Desolation

by Mark Campbell

  The man turned his pistol towards Andrew.

  Andrew froze in his tracks.

  “I’m going to tell him that we just want a little food and shelter,” Jerri explained to Andrew. “I’ll tell him that we want to stay just one night.”

  Andrew nodded reluctantly.

  The man brandishing the pistol stared at both of them with fear in his eyes, gun trembling in his hands.

  “Sólo queremos que nos des alimentos y refugio,” Jerri told the man, voice pleading. “Por favor, señor. Sólo una noche.”

  The man with the gun started to shake his head repeatedly. “No! No! Mi familia! No puedes quedarte aquí!” the man shouted. “Esta es mi tienda!”

  Andrew looked over at Jerri, eyes frantic.

  “He said no… He said that his family is here and that this is his store,” she explained, face sunken.

  “Tienen un bebé...” a woman said from the corner of the room in a mousey voice. “Tienen un bebé, mi amor.” Jerri and Andrew quickly turned towards the voice and saw an attractive woman. Behind her, four small frightened children hid behind her legs, peeking around at the strangers. Three were girls and one was a boy.

  “Quédate ahí atrás! Mantente alejado de ellos!” the man shouted towards the woman, his wife. “She’s talking about Jacob,” Jerri said, surprised by group in the corner. “She wants to help us, Andrew. The man told her to stay away from us.”

  “Son monstruos, mami?” one of the girls asked.

  The woman looked down at the little girl and shook her head. “Son peores. Son extraños,” the woman said.

  Jerri frowned, horrified.

  Andrew looked over at Jerri, lost.

  “One of the little girls just asked if we are monsters…” Jerri said, frowning. “The woman said that we’re worse than monsters.” “ Worse?” Andrew asked in confusion, arms still above his head. Jerri nodded.

  “We’re strangers,” she said.

  Andrew started to walk towards the woman.

  “Look, we’re not here to hurt anybody, please! Just listen!” Andrew begged. The woman and the children started screaming. “Stop! Just–”

  The man struck the back of Andrew’s head with the pistol, hard. Andrew stumbled forward and fell down onto his hands and knees, bleeding out of the back of his head.

  The woman and the children screamed again.

  “No lo mates! Por favor!” Jerri begged, stepping towards the man. “Fuera! Fuera de mi tienda y deja a mi familia en paz!” the man shouted at Jerri. He grabbed the semiconscious Andrew by his collar and dragged him out the door through the storeroom in the back of the store.

  Jerri ran after the man with Jacob, frantic.

  “El bebé! El bebé!” the man’s wife shouted. “Los monstruos se apoderaran de ella y el bebé! Por favor!” “Cállate!” the man shouted at his wife who was still in the other room. He hurled Andrew out of the back door into the alleyway and then pointed the gun at Jerri, barrel shaking. “Fuera! Get out! GO!”

  Jerri cautiously walked towards the door, nodding, holding Jacob protectively.

  The man’s wife ran into the room holding two cans of baby formula and a bottle still wrapped in its original packaging.

  “No lo hagas!” the man shouted.

  The woman ignored him and tucked the items into Jerri’s arms, into Jacob’s shawl. “Para el bebé,” the woman said with a half-smile.

  “Gracias,” Jerri said.

  “Puta estupido!” the man said, spitting onto the ground.

  “De nada,” the woman said to Jerri while keeping her eyes narrowed on her husband.

  Jerri walked past the man to the door, careful not to turn her back towards him as she inched past his gun’s barrel. “ Fuera! Go!” the man shouted as he took her knife and threw it on the ground. Before she could protest, he pushed Jerri out the door towards Andrew.

  Jerri stumbled out into the alleyway and the door slammed shut behind her. She stood next to Andrew who was still on his hands and knees, trying to compose his spinning head. She heard the man and the woman arguing inside the store.

  “That fucking bastard…” Andrew said, spitting blood onto the pavement. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

  He tried to stand but collapsed back onto his hands and knees, looking like a weaponless clown that nobody would take seriously. Jerri ignored his empty threat and shoved the two cans of formula in her front pockets and the empty baby bottle in her back pocket. She looked down the alleyway with concern, trying to figure out what to do next.

