by Max Danzig
In the distance, just north of the farmhouse, she saw a lone pathetic figure staggering across a recently plowed field. She'd seen hundreds of the pitiful creatures over the last few days but she decided this particular stumbling corpse was the one she hated the most. It reminded her that her normal life was long gone and would never be restored, and it reminded her how much she hated the new normal.
Rachel was trapped in the same incomprehensible nightmare she'd been in for the last week. It was a nightmare she knew would never end. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she wiped them away annoyed with herself for even crying. The yearning for the way things once were gave way to a cold hopelessness as empty and lifeless as the body in the field.
“Is everything okay?” a voice asked from behind her. Startled, Rachel jumped, caught her breath and spun around. Peter stood in front of her, his normally bright eyes still dulled with sleep and his short hair disheveled.
“I'm all right,” she mumbled in reply, her heart still thumping.
“Did I scare you?” he wondered. “I'm sorry, I tried to make as much noise getting up as I could but you looked preoccupied.”
Rachel shook her head, making it clear it didn't matter. Her thoughts had been elsewhere. He could have shouted her name and she wouldn't have noticed.
Peter took another step closer to her, and she noticed he had also slept in his clothes. She turned to look out of the window to continue scanning the misty horizon for more signs of movement.
God, she hoped that they'd find something else this morning and not another one of the loathsome creatures. She wanted to see something that moved with reason, purpose, and direction like she did. More than anything she wanted to see another living, breathing human being.
“What are you looking for?” Peter asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. She didn't want to answer him. “Nothing,” she murmured. “There's no fucking point, is there? There's nothing left.”
Peter turned and walked out of the room, leaving her alone to look out over the dead world.
Chapter 30
It was after nine before Peter, Steve and Rachel were all together in the kitchen. Steve and Rachel sat in stony silence opposite each other around a little, square maple wood table. Peter was trying to put together some breakfast from the meager scraps remaining from the dwindling supplies they'd brought from Derry.
The atmosphere at the farm was subdued. Peter was more depressed now than he was at any other point over the last few days and was struggling to understand why. He expected to feel a little better today because he rationalized, that they had found a place where they could feel safe and secure for a while. It was sturdy and isolated, but comfortable and roomy. As he looked out of the kitchen window to the rear of the farmyard, he realized he was just coming down from the elation he felt last night. It was making the cold reality of this morning hard to accept.
The baked beans he was cooking started sticking to the bottom of the pan.
“Is something burning?” Steve muttered.
Peter grunted and stirred and scraped the beans with a wooden spoon. He hated cooking, but he used it as a temporary distraction. It’s why he was the first to cook food at the community center back in Derry, and not because he had any civic spirit or a desire to please others.
Dejected and distant, he served up the food and carried the first two plates over to the table. Rachel and Steve looked at the plates of food in front of them with disinterest. Neither of them was feeling hungry. Each plate had a serving of baked beans, a scraping of scrambled eggs, and cut up hot dogs added to the bean pot. Rachel managed a half smile in acknowledgment but Steve didn’t bother. He sniffed and stared at his food feeling tired and unsettled.
Rachel picked up a fork and prodded the food. She looked at the two men and noticed they were both doing the same. Each of them seemed to be trying their damnedest not to say or do anything that might cause them to talk to each other. They each craved the normality of conversation, but they knew such a conversation would lead to them talking about things they were each doing their best to forget.
As the long minutes dragged on, Rachel's patience wore thin.
“Look,” she sighed, “are we going to sit here or should we think about doing something constructive today?”
Peter looked up and rubbed his tired eyes with forefinger and thumb. Steve ate his food. Filling his mouth with burnt beans, an under-cooked hot dog and eggs gave him an excuse not to have to talk.
“Well?” Rachel pressed.
“We've got to do something,” Peter agreed. “I don't know what, but we've got to do something...”
“We need some decent food,” she said, pushing her untouched breakfast away.
Peter thought for a moment.
“There's bound to be other things we need.”
“Such as?”
“I don't know... warm clothes, tools, gas...”
“We need to know what we've got here first.”
Steve watched Rachel and Peter as they spoke, following the conversation, looking from face to face.
“You're right. The first thing we should do is go through this house from top to bottom and see what we already have. Space in the SUV is limited so we don't want to double up on anything.” Peter took a breath. “Steve, do you know what you'll need for the generator?”
Startled by the sudden mention of his name, Steve put down his fork.
“What?”
Peter frowned. “Do you know what you need to get the generator going?” he repeated, annoyed.
He shook his head. “No, not yet. I'll have to take a look at it and see what’s what.”
“We should get it done right after breakfast,” Rachel suggested. “I think we should go through the house from top to bottom then go get what we need and get back as quickly as we can.”
“The sooner we get started,” Peter added, “the sooner we get back.”
