by James, Guy
A new movement caught his eye and he looked away from the trees to face the zombie directly. It was turning, the wild tossing of its head slowing, as it edged in the direction of the other window, the one that Alan had opened earlier, then it took off in a shambling run.
“It’s coming,” Alan whispered, turning toward Senna and Rosemary and positioning himself closer to them. “Get ready.”
Behind Alan , a piece of sparsely-haired zombie flesh left stuck to the window’s rounded plastic seemed to glare at his back, as if daring him to return. Within the spectrum of viral gore, it was unremarkable, a souvenir of the zombie’s collision with the window, and a minor one at that. It would dry in the sun and fall off eventually, a poisonous jerky.
He moved so that he was behind Senna and Rosemary, who were standing in front of the window, waiting. He adjusted his hands under the Voltaire II and studied Rosemary, who appeared calmer now, more attuned to Senna’s wavelength, which was good.
Then the putrid odor that belonged so completely to the zombies reached them and hugged them tight with its foulness, entering their nostrils and nipping at their skin, coming uninvited and as it pleased, passing over welcome mats and dirtying the rug.
Rosemary’s breath caught, and she began to feel a spell of lightheadedness coming on as the good air was being pushed away from her, displaced by floating particles of rot, and the far reaches of her lungs began to close up in protest again.
The virus very much wanted those lungs for itself, faulty though they were, and the girl in whom they resided, and, if it got its way, it would have them, and her, and the rest of the holdouts who’d squirreled themselves away in the self-imposed captivity of places like New Crozet.
4
Above New Crozet’s outer gate, Corks clicked off his rifle safety and then scratched absently at a frayed spot on his pant leg. Like Alan, Senna, and Rosemary below him, he was wearing old and practical clothing that was threadbare in places and worn with no eye to matching pieces or catching the latest fashion trends, although the tattered and ill-fitting look was certainly in these days, and they all had that down to a T.
His full name was Corbet X. Noire, but he preferred not be reminded of his former life. The name his parents had given him would get him to thinking about his father, who, even though the ‘X’ in Corks’s name stood for Xavier, had liked to joke that it was pronounced ‘Javier.’ And that would only serve to remind him of his father, who’d died long before his time—thank God he isn’t alive to see any of this—and of the short-lived father-son relationships in the Noire line. The fathers in his ancestry always seemed to die too young, leaving their sons as children in the world, but he’d broken with that tradition, or rather, the virus had done it, by taking Corks’s son from him.
When his father had died, Corks had been left a boy with too many questions, questions that he’d wanted to ask his father, but no longer could, and didn’t have the heart to bring up with his mother. The outbreak had made him realize that he’d also had things to say to his son that he hadn’t raised in time, and now never would. There was a lesson in that, he knew—ask it while you can, say it while you can, ask them what they think and tell them you love them…while you can.
Corbet Xavier-pronounced-Javier Noire looked down at Senna, Alan, and Rosemary, and at the approaching zombie, whose stench of death was being carried to him on the shifting breeze.
It was trying to get in and give that smell to New Crozet, and fulfill Corks’s worst nightmare, which he thought on much and now, there it was again, right on time, that familiar scene coalescing in his mind from the circling vapors of memory and dread, which always found him in moments such as this, and he’d learned with time, resistance was futile.
Superimposed on his vision, he saw the townspeople as pictures of decay, going about their business of aimless, walking death, trapped inside the New Crozet perimeter, dormant in an enclosure that lacked prey. Moments later, his son, Remy, stumbled out from behind the little church where the town meetings were held and with painful slowness he joined the New Crozet zombie horde, and together, they advanced on the town center, drawing closer to the market.
Remy’s full name was Remy Y. Noire, and the middle initial stood for Yoren, the name of Remy’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Corks had joked with him that he had a family duty to give his own son a middle name that began with ‘z,’ to keep the family tradition of alphabetically progressing middle names alive. It could’ve been Zane or Zed or Zarul or Zanuda or Zax or countless others, the possibilities had been happily endless, and it had been for Remy to decide, anyway.
