This Is Not The End: But I Can See It From Here (The Big Red Z Book 1)

by Thomas Head

  While the final breath leaves him, an enormous clap of thunder barks across the jungle and I can see the Indians stare at each other as if to decide what this means. The smoke is rolling across my head. A few more bend down to gawk as they pass me going into the wreckage, and someone says something that makes the others laugh.

  I watch them rummage through a pile of electronics. The old one, the leader, shakes his head no. The one he’s talking goes silent and motionless. He’s pissed. His eyes are milky with blood and something like snot. He yells out something that causes a great deal of debate.

  Then they gut-shoot him with an arrow. A hot, single arrow to rip through his small intestines. Then they do the one thing that really fucks us. The one fucking thing.

  They grab the beacon.

  Finished, they make their way back toward the way they came. They have taken no weapons. No slaves. But they are not fleeing—their actions are steady and assured while they assume stations down the length of a long canoe with a small outboard motor. Jagger shuts his eyes. The pain in my mouth and head and stomach and leg begin growing in surges. I’ve killed thousands. Never felt this kind of fury. Yeah, let me live, you sick fucks.

  I will splash my boots in your blood. I eat you mutha-fuckers alive.

  But then I see compassion. Maybe intimidation, like Saladin bringing Crusaders ice in the desert—they have gathered a few guns for us. Then their motor fires up, and only then do I see the ammo too, and I realize they have not left us as food for their dogs, not to mention the vultures and rats that are already gathering at the edge of the debri fields. They just came for some shit to trade.

  Mental note: Follow them. They’ll take our gear to some kind of market.

  My reddening eyes scan the wreckage in the growing light. How many more besides us alive? Five. Maybe seven. Ten maybe. Ten more or so that’ll be dead in an hour. All around are more than two hundred lifeless lumps, or pieces, frozen in their animate poses. Thinner and thinner plumes of smoke are pouring over the contorted frames.

  The Indians’ dogs are already at work on the wetter parts.

  Chapter 5

  I strain to stay alert, strain to sit up, strain to breath, straining until the edge of my vision start to fuzz again. Then I shiver and shake my pounding head. I was wrong; we can’t afford to try and follow them. We need to stick around for a day or two at least.

  I almost laugh when I think about it again. That we could have tracked those guys anyway. What the hell. When I do laugh, I realize the cruelty of it. There is a moment of perfect stillness, then comes heavy breathing. And perfect anger. Then the dead silence begins falling on us like snow.

  The rain stops, and the bugs and frogs shut up.

  And we just sit there.

  They took the world from us when they took the transmitter. They could check the flight path if the radar happened to be working. It’s too horrible to allow into my mind that it wouldn’t be. But. You know. Too horrible to admit the hard facts: Resources aren’t plentiful enough to fly out for eight or ten guys.

  Who knows. Maybe they will. No idea.

  Jagger’s leg is starting to cramp. I look at his face, you can tell it’s about to lock up rigid as steel, but he can do nothing to ease it. Low blood pressure from so much bleeding. He loses his balance and instinctively, he braces himself against a knot of small trees. I think he’s going to cry. Could be worse, I remind myself. They took what they did. Screw it. They could have taken everything else, and nothing came of it but more exhaustion and wounds that were not as deep as they felt when they first stabbed us. And they left us some rifles.

  Unless. If they poisoned us. No. We’d feel it by now; there’s nothing subtle or slow-acting about the jungle. I stare at the clouds a moment. Every gasp is bringing less air.

  Then, I thank them; in stark terror, I thank them: Twenty or two dozen naked, rotting Indian zombies, well-muscled. They are coming, crossing the debri fields like excited apes, their calls and growls like the sounds of bulls being castrated.

  “Fuck,” I whisper, a giant fist of pain squeezing my lower back. “Company.”

  Everyone crouches, gathering weapons. Six of us, taking position.

  “Where are they?”

  “My nine.”

  Nausea is starting to balloon in my chest, and they come. The cold shock of pain crumpling the faces of the men. I almost fall backward on top of my own leg as I put the M4’s scope to my eye. A film is all over it.

  Instead I instinct-sight the onrush.

