVs, laptops, and video game systems…Were these the “precious” things we were thinking about saving in the face of the apocalypse? I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me. We were a species obsessed with technology and the mind-numbing, drug-like stupor it could put us into. And with virtual reality steam rolling the next path ahead, we would have no use for heroin, cocaine and the like. We could be whoever we wanted, whenever we wanted at the touch of a button…Maybe it’s for the best that we didn’t make it to that point. As I saw the blackened bloodstains of fearing hands and fleeing feet, I couldn’t help but wonder if any of these people were thinking about this worthless shit the minute they were taken from this earth. I certainly hoped not.

  All of a sudden, I almost hit the ground at a piercing sound up ahead. The dogs went into a flurry, but still they held no candle to the sickening screams that now refracted between the mirrors in front of me. I had no idea what the hell I was hearing at first, all I knew is it was sending chills up my spine and down my arms. It sounded like a dying baby…It was a baby. I flew into a sprint towards the noise until it was piercing right into my ears. The minivan up ahead had the side door slid wide open and that’s when I saw it. A baby, still strapped into a car seat. As I’m sure you can imagine, this baby was human no longer, long changed and half rotting in the heat of that van for weeks. I could barely even look at him or her, or whatever it was at this point. It was a rabid infant that was now going into fits, pulling and biting the air in my direction. Just like the others I’d encountered as of late, it’s skin was falling away, leaving behind the fat and sinewy underlayer. I couldn’t move, I just stood there, and all I could think about was the church I’d just left. I wondered if God were real, where was he? Where was he when this child was left to die and bitten only to be reborn as the thing I now saw before me. The dogs were all huddle around my feet now, barking right into the van as if they were waiting on me to give them the signal to attack. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t do it. Once again, the baby went into a screeching, squalling fit, wailing like something straight out of a horror film, and it was right then that I saw it. A flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. I looked to the west, to see the gaps between the vehicles ahead fill with reds and ripped flesh…the dead had found us. I screamed a command down to the dogs and began to flee back to the east. As I zigged through the maze of steel, I looked back to see countless numbers of the dead flowing through the cars behind me like a river of slithering crimson death. The sound of their despicable screams only hastened my pace as I broke through the back of the traffic jam and ran back up the hill. All four dogs were now around me, running the length of the long incline that promised to lead us to salvation. I just wasn’t fast enough. As I topped the hill I turned round to see the dead not but twenty feet behind me, there was no outrunning this new incarnation of them. I had to save my energy. I unsheathed Orion and took a breath. If this is where I died, I was okay with it. It was better than taking a bullet to the brain inside of a church I’d never went to. I center myself into the middle of the dogs and waited. Just as I’d hoped, they parted down the middle, their faces changing in an instant from rabidity to absolute horror as they tried their best to stay away from the dogs. I began hacking and slashing like a man possessed. I parried and circled, chopping off legs and heads alike. I was like a goddamn human garbage disposal, turning these dead assholes into mince meat like it was my job. All the sword practicing I had been doing was paying off. Every stab, chop, and thrust sent another one flying back into the seemingly endless waves behind. I had no idea how many there were, and I didn’t care. I was taking as many of these inhuman shits with me as I could. All that filled my ears now were barking dogs and screaming death and then June went on the attack. She began biting and shaking, turning into the same crazy soul I now had become. Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw her handywork. Zombies began bloating up and exploding all around me, throwing up their own insides as their eyes popped and skulls and ribcages split wide open. They fell around me, writhing and spraying a torrent of blood that splashed into the faces of the others trying to get at my flesh. Droves of them would dive out of the way of the ones falling from June’s assault as if the blood itself was poison to the touch. Soon, there were so many bodies piling up, they almost built a barrier between us and the remaining dead. They also made good trip wires. My tiring ass fell backwards over one of June’s victims. Panic set in as I saw a few dead scrambling to jump right on top of me. I stuck out my sword and just let them fall down onto it, letting their own weight work against them. I rolled them off, but more were behind and my sword was stuck. And that’s when it happened. I felt a tiny thing run down my stomach. Four rat-like paws traverse my body and I realize it’s Pete, the asshole Chihuahua mix. With awe, I watch this eight pound creature springboard off my leg, right into the face of the next zombie. He latched down on that bastards face and shook like a fish on the end of a line. Jeff was right behind him, putting himself between me and the other dead that followed, but my eyes weren’t on any of them, they were still fixed on Pete. He let go of that zombie and the unthinkable happened. It began kicking and writhing, bloating up like a balloon only to explode within moments, raining down a glorious shower of brackish insides. How could it be? Just how? He hadn’t been on the plane with June, had he? In my awed state, I didn’t even see the clawing hand coming for me, but Jeff did. He clamped down on it and the same phenomenon took place.
The terrifying destruction from the inside out. The zombie died a horrible death by dog bite. It wasn’t just June? There was no time for questions. The whole thing lit a fire under me that sent me ripping the sword from the bodies of the dead and amping up the dogs as I jumped to my feet. Bites and sword slices ripped through the air under showers of raining blood and guts. Within minutes, the entire breadth of the road was littered with mangled bodies, but none of them were ours. A wind blew, cooling my blood drenched flesh as I saw that every single one of that horde was now nothing but inanimate flesh covering the asphalt. I stood there panting with my sword still planted in a skull, I couldn’t help but feel like a warrior, nay, a god at that moment. There had to have been over fifty of them, and we’d laid them all to waste. Not bad for an introverted, ex-insurance processor. I just remember thinking that would make a great selfie stick photo op. Me and four dogs covered in blood amongst a pile of zombies. Post that shit #fridaynightvibes. Probably would’ve got sixteen likes if I was lucky. In the distance, I heard the sounds of the baby once more. I couldn’t help but wonder if that child was nothing but bait made to lure in fools like me. Maybe it was an insane thought; I was making the dead more intelligent than they were…wasn’t I? I hoped. Regardless, I wasn’t going to risk another idiot getting put in that position. The next guy may not have four zombie killing dogs and years of pent up rage at his disposal.

  I waded through the bodies and back into the center of the traffic jam. I reached the van and let June do her work. I just walked away, unable to watch, as I heard the crying stop and the blood burst against the back window.

  The ride home was quiet and smelly. Jesus, God was it smelly. I figured at this point I’d be used to the slimy stench of the dead, but it just never seemed to blend into the background quite like most things in the country. Like cow shit, for example. You’d roll up on a farm and wince at the odor but five minutes in, you wouldn’t even notice it anymore. And if you actually lived on a farm = What smell? But anyway, there we were, five still alive, covered from head to toe and snout to tail in the remains of our enemies. I’d never been so happy to see my house. But we arrived to even more surprises. About twenty more dogs had shown up, at least I think it was around that number, honestly there was just no keeping track at this point.