  32

  Andrew walked down the deserted street pressing a hand against his wounded scalp. Blood trickled out from between his fingers and matted down his hair.

  Jerri followed behind him, cradling Jacob’s freezing little body against hers, protecting his fragile frame from the cool air. The sun had almost fully sunk into the west and darkness was starting to swallow the powerless city. Everything looked more menacing in the dark; alleyways were impenetrable, the abandoned buildings loomed into the air like jagged mausoleums, and navigating the dark city streets was next to impossible.

  A few of the buildings they passed had lanterns flickering inside of them and their front doors barricaded. They made sure to give the occupied dwellings a wide breadth.

  As they walked, they felt eyes on them. “Andrew,” Jerri said, looking over her shoulder. She thought she heard a noise. Her stomach continued to growl and she felt weak and parched.

  “What?” he grumbled in reply. He took off his FEMA uniform shirt and wrapped it around his hand. He pressed the shirt against his bleeding wound and held it in place, grimacing in pain. He was wearing a thin t-shirt underneath his uniform shirt, covered in sweat.

  “I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” she said as she looked over at him, embarrassed about her behavior. It was amazing how different and normal he looked without his uniform shirt. Truth be told, he really wasn’t a bad looking guy. “I didn’t mean to go off on you.”

  Andrew shook his head and kept walking.

  “I’m sorry for grabbing your hand,” he said. “I was just worried when you ran off like that.”

  “Believe it or not I can actually take care of myself from time to time,” she said with a slight smile.

  Andrew chuckled. “Apparently you can speak Spanish too,” he said as he tried to fight off another dizzy spell; he was starving. “Any other secrets I don’t know about you?”

  “Lots,” she mused playfully. “What about you? What secrets are you keeping behind those inquisitive blue eyes?” Andrew turned towards her, grinning.

  “I speak Italian,” he said.

  She laughed.

  He was elated that her icy wall seemed to be melting again. She was beautiful and a smile looked good on her. Perhaps Chris didn’t ruin everything. All attraction takes is time and energy; Andrew had all of the time in the world. Now if he could just patch her sanity…

  He lost his smile.

  “Jerri… behind you,” he said as he reached for a pistol that wasn’t there anymore thanks to the altercation in the grocery store. Jerri spun around and her expression sunk. Shamblers started to emerge out of the seemingly empty buildings and emerge out from alleyways as darkness consumed the city. They shuffled towards Jerri and Andrew, moaning, barely able to use their decrepit legs. Their dried, sun baked skin was pulled tight against their gaunt bodies. Unable to burrow into the concrete streets in order to avoid the sun’s harsh waves, the infected learned to use other means of hiding to slow their inevitable demise.

  A National Guard soldier wearing a tattered uniformed limped towards Jerri, nearly close enough to grab her.

  Jerri screamed and ran towards Andrew.

  “Run! Just run!” Andrew shouted as he threw his bloodied FEMA shirt at the soldier. The soldier snatched the shirt and started to rip it apart with his rotten teeth, sucking the blood out of the fabric greedily. Other shamblers nearby swarmed the solider and went into a frenzy as they jostled for the shirt. Soo
n there were over fifty piled on top of each other.

  Hundreds more continued to emerge out of their hiding spots and stumbled after Jerri and Andrew moving with the awkward gait and slow speed that they were known for.

  Andrew ran as fast as his malnourished legs would allow and Jerri lagged behind.

  Suddenly a lit flare landed behind Jerri and Andrew and bathed the street in a flickering red glow. Andrew, startled, froze and turned towards the flare, struggling to catch his breath. Jerri ran up next to him, almost collapsing on the ground.

  The shambling horde gathered around the flare, swiping their boney hands at it as they trampled each other. The red glow revealed their sunken eye sockets and yellow rotted teeth. As the flare started to extinguish under the trampling feet of the dead, the horde’s attention shifted back to Andrew and Jerri.

  Slowly, they started to shuffle towards their prey once again. “Get over here!” a man shouted. “Don’t just stand there gawking like deer in a headlight!”