Joking with Remy about middle names had made Corks feel like he was somehow connecting with his own father, understanding the man more and getting to know him in a way he’d never had the chance to do in life.
Remy never had a son, and, though Corks suspected there was something left of Remy somewhere, it wasn’t really him anymore, no, it was…just the virus.
The scene in his head kept developing, like a strip of photographic film taking a chilling, chemical bath, and Corks saw that in the tangle of zombie limbs, Remy wasn’t a man in the prime of his life as he’d been before the outbreak, but a mindless, physical ruin showing break upon break…upon break.
New Crozet is purgatory, Corks’s mind sang to him in the mocking lilt that it had perfected over the last decade. It’s the ultimate punishment for those unworthy even of hell.
That means you, Corks. You. You must’ve done some seriously rank shit to earn your comeuppance, and you’re livin’ it up now, oh yes you are.
Focus, he told himself. Focus on the present, on your job. You have a duty to New Crozet, to your people, to the people who are left.
Shutting his eyes he managed to pull the curtain shut on the vision of an undead New Crozet, and the torturous performance of his synapses was forced into an intermission.
There was a mental sigh of relief…which was cut short when a dragging foot poked out from under the curtain, and then a human shape pressed into the corded burgundy fabric above the foot, and he knew it was only a matter of time until the zombies fought their clumsy way past the shutter for Act Two.
He opened his eyes and looked down. These were his people, and he was charged with taking care of them, and he’d be damned—more so, completely so—if he failed now. Straightening to his full height, just shy of six feet, he thrust his chest forward and sucked in his nonexistent gut, catching a stronger whiff of the rot in the air.
In the days soon after the outbreak, he’d been unable to keep from gagging when the stench that was wafting up to the tower was around him, but now, his stomach held its ground easily.
He aimed, knowing that this was where it could get dicey, and centered the zombie’s head in his rifle sight. He’d been out in the field with Senna and Alan many times in the past, and in spite of this exercise’s relative safety…well, that was just it, it was only relative. And if something went wrong, well…
Corks glanced at the two locked gates behind the people at the fence, catching a glimpse of the town, where a scatter of dim lights was emanating from the shadowy silhouettes of houses. Even with the zombie closing in, the town looked peaceful, unworried, in a quiet and well-earned repose.
Separating Alan, Senna, and Rosemary from New Crozet’s interior and faint, hopeful illumination, were two inner gates, which were locked, and if the approaching zombie or any of its kind found a way through the outer gate, then Senna, Rosemary, and Alan would have nowhere to flee.
The inner gates wouldn’t be opened for them, and if not for them, certainly not for any other New Crozet citizen in their place. They’d be forced to deal with the threat themselves, walled in by gates on a narrow strip of ground, with only the help of Corks from his watchtower.
The three gates could only be opened in sequence, and no two could ever be opened at the same time. Well, technically they could be, but that wasn’t allowed under any circumstances, and this rule, that only one
gate be opened at any given time, was the strictest one New Crozet had, and anyone discovered breaking it would be expelled, a punishment that meant certain death.
You could survive outside the perimeter for some length of time, especially if you were skilled at spotting, but, even then, the virus’s progress could only be delayed.
The zombies, even while dormant, always crept closer to you. They were blind and drawn only to noise, but the virus sharpened their sense of hearing so that even the faintest sound was enough to attract them, and the noise you’d make, as an uninfected human, was the best of all, a sensory delicacy that the virus needed to stuff into its hungrily gaping mouth and suck all the juices from.
Of course, the sounds made by your helpless movements were just an appetizer, and the main course was your flesh, and, if the virus was lucky enough for you to be a child, a little boy or girl who’d made it for so long after the outbreak; the special du jour would be your fear, your anguish, your suffering, as it dawned on you that you’d been bitten and were turning, graduating from the zombie boot camp with flying colors.
