by Ray Wallace
The arm attached to the torso twitched, the fingers flexed, curling and uncurling, a phenomenon Simon knew could continue for several hours once the zombie's brain had been destroyed or the head removed from the body. It was as though it took a while for the various pieces to realize their usefulness had been eradicated, that their services were no longer required. At first the sight had fascinated him but over time he'd grown bored with it, much as he'd grown bored with dismembering zombies.
It wasn't enough. Not anymore.
He walked over and grabbed the head, lifted it by the hair, its red eyes staring back at him, teeth gnashing, so close to the living flesh they wished to tear into. Yes, the facial features did possess more than a passing resemblance to Eric's, the reason he'd chosen this particular specimen in the first place. Because if he couldn't have the real thing...
Simon stared into the face before him in the murky lighting offered by the garage's lone, grime covered window. Then he dropped the head and gave it another kick.
Getting the zombie into the garage had been a fairly simple endeavor. He'd used a device he'd created shortly after he and his traveling companions had settled in at the house where they'd been staying. The device consisted of a shovel handle with a hole near the end of it—luckily, he'd found a power dill with enough juice left in the battery to get the job done—and a length of twine threaded through the hole which had been tied into a noose. All he had to do was reach out with the handle and drop the noose over a zombie's head, use it to guide the creature—usually quite forcefully—wherever he wanted, safely out of its reach. Over the past couple of days, he'd brought three of the undead things into the garage, each one of them bearing some passing resemblance to the man he wished to kill.
He'd littered several other garages in the area with body parts, too. And, yes, he'd enjoyed every moment spent stabbing, cutting, and hacking apart his Eric stand-ins. But, like a drug losing its potency with each subsequent use, he'd found himself enjoying the process a little less each time until finally...
It wasn't enough. Not anymore.
He thought about Amanda, the strange power she seemed to wield over him, the only reason Eric was still alive. Simon knew she had no interest in him, that she had given herself to Eric. He still wanted her to like him, though. But it wasn't as much of a concern as it had been once upon a time.
Do I still love her?
He followed this question with another one:
Does it really matter?
Obviously, she did not love him. And he had to concede the fact that she probably never would.
Hell, if rescuing her and her son hadn't done the trick...
With every passing day, he could feel the pressure building inside of him, demanding release, the feeling that had driven him to kill so many others before. Butchering these zombies, these cheap imitations of living, breathing victims had served as a nice distraction for a while. But he needed to see the fear in the faces of his victims, watch the light go out in their eyes. With the undead, there was no fear, and the light was already gone.
It wasn't enough. Not anymore.
Standing there in the stench and the stifling heat of the garage, he came to a decision, one that brought a smile to his face along with a welcome sense of anticipation.
Wednesday, August 26th
Governor Richards lay in the dark, waiting for the sleeping pill to kick in, listened as his wife mumbled something low and incomprehensible from her side of the bed. He envied her ability to drift off within minutes of putting head to pillow. For him, attaining sleep often seemed like a quest of sorts, one that became more difficult to complete as the years went by, strewn with various pitfalls and detours created by his racing mind. As a “servant of the people,” there had always been plenty to keep that mind of his racing. And ever since the outbreak, it had only gotten worse. Thus, the sleeping pill along with the stiff drink he'd used to wash it down.
No one forced you to get into politics.
Looking back, he often wondered what had obsessed him to run for office in the first place. Youth and a strong desire to change the world on some level, he supposed.
It all began more than twenty years ago. He'd been fresh out of college with a head full of powerful ideals and principles, a certainty that he and he alone could bend the system to his will, that he could really make a difference in people's lives. Of course, the longer he'd been a part of that system the more he realized just how inflexible it had become in the long centuries of its existence. This didn't stop him from trying, though. Because of this attitude, he developed a reputation as “the people's politician” and managed to garner enough political clout to make a run for the state of Michigan's highest office. He'd also learned enough about the game—that's what it was, really, a game with winners and losers—how he needed to make the right promises to the right people to actually attain that office. Once there, he did what he could to maintain his status as “the people's politician.” But the game had its rules and there was no shortage of seasoned, powerful players ready and willing to take him out. So, in the end, there was only so much he could do for the common people, the men and women who put in long hours working whatever jobs they could find, doing whatever they could to stay above water, to keep from going under, all the while dreaming of something better.
As he lay in the bedroom of the sprawling governor's mansion, waiting for sleep, he longed for the days—not so long ago—when the worst he had to deal with was a touch of guilt at not living up to the promises he'd made to the people who'd voted for him, the people who'd believed in him. After the events that had started to unfold at the beginning of the summer, such concerns seemed insignificant at best. The world had changed in terrifying and wholly unforeseeable ways. In less than three months, much of the country had succumbed to the various horrors of the zombie plague. If not for a quirk of geographical good fortune, the large section of Michigan that had been dubbed “the zone” would have undoubtedly suffered as well.
