Dead Fall

by Joseph Xand

  Unlike the can goods they were used to, Lizzy and Brandon actually had to prepare their meals, which Lizzy was more than happy to do as it was a welcome distraction and something she found she actually missed doing.

  She'd hated cooking at home, but it was something her mother insisted she learn and something Brandon would have learned, too, once he was older. (Lizzy tried to show Brandon how to cook their first couple of meals, feeling like it was her charge now that their mother was gone, but Brandon quickly lost interest and went off to find something else to do.)

  Brandon, for his part, busied himself collecting wood for the cast-iron stove where Lizzy did most of the cooking, but also for the fireplace where she made their stews in the heavy pot and in front of which they often fell asleep, Lizzy on the couch and Brandon on the floor.

  He was also in charge of getting their water, which was gathered easily enough from a hand pump that tapped into an underground water source. Aside from water for cooking and drinking, he'd also fill up a large basin in the backyard three times a week so they could take sponge baths beside it, each giving the other privacy.

  And once he discovered a small pond hidden within the fields of corn (Lizzy guessed the Amish had somehow used it for irrigation) stocked with fish, he was able to use his wilderness survival guide to extend some trout lines, varying their meals with the occasional fish, which the guide also detailed how to skin, gut, and debone.

  For a bathroom, Brandon, again following the guide, dug a latrine between two medium-sized trees and then connected the trees with two boards he nailed to either side of both trees. One was nailed high and the other low, allowing Brandon or Lizzy to sit with their thighs resting on the lower board while they leaned back against the other. It was a pretty smart idea Lizzy could have used a long time ago, and probably signaled how long Brandon intended for them to stay—something a little more permanent than simply finding a bush.

  Brandon also tried to trap small game in the forest beyond the corn, but other than the occasional cat, (which he released) so far hadn't been successful.

  At first, Lizzy worried about him as he left to explore the surrounding countryside. She watched him anxiously through the windows as he disappeared into the corn, as it enveloped him, the bat on his back his only protection, wondering if she'd ever see him again.

  But he always came back, and usually from a different direction. Eventually, after a discussion about staying away from roads and the corn silo, a conversation that was likely unnecessary, she learned not to worry so much.

  Lizzy managed to pull together two meals a day, with bread left over to snack on. For the first of each day, Brandon usually showed up to grab the food and then disappear again, either into the basement or outside exploring.

  For the second meal, though, Lizzy insisted that they sit down and eat together at the large kitchen table, which they did, one at each end, an oil lamp straddling the distance between them.

  They often ate the meal without a word passing between them, complete silence save for the natural rustling and groaning of an old farmhouse and the anything-but-natural creaking from the bedroom upstairs, punctuated, as always, by the inevitable clomp. Brandon usually read one of his comic books, probably for the hundredth time, as they ate, leaving Lizzy alone with her thoughts.

  "Why do you think he did it?"

  They were sitting down to dinner when Brandon shot the question at her as if out of a cannon. Lizzy jumped from her stupor, dropping her fork on the wood floor. She'd been mainly poking at her food. The fish was cold, the green beans were soggy, and the hard dinner rolls were harder than usual. Brandon had been late getting back from his exploring.

  Lizzy looked at her younger brother. He was dressed that night in the suit they'd put together at the clothing store. He'd been wearing it all day. Lizzy knew what that usually meant.

  If he knew how much he'd just startled her, he didn't give any indication. His eyes studied the ceiling over their heads, listening to the creaking of the rocking chair above.

  Lizzy gathered herself enough to speak. "I don't know. Why?"

  "Well, we've been here, what? A couple of weeks? Nothing's bothered us. Why not just try to wait it out, like us? There's food. Supplies. He was probably better at trapping and hunting than me. They could have lasted here a while. What do you think made him want to waste the whole family like that?"

  "Don't say it like that, Brandon. Waste. He wasn't a mobster. He probably thought he was saving them. Showing them mercy."

  "From what?"

  "I don't know. They've been dead a while now. We don't know what it was like here before. Maybe the house was surrounded by those things and he didn't see a way out."

  "The windows and doors weren't boarded up. The windows weren't broken."

  "So what?"

  "Like in that movie. If these things were inside trying to get in, there would be broken windows with boards on them where they tried to keep them out."

  "Who knows, Brandon? This isn't a movie. I'm sure he had his reasons. You live your whole life in one place, believing certain things—about society, about God—and you build a community, raise a family around those beliefs while the rest of the world laughs at you, but you stick to your convictions, as your ancestors had for centuries. The world has cars, but you make due with horse-drawn carriages. Your competition is harvesting their crops with massive tractors and all sorts of modern equipment, but you do it the hard way. Above your heads, people in jets and commercial airliners are flying all over the world, but you work your land and never wander more than a few square miles. You spend your life keeping out TVs and music and computers and the internet and cell phones, and all to please God.

