Cleaver

by McCloud, Wes

  The next couple nights I remember my dreams kept ramping up in vividity ( I’m 98% sure that’s a real word ) I should rather say my nightmares. One night I dreamt I woke up to this awful thumping sound that shook the whole house. I went outside and beheld the horror of dead bodies raining down everywhere. Smashing right through the roof, blasting onto the truck, and most sickening of all, they were falling on our dogs and killing them from the impact. I woke up screaming, much to the horror of Maddie who came running downstairs with her sword drawn. She was sleeping with that thing now, just like I was. Though I guess in this world it was safer than a teddy bear. She didn’t even ask and I didn’t tell. It was obvious it had been a dream. She ended up wedging herself behind me in the couch and wrapping her arms round me. We both fell back into dream, serenaded there by the muffled sounds of Metallica playing through the Walkman. That was a good album, but, my god, we needed to get her some more tapes stat.

  The next day was set aside for the final pre-stage of the plan. I hadn’t gone and got a crane truck for no damn reason, that thing was, in a sense, a giant, rolling fishing pole. The problem was, I needed bait. I figured out the quickest way to get all the dogs to follow me into town was with something they couldn’t resist, a live zombie ( wow, that’s a oxymoron ) The idea was to go fetch one and tether it, kicking and screaming, onto the end of the crane hook just out of the dogs’ reach. I would then make a slow drive to town with the deadbag dangling behind, thus making all the dogs follow. At least that’s what I hoped was going to happen. All, I needed was ONE zombie. But then I quickly remembered the last time I went out and retrieved a live one for experimentation, it didn’t go so well. I could only hope I’d learned from my mistakes.

  “Where we going?” Maddie asked. I looked over at her and watched the wind whip her hair cross her questioning brow for a second. I had to take in those small moments, I didn’t know how many I had left.

  “We need one of the infected. Alive.”

  “That’s why you didn’t bring the dogs?”

  “Yeah.”

  I went on to explain the plan to lead the dogs to town and that she needed to keep her eyes peeled. The real issue was finding a zombie. All the times we’d gone raiding and even on the brick yard trip, we’d barely seen but two and the dogs made fast work of them. We drove around for hours until I saw Maddie pointing with wide eyes towards a field off to the left. There one was, solo, just like I’d hoped.

  “Hold on!” I warned. I jumped the culvert and went right into the field and THUD, ran that bastard right over. It was a thing I’d known I should’ve done the first time around. I blasted the brakes and yelled for Maddie to follow me.

  “Cut off the legs!” And we went to it, severing his legs in less than a minute. “Flip him over! Stand on him!” We turned him and Maddie stood on his back, holding him down while I pried his flailing arms back and secured them with handcuffs I’d found in the dresser drawer of the Apostolic neighbors down the street; I knew they were into some kinky shit. I then duct taped the deadbag’s mouth shut, spinning the roll round his head about a dozen times to make sure he wasn’t biting anything. For extra security, I cinched a burlap bag over his head and then threw him into the back of the Bronco. And if you’re thinking that was too easy, it was. I spun around to give Maddie a high five but I was met by the sight of nearly twenty of this bastard’s buddies rising up from the high grass, and they weren’t happy and we were dog-less. And there was that moment, that sickening moment, that split second of raped hope in your gut that whispers “This is where you die.” I’ll give props to Maddie, the kid already had her mask on and sword drawn and was ready to go down swinging. So in the thought of a fifteen year old looking death in the face with such blithe, I chased the bad thoughts away. I grabbed the shotgun from the truck and started turning heads into soup until they were too close. Maddie was the first to swing, decapitating one right off the bat, silencing that godawful honking-scream they greeted you with.

