Ten minutes later we were in the Humvee rumbling along Route 56 towards Colt Creek. Already you could see the heat shimmering on the unsealed road and the brushy meadows to either side. Tommy giggled at Jim’s terrible jokes. Bob was silent. I sipped constantly at my canteen to stop from feeling like my mouth was full of cotton-wool.
Cutshaw pulled-up north of Colt Creek where we were downwind of our quarry—a zombie can smell living human flesh from up to several miles away depending on the wind’s strength and direction.
We checked our weapons and got out of the Humvee. Franz was instantly alert, prowling forward, stiff-tailed, nose pressed to the dirt. Cutshaw followed him, slightly hunched over. We fanned out to either side of them.
I glanced at Bob and was relieved to see that he was totally focused. The hunt was on, nothing else mattered.
All around wildflowers were coming into bloom. The landscape was awash with purple thistles and bright yellow sundrops, with scattered patches of Virginia bluebells, Rocky Mountain beard tongue and red-pink creeping phlox. You could get drunk on the smell of it. The air hummed with bees.
A ring-necked pheasant rocketed up out of the grass. Jim squeezed off a short burst from his AK-47 and it fell from the sky with a thud.
“Jesus, Jim,” hissed Tommy.
Jim stuffed the fat bird into his rucksack. “At least we won’t go hungry tonight.”
I laughed. Cutshaw didn’t look amused, but then he never does.
We started up a long slope. By the time we were halfway up it I was wheezing like an asthmatic buffalo. Bob was only doing a little better. I could tell from Cutshaw’s frequent glances that he was irritated by the amount of noise we were making, but so long as we were going after nothing worse than a stage three it wouldn’t make any difference if we belted out a couple of verses of Jake Leg Blues. All zombies go deaf shortly after turning.
At the top of the slope Franz stopped suddenly, fur bristling.
Cutshaw dropped onto his belly, motioning for us to do likewise. About 300 metres away was a steep-banked creek. Cutshaw scoped it, then handed me the binoculars, saying, “In the water, beneath the river birch.”
The zombie was standing waist-high in the stream. It was a stage five in about as advanced a state of necrosis as any I’d seen, a real ugly mother. Only a few tatters of putrefied skin still clung to its skull, its eyes had rotted away, most of its teeth were missing and it’d lost an arm.
“Who wants it?” asked Cutshaw after we’d all taken a turn with the binoculars.
“I’ll take it,” said Tommy, unslinging his rifle. There were no complaints. A stage five kill might be something to brag about when you’re a novice hunter, but not when you’re a veteran of seven seasons. What’s more, this one probably didn’t have more than a couple of months to go before the billions of microbes, maggots, flies, beetles and moths feeding on its mouldering body killed it off.
“I almost feel sorry for it,” said Jim as Tommy sighted the flesh-eater.
There was a sharp crack and the zombie dropped back into the water. I watched it go over through my scope and knew it wouldn’t get back up. We congratulated Tommy. It was a pretty good shot considering it was his first kill of the season. We took turns drinking from Bob’s canteen while Cutshaw got on the radio to see if any of the spotters knew where the stage three had got to.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“It was seen an hour ago four miles south of here,” answered Cutshaw, starting towards the creek.
The zombie was bobbing about in the water face down, flies swarming over it. Cutshaw cut a branch off the birch, hooked it through the zombie’s tattered clothing and pulled it into the bank. Tommy and me dragged it out of the water, struggling to get a firm grip as it was slimy as a rotten fish. The stink was hard to take. All zombies smell bad, but when they’re that far gone they have a smell that’s difficult to describe. It’s like a cross between rank cheese and raw sewerage, only much worse.
“How far gone do you reckon?” asked Tommy.
“Christ knows,” I said. “It’s probably older than us.”
We washed our hands in the creek while Cutshaw doused the body in ethanol and set it alight. As smoke mushroomed into the sky, we made our way south. The sun felt hot enough to fry an egg.
We hiked alongside the creek for about two miles on an overgrown trail, then climbed a hill crowned by pine trees. We looked out over a broad, grassy country dotted with thickets of birch and ash. Cutshaw pointed at something I couldn’t see. I squinted through my scope and spotted the stage three about three-quarters of a mile away, goose-stepping its way southward. I wanted it straight away. So did Bob.
“Flip you for it,” he said.
“Tails.”
He flipped a coin. Tails came up. The stage three was mine. I started down the hillside, blood pumping with the thrill of the chase. Franz was ahead of me, nose to the ground. At 350 metres I brought the zombie into sight, centring the crosshairs on the back of its skull. I took a couple of breaths, trying to relax, holding myself still, waiting for the right moment. My shot echoed around the valley, the zombie went down.
Jim whooped. “You got it.”
“No he didn’t,” Cutshaw stated.
I said nothing. I knew he was right. I’d felt myself tense on the shot. The zombie was sitting up slowly, arms outstretched, black blood oozing out of its throat. It rose stiffly to its feet and resumed walking south.
“That’s odd,” said Jim, starting after it.
“Wait,” said Cutshaw, his hawk-eyes slitting.
A shot rang out dropping the zombie again. Cutshaw nodded as if something he’d privately suspected had been confirmed.
“Where the hell did that come from?” wondered Jim.
I scoped the landscape and fixed on two figures emerging from a knot of pines to the south. “There,” I said, pointing.
“It must have caught their scent.”
We hurried across to the kill sight. One of the hunters was bent over the zombie. The other watched our approach. I recognised him as the man I’d spoken to outside the toilet-block. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I had to take the shot, it was onto us.”
“What the hell did you expect when you were upwind of it?” said Jim.
The man frowned. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”
“Hey, Dean, you’ve bagged a beauty here,” said his partner, a palefaced kid. He pointed at a clean round entry wound big enough to put your index-finger in. “You got the bastard straight between the eyes.”
“Nice shot,” I said, trying not to sound as cheated as I felt.
“Thanks.” Dean turned to his partner. “Let’s get moving, Al.”
“Where you headed?”
“Burke’s Ridge.”
“The old tin mine?” asked Tommy. Dean nodded and started walking.
“See you back at camp,” I called after him. He raised a hand.
“They must be crazy going up there,” said Tommy as we watched the men make their way eastward towards a craggy range of hills.
“They’ve got balls,” said Jim in a tone of begrudging respect.
Bob snuffed down his nose. “No brains, more like. That boy can’t be more than sixteen. No one’s got any business taking someone as green as him up there.”
Jim rolled the zombie over, exposing a large exit wound with the skull pushed outwards at its edge like the rim of a moon-crater. “We’d better burn it,” said Tommy. Cutshaw was already unscrewing the ethanol canister’s lid.
We climbed a bare hill to the west on top of which was a hut stocked with food, water and firewood where you could hole up for the night if you got in a fix. We ate our lunch in the hut. Jim and Tommy argued the whole time we were eating. Jim was on for following Dean and Al up to the tin mine. Tommy said he’d rather hike back to the Humvee alone than go up there. I was inclined to agree with him. Flesh-eaters just love to congregate in dark, dingy holes like those mines. Anyone who went up there without a small
army at their back was liable to be biting off more than they could chew. Cutshaw put an end to the argument when he told us we were heading to a derelict farmhouse two miles to the southeast.
“What have the spotters seen?” asked Bob, but Cutshaw wouldn’t say.
We hiked those two long miles through waist high grass and marshland swarming with biting midges. By the time we sighted the farmhouse all I wanted to do was lie down in a shady spot. We staked the tin shack out for an hour with no luck. Eventually Cutshaw and Jim went in the front-door and found nothing but dust and cobwebs. I felt like burning the place down. I half-suspected Cutshaw had deliberately led us on a wild-goose chase just to knock us into shape. A glance at Bob told me he thought the same.
The sun was setting by the time we got back to the Humvee. We were all dog-tired, except Cutshaw, the bastard. Every moment spent in his company made me like him less.
There was drama back at the camp. A large party had come up from the south full of crazy stories about a legion (their word not mine) of zombies that’d attacked several camps and which seemed to be driven by an intelligence that went far beyond simple remembered behaviours from their mortal existence.