That…that fear, that knowing anguish, was the most delectable of spices on the virus’s tongue, and of increasing rarity these days, what with so few people left.
The real clincher was that even if you were good enough to spot the zombies, the virus’s legions of feelers, coming, your instinct—that built-in, human instinct—was to run, and if you did, you’d make noise, and the faster you tried to get away, the louder you’d get, and the faster the zombies would come, slipping by degrees out of dormancy until…
The break.
And after that, after they were broken, there was little hope left.
If you were like most people, you’d run when you saw the diseased viciousness closing in behind you, and if you hadn’t been a sprinter before the outbreak, you’d learn quick, or not, and that would take care of itself, because the zombies were blazing fast after they broke, like flashes of death running after you while your lungs burned and your muscles cried out for air and your heart for mercy. But the virus’s kind, they didn’t need air, ’cause they don’t need no stinking fuel, no, they want only one thing, and it’s the same thing they run on, too, a mastery of perpetual motion if there ever was one.
All they want, all they need, and wantonly at that, is to put the virus in you, so it can eat you alive.
5
Senna allowed herself a backward glance, reassuring herself that Alan was still behind her, and, had she needed it, that would’ve helped brace her for what was about to happen, but she didn’t need it, because this was routine and safe, for the most part. They were inside the perimeter, and though something could always go wrong, the elements that could be controlled here, were.
Past Alan, she could see that the town was quiet, encapsulated in a semi-darkness made of night, moonlight, moonlit reflections, and the dim, wandering emissions of lamps from a few of the houses.
The lights were low because it was late, but also because electricity was carefully rationed to avoid overloading the transmission lines. An overload might require Senna, Alan, and some of the other experienced townspeople to risk their lives traveling outside the perimeter for repairs.
A person could be kicked out for wasting power, but it had never been done, even with drunks like Larry Knapp who frequently passed out with their lights on. He was the town’s expert imbiber, after all, and New Crozet looked after its own, such as they were.
People didn’t use that much power anymore anyway, hardly running ACs in the summer or using appliances, as if electricity had gone out of style over the years. Maybe it was because turning the machines on brought the past to life, reminding them all of what was lost for good and it was better not to stir up those feelings, better to sweat it out in the heat of summer without the latest soap opera on the tube than to dredge up idle sharp things.
The zombie had now closed most of the distance to the open window, in front of which the three townspeople were standing. Given the state of its body, its bones, it was a wonder the thing didn’t fall over—you had to give it to the virus sometimes.
Rosemary edged closer to Senna, and Alan took in the movement with his peripheral vision, but his gaze remained fixed on the open frame.
Up in the tower, Corks said, “Here it comes,” letting the words spill out just under his breath. “Hell on earth.” He set his jaw, firmed up his grip on the rifle, and braced himself.
Opting to skip any further introductions, the zombie thrust its misshapen head through the open window, scraping off a scraggly, decay-chewed ear in the frame. The loss of the ear was like a small dead Lego popping off of a larger Lego structure, said larger structure being just as lifeless as the earpiece—no bleeding, hardly any wound, no harm no foul.
Its mouth was working furiously, snapping at the air with the four teeth it had managed to keep unclaimed by the elements, chipped and blackened though they were, each separated from the others by pockets of gum so decayed that the collapsed tooth sockets weren’t visible.
An eye was missing, its empty socket fringed with tattered eyelid remains, and the eye that was left was bulging out of its hole, looking like it had been caught on something and pulled out partway.
Then the zombie opened its mouth wide enough to unhinge its deformed jaws, and its rot-blackened nub of tongue lolled out to the limit, reaching for the girl with the virus’s desperation.
“Now,” Senna said. “Squeeze the trigger, just like we practiced.”
