by Tony Urban
Doc and the others who had started the Ark should have planned ahead. They should have bought and amassed their own warehouse full of supplies. For a group of people who referred to themselves as ‘preppers’, Wim thought they were woefully unready for a disaster such as the one which occurred the previous May.
The two bags dropped into the back of the pickup with a thud and a cloud of dust that rose up and surrounded Wim’s head like a fog. The bed was nearly full now and he knew he should stop. He needed to save room for whatever goods Caleb had scavenged, but the animals and crops were Wim’s responsibility and, so far as he was concerned, they took priority.
He returned to the almost endless rows of pallets and grabbed two more bags. As he did, he glanced over to Clark Raber whose attention was focused on an adult magazine which he held sideways to get a better look at the centerfold. His belly sagged over his belt and Wim quickly looked away when Clark’s free hand fell into is lap.
Clark Raber was there, in theory, to assist and supervise Caleb and Wim on their duties. But the fact that he allowed Caleb to wander about town proved to Wim that Clark was little more than his own personal babysitter. A poor excuse for one too. He told everyone he was a sergeant in the Army but Wim doubted that. The man didn’t carry himself like a soldier. Nevertheless, Clark had been given a position of power at the Ark, one he enjoyed flaunting.
While Wim found the carelessness of the Ark’s founders frustrating, he greatly enjoyed his time away from it. The quiet reminded him of life on his farm and there were many days when the idea of returning to Pennsylvania and leaving the Ark behind sounded not only plausible, but desirable. Even knowing he’d be returning to nothing - no mama, no pa, no animals to tend to - still seemed more appealing than the thought of a life lived behind the Ark’s walls. Of being given a list of chores each week like he was some sort of overgrown toddler working for an allowance. Of pretending that any of this was normal and that the world outside of the twelve-foot-tall timber barriers that lined the Ark like prison walls hadn’t gone to hell.
None of the founders of the Ark - Emory called them OG’s which Wim didn’t understand even after his old friend had tried to explain the term - talked about the zombies. They never acknowledged that the world had collapsed. They simply went on as if everything was normal and that bothered Wim more than anything else. So far as he could tell, just about everyone was dead and to not even talk about them, to question why it happened, it seemed wrong on a moral level and Wim didn’t care to be around people who could go on as if nothing had happened.
The only reasons he stayed were Ramey and Emory and Mina. He felt responsible for them and couldn’t bring himself to leave them behind. And he knew Ramey would never leave her father. That man, Doc, had been a sore spot in their relationship since his group arrived at the Ark. Wim didn’t trust him and, even more, didn’t like him and he suspected the feeling was mutual.
Doc said all the right things. He blathered on about how they were starting a new, better world, but Wim thought the man was as phony as a high school student in a class play. He said the words like they were lines in a script, and to Wim’s ears, they rang hollow.
Emory shared his opinion. Caleb too, for the most part, but Caleb was always careful to keep his criticisms in check, like he was afraid someone was trying to get him to slip up so they could run and tattle. Wim couldn’t really blame him as such tattling was a regular occurrence at the Ark. If someone missed a chore or snuck an extra ration or spoke critically when the wrong ears were listening, it wasn’t long before Phillip, Doc’s right-hand man, would sidle up to the offending party and scold him or her.
Usually, a punishment followed. It could be as minor as no dessert after supper, or a day or two doing the Ark’s less desirable jobs, such as emptying the composting toilets. But for more serious offenses, like possessing contraband, there was a three feet wide by five feet high steel shed that stood at the far end of the compound which everyone called ‘the box’.
Doc said it was a place to clear your mind and think about what you’d done, but Wim knew what it really was. A jail cell where you were confined with no food or water until your release. Most only ended up in the box for a day, but once a man named Waylon who had arrived at the Ark a few days before Wim and his companions, got drunk on homemade whiskey and started shouting in the middle of the night that they were all hostages and that Doc was a dictator. Waylon spent three days in the box after that tirade. When he was let out, Wim thought he looked like he’d aged ten years and the man never spoke out of turn again. Rarely spoke at all, matter of fact. Wim had never ended up in the box, but its very existence was yet another reason why he wished he’d never found that X on Ramey’s map.