We were full of scepticism. Bob wanted to know about Martinez. A wild-eyed kid strung out on hillbilly pop told us he’d seen The Mexican two days ago sat up a tree fifty miles to the south. He shook his head when we told him Martinez had been here the night before, saying, “No way, Martinez was headed south. Everybody’s headed south. That’s where it’s all happening. We only came up here to meet with some friends then we’re headed back south.”
Jim’s eyes shone with excitement. “Didn’t I say that’s where we ought to go. The country round here’s all hunted out anyway.”
The wild-eyed kid whose name was Hooch nodded feverishly. “You’re welcome to come along with us. It’s gonna be a blast.”
The mood was contagious and after a couple of turns each at the homebrew Jim, Bob and me were ready to pack up and head south. Tommy couldn’t stand it. He mooched off sullenly to his tent after Jim shouted at him, “What the hell did you come on this trip for anyway?”
A bonfire was lit. Hooch jumped whooping through the flames as gun muzzles flashed all around. The whole camp was drunk. A brawl erupted. The guards were afraid to get involved. Hooch was off his head on anything he could get his hands on. He wanted to go on a night-mission, but the guards refused to open the gate. He yelled at them that he had enough dynamite to blow the motherfucking gate down. When one of the guards made a grab for him, he broke away screaming that he’d kill anyone who touched him. Guns were drawn and someone would’ve got shot for sure, if Bob hadn’t floored Hooch with a wicked right hook.
Day Three.
It didn’t occur to me until I crawled bleary-eyed out of the tent in the morning that something was seriously wrong. I went in search of a guard. “I didn’t see Dean and Al come in last night.”
The guard eyed me sourly. “Who?”
“The guy about my age with the kid in tow.”
The guard frowned in realisation. We checked Dean and Al’s tent. It was empty. The guard hurried off to find out when they’d last made contact. It turned out they’d radioed in a couple of hours after we’d seen them to say they were heading up Hungry Hill. My stomach clenched like a fist. “But they told us they were making for Burke’s Ridge.”
“Well they changed their minds.”
I returned to the tent and gave Bob the news. He shook his head. “That’s the last we’ll see of them.”
“They might’ve made it.”
“You reckon? You know what it’s like up there when that mist comes down.”
“We made it.”
“Only just and we were damn lucky.”
News of Dean and Al’s disappearance spread quickly through the camp. A search party was assembled. Hooch approached us, a pair of revolvers hanging off his hips, a sawn-off shotgun balanced on one shoulder. There was an ugly bruise on his chin.
“No hard feelings,” said Bob.
“Forget it,” grinned Hooch. “I know what an asshole I can be when I get like that. We’re going after those missing dudes. You coming?”
I exchanged a glance with Bob, then nodded. The thought of going into those woods again made me feel sick to my stomach, but what choice did I have? Bob wordlessly started getting his gear together while I looked in on Jim and Tommy. Jim looked barely alive.
I told them what was happening. Jim tried to get up and almost passed out with the effort. He was distraught at having to miss out on a trip up Hungry Hill. “Goddamn, sonofabitch moonshine,” he croaked.
“I’d better stay with him,” Tommy said sheepishly.
I nodded. To be honest, I was relieved he wasn’t coming with us. The shape he was in, if things went bad, he would’ve been more hindrance than help.
Two hummers rolled out of camp with twelve men armed to the teeth crammed into them. Franz lay across my lap, breathing his meaty breath in my face. More than once during that journey I thought I was going to puke. Hooch hitched a ride with us. He talked nonstop. I switched off listening after a few minutes. Jim had insisted I take his AK-47 and I occupied my mind by admiring its genius simplicity. Forget Tolstoy and Lenin, as far as I’m concerned Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov is the greatest Russian ever.
The sun was hot and high by the time we reached Hungry Hill. My mouth was sawdust dry as we started up the trail behind the farmhouse. Cutshaw and a Ranger named Nash led the way. A guttural moaning drifted out from under the trees. Nash raised a hand and we raised our guns.
