by Eddie Austin
The night is made even more black by the light behind me. It is as if I am looking into a void. Below me, I can hear the shuffle of the zombies as they call in unison, ”Nnngh!”
I shudder. Closing the window, I cross over and look out and down at the big room. I can hear the arms that flail at the wood from outside, but it holds. If enough of them pile up they might break through the entry door, and perhaps, the door that leads to the big room, but that would take a lot of pushing.
What concerns me most is the large barn door. I imagine that it might come off its track despite my fortifications and reinforcements if proper force were applied. If this happens, I will pick them off as best I can and see what happens. I pray it will hold.
Daylight will bring the opportunity to pick off as many as I can, and, barring a swarm of hundreds, I might account well for myself. I sit at the table, take a quick pull off my pipe, and start to read. Fists beat a staccato on wood echoing around me. I do my best to ignore it, letting my mind wander into the old familiar story, aided by the smoke. Hundreds? What if there are thousands? I dismiss this thought. If there are, I am fucked. So why worry? Tomorrow seems like a long ways away.
⃰ ⃰ ⃰
Dawn comes all over me like a bum on a beach wandering past the unwary. I have an indentation on my forehead from a piece of jerky I have slept on. My mouth is a hot salty nightmare. Had I really fallen asleep here at the table? Before me, the table top is an assortment of half-chewed strips of deer flesh, a badly folded paperback, and spilled water.
Around and below me, from everywhere comes the sound of clawing hands on wood. Heads and arms beat at the barn relentlessly. The doors hold.
I stand and stretch, my body fingering the jerky impression on my forehead. Leaning to the right and looking down and out the line of windows above the front barn door, I curse. There must be forty of them, four bodies deep, pressing against the door. The ones in the back row are milling about and looking expectant. A brief thought. It could be worse.
I sigh, walking to the back of the loft and to the hay door. Opening it, I peer down at the same situation on that side. All told, probably a hundred zombies press about the barn boxing me in. I am calm. I have to be. I need to think about this situation rationally.
Scanning the horizon, I note that there is no movement. No stragglers. Those that are here, are here. Where have they come from? None look fresh, but I can also see that they do not look weathered either. Many of them have the same complexion, for lack of a better word. Wherever they have petrified, they have done it together. I imagine a gymnasium somewhere; people shut in holding off the threat outside, waiting for help that never comes. I then imagine the same scene three years later; a mass of the dead, locked in, trying to get past their own fortifications, eventually the right hand jostles the right board, and success. They burst forth into their new world like an abscess. As good an explanation as any. Works for me I guess. How will I deal with them now?
The doors are holding, so I feel somewhat secure for the moment. I let down the ladder shoulder the AK, and descend to the big room. Walking, feeling the walls, they all feel sturdy. No nails are half out of the wood boards, no split beams. I have done well.
I undo the side door and peer into the entry room. No unwanted guests. These doors also hold sturdily. Back to the supply room, I don’t bother to light a lamp. I am familiar with the contents of the room and enough bright sunshine hits the big room and creeps in here to light the walls.
I select a nice .22 long rifle carbine that I found in a neighbor’s house some years ago; wood stock, blue steel. I don’t carry it for protection. It has no knock down power and holds only ten rounds, but it is perfect for what I have in mind.
Most discount the .22 as a wimpy round. True, it won’t blow someone in half or shoot through a lock, but it kills in its own gruesome way. The .22 is a rather light and small round not much larger than the ammo from a pellet gun. It is fast, though, and will punch through a skull. Once the round enters a skull, it isn’t powerful enough to punch through the other side. Rather it ricochets and rattles around scrambling the brain. The .22 is an assassin’s round. Look it up.
I grab a 550-round value cube of ammo and make my way to the back of my workshop. Propping the rifle on the tub while I open the window and shutters, I look down.
There they are, a creepy throng of pests. Granted, if they corner me, they could tear me to bits and then eat those bits, but I am perched above their means of harm. Not so the reverse.
