The front porch creaks beneath my weight. The wood is old and moldy. I smell mildew and rot. At the door, I tap the butt of my gun against the wood three times. A few chips of red paint, like dry blood, flake off and drift down to my boots.
My heartbeat is surprisingly calm, but an iciness has begun to course through my body. It’s anticipation. It’s fear.
I hit the door to alert any zombies inside. Wait a few moments. Nothing happens, nothing comes. Still not knowing if entering is safe or not, I push the door open anyway. It creaks loudly, the noise echoing in the vast emptiness.
I take a step forward.
The inside of the farmhouse is covered in blood. It hasn’t even gotten the chance to dry yet.
The hall runner squishes beneath my feet. It is red, but I don’t think it was originally that color. Bloody handprints smear and streak the drywall. Some of the frames that once hung in the hall are on the floor, face down. Others are still hanging crookedly. Pictures of a happy family near a lighthouse, near a beach, graduation photos, piano recitals, high school basketball team photos. I don’t study these closely. There’s no need to because the people in these photos are gone, long gone. I remember back to a time when I entered an abandoned house with Darlene, Norm, and Abby. There were pictures just like these sitting on the living room mantle, pictures I picked up and looked at. The feeling that invaded me then was one of sadness, of dread. I don’t need more of that in my life.
So I avoid the pictures and walk down the blood-soaked runner. At the end of the corridor, on my left, a staircase winds up to the second floor. An old suit of armor stands guard near the railing and the first step. It’s dusty, dented, as if it has seen many battles. I pause and run my hand over the helmet. Grittiness comes off, sticks to my finger tips. This could be useful, I’m thinking, then chuckle at the idea of me riding around on a horse in a suit of medieval armor. If that ever becomes a reality, the world is truly over.
Around the staircase and through another door, I see a bathroom. A smear of blood greases the hardwood, hardly visible in the low light. Through this door, the hardwood ends only to be taken over by carpet. The carpet, originally white, is now pink. Streaks of blood here, streaks of blood there. The television is big, but it’s busted and glass is embedded into the floor. I step around it, scanning for more signs of blood. Of course, there is, and my pulse quickens. With anticipation? With fear? I have no clue. All I do know is that I’m drawn to the gore, to the macabre. The need to know what happened here on this farm weighs heavy on my mind. I know I won’t be able to search the house for supplies without knowing for sure that no monsters are lurking around the corner.
But these days, it seems monsters are always lurking around the corner.
Through this family room I go. I guess there’s not much of a family left here, but oh well. Two windows are on each side of the television. Covering the glass are bags of sand, like it’s a war zone.
Now on the threshold of the kitchen and dining room, I catch a smell. My nose must be used to this particular stench because I don’t smell it until I’m near the dinner table.
To my left, the smell is coming from a dark hallway. I’m nearer the front of the house now. There’s a bathroom in this corridor, but the door’s closed. I reach for the doorknob, feel something crusty caked to it. Pulling my hand away from the brass and leaning back into the light in the dining room, I see red flakes.
Blood.
Probably against my better judgment, I continue on. The bathroom door opens soundlessly. I hold my breath and raise my gun, ready to put a bullet into the brains of anything that moves.
Nothing.
It’s empty except for a sink and a toilet and a small hand towel hanging on a rack between the two. There aren’t even signs of blood inside. Whoever was trying to make it here must not have had the strength to turn the knob.
I turn away from the bathroom and plunge down into the darkness. A door on my left. I open it and look inside. It’s the garage. There’s a car inside—a Ford truck, extremely old. The idea of trying it to see if it works crosses my mind, and I’m halfway down the two concrete steps that lead to the garage floor when I see that there’s a mess of pipes and wires and rusty metal hanging out from beneath it, as if some giant beast has gouged the underside with even bigger, killer claws. There’s some tools around the other side, socket wrenches, pliers, an entire tool box. Whoever was here before us was trying to fix it up. Without much luck, it seems.
I turn around and go back into the house.