He didn't need to say anything else. Rachel was already up and out of her seat. She scraped her untouched food into a black plastic trash bag and rinsed the plate clean in a bowl of cold water in the sink. She felt good about having purpose now, and without saying another word she smiled at the two men still sitting at the table and ran upstairs to begin going through everything in the farmhouse.
Prompted to move by Rachel's sudden actions, Peter jumped up and got busy. Steve was in no rush. He stayed at the table toying with, and eating, the cold food on his plate.
The night before, the three survivors had made an unspoken agreement to stay at the farm for the time being. It's safe, secure and had the potential of becoming a real home to them. It was only as they scoured the house for supplies that the true potential of their location became clear to Rachel and Peter. Steve acknowledged it too, but he was still unsure. He wasn't convinced they were safe anywhere.
Rachel began at the top of the house and worked her way down room by room. She started in the attic bedroom, which Steve had claimed as his the day before. The only light in the room trickled in through a small window at the front of the house. Other than a bed, a wardrobe and a few items of furniture there was nothing of real use there.
Peter worked his way through one of the three bedrooms on the second floor. He uncovered what he expected to find; clothes that were too old, and too large for any of them to wear. There were personal possessions, trinkets and little else. He sat on the edge of the large double bed Rachel had slept on the night before and looked through an antique jewelry box.
Peter was fascinated by the value of the items it held. Less than a month ago the rings, earrings, necklaces, and charm bracelets he assumed had belonged to Mrs. Marchand, would have been worth a small fortune. Today they were worth nothing. On the other hand, the comfort of the wooden-framed bed he was sitting on made it priceless in his eyes.
By the time Steve forced himself to get up and go outside, the other two had almost finished searching through the entire house. Rachel and Peter finished searching the room
s on the main floor and met by the back door and planned their next move. Energized by having something constructive and purposeful to do for a while, Rachel and Peter talked with what could have passed for enthusiasm. Peter planned to fill the truck with supplies to further secure the house, and find whatever Steve needed to get the generator working.
He found a stereo and was determined to get it working by the time darkness fell. He also wanted to bring beer back to the house so he could drink and forget. Peter knew when the beer was done the pain of reality would return with sobriety, but it didn't matter. He knew it was only a matter of time before one of them would crack under the pressure. He'd just make damn sure it wasn’t going to be him.
Chapter 31
An hour later Peter, Steve and Rachel had gone through the house and the property. They made a list of the things they had and what they needed, and got ready to leave the farm to get more supplies. The three of them stood together by the side of the truck wincing against a cold, autumn wind on their unprotected faces.
The survivors had spent the previous week dealing with crisis after crisis and were on an emotional rollercoaster. They experienced periods of utter fear and despair to moments of elation and renewed hope. Since leaving Derry, nightmarish situations were punctuated with small successes like finding the farm. But, as Peter already found, those short-lived periods of success only made the stark reality of their shattered lives harder to accept. None of them wanted to think about what came next, or dwell on what might happen tonight, tomorrow or the next day. The future has never been certain, but in this new world, the survivors couldn’t even look forward to their next breath with anything less than trepidation.
They stood in silence for a few minutes. Each of them had hundreds of unanswerable questions jumbling their thoughts. The constant barrage of questions floating in their head seemed to prevent them from saying anything. Peter snapped himself out of his trance and got into the truck.
Steve and Rachel followed Peter’s lead and got into the truck and took a seat. Peter started the engine. The noise of the powerful machine echoed through the isolated countryside.
“Any idea where we're going?” Rachel asked from the back seat. She shifted in her seat to slide the key to the front door into the pocket of her tight jeans, having locked up before they left. She found the key on a hook in the front hall. It was a habitual act of a now bygone era.
“No,” Peter replied. “Have you?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Fucking great,” Steve cursed under his breath as he leaned against the window to his side.
Peter decided that whatever they did, they would achieve nothing by waiting. He put the truck into gear and moved down the long rough dirt road which led to the main paved road.
“So any ideas where we’re going?” Rachel asked again.
Peter shook his head, “No. But we passed a few small towns on our way here, all linked by roads like this. If we keep driving in any one direction we're sure to find something somewhere.”
He pushed down on the accelerator, sending the SUV along the twisting dirt road.
“I hope we can remember the way back after this,” Rachel mumbled.
“Of course we will,” Peter replied. “I'll just keep going in one direction. We won't turn left or right unless we have to. We'll keep going straight until we find a town, get what we need, turn around and come back home.”
Home. It was a strange word to use because it didn't feel like home to Steve. Home was a hundred miles away. Home was his modest three bedroom house on a quiet street in East Derry. It's where he'd left Sarah and Mom. Home was definitely not an empty farmhouse in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Steve closed his eyes and rested against the headrest. He tried concentrating on the sound of the truck’s engine. For a few minutes the noise stopped him from thinking about anything else.