  Shado coming, boys, whooping, rushing on all fours. My fist balls around the gun, and the undead give a shaky, loud squall with a noise that still slams you no matter how often you hear it. There is a massive pain, like a bolt of magma shooting from my knees to my neck as I open fire.

  For a pair of shivering moments, all is noise.

  They begin to shiver under the rain of bullets and as the ammo slams them, the trees behind them get red, as red as the ground under them. Then splotchy blackness. They begin to fall, ever moving, their “breathing” like hiccups now and you seem them crawling away, big flaps of corded meat splayed open on their torsos, feet, craniums. Then the limbs fall both from the trees and from the rotten, fungal beasts. Some crawl yet. The moment is stretching into a murder of eons before we are, one by one, laying off the triggers.

  We draw real breaths.

  Hard to tell the zombies from the men at this point. When the shaking slows, a wave of agony presses through my body, washing away the denser hurt as I sit on my butt and heft the SOPMOD M4 over my shoulder.

  I look and see the socks that somehow I thought was a portrait of my grandmother. I think of my father. He was already old when I was born. He had served, right at the onset, when we tried to stomp them out in India. Not one real idea of what we were dealing with just yet. My father, and your father, possessed the odd talent of being the strongest and the weakest person we ever knew. That is nature. And that shit is all around us. Nature. Half the species on the planet. I look at some movement in the leaf-litter at my feet. Some sort of brown and orange beetle. I can crush it without trying, but sit on it, who knows. Maybe that little bastard can make you feel like you just took a bullet to the ass. I don’t know shit about it. Except avoid anything that’s pinching, stinging, or biting. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it kills you. Maybe it’s a scorpion. Or a bright frog. A vine. The spiders are every-damn-where. Pretty sure we’re in Columbia. Maybe Ecuador. What have they got, two, three dozen kinds of poisonous snakes? Eyelash vipers. Some kind of hog-nose viper. Those colorful coral snakes with the rings. Nothing else comes to my numb mind; except the stuff that can eat you. Leopards. Crocs. Anacondas that couldn’t squeeze their fat asses through a car tire, but bet your own fat ass, they can be two feet away from you and you’d never see them.

  I get up off my own ass.

  Stepping toward a pile of wreckage, I shake, angry with myself, mad for being happy to be alive. What was I thinking? What the fuck was I thinking?

  I look around. Full light. Endless. It just goes on and on forever in every direction. I want to sit again. But I know what my jolted brain will do—it will squeeze more strange shit out.

  To business: We need to not get eaten, firstly. Let’s get some more guns, more ammo; all that we can find.

  Chapter 7

  My brain feels better now that all the hope is out of it. Besides, we have planned for this very thing. If it all dissolves to watery shit, we gather guns, then survivors. In that order. Then we build some kind of compound.

  I’m not even sure about that last part.

  I hobble toward some Kevlar vests. Three of them. Kick them together. That is more or less precisely when I discover my pinky toe is broken and start roaring, my fist in my mouth. Have to get over it. Have to act. Others are scavenging now. Good.

  “Anything that shoots.” I yell over to them.

  “No shit,” says Highway.

  He and Biggs are draped in ammo belts. Biggs is
big, some un-ironic fate life as given, even stronger than his looks. Like, he’s a mighty sum’bitch. He’s got on another Kevlar vest, plated. He pulls it open, looks at the wound in his belly, instantly regretting it. For the next seven or eight seconds, he closes his eyes. It will be nastier before it improves. He knows this. But knowing this is hardly a tonic. Already, the smell is worsening.

  Breathing like a woman giving birth, he hobbles to dump the ammo in a pile.

  I see Pip. Mean-looking redhead. He’s got no pants but he’s holding a single bar of gold. It is difficult work, not telling him to drop it, and it is incredibly worrisome to see the thin smile of shock on his face. He is shaking as though he’s hurting like fifteen hells but grasping that shit like a maniac. Staring at it. His face is screaming silently: It’s mine.