Around this last corner, there is one room. Beneath the smell of death and rot, there is something I haven’t smelled in a long time. It’s Hawaiian Breeze, it’s Downy.
This is a laundry room. If I could just hold onto the smell of freshly washed clothes for a little longer, I’d be the happiest man in the world, but I can’t.
Death wins out, like it always does in the end.
The door is cracked. The crack isn’t wide enough for me to stick more than the muzzle of my pistol inside. As I lean closer, the mixing scents of death and detergent blast me.
It’s too dark inside to see what lurks inside. There’s no sound, though, and that’s good.
Fear is trying to paralyze me. I don’t let it.
I am the Jack Jupiter that has lost everything, who has nothing else to lose. Nothing to fear. Right?
I take a deep breath, and instantly regret it as that terrible smell finds its way onto my taste buds and for the smallest of moments, I can actually taste the death.
I push the door open. It creaks on old hinges just as the front door had earlier. As if this couldn’t get any more creepier. Gray light from this hallway I stand in floods into the laundry room, painting the blood on the walls with an eerie glow.
And there’s a lot of blood on the walls.
It sprays upward in a starburst of red. Drops have congealed on the ceiling, hanging there, waiting for the right amount of vibration or heat to make them fall. I have to put a hand over my mouth and stifle the gagging.
Flies buzz around as the door moves. Maggots squirm over a sunken in face.
I am looking at a corpse. Not a zombie. The corpse of a woman. Her hair was once gray, I think, but the old blood stuck to the stringy strands has turned it nearly black. I can see exposed brains from a hole in her head. It’s a bullet wound, and I would know this even if she wasn’t holding a shotgun in two pale-gray hands connected to arms so frail that you wouldn’t think an old woman like this would be able to lift the weapon high enough to hit herself in the head in the first place.
But she did, and here I am dealing with the aftermath.
Well, there it is, mystery uncovered. On her arm is a bite mark. I’m guessing from the half-zombie Lilly bashed to a second-death. Probably a son or a grandson who got bit and decided to take a bite out of granny. Granny couldn’t live with the fact of coming back as a monster so she put a bullet in her own brain.
Case closed.
I search the rest of the house. Don’t find much of anything useful. Some Spam, a few cans of vegetables, and some hydrogen peroxide. I take it all.
Better than nothing.
11
When I go outside, the first thing I hear is the splintering of wood. A spike of alarm jolts my tiredness away. On the far side of the field, a group of zombies have gathered, moaning, groaning, pushing up against the fence. The fence is cracking.
I rush to Lilly and wake her up. She jumps to her feet, already knowing the drill. I’m thankful for that.
“I’ll grab the stuff,” she says and darts into the silo, disappearing amongst the shadows.
I’m doing my best to try to calm the horse down, who has now noticed the zombies traversing through the tall grass. Once my hand brushes his mane, that seems to do some good and he stops bucking.
“Lilly!” I shout. Time is short. The zombies are halfway across the field, like a sea of disease and chaos. Fear tightens my chest and I’m realizing Bilbo is calming me do
wn as much as I’m calming him down.
“Coming,” Lilly calls back. She bursts through the doors of the silo holding her bag and Bilbo’s gear. “I’ll saddle him up.”
I point to the wave of zombies. “No time.” I say. “Just have to outrun them far enough to gain some ground.” This is no time to panic. I’ve taken part in this rodeo many times before. A horde of zombies is nothing new. It’s times like these that I’m grateful for them being the slower type, and not the freaking sprinting zombies that were popular in living dead flicks in the early 2000s. If that were the case, I don’t think there’d be a human left alive on this planet. We’d all either be in some zombie’s stomach or zombies ourselves.
Lilly points to the back gate we’d entered in. I shake my head. The back gate is compromised. Right now, the zombies haven’t passed it, but by the time we get to it, we’ll be on a collision course with death.
“Then what?” she asks, her voice urgent. I take my bag and sling it over my shoulder. Then I put Bilbo’s reins around him like a dog leash. He’s not particularly fond of this, but we don’t have the option to do it the right way.