Peter was right. Within fifteen minutes of reaching a paved road they came upon the small town of Goshen. It wasn't so much a town as it was a crossroads stop. At the intersection was a True Value hardware store, and a gas station convenience store with a few parking spaces. It was so small the sign reading 'Welcome to Goshen - Please Drive Carefully' was a thousand feet from the one which read 'Thank You for Visiting Goshen—Drive Safely'. The compact size of the town was comforting. They could see it all from the main road. There weren't any dark corners or hidden alleys to explore.
Peter stopped the truck on the main street and climbed out. He left the engine running in case they needed to make a quick getaway. On first impressions the sight greeting them was disappointingly familiar. There were several reanimated corpses stumbling around. Two cars had crashed into the same vacant storefront, and a few unmoving bodies lay sprawled on the sidewalk or in parking areas.
“Look at their faces,” Steve said as he stepped out into the cold morning air. It was the first time he'd said more than two words since they'd left the farmhouse. He stood on the double yellow line in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips, staring at the pathetic staggering creatures.
“Jesus,” he hissed, “they look and smell fucking horrible.”
“Which ones?” Rachel said as she walked around the front of the SUV to stand close to him. “The ones on the ground or the ones moving?”
He thought for a second and shrugged his shoulders. “Both,” he replied. “There doesn't seem to be much difference between them anymore, does there?”
Rachel shook her head as she looked at a body on the side of the road a few feet away. The poor thing's lifeless face bore an expression of gape-mouthed pain and fear. Its skin was tight and drawn. She noticed the greenish tinge of decomposition on its cold flesh.
There was a sudden dull thump behind Steve. He spun around to see one of the awkward stumbling figures as it walked into the side of the truck. It lurched around the truck and tottered towards the startled survivors. For a few seconds Steve didn't react. He stood there and stared into its cold dead eyes, feeling an icy chill run the entire length of his body.
“What the hell,” he said. “Look at its eyes. Just look at its fucking eyes...”
Rachel recoiled at the sight of the pathetic figure. It was a man wearing filthy brown work pants and a ragged red and blue plaid shirt. She guessed, he must have been about fifty years old when he died, but the unnatural tightness and hue of his skin made it difficult to be certain. The body staggered forward with stilted, uncoordinated and listless movements.
Steve was transfixed, his attention captured by a combination of morbid curiosity and uneasy fear. As the cadaver approached, he saw the man's pupils had dilated to pinpoints and the iris of each eye was a thin ring of dull color. The eyes moved continually, never settling on any one object. Whatever information was being sent from the dead man's eyes to his dead brain was not registering at all. The body moved closer to Steve, looking straight past him. It didn't even know he was there.
“Oh shit,” Peter said. “Watch out.”
“It's all right,” Steve sighed. “The fucking thing can't even see me.”
Steve reached out and put his hands on the dead man's shoulders. The body stopped moving. Rather than resist or react in any way it slumped forward. Steve could feel the slight weight of an emaciating body, against his hands.
“They’re empty inside,” Rachel said taking a few tentative steps closer to the corpse and stared into its face. Now she was closer, she could see a fine, milky-white film covering both eyes. There were open sores on its skin around the mouth and nose and its bedraggled hair was knotted. Rachel looked down the thin torso wrapped in loose, dirty clothing, and stared hard. She was looking at the chest for signs of respiration, but couldn't see any movement.
“What do you mean, empty?” Steve asked.
“Just what I said,” she mumbled, still staring at the dead man. “There's nothing to them. They’re just a shell. They move but they don't know why. It's almost as if they've died but no one's told them to stop moving
and lie still.”
He nodded and watched another of the creatures wandering across the road a few yards from the front of the truck. Steve again looked into the face of the body he was holding and then dropped his arms, allowing it to move freely again. The second he released his grip the corpse staggered away.
“So if they're not thinking, why do they change direction?” Steve asked.
“Simple,” Rachel answered. “They don't do it consciously. If you watch them, they only change direction when they can't go forward any further.”
“But why? If they can't make decisions, then they shouldn't be able to realize they're stuck. When they hit a wall shouldn't they just stop and wait?” Steve said.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It's just a basic response, isn't it?” Peter said.
She nodded. “I suppose so. It's about the most basic of responses. Even amoebas and earthworms can react like that. If they come across a barrier, then they change direction.”
“So what are you saying?” Steve pressed. “Are they thinking or not?”
“I'm not sure.” she admitted.
“You sound like you're saying they might still have some decision making capabilities...”
"I guess I am."
"But they might be on autopilot, just moving because they can."
Rachel shrugged her shoulders again, becoming annoyed. "Fuck, I don't know. I'm just telling you what I think."
“So what do you think really happened to them?”
“They're almost dead.”
“Almost dead?”
“I think about ninety percent of their body is dead. The nervous system is still signaling the body to move, but there's no awareness. They're not breathing, thinking or eating but there's something still working inside them. Something at a base level. The most basic of controls.”
