Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  A few miles and hills later I saw her there. The bane of the local economy. The killer of moms and pops and the weeds of corporate America slithering through the rural veins of our country. The dollar store. They were basically giant gas stations with no gas. Fresh produce? Never heard of it. Oh you want tomatoes? We got these sun-dried, tomato, bacon, cheese chips. Kettle cooked, of course. Because every chip on the planet was now kettle cooked or it wasn’t fit for eating. The parking lot was bare, which was a sight for sore eyes. I never remembered it being bare on my 9 p.m. runs for an energy drink.

  When I killed the engine, I heard a hum. It set me at unrest for a hot second. I thought it was a car running, but it turned out be something much less ominous. It was a generator. The place had power. I wanted to be excited, but the thought of a food and supply source having full power in the apocalypse was enough to set anyone on edge. I could open the door and get a fresh bullet right between the eyes. Surely someone was protecting all of it? I clung to the building and snuck along, trying to peek through the windows, unfortunately I couldn’t see shit through the blood stains. They were just smeared as high as a dying human could reach. Interwoven, crimson layers of streaked fingerprints down the entire front of the building’s glass. All on the inside...

  As I reached the door with the dogs at my back, I saw the handles had been wrapped tightly with a log chain. Either someone had done their best to keep people out, or they were keeping something from getting out. Seemed quite the latter, though. Moments later, I had pulled the Bronco to the front entrance and tied the winch to the front door, ripping it right off the hinges. The smell immediately slithers out. It was rot, times a thousand. I killed the engine, dropped my mask down, and ran forward, waiting for droves of dead to come scrambling out…but there was nothing. It was just too damn quiet. I grabbed Pete up in one hand and stepped over the broken down doors. This four-legged ball of hate was my wingman. If there was something in there, it wasn’t going to last long. I wasn’t even two steps in and I hear it. The entire place comes to life with the same curdling screams I’d come to hear even in my sleep. It was a sound you just didn’t get used to, because you knew it was coming from the lungs of what was left of a human, and it sounded nothing like one. I’m not lying when I tell you these things are starting to sound like someone threw a human, a raccoon, and a goose in a bag and forced them to fight to the death. Anyway, this seven foot tall bastard comes out from an aisle sliding across the bloody floor looking like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, only Tom Cruise at least had the decency to wear underwear. Although, I’m not sure he could’ve even worn a pair. When I first looked at him, I thought some of his guts were hanging down between his legs, turns out, no, it was just his dead, monster dong dangling like one of those shitty, salt laden and shrink wrapped sausages they sell at the front counter. I didn’t have time to even fear for my life because I was seriously in awe of this thing swinging back and forth as he charged at me from across the store. He couldn’t have been ten feet away when I suddenly snap out of it and just launch Pete like a Nerf football right into his lap. Pete flies through the air, clamps right down on this dead man’s dong and all-out chaos ensues. The zombie is singing this godawful wail of a screech as he spins around with Pete clamped firmly on the end of his schmeckel, which I’m still not totally convinced isn’t some sort of third arm. They’re running into end caps, food is flying, and Pete is still holding firm, legs folded against his body, horizontal with the floor, as they spin on and on like two figure skaters going for the gold. Right then, this giant of a zombie explodes all over the place and Pete goes flying down the coffee aisle, dead dick still in mouth. I didn’t even flinch, I couldn’t, I just sat there in awe of the whole situation, like it wasn’t even happening. Soon, I hear the clicking of his nails upon the tile as he runs up to me with this rotten pork sword dragging the floor like he’s bringing me a toy to play with.

  “Ahhh, c’mon!” I’m yelling, as he drags it across my boots. I start kicking at it and finally I lean down and try smacking it out of his mouth to no avail. Soon, I throw all common decency to the wind as I grab ahold of it and start trying to forcibly rip it out of his mouth. He just isn’t giving up. He’s growling, I’m cussing, and apparently too pissed to even realize I’m playing tug of war with a dead man’s dong. At one point I lift him off the ground and he’s just hanging there like a fish on hook, thrashing about. I can laugh now, but at the time it wasn’t funny. When he finally does let go, it snaps back out of my hand and goes spiraling up. It blasted a ceiling tile so hard that it pushed it up and it disappeared above it. I couldn’t do anything but sigh because that dick was no longer my problem.

