by Jason Offutt
Andi realized her breath had become shallow. She inhaled deeply, trying to keep it steady.
“It’s pretty much safe here,” he said, “in camp. You could stay here. Or I could probably get you a desk job someplace close.” He looked up at the nearly full moon, the blond stubble visible in the light. “What I’m trying to say is I don’t want you to go out and get killed.” His eyes dropped back down to hers. “Them ain’t people out there no more. Those things you’re goin’ against—” He waved his beer bottle toward the other tents set apart from Andi’s, “—those things ya’ll are goin’ against, might look like people, they might even look like someone you know, but they’re monsters. Goddamned flesh-eatin’ monsters.”
Andi felt her heart beating hard under her shirt. He wants to protect me. He— No. She couldn’t have that. She wouldn’t have that. “Thank you, but I can’t. I’m here because my parents probably turned into those things.” She paused and stared at him until his eyes came back to hers. “I couldn’t protect them, Cotton, but I’m going to do what I can to protect everyone else.” His mouth opened to say something, but she shook her head and it closed again. “You said I was the best shot you’d ever seen. I’ll be fine.”
He glared at her with glassy eyes. It was a long time before he spoke and when he did Andi wished he hadn’t. “You ever shot a man, Bakowski?”
Andi had shot deer, turkey, rabbit, squirrel, pheasant, but no. Shooting another human being had always been shoved way in the back of her head, reserved only for self-defense. She shook her head. “No, Cotton. I haven’t.”
He looked back up into the sky. “It’s different. The person on the end of your sights, they got family, maybe kids. They probably got a job, people countin’ on them.” He dropped his eyes back to hers, his face stiff with unexpected sobriety “This ain’t nothin’ you want to do. This ain’t nothin’ you ever want to do.”
They stood in silence before Cotton turned and walked back toward his tent.
Andi didn’t see Cotton again. Cpl. Tennyson gave deployment assignments in the morning, one soldier for every mile. After two days, they’d move to another section of the Fence. Two days another. They’d be back to base in a month. Maybe things would be different then.
***
Polo Man paused at the Fence and looked up. Andi was convinced this person wasn’t one of those things with the Piper. He was exhausted and running from something. She broke from the scope and looked at the world with just her eyes. The black cloud of birds was closer, covering half the sky; the beat of their wings was audible now, a drumbeat tattoo she heard over everything. Then she saw what Polo Man was running from; it wasn’t the birds.
The cornfield shook. She put the scope back to her eye and looked more deeply into the dry, brown stalks.
“Oh, my god.”
Piper monsters. Hundreds of them moved through the corn, their rotting gaunt faces streaked with blood, their bodies covered in mold. They weren’t coming for the man in the polo, but he was in their way.
The man kicked off his shoes and made as if to climb the Fence. “No, no,” Andi said under her breath. “Get out of there. You can still get out of there.”
Andi’s fingers fumbled with the megaphone before she found the handle and moved it to her mouth. Her mind suddenly grew blank. Words. Damn. Damn, damn. What are the words? Her squad’s training wasn’t just to shoot, it was to detain. Shoot the infected, but delay a possible clean human long enough to send them toward a way station near Lawton. This guy didn’t look infected. She tried to relax, but the birds’ wingbeats pounded her ears. One of them, a crow, landed on the roof about ten feet from her and cawed. She knew she’d have go inside the motel soon, away from those birds, but not now. Not yet. The man hooked his fingers and toes into the chain links and pulled himself up, the two-legged monsters closing in fast.
Citizen. That’s what she was looking for.
“Citizen,” she said, the megaphone belching the word. “Citizen. Back away from the Fence.”
The man said something, but Andi couldn’t hear what. ‘What are we going to do if we see one?’ Guthrie had asked Cotton last night. Andi knew Cotton’s response too well.
“Citizen,” she said again. “There is a safe zone near Lawton. It’s just to the west. Please disengage from the Fence and move west.”
A crow settled on the top of the Fence near his head. The man kept climbing.
Can he hear me? She looked at the settings on the megaphone; the volume was set to maximum. “Please remove yourself from the fence. Remove yourself immediately,” she said, louder this time.
