by Eddie Austin
I walk over and check the ignition. At least I haven’t run it dry. If my memory serves me, the dome light would have shut off after fifteen minutes and the lights aren’t switched on, so the battery might still be good? Stupid.
I walk well past the burned out mess of Bill’s old house and let the snake go by setting the bucket down and walking six feet away; pushing the bucket over with a long stick. The snake slithers into the ditch after a few minutes and I retrieve the bucket.
I am already this far out, so I keep walking, determined to get something unpleasant out of the way. I turn left past the mailbox and keep walking. After a time, I run into the road. Turn left again, and back a ways to an old blind I had set up some years before, to use as a watch post for the road, back when I was getting a lot of ‘visitors’.
In the first few months after the end, things had been bad. Dead townsfolk had converged on the farm in waves. The first wave I dealt with by hand. Then I picked up my first firearm; an M-4 rifle from that first day taken from that dead soldier who was probably making his way to Selma to look after family when he was bitten and turned at some point.
When these waves became less frequent, some people decided to scavenge for food or for greed or pleasure. I can only guess at their motives, but they hadn’t been friendly. That’s when I started watching the road from time to time making sure that those psychos didn’t make good on me.
From that point, almost two years hence, I shot that man from town and saw his friends run quietly back down the road and out of sight. I was quick to grab his rifle and pack, checking his boots and clothes to see if they would serve me, then roll him up onto my shoulder, I carried him down the road past Bill’s and tossed his stripped corpse into a ditch.
He had been carrying an AR-15 assault rifle, .223. I have long since eaten his rations and shot some of the ammo, but the clothes and other effects are back at the barn. It takes some searching, but eventually I find most of his bones where I had left them. They had been picked over and scattered by animals. I retrieve his skull, badly shattered in the back, femurs, radii, ulna, pelvis and a collection of ribs. I place them in the bucket that had held the snake and carry them back to the barn solemnly and without much internal dialogue.
Later that day, I gather his clothes and boots and place them in his pack with some extra MRE’s. I take his rifle and set these things beside the couch in the big room. I find an old duffle and place his bones therein after cleaning them with a dry rag.
I leave these bags in the big room and feel satisfied that when it comes time to see this boy, he will have as much peace as I can give him. I’m not looking forward to the meeting.
The sun is already getting low. I decide to tidy up a bit -gathering trash and throwing it to compost out back beyond the privy in a big pile. Before the light fails me, I check Bill’s old truck.
It fires up ok, still smoking, and I drive it back to the barn. I siphon off the gas into a five gallon can and add some stabilizer to it. I have some gas, but I’m not sure how long it will remain good and I need it for the chainsaw--not the damned old truck. I unhook the battery and put my ambition for vehicle maintenance on a shelf. The oil in the engine is getting nasty.... but rather than mess with it, I leave it for another day.
Closing doors and kicking rocks, I walk back over to the barn and decide against a fire. Too late. Off to bed and maybe an early start tomorrow. I saw deer shit by some fallen fruit yesterday and my meat supply is getting low.
Chapter 7
I awaken early, having trained my internal clock to obey the whims of my mind as much as is possible. I feel immeasurably better and decide to lay off the pot and booze for a week or so to let mind clear and to detox some.
I check my AK and don a simple jumpsuit. Into the grey early, early morning I go. I stalk softly and choose a tree that seems downwind from the rotting fruit pile. I climb and sit as comfortably as I can, my back supported by a medium sized branch. The AK is ready to fire, and I hold it, and wait, and am as quiet as possible.
As if on cue, a line of seven deer walk from the tall grasses beyond the line of trees and begin to take turns; one or two rummaging in the fruit while the others look around flicking their ears and looking on edge.
I choose a smallish sized buck; four prongs, and shoot him in the neck close to his head. The other deer jump; white flagging, bounding away from the site. The injured one lays kicking at the sky, blood pouring from its neck. I wait.