  Actually it is mine. Was. I had found it up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It had been just a yellow brick in the middle of I65. I had not known the value of gold before then, hadn’t known what it did to the heart. In your hands it is the most useful of all useless things. A lust saved for when all lust is lost. Gold had been the furthest thing from my head. Until I saw it. It had dumbed me. I had not even been wise enough to fear a trap. I had stopped, picked it up. Only later did I realize how fortunate, foolish I had been.

  I’m not asking that mean-looking bastard for it back.

  Then I see he’s got something else. A can of Diet Coke, of all damn things. Unopened after a nose dive into the jungle. I want that too. The absurdity cups my balls with feathery little hands a moment, then Pip looks at Biggs, and the mean-looking bastard pops open the can and offers it to him.

  Biggs kills it. Dickhead.

  Then Pip grabs a tactical shotgun by the barrel, pulls it out of a small puddle, a bandolier of shells, a knife, some crackers, and a crushed, nineteen-year-old pack of Marlboro. Good. He looks around one last time. He’s fine. Just needs some pants on his butt.

  There’s not much else that wasn’t part of the plane once.

  But shit, there’s Gilli. Gilli’s alive. He’s brought some helmets and a mask. They call this the Sunset War. Like we’re just shit out of luck. The Sunset of Humanity. But Gilli. He makes you forget with that north Georgia accent. Slick blonde. Could have been an actor. He’s just standing with his hands on his hips and that pretty idiot Owen Wilson grin like which one of us fucks decided crashing the plane was a good idea.

  “I say, boys. We’uh in a damn pickle.”

  Chapter 8

  Lord, just us six. A half a dozen damaged motherfuckers. Mean-looking Pip, Huge Biggs, Give a shit Jagger, Old Dog Highway, and Pretty Gilli.

  I straighten my back, look at the impressive pile of weapons. Ammo. Gear. MREs. More than you’d think. All gathered and sorted in less than a day. More than we could carry. It’s children’s laughter and dogs’ wagging butts reassuring. But it’s just a little moment. That shit ends quick. It’s afternoon. Too damn soon for being more tired and more afraid than before, if that’s possible. We’re damn few, even counting the soon to be dead, which I don’t.

  It seems clear Highway knows were fucked, but I hope he doesn’t say so when I approach him.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Go or stay?”

  “Both.” I know where he’s headed with this, but let him finish so the others can hear. “This scrap metal ain’t shit for cover. We go, get to high ground. Some place we can see the wreck. See if they’re coming for us.”

  “If not?” says Gilli.

  “The fuck you think, if not? We go west. The coast. Find us a boat and get our asses up to Mexico.”

  “I like it,” Jagger puts in.

  “I’m glad,” Highways chides, but his look is accompanied with a thankful nod.

  Moments later, we decide it is time to act. For my taste, we move a little too fast, selecting the weapons. Feels like we should slow down, be careful.

  After five minutes, it hits me.

  “Shit,” I stop, hop back.

  Everyone halts. Looks at me.

  “The fuck are we thinking? A lookout.”

  “Yeah,” Highway nods. Points my ass to a clearing, a wide muddy skid the plane had made. He throws me a SOPMOD M4 and a half of a bandolier of shells.

  I pat my vest, feel that sturdy Kevlar. Then I go, thinking of picking a higher place where I can wait and snipe for them if need arises, like a good sniper should, or a madman, but not as mad as walking alone into a little stretch of nothing. I don’t know that there are any high places anyway. None with a clear view. The undead, or maybe some unfriendlies, they could be to our flanks or circling ahead, and waiting for us. That, or something had just plain gone out of me.

  Leaving the group, something’s got fear going through me, circulating like blood. It’s got the sight of the dead making me sick now for some reason.

  Then cra-aack, a pair of legs shoot by me, and I’m deaf. I can’t hear anything.

  What the shit?

  There’s just the ringing in my ears. Hell’s crickets in my skull. I’m drenched on my backside. Blood. What the shit? Lightheaded, dizzy, I’m going down. On my knees, I hold my ear. Check for blood, and I find some but I sense it is not mine.

  Grenade blast, by the smell. Detonation wets the air with a sort of dangerous odor. The musty smell of bowels comes after.

  I don’t want to look. Almost can’t. But, hell.

