Serial Killer Z

by Philip Harris

  I watched the clearing for a few minutes, searching for signs of movement, then went outside and walked over to the remains of the fire. I kicked absentmindedly at the ash, sending a lump of wood rolling across the ground. There didn’t seem to be an obvious use for the fire. Unlike the one in the camp, there was no spit for roasting food and no seats around it for late-night storytelling.

  The wind picked up a little, disturbing the ash at my feet. Metal jangled quietly. It wasn’t until the next gust of wind triggered another round of metallic rattles that I spotted the chain noose hanging from the branch of a pine tree at the edge of the clearing.

  The chain was draped over the lowest branch, but it was still high enough that all but the tallest of people would have struggled to keep their feet on the ground while their head was in the noose. The branch was pale where the chain had scraped away the bark.

  I spent a few minutes staring at the chain, trying to work out what it was for, before the answer hit me. I ran back to the fire. The chunk of wood I’d kicked was lying at the edge of the blackened circle. I knelt down and looked at it properly.

  It was a lump of bone, burned almost beyond recognition. There were other charred fragments, too. The patch of ground I’d thought might be a garden was the final piece of the puzzle. I retrieved the shovel I’d found in the workshop and began to dig.

  Three bodies were buried just a few inches beneath the surface. Their clothes and most of their flesh had been burned away. Two of them had broken ribs; the right arm of the third was crushed, the bones splintered. All three skulls were smashed. I was struck by the image of the camp’s counselors killing their zombified charges and then trying and failing to burn the bodies. Again, I tried to feel something, sympathy maybe, but couldn’t. At least now maybe I understood why they’d killed themselves. The guilt must have been overwhelming. Or perhaps they were infected themselves.

  I shoveled the dirt back over the bodies. The shadow whispered to me as I worked—planting ideas in my mind, weaving together the threads until they coalesced into a plan. I turned the thoughts over in my mind, examining them from every angle, looking for flaws and finding none. The excitement I’d felt earlier returned. The camp would provide me with shelter and some degree of safety, but the workshop? The workshop might be a place the shadow and I could resume our work.

  Back inside, I took a closer look at the workbenches. They were big, well over seven feet long, and close to four feet wide. They looked as old as the rest of the workshop but well made. They’d even been bolted to the floor for good measure. I leaned into them, testing their strength. They didn’t give an inch. There was lighting, too—three gas lamps hanging from the ceiling. I’d be able to work at night.

  I stepped back and admired the workshop, the shadow swelling eagerly. It was perfect.

  Chapter 9

  Garbage Disposal

  By the time I got back to the camp, I was feeling lightheaded from lack of both water and food. I went straight to the kitchen and downed three glasses of water then dug through the cupboards and found a couple of energy bars. I’d eat properly later; for now, I just needed something to stop me from passing out.

  I sat down on one of the benches near the fire pit outside the lodge. It was later than I’d thought, and the sun was high in the sky. The air was warm and muggy. I tried to remember if I’d seen any hats in the cabins. There was a lot of work to do, and I was going to be out in the open a lot of the time.

  My first task was to clear the lodge of the bodies and secure it so that I had a safe place to eat and sleep. The evidence around me pointed to there being seven inhabitants of the camp. There were three bodies in the lodge and three out at the workshop. That left one unaccounted for.

  I thought back to the young man I’d seen at the river the day before. Maybe he was the missing camper? I couldn’t know for sure, but it didn’t seem likely. He’d looked worn out, hungry, and injured. Surely, if he’d known about Camp Redfern, he’d have stayed in it rather than venturing out into the forest. Even if the bodies in the lodge made him uncomfortable, there were the other cabins. I considered them myself but in the end decided the extra space would be worth the effort.

  My own attitude toward corpses is ambivalent. I don’t make connections with people. In my pre-pandemic life, my job as a medical researcher had regularly brought me into contact with cadavers, but I never really saw them as human beings.