I begin to load clips; ten rounds each, four clips. Then I slide the first clip into the rifle pulling the lever back seating a round. Crack! The loud snap of the .22 going off is nothing compared to the explosion produced by the AK. It barely moves the rifle and only a small dirty puff of smoke drifts lazily from the tip of the barrel. Dirty ammo; cheap, cheap stuff.
The effect is what I want, though. Below me the old lady I’ve aimed at slumps her head and slides slowly down into the throng, supported by the press of bodies. I take aim carefully and begin picking off the ones in the back. I don’t want the fallen to create a ramp for the rest to climb.
So I spend my morning; shut up in the workshop picking off the backyard crowd. They are thinning nicely when the sound of the entry room door cracking open sends cold electricity racing to my fingertips. Panic.
“Oh, shit!”
I drop the .22 and dart to the sliding door of the workshop. Half out the door I can see the entrance. The small clapboard door that I use every day is swinging open; the press of bodies the only thing slowing the tangled mass of death that is entering the room.
I push a shelf over hoping to slow them some and turn closing the sliding door and looking for a way to lock it. At the top is a small iron hook that slips into an eye bolt in the frame. That is it.
Turning, I look around frantically for something to block the door. I hear the first zombie press against it. I wait a moment. They aren’t trying to slide it open; just pushing against it. The sliding door is not heavy, though. Will there be enough room for them to press against it and to break it?
The only object that I can move is a shelf; contents spill to the floor as I do. All else is too heavy or not suited for the purpose.
I can see the door pushing in, its bottom rollers straining against the track in the floor. Then I notice the old chainsaw. The big room is secure. Could I cut through the wall? I bend over the saw, woefully unmaintained, and pray that it will start.
I hold the cord and drop the chainsaw again and again hear it putter but not start. The small tank is half full of two-cycle. I have pressed the clear plastic bulb to prime it; throttle set low. I fiddle and get mad. Yank, yank, yank. It growls to life sending a small cloud of blue smoke into the air. I squeeze the trigger and the blade whirs. I cut.
I want the hole to be small enough so I can fix it later. Even now in a near panic, I think of repairs. Chest high, I saw a rough square roughly three feet by three feet in size on the left side of the back wall where the shelf had been. I kill the saw and push at the square. It falls through, ripping the maritime chart hanging on the other side.
I grab the .22 and box of ammo and drop through the hole. Bracing myself on the waist high hip of the hole, I let myself tumble forward into the big room. I get up quickly and run to the side to the door that leads to the entry room. Shut but not locked, I throw the bar, turn, and grab the .22 and ammo. I throw the box up into the loft and hear the bullets spill, some rolling back over the edge onto me. I grab the .22 and climb up pulling the ladder as I hear the sliding door to the workshop pop out of its track and spill open like a cat door.
I tie the nylon rope holding the ladder and look down over the railing. A torso leans through the hole; awful face turning toward me held tight to the other side of the wall by its waist and the push of bodies behind it. Good lord, that was close.
I pick off the zombie leaning through the hole I have cut and he falls forward as another scrambles over him. This one
also gets a .22 to the skull. At least with the small caliber, I won’t have huge splatters to clean up. Look at the bright side.
The next zombie is harder to hit; its head pushing back and forth against the backs of the two now slumped over the edge of the hole. Another and another and the hole is clogged. I have bought some time.
I scoop up some .22 rounds; stuffing my pockets. I have left the other clips downstairs in the workshop turned zombie slaughter room. I walk to the hay door and lean out. Crack, crack, crack. Three more drop. Once the clip is empty, I remove it loading it again careful to pick the pocket lint off the rounds. Loading and shooting, every dozen rounds or so, I have a dud. I hold the rifle pointed in a safe direction counting to thirty before ejecting the round. I toss them out the window pinging off the shoulders of the dead.
After ten minutes, the backyard is clear. A mass of bodies freed from their unnatural animation, look peaceful in a way, spread before me.
I then walk, stepping on spent casings, pausing by the ladder to scoop up more ammo, and walk to the right of my bed. Looking down through the small rectangles of glass, I can see the front mob pressing into the entrance room. Some are turning now to look up at me.
With regret, I break a pane of glass and lay prone shooting at the zombies still outside. As they fall, some from inside come back out to turn and look up at me. Each curious customer gets the same answer, “Crack!” Fuck you for wanting to kill me!
