“I … I think I’m fine,” Dan mutters, looking like someone who just stared death in the face. “I just hurt my hand a little when I fell down.”
They move away farther, as the zombie lady makes a halfhearted attempt to follow them, before she changes her mind and heads back for the car in the ditch.
Ozzy is still working the other zombie, having torn open his shoulder and dragged him several yards down the road.
“Ozzy!” William shouts. “Release! Heel!”
Ozzy lets go of the zombie—not completely voluntarily, but still he obeys and returns to William. He’s panting, looking proud and his mouth is full of blood.
“Good boy,” William says, not touching Ozzy, as he suspects the zombie blood will be contagious if he comes into contact with it. Being a dog, Ozzy will most likely be fine—after all, he already bit one zombie yesterday and probably swallowed at least a few drops.
“This isn’t working,” Dan says, looking over at the zombie who was just mangled by Ozzy. The guy gets to his feet and simply waddles over to the car in the ditch like nothing happened, joining the rest of the gang.
“You’re right,” William says, wiping sweat from his chin. He’s completely soaked from running around out here under the baking afternoon sun, and he could really use a Coke right now. Or, better yet, an ice-cold Carlsberg. “We need help.”
As though his words made it happen, there’s a honking of a car horn, and William turns to see a red SUV approaching. There’s a heavyset guy behind the wheel and a frail-looking woman next him. The driver is gesturing for them to move out of the way.
“Hey, we need some help!” William shouts and waves his arms.
The SUV lunges forward, and William and Dan jump to the side.
“Wow, asshole!” William cries out, flipping the finger to the guy behind the wheel as he speeds past them. “Thank you for not being a selfish dick!”
The SUV speeds on off down the road.
“What now?” Dan asks, wiping sweat from his brow. The afternoon is turning into early evening, but the sun is still hot.
“Guess we’ll just have to wait and hope the next one will be more generous.”
At that moment, they both hear the sound of a rumbling engine approaching from behind.
NINETEEN
Mille looks at her phone and breathes deeply. Her finger hovers over the call button. She’s back in Holger’s bedroom, alone.
Surprisingly, there’s hardly any fear. She feels oddly resolved. Like she has already made the decision several hours ago, and now finally is able to stop fighting it.
Then, she makes the call. Puts the phone to her ear as it begins ringing.
It’s answered almost immediately. The voice is shaky and full of hope.
“Mille? My God, is that you?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, God! It’s so good to hear your voice. Are you okay?” Her mom is on the verge of tears.
“I’m fine. How about you?”
“I was so worried. I thought something might have happened to you. We’ve been at your apartment, looking for you, but you weren’t there.”
Mille frowns. “You’ve been in town?”
“We still are! We came here as soon as we heard about what was happening.”
Mille blinks. “Who are ‘we’?”
“Torben and I, of course.”
“Oh, so you’re back together?”
“We’ve been for two years now. We—”
A man’s voice in the background. Torben, no doubt. It sounds like they’re in a car.
“What’s he saying?”
“He’s wants me to ask where you are, so we can come pick you up.”
“I … I don’t know, Mom. Did you guys really come all this way just to get me?”
“Sure! I couldn’t live with myself if I knew anything had happened to you and I could have prevented it.”
Mille closes her eyes in an effort to hold back fresh tears. She doesn’t want her mother to hear her crying, doesn’t want to let down her guard—not yet, at least. But hearing the warmth in her mother’s voice is so unexpected. The last words they exchanged were so full of hate, both of them shouting, Mille cursing her mother, and her mother telling her to fuck off and stop being a such a burden.
Mille had taken her on her word. She had left her key and walked out without looking back.
That was three years ago.
It feels like a lifetime.
“Mille,” her mom says earnestly. “I know … what happened between us … I can never undo it. I’ve wanted to take back what I said a million times.”
Mille squeezes her lips together.