  To me, a dead body is just an object—like a table or a zucchini. My motivation for getting the bodies out of the lodge had nothing to do with squeamishness. Three rotting corpses would be a health risk at best. Not from the LDN-4 virus—as far as I knew it had never gone airborne. There were other, more mundane diseases that could be just as deadly. I’d scavenged a few antibiotics and some generic pain pills, but other than that I wasn’t equipped to deal with an infection.

  I added Search camp for medical kits to my mental to-do list and finished off the energy bar, washing it down with the last of my water. Then I grabbed one of the tarpaulins from the quad bikes and took it up to the bedroom.

  I started with the woman, Mary Kelson. Her body was closest to the door, and the smallest, so I figured I’d begin there and work my way up. I rolled it off the bed and onto the tarpaulin easily enough, but it took a couple of attempts to work out the best way to wrap the plastic around it. In the end, I just folded it over and dragged the whole thing across the room and down the stairs. The body made a solid thunk thunk thunk as it bounced from step to step.

  I pulled the tarpaulin out to the front of the lodge, laying it alongside Eric the mechanic’s body. Kelson was wearing baggy chinos with what seemed like an endless supply of pockets, but they were mostly empty. All I found were some crumpled up tissue and an inhaler.

  I looked again at the screwdriver-shaped hole in the woman’s head. In my experience, zombies could “turn” in a matter of minutes, or it could take hours. A few might stay permanently dead. I had no idea how much damage needed to be inflicted on a corpse’s brain to prevent them from coming back. I’d always erred on the side of caution and done as much damage as possible. I briefly considered following the example I’d found at the workshop, and burning the bodies, but quickly decided against it. The fire pit was nearby, but I didn’t know where there might be any sort of fuel, and the smoke would be visible for miles.

  In the end, I dragged Kelson’s body into the forest a couple of hundred yards away from the camp. I rolled it off the tarpaulin, unhooked the machete from my belt, and raised it above my head. I took a deep breath and brought the machete down on its neck. I disposed of Eric’s body in the same place and decapitated it as well, just to be sure. Then I took the tarpaulin back into the lodge.

  John Wrigley’s body was a lot heavier than Kelson’s. It took me some time to get it onto the sheet of plastic and then maneuver it outside. I searched the body and found a wallet containing a membership card for a music club, a driver’s license, and a couple of credit cards. For reasons I can’t really explain, I found myself wondering how much debt Wrigley had on his credit cards. I replaced the wallet and dumped the body with the others.

  Back at the lodge, I stood in the bedroom, working out a strategy for getting Suter’s body out as cleanly as possible. A healthy dose of blood and brains was already spattered across the floor. Even if I slept in a different room, I’d have to clean this one up, but I didn’t want to make things worse if I could help it.

  Flies swarmed around the body, feasting eagerly on the rotting flesh. Reaching past the corpse, I slid the window open as far as it would go, hoping the flies would sense freedom and leave. A few of them did, but most kept buzzing around the remains.

  I laid out the tarpaulin behind the body then pulled the rifle from Suter’s hands and placed it on the table. The chair swiveled, so I turned it around until the body was facing into the room and moved behind it.

  Flies buzzed around me, grazing my face and getting caught in my hair. One landed on my lips, an
d I spat, grimacing and turning my head away in a futile attempt to avoid the insects. I hooked my hands under the body’s arms and pushed it forward.

  The chair slipped then caught on the tarpaulin. Suter’s body fell forward. I let it drop the last couple of feet. As its head hit the floor, a stream of maggots burst from the hole in the back of the skull. A cloud of flies rose up into the air. I swatted at them, directing them toward the window. They swarmed around me, bumping into my face and chest. I felt one crawling on my ear and shook my head, waving a hand at it and hoping I wasn’t encouraging it to hide in my ear canal.

  Slowly, the flies dispersed. A lot of them returned to the body, but a few zigzagged out the window and were gone. The rest swept around the room, crashing into walls or crawling over the furniture. They seemed so mindless, I wondered if perhaps they’d died and become “zomflies.” Trying to ignore them, I rolled the body up in the tarpaulin and dragged it out of the room.