  "But then one day something does get in. Something from the outside world. Some infection that you couldn't have seen coming because you don't watch the news. People give it a name, but Zero Day, if you ever hear the phrase at all, means nothing to you. Even so, just like that, everything you built, everything you believed, falls apart. And I imagine you feel like God has forsaken you, after all you sacrificed for Him. You might even be right.

  "Maybe zombies weren't pounding on the windows and doors, but maybe one of those kids got sick, and he knew what that meant because he saw the same thing happen to other families. Maybe he couldn't bear to see it happen to his."

  When Lizzy stopped talking the silence was heavier than before. She picked her fork up off the floor and wiped it off while Brandon pushed food around his plate. She stabbed a bite a fish and raised it to her mouth.

  "I think about mom and dad," Brandon said.

  Lizzy laid her fork down on her plate.

  Again, he raised his eyes to the ceiling. "I think about them as those things. They were our family. Our responsibility. And I left them in a closet."

  They'd been over this before. Many times. Always when he wore the suit.

  "They'd have wanted us to get away. Not to take any chances." Lizzy's response was the same as it was every other time he brought up their parents.

  "We shouldn't have left them like that. I could've—"

  "We did what we should have done."

  "We should have taken care of them. I think we should go back, and—"

  "No!" Lizzy stood abruptly, her chair noisily scraping across the floor. She picked up her plate, walked over the sink and set them in. Finally: "Brandon, we've come too far, and there are too many of those things between us and mom and dad. We are alive. They'd want us to stay alive."

  Brandon didn't look up from his plate. He tapped a fork against it. Then: " I saw some of them today. The fast-moving kind. They were chasing a truck down the road. A woman was driving. She looked scared to death."

  Lizzy knew he wanted her to think he was changing the subject, but she knew he was just approaching it from another direction. "What were you doing down by the road?" she asked into the sink.

  Brandon ignored her. "They were actually keeping up with her pretty well. I assume they probably ca
ught her. The truck would run out of gas eventually. But they won't."

  "Finish your dinner. We can talk about it later."

  "How much longer can we keep going? How much longer before they catch up to us, too?"

  "We keep doing what we're doing. We stay low."

  "Sometimes I think the man, the one upstairs? Maybe he got it right."

  Finally, she turned around and faced him. It took her awhile to find the right words. When she finally did, they were succinct and arrived with tears.

  "When you get older…and the world is different…you can go back and put mom and dad to rest. But right now, I need you. Here. With me."

  Brandon looked down at his plate and nodded slowly. Lizzy turned back to the sink. She picked up her plate and moved to the trash to scrape the food into it.

  After some time, Brandon stared up at the ceiling again.

  "That sound is driving me crazy."

  "I know," Lizzy said.

  * * * * *

  They were not meant to stay.

  Lizzy knew this. Not because their life there was hard. Not because supplies were low. Not because they had another destination in mind as their goal and this quiet break in Amish country was keeping them from it. Not even because they didn't particularly like it and were growing bored.

  As far as Lizzy and Brandon were concerned, they could have scraped out the rest of their existence among the rows of corn.

  They weren't meant to stay because life—call it destiny or fate—has a way of moving people along. Whether they like it or not.

  This Lizzy knew. She felt it when they were living in the basement back home as she watched the food dwindle to nothing, forcing them into action. Again when the cruelty of man filled them with an urgency to leave the clothing store. And again when higher concentrations of the dead flowing from Philadelphia propelled them eastward.

  Lizzy could feel it happening again. Long before it became glaringly apparent that it was time to move on, Lizzy knew they'd have to decide on a direction.

  But usually life—again, destiny or fate—already has a path in mind.

  Were it up to Lizzy, they'd have headed south. Try to get to areas where the winters wouldn't be as harsh. And it was with that thought in mind that Lizzy looked south while she hung clothes on a wire to dry on a windy, sunny day. Then she saw the distant dark cloud rising to the sky.

  She consulted Brandon and they studied the cloud and both of them agreed it could be a far-off storm. But neither of them really believed it. Both knew the cloud was too centralized.

  And both felt the heavy weight of fate urging them along.

  The days passed and the cloud grew closer. Several columns of smoke, two or three new ones each day, stretched high into the heavens and combined to amplify the looming threat.

  Still, they stayed.

  Soon the smell of smoke was everywhere, but still, Brandon and Lizzy held out hope that the winds would change or the rains would come and the fires would not force them from their Eden.

  But soon unending flocks of birds filled the sky in desperate efforts to escape the blaze, and they were soon followed by the smoke. Lizzy and Brandon watched from an upper-storey bedroom window as the smoke crept across the fields of corn and turned a bright mid-afternoon into a hazy, gray dreamland that burned their eyes and choked them with every breath.

  Finally, they conceded.

  They packed as much as they could carry into two large rucksacks. To make room for more supplies, they decided to leave one of the two-man tents and made due with just one. They were able to pack a lot into the rucksacks, but they were leaving more behind. Again.

  On one of his last scavenging missions, Brandon found a bike shop. The plan was to make their way there first, find some bikes, then head north. They'd have to stay on the roads, which was dangerous, but they needed to stay ahead of the fires.