  Andrew and Jerri jumped and turned towards the voice. The man was standing across the street on the balcony of a mortar-damaged apartment building. Empty milk crates and boxes of flares littered the balcony where the man stood. The bottom floor of the apartment building had been heavily fortified and covered in plywood.

  Long gray hair hung off of the man’s head and an unevenly cut beard covered his gaunt face. His skin was pale and his eyes had dark circles around them. His thin body was enshrouded by a black poncho. He waved his hands above his head, holding an un-lit roadside flare in each hand. He kicked a rope ladder over the side of the balcony and let the end tumble down onto the pavement.

  Jerri looked uneasily over at Andrew, leery of the stranger’s offer even as the dead closed in all around them.

  “We don’t have many other options,” Andrew said as he hurried towards the rope ladder, limping rather than running. “Come on, Jerri!” Jerri ran after him, clutching Jacob tightly.

  The man on the balcony lit the flares and hurled them out into the massive crowd.

  The flares landed, but this time the infected didn’t pay them any attention.

  “Ah, shit,” the man muttered, running his fingers through his scraggly beard. “Just hurry! They got your scent now!”

  Andrew flung himself onto the ladder and held onto the rung with one hand, turning towards Jerri. Jerri shoved past two corpses who had shambled into her path, knocking them onto the ground. She ran towards Andrew and quickly handed Jacob off to him.

  Andrew grimaced and reluctantly took the child and held him on his shoulder with one hand and made his way up the ladder, struggling. Jerri trudged up after him, grunting with each rung as the ladder swayed from side to side. The infected at the bottom of the ladder started to weakly clasp the ladder, shaking it. They gathered at the bottom with their arms outstretched towards the sky, reaching for their prey.

  Andrew reached the balcony first and quickly handed the man the shawl covered baby.

  The man looked at the wrapped child with wonderment and froze for a brief second.

  “Help me up!” Andrew yelled, waving his hand in front of the man’s chest. His grip was failing and his legs were turning wobbly. The man quickly laid the child down in a milk crate and snatched Andrew’s hand. Grunting, he pulled Andrew onto the balcony. Andrew collapsed on his hands and knees, breathing wildly. The man reached down and pulled Jerri onto the balcony, gently catching her as her knees gave out. One of the infected, a policeman whose ribcage jaunted out of his tattered uniform shirt, started to slowly and awkwardly climb the rope ladder, pulling himself up with his leathery hands one rung at a time.

  “Oh no you don’t, you clever little fucker,” the man on the balcony shouted, cackling. He pulled out a bowie knife from his boot and sliced the rope ladder.

  The ladder and the policeman went tumbling down into the sea of shamblers. The man walked over to Jerri and helped her onto her feet. “Thank you,” she managed to say in a weak voice.

  Andrew stood up and nearly collapsed. He caught himself on the handrail of the balcony and looked over at the man with suspicion, struggling to breathe.

  Jerri leaned down and picked up Jacob, patting the baby on the back gently.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Andrew finally said. “Name’s Andrew.” “I’m Jerri,” she told the man. She rocked the baby and looked down at him. “And this is Jacob.” The man studied the trio carefully, wringing his hands together nervously. He listened to the infected moan and clamor on the ground below.

  “Withers,” the man finally said. “But my friends used to just call me Witt. I’m guessing you’d all like to come inside for a spell.” “Depends,” Andrew said as he glanced at the balcony door. “Last time we walked inside things didn’t go so well. So what’s waiting for us inside this time?”

  Witt cackled.

  “Tea,” he said, “And if we’re lucky there may be some biscuits to go with it.”

  The group walked into apartment and Witt slid the sliding glass door shut behind them.

  The infected on the street lowered their arms and staggered aimlessly along the pavement, wandering off into every direction.

  33

  Witt’s apartment was , to Jerri's surprise, very clean and tidy. Trinkets and knickknacks covered the living room walls and the apartment was nicely appointed with fine furnishings. The windows were all covered with black sheets. A powerless television dominated the living room wall, a monolithic technological monument to a world that didn’t exist anymore.

  Situated directly across for the living room sat the kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment, it was meticulously clean and was nicely stocked. Cans of food, soda, and bottles of water sat stacked underneath the cabinets. A propane oven sat in the middle of the kitchen in front of the powerless refrigerator.

