by Gareth Wood
“Ready?” he whispered.
I nodded, and he turned it. He pulled the door open and I found myself staring at a zombie, all rotten blackened flesh and crumbling clothes. It was huge, at least six and a half feet tall, and it lurched out towards me as I shifted my aim up, pulling the trigger as I went. My first shot hit it in the chest, and it didn’t notice. The second struck it in the collar bone, and I heard the bone snap as the bullet passed through. Then it was on me, grasping and trying to bite, and I pulled my Browning up close and shoved upwards to get it under the thing’s chin. It wormed around the barrel, and I could see it open its mouth to bite me when Darren stamped down on its leg from behind. He hit it behind the knee, and grabbed its hair to pull the head back. I slammed a gloved hand under its chin and pushed, and it toppled backwards. It still had hold of me, and I nearly fell on top of it as it tried to grasp and pull, but I managed to step away as Darren kicked it again, this time in the head. It rolled to the side, and one arm grabbed Darren’s foot and pulled. He went down, and the thing clambered towards him, mouth open and snapping. Teeth closed on Darren’s boot heel, and I leapt forward. I landed with both feet on the zombies’ neck, hearing a loud snap as the spine broke. Arms and legs stopped moving instantly, and I stepped off the putrescent thing, looking down at Darren where he sat gasping.
“You okay?”
“Holy fuck,” he said. “That was close.”
I reached down to pull him up. “We’re not finished yet, either.”
We caught our breath and let our hearts slow down, and I looked at the zombie still at our feet. With the neck broken it wasn’t an immediate threat, but the eyes still followed us, and its mouth was still capable of biting. I looked around the kitchen, and opened drawers until I found a hammer in one. I took that and swung it three times into the top of the things head. Brain and old blood leaked out, and the little animation left to the creature was lost.
The open door to the basement was darker than the approaching night, but we could hear something moving around down there. Despite the cold, air the reek of the dead was still strong as I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on. I went first, flashlight shining ahead of me in my left hand, my Browning aimed at the spot where the light shone as my right hand rested on my left wrist. Darren followed me down the stairs.
From somewhere below we could hear a steady thumping, as if there was something trying to batter its way out of a large cardboard box, very slowly. My light revealed unfinished concrete walls and piles of boxes and debris in what looked like one large room below the house. All the detritus of long lives was spread out around us. Aerial photos of the farm were stacked on a table along with old vinyl records, and what looked like a hundred jars of nails and screws were placed on a workbench to my left. Cardboard boxes lay strewn about, and ten feet away there were bones lying on a huge stain on the floor. I made out pieces of two human skulls, ribcages and spines, broken bones that I thought were legs, and torn and shredded clothing before I looked away. I’d seen enough of the abattoir.
The thumping was coming from the back of the room, and the one ground level window was letting in just enough light for me to see a wooden wall with a door, and a hinged padlock on that door keeping it closed.
We stepped carefully across the room, shining lights into shadows and watching where and what we stepped on. We reached the door without anything trying to eat us, and stood on either side of it, listening. The banging had continued the whole time we had crossed the floor, a solid thump every few seconds.
“What do you think it is?” Darren whispered to me.
“No idea,” I replied.
Darren suddenly grinned. “Bet you twenty bucks it’s a zombie,” he said.
I just shook my head and took a step back. “I’ll kick it in on three. Ready?”
“Go for it.”
He stepped back as well and aimed at the door, and I took a deep breath.
“Three!”
I kicked the door with the ball of my foot, snapping my leg forwards to deliver the greatest amount of force. The wood splintered but didn’t give way, and the thumps increased in tempo and intensity. I kicked it again, and the door flew open, striking something out of sight behind it, and bouncing back. I had stepped back again and was aiming my handgun at the opening, but nothing came out. After a minute I stepped forward and pushed the door with my boot. I shone my flashlight inside and found the source of the sound.
* * *
Later, upstairs, I tried to make some sense of the horror I had seen. There was, of course, a zombie in the room. It had been bound with metal tie wire, tightly wrapped around its neck, arms and ankles. A long triple braid of the stuff had been looped over a nail on the wall behind the thing, and attached to the neck as well. Over time, as the thing tried to free itself, the wire had cut through flesh and clothing, all the way to bone.
The feet were nearly severed, and so were the arms below the elbows. The wire around the neck had cut through the throat and windpipe and was lodged in the spine. The thing was able to flop around only in a small area, and the thumping was from its head hitting the wall behind it as it tried to stand. It couldn’t grip anything, or get balance, but it could see us, and its eyes locked on us as soon as we entered the room.
It was about half my height, had maybe been a quarter my weight when it was alive, and I could still make out the writing on its shirt, spelling out the name of a popular anime show.
“Fuck me,” I said. “It’s just a kid.”
BANG!