The Great Lakes served as natural barriers around much of the area's land mass. Within days of the President's order, the fences had gone up along the state's southern border, the direction from which the greatest threat presented itself. The stretch of land between Lake Erie and Lake Huron along the eastern border had been fenced off as well. After that, explosives had been used to demolish a hundred feet of the Mackinac Bridge, effectively cutting off access to the state's upper peninsula, leaving it to fend for itself. From that moment onward, all traffic in and out of the zone had been strictly controlled and monitored. Soldiers guarded the fences while drones patrolled the skies over the lakes, looking for anyone attempting to cross by boat, day or night. Drastic measures, to be sure. But they had worked. Millions of Michigan’s citizens had been able to lead mostly normal lives while chaos gripped the rest of the nation.
Governor Richards worried, though. How could he not? They'd gotten extremely lucky, he knew. He couldn't help but wonder how long that luck would hold out.
He had concerns regarding the military. Not the soldiers who'd done such a spectacular job of securing the zone's boundaries. No, he found himself worrying about the various bases that had fallen silent across the country. Just knowing that NORAD had gone quiet was enough to keep him up at night.
All of that destructive power at their fingertips...
And he worried about former Vice President O'Connor, now the acting President of the United States. Michigan had a second governor's mansion located on Mackinac Island in Lake Huron. The new POTUS had been spending all of his time there, blissfully drunk and doing everything within his power to ignore his presidential duties.
Yes, Governor Richards worried.
With good reason.
His mind continued to race as he lay next to his wife, thinking about all that had happened this terrible summer, what unforeseen horrors might yet make themselves known. Eventually, however, the sleeping pill did its job, granting him a few hours of peace.
&nbs
p; Thursday, August 27th
"We have to go. Now."
Amanda looked up from where she sat on the living room floor, playing cards with Mitchell. Eric had just entered the house in a rush, a wild look on his face.
"Put your shoes on," he said. "Leave everything else."
Less than a minute later, the three of them left the house on foot. They followed a narrow road with trees and overgrown yards to either side of it, Eric carrying a pistol he'd acquired during the journey that had brought them to this place.
"What's going on?" Amanda wanted to know. "Where's Simon?"
In response, Eric shook his head and said, "Not now. Just keep moving."
She didn't like any of this, not one bit, but she trusted Eric and did as he instructed.
"Mommy, you're hurting my hand," said Mitchell, walking beside her.
She loosened her grip. “Sorry, baby.”
"This way," said Eric when they were a few blocks from the house. He led them away from the road through a scattering of trees and into the wide, grassy field beyond. "There's another road over there, straight ahead," he told them, gesturing with the gun in his hand.
The sun hovered just above the horizon, ready to drop out of view and usher in another hot summer night, one Amanda had expected to spend in the house where they'd resided in recent weeks. She'd felt somewhat protected there from the horrors that wandered through the darkness outside, pretending—for the sake of her son, mostly—that a semblance of normality had returned to their lives. Ever since she and Eric had taken their relationship to another level, there had been moments when she'd been able to convince herself that a bit of normality actually had found its way back into the world.
Simon had continued to come and go, spending more and more time away from the house.
"Just keeping an eye on things," he liked to say. “Wanna make sure there's nothing trying to sneak up on us.”
When asked if he'd discovered anything noteworthy, any cause for concern, he'd shake his head dismissively and say, "A few loners. Nothing to worry about."
“Are you sure they won't be a problem?” she'd asked him a few days back.
He'd nodded his head and offered a little grin. "It's all been taken care of."
As she made her way across the field with Mitchell and Eric, she stayed alert for trouble, especially of the undead variety. When nothing presented itself, she had to wonder at the number of zombies Simon had “taken care of” since they'd first come to this place.
"Almost there," said Eric.
Moments later, they stepped out of the high grass and onto the asphalt, heading north, the only direction that made any sense.
"Amanda!"
She turned to see Simon walking across the field, the man who'd saved her and her son. The man they now fled—she knew this without Eric having to tell her.
Eric stopped, motioned for her and Mitchell to get behind him. And there they stood in the middle of the road, waiting for Simon to arrive.
"Amanda,” he said once again when he reached the street, stopping about ten feet away. “Where are you going?"
Eric raised his arm, pointing the gun at Simon who stared back at him, an aluminum baseball bat clutched in one hand, hunting knife held in the other, its blade glinting in the sunlight.
"Take one step closer," said Eric, "and I will shoot you."
Simon continued to stare at him, expressionless, seemingly unmoved by this threat. "And why would you do that?"
"Because I know what you are," Eric told him. “I followed you, saw you go into that house. After you left, I went inside and looked around, went into the garage..."
Simon pursed his lips in disappointment. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Amanda noticed the gun in Eric's hand had started to tremble ever so slightly.
"You're sorry?"
A shrug. "Sorry I didn't get the chance to show you myself."