Once it slows and stops, I bring forth my hunting knife. Sharp. Pushing it into the neck and pulling forward, I slit the throat. I heft the body on my shoulders, guessing he weighs 170 pounds, and walk back and over to a small clearing at the edge of the orchard where I butcher and clean meat.
The body thumps against the ground and I busy myself, tying up the back legs to a board and hooks, hoisting the still warm and bleeding thing to eye level. Crucified there, I begin by slitting the belly and eviscerating the beast. I am careful to collect the liver as best I can into the pail along with the kidneys and fat. Already, parasites have begun to jump ship; ticks and fleas and all manner of pests, peppering the ground and sounding like the start of a soft rain.
I carry the liver and kidneys back to the fire and set them to boil in the large kettle. A rare treat. I will have to work quickly with the rest of the deer, finding the most tender meat to fillet into long strips for curing; smoking and eating the rest until I am near sick from feasting. In the first year or so, much more would have been wasted, due to my lack of experience with preserving food. After I started to experiment with the smoke house things got better. A couple of my first tries put me to bed, sick as hell, but in the end I figured out the basics. Bugs must be kept out, tight doors, dry, lots of smoke… This process of discovery has made me even less enthusiastic about eating meat, but my body craves it, desires the minerals, fats and salts.
Salt. I am running low. Unless I want to get serious about mining it in the desert pan, I need to find some soon. Add it to the list of needful things. Maybe this Bryce fellow will trade some?
The liver is gorgeous. I slice it off in chunks, add salt, and eat it while it is hot with slices of overripe pear. I eat the whole damn thing. I will let the kidneys cool and save them for the evening, I am less excited about these.
Walking back to the site of the slaughter, I hear a rustle in the grass off to my left. I am wary; AK at my shoulder, left eye half shut, legs apart, leaning forward.
The thing crawls toward me with jerky, flapping arm movements. Its clothing has long since worn to shreds of rags and its skin, her skin, is purple-marbled with angry red blotches. She makes a keening noise as she nears me; dead black eyes locked on mine. I fire when she is five feet from me.
The report echoes around me and my right ear hums softly. Seeing that the bullet has caught the thing square in the forehead, I let my self-training kick in. When one is forced to deal with one of these zombies, no matter how adjusted to the horror you might think yourself to be, there is a level of shock—an adrenaline rush that confuses the senses. To counter the tunnel vision that has set in, I turn my torso left and right, pointing my AK as I try to focus with my limited vision. To my left now, a slow shambling figure of a man; upright, track shorts tied tight over a shrunken waist, hips protruding. His shirt is covered in gore long since putrefied. I blast his face with two rounds. Tap! Tap!
Sweep again in a circle, relax the eye muscles, don’t focus on the clear foreground. In the distance, long down the row of pear trees, something passes across my line of sight. “Dammit!”
I take a deep breath and start to jog down the row. The quicker one turns now in a wide arc and tries to come at me from the side. This one is white like ivory and lithe -looking freshly dead. It rushes me! I almost panic at its burst of speed. Tap! A careless round to the chest knocks the thing down. I close to two feet and TAP! One to the head as it tries to flop itself to its feet-- black mist and oily goo. Again, I sweep. Look left, look right. Nothing.
How had they gotten so close?
My traps. Monofilament fishing wire from the garage tied to cow bells, reindeer bells and whatever else will make noise; chains of old beer bottles, cans filled with marbles. Most are set at chest height, easy to duck under, but the dead don’t duck to avoid such things…
I am breathing easier and feeling more calm now. I resolve to check my traps, wires, trip holes and spike pits. I am paying for my carelessness with precious ammo. I begin to walk, doing a round of the property that I regularly inhabited and consider my perimeter. The deer will have to wait.
Tracking across where the things locked onto me, I see a trip wire snagged. The line of bottles have caught in the crook of a limb keeping them from making a sound. I reset them and give the tree a little shake, they clink together, but not loud enough to hear from the barn. The attack is bothering me. It has been months since I’ve seen this much action. Maybe they followed Bryce out this way?
