by Rich Baker
He turns the wheel to the left and heads for Granite Road. He passes several houses along the way, a couple of which have burned down, and sees no signs of life in any of them. One has a lot of activity, but none of it is from the living. He keeps his foot on the gas, his stomach tightening as he nears the main road.
At the stop sign at Granite Road, there’s an old Suburban stopped at an angle, the passenger door hanging open. Out of habit, he looks left for traffic before rolling around the old Chevy. There’s a zombie in the driver’s seat, held in by the seat belt. It turns and reaches for DJ with arms that are ten feet too short.
He turns right and heads north on Granite Road. He’s got 5 miles to go to get to the dairy. He keeps his speed to forty to give him more reaction time if something should happen. He passes several cars that have either run off or pushed off the road into the drainage ditches on either side of the road. In some places, he sees skid marks, broken glass and plastic, and various fluids scattered all over the road. It’s been rough for people out here. A few, like the Suburban, have undead souls trapped in them, forever restrained by their seatbelts. Others are empty, abandoned. Several have significant bloodstains around them, but no bodies to go with them. He passes several zombies tangled in the barbed wire fences that border the farmland. Some of them are in the fences that border NELSON farm land.
“Serves you right, you bastards!” he says aloud.
Without any further trouble, he arrives at the Anderson Dairy Farm. He turns left at the huge sign with the Anderson logo and drives at a cautious pace along the quarter mile to the main parking area. The offices are to the right, the covered parking island in front of it, complete with solar panels to charge the electric carts they use to get around the growing operation. Being green is a big thing now, even if it doesn’t do much. It drives DJ crazy having to deal with all the hippies. He hopes they’re aware of the irony that there are no vegetarian zombies.
The only non-Anderson Dairy vehicle under the canopy is his brother in law Steve’s personal truck, so he doesn’t think any of the workers are here, but it’s still better to be cautious.
He gets out of the Ranger, and to be safe, he slings the rifle behind his back and puts both hands in the air, one empty and the other holding the Zak. He takes a few steps toward the office, but no one either threatens him or welcomes him. He walks, approaching the office door cautiously. There’s a bloody handprint on the door jamb and a trail that stops where a pool of blood has formed. He pokes at it with the business end of the Zak. It’s coagulated, gummy and a flurry of flies buzz off it, returning to it the second he turns away. Whatever - whoever – fell, and from the looks of it, died there, is not there anymore. Where are they? Who are they, or who were they, to be more accurate? DJ’s fear and unease start to grow. It was one thing fighting zombies at the main house with a group, but here he’s alone and probably outnumbered and doesn’t know the layout of the buildings well enough to escape and evade. He still curses his mom for sending him here, but it looks like Steve and Bonnie really do need help.
The office is unlocked, and a quick check of the building turns up nothing. He exits the building, gets back in the Ranger and drives past the office building, around the parking canopy, and heads toward Steve and Bonnie’s house. As he nears the front of the house, he sees that the front door has been kicked in and hangs by one bent hinge. This is not good. His stomach does a couple of flips as he exits the Ranger and heads to the doorway.
He can smell it before he sees it. He knows too well the smell of a zombie when it’s body’s been opened, and that black pus worms its way out of the wound. He steels his nerve and heads toward the kitchen. The open floorplan of the house lets him see all the way from the kitchen over the dining table and into the family room. He takes a breath, about to call out to his sister, but thinks better of it. He might draw the attention of something else.
He sees a worn pair of boots as he nears the kitchen. Boots that are covering feet that are still attached to a pair of legs. Whoever it is lays on their back on the kitchen floor. He prepares himself mentally and peeks around the corner. He doesn’t recognize the man, though even if he DID know him, there’s not much left of his face to identify him. He’s too fat to be Steve, so DJ lets out a sigh. Based on the spray pattern of zombie pus and the damage to the face DJ guesses that tubby took a shot to the face from a shotgun at a short distance. He does a quick recon of the first floor, finds nothing, and checks the upstairs portion of the house. No sign of either Steve or Bonnie. He notices the gun cabinet is empty, and several empty boxes of ammunition litter the sitting area of the master suite. He takes that as a good sign.