“Sorry,” I say.
He whinnies and his eyes bolt to the side to get a better look at the zombies. Closer now. Always closer now. I can smell the pungent scent of their disease.
“Hold this,” I say to Lilly and hand her the reins. I unholster my revolver, cock it, and shoot at the fence. Then one more time, aiming at the bottom piece, weakening it. I kick out with my bloody boots and make a hole big enough for Bilbo to squeeze through.
Lilly shoots once behind me. Unfortunately, I turn around in time to see the face of a too-young-to-die-zombie evaporate into a mess of pink and white and black. It drops headless and trips up a few of its buddies.
Now we’re running, Bilbo trotting along with us, keeping pace, the wind whipping his mane back. I risk a glance over my shoulder and see the wave of zombies get tripped up by the fence. Some fall and spear themselves on jagged pieces of wood.
Good riddance, I think to myself.
As we approach a tree just off the side of the road, Lilly and I bend over, hands on our knees, catching our breath. She looks up at me and laughs like a lunatic. I can only stare at her cross-eyed, confused. This is no laughing matter.
“What?” I say, winded.
“What. A. Rush!” she shouts, shaking her head.
I’m slightly pissed off she’s not taking this seriously, I say nothing and begin to saddle Bilbo up. I’ve never done this before and it shows. After about two minutes of embarrassing myself, Lilly sighs and says, “Here, let me help.”
I let her, watching her as she does it. It’s as confusing as I thought it would be. It doesn’t matter as long as it gets done.
“Go ahead,” I say, motioning to Bilbo’s saddle. “I’ll walk.”
Lilly shakes her head. “No way, Jack. I got some sleep in the silo. You didn’t. About time you did.”
Taking another glance over my shoulder, I see the zombies behind us. They’re a small black cloud against the backdrop of the sky, but they won’t stay that way.
They’ll keep coming. They always do.
Until then, I guess some sleep would do me good.
12
Rough hands jolt me awake.
“How much farther do we have to go?” I ask, sleepily. The sun is closer to setting. I’ve slept longer than intended, but I needed it. I really needed it.
My hand comes to the locket around my neck.
She points past my shoulder. On the horizon, is a forest of trees bisected by a curving road. Past the trees, a large windmill—that looks minuscule to us from here—turns lazily with the breeze. Through the trees is a few acres of farmland, the fields are perfectly neat, plowed or harvested—not sure what the correct term is. Something moves within one. It looks like a small vehicle, but from this distance, I can’t exactly tell.
“That’s where we’re going,” Lilly says.
I take out a pair of binoculars and look at the place. Many people are walking about, people who walk with a purpose. Busy worker bees. Almost all of them have guns. I see a black vehicle moving away from us toward a red barn. With the binoculars I can plainly see that its a tractor. The only thing off about it is that I can’t hear it—and in this quiet countryside, you can hear damn near anything. I can’t see any exhaust coming out of its exhaust pipe, either.
This gives me a bad feeling. My logic tells me that it’s safe to assume a place with a working car would also be able to have a working tractor.
For now, I put it to the back of my mind. Working car or not, we are heading to one of the places run by a high-ranking District officer. This means there’s a chance of finding out more information about the one-eyed man and what became of Norm and Abby.
At worst, the car turns out to be a dud.
At best, it doesn’t.
Either way, I’m killing every District soldier in this place.
13
We’re closer now, and what I see disgusts me. The answer to the riddle of the moving tractor not giving off exhaust or making noise presents itself. I look through the binoculars and shake my head.
“What?” Lilly says. I hand them to her. “Poor bastards,” she says and hands them back. “But what did you expect?”
I take another look. Part of me thinks I might recognize the prisoners currently attached to the front of the tractor, acting as the engine. Maybe it’s Norm or Abby or Tim or Carmen. I know that won’t be the case. If it was Tim or Carmen, I would probably scream. They’re dead. I buried their bodies myself in a shallow mass grave. If I had more time, I would’ve buried them one by one, their own plot, headstone, flowers—the works. But the border was compromised by the zombies and there was no telling how long I had before the District came back. I thought of waiting, of sticking it out. Maybe the one-eyed man would come back. I mean, who would be crazy enough to pass up the land Haven was on? Aside from a few broken fences and walls, this place went untouched for the better part of thirteen years.