I walk, listening as best I can and climbing trees, scanning the distance for movement. Eventually I am satisfied that there are no more visitors. Heading back to the barn, I place the kidneys on a tray and bring them inside. The work of carting off the bodies can wait until tomorrow. My day has gotten away from me, and the distant dark is rushing in. Time to clean up for dinner.
⃰ ⃰ ⃰
I sit in the big room eating the kidneys and drinking cold water. I worry about the deer, still hanging wasted, and think hard about my food supply. In the orchard, it seemed like something is always ripe or close enough to eat green. Deer are populous in this area; more so since the fall of man. There are lean times, though. You can’t live off lemons and pistachios. Not well, that is, and that is a good example of the odd assortment that the land sometimes provides.
Now is a good time. Pears, avocados, and citrus provide good sources of sugar and fat. I think that I should be out more searching houses finding stuff before I get desperate. Stock up now when there is plenty. Eat the canned stuff before it is corrupted by time and the elements. Canned food takes a while to really go bad. They say to eat before X amount of years, but with modern preservatives and technology, well, not really modern anymore… who knows how long those spaghetti-O’s will last? What we had- our food supply, was a marvel. A sometimes Sinclair nightmare, but for the most part it is an anomaly of human history, huge quantities of stackable, storable cans of edible goodies. 300 million people’s worth. Out there somewhere. That should feed me for a while right? So I open any can I find and I let my nose and eyes and tongue guide me as to its edibility. Trust my senses.
I am also craving carbs. Time to go ‘shopping’ soon, find a house with some rice sealed up in a Tupperware, or maybe some wild potato. What does a wild potato look like? I decide to take stock of my supplies, to get a feel for what is missing. After dinner I dump the liver/kidney water over the fire and shut up the barn, nice and tight. Walking through the entry room past trunks and shelves and stacked chairs, I open the trap door to the cellar.
Lantern in hand, I climb down. I have seventy three quart jars of hooch including about a dozen that I have set aside to become vinegar. There are twenty smaller jars filled with weed; way more than I need, still. On one shelf I have jars packed with jerky, salted and dried. I take one down and open it. It smells strong, but not spoiled. I take a bite. It is good. Ditto for the jars of fruit leather. I scan the jars of bottled water for drinking and the few cases of soap and odds and ends. A crock for deer fat, a jar of olive oil, etc. Together there is a few months supply of full rations.
I wish with all of my heart that I knew how to can fruit preserves. Something to ask about in town. I take the jar of deer jerky that I opened and bring it up with me back through to the big room, then up to the loft and my kitchen table. I sit there having placed the jar on the table untouched. I am beyond full after eating the kidneys for dinner, but I want it there all the same.
I have a lot of nervous energy despite having had such a busy day. I walk over to the back of the loft to the large vaulted open area. I sit facing the line of small rectangular windows which look out on the backyard. I close my eyes and straighten my posture. I contemplate the circumstances which brought me here to the edge of human agriculture all those years ago.
Modern life was a lie. There was no true place that valued the efforts of the individual. Every business of man concerned profit. Make more profit at the expense of your happiness and health. Pay us more for less because you really have no alternative. Benefit the rich, bleed the poor.
I wasn’t what television culture would call a ‘success’. No real career. Some time in the service, some time in school, some time working at this and that. On the grid really just long enough to amass a ton of debt, student loans and credit cards, a condo with a variable rate. Hooked. And so it was for many of us. The failed dream.
All fueled by a revolution in thought. People began to live blinded by a sense of entitlement at the expense of all others. No serfs in this bright new world, we’d decided to all be kings. My huge fucking SUV, my cookie cutter mansion, my stupid kids to multiply and burden society. My planet to destroy.