He leaves the house and goes to the barn a few hundred feet to the south. The big building is part garage, part rec center, and part guest house. It’s several times larger than the house and has more places for zombies to hide. It takes DJ about fifteen minutes to go through the whole place, but there’s no one there. There’s only one place left to search, and that’s the massive structure where the cows are housed, fed, and milked. If Bonnie and Steve aren’t there, then DJ has no clue where to search for them. He gets in the Ranger and drives an eighth of a mile to the massive building.
Anderson Farms has around 120 cows, only 80% of which are milked at any given time. This puts it on the large side of the dairy industry, though not by much. What sets them apart from the big industrial dairies is how the Andersons treat their cattle. They’re fed a mix of corn, alfalfa, and soy, but they also get to wander and graze on their own. They sleep indoors and get routine medical care. Steve Anderson doesn’t use hormones, and if he’s treating a cow with antibiotics, he takes her out of the milking cycle. People that know his operation often joke that if people treated each other the way Steve treats his cows the world would be a better place.
That’s why DJ is shocked when, as he pulls up to the building, a cow rounds the corner at a trot, staggering from injuries. A massive flap of hide hangs from its shoulder, and the udder is ripped open. Open sores on its legs and sides leak blood that stands out in stark relief against its white fur. DJ is afraid for a minute that the cow has become a zombie, but it rushes past him without so much as looking at him.
He hears a familiar sound as a zombie, a female, rounds the same corner from which the cow came. She is hot after the cow but sees DJ and alters course toward him. He scrambles out of the Ranger and readies the Zak.
She comes at him with a singular focus. As she approaches, she raises her hands to latch on to him, but he sidesteps her grasp and drives the tine of the Zak into her head, entering just under the left cheek and sticking out the right ear. Her momentum carries her forward, and she starts to take the Zak with her, but DJ has the loop of paracord drawn tight around his wrist. He gets his grip back, pulls back on the Zak, and it comes free, pulling the woman’s head back and to the left at an impossible angle. She goes down, but still flops on the ground, trying, and failing to get to her feet. DJ lets the ZAK fall from his grip and swings his rifle to the firing position. He’s not going near that thing while she’s so animated – one scratch and he could be infected. He flicks the safety off, sights in and fires three times, hitting her once in the shoulder, missing on the second shot and hitting her in the head with the third one. She lays still on the ground. The homemade suppressor muffles the shots, but they’re still audible to anyone or anything within a hundred feet.
A grunt alerts him to a zombie coming up behind him. He wheels around to find a trio of the gruesome fiends coming at him. He raises the rifle, and since they’re so close, he uses the offset iron sights rather than the telescopic sight. Two shots to the head of the lead zombie and it goes down in a heap. The second one trips on it, so he sights on the third. This is one is a runner, and it’s coming fast.
DJs' heart sinks. It’s the revenant of his brother-in-law Steve. He processes several things in a short span of time. First, he has two zombies in front of him he needs to kill ASAP. One is his brother-in-
law. If Steve has been turned, the odds aren’t good his sister is still alive.
He starts squeezing the trigger. Puffs of black mist denote where the bullets strike Steve’s reanimated body. Six shots, seven, and finally he gets one through the skull. Steve is powered off, and his body collapses on itself.
Steve looks down to account for the zombie that tripped. He’s surprised to find it close enough that it’s reaching for his leg. The creature broke its own leg when it fell, but crawls faster than he would have thought possible. Thankfully, it’s not DJs sister.
The fingers on the hand reaching for DJs leg have been ill-used since the turn, and the flesh is gone. The nails have peeled back, and only bone, ligament, and tendon are visible as it latches on to DJ’s leg and pulls itself – its MOUTH – closer to it. At the same time that it pulls itself toward DJ, it also slides DJ’s leg forward, and he finds himself off balance and starting to tip backward. With both hands on his rifle, he can’t pinwheel for balance, and he reaches the point of no return where a fall is unavoidable. He manages to get the gun pointed in the general direction of the zombie about to bite his leg as he topples. He fires several shots, then feels a sharp pain shoot all the way up his leg. His head hits the side of the Ranger, and as DJ’s vision fades to black, he thinks it’s like watching an old TV power off. Everything condenses down to a small circle of light, and then, nothing.