  “Get up on the truck!” I pushed her back. She jumped up on the hood while I hacked my way through a few more, panic and pandemonium just set in. Things became a blur as they always do in these situations. It’s as if it all isn’t real and it’s going as slow as a snail and as fast as a hare all at the same time. It was odd to think that this wouldn’t even be happening had the dogs been here. These twenty zombies would have been ooze fertilizing the field within a minute. You want to tell yourself that you’ll be the hero in these situations, that you’ll fend off the danger and not let anything bad happen to the company you keep. But when you have a dozen zombies surrounding you, that shit sort of goes out the window, and it’s every man for himself. I had no clue if Maddie was even safe, because I was too busy trying not to die. I felt myself get bit ( what was new? ) I’m pushing them off of me and swinging and screaming and kicking and it’s just ugly, and I’m convinced I’m going to die in this field. But then it happens. I hear Maddie scream and I turn to see her get ripped down onto the hood. I’d always heard parents talk about that instinct, that level of crazy you get when someone or something tries to hurt your kid. I now understood what that felt like, and so did the poor, dead shitheads that remained standing. I can’t really remember what the hell happened in the next ten seconds, I just recall body parts flying and then me smashing the head of a zombie into the fender of the truck over and over until I had nothing solid to hold onto. My brain is just numb and I’m covered in dead blood as I start trying to look around and get my head wrapped round what had happened. I’m in that weird living-dream state where you’re trying to come back to grips with reality after a horrible event. Every zombie was down for the count, then my senses snap back to me…Maddie. I turn to see she’s fallen off the hood. I start to panic because I immediately think she’s dead, but I see her writhing a bit. In seconds, I had her up into the passenger seat. I ripped her gasmask off and wrapped my hands around the side of her face.

  “Hey! Hey! You alright?!” She wasn’t. Her eyes keep trying to roll back in her head. I shake her some more. She takes a deep breath and sort of snaps back into it. I’m not sure if she just hit her head or what happened, but she doesn’t look good at all.

  “Hey, look at me.” Her eyes focus in on mine. “You okay?” She shakes her head no.

  “It hurts.” She squeaks.

  “What? Why? What hurts?” She rolls to the side and exposes her shoulder to me and there it is. The end. Through the torn fabric of her shirt I see the red halo, staining the cotton surrounding. She was bit. The dread washes over me like nothing I’d ever felt in my life. It was like the world itself was shattering and the devil had cracked open my chest to shove the broken pieces into my heart. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds and I wanted to get sick right then and there…I had to keep it together. I wanted to play it off, but she knew what was happening, I wasn’t about to patronize her in those last precious moments. I gently pushed her back and our eyes met. It reminded me of that moment when her sister and I looked at one another and knew it was all over, and my soul shattered. And we didn’t say anything to each other, it was as if we couldn’t. It was this cold, mutual surrender. We didn’t have much time, and in that thought, I just started crying. I didn’t want to, I wanted to be strong for her, I owed her that, but in the end, I couldn’t keep it together. I put my arms under her and hoisted her up. I just started carrying her around the truck, shaking my head and the most preposterous words started coming out of me, “Help! Help me!” What the hell was I doing? Who did I think was coming to save her? An actual, live person? The dogs? God? We were alone, and that fact never quite struck me as hard as it did right at that second. You go through all this horrific shit, and you just keep telling yourself, I’m alive, we’re alive, and that isn’t going to change, this is our story, it doesn’t end. Everyone who died before us were just players in the narrative. They weren’t forever, but we are. And this happens, and you quickly realize you’re not immortal, and you are alone, and you are as i
nsignificant and as vulnerable as every other living thing you ever saw crumble and die before this.

  I slowed my steps and sat her on the hood. I was defeated. I grabbed the revolver from under the seat, tucked it under my shirt, and returned to her. She looked at me with weak and weary eyes as she sat there on the hood, her feet dangling off the edge. I see her mouth fall slightly agape and I can tell she’s about to speak. I stood there with bated breath, for some odd reason anticipating some prolific last words to come falling from her mouth, but instead, she says the most Maddie thing she can,