  The flies buzzed and whirred as I dragged the body down the stairs. Each bump dislodged a few more, and I left behind a trail of maggots. As soon as I got the body outside and away from the lodge, I opened up the tarpaulin to let the flies out. This time, most of them did fly away, sailing off into the clear blue skies. I kicked the body a few times to rouse more of them then rolled it back up and dragged it to where I dumped the other corpses, leaving the tarpaulin behind this time.

  It took me a couple of hours and what felt like dozens of buckets of bloodied water to clean the room. Thankfully, most of Suter’s remains had ended up on the rug, and I dumped that in the forest. The floor was still stained in places when I’d finished, but the room no longer looked like an abattoir. Some concerted spraying of air freshener replaced the smell of blood and decay with a subtle pine scent.

  The effort of cleaning up had made me hungry and lightheaded. I headed back inside, drank some more water, and made myself a meal of carrots, apples, and peanut butter. It wasn’t exactly a feast, and I savored it as best I could, but it was gone all too quickly. Resisting the temptation to eat more, I sat on the couch, my eyelids drifting closed as sleep tried to claim me.

  My chin hit my chest, and I snapped awake. The lodge was getting dark. I stood, and the blood rushed to my head. I waited with my eyes closed for a moment until I’d stopped swaying. Plate in hand, I checked the doors and windows on my way to the kitchen. I checked them again on the way back.

  I grabbed my backpack and then paused at the bottom of the stairs, gazing up into the darkness. I knew the rooms were empty, but even without the bodies something made me hesitant to spend the night up there.

  That ancient part of me, the part that was still afraid of the dark, wanted nothing to do with the suicides. My hand found the machete still hanging from my belt. I’d left my flashlight somewhere, but I was armed. I could lock the door. I had nothing to be afraid of. The shadow urged me forward, silencing that ancient voice.

  With my hand still on the machete, I climbed the stairs and entered the first room. The clothes were still scattered across the floor. I halfheartedly moved some of them out of the way and retrieved the pillow from the corner of the room, but the real cleanup operation would have to wait until the morning.

  The moonlight coming in through the window was strong enough for me to check the wardrobe and under the bed. The room was still empty. I swung the door shut and locked it then checked the room one last time before I lay down. I was asleep by the time my head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 10

  Preparations

  I woke with the thick taste of blood in my mouth. The vision of a zombie lunging at me filled my mind. I panicked, sat upright, and kicked out at the imagined horror. My heart was hammering in my chest, nineteen to the dozen as my mother would have said. I could taste blood on my tongue. I wiped my sweat-slick hands on the sheets and fought to regain some measure of control.

  The intellectual part of my brain, the part I relied on to keep me alive, gradually reasserted control.

  I was in the lodge.

  There were no zombies.

  I took eight deep breaths, counting to four on each inhale and again on the exhale. My heart slowed. I dabbed at my lip and winced. My fingers came away wet with blood. I’d bitten it, and it was puffy and tender.

  It was still early, but the room was bathed in a warm yellow glow. My arms and legs ached dully after my exertions the day before. Despite that, there was no chance I’d get back to sleep. My mind was already whirring. A dozen questions competed for my attention. Did anyone else know about the camp? Could I make my home here? Where was the last inhabitant? Were they trapped somewhere in the camp, a zombie?

  I gave up trying to sleep, dressed, and went downstairs. After a meal of a discount-brand breakfast bar and the last of the aging fruit, I decided to start the day by assessing what supplies I had.

  If I wanted to make the lodge my base of operations, my sanctuary within a sanctuary, then I needed everything close at hand. I emptied the kitchen cupboards and placed the contents on the table in the center of the room. Then I went through the rest of the lodge and all four cabins, loading up with anything remotely useful and transporting it back to the kitchen. I tidied up my room as well, dumping all of the clothes into the pink suitcase and cramming it shut.

  When I’d collected everything, I admired my haul. There was a lot less food than I’d hoped. Most of it had been in the kitchen, although there were half a dozen cans of energy drink and several boxes of protein bars stashed in the graffiti cabin.