He said something else Andi couldn’t hear before he reached over his head and grabbed more of the Fence. A crow flew straight at the man. Andi saw it coming. The big bird dipped from the cloud and struck him in the head. He teetered and almost fell, just as the Piper monsters reached the Fence below him. They wrapped their moldy hands into the chain links and shook, seemingly oblivious to the man above them.
“Goddammit,” she hissed. His window to escape had vanished. Shoot it in the head. “Damn you, Cotton.”
I can do this. I’m a soldier and I can do this. “I’m sorry,” Andi said through the machine. “I truly am, but I have my orders. You are in violation of United States Army Code 45986B. For the survival of the human race, no one is to cross the Southern Border of the Good Lands of the United States of America. Trespassers will be shot on sight. Now, please, remove yourself from the Fence.”
Please, God, please move away from the Fence.
The bird attached itself to the man’s head and began to peck. The monsters below Polo Man noticed him, reaching upward like he was an apple on a tree.
“Citizen.” Her voice trailed to nearly nothing. Her words didn’t matter. “Shit.”
Andi threw the megaphone. It skittered across the rooftop and sent the crow flapping into the air. The man was as good as dead. “Damn it,” Andi said, her voice inaudible from the pounding in her ears. Tears didn’t come. The person on the end of your sights, they got family, maybe kids. They probably got a job, people countin’ on them.
The butt of the M24 SWS nestled firmly against her shoulder. Polo Man was an easy shot; he barely moved, but Andi’s hands hook. This was a person. You ever shot a man, Bakowski? “I’m sorry,” she whispered and gently, evenly pulled back the trigger. A crack split the air a half-thought before the bullet punched into the man’s right shoulder, throwing him backward from the fence. His left hand dangled his spent body over the growing sea of slathering human monsters beneath him. The crow clung to his head like an awkward hat.
Shit. Shit, shit.
She pulled back the bolt and shoved it into place, slamming another round into the chamber as one of the Piper monsters saw what was happening just above it and grabbed Polo Man’s right foot. Her second shot exploded the back of his head. Polo Man was dead before he fell onto the waiting wall of monsters.
***
Andi left the sniper weapon lying on the Motel 6 roof. There was no need to hurry, at least not now. After Polo Man disappeared into a cluster of the human-shaped monsters, the rest of the Piper things stood milling at the Fence, seemingly befuddled by it. The cloud of crows settled in the cornfield, contented to pick at the crop no one would ever harvest.
She vomited on the motel roof before she descended the ladder through the trap door, Army-issued mac and cheese splattering over the sniper rifle. The man was dead, she’d killed him. But I saved him from being awake for that. He would have felt being eaten alive. She dropped to the floor and walked down the dusty hallway to the stairs. I should have asked Cotton if that’s how you get past it.
Her Humvee sat in the parking lot over two spaces like it was a Mercedes she hadn’t wanted to get scratched.
There was enough water and food in the vehicle for a week, enough ammunition for her sidearm and the M4 Carbine that sat in the passenger seat to take over a small town and enough gasoline to get her far enough north the Army might
forget about her. The tears finally came when she pulled herself into the four-wheel drive truck and shut the door. Polo Man. He might have had a family. He might have been a priest, or a teacher, or he might have had the cure for all this. Shoot them in the head. Polo Man might as well have been Big Andy, wherever he was.
Andi started the Humvee and put it in gear. She drove north, sticking to the side streets in case she encountered another military vehicle; she wasn’t going back. Uh-uh. The Army had been a mistake. She could shoot but wasn’t ready for what she was required to pull the trigger for.
The city was empty, desolate. Andi stopped at a convenience store at the north end of town and picked up Sun Chips and a case of Bud Light. Maybe, she hoped, she’d meet up with Cotton after the world stopped sucking so much.
July 28: I-80, Western Nebraska
Chapter 4
Nikki hated running. In high school, she tried out for track, not because she wanted to run, but because she wanted Thickie Nikki to go away. “I’m ugly, Dad,” she told her father, Gene Holleran, the morning he found her crying on the toilet. Doors meant nothing in the Holleran house.