  “I wonder what the dogs are up to?” I can’t fight off the smile. But with it comes the tears again. Those waves you get when you just can’t hold them back. You squint your eyes so hard your face hurts, because you have this idea that doing that will somehow keep them from coming out. It’s always a fruitless endeavor. I jumped up and sat beside her, wrapping my arms round her as she leaned into me. My hand slips under my shirt and I grip the gun tight, but I don’t make a move, not just yet, I was going to drink in every last sip of these last milliseconds I had with the normal her. My hesitation worries me, was I going to be that sick person who just couldn’t do it? The one you’ve seen in movies, the one that decides to keep their loved one alive and chained up in the basement, doing daily errands to find fresh flesh to keep them going? No, I couldn’t do that, I owed her more than that. For this tiny and beautiful moment, we just sat in silence and watched the sunbeams dance through the gentle breeze of the branches beyond the field. As I slowly pulled back the hammer on the revolver, I feel her hand gripping my arm tighter. It reminds me of how her sister had grabbed me that violent day they both came into my life. Still, I wasn’t sure if that was the anticipation of the end, or the virus starting to take her, but in that thought, I began to question where that bullet ultimately was headed. The scenarios keep playing inside my head, with the most vivid of them all being me sticking the barrel beneath my own chin and doing what I failed to do back at the church. I just couldn’t keep on going without her. I couldn’t keep facing this godforsaken, new world alone. Yes, I would kill myself and Maddie would turn and I’d be her first meal. Wow, I was sick, and selfish. Soon, I uncocked the hammer, released my hold on the gun, and raised my hand up to gently stroke her hair as I rocked her. Now, I was just being plain stupid. But I didn’t care. So I just held her tight and waited. And waited. And waited. Something wasn’t right. And after what seems to be ten minutes of silence and sickening anticipation, we unlock our embrace and just stare into one another’s eyes with a look of horrified curiosity.

  “Am I…? Why?” She stutters.

  “I don’t know…How do you feel?”

  She looks around and begins rubbing at her bite wound. She answers me, “Hungry. I feel hungry.”

  “For brains?”

  “For pancakes.”

  If I knew anything about this infection, I knew it wasn’t one to take the scenic route to the brain. It was either a dry bite, or something else was going on. I wanted to be happy, but I was being suffocated by questions and distrust.

  “Cleaver…am I like you?” She pointed at the freshest bite wound I had. I didn’t know how to answer. How could she be? What were the odds of two people being immune and finding one another by chance in all of this? There was something more. I began flipping back to when we first met and forwards, trying to piece something together that would explain this phenomenon, but, in that moment, just couldn’t think of anything sound. I was just happy that she was okay and not a flesh-eating monster.

  In the next few minutes, we limp back and throw our beaten bodies into the Bronco. I take off and make sure I run over the pack of dead we’d just slayed for about four or five rounds. I’m not sure why I did that, but it felt good.

  The way back is quiet between us, I keep glancing over at her from the corner of my eye just to make sure she isn’t about to bite my ear off. I’m beyond paranoid, but I’m sure what she is going through is ten times worse. I remember what it felt like the first time I’d been bit. I was convinced I was going to die at any moment, and that mindset will set you adrift into places you just don’t want to be.

  About two miles away from the house, I start hearing the thumping. At first I thought we had a flat, but it was the deadbag in the back. I’d actually managed to forget about him amongst all the other mayhem. I’m glad he started making a ruckus, because I quickly realized that if I’d pulled back into the driveway, that truck would’ve been covered in rampaging dogs, all trying to get at him. I make a fast detour into a farm and pull up to the closest barn. I quickly find what I’m looking for, an empty, fifty-gallon steel drum. Maddie and I pick our hostage up and dump him down into it. I then pile a steel plate on top and several cinder blocks on top of that in the back corner of the barn. I was stowing him away for safe keeping.

  As per usual, we are greeted by hundreds of dogs upon our return. Well, the hundreds that we knew wouldn’t follow us. There’s about fifty locked up in the house that we knew would come looking for us, and of course June and Jeff were among them. I quickly tend to Maddie’s wounds, especially the bite that, as of yet, had zero effect on her. She grimaces and kicks her legs as I douse the area in alcohol and then bandage it up. I then tend to my own wounds, which are worse than I thought. I had three goddamn bites this time. We take the rest of that day and the next to recuperate and decompress from the attack. My grand ideas of taking the town begin to wane. I had almost lost Maddie, and I wasn’t about to so quickly put us back into another situation where it could happen again.