Like Brandon said, it wasn’t about land or safety or expanding the District’s borders. No. It was completely about domination, about destruction, about sending a message. The one-eyed man just wanted to torture us, to show he was better.
But he made a big mistake. He left me alive and I’m so close to catching him that I can practically smell his festering, empty eye socket.
The men and women dragging the tractor along wear harnesses. Attached to these harnesses are sticks for them to bite down on. I’m guessing it’s to curb their screaming. Now that we’re closer, I realize I can’t hear their screams. I wonder if they even have enough energy left in them to scream or cry. They are ragged, as emaciated as the oldest zombies. Their skin is riddled with wounds and pockmarks, bright red slashes across their backs. Behind them, in between the grille of the tractor and themselves, is a group of zombies. They are only a few feet behind these poor souls, their arms outstretched. If one of the people slip up and fall, they have about three seconds to get back up before they become zombie chow, and I’m betting these zombies haven’t had their jaws and claws removed.
I shake my head and hand the binoculars back to Lilly. A large rock in the nearby woods is our cover. Bilbo is currently tethered to the trunk of an oak in a copse of trees. No one could see him through all the branches, not even me and I’m about fifteen feet away. I can hear his soft whinnies and slow chomping. Apparently the expired horse feed didn’t fill him up nearly as much as I expected. The saying ‘You eat like a horse’ makes a lot more sense to me.
“There he is!” Lilly shouts, her voice entirely too loud. “Right there!”
I shush her and pull us both down behind the rock, afraid our noise will carry on the wind. Velvety moss tickles the back of my neck.
“That’s the guy. They call him Bandit,” Lilly is saying.
“Bandit? What a dumb name,” I whisper.
“Okay, Jack Jupiter,” Lilly says and snick
ers.
I sigh. I’ve been doing that a lot since I’ve met Lilly. She’s annoying, but I’ll admit…she has proven to be useful.
“Like I have room to talk,” Lilly mumbles.
“Huh?”
“My name is Lilliana Wildflower. Did I ever tell you my last name? I don’t think I did. It’s not like it really matters anymore. I’m surprised I remember it. I’ve forgotten so many things. My social security number, my old addresses, schoolteachers I had. All of that seems like another life ago.” She’s still whispering, but I wish she’d just be quiet. I’m trying to listen to the wind and her voice rattles around my head.
I put my hand on her arm and this surprises her enough to quiet her rambling. It’s unexpected by both parties. Been awhile since I’ve shown any sign of gentleness. Mostly because it’s been me, myself, and I. Really, I’m not trying to be gentle; I’m just trying to find a more effective way to get this woman to shut up.
Slowly, I poke my head up over the rock, looking through the binoculars. Nothing has changed at the farm. Prisoners are still running from the zombies which is pulling the tractors and the plow behind it. A man sits in the tractor’s cabin, smoking a cigarette and smiling big. He has sunglasses on.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Older guy near the house. He was standing with another fella with bright red hair,” Lilly answers.
I scan the horizon. I see the guy with the bright red hair. He can’t be much older than Lilly. His shirt is off and he has a cringe-worthy tattoo of a crucifix over his heart. It’s not the content of the tattoo that makes me cringe, but rather the design. It’s like he got drunk and did it himself, shaky lines, mismatched lengths and all. If one was to go to hell for a tattoo, it would be this one.
“Don’t see him—” I begin to say just as something gets my attention. It’s the garage door rising, off to the side of the house. I focus my binoculars there, turning the wheel in the middle to adjust the sight. Sure enough, there’s a car. The taillights flare up red and the exhaust pipe spits out a fresh cloud of smoke. I’m nearly giddy with excitement. A car. A real, working car.
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