I jumped as I realized that Darren had shot the creature, and it was finally still, a long time after it had died.
* * *
Sanji and Jaeger dragged all the bodies outside and placed them in a ditch a few dozen yards away, out of sight and smell of the house. They wore thick gloves we had found on the work bench, and then washed very thoroughly with melted snow afterwards. Amanda turned the vehicles around, backing them in towards the house so we could just drive away if we needed to. Keiko and I unloaded some food and the portable stoves while Thomas searched the house for anything useful. Before we cooked dinner the sun went down, and we spent some time light-proofing the windows with sheets and curtains. Dinner was cooked and eaten by flashlight in the living room, the cleanest room in the house.
The meal was highlighted by Thomas and Amanda arguing over which Eagles album was the best one. I think she did it just for the fun of it, since I doubted she’d even listened to the Eagles. Watching her bait and annoy Thomas was only amusing for a few minutes, though. I went outside to get a radio, and brought it inside to set up on the table.
“Yankee Yankee Charlie, this is Sierra Tango one oh seven. Message, over.”
“One oh seven, this is Yankee Yankee Charlie. Send, over.” It was a woman’s voice this time.
“We are secure for the night, Yankee Yankee Charlie. Safe and sound, over.”
“Do you need supplies, one oh seven? Over.”
“Yes, we do,” I said, “can you supply us? Over.”
“We can make an airdrop if you need it, one oh seven. We have a couple of small aircraft that can drop supplies, over.”
It was good to know they could resupply us if we needed it. We might take advantage of that later, but we were alright for now.
“One oh seven, what is your plan to get home, over?”
“If we can’t get over the number two at Crossfield we’ll go overland. If we can, we’ll try to approach the airport from the east. Over.”
There was far more empty land to the east of the city, and the northeast of Calgary had been emptied of as many of the undead as was possible during salvage runs and military operations. There were still plenty of them there, but compared to other parts of the city they were fewer in number. Unfortunately the access was on the other side of the highway from where we were.
“Be advised, one oh seven, there are reports of undead activity within five kilometers of the city limits to the east, but only minimal si
ghtings beyond that. Latest reports show that the swarm on the number two highway north is still present, numbers estimated at twelve thousand. As of dusk today the road from the city limit to just north of Airdrie was standing room only. Over”
“Thank you, Yankee Yankee Charlie, we noticed. We will advise you of our plans in the morning. One oh seven out.”
* * *
There is a tradeoff to be made between physical security and being warm at night in a world where the dead have returned to life. If you can get solid walls between yourself and the undead at night or when you need to rest, good. If not, stay in a vehicle and try to keep moving. We would have been warmer outside in tents than in this house at night, since the insulated walls did as much to keep cold in as they did to keep it out when the heat worked. We drank a hot cup of tea or instant decaffeinated coffee each, and made our beds in the living room. We shared the watch, each taking about an hour from midnight to dawn. I had the last watch, and Amanda woke me just about an hour before sunrise. I yawned and stretched and pulled my jacket on as Amanda climbed into the warm place I had vacated between Keiko and Sanji, who was snoring quietly. I checked my C7 and stepped outside into crunchy snow. The temperature had dropped during the night, and I pulled up my hood and took my gloves out. I walked to the ditch and listened long enough to be sure I was alone, then unzipped and urinated into the snow.
There were a few rules that helped us stay alive out here. Keeping calm in a dangerous situation was important. Keeping quiet when moving around or resting was vital. Being smarter than the undead was easy. They were fairly stupid individually. Knowing the weaknesses of the enemy was also easy if you’d been observant during the last year or so. We’d adapted many kinds of tactics for dealing with them. Diversion was always good, diverting the undead at one door while you fled out another. Waiting patiently before entering a building to see if the undead inside would come to us rather than having to go inside to find them.
I thought about all this as I walked around the dark house in the predawn half-darkness, watching and stopping every ten steps or so to listen for any other sounds. I passed the ditch where the bodies had been dumped, and saw that frost had formed on them during the night. I felt a sudden sadness, and for some reason started to wonder what day it was. I realized I had lost track of the date. Was it November third? The fourth? I had no idea. My feet broke through the snow as I made my fourth loop towards the back of the house, and I heard a dim echo come back to me.
Echo? I stopped walking, and looked around as I listened carefully. There was a crunch, crunch to my left, and I turned that way. A hundred meters away was the fallen-in barn, and behind that trees, skeletal branches grasping at the sky. My eyes saw movement near a rusted heap of crumbling old farm truck, and I saw something orange and black—and twice my size—leap up onto the roof of the truck. The tiger growled at me, quite loud in the predawn chill, and I felt adrenaline pump into my blood. I stood absolutely still, astonished at what I saw. It was a tiger! Where had it come from?