The sun is high now and the barrel of the gun is frightfully hot. I decide to take a break before clearing the rest out. I prop the hot .22 against the rail and stretch my arm, sore from being held in the same position all morning. I gather the good rounds dropping them into the cardboard box and then gather the spent shells. I throw them out the window over the corpses. Pepper in the pot.
I jump and slap a rafter listening to the echo it makes competing with the shuffle of feet downstairs and the occasional moan. I get motivated and drop the ladder. Arms still press past the inanimate dead seeking me, but the plug is holding.
I am wary but feel that the plug of bodies will continue to hold. I open the door to the supply room and get a bunch of clips for the AK. I have left the .22 upstairs confident that my bathing pistol, inexplicably still hanging from my side, will do as a hold-out weapon.
I retrieve the AK, put in the clip, and pause considering my clothes. If it comes to it, and I am arms length from these things, I will want some extra layers between my skin and their teeth. I button on a coarse old army jacket, taking a fast glance at the moaning scraping dilemmas behind me. I can’t afford gloves. Heavy fingers are no good for working a gun. Before I get started, I grab the hammer from where it has fallen earlier and put it back through the loop provided for just such use on my thigh.
I stand three feet from the plugged hole in the wall and let loose trusting that the heavy 7.62 rounds will punch through bodies and anything else in the way. After a time, the plug falls apart. I hear the shatter of glass; the back window. I lean into the hole in the wall, careless of the slickness soaking into the arms of the jacket, pointing and shooting, racking up head shots on the invaders. I back out, turn to the side door which leads to the breached exterior door, throw the bolt, and let them come.
Close to a dozen are left. I take aim and wince at what lays beyond their heads. Cupboards full of empty jars, dishes and pans destroyed by the heavy AK rounds. Glass has fallen, wood splintered, holes in the walls. Holes in corpses.
Chapter 9
Sitting there in the big room on my old green couch, I lift my head and look around me. To the left is the three by three gore covered hole that I sawed through the wall to escape the bastards that broke through my door. Ahead of me the door to the entry room is held open by a stack of bodies; their putrescence leaking to the floor. The smell is oddly antiseptic. Perhaps the mind can only take so much stink before telling the nose to take a vacation.
What a fucking mess! I unzip and peel off the jacket, tossing it onto the slow puddle coming my way across the floor. It darkens as the fluid tries to flow past. My arms are stained a queer purplish yellow from the muck.
I have imagined this day many times over. Planned, re-planned and fortified. As well prepared as I thought myself, I still stare at disaster. Is this place even habitable? What if there had been a thousand? A million of them? Nevermind. I live.
I give up on fumbling for answers and decide to start the work of clearing out the barn. I am suitably attired, old boots, coveralls already stained with putrescence. Too many layers for comfort in this weather, but there is little choice. I fish an old pair of leather gloves from under the work table and put them on. The hammer still hangs on my leg slapping against my thigh as I walk. The AK is propped by the couch; still warm, and empty.
I step up onto the bodies piled in the doorway using the door frame to balance myself. It is an unnerving feeling walking on the dead. Leaning in, I look left at the carnage. Broken shit everywhere. Dead bodies everywhere. Illuminated by half inch shafts of light, streaming in through bullet-holes, punched into the far wall. Catastrophe. My poor lovely barn.
I hop down and look right at the busted door. It isn’t as bad as I thought. The board I nailed on the right hand side so that a bar could be dropped across the door has pulled free of the wall allowing the safeguard to fail; the door crashed in, but miraculously is whole and hinged.
I begin here; grabbing the first zombie by the ankles and dragging it into the yard. The grass grows a black trail from the entrance of the barn to the wire fence which runs the border of field and dirt road. As the pile along the fence grows, the trail glistens and becomes slippery. I fall occasionally, staining my legs. This is awful, hot business. The image of another wave of these things showing up is the taskmaster’s whip, forcing me to move faster. Every break I steal to catch my breath is a chance to scan the distance, to listen.