When it came to discussing Doc with Ramey, Wim had hemmed and hawed and beaten around the proverbial bush on numerous occasions but never worked up the nerve to come right out and share his opinion on her father. And considering the way Ramey looked at Doc with eyes gleaming adulation and spoke of him in a tone that exuded love, that was probably for the best. If Doc was a magician, he certainly had his daughter under his spell.
Wim understood a child’s love for its parents for he had found his own to be just about flawless and he knew that keeping his big mouth shut was for the best. Still, Wim felt like Doc was a splinter under the skin of their… he wasn’t sure what they had. Friendship. Relationship. Romance. Whatever it was, that splinter was festering and it was only a matter of time before infection and pus pushed it to the surface and they’d be forced to address it. Wim suspected it would end badly and hoped to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.
Wim was half way back to the truck when he heard the scream. It was low and masculine and, as he’d never seen a living person in this town on their four prior trips, he had a good idea it must be Caleb. He dropped the feed sacks which created another mushroom cloud of dust as they collided with the floor, and started for the door but Clark had heard the scream too and it had finally pulled his attention away from the dirty magazine.
“Stay here and finish loading the truck,” Clark said as he went toward the door, drawing his pistol.
“We should go together. It’s more safe.”
Clark paused, considering it, then shook his head. “No way. Maybe you two got something planned. I’m not taking any chances. You stay. If I need you, I’ll fire off a round.”
Wim thought he was making a mistake, but kept silent as Clark disappeared out of the building. He only had time to load four more bags before he heard the gunshot.
The town had a small crosshatch of streets and it took Wim less than two minutes to stumble upon the scene. He saw the zombies first. A near giant of a man that made Wim think of a gray version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, shambled down the street, a dribble of blood staining his chest like an infant whose Kool-Aid had missed its mouth. Wim raised the pistol and sent a perfectly aimed shot into the creature’s forehead. It took an awkward step forward, then crumpled to its knees. Wim thought it might be staring at him and almost shot again but then the zombie toppled over in a backbend that would have reminded Caleb of a yoga pose.
A hissing growl to his right caught Wim’s attention and he turned to see Clark Raber. Most of the skin from his nose down was gone revealing gristle and bone and bottom teeth that Wim thought looked scary and long. Clark’s eyes had gone gray and Wim didn’t hesitate before firing a shot that poked a hole just under Clark’s right eye.
As he fell, Wim saw a second musclebound zombie further away, sitting on the sidewalk before a pile of bloody clothing. Blue jeans? Wim wondered and tried to remember what Caleb had been wearing that morning. Before he could recall, the zombie rose to his feet, tottering as it stabilized itself and prepared to move. Before it could come toward him, Wim shot again and the left side of the monster’s face collapsed inward like a tiny bomb had gone off inside its skull. It fell forward, landing face first in the rain gutter.
Wim hurried across the street to where th
e motionless zombie had taken its final dive, but he wasn’t concerned with the dead man. He knelt beside the mound of blue jeans which were soaked purple with blood. At first, he couldn’t understand why the fabric was so voluminous but when he reached out to pull them closer, he realized the unusual density was because they still contained a pelvis and legs. Leftover bits of bowel spilled out when Wim lifted them and hit the pavement with a wet thwack. Wim dropped the jeans, causing more tissue to tumble free.
He was almost certain the jeans belonged to Caleb and whatever small percentage of doubt he clung to disappeared when he heard noise behind him. It was a heavy, scraping sound with an undercurrent of throaty gasps and labored breathing. Wim didn’t want to turn around, but he did anyway.
Caleb, or what was left of him, dragged himself up the street, toward Wim. Blood leaked from his mouth and, further up his face, his dead eyes stared ahead in that desperate, insatiably hungry gaze that Wim had seen all too often since the plague.