  I started looking around closely for the first time. Some of the shelves were cleaned out, but for the most part it wasn’t bad. Apparently that juggernaut and his otherworldly cock rocket had kept most of the survivors out, probably his dick more than him. And at the current time, it seemed as if he were the only zombie in the place. I do a quick run through the place to make sure it’s all clear and then I go outside and pull the truck right through the front of the building till its sitting firmly in the main, front aisle. I’m grabbing everything like it’s supermarket sweep. I’m dancing through the aisles, the dogs are playing, I’m singing 80s pop tunes. Life is suddenly a Disney musical, only with more blood and dead dicks. I fill up the truck with dog food, people food ( frozen pizza! ) toiletries, the squirt guns, couldn’t forget those. I grabbed handfuls of ridiculous white-trash treasure that I had no use for, whatsoever. Fidget spinners, laser pointers, emoji stressballs. I grabbed up a pink, bedazzled drink flask with the word “slay” written on it. Whatever the hell “slay” meant in today’s vernacular. Hey, it was between that and “boss lady”. Un-essentials aside, I start loading up on dog supplies in general. I grabbed every leash and harness they had. And last, but not least, energy drinks, yes energy drinks, because just like in the before time, they’re a currency as steady as gold. And I hadn’t had one forever so I cracked a cold one open, they were the only things on the planet that tasted just like 1990s Nickelodeon. As I have my head reared back, gulping that thing down like an asshole, my ears are overcome with this whirring noise. It’s so loud that I almost involuntarily swat because I think there is a bee right by my head. But there isn’t…I nearly drop my drink at the sight of a drone hovering there right above the entrance. It’s dead still with a camera pointed right at my dumbfounded mug. A thousand things are going through my head. Actually, it was only about four things. Is this a joke? Does the store have their own advanced security cameras? Is it the military watching me? An individual? Hell it was so hard to tell. The average joe-blow creep could buy a good one online for less than a grand nowadays so he could watch the girl next door organize her underwear drawer from the comfort of his own sofa. So for this seemingly infinitesimal amount of time, man and machine stare one another down. I’m seriously getting that stupid paranoia that if I move, this thing is going to sprout machine guns and mow me down like something out of Terminator. Finally, I did the only thing I can think of, I give it the middle finger. Yeah, I know, not exactly original, but more often than not, effective. It does a little juke move and then I launch my energy drink right up into the ceiling. A tile dislodges and that damn severed, dead dick comes falling down, wrapping itself around the drone and bringing it down to the floor with a crash. I wasn’t even trying to do that. I was trying to hit the drone with that drink but, hey, whatever works. God bless that dead trouser snake. I ran up and stomped that drone, dick and all, like it was on fire, pummeling it into a mass of broken composite and glass. The whole thing had me spooked. Who the hell was controlling it? Were they about to come flooding in here with guns and happy trigger fingers? I wasn’t sticking around to find out. I threw what was left of the drone onto my front floorboard, gathered the dogs, and then peeled out of there. I was flying home so fast that shit was falling out of the truck, but I just didn’t care. I was putting as much distance betwee
n that place and myself as fast as I could.

  I returned home with my bounty to bouncing feet and boisterous barks. Somehow, more dogs had shown up, including three that ran after my truck down by the last turn off. I had to be bordering one-hundred and fifty mutts at this point. Luckily I had tons of food. Far more dog food than people food in fact, since most of my shit had fallen out of the Bronco on the way back. But at least I still had those energy drinks and my precious pizzas.

  I spent the evening filling dog bowls with fresh food and watching the wag of happy tails and carefree romping. Unfortunately, I was not joining in on the carefree part. The corpse of the drone still laid in the truck and I couldn’t help but wonder if the people piloting the damn thing were out there looking for me. Honestly, I didn’t care much about me, I was worried more about the safety of the dogs. I loved all the dogs here, but other folks out there may not be so humane.

  I finally grabbed up what was left of the drone and threw it in the burn barrel where the rest of my gadgets had met their ultimate end. That monster dong was still attached to that thing. I didn’t throw it in the barrel though. I gave it a proper burial in Ted’s yard. That dick was a hero. Okay, maybe it wasn’t, but I didn’t want any part of it, burned or no, in my yard, in the event the deadeater came looking for a midnight snack. Or in the case of this particular dong, a four course meal.