  The morning of their departure, a heavy dew held the smoke to a tolerable level. It was cool out and at times the air seemed fresh. They were walking down the porch and were ten strides along before Brandon stopped. Lizzy turned to see him looking up at one of the upper-floor windows.

  The master bedroom.

  Without a word, Brandon slipped the rucksack from his shoulders, lowered it into the dirt, then walked up the porch and back into the house. He was pulling the bat from its sheath as he passed through the door.

  Lizzy said nothing. She didn't try to stop him.

  She heard a couple of dull, muffled thuds, and then Brandon emerged from the front door shortly afterward, wiping his bat off with what looked to be a pillowcase. He dropped the soiled linen at the doorway, sheathed the bat, then walked back to his rucksack. He pulled it back on, avoiding eye contact with his sister as he did so.

  Together they walked up the long, dirt drive between the rows of corn. It led them to a gravel road. From there they headed east towards town.

  Above them, a column a smoke threatened to blot out the sun.

  Chapter 11

  T URTLEMAN HAD TO COME to grips with the fact he'd lost the couple who'd camped out next to the pond. He tried to track them from their campsite, but once their footprints disappeared into the brush, no more than a hundred paces from where they'd set up their tent, he lost their trail immediately.

  He tried to do what he'd always seen people do in the movies—follow broken branches or hair or clothing fibers that snagged on jutting timber. He quickly learned that they didn't snag as often or as easily as in the movies, and broken or torn branches were found everywhere, in every direction, broken by God-only-knows what God-only-knows-when.

  When those methods of tracking broke down, he tried logic. First, he continued roughly in the direction the footprints had been leading when they disappeared hoping they'd follow a simple, straight path. When that proved ineffective, Turtleman doubled back and walked the entire perimeter of the pond, thinking they'd want to stay close to a water source. As he walked, trying to be as quiet as he could, he scanned the horizon for smoke, signs that they may have made a new camp nearby. All to no avail.

  And as depressing as it was to realize he'd lost his chance to get the gorgeous blonde, losing them made him have to come to grips with other harsh realities.

  For one, he was terrible at survival. He didn't know how to build a fire, let alone clean an animal to cook on it. He rubbed sticks together until he had blisters on his palms, without creating the slightest whiff of smoke.

  There were lots of berries he'd stumble upon, but he was always too chicken-shit to eat any of them for fear of being poisoned. And he apparently didn't know poison ivy when he saw it, evidenced by the fact his left arm was covered in seeping, scaly bumps that itched like fuck. He'd scratched deep scabs the entire length of his arm.

  Turtleman also learned he didn't have the balls to stray far from home. He'd had lofty ideals of hitting the road, heading west, making his way to the beaches of California, killing every Reg Rollins he met along the way.

  At first, he felt driven and emboldened by having survived the three days of hell on the billboard. But ten miles out of town he began to get anxious, not knowing for sure if he was actually headed west, and decided to turn back to the town he knew.

  The town where he felt safe.

  Pathetic.

  And the voice let him know it, too. It haunted him daily, taunting his incompetence, laughing at his many failures, accusing him of being no better than that fat-ass, queerbait, Harry Tuttleman.

  Oh, what's wrong? Is fag-boy's pussy too itchy? it teased when he turned back to town.

  "Fuck you," Turtleman said automatically. It was his go-to comeback.

  Aww, now where would you be if I didn't remind you how much of a cockhole you are?

  Turtleman continued back towards town, walking angrily as the voice laughed and laughed.

  Then about a week after losing the couple, he went back to the pond and looked for them again, thinking they may have come back. The voice was not quiet when his sea
rch was fruitless.

  I bet if they were pizza you'd find them, you fat fuck.

  And the taunting continued with every frustrating blunder.

  If you'd have rubbed those sticks like you rub that thumb-cock of yours, you'd probably get a fire going.

  And, as always, his best comebacks were always idiotic, non-sensical bullshit that amounted to nothing.

  "Why don't you rub them together, you…stupid!"

  Again the voice would laugh at his ineptitude.

  Mostly Turtleman stayed near the outskirts of town where the dead were less populous. He'd break into houses that bordered the tree lines and live off any can goods he could scramble or sometimes managed to boil beans or pasta and flavor them with seasonings.

  Sometimes he'd wander further into town, out of boredom more than necessity, and always under the cover of night. But soon the faster-moving variety of zombie was becoming fewer and far between, and he began to leave his safe house while the sun was still high in the sky. Probably more to prove to the voice he wasn't the pussy it constantly berated him as being.

  Reading, Pennsylvania, though not a metropolis by any means, had been a good-sized community centered around an abundance of outlet malls catering to an upper middle-class hamstrung by mundane materialism.

  Between the hundreds of discount outlet stores, the restaurants that popped up on the fringes of the sprawling parking lots, and the three-star hotels surrounding the malls, the outlet centers had been the economic heartbeat of the community. Tourists would drive in from hundreds of miles away and spend days adventuring between one department store emporium after the next in search of deals they couldn't possibly afford to miss.