  There were two camping stoves and four spare propane bottles, so at least I’d be able to eat some hot food. If I was careful, there were maybe a couple of months of soups, chili, instant noodles, canned vegetables, and crackers, along with some cartons of fruit juice.

  I was vaguely disappointed that I didn’t find any alcohol, but after the scene outside the workshop, I wasn’t really surprised. If there’s ever a time for Dutch courage, it’s when you’re about to kill and cremate your once-human, now-zombified friends.

  The cabins had yielded plenty of clothes, including a lot that would fit me well enough. I’d loaded up the biggest of the seven suitcases with anything I’d feel comfortable wearing and put it in my room.

  Beyond the food and clothes, I’d gathered a generous collection of medical supplies including a small first aid kit in a green plastic case, painkillers, bandages, disinfectant, and various lotions for bites and sunburn. I’d found a bottle of antibiotics in the psychedelic cabin, but there were only a few tablets left. I combined them with the few I already had. I’d also discovered some climbing rope beneath one of the beds. The ends were frayed, but otherwise, it seemed in good condition.

  Weapons were few and far between. Other than the rifle Suter had used to blow his brains out, there were no guns and only a couple of hunting knives. I found a box of bullets for the rifle high up on a shelf in the kitchen. There were about thirty rounds, .270s according to the box. I’d never fired a gun and didn’t like the idea of advertising my presence by practicing, but it would come in useful in an emergency or to discourage the living from causing trouble.

  The knives were in better condition than mine, but they were smaller and probably less effective, so I put them to one side. I’d have to check the workshop for a sharpening stone next time I was out there.

  There were a dozen or so books, mostly trashy popular fiction. But there were some on local flora and fauna, an English-French dictionary, and a battered paperback of Stephen King’s The Stand. I put that one aside and stacked the rest on the table in the lounge.

  I’d found a photo album, too, containing twenty years of captured Camp Redfern memories. I flicked through it, but there was nothing other than the usual banal campsite scenes.

  The rest of the scavenged items were largely useless—keys, tourist mementos, things like that. But there was a hand-drawn map of the surrounding area. I found it sandwiched between two hardcover books on trees. It was almost three feet square and had obvio
usly been created over the years by successive visitors to the camp. An intricate banner ran along the top, proclaiming it to be “A Visitors Guide to Camp Redfern and the Surrounding Environs.”

  It covered an extensive area, at least sixteen square miles according to the measurements written along its sides. The camp was at the center, and the map had expanded from there over time as numerous artists added landmarks, natural features, and the sites of events that were significant in the camp’s history. There were a few places I recognized—the river, the road where I’d found the broken-down truck, a logging trail, and the workshop. The distances to each landmark were labeled, and the numbers seemed fairly accurate, at least for the locations I knew.

  The map also showed a ranger station twenty or so miles upriver. I wondered if that was where the military had made their base. If it was, having them that close was a mark against the camp. There was also a lake someone had christened Camel, presumably because of its twin-humped shape, a ridge that had been the site of the Great Water Fight of 2010, and most interestingly, a cluster of buildings marked Sally’s Home Comforts. Someone had recently drawn a crude knife, fork, and bottle next to the buildings in case there was any question what home comforts Sally might be willing to provide.

  I carefully folded the map up and put it in the dining room with the books. It was really quite impressive, a work of art in some ways. It would also be very useful if I was going to live in the camp for any length of time.

  Once I’d sorted through everything and filled the kitchen cupboards with the food and medical supplies, it was lunchtime. I opted for a protein bar and some of the dried fruit. The bar was powdery and had an antiseptic taste. I wished I’d taken the time to warm up some soup.

  My thoughts turned to the workshop. In my head, it was perfect for my purposes. Near enough to the camp that I could move between the two quickly, but not so close that you’d see it from the lodge. The two benches were solid and stable. Once I’d made a few modifications, it would be an ideal place for me to work. And the tools? They’d open up new possibilities, vistas I’d never dreamed of in my closeted existence in the city. I could sense the shadow’s excitement.