  Make Room for Maddie

  The next few days I tried ridding myself of the angst the drone had dropped into my life. Afterall, nothing was happening, right? Or were the people out there biding their time, waiting for me to let my guard down? I guess in the end, there wasn’t much I could do about such things. If they happened, they happened. I tried busying myself with the new task at hand, harvesting as much deadly dog saliva as I could. I made a point to get most of them romping and playing in the yard so they’d ultimately start panting and drooling in the heat of the day. Even at that, I wasn’t getting much. It was a painfully slow process. Though I did have one dog that was speeding things up. He was a mastiff I called Ralph. Why’d I call him Ralph? He just looked like a Ralph. Just some dude that worked four twelves at the local factory so he could afford to buy enough beer to keep him just drunk enough to be able to tolerate his wife. Seriously though, I thought dog poop made me gag, the drool, it was so much worse. Finally, I managed to collect an entire pickle jar full of the stuff. Jesus, just looking at it sloshing around inside of there made me want to gag. I filled one squirt gun to the brim with the it. I figured that would be plenty enough to take down at least fifty of the dead, if not more. I placed it in the fridge for safe keeping, and to prevent the drool from becoming any smellier than it already was. So that’s what I did. I spent almost the entire week collecting ammo for the new arsenal of squirt guns I had amassed. Soon, I had about a dozen guns full with the zombie liquifying agent. I couldn’t help but chuckle just a tad every time I got done filling one of those candy colored vessels. Of all the weapons, the knives, the guns, the bombs, etcetera, humans possessed, mutant flea-infected dog saliva was the answer to the dead’s extinction. It was like the black plague, only the fleas were going to save us this time around.

  I can’t really recall how many days elapsed between the dollar store and the next batch of hell that came my way. I thought staying put on my property and doing next to nothing was going to rid me of danger. All I could picture was that Roll Safe meme, otherwise known as The Thinking Black Guy. He’s pointing at his head with some fill-in-the-blank obvious advice, and mine was “Can’t get killed if you don’t live”. It was getting so bad that I found myself bored enough to shove my hand inside a frog puppet I’d swiped from the dollar store and started putting on a show for the dogs. Most of them weren’t amused, especially Pete. His tail went between his legs and he went running under a chair. This dog was terrified of puppets, but apparently not zombies or their giant schlongs. ( I’m gonna be making references to that monster dong, so get used to it. You weren’t there, you don’t understand.)

  I think it was a Saturday, maybe it was Sunday. I just remember I was enjoying another frozen pizza, the key word being WAS. I was only halfway finished when I start seeing all the dogs’ ears perk up. Soon, their heads are popping up like meerkats and they’re staring towards the south. The fact that there was something out there that managed to deter the attention of nearly two-hundred dogs away from begging for a slice of my pizza was enough to make my skin crawl. I threw my lunch to the wayside and started listening mid-chew for over a solid minute before my weak human ears began to hear it. It was a low hum. It all put me in mind of the day of the choppers. The same fears and gooseflesh came singing once more as I stood up and peered to the south along with my canine companions. Some of them were getting antsy, whining and rocking where they sat. Something bad was coming. I could feel it in my pepperoni-filled gut. And just like that, there it was, a dot of a vehicle, up the hill, screaming down Red Chapel Rd. I froze solid. Unless the zombies had figured out how to drive, there were actual people behind that wheel. And I had no idea what to think of it. Barking dogs started filling the air as I finally broke away and ran to the edge of the pole barn to try and get a closer look. I stopped just in time to hear screeching tires and see weaving maneuvers that led the vehicle into a crash right off the road, into the field below. I ran to the garage and fetched a pair of binoculars and then jumped upon an old lawn tractor for a better vantage point. I just remember not being able to keep my breathing under control as I am turning knobs and focusing until the haloed picture of a turned motor home comes into view. I see smoke barreling upwards and suddenly the door comes flying open. I couldn’t tell you how many people scrambled from that thing. Crawling out and spilling off the sides of it. It seemed like more than would be able to even fit inside. Most of them went running away from my homestead, I mean, full-bore, life dependent speeds. Right then, every damn dog in the yard starts snarling, hair is raising on their backs and my goosebumps somehow grow even larger. I start swinging the binoculars around and I see it. Or them, rather. Hundreds of the dead, converging on the downed camper afar. I can actually hear their godawful screeching overtop of the riled dogs surrounding. I don’t even know what to do. The coward screaming in my ear says, shut the hell up and go back to your pizza. It’s none of your business. It sounded like a good plan, but what I didn’t count on was seeing about half a dozen more people fumbling from the camper as the horde of zombies closed in at fifty yards and counting. Panic overtakes me. Most of them looked like kids, teenagers. I lower the binoculars and mutter the only thing I can - “Shit.” In that split second, I seriously thought about still listening to that pizza-craving coward. People sucked. What good were they? ‘This is why you dumped social media and became a hermit. You didn’t need them. The only live person you’d seen since all this started had the nerve to blow his brains out when you offered him a safe place to stay.’ Jesus, up until that point I had the audacity to believe I was the last living soul on the planet…I had to do something, otherwise I was no better than the dead. I start screaming for them to head this way, but it isn’t enough. I ran to the truck and start blaring the horn over and over, hoping it drives them in my direction. I don’t have a plan. I just whistle for whatever dogs are willing to follow and I jump into the field with Orion drawn, ready to hack and slash.

