by Shane Staley
* * *
They came for him at the point the sun was highest in the sky, the light glaring, everything bright and difficult to focus on through the dim slits.
The hollering became louder, more frequent, and rose into a cacophonous chorus. Things began to strike the side of the house, rocks, scraps of wood, shoes and pieces from the crashed cars. He could hear clawing sounds scraping the siding. When he looked outside, there were limbs everywhere, some with jagged objects in their hands, most jostling with others for position, hundreds of leering faces greasy and glimmering in daylight, the horde upon him. They threw themselves at the house, bashing with fists, some with sticks, still others with makeshift blades—knives or wicked-looking things strapped to broom handles.
When they saw the slit, some of them reached for it, wedging their fingers through, pulling and clawing, trying to tear it wide enough to get an arm through.
Grady watched the fingers, dirty and wriggling, as if the cut in his house were a wound infected with maggots, from a couple of feet back. Slowly, he raised the knife, which he’d sharpened to glistening, and began to hack. He brought the knife up and down. Blood flew. He could hear the crunch of bones, flecks of skin-matter spraying. But there were no grunts of pain, and the fingers did not seem slowed. He hacked until his arm was tired.
He fell back, panting. He dropped the knife and lifted the rifle. He aimed.
Tat-tat-tat.
The wriggling mass exploded, fingers coming away, spinning in all directions.
For a moment, the fingers fell back and someone’s face came into view, eyes bloodshot and wild.
Tat. Tat-tat-tat.
Blood gushed through the slit, slopping down the wall and pooling on the floor.
Grady smiled. The boards were holding. They couldn’t get in. They weren’t strong enough.
Something rattled behind him and he swung his rifle around. They were attacking the back of the house now too. He slung his rifle up by its strap over his shoulder and un-holstered the Glock.
He’d left another open slit by the back door. As he hurried across the house, he heard a loud thud, and then the shrieking of nails being forced from wood, a splintering crack. One of the boards over the slit by the back door burst into the house and the opening was suddenly large enough for entire arms to reach through. He saw faces pushing forward to peer into the house.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
The Glock kicked in his hands. A ragged wound appeared in one of the faces. A bloom in someone’s wrist, a spurt of blood. A grunt and then laughter as the bodies were pulled away and the scrambling resumed.
Thunk. Thunk.
The thuds continued, someone bashing at the door. It held, but he could see the wood bowing inward, the hinges rattling, dust exploding from the cracks.
Arms wriggled and twisted, not worms this time, but snakes.
The Glock seemed to have little effect on them. He stuffed it into its holster and lifted his rifle again. He pulled the trigger and sprayed gunfire at the arms and into the opening.
The rounds made strangely muffled sounds as they buried themselves in flesh. The liquid sound of blood striking wood was audible even over the grunts and screams and laughter.
Another thud came at the door, this time accompanied by the crack of wood.
“Come out, Grady! Come on-the-fuck-out!”
One of the wriggling arms wrenched another board free and began to wave it about. It struck the arms around it away and a balding head came into view.
Tat-tat.
The board clattered to the floor.
There was a great splintering sound and the door cracked open, coming off its hinges, hanging at an angle. The opening wasn’t large enough for any of them to come through, but it was large enough for Grady to see the man on the other side with sweat-stringy hair hanging in his face. The man gave Grady a triumphant look, lifted what appeared to be the ragged body of a child and bashed the door again with it.
The door turned precariously, ready to topple, but held.
Grady opened fire.
Again, there was grunting, and blood sprayed. Several rounds took the large man in the chest and still he lifted the child’s body and used it like a club.
The door gave in to the blow, dropping miserably to the side.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
The large man took a volley up his shoulder and across his neck. He tumbled forward onto his face and the horde came after him with pale faces and yellowing grins and eyes bright with glee.
Grady turned and ran. Arms were now fighting to come through the widened slit at the front of the house as well. He ducked to the left, through the kitchen. He fumbled with the lock at the basement door.
Insanely, they were talking, nothing he could distinguish, but all of them at once. They were right behind him.
He wrenched the door open and slid into the dark. He slammed the door closed.
Immediately there was scratching and pounding at the door. He ran down the stairs for a hammer and boards and nails and anything that he could use to barricade the door. He glanced only once at Alice and the bloody mess.
He nailed boards every way he could until he’d sealed the door as solidly as possible. The sounds from the other side continued, but they had become white noise and Grady slumped to the stairs, utterly exhausted.
He sat with his back against the wall and, despite everything, dozed.
IX. HORDE
Something tugged at his leg, but he ignored it. He was drifting...
Bodies smeared like paint across the hillsides; murky streams teeming with tiny fish that darted through castles of bone, ribcages picked clean and glaring; flesh decomposing in gelatinous pools, ears, noses, and hair brimming at the bloated surface iridescent with fly larva; arms and legs severed and roasting over an open fire, oils running thin and sizzling, bellies splitting, slippery offal sliding free, charred, eyeless faces, mouth-watering, maddening…
The tugging became more persistent, pulling him from his dreams.