Wim had known splitting up was a bad idea, but Caleb always insisted they’d finish their runs in half the time by doing so and, since Wim tried to avoid conflict on general principle, he always relented. Now it was Caleb that was split up. His bottom half laid useless at Wim’s feet and he pulled his upper body along the roadway with his fingers which had become destroyed in the process. Wim could see shards of broken fingernails peeling back as the zombie clawed its way toward him. In some places, the flesh had totally torn free and white bone gleamed through the gore.
None of it slowed down the dead man and Wim pondered whether zombies could feel pain. He suspected not. Not the physical kind anyway. But occasionally he’d see something in their eyes, some small bit of tortured humanity trapped inside, and that made him wonder. He tried to ignore that. Tried to tell himself it was his imagination and that might very well be true, but late at night when he’d closed his own eyes but sleep wouldn’t come, the memory of that pain in their eyes was impossible to forget.
In six long strides Wim reached Caleb. The half man pushed himself up on its bloodied elbows and its head flopped back as it peered up at Wim. Caleb’s mouth hung ajar and a quivering, raspy groan tumbled out. Hunger or hurt, Wim thought, then quickly tried to push the question away. He tilted the barrel of the pistol down and shot a round through Caleb’s forehead. The zombie fell to the pavement and Wim couldn’t avoid seeing the splintered burst of skull that had broken apart in the back of the man’s head.
“Sorry about that,” Wim said to the dead man.
He considered dragging Caleb’s torso over to his severed legs and reuniting the pair, then thought the idea foolish. Neither half had any use for the other anymore. So, he left them lying twenty feet apart and returned to the mill where he finished loading the truck. Caleb wouldn’t be able to retrieve whatever items were on his list and Wim wasn’t rifling through his pockets to find it. The Ark would have to make due with feed and fertilizer and if that didn’t satisfy them, oh well. Wim found himself not caring much at the moment.
When the truck bed was so full that the back end sagged down and threatened to brush against the rear tires, Wim figured he had enough for the day and climbed into the cab. He knew he had an hour or so drive back to the dock where Hal would be waiting for him. For them. He didn’t look forward to explaining why three had become one and suspected he’d catch the blame someway or somehow.
Even though the fall air had taken on a decidedly winterish feel, Wim drove with the windows down. The sun had dipped near the horizon and he realized it must only be a few weeks until the winter solstice. And Christmas too, for that matter, not that he felt much like celebrating. As he tried to do the math in his head and remember the exact day, he almost missed seeing the figure standing in the roadway ahead of him. When he did see it, he slowed the truck from forty down to twenty but didn’t give much consideration to stopping. Just another zombie, after all.
As he got within five yards of it, he thought it looked almost skinny enough to be a skeleton and he slowed down a little more. He didn’t want to risk running it over and having a bone splinter and puncture a tire, not with another thirty miles to travel. He leaned out the open window and aimed the gun at the thing’s head but waited to fire.
When he got right up next to it, he saw its face was nearly black with dried blood. All that broke the ebony mask were the whites of its eyes and mounds of mustard yellow pus that oozed from around its mouth like lava. Wim had never seen infection on a zombie and he stopped the truck dead.
At first, the figure didn’t react. It stood in the road like a statue. Body motionless. Eyes unblinking. Wim could smell the sickness coming off it but as noxious as the smell was, it wasn’t the aroma of spoiled, rotten meat that typically accompanied the undead. He realized then that this thing was alive.
“Hey.” It was all he could think to say. He considered following that up with something equally useless, perhaps, ‘Are you all right’ even though it clearly was not. Instead of saying anything, Wim pulled the emergency brake and stepped out of the truck.
He looked closer at the person. It was hard to see detail through the caked-on blood but from the slender build he thought it to be a teenage boy or maybe a girl who hadn’t developed yet. Its hair was shoulder length, but dirty and matted, clinging to its head like a mangy cap. Wim eased his big hand onto its shoulder and felt hard bone poking at the skin.
