by James Cook
Now we had a pileup. The undead began clambering over the mass of bodies in front of them, but their lack of coordination made them clumsy. I let Lance empty his magazine, then began firing while he reloaded.
Slowly, one by one, we exterminated them all. When we ran out of ammo for our pistols, we switched back to our rifles. By the time we were done, the stairway groaned and popped beneath the weight of all the bodies.
“Let’s get off this thing before it collapses,” Lance said.
We went in through the back and made our way to ground level, exiting through the front door. I almost started back toward the Jeep, then realized I had gotten so caught up killing the undead I had forgotten about Bob and Maureen. The brief moment of confusion was lost on Lance, who stood still, staring at the mess we had made.
“How many of them are there?” he asked.
“Probably about eighty or so.”
He frowned at me. “No, I mean all together. Like across the nation.”
I wiped a hand across the back of my neck. “The news said the whole East Coast is overrun.”
“More than half the country lives on the eastern seaboard,” Lance said. “There must be millions. Tens of millions.”
“Or hundreds,” I said.
For the first time, I saw genuine worry in Lance’s eyes. “I knew things were bad, but this …”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go check on the Kennedys.”
TWENTY-ONE
I knew it was hopeless when I saw the front door.
To call it smashed in does not quite do the damage justice. Shattered and brutally cast aside would be more apt.
Broken glass, bloody footprints, and expended .22 shell casings littered the floor. The infected had broken through all three windows along the front of the house, ripped down the curtains, and knocked the furniture askew. It occurred to me the moaning had been so loud I had not heard the crack of Bob’s gun. By the lack of bodies on the floor, I was guessing he was not aware of the headshot rule.
Looking upstairs, I saw red streaks along the walls and the blackened outlines of several pairs of bloody feet.
“Bob?” I shouted, standing at the base of the stairs. “Maureen? You all right?”
No answer.
I looked at Lance. He pointed upward and said, “I’ll take point.”
I let him go ahead of me, aiming my rifle at the vectors he couldn’t cover. We climbed slowly until we reached the first landing where I heard a snuffling and snorting like pigs rooting in a trough. We exchanged another glance before walking the rest of the way up.
A trail of red prints like a macabre version of an old-fashioned dance mat led to the master bedroom. Lance held up a fist for me to stop, crept to the doorway, and quickly peeked inside. His gaze lingered in the room for less than a second, then he stepped back.
I looked at him and mouthed, Well?
He shook his head sadly and made a slashing motion across his throat.
My shoulders sagged as I cursed silently, feeling as if someone had let the air out of me. I had only spoken with the old couple a few times, but they had struck me as warm, genuine, kind people. A few days before, I had stopped by to check in on them and Bob gave me a nine-pound catfish he caught that morning in the Guadalupe River. My dad and I battered and fried it, and it was damned good eating. I resolved afterward to stop by again soon and give them a vacuum-sealed tub of coffee as a show of appreciation. But that wasn’t going to happen, now. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
A warm, liquid darkness swelled at the back of my vision. The lights and colors in the hallway seemed to sharpen, growing in brightness and intensity. The grip of my rifle, once smooth, now felt impossibly rough, like low-grit sandpaper. Each individual whump-thump of my heart sang in my ears with biting clarity. I heard my teeth grind together, felt the muscles in my jaw tense, felt the air whistling in and out of my lungs.
“Excuse me,” I said as I stepped around Lance, who saw my face and took a worried step backward.
I stopped in the doorway, staring. If I had known how enduringly the memory of that moment would burn itself into my mind, I would not have gazed upon that nightmare as long as I did. I would have closed one eye, sighted across the top of my carbine, and taken six quick shots. Then I would have stepped out of the room, walked back to the Jeep, driven back to the cabin, and gotten blackout drunk.
But I didn’t know, then. So I looked.
There were four of them tearing at Bob, two more on Maureen. The old couple were almost unrecognizable, faces ripped apart, clothes rent asunder, blood splashed on walls and bed sheets and standing in puddles on the carpet. The undead had opened Bob up from chest to groin and pulled out his intestines, munching on them like plump sausages. A little girl who could have been no older than ten gnawed dutifully at the flesh of his left forearm. Maureen lay face down, the two creatures astride her ripping strips of skin and muscle from her back to reveal the red-soaked curvature of ribcage beneath. After a few seconds, one of the undead—a young woman, maybe early twenties—looked up and noticed me. Sunlight from the bay window threw off golden flashes from a diamond engagement ring on her left hand, the same hand clutching a ragged, half-chewed loop of Bob’s small intestine.
Her white-gray eyes locked on me, lips curled back from bloody teeth, and she let out a rattling, gargling hiss. Blood droplets and a piece of half-swallowed gore expelled from her mouth and bounced on the floor in front of her as she began to rise.
“Not today, lady.” I raised my carbine and fired twice. Lance cursed behind me as the narrow confines of the house amplified the reports to ear splitting volume. I took a moment to fish a pair of earplugs from my vest, put them in, and took aim again.