“You’re a beautiful girl,” he said. “You’ve always been a beautiful girl.”
“But I’m a fatty,” she whispered between sobs. “They call me Thickie Nikki.”
Gene Holleran smiled and kissed his daughter on the head. “High schoolers are mean people, baby girl.” His voice was soothing. “Don’t worry about it. Just be who you are and be happy with that. Nicknames come and go. If these jerks see it doesn’t bother you, it’ll go soon enough.”
She pulled off a line of toilet paper and wiped her eyes. “Did you have a nickname in high school?”
Gene Holleran nodded, a grin playing at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. They called me Mean Gene.”
A short laugh escaped her mouth. “Mean Gene? Dad, you’re a teddy bear. How did you get that?”
Gene leaned against the sink and crossed his arms. “I kind of punched the biology teacher.”
Nikki’s hand instinctively went to her mouth. “Oh, Dad. A teacher?”
“I wasn’t aiming at the teacher,” he said. “The guy I was supposed to hit had it coming to him, he just didn’t get it. Mr. Mackenzie did.” Gene flipped on the bathroom fan and started out the door. “Now finish up in here. I’m fixing eggs and toast. You don’t want to be late for school.”
Nikki didn’t lose weight on the track team because she didn’t make the track team; she could almost walk faster than she could run. Thickie Nikki lasted for three more semesters until graduation when Nikki went to a community college where there were enough Thickies she could hide in a crowd. Nikki looked good now, though. Firm legs and a flat stomach. The apocalypse was apparently great for weight loss.
But Nikki had to run again.
When Terry rolled down the embankment toward the culvert, Nikki knew he didn’t fall by accident; the look on his face wasn’t pain, it was terror. The kind of terror that gripped you in steely claws and would not let go. ‘They saw me,’ he’d said. Nikki didn’t know who “they” were, but she had a good guess. “We have to get out of here,” she said, helping Terry to his feet.
He nodded, “Now.”
“But Doug can’t move that fast,” Jenna said, her voice trembling.
Terry turned to Jenna. “We don’t have time for that. They’re coming in hard.”
“Leave me,” Doug said. “My ankle’s broken and my head’s—. Well, my head’s fucked up. I’ll slow you down.”
“Jenna, you and me grab Doug–”
“Leave me,” he said again. “You’ll be faster that way.”
“–Nikki, you go get the doors open on that Toyota.”
Nikki nodded and scrambled up the embankment. Terry rushed to Doug and he and Jenna hoisted him to his feet. “Sorry to disappoint you, boss, but we’re going to try and keep you alive today. Let’s go.”
***
When she reached the highway, Nikki looked to the west and her legs nearly buckled. The sky was black with birds and the highway teemed with zombies. She didn’t know what else to call them anymore; they shambled toward her straight from the set of a Romero movie. And they were close, too close. Where the hell did they come from? Move, Holleran. Move your ass. But her legs were frozen. My God, the noise. The thunder of wings was deafening.
“Nikki,” Terry yelled, his shaggy head popping up on the side of the road, followed closely by Doug and Jenna. “The doors.”
Doors. Right. She lurched toward the Prius, the luggage shell on top of the vehicle lay open, the owners on the roadside beside the car, their bodies baked dry by the Nebraska summer. The driver’s side door swung open easily in her hand, as did the passenger door, but the back doors were locked. Nikki reached in and manually opened them. When Terry and Jenna finally topped the embankment and stepped onto the pavement, the car was ready.
“Hurry,” she screamed. No need to be quiet, the zombies already knew where they were. Their snarls and moans grew louder by the second, the flapping wings turned her world into a horror movie she couldn’t turn off.
The horde of maybe twenty growling monsters that used to be teachers, or farmers, or accountants, reached the furniture truck when Terry and Jenna slid Doug into the back seat and Jenna squirmed in beside him. Terry jumped into the driver’s seat. “Now let’s see if this baby starts, or this is going to be the shortest escape ever.” He took a breath and punched the ignition button on the dash. Nothing happened. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Nikki hated the sound of her voice at that moment. It sounded panicked, weak.