The zombie, when it appeared, was almost comical, a real pathetic specimen. Some half-starved wild animal must have had a go at it because both its arms were missing and its guts trailed over the ground like a string of sausages. Cutshaw dropped it with a single shot. The corpse was quickly doused and set alight.
“Keep close together,” said Nash as we started moving again.
It was gloomy and silent as a tomb beneath the dense forest canopy. Every sound we made felt like a violation of a sacred silence. I concentrated on taking controlled breaths, fighting a creeping sense of claustrophobia.
Franz barked suddenly, pressing his nose to the dirt and pulling tight on his lead.
“He’s picked up their scent,” whispered Bob.
We found the boy half a mile further on. His skull had been smashed open like a hard-boiled egg and the brains scooped out. The flesh had been stripped off his bones by teeth hungry for marrow. There was no chance of him turning, but we dismembered his remains just in case. It was grisly work.
Franz snuffled about until he picked up the scent again off to the left of the trail. A compass reading was taken and we headed deeper into the woods.
We hadn’t gone much further when we found the dead zombie. Half its head had been blown away. A trail of dried blood led away from it. Franz growled, back roached, fur bristling.
“What is it, boy?” said Nash.
“Look,” hissed Hooch, pointing. I glimpsed a flash of grey fur moving through the gloom thirty or so metres to the west.
“Wolves,” said Cutshaw.
Hooch cupped a hand to his mouth and gave out a high-pitched howl, which was greeted by a chorus of plaintive howls and yips.
“They’re all around us,” said a man with popping blue eyes who’d travelled up from the south with Hooch.
“That ain’t nothing to worry about, Lyle,” said Hooch. “They ain’t hunting us.”
“They’re hunting something,” Bob said.
We followed the blood-trail, moving with even more urgency than before. Every so often Cutshaw bent to examine a spatter. After about three-quarters of a mile, he said, “It’s wet.” The words were barely out of his mouth when a shot rang out nearby. The woods suddenly came alive with howls that were reflected and scattered by the tree trunks until they seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Franz dragged at his lead. We hurried after him. Shadowy
forms moved with incredible swiftness through the closely packed trees on either side of us.
“Hold your fire,” shouted Nash when Lyle squeezed off a couple of shots at them.
Cutshaw signalled for us to halt. He advanced a couple of steps into a sunny clearing with a white pine at its centre. Dean was slumped against the base of the tree. About five metres away from him was the corpse of a huge wolf.
“Stay back,” Dean called out.
“Are you infected?” asked Cutshaw.
Dean levelled his rifle at him. “I said stay back.”
“What happened?”
“It wasn’t my fault. The sonofabitch came out of nowhere.”
“Where did it get you?”
After a pause, taking a shuddering breath, Dean said, “My leg.”
Nash immediately started circling around to the right of the clearing. I turned my back, knowing what had to happen. Everyone else stood grimly fixated. Hooch licked his lips as if he was hungry. An echoing shot rang out. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Dean was fallen to one side.
As we retraced our steps, the mist rolled down behind us. The mere sight of it made my hair stick lankly to my forehead. Luckily, we reached the edge of the woods before it overtook us. We walked in file, like a funeral procession, each man making sure he didn’t lose sight of the man in front of him. The going was deadly slow. After what felt like a long time, the dark shape of the farmhouse loomed through the mist. We piled into the Humvees, breathing sighs of relief. Everyone was silent during the journey back to camp.
Jim and Tommy were full of questions. Bob answered most of them. I couldn’t bring myself to say much. “Jesus,” murmured Tommy when he heard about Dean. We all agreed that we’d move camp the following day. None of us felt like hanging around after what’d happened.
Day Four.
At sunup we rolled out of camp waved off by Hooch. He threw his head back, howled and danced a crazy little jig that cracked Jim up. Bob and me exchanged an uneasy glance. “That kid’ll be lucky if he survives the season,” said Bob.
We were heading for Camp 24, fifty miles to the south. It would take most of the day to get there. Jim was itching for some action. I was glad of the chance to rest-up after the exertions of the previous two days.
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