Grady opened his eyes and groaned. The first thing he became aware of was the noise: voices, banging, scratching. He was in the basement. He was lying on the cold concrete floor. His body was numb and something was pulling at one of his legs.
He looked up and Alice was crouched over him, picking at his leg with her hands. His pants had been torn away and his boot removed. The girl’s fingers were stained red.
“Hey,” Grady said, but the girl didn’t pay him any attention. “Hey,” he said again and dragged himself back.
Alice shrieked and clawed at his leg. She brought her head down, attempting to bite him.
Grady rolled. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and groped to a sitting position.
Alice rose to all-fours and looked at him for a moment. She opened her mouth and began to laugh—a girl’s laugh, so innocent sounding. She crawled toward him.
Grady got to his feet and watched the girl. She was free of her cord, her leg having been gnawed off at the knee. She left a thick trail of blood behind her, terminating somewhere in the mess of gore and blood that was the corner where she had been imprisoned.
Grady looked at his leg. The flesh at his calf was scratched and torn, but the wound didn’t pain him so he told himself he was okay. He looked around, but he didn’t see where his rifle had gone and the Glock was missing from its holster.
He watched Alice, saddened, his heart beating irregularly in his chest. At his feet was the hammer he’d used to board up the house. He reached down and took it up. When Alice reached him, he put one foot on the back of her shoulders, pinning her writhing body in place like an insect. He brought the hammer up and then down.
He sat back on the stairs and stared at Alice’s body.
Above him, someone said, “Come out, Grady.”
* * *
For a time that could have been hours or days, Grady drifted in and out of consciousness. He was weak, hunger like a mewling beast within, threateni
ng to consume him from the inside out. He rocked in place and thought of his mother, always doting over him, always worried, and his childhood, so fleeting, buried in the earth so very close to him, yet entirely out of reach.
He saw the battlefield from his dreams, strewn with the dead, and he saw Alice, lying motionless on the floor. He lifted her, set her up in her chair, her crushed head resting face down on the table. He positioned her hands to conceal the wound from view. He stepped away and he watched her sleep.
The beast within growled, yearned to be rid of its emptiness, to be filled. Grady couldn’t take his eyes away from the girl. How long had it been since he’d eaten? His mouth watered uncontrollably.
“Join us, Grady.”
He forced himself to look away from the girl. He stood, trembling, and turned slowly to look up the stairs. The door was giving way. Already, the boards were shaking loose, nails protruding.
For a moment, he considered simply lying down to wait for the end, but he couldn’t do that—he was a soldier. He was stronger than that. His rifle he’d found lying at the top of the stairs and was now leaning against a nearby wall. He took it up and looked around.
He blinked, feeling strange, trying to clear his head, and began to prepare his final stand.
* * *
It was daytime outside when they finally burst through. How many cycles of light and dark he had passed alone in the basement, he wasn’t sure. The door gave with a final wrenching squeal, and caved inward with a clatter. The first of them through fell with the door and were trampled by those who came after.
A woman lurched through the opening, lost her footing, and tumbled down the stairs. She landed with a sickening crunch on the concrete floor at the bottom. She groped to her feet and Grady fired his rifle. The woman took one step, and then faltered, clutching her chest, crimson blooming through her clothing. She slumped with her face to the floor.
More of them came, like violent water through a burst dam, pushing each other, eager, grinning, gnashing teeth, swinging clubs and knives, tumbling down the stairs, rolling; and then the stairs giving way, crashing down, pouring forth, instantly filling the tiny space.
From behind the table turned over like a blast shield, Grady fired his weapons. His rifle cut trails of blood in a swathe, and when its clip was empty, he dropped it, with no time to reload, and the Glock began to kick in his hands. The only thing he could hear was the blast of his weapons and the satisfying thlick as each round buried itself in flesh. He laughed. He laughed wildly. He fired wildly. He couldn’t miss.
Bodies fell, crumpled, began to pile. He’d created himself a barricade, built from everything he could find in the basement. On one side, his fortress was a wall of paint cans, tied into a mesh by wire and cord and supported by crossbeams set against the septic pipes in the corner; on the other side, he’d used the hot water heater as a base, stuffing and stacking boxes of old photographs and Christmas ornaments into the exposed crevasses. In the middle, he’d started with the table and a wooden shipping pallet and built a structure using the last of his collected scrap wood, wire and nails. He fired his Glock over the table and through gaps in the pallet.
He continued to pull the trigger before he noticed the clip on the Glock had run empty. Members of the horde were already throwing themselves against his barricade, ripping at it with their hands, smashing it with their makeshift weapons. He dropped the pistol and snatched up the hammer. He swung, striking blindly. He connected and swung back the other way.
The wall made from paint cans crumbled, the shipping pallet was torn away.
He lifted the hammer and buried it in the skull of the first person to leap over the table. The body collapsed over the table, but the hammer was stuck. He pulled, trying to wrench it free, but it wouldn’t come.
The hot water heater came down like a toppled tower, thudding loudly, lukewarm water gushing out over the floor.
Hands gripped and clawed at him. He tried desperately to pull the hammer free.