Five
DJ tries to force his eyes open, but they aren’t cooperating. He's groggy from hitting his head, but the reptilian part of his brain where the Voice resides is screaming “DANGER, DANGER” so he keeps trying to get them open. He starts to move, but a horrible pain in his leg puts an end to that activity. It does bring him out of his stupor, however, and he gets his eyes to open and snap into focus. He remembers the ghoul that was about to bite his leg right before he fell, and he fears the worst. He's afraid to look, for fear he’ll see a zombie eating his leg, but he must.
It’s one of those good news/bad news situations. The good news – very good news – is that he managed to shoot the undead creature in the head as he fell, and it lies dormant with a hand resting on DJs leg.
The bad news is that he managed to shoot his own leg and foot in addition to the creature’s head.
He assesses the wounds. In his time on the farm he's seen some bad injuries - farm equipment can be VERY unforgiving - and this looks as bad as any of them. He's lost a fair bit of blood, but it seems to have stopped, for now, so he doesn't think he's hit any major blood vessels. He sits up so he can get a better look. He pokes at his leg and winces. He can’t tell for sure, but it looks like the bullet hit his shin and ricocheted through his foot. There's a six-inch gash in his shin that the bullet left behind, but he doesn't think the bullet is still in his leg. It’s hard to tell the extent of the injuries, and he’s exposed here, so he needs to get out of this spot before more dead come for him.
He leans on the Zak for support to get him, if not vertical, at least halfway upright. He finds the steering wheel of the Ranger and uses it to pull himself into the driver’s seat. He secures his rifle, sets the ZAK down, and starts the engine on the utility vehicle. He’s grateful it's automatic and not manual, and that he shot his left foot and not his right, or he'd be in trouble trying to drive. He aims it at his sister’s house, trying to avoid zombie bodies and ruts on the road as every bounce shoots pain from his foot through his leg and up his spine, and makes his vision go gray. He sees the cow that ran past him earlier, now laying on its side, dead. It crushed a zombie beneath its massive body, pinning it under three-quarters of a ton of beef. The creature’s arms are still thrashing at the dead bovine, ripping hide from meat and meat from the bone, but it’s not going anywhere.
He parks the Ranger as close to the house as he can, and half limps, half crawls his way inside. He manages to get the door shut, though it won’t latch, and takes a rest with his back leaning against the door. He looks at his foot and sees it’s bleeding again. He drags himself up the stairs, taking what seems like forever. He looks at the blood trail on the carpet. If Bonnie’s alive, she going to kill me, he thinks.
In the master bathroom, he finds his sister's medical kit. It has a bottle of prescription painkillers in it. He studies the label until he reads ‘take two every eight hours as needed for pain.’ He pries the lid off, dumps two pills in his hand, and sticks his head under the faucet. The pipes clunk and the faucet spits a dollop of stale water into his mouth, nothing more. He winces at the taste of the warm fluid, but tosses the pills in and swallows. He coughs once and chokes the pills down, the acrid taste triggering his gag reflex for a moment.
Next, he sets about determining how bad his wounds are. He unties his left boot and pulls it off, nearly passing out from the pain. When he recovers, he takes off the bloody sock, which hurts almost as bad, then takes his pants off and sits on the edge of the bathtub, his leg and foot wounds dripping blood on the white porcelain. He fishes around in his bag and finds one of the bottles of water, uncaps it and pours it on his leg and foot to rinse the blood and dirt off the wounds. The world around him goes gray for a moment, the pain going off the scale.
He was right in his initial assessment. The bullet dug a trough down his shin and ricocheted into his foot. He grabs a box of butterfly bandages from the medical kit and closes the leg wound as best he can, then wraps the leg with gauze and medical tape.