“All I can say is, I wasn’t myself back then. It was the depression speaking, and the alcohol. And I know that’s no excuse. Kicking you out was unforgivable. Please let me come pick you up. Please give me another chance, even if I don’t deserve it.”
It’s surreal. It’s got to be a dream.
Mille can’t believe she’s hearing those words she’s been wanting to hear for so long, even if she would have never admitted it, even to herself. The walls she has built, which seemed so solid, are now coming crumbling down.
She nods and swallows hard. “All right, Mom.”
“Thank God! Thank you, Mille. What’s the address?”
“Mill Road 261.”
“You got that, Torben?”
“But, Mom,” Mille says, wiping her nose in her sleeve. “Where will we go? They’ve sealed off the area.”
“That’s okay, hon, Torben has a special permit. Because of his diabetes. We’ll be allowed to leave.”
“Oh. Okay, well … how long till you’ll be here?”
“How long, Torben? … Ten minutes, honey.”
“Right. I’ll just … I need to tell the guy I’m staying with I’m leaving.”
“Why doesn’t your boyfriend join us?”
“It’s not a boyfriend, Mom, it’s just a … I’ll explain later.”
“All right. See you soon, honey.”
“See you.”
Mille disconnects and looks at her phone for almost a full minute. Her brain is trying to adopt to the new reality. She just spoke with Mom. Mom told her she was sorry. They will see each other in less than ten minutes.
In the span of a short phone call, everything has changed.
Somehow, this is harder to process than the fact that the world might be ending.
Mille feels a strange mixture of confusion, excitement and worry. She also feels like a new person. She gets up from the bed and leaves the bedroom.
She finds the living room empty. She feels a sudden pressing urge to pee and hurries out to the bathroom. In the mirror, she wipes away any stray mascara and fixes her hair as best she can.
Back in the kitchen, she finds Holger just finishing up on the vegetables.
“Where are the guests, Holger?” she asks.
He answers without looking at her: “Upstairs, resting.”
“Have you heard anything from William?”
Holger shakes his head as he wipes his hands on a dish towel.
“I’ll be leaving soon. My mom is coming for me.”
Finally, Holger looks at her in a weird, sideways glance. “Why? I thought you wanted to stay here.”
“Honestly, I had no choice. But now I do. I’m thankful you let me spend the night here, Holger. Soon you’ll have one less person to worry about.” She smiles, but Holger doesn’t return it. “I’ll go pack my things,” she tells him and turns to leave.
“I don’t trust her.”
Mille turns back around. “What’s that?”
Holger squeezes the dish towel and looks at the counter. “I don’t trust Birgit.”
Mille frowns. “Why not?”
“I heard them whispering.”
“Whispering what?”
Mille is also whispering now, her heart beating faster for some reason.
Holger doesn’t answer, he just shakes his head, a
s though he doesn’t know.
“Holger, who are they? You know them, don’t you?”
“I know of them. They live down the road. We’ve only met in passing. She’s weird, that’s all I know. Practicing some strange occult religion. And her son is slow in the head because she used some of her rituals on him when he was little. That’s what everybody around here is saying.”
“That … that sounds like rumors,” Mille says. “I know she’s a little hard around the edges, but I don’t think she’s a witch or anything.”
“She is,” Holger says, nodding emphatically. “And she can’t be trusted. I only let them in because William will be back, and he’ll get them to leave tomorrow if they don’t go voluntarily.” Holger breathes fast through his nose, avoiding her eyes. “I can tell when people lie. That’s one of the things I’m very good at. And she’s lying. She’s lying about something.”
Mille feels a rush of cold run down her spine. She’s just about to say something else, when she hears footsteps from behind, and the woman appears in the doorway.
“Oh, sorry to barge in,” she says with a brief smile. “I just wanted to know if you got hold of your mother, Mille?”