There is no way I am going to drag all of these things all the way to the ditch at the back of the orchard. I have the big room, entrance room, and much of the workshop cleared out, and I have counted thirty seven bodies. Already the sun is well past noon. I resolve to clear the bodies from the barn at least, and, then spend the night in my old shack. The barn is fucked and will take more than a whole day to get cleaned enough to any degree where I will want to inhabit it. I wipe my brow carefully with the sleeve of my shirt and continue.
The sun is sinking slowly over the tops of the trees when I decide to stop for the day. My gloves are so caked with gore that I am afraid it will seep through and make them useless as any kind of barrier to the ick, but it would still stop a bite. The pile of dead is three high and runs a good distance down the fence line.
The barn is free of bodies and halves of bodies and limbs. There are a few still out front, laying there in tangled poses. All morning long my eyes drifted to one form, somehow fallen into a restful pose, as if napping beneath a tree. This is the one that haunts me. As if all were well in his world, and I the anomaly. I close my eyes and look away. These ones will wait along with the large pile out back. There are almost sixty corpses in my pile and I figure there to be almost fifty more between the front and back.
I set the gloves by the well pump and work it for a time, cleaning my hands and running water over my head; cold -gloriously clean water. I drink then, deeply, leaning my face to the spout even though the temperature makes my teeth ache painfully.
I walk inside passing through to the big room disheartened by the wide planks still pooled in black gore. Soaking it in, staining the floors. Rummaging in the supply room, I pull down a coffee can of 7.62 rounds. I am using far too much of this stuff. I load the one clip then place it in my AK, slinging it and a canteen on my shoulder. I turn, grab a lantern-mostly full of kerosene, and close doors behind me as I leave. I notice that the board in the entrance room that always squeaks when I step on it fails to let out its familiar cry; soggy with this cursed black fluid.
It is dusk now, and I seek the familiar trail. As I pic
k my way through the grass, I think about my predicament. It will take too long to drag all those bodies to the trench. I decide then that I will cart them over to Bill’s old house and pile them there. It is the only safe place to burn them and it is a lot closer. I feel a pang of sorrow, of regret for desecrating Bill’s resting place this way, but in a land so fouled by death, one has to give in to the desensitizing reality of the needs of the living.
I think there is an old mop in the garage and I know there are a couple gallons of bleach hanging around, too. These will have to do for cleaning the floors. I hope that all that fluid doesn’t leak down onto my food stores in the cellar. I push that thought away.
Smelling the breeze that meanders through the trees, and my mind, and belly concentrating on food, I smell the tang of death. The deer!
It is a lost cause. Flies have found my little deer and it sways from the branch black and buzzing. What the hell was I thinking? I should have butchered it right away; clock ticking. Chop, chop. I untie it letting it fall, leaving it for the coyotes. Small losses, I keep telling myself. Breathe and be grateful.
The shack is dark, as it should be, and the moon rises over the hills beyond it. I step up to the door and open it. It smells a little stale, but compared to the horror of the barn, it is a lovely and familiar smell. I feel at the door frame above me and bring down the old plastic lighter I have left here; lighting the lantern. I hang the lantern in the center of the room and shut the door behind me.
I light a very small fire in the fireplace and look about me. In the cupboard there are MREs and canned food. But I am far from hungry. I untie my boots, leave them by the door, and then step out of the bibs. I toss my clothes outside on the dark steps, cautiously, lock up and then pull a chair over to the fire. I hang my canteen on the back of the chair and set the AK on the bed. Once the fire catches, I turn the lantern off.
Sitting there sipping water and staring into that lovely fire, I let my mind go blank. I am a hardened man. So many years spent in blind fascination of technology and cradled in comfort. Flicker. It is no surprise that those of us who still live are as tough as nails. The slow and sweet treat is trampled under feet. Flicker. Silas looks tough and leathery. Flicker. Bryce looks like he could run across that desert. Flicker. What will we wear when the clothes run out? Flicker. I let my eyes become distracted by the fire licking at the small sticks and one small log. I have to get over this self pity. Zombies knocked down my sand castle. I will build another. I hate the bastards. Not because they try to kill me, but because of what they are. They are us, ruining it for the rest of us, as we always have done.