  I noticed the second day after the attack Maddie isn’t acting herself. She’s barely talking, lying around and just acting lethargic. This heavy sense of dread starts taking me over. I don’t want to even ask for fear of making it real but I finally do.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  She’s lying on the picnic table watching the clouds drift by. There’s no answer for a second but then she rolls up onto her arm and looks at me. She shakes her head “no”.

  “Sit up,” I tell her. She does, and I began pulling her bandages off. The wound just doesn’t look good. I’d been tending to it regularly, even putting on latex gloves to keep my own filthy hands away from it, but ever since that morning it had taken this fast turn into unnerving territory. Its off colored, red streaks are forming on the outside of it on her virgin flesh, and I can feel a distinct heat radiating into my hand through my gloves.

  “It hurts,” she says. I grab her more ibuprofen and redress the wound with a newfound sense of terror tugging at me. I don’t want to tell her I think that it’s infected because I’m not even prepared to deal with that fact, let alone her. I try giving her bullshit reassurance that even I don’t buy into, but she just nods her head and trusts me that everything is okay. I start worrying about full on sepsis. The goddamn zombie didn’t turn her, but if blood infection sets in, she might as well have died out there in that field. I have no antibiotics, no IV, no kind of any medical shit other than the finest drugs the neighbors medicine cabinets had to offer, and that ain’t much. Foolishly, I decide it’s okay, everything is going to be okay.

  I’m awakened at four in the morning by the sound of her running down the steps and filling the toilet to the brim with last night’s dinner. I run and hold her hair and comfort as she starts crying. She now knows I was lying to her when I said she was going to be fine. I make her sit on the edge of the tub as I fetch a thermometer. I look into her fearful eyes when I return and see the same stare of the frightened girl that hid in that very same tub not that long ago. 99.9 degrees, her temp reads. Not that high. But its elevated, and that sends me into a panic. I redress her wounds yet again, there’s some pus drainage this round. I send her up to her room and tell her to get dressed. The next thing I know I find myself sitting at the kitchen table, wondering, pondering, trying like hell to figure out what I’m going to do, because I know damn well that time is stacking against me. In the end, there is only one place I
can think of that has what we need to stop her from getting worse, the hospital. The plan of taking the town was right back on the table. Maddie comes back down and sits across from me.

  “How you feeling?” She just shrugs. It’s obvious how she’s feeling. I go on to explain what’s about to happen. We’re going to wait till dawn, fetch the zombie we hid and lure the dogs to town. It was a bit more complex than that, but that was the gist. I then explained to her that she needed medicine that we didn’t have and that the town was the only place to get it. I also gave her the option to stay here while I got what we needed. She was having none of that. Together, we sat on the chairs of the front porch, holding hands, while we watched the sunrise through the glass of our masks. I don’t know what she was thinking, honestly I didn’t know what I was thinking. I tried not to think. It was best that way.

  At dawn, I fired up the F800 and backed it into the field. I used the boom crane to pluck up the C.E.R.B.E.R.U.S. gun and place it into the bed of the truck. I then spent the next few hours securing it down with a system of bolts and welds. We gathered all the gear we thought we’d need and then headed off to the farm down the road to fetch our dog bait. There was a small part of me that had this fear the zombie somehow got out of that barrel, but it was put to bed when I heard the thumping echoing through the barn when we entered. We dragged the barrel out to the drive and placed it directly under the crane arm. I carefully lowered the ball and hook till it was just above the barrel and then fished the writhing bastard up from the depths. I clipped the handcuffs to the hook and then further strapped him in with some truck bed tie downs. Then, I began pulling away the burlap sack to reveal his thrashing head. His mouth was still secured with rows of duct tape that I carefully cut away until his honking-screech was once again allowed to violate the air. We both stepped away and watched him dangle there for a moment, wriggling and screeching. What was left of his legs, flailed back and forth. I wanted to feel bad, but it was impossible. These things were just so far removed from humans at this point you now could only look at them as the monsters they’d become. Still, there was this tiny pulse that reminded you that this was once someone’s son and maybe he was a father himself. At least he didn’t die for nothing, he was quite integral, a chosen one if you will. He was our ticket to leading the dogs to where we needed them to go, even if he didn’t want anything to do with it.