It was at his touch that the person reacted. It turned its head slow, like a rusty wheel which hadn’t been used in ages, and looked up at Wim who towered over it by nearly a foot.
“I can get you help,” Wim said and when the person heard his voice, its eyes grew wide and Wim heard a gasp as it gulped in a mouthful of air. “You’ll be all right.” Damn, he thought as soon as he said that, what a dumb thing to say.
He realized just how dumb the words where when the person opened its mouth, but instead of its lips parting to form words, its entire face split in two from the corners of its mouth to its ears. More pus seeped from the wounds and fresh blood joined in, mixing into a pink fluid that Wim thought had the consistency of sour milk. Through the torn - not torn, cut, Wim thought, flesh Wim could see every tooth in the person’s mouth, all the way back to the molars. He heard air escape from that too wide opening and realized it was trying to speak.
“Stop now. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll take you somewhere safe.”
“He…”
It was a deeper voice. A young man’s voice, Wim was certain. The boy said something else but the words came out in a jumble that Wim couldn’t solve. The boy tried again. “He…”
Wim didn’t want the young man to speak. Every time he tried, more infection and blood broke free of its face, but he could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t going to stop until Wim heard what it was trying to say.
“Is someone with you? Are you looking for someone?”
The young man shook his head slowly, like every movement took considerable effort or caused unbearable pain, or both.
“Help me.”
Tears dribbled from his eyes and glistened against the black blood that marred his face. Wim saw his eyes flutter and knew what was about to happen. The young man swayed on his feet and Wim reached out and grabbed him around the waist, catching him just before he lost consciousness. Wim carried the man to the truck bed, thinking he might weigh less than two sacks of feed, then eased him into the vehicle. Wim rested the young man’s head against a feed bag, then resumed his spot behind the wheel. He drove faster now, anxious to get this person help, but also to get away from this place.
As the truck barreled down the deserted road, he wondered who could have hurt this boy so bad and why. What type of monster was out there?
Chapter Two
Harvey Dade, known as Hal to members of the Ark, let the cold water of the lake wash to and fro across his bare feet as he sat on the dock. He’d been reading from a tattered paperback book when he heard tires approaching. He knew the odds were grea
t that it was Clark and the newbies - he still thought of them as newbies even though they’d been in the Ark for months - returning from their supply run, but you could never be too careful. He folded over the corner of the page that had been interrupted and set the book aside as he stood up, wiping his feet against the rough wood of the dock to dry them.
Dust rose in the distance and the cloud blew nearer and nearer until the pickup broke free from it and sped down the dirt and gravel ramp that ended in the water.
“What’s he in such a damned hurry for?” Hal muttered as he slipped on his shoes. He stepped off the dock and onto mostly dry land, wincing as his right knee gave a little pop.
The truck skidded a yard as the brakes locked up, then stopped a few feet from the water’s edge. The engine rumbled to a halt as Wim climbed free of the cab. Hal noticed the passenger seat was empty, then looked toward the truck bed.
“Where’s Clark? And Caleb?” Hal said as he limped toward Wim.
Wim didn’t look at the 55-year-old man whose hair was still so thick and curly that it looked like he’d just received a perm from a salon. The only difference between now and thirty years earlier was that Hal’s locks were gray, not blond.
“Dead.”
“Dead?” Hal asked.
“That’s what I said.”
Hal didn’t like this at all. Clark was one of his friends. And Caleb wasn’t anyone’s favorite resident of the Ark but Doc didn’t like change and liked mistakes even less. If what Wim said was true, and Hal had no reason to doubt him, these would be the first members of the Ark to die and Hal knew someone would catch the blame. And he didn’t want it to be him.
“What happened?”
Wim had moved behind the truck and dropped the tailgate. “I’d imagine they got careless and, out there, careless people get killed.”