Mille smiles, but suddenly, she doesn’t feel comfortable. “I did,” she says hesitantly, glancing at Holger, who just stands there. “She’s … she’s coming for me soon. I’ll be leaving with her.”
Birgit smiles, the pale skin around her mouth drawing thin creases. “That’s so great to hear. I’m glad you got it to work.”
“Yeah, me too.”
All three of them just look at each other for a moment. Mille can’t help but notice Birgit’s necklace with all the strange items. And the dagger protruding from her belt. Now that she thinks about it, Birgit could be a modern-day witch like Holger suggested. Or, it could all be made up by people around here just talking. It’s easy for someone with a slightly different way of dressing and acting to be called weird. And even if Birgit really is a witch, how does that change anything? Witches aren’t evil, they just practice love of nature and stuff. It’s most likely just Holger’s paranoia making him suspicious of Birgit.
Mille realizes the quiet has gone on for several seconds now, and she feels like she needs to say something else. “Thank you for … you know, talking me into calling her back.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Well, I’d better get ready. The others will be back any time now.” She says this more to Holger than to Birgit, wanting him not to feel anxious about being alone in the house with the woman and her son.
He doesn’t look at her, though, and she’s not sure he even caught the message.
Then, Mille sees the red car coming into the driveway.
“That must be your mom,” Birgit says somewhere behind her.
Mille barely hears her; she’s staring out at the woman in the passenger seat. Smaller, older and paler than she remembers. Her haircut is also a lot shorter. But it’s definitely her.
TWENTY
William turns and shields his eyes from the light of the sinking sun.
A big, red tractor is approaching from a little way out on the field. It’s harvesting the wheat, and a cloud of golden dust is rising straight up into the blue sky.
“Who the fuck is working their fields now?” William blurts out.
“I don’t know, but maybe they can help,” Dan says, waving his arms.
The tractor slows down, then comes to a full stop. A door high up swings open, and a guy not much older than William leans out, tipping his cap at them. “Hiya!”
“Hi!” Dan shouts back over the rumbling of the engine. “Could you please help us? My parents are trapped in that car over there!”
The young farmer glances at the crashed car, then leans back inside the tractor and turns off the machine. The silence that follows is deafening. Now William can hear the zombies moaning again.
The farmer jumps down and walks towards them, stopping at the edge of the field. “Yeah, I noticed that car before. I didn’t know anyone was inside, though. Should have figured that much, I guess; otherwise, them sick bastards wouldn’t have been there.”
“They’re not sick, they’re dead,” William corrects him. “Haven’t you heard anything about what’s going on?”
The farmer looks at him and tips his cap again, scratching his white, damp hair. “Sure, I’ve been listening to the radio. But in my experience, dead fellows don’t usually go about attacking us living folks.”
“They’re zombies,” William begins. “They’ve been—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dan cuts him off. “We need to get them away from the car so my parents can get out. We already tried luring them away, but there’re too many of them. Can you help us in any way?”
The farmer snorts and looks over at the station wagon. “Mmmm. How do you get seven people away from a car if they don’t want to?” He chews his lower lip, then answers his own question. “Seems to me it would be easier to go about it the other way around. Ya know, get the car away from the seven people.”
“That … that might actually work,” William says. “Can you, like, push the car out of the ditch using your tractor?”
The farmer looks at him and sends him a wide, yellow-teethed smile. “You’re from the city, aren’t ya? That’s not a tractor, it’s a harvester. And you don’t push a stuck car, you pull it.”
“All right,” William says, feeling like punching the guy, but suppressing the anger from his voice. “You got anything to pull it with, then?”
“Sure do. Got a wire round the back for that exact purpose. Happens more often than you’d think, another machine getting stuck in the field, and we need to drag it free.”
“Great!” Dan exclaims. “Let’s do it!”
“Sure, we could give it a go,” the farmer says. “Only problem is, we need to get the hook onto the car, and I don’t see any of you guys waltzing over there and pushing your way past those poor pricks.”