  Two bedroom doors sat at the end of a hallway between the kitchen and the living room; one of the doors was locked on the outside with a padlock and the other bedroom as decorated with colorful floral prints and had a sign on it that read ‘JeSsIcA ~ Knock First’.

  The front door was barricaded and the entire apartment was lit by an array of kerosene lanterns. Jerri and Andrew sat uncomfortably on the sofa with their emptied cups sitting in front of them on the coffee table. The tea and biscuits were a rare treat and absolutely delicious.

  Even better was the hot meal of canned chicken and lima beans that Witt had cooked for them. Jerri held Jacob in her arms and held his new bottle against his lips, but to her disappointment he was deep asleep and wouldn’t touch the formula.

  Witt sat in front of them on the recliner, inhaling his herbal tea and savoring the aroma with his eyes closed.

  Nobody said anything since they came inside and an awkward silence hung heavily in the air. “So,” Witt finally said, opening his eyes. “How long has it been since you two escaped from the FEMA camp, or, as we call ‘em out here, the famine camps?”

  Witt chuckled.

  Andrew looked over at him, surprised.

  “How did you know we came from a camp…?” he asked.

  “Well it is pretty obvious,” Witt mused. “If you were from the outlands, you’d know better than to walk around the city at night. By the looks of you two I’d say you’ve been out only about a day or two.”

  Andrew looked down and felt embarrassed.

  Jerri had a puzzled looked on her face.

  “I’m sorry, but since when did the shamblers turn into vampires who only come out at night?” she asked. “This whole behavior is new to me…”

  Witt started to laugh and slap his knee. “Shamblers! I like that! We call them for what they are out here. We just call them zombies,” he said matter-of-factly. “No need to be all politically correct. They don’t get offended. Still to answer your question, the zombies didn’t start hiding from the sunlight until a few months ago. Guess they saw how quick they were drying up and dying off.”

  “We saw some burrow in the desert earlier,” Andrew spoke up. Witt s
hrugged.

  “I’ve heard of that. Up north I heard they lie in rivers and hide in sod. It doesn’t surprise me since its all the same reasoning. I heard that the cold killed them all up north.” Witt said as he took a sip of tea. “Of course, this is all just rumor. The fact is that if you get close enough to one of their hiding spots and they catch your scent… well… they couldn’t care less about the sunlight. They’re opportunistic predators.”

  Andrew nodded, fascinated. The whole point of the project he was once a part of was becoming apparent to him; he had no idea that the undead population was still such a problem. He never really understood the project at first, given the side-effects it had on healthy humans, but it all started to become quite crystal clear.

  “There goes your intelligent zombie theory,” Jerri mused. “Guess it wasn’t a trap after all… We just disturbed their nap.” Andrew looked over at her, embarrassed.

  Witt laughed.

  “They’re smart… but not smart enough to make traps,” Witt said. He sat his cup down and leaned closer, folding his hands on his lap. “So how did you do it?” he asked in a secretive tone. “I heard that those FEMA bastards weren’t letting anybody leave the encampments…”

  Andrew looked away and hesitated.

  “There was a siege,” Jerri answered. “The marauders were using the vaccine to infect the camp from outside the walls… We escaped during the chaos.”

  Witt nodded and sat back in his chair and his poncho flapped open. For the first time Andrew and Jerri noticed the two sawed-off shotguns the man had hidden underneath.

  “It’s a shame what some people have become. The raiding parties stay away from the big cities… too many buildings have zombies hiding in them,” Witt explained. He took a toothpick out of his front pocket and started to chew on it, staring up at the ceiling. “Bet those raiders ended up empty handed, huh?”

  “You have no idea,” Andrew said, shaking his head. Witt laughed.

  “Nope, I have a pretty good idea,” he said with a wink. “That’s why when everyone else was lining up to go to the FEMA camps, I rushed down to the local Wal-Mart and, uh, liberated some supplies. Considering how they handled the outbreak on the east coast, I didn’t have much faith in them to handle things better out west. My wife thought I was crazy but I was right.”