Raising the gun, Rosemary tried to keep the weapon upright and aimed at the intruding, rotten head, which now appeared to be stuck in the window, but her fingers were rubbery and numb and she felt as if the gun might tumble out of her hands.
She’d known what she was going to have to do at the fence before they’d come there, had been preparing herself for it mentally, practicing each step in her mind, but now, in spite of all that, she found that she was more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Children were kept away from the perimeter so she’d never seen a zombie up close and the sight was more horrible than she’d imagined.
She wanted to turn and run, wanted to get away more than anything else in the world, but she wouldn’t because Senna and Alan were there, and she wasn’t going to be weak in front of them, and as much as the tears wanted to come—they were already there, ready and waiting behind her eyes—she wouldn’t allow it, she wouldn’t surrender to fear.
Senna stepped forward and steadied Rosemary’s hands just as the girl’s own resolve was strengthening, as if she’d known what was going through Rosemary’s head and when to step in for that final push. Probably, she did know, in the same way she knew when a dormant zombie was about to break.
“Do it now,” Senna said firmly.
Rosemary obeyed. Holding the gun steady with both hands, she squeezed the trigger, and the gun coughed, emitting a pathetic noise from its sound suppressor. Though it would have preferred more fanfare, the bullet flew regardless.
6
The first silenced shot put a hole in the zombie’s nose, to the right of center, the bullet forging a dark pathway into putrefying flesh.
There was a short pause, like a stutter, as the zombie’s head jerked backward, and then it was straining to get through the window once more.
Choking back a whimper, Rosemary squeezed the trigger again.
The second bullet found the empty eye socket and there was another pause in the zombie’s movements, but this time, there was no restart.
The zombie went limp, its head sagging over the window frame, which kept it hanging in place like an accidental gallows.
The girl took a breath, and it felt like the first one she’d had in a long while. Eyes wide and realizing her entire body was shaking, she looked at the gun in her hands with wonder, and then turned and stared up at Senna, whose hand touched down on her shoulder and gave a brief squeeze.
Then Rosemary turned and looked at Alan, who nodded, trying to make the gestu
re supportive.
After failing to force a smile onto her face, Rosemary looked away, her gaze drawn uncomfortably to the corpse that was hanging partway through the fence. Senna took the gun from her and put it away, and Rosemary was glad to be rid of the thing.
Alan was pleased, and he was so pleased in fact, that he almost smiled, and if the circumstances had been rosier, he might have, because he was happy that Rosemary had fired again after the first shot hadn’t worked, and that she’d done so on her own. Getting the children used to the zombies enough so they could do more than freeze up, so they could take action and fight and get out of harm’s way, was the first step. As Alan and Senna knew well, being frozen by fear did not a survivor make.
Alan went to the limply hanging head, and its stench reached for him, the familiar notes it played on his olfactory nerves recalling scenes from his past, images that he normally suppressed.
Now it was the Voltaire II flamethrower’s turn to work. He hefted it, swung it backward and then swiftly forward, connecting its muzzle with the sagging and disfigured jaws that had sought them all so doggedly moments earlier.
The strike with the thrower was a trained behavior, engrained in him through years of service on the rec-crews, with Senna, and with many others, most of whom were now gone, and not to settlements like New Crozet. Hitting a zombie corpse with a different part of the Voltaire II, one that wouldn’t later be cleaned by the fire’s heat, risked contaminating the weapon and returning to town with a piece of poisoned flesh hanging stuck to the Voltaire II’s chassis.
He hit it again, and one more time, and knocked the grotesque beast back through the fence and out of the town, where it fell on the bare dirt and kicked up a meager cloud of dust around its lifeless body.
From his post in the watchtower, Corks thought the corpse, lit up as it was in the spotlights, made an image that was infernal enough to decorate the cavernous hallways of hell. He hadn’t been religious before the apocalypse, but now that demons had crawled rotten from the nether and occupied the space of the living, faith seemed an appropriate response. And better late than never.