  And it’s true.

  They’re ghosts, all. Just pieces. I freeze. Lord take me, there on my knees, perfectly motionless. Screw it, I’m done, and my thoughts seem to frighten a bit of movement from Highway’s eyeless corpse. Every one of them, dead, bluish and devoid of anything identifiable. There are no whole people left, and Lord, there is no time to mourn them in the late afternoon shadows.

  Walking on my knees, closer now, the disbelieving gets thicker and more intense. But then, in an instant that comes so fast that I grab it like an arrow in flight, I feel the power of the gold. And surprise, surprise, guess what: I decide I owe it to myself to pick through the bloody soil for the bar.

  Chapter 9

  The distraction is short-lived, but the gold takes a half an hour to find, half-buried under what looks like the hoof of a piglet. It’s Pip’s severed forearm.

  I pull the bar tenderly from the gunk. Laying it atop a sheet of moss I wipe the flesh off of it with my wrist. It’s no easy thing to admit that it looks handsome, the way natural elements do when they are not too polished or refined.

  Suddenly monkeys yell from the trees. I imagine they’re yelling something about money. It is loud enough that I have to look up at them, and I see one of them, a small reddish male, making a slapping motion, as if he’s spanking the air.

  I find it unclear what it is he means to convey. Until it throws a fistful of his shit at me.

  Well then. Fuck you, too, monkey, I am alive.

  Looking around, though, I wonder if I truly am. There are no dying anymore, no one to stir and call out my name. They are silent and motionless, all. I breathe and try to feel the fact of this. But the absence of a thing is very much a thing. Consider the night. I begin to shake. Some of that old horrible scotch would be terrific. There is none, of course, but I have my canteen. I put the gold in a sub-belt beside a pair of shattered binos. Along with the cell battery for my night vision goggles, which will last maybe a week without recharging, my back is now laden with a three pack of MRIs, an empty hydration pouch, a bent shovel, a tomahawk, a bandolier of M4 shells, of which there about half left. A few more rounds of 40 cal shells. There’s a small sub-belt of survival gear, including a spark box, some fishing line with three hooks, a knife, a reflective thermal bag for sleeping or collecting water, one flare, one smoke bomb, and two lengths of twenty seven foot nylon cord. The radio in my helmet is busted and we have failed, utterly, in finding one that works. So I can take the cell battery out of it, I decide. But I catch my idiocy before I toss it. Who knows.

  And with these things I get going,
trekking onto a sunken path, or maybe a small creek, to the sight of a small rise in the west.

  ***

  Exhausted and feeling somehow shit-faced drunk, every step sends crashes of pain sweeping up my left leg. As I step across the bumpy and engorged roots it gets worse. There is not one step that doesn’t cost a crazy amount of energy, energy that feels like it was stolen away long ago.

  But I’m almost thankful for the distraction. Uninvited realities are already coming fast. The vast path ahead. Finding a way through the mountains, where the Shado are unaffected by altitude. Getting to some sort of boat. It already seems so long and impossible that I allow myself hope—hope that they’ll send a helo out to search for us. Which is about as likely as making out alive.

  Thinking about Jagger focuses me. A rarity among men. I know that. I had loved his ways. I had wanted to make it out of this with him. Be old farts and argue about ridiculous things together.

  I think of Emily instead, then have to stop that, too. Unthinking, just moving, I keep my mind attuned only to the moment until dusk finally seeps out of from the tree-filled hollows to once again to rise into the sky. Finally I let myself pause. I am deep in the trail, not yet to the base of the hill. Far behind me is the wreckage, still alive with its smell and its scatterings of firelight. Chunks of the plane sit tucked into the folds of the landscape.

  How had it not been engulfed in flame?

  The empty noises of gratitude echo in my skull. My heart flickers, shadow-fingers of joy danced up my back. To think that I survived. Shite fire, man. I look at it for a while again, vaguely envious for reasons I can’t fathom.

  Then I catch an odd smell.

  I sniff the air, dog-like. The odor is faint and appealing. And familiar. I deign to my knees and knuckles. For a long while I smell the ground itself. When I recognize the odor, my entire body recoils.