The sights seemed to line up of their own accord, red dot centering over the forehead of the nearest infected. A minor flex of my index finger spattered the king-sized bed with a coat of blood and brain matter. The other four began standing, mouths open, hands reaching. I aimed and fired until only one infected remained, a teenage boy, maybe only a year or two younger than I was at the time. I calmly removed the spent magazine, inserted a new one, and raised the weapon level with the creature’s face. Its eyes never left mine as I pulled the trigger and watched it fall.
I looked down at Bob and Maureen, pity and anger burning the backs of my eyes. After all they had seen, all they had lived through, all the love they had shared, all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and weekends, the children they raised, the grandchildren they doted on, after all the years they had spent working and saving to afford this house on the lake and retire in comfort, after all that life, this is where it ended—on the floor of this bedroom, dying screaming in the maw of mindless monstrosities.
Putting a bullet in each of their heads was, up to that point in my life, the hardest thing I ever had to do.
There was a bathroom down the hallway. I leaned over the toilet and heaved up everything I had eaten for lunch that day. When I finished, I rinsed my mouth with water from the sink, stepped outside, and found Lance waiting for me. His expression was carefully blank.
“We should head back. Your stepmother is probably worried.”
“Yeah.”
We left.
*****
Lauren and Sophia tried to talk to me, but I ignored them.
The bottle of Woodford Reserve was in the cupboard where I left it. Three fingers’ worth went into a tumbler, which I carried outside and sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs near the lakeshore. I sat with my eyes closed, face turned up to the afternoon sun. I heard footsteps crunch behind me as Lauren followed me to my chair.
“Caleb, what are you doing?”
I took a sip of bourbon and said nothing. The burn was a comfort against the cold, slick knot rolling in my stomach. The tastes of honey, smoke, and charred wood competed for territory on my palate. I began to understand why Mike liked this stuff so much.
“What happened back there? I heard gunfire. Are Bob and Maureen a
ll right?”
My eyes opened when a cloud drifted over the sun, its puffy shadow casting the lake in semi-darkness. A small group of ducks swam by, squawking at one another. What was the word for a group of ducks? Gaggle? No, that was geese.
“Caleb, look at me when I’m talking to you.”
But geese are only a gaggle when they’re on the ground, right? I was pretty sure once they took flight they were called a skein. Why they were called one thing on the ground and something else in the air, I had no idea. Probably some scientist’s idea of a joke. It bothered me I could remember what a group of geese in flight was called, but not the correct term for a gathering of ducks.
“Do I need to have a talk with your father when he gets home?”
I tossed back the rest of the bourbon in one gulp and waited for the burn to fade before speaking. “You do whatever the hell you feel like doing, Lauren. Right now, it doesn’t make a good goddamn to me.”
Her shocked silence was a physical thing I could feel prickling at my back. “Young man, you do not talk to me like that.”
I stood up, rounded on her, and threw the tumbler past her head. It whipped a lock of auburn hair backward before shattering against the cabin. “I AM NOT A FUCKING CHILD!”
She went still, eyes wide with fear. I stepped closer until our faces were less than a foot away. “Ever since we got to this cabin it’s been nothing but ‘Caleb do this, Caleb do that.’ ‘Go clean the guns, Caleb.’ ‘Go cook dinner, Caleb.’ ‘Tidy up the cabin, Caleb.’ ‘Clean up everybody else’s mess, Caleb.’ ‘Try to keep your father and stepmother from tearing each other’s throats out, Caleb.’”
I stepped closer, only inches away now. “I am telling you, Lauren, no more. I am sick of this shit. I am not your employee. I am not your slave. I am not at your beck and fucking call. I will not do all the goddamn dirty work around here while everyone else pisses their pants looking for excuses to stay out of your way. I refuse to walk on eggshells around you any longer. I’m tired of playing middleman between you and Dad because you’re both too goddamn immature to just talk things out like adults are supposed to. And if I kill a shitload of infected, and have to see the mutilated corpses of two people who were alive just this morning, and I want to have a drink afterward, you are hereby informed that I am no longer under any obligation to explain myself to you, or to anyone else. I’ve done a man’s goddamn work around here, and a man’s goddamn fighting, and when those two men broke into our house and tried to rape you that time, I did a man’s goddamn killing. So from now on, you will damned well treat me like a man, and I don’t want to hear any more of this stupid wait-till-your-father-gets-home bullshit. You’re done telling me what to do. You’re done treating me like I’m fucking twelve. You’re done taking me for granted and ordering me around like a goddamn butler. You and everyone else. Do I make myself clear?”
Lauren stood absolutely still, tears standing in her eyes. “Caleb …”
“Yes or no question, Lauren.”
She looked down, twin streaks coursing down her face leaving glistening trails across the borderland of black circles under her eyes. “Yes, Caleb. I’m … I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want to hear your apologies.”
“I know Caleb. But you have to understand, it’s been hard. I don’t know what to do, or what to think, or-”
“Do you honestly believe you’re the only one having a hard time?”
She looked up, startled.