He pours more water on the foot wound, crying out when he does, and tries to assess the damage, but there’s too much blood. He grabs his boot and looks at the sole. There’s a hole in it. So, the bullet passed all the way through the foot.
He decides against digging around in the wound to look for bullet fragments. Instead, he takes a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and pours some of the contents on his foot. His vision goes gray again as he leans over and splashes some of the fluid on the bottom of his foot. He places sterile pads on the wound, top, and bottom of the foot, then wraps it tightly with gauze. He digs through his bag again and finds the roll of duct tape, rips off an eighteen-inch length and wraps it around the gauze. That ought to hold things in place.
He removes the laces from the boot, and shoves the foot back in it before it swells too much to get in there. The pain is immeasurable, worse than anything he’s ever felt, worse than the time Corey Evans broke his nose after football practice, worse than the time he jammed a knife all the way through his finger playing that knife game from the movie Aliens. He watches his vision condense down to the small white spot again, and feels himself falling, forever it seems, until his head collides with the side of the bathtub, and he slumps over awkwardly, his body and left leg in the tub, his right leg hanging out of it.
* * *
His mother is yelling at him. He can’t quite make it out, but he hears something about what a failure he is for not taking care of his sister. He starts to protest when the Voice chimes in.
You’re dreaming, dumdum. Mommy’s not yelling at you, that’s your guilt, your conscience. You should open your eyes and see why it’s upset with you. Open. Your. Eyes. OPEN YOUR EYES!
He forces his eyes open and sees his sister, zombified, clawing at his right leg, which is still hanging out of the tub. It takes him a minute to process everything – where he is, what he’s doing there, why his sister is trying to eat his leg…
Kick her!
The Voice spurs him to action. He thrashes in the tub, struggling to get enough leverage to kick with his good right leg. He finally gets the left one sufficiently wedged against the inside of the tub so he can kick with his right foot, sending his sister’s undead body flying partially across the bathroom. She starts pulling herself toward him without any hesitation.
He can see the wound on her back that has rendered her legs useless. It looks to him like a cow stepped on her and broke her spine. Her hands are torn to shreds, doubtless from dragging her carcass around the dirt roads and gravel paths around the farm.
His AR15 rests against the wall, mocking him,
on the other side of his sister. He pulls his leg into the tub as she tries grabbing it again. She’s having a hard time pulling her limp body up, and into the tub, so he has a minute to collect his thoughts. He can’t jump over her because he’s pretty sure when he lands on his left foot he’ll either collapse or pass out again. He glances around at the tub and the baubles and soaps his sister uses for decoration. Nothing resembling a weapon.
Curb stomp.
The Voice startles DJ, but he catches the meaning. He eyes the tiled border of the tub. He could grab his sister’s head, slam it on the edge of the tile, and drop an elbow or knee on it. It could work, but thinking of doing that to his sister makes his stomach flip over.
It’s not our sister, not anymore. Us or her, that’s your choice.
He sits back in the tub, contemplating what lies before him. His eyes well up, thinking about his sister’s last moments, and what they must have been like. How badly did she suffer? Did she know her husband had been turned? What were her final thoughts? He chokes back a sob, tears running down his face and leaving clean streaks on his cheeks. He steels himself, gets on his knees and looks at the wretched creature on the floor, reaching with its ragged fingers, trying to grab him.
“You’re not my sister,” he says aloud. He grabs a handful of hair and lifts her above the level of the edge of the tub. Her claw-like hands grab at his arms, and before they can lock down on him, or scratch and infect him, he slams her head against the edge of the tub, knocking out several of her teeth. He holds her head in place with his right hand, pushes himself up a bit with his right leg, and lets his body fall. He drives his left elbow into the back of her head, the force of his body weight all concentrated on a small area of her skull. He hears more teeth breaking as the head drives into the tile, then the wet crunch of bones breaking, and the skull collapses. Rotten smelling fluid and brain matter ooze from the sides of the skull like toothpaste. The body twitches and convulses once then goes limp.