The trembling became more pronounced.
"Don't do it," Amanda told him. "He saved my life. And Mitchell's."
Whatever was going on here, she couldn't let Eric commit murder.
Several long, silent seconds slipped by before Eric finally said, "Get out of here."
Simon didn't move.
"Leave now. Or else…"
Another moment passed before Simon said, “Well, I guess this is goodbye then, Amanda. For now.” With that, he turned and left the road then made his way back across the field.
Amanda placed a hand on Eric's arm, pressed down until the gun hung at his side, pointed at the ground.
“Let's go,” she said.
It wasn't until they'd found another house to stay in that night, not until Mitchell had drifted off to sleep that Eric told her what he’d found, what Simon had been up to all those times he'd been away.
Friday, August 28th
One limping stride after the next, the zombie moved onward, ever onward, driven by a wordless command it found impossible to resist. It was not the only one of its kind compelled to do so. Far from it. A migration was under way. The dead had been called from far and wide, motivated by the single urge that controlled them, and the promise that it would be fully satiated upon reaching their destination. For those creatures forced to survive in areas long overrun by the undead, where sustenance was scarce and hunger a near constant companion, it was a promise that could not be ignored.
Casey.
After a recent feeding, the name had resurfaced once again, only to fade with every minute that passed, with every mile it covered. The zombie wandered north, finding prey where and when it could, when the group with which it traveled chanced upon some unfortunate person, surrounding him—or her, as the case may have been—cutting off any avenue of escape.
This exodus, this mass migration of the undead, suffered its share of losses. Zombies made easy targets, after all. They were dim-witted and slow, would not be considered agile by anyone's definition of the term. And the living possessed many weapons that could strike them down. The undead had numbers, though, as their multitude increased every day, every hour, while the plague raged on. And so the undead army continued to grow despite the losses it suffered.
Casey.
The zombie moved ever further north, never tiring, driven by a will that was not entirely its own. Night and day, through lashing storms and blistering heat, it continued to walk, to trudge and shamble and stumble its way along sidewalks and streets, through dense woods and wide swaths of open land, putting ever more distance between itself and the city where it had been reborn as this red-eyed, ravenous thing. It did so based on a wordless command, a promise that the journey would be well worth whatever suffering it might endure along the way. And suffer it did. Gunshot wounds. A knife to the abdomen. A short but fairly severe beating at the hands of one of its victims. Oozing sores along the bottoms of both feet. And the constant harassment of flies, drawn by its foul odor and the wounds inflicted upon its flesh that never quite healed. Yes, it suffered, most of all when the hunger grew strong and all-powerful, when it squeezed what remained of the zombie's psyche in its burning fist.
The suffering didn't matter, though. Completing its journey was all that mattered to the zombie anymore. And so, aside from the rare moments when it was able to feed, it never stopped walking, not even when the rising sun illuminated a large body of water stretching away into the distance directly before it.
Casey.
The zombie knew that its destination, the reason it had traveled all this way was close now. So close...
It waded into the lake, never hesitating as the surface rose above its knees then its waist, up to its chin and over its head. Water poured in through its nose and gaping mouth, filling its lungs and reducing its buoyancy. After the last air bubble escaped from its mouth, it walked along the lakebed, covering ground even slower than before. The zombie did not fear this strange, new environment, gave it little to no consideration whatsoever. It only knew that it had to keep going, that it had to reach the other side
of the lake.
So said the wordless command in its strange, inexplicable way. So said the hunger that, as always, drove it onward, leaving it no choice but to obey. No choice at all.
Saturday, August 29th
Dear Diary,
Aaron's dead.
It happened the other day when we reached the border. Traffic was backed up about half a mile with people waiting for their turn to either be let in or turned away. From what we could see, it looked like the rumors were true and many of them were being turned away. After inching along for an hour or more, a pair of soldiers approached us, masks covering their faces below the eyes, rifles held in front of them. From what I can remember, the conversation that followed went something like this:
"State your business," said the soldier standing outside the driver side door.
"Business?" asked Roger. I was glad it was him and not Aaron behind the wheel. "Well, we're not here on business. We were just hoping—"
The soldier cut him off.
"Is this a return trip to the zone or your first time approaching the area?"
"Our first time.”
"Has any member of your party showed signs of illness within the past two weeks?"
"No. Actually..."
I knew what he was going to say next, but he never got the chance.
"What the hell is this?!" Aaron shouted from the seat behind Roger's. Luke and I were in the very back of the SUV, staying quiet and letting Roger do the talking, just like he'd suggested.
"Sir, they're just standard questions," said the other soldier from outside the passenger side window, next to where Brenda was sitting.
Aaron grumbled something under his breath.
"Just ignore him," said Roger, sounding a little bit angry now. "No one in this vehicle is sick, nor have we been sick. That's the God's honest truth."
The soldier he spoke to seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he nodded his head.