“Do you think you’re the only one scared? The only one confused? Are you fucking blind? We’re all scared, Lauren. The whole goddamn world is falling apart. There are walking, flesh-eating monsters out there. Lance and I just killed damn near a hundred of them not ten minutes ago. They tore Bob and Maureen apart like dogs on a side of beef.”
Her hands went up to her mouth. “Oh my God …”
“Yes, Lauren, that’s right. Bob and Maureen are dead. Those things were still feeding on them when I found them. They tore them apart, Lauren. They ate them alive. Lance and I were lucky to get out of there in one piece.”
“Hey, Caleb.”
I looked up to see Lance standing on the back porch and hissed in frustration at the interruption. “What?”
“Stop shouting,” he said.
I blinked at him. “I’m sorry, who fucking invited you to this conversation?”
His eyes hardened. “Calm the hell down and look behind you, kid.”
“What?”
He pointed at the lakeshore to the north. “Look.”
I turned and looked where he indicated. At first, I didn’t see anything. Then I cupped my hands around my eyes to reduce the sun’s glare and saw a rippling, undulating movement against the shore in the distance. I could make out no details; it looked like someone shaking a giant blanket in the wind.
“The hell …”
Lance stepped down from the porch, stopped beside me, and handed me a small pair of binoculars. “Here.”
I glanced at him, then brought the glasses up to my eyes. After turning the dial in the middle a time or two, the picture came into focus. It took a few seconds to realize what I was looking at, and then a plug popped free from my chest, and all the anger and frustration that had possessed me just a few short moments ago drained away. In its place, a coldness started in my hands and face and spread until it engulfed my limbs and froze my thoughts.
“Holy shit,” I said shakily.
“My sentiments exactly.”
Lauren came over to stand on my other side. “What is it?”
I handed her the binoculars, unable to speak. Much as I had done, her eyes narrowed in confusion for a moment, then all the color drained from her face.
“They’re headed our way,” Lance said.
My voice came out high and weak. “Do you think they heard me?”
Lance shrugged. “I’d say it’s a possibility.” He started walking away. “Come on, kid. We have work to do.”
Numbly, I did as he said.
TWENTY-TWO
“First thing you need to do is go find a couple of ladders,” Lance said.
I looked from him standing in the front yard to Lauren biting her nails a few feet away. “Okay. Then what?”
“There’s some old scrap wood in my shed, should be enough to barricade the first floor. Is there a splitting maul or a sledgehammer around here?”
“I think there’s a maul in the garage.”
“How about a crowbar? The bigger the better.”
“Not sure. I can look.”
“Please do. Be back in a few minutes.”
As he walked away, a thought occurred to me. “Hey, what kind of ladder? You want like a step ladder, or a roofing ladder, or what?”
He stopped. “A step ladder is too small. Something bigger, at least ten feet.”
“What are we using it for?”
“Them,” he said. “Plural. We need two. I’ll show you later.”
I stared after him as he walked over to his house. “Ooo-kay then.”
Lauren stopped biting her fingers long enough to look at me with worried eyes. “What should I do?”
I looked at her, regret scouring the inside of my chest. My father had once told me a foul temper is a coward that always searches for the easiest target. I walked closer to my stepmother and pulled her into my arms, holding her tightly. The hitching in the shoulders started after a few seconds, then came the warm dampness on my chest. “I’m sorry, Lauren.”
“No, honey, you were right,” she said. “I’ve been a useless mess. I’ve treated you like some kind of servant, and I’ve taken all my worries out on your father. You both deserve better.”
“Let’s just forget it, okay? We’re all scared, and we’ve all said things we regret. It happens. The important thing is we’re still here, still together. That’s what matters.”
I felt her nod against me.
“We have to stay focused,” I went on. “We have to stay alive.”
“I’m w
orried about Joe and the others. They should have been back by now.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it right now.”
“I know. I hate it.”
I held her at arm’s length. “Listen, Lauren. Those things on the other side of the lake are coming for us. I’ve seen what they can do. Doors and windows won’t stop them. We have to barricade them out.”
“Okay.” There was panic at the edges of her eyes, hazel irises darting restlessly. I remembered Dad telling me the best way to keep someone from freaking out in a bad situation is to keep them busy. Left idle, they dwell too much on the danger they’re in and drive themselves crazy. Which can lead to very, very bad things.
“Listen, I need you to do something for me, all right?”
Her eyes focused. “What?”
“Go in the house, find all the nine-mil and five-five-six mags you can, and load them up. I want plenty of spares on hand just in case. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“What about me?”
The voice made me jump. I turned around to find Sophia standing in the doorway of the cabin. “Um … I guess you can give Lauren a hand, if you want.”
“Caleb,” Lauren said, some of the confidence returning to her voice, “I’ve been married to your father for fourteen years. I haven’t had your training, but I know how to load a magazine. Sophia, why don’t you go with Caleb and keep an eye on him?”
I looked down at her and frowned. “I can take care of myself, Lauren.”
“All the same, it won’t hurt to have someone watching your back.”
Sophia cut in before I could say anything else. “Sounds like a good idea.”