I let the rage simmer in me and then cooled it with memories of coming to the farm. I had packed a backpack with two changes of clothes and packed a couple boxes of books and that was it. I left everything else behind in my apartment. My car sold days before on the internet. I told my brother my new address with instructions to share it with NO ONE. I left no forwarding address. My bank account was my back pocket, and my identity a cheap ID from Chinatown. Good enough.
This severance had been an unbelievable joy. I had walked away from the world and come here to the middle of nowhere to help grow fruit. And when it came, I had thought the end to be a fitting outcome to mankind’s depredations, and wondered now if it would all begin again someday—a renaissance after a thousand dark years. I hoped not.
I clear my mind of all this negative energy and focus on the act of breathing. Sometime later, I hear the distant clunking of a cow bell.
Chapter 8
My eyes snap open at the sound. I lean forward and look out of the low windows. It is dark. I swear softly and wait for a moment. Holding my breath in the stillness of the barn I strain to hear and then it comes again. This time the clinking of cans, and it is closer.
Turning, I climb down from the loft and run through to the entrance room. The door is shut, but I set the wooden board across it to bar and add strength. The windows in this room are high and small. Back to the big room now and a check of the large sliding barn doors. These I have long since barred and nailed shut. All the same, I look them over from top to bottom checking nails and wedges. Good. The back barn doors are mostly for show since they don’t meet the ground at this new foundation.
I can’t remember if the back doors that lead to the wood shed are closed, but the only way up from there would involve coming through the wall of the cellar and up a tight captain stair; not likely. Everything within reach from the outside is boarded up or shut tight. I dim the lantern in the big room so that it barely casts light and set it aside.
Moving to the couch, I grab the AK and check the clip—25 rounds. I make sure I know where a fresh clip lays and, for good measure, set a hammer on the work table and grab some nails.
Back through the entry room I take a left and come to the sliding door of the workshop. The way the hill slopes behind the barn, the window in here is maybe twelve feet off the ground below. I step around the tub and look out into the gray-near-black of the outside world.
With no light in the room, it seems brighter outside and my eyes adjust quickly. There. Forms are moving in the distance closing toward the barn. They shamble and crawl with the halting movements of the dead. The faster ones are nearly to the privy. Well, I think, at least it’s not angry townspeople with torches.
I decide to snipe a couple if I can from this vantage while the light remains. I swing the window open and stand, leaning the wooden foregrip on the sill. The closes
t one is probably fifteen feet out. I take aim closing my eye as I pull the trigger. Even with my eye closed, the muzzle flash ruins my night vision with a floating orange blob.
I have torn an evil hole in the thing’s jaw, but still it comes. I fire again. This time I don’t worry about the flash. It dazzles me, but I focus and keep firing. The first one down, I aim at a crawler rounding the privy. I account for five of them before running out of ammo.
As I turn to fetch another clip from the big room, I hear the tell tale knocking and scraping behind me. They are coming at the barn from both sides.
I grab my pistol, hung beside the tub days before and belt it on. Walking to the big room, AK slung on my shoulder, I close and bar doors behind me. I grab the extra clip, seat it, and draw back the bolt chambering a round. I also grab the hammer, dropping it in a loop on my pants. Lastly, I shoulder a water bag that is about half full before climbing the ladder to the loft and pulling it up behind me, grabbing the rope and tying it off on the rail.
I drop the gear next to the kitchen table and slap my forehead with my hand. The lamp! I let the ladder back down, trot over to the lamp, turn it up, and grab my pipe before returning to the loft and pulling the ladder up again. Sobriety might have to wait until this crisis has passed.
I hang the lantern from a beam over the table and walk around the loft. The lantern casts soft yellow light across the floor and makes blocky shadows as it passes the railings and casts itself against the slope over my bed. I select an old paperback, something light, from the makeshift shelf there.
Pocketing the book, I walk across the open space at the back of the loft and pull on the old hay door set above the line of windows sliding it open about six inches.