“Can’t we … can’t we do it from like, inside the trac … harvester?” Dan suggests.
“Mmmm, no, but we might be able to do it from atop it.” He looks at Dan. “If you climb up onto the roof, I’ll drive as close to the car as I can. I think you can catch the hitch from there.”
“Okay,” Dan says, nodding. “Let’s try.”
“All righty. Name’s Jens, by the way,” the farmer says, reaching out a surprisingly large hand. “What’s yours?”
“Dan. This is William.”
“Nice to meet both of ya,” Jens says, shaking William’s hand as well. “Whose dog is that?”
“Mine,” William says. “But you shouldn’t touch him; he just bit one of the zombies.”
“Oh, good boy,” Jens says.
“Listen, I’ve got to ask you: Why the fuck are you harvesting wheat right now? Don’t you know the whole area has been sealed off? The town is fucked, everyone is probably dead by now.”
“Sure, I know the situation is a little extraordinary,” Jens says with a shrug of his boney shoulder. “But me and my boss spoke about it this morning, and we figured, why stop working? Who’d that serve? I mean, we’ve got livestock to take care of.”
William can’t really argue with that. After all, harvesting wheat makes more sense than hogging toilet paper. At least you can make bread out of wheat.
“We need to hurry,” Dan reminds them.
William and Ozzy stand back as Jens helps Dan climb to the top of the machine. He then pulls out a thick metal wire from the back of the harvester, climbs halfway up and raises it to Dan who takes it.
“Right, now, hold on as best you can,” Jens instructs him, squinting against the sun as he looks up at Dan, who’s at least twelve feet above ground. “I’ll do my best to drive carefully.”
Dan—who’s already lying flat, holding on for dear life, while clutching the wire under his arm—nods affirmative.
Jens gets in and starts up the machine again.
He drives out onto the
road, very slowly. Every time the harvester sways a little, Dan is thrown from side to side. He looks very pale, but he doesn’t cry out.
As the machine approaches the car in the ditch and the horde of zombies, William envisions Jens turning on the harvesting-thing and plowing into the undead, chopping them to bloody pieces. It’s a satisfying thought; however, he doubts it’ll work. The machine is made for cutting wheat, not human bodies, and it would probably jam-up pretty quickly.
Jens drives up right next to the station wagon and stops. He shouts out the open side window: “Now you do your thing, Dan!”
Dan unclutches his grasp and sits up on his knees. He peeks down, then begins lowering the hook at the end of the wire. As it reaches the back end of the car, Dan begins swinging it from side to side, slowly gaining the momentum needed to get out far enough. The hook passes the hitch a few times, getting closer with each swing. The zombies don’t pay any notice at all.
“Come on,” William mutters. “Come on, Dan. You almost got it.”
Then, the hook catches its target.
“Yes!” William cries out, raising a triumphant fist. He reminds himself to check every direction so no one uninvited sneaks up on them again. Luckily, no one is in sight.
“Good job!” Jens calls out, opening the door. “Now, come on down here!”
Dan lies back down and swings one leg out the side. He climbs down and into the harvester, receiving a helping hand from Jens, who pulls the door shut again. Then, Jens puts the machine into motion, driving slowly down the road, dragging the wire. Within a few moments, the wire is pulled taught, and the car in the ditch jerks to life.
The harvester is a giant compared to the station wagon, and it has no problem dragging it up onto the road.
Two of the zombies are behind it and get caught below it, and William can’t help but cheer as they both are crushed into the ground. The rest of the zombies take up pursuit as the car is pulling away from them. But one of them—a young woman—seems to have her hand stuck in the driver-side window, and she’s dragged along the for ride, fumbling to get to her feet, but constantly tripping as the harvester picks up speed.
“Roll it down!” William shouts as the harvester passes by him. He gestures to Dan’s father. “Roll down the window!”
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 2 | Days 4-6 Page 12