By the time he noticed the cane coming down—topped with an ugly, heavy, gnarled knot of wood—it was already too late. There was a great exploding pressure in his head.
All he could hear now was laughing.
The battle was lost.
X. ARMY
Sound: faint at first, murmuring, rumbling. Grady groaned weakly. Slowly, he became aware of his body, lying on its back, a heavy, sagging creation of flesh and bone. He expected to be sore, to feel pain, to feel fire in his limbs and battered muscles, but he felt only the weight of life, the impossible animation of meat, and the stirring in his brain that willed him to continue. His eyes fluttered open.
He stared at the vibrant sky for what felt like a very long time: wisps of cloud and the visible moon in faded daytime blue. It was peaceful, remote; vast and beautiful.
He lifted his body, bending at the waist. The noise was louder now, a great roaring, and he could feel the ground shaking beneath him. Where am I? What’s happened?
He remembered the attack on the house, how they’d broken through, the assault in the basement, his last stand…
“Am I dead?”
“No,” a voice at his side said, startling him.
Grady turned and for a moment his heart beat like a sickened animal in his chest. The Bearded Man was standing mere feet from where he lay.
“I brought you here,” the Bearded Man said, grinning his shell-shocked, maniacal grin. His beard had been bound in several places, forming a ponytail of sorts. The breeze tugged at his voluminous robes, making the severed heads tied within jostle like fruits ripe for picking.
Grady blinked. “Why haven’t you killed me?”
“Look,” the Bearded Man said and turned his eyes out over the landscape.
Grady stood on legs numb and rubbery. He gazed at the wasteland before him, like a charred bruise reaching to the horizon, and the vast army marching in his direction. Regiments of battered soldiers came through the mists, their all-black uniforms hanging from their emaciated bodies in tattered rags, their pale faces, eyes staring. They carried mismatched weapons of all sorts, some with various firearms, most with bladed weapons—knives wired to the end of shafts to make spears, a mass of blades fused together into a ball of many points attached to a chain like a mace, disassembled and sharpened farming equipment—and some with more primitive clubs and rocks for bludgeoning, and one with a large rabid-fire canister, greasy and caked with splattered grit. Some of them grinned and appeared to be laughing, while others wore more somber expressions, grievous and melancholy, or numb and blank. Some of them seemed to be talking—although it was impossible to hear their words from this distance—while others cursed, or hollered, or laughed. And some of them had taken to all fours, crawling along in loping strides, baring teeth and gums and snarling; and some had broken extra joints along their arms and legs and moved like spiders with their backs arched and their spines twisted in odd formations; and some had missing limbs, or extras attached by stitching or melted flesh.
“I found them for you,” the Bearded Man said.
“What?” Grady couldn’t take his eyes from the horde. He had thought the Bearded Man’s army corrupt before, but now it was truly a sight.
“I dug them from the ground, piece by piece.”
They had wounds that festered on grayish skin, cuts and open gashes, hanging flaps of skin and muscle; and some of them rode others, either piggyback or like ponies; and some of them were stitched together into beasts with long and gangly limbs and multiple heads—each one laughing in turn—that loomed over the others, one with a chunk of muscle as big as a roast made from hundreds of human hearts that beat visibly within a cage of pink tendons. And amongst the ranks towered hideous constructs, machines of bone and muscle, wrapped in skin and gristle, with sharpened points upon which bodies hung triumphant; one that trundled several stories high, shaped like a pyramid with steps upon which members of the horde danced and brandished weapons with glee, a banner of human skin at its to
p stretched taut like a drum; and one that lurched forward on hundreds of staggering limbs, its body a large and translucent membrane like a large ballooning stomach, filled with blood and wriggling things that swam briefly into view only to be swallowed in the murk moments later; and one that held a massive web of veins removed and woven into an intricate crimson pattern, strung between poles of skewered totem heads, a single horde member caught twitching at its center, somehow piloting the creation. There were carts being driven forward filled with human organs, one just for brains, another piled high with stomachs, which some horde members snatched greedily and tore into with their teeth, consuming these variously-filled dumplings with relish. There were those who slashed and clawed at others around them; and one with the skin from the top of his skull scalped and hanging in his face, holes cut through the red flesh so that his eyes could see; and one with fingers protruding from every angle of her face, moving lazily like the tentacles of an anemone; and a line of them with their ribcages split and snapping open and closed like the jaws of ravenous beasts; and—Grady staring in awe—several of them turning to each other like passionate couples, kissing, smearing lips and tongues and faces together, until noses gave and bones crunched, then pulling their mangled faces back with wet smacking sounds to gaze into each other’s eyes.
“They’ve grown strong, the new people of the earth,” the Bearded Man said. “The revolution has begun.”
“I don’t understand,” Grady replied. “What are they?”
“Your buried soldiers, General.”
Grady forced his gaze from the horde to look at the Bearded Man, whose eyes sparkled with madness. “General?”
“Yes. They’re yours.”
Movement caught Grady’s eye and he turned to see another familiar face stepping from the gloom.