Terry opened the car door and stepped out, the thunder of the approaching wave of birds vibrated the air; a blanket of black stretched along the highway. “No keys. Get behind the wheel, honey and shut the door.” Nikki scooted into the driver’s seat and watched the man she’d fallen in love with turn to face the monsters.
***
Damn Hipsters and their damn Prius. Terry hated hybrid cars; not because of the cars themselves, it was because of the assholes who drove them. ‘I’m doing my part to save the planet,’ a young bearded man wearing a hat out of a gangster movie told him one day while Terry fixed the brakes on his Prius. Horse shit. Then why are you standing here in Doug’s Muffler and Brakes in your leather shoes, drinking coffee that’s growing demand has caused damage to the ecosystems of small countries – and out of a Styrofoam cup, no less?
A crow cawed at Terry from the electric wires that paralleled the highway as he knelt next to the Hipster corpses; the day growing darker as the wall of birds covered the sun. “Come on, man.” He pushed his hand into the right front pocket of the Hipster’s jeans that were probably once tight, but now hung loose over the dried flesh. The man’s eyeless face stared at Terry from behind horn-rimmed glasses. Terry’s hand closed on something metal; he pulled it out. “Change? Who the fuck keeps change in their right pocket?” Lefties. Two quarters, three dimes and six pennies rattled on the dusty asphalt as Terry rolled the almost weightless, wood-like body onto its face and shoved his hand in the left pocket. Keys. The Prius didn’t need a key in the ignition to start, but it needed the electronic keychain in the car, or it wouldn’t budge.
“Terry,” Nikki screamed. He swung his head away from the corpse. A zombie, a good twenty feet ahead of the horde, its eyes white, its blue dress shirt stained with spittle like a teething infant, ran toward him fast. Fuck. He couldn’t reach the car before it got to him. Terry glanced around him, the end of a pipe stuck from the dried grass of the roadside. Holy shit, Adopt-A-Highway needs to step up its game. Terry reached forward and wrapped his fingers tightly around the sun-warmed metal. He stood fast, swinging the four-foot long section of three-quarter inch pipe in a wide arc. The pipe hit the foaming zombie on the forehead with a sickening crunch, a piece of its skull flew off the side of the road and the thing fell to the asphalt.
A bird flew by Terry’s head; its wing clipped his ear. “Shit.” He le
t the pipe fall to the pavement and ran to the Prius, flopping into the passenger seat and dropping the key ring in the cup holder.
“Where does the key fit?” Nikki screamed.
Terry pushed a button on the dash. The Prius started.
“How did you know how to do that?”
“I’m a mechanic.”
Something slapped against the rear window and Jenna screamed; the bloodied body of a fat crow lay on the trunk. The sky was now black; the cloud of birds moved like a storm front. “Go,” Jenna yelled, pounding the back of the front seat. “Go.”
The first zombie, a man in a wrinkled black business suit slammed its face against Nikki’s window, wiping a stream of drool and snot across the glass as it tried to gnaw the window. Another monster pounded the trunk. Jenna screamed again. Nikki slammed the shiny blue gearshift into Drive and punched the accelerator. Regardless of reputation, the 2012 Toyota Prius can go zero to sixty in ten-point-two seconds.
The Toyota shot away from the snarling mob. “Stop here. Stop here,” Terry hollered.
“Are you crazy?” Nikki spat.
“No. No. Just stop.”
Nikki slid the Toyota to a screeching halt next to the Budweiser truck. Terry jumped out of the car and looked to the west, slapping his ass at the approaching zombies. He pulled two cases of Budweiser out of the open door of the beer truck, the same door he’d pulled open yesterday and climbed back into the car with the beer on his lap.
“You’ve got to be shitting me, Terry,” Jenna screamed at him.
“It could be forever the next time we find a beer truck.”
“Unbelievable,” Nikki said under her breath and hit the accelerator again; the Prius moved silently away from the beer truck and the pack of walking death.
Terry pulled a beer out of a case and held it toward the back seat. “Anybody interested?”
Jenna snatched the can from his hand. “Fuck you, Terry. Just fuck you.”