  I can start to make out the teenagers ahead. The gap between us grows narrower, but the fear on their faces only escalates. I’m sure the fact that I was running at them, sword drawn, wearing a horned mask wasn’t helping. I rip up the mask and start yelling,

  “Run! Run! Run!” over and over as if they need someone to tell them something so goddamn obvious. “Run to the house! Stay close to the dogs!” I yell to the first girl who passes me. I don’t think she heard a word I said, and even if she did, it only half made sense. The next part is just pandemonium. All I can see is terrified faces and a wave of red rot cascading directly behind them. I’m going to die out here. We’re ALL going to die out he
re. What the hell had I done? I don’t even have a chance to swing my sword when I see the first kid get tackled. I’ll never forget her face. It was like watching lions take down an impala. I remember her screams, instantly turning to this sickening gurgle. It was from her lungs filling with blood…she was getting torn apart before she even hit the ground. She was gone, swallowed up by the unrelenting gauntlet of rabid corpses. Another girl is ahead of her and she trips. I grab her open hand. It’s this eerily calm moment, I hadn’t touched another human being for the longest time. It felt…complete. I remember our eyes met in this split second of inevitability. She knew she was gone and I knew she was gone. And we just said goodbye, in that hair’s breadth of time, even though we didn’t know each other’s names, we said our silent goodbyes as she was engulfed by the raging hellmouth of walking death. I could feel her pulse just cut off as she was torn apart and I fell backwards still clutching the hand of her now severed arm. I look to the side just in time to see another kid taken down. This red bastard just leaps on her back and bites her neck. All I hear is a second of pure terror expel from her mouth and she too is swallowed up amongst a sinewy symphony of breaking bones and ripping flesh. People were dying right in front of me and there was NOTHING I could do to stop it. It reminded me of when grandad died, only slower. The zombies were the cancer and I was the insect of a man who could do nothing but watch him fade away. I went absolutely ballistic. I rose to my feet like some rabid animal and swung so hard I literally cut two zombies in half with one blow. I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, they were right on top of me. I said this stupid silent prayer, the one I couldn’t find the words for at the church…and the angels heard me. Not the feathered variety, but the furry ones. All around me, a dozen dogs are meeting these screeching monsters head on. June, Jeff, and Pete are at the forefront, leading a charge like generals marching an army into battle. Teeth are finding rotting flesh. Zombies are exploding. I’m screaming and swinging, it’s like Route 40 all over again. A bunch of the dead have surrounded us, but beyond them, I see another kid is running to safety into the yard. I start fighting my way back towards the house through the horde, but I don’t have to try that hard. Up ahead, I see blood and guts detonating into the sky as the dogs from the yard start bulldozing right towards me, clearing a path for us to get back. Within moments, I and about fifty blood-covered dogs run back into the yard. We’re riled but we’re alive, damn it. I spin round to see the zombies backing off. It’s like the yard itself is a forcefield keeping them at bay. They spread out, clear along the property line, screeching, but not daring to come any further. As I watch the seemingly odd behavior, it hits me. The pee, the poop, it’s all around the yard. The dogs have thoroughly covered everything in their scent and the dead are having none of it. They get as close as they think is safe and start clawing at the air like an angry mob, eyes all focused on me. Dozens of dogs are charging out to meet them. They lunge and bite hands and feet and the violent zombie liquification process just keeps on going. I find myself almost despondent at this point, as I watch the mob keep funneling from the field beyond. Growing larger and larger, surrounding my property until a literal wall of dead has encompassed my homestead; a fence thatched of rot and rage. Among the screeching I hear a scream. A human scream. But it’s not out there in the horde, it’s in my driveway. One of the girls is lying on her stomach, trying to crawl towards my house. There’s a blood trail behind her. I run over and scoop her into my arms and lay her on the picnic table. Horror overtakes me. She’s split down the middle, sternum to waist and her insides are coming out. I don’t even know how she’s alive at this point, but I go into some terrified state where I find myself whispering reassurance into her ears as I try and push her guts back into her. I tremble as one hand strokes her hair and the other feels the slithering warmth around my fingers,