The enormous cat stepped off the truck with incredible grace and began to casually stroll towards me. It licked its fangs, and I remembered I had an automatic weapon in my cold hands. I raised the gun and squeezed off three rounds without aiming. The bullets pinged off the truck, and the tiger jumped in the air like I’d seen my housecat do when something surprised it. I hadn’t hit it, but it didn’t wait around to see if I was going to try again. It was over the fence and through the trees behind the barn before I raised the C7 to aim, and I gave up and let it go. I could see it running through the fields behind the trees, just a hint of movement in the overgrown grass. A tiger, I thought, wow.
“Brian!” Sanji was calling, and he and Darren came wide around the corner, armed and half dressed.
“Are you alright?” he demanded, looking around. Darren looked like he always did in the morning, stunned to be awake.
“I’m fine. I scared it off. I might need to change my shorts, though.”
“Scared what off?” Sanji asked.
“A tiger. It was a tiger.” I laughed then at their expressions. “Seriously.”
I showed them where the big cat had been. There were paw prints the size of both my hands together in the snow. I shivered and looked around a little nervously.
“Let’s go back inside,” Sanji said quietly, and so we did. I told everyone else what had happened, since they were awake now. They all seemed surprised, except for Doctor Dand.
“I believe that there were more tigers in North America, in zoos mostly, than any other continent on Earth,” he told us. “This is a good environment for them. Many of them probably escaped from captivity once the dead came back. There will be a lot more of them in a few generations, provided the undead rot away.”
“They haven’t yet,” Amanda replied dryly. “They just get uglier as time goes by.”
“I wanted to ask about that,” he said. “You, your team, have been out there for months. You traveled among them to get to Cold Lake. Have you seen any signs of them deteriorating? Or signs of their coordination or abilities failing?”
I noticed everyone was listening except Amanda, who went to the kitchen, and Sanji, who had pulled a corner off one of the sheets covering a window. He was looking outside.
“Last year near Drumheller a group of us saw one standing in a field. It wasn’t the first time we’d seen that particular zombie, but it hadn’t moved at all, any of the times we’d seen it. I was curious, so we moved towards it. It never moved, even when it saw us. It just stood there.”
“Was there no reaction at all?”
I motioned for everyone to start packing up before I answered. “Its eyes. It watched whoever was in front of it, but it never attacked. Darren threw rocks and snowballs at it, but it still didn’t move.”
“What happened to it?” he asked.
“After a day or two of us watching it do nothing, it grunted and fell over. Seemed like it was really dead, then. I shot it just to be absolutely sure. Once we got to Cold Lake we heard other stories of similar things. Other survivors and salvage teams had seen things like we had.”
“Were they studied at all?”
“Probably not,” I said. “People tend to shoot these things if they present an easy target.”
He made a sound, not quite a grunt. I thought he was mourning our lack of scientific curiosity.
“There are scientists at Cold Lake. I’m sure they are looking into it.”
“You don’t appear too concerned,” he said.
“It doesn’t really make any difference in the situations we usually find ourselves in, Doctor. When there are a few hundred zombies hunting you through the ruins of a town, one of them that just stands there is really low on the priority scale.”
Amanda came in with two hot cups of tea, and handed me one. She sipped from the other herself.
“Since everyone’s up,” she said, “why don’t we call in? Also, I made tea.”
Sanji was still looking out the window, so I went to pour him a cup. I came back to find him tapping his fingers on the stock of his shotgun. “Tea?” I asked.
“Thank you.” He reached back for the cup.
“Any sign of that tiger?”
“No. But it was not what I was looking for.”
“Ah.” I stepped closer and looked through the sliver of window. It was much lighter outside already, the sun just peeking over the horizon. The few clouds were bright pink, lit from below. It was quite pretty. Walking down the road from the direction of Cremona were three zombies. Damn. They’d heard the shooting. Gunfire carried a long way, so I would happily bet that there were a lot more coming behind these three. The good news was they wouldn’t know exactly where the shots came from, so might pass us entirely. The bad news was more of them might come from other directions, and trap us here. I didn’t give this house much credit as a survivable shelter. It was time to go.
“Everyone,” I called, and when I had their attention, “finish pack
ing. My shooting attracted attention. We have about three minutes to get out of here.”
We finished packing quickly, taking clothes and food and weapons. Sanji and I were done first, and dropped our bags by the door. Darren was packing the radio, and Amanda was helping our passengers. Sanji looked out the window again while I stood by the door.
“It looks clear,” he said. “They are about 70 meters away.”
I opened the door and stepped out, C7 at the ready. I stopped and looked in every direction. The three undead were the only ones I could see right then, and I could smell them. Yuck. They were walking towards me now, arms outstretched.
“Darren,” I called, “load the vehicles. Amanda, Sanji, stand watch.” With that I walked to the road and stepped onto the asphalt. The three kept coming, and farther behind them I could see more, at least a dozen. They were half a kilometer away, probably.
