by T. W. Brown
A few times, she considered going limp. The noose would constrict and it would be over. But she just couldn’t. Something deep down told her to fight. The Big Man was not too terribly smart. Eventually, he would make a mistake, and when he did, she would get away. Or, if she was lucky, kill him. Kill The Big Man. She’d given it thought, honestly asked herself if she could kill a living person. The Big Man wasn’t a person. He was an animal. Worse than the dead people who wanted to eat her. Worse than the dead person who’d bitten her dad.
Yes, Kirsten thought, The Big Man had to die. And she would do it. The time would come, of that she was certain. He would die, and she, Kirsten Malloy, would do it.
***
Garrett slipped over the waist-high wooden fence and into the yard of the large house. He’d had no luck finding anything of value in the first half-dozen houses. Perhaps it would’ve been wise to bring his Toy. He knew that it was too late for that now, and it would just be a waste of time since he’d already gone this far.
He did have to grudgingly admit that that tiny creature had shown some ingenuity. On two occasions he’d gone into houses to discover the undead occupants locked inside rooms. And in a few cases, they’d been taken down and killed. He wasn’t sure if it was at the hands of his little Toy, or at the hands of the man she’d been living with prior to him. The one who’d supposedly taught her how to get the monsters’ attention at the front gate before slipping over the wall for supplies. And it didn’t actually matter. What mattered this very moment was that he find food. And when he got back, he’d make The Toy earn every bite of every meal.
Trotting along the side of the big, expensive looking house, Garrett noticed it was all closed up. Glancing at some of the windows, he realized that they were boarded from the inside. Perhaps there were others inside. Could he find something even better than food? The possibility made his pulse quicken and certain parts of him stir.
Rounding the corner, he climbed a small set of stairs that led to a covered back porch. There was a black square of plastic at the bottom of the door, a pet entrance. Garrett pushed it with his big toe, but something solid was blocking it from the other side. He tried the door, not surprised to discover it locked.
Bracing his shoulder against the door, Garrett pushed, testing the sturdiness of the frame. It was strong, but not impossible. The only problem was that, by breaking it in, he would lose any chance of surprise. He’d have to be ready to kill immediately. Having recently found a sturdy-bladed machete in one of the groundkeepers’ sheds, he was actually anxious to use it.
One good thrust with his shoulder opened the door. Garrett laughed just a little at the illusion of security these rich people had lived behind. He peeked inside and discovered a kitchen. It was pristinely clean. Not simply tidy, no, this kitchen had been scrubbed and polished. Even with a light coating of dust, there remained a chemical smell, like bleach and something else.
Stepping in, Garrett pulled the kitchen door closed behind himself. There were three closed doors and an open archway. It was gloomy and dark because of all the windows having been boarded up. Garrett listened carefully for sounds of any movement.
Nothing.
He walked through the arch into an enormous dining room. A long table with high-backed chairs was adorned with immaculately placed settings and a long-dead floral centerpiece that had blackened flowers of all sorts sprawled around the dry, muck-coated crystal vase. Garrett could barely see into the next room due to the imposed darkness. He walked over to the hastily nailed up sheet of plywood and tugged. It took a couple of pulls, but eventually he tore one free with only a modest amount of screeching as the nails ripped from where they’d been pounded into the wall and sill.
Sunlight poured in, chasing darkness away, or at least into small shadowy pools in the corners. Garrett walked back into the expansive kitchen and began opening cupboards and drawers. All he found were useless china settings and indescribable utensils. He considered the three closed doors and decided on the one beside the largest refrigerator he’d ever seen in his life.
The doorknob turned and revealed a walk-in pantry. It was a jackpot on his first try! He scanned the shelves, mouth already watering at some of the possibilities. His eyes stopped on a can of pears. What would his Toy do for such a luxury? He moved to the second door and opened it. Nothing but cleaning supplies. Garrett approached the third door and noticed the hint of the sickly sweet smell of death mixed with the sharp stench of shit. Cocking back his weapon, Garrett yanked open the door and leaped back in anticipation of the monster that would come stumbling back. Instead, in the inky darkness of what had been a giant linen closet, a boy hung from the sturdy piping that ran in a neat, parallel manner across the ceiling. Garrett scowled and shut the door.
He decided to give the house a walkthrough to see if there might be anything else worth taking. He was already certain that he would need to make a couple of trips just to empty out the pantry. He crept deeper into the interior, noticing once again that smell of death drifting down a large staircase that led to the well-lit-by-the-sun upper level.
Halfway up, Garrett paused. There it was again, a squeak of a loose floorboard. Something upstairs was moving. It had to be one of them. Well, now he’d get to use his newly acquired weapon.
Heedless of the noise he made, Garrett hurried up the rest of the stairs. There was a large, open room with long couches arranged facing in to a wall-mounted flat-screen television that was the size of the living room window of his mom’s house. There were two hallways leading off from this room. There were several windows up here, most with the curtains open wide to allow in torrents of sunlight.
Garrett walked to one that looked out front. He was less than pleased to notice that a few of those filthy creatures had followed him and were staggering up the long driveway or simply standing at the fence, apparently too stupid to walk along it to the open driveway entrance.
Squeak.
Garrett spun, the silence making it difficult to tell just how far away he was from the source of the sound. However, he only had to stand there for a moment before it came again. It was behind a door along the wall to his left. Creeping slowly, Garrett approached the door. The smell grew stronger, quickly confirming that there was indeed death on the other side of that door.
Breathing through his mouth, Garrett took in one more deep inhale. He closed his hand on the knob, turning it as slowly as possible to minimize his noise. Carefully and slowly he opened the door. The wave of stench rolled out in an almost tangible, physical sheet that coated him with its vile nastiness. For the first time in a while, Garrett gagged.
His eyes blinked at the slight stinging sensation. He wanted to pretend what he was seeing didn’t bother him, but the still human part of him cringed nonetheless. The squeak sounded again. It hadn’t been a loose floor board after all.
***
Kirsten winced for probably the hundredth time. The blue-grey hand swiped at her, missing by a handful of inches, but it seemed in her eyes to only be a fraction of a millimeter. She tried to be careful, but a few times she’d jerked enough to cause the line around her throat to tighten.
Glancing up, she noticed that the sun was clearing the houses and trees now, bringing its full power to bear on her skin. Well, she thought, at least it will dry the rivulets of slobber running down my front.
Her eyes scanned the growing crowd on the other side of the gated entrance. It had at least doubled in size since she’d been tied to the wooden post. There’d been some concern on her part that so many of those things pressing towards her would somehow enable them to reach her. That fear had subsided eventually, but she still couldn’t help the wincing when one of those thing’s hands would swing through the air wildly, fingers extended fully instead of clawed or curled like they were already grasping her. That’s when the hands seemed so close that she could not will herself to keep from reacting.
She tried closing her eyes a few times. That had only made it more frightenin
g. The sudden breeze from one of those swiping hands was made far worse by not being able to see. So, she was, in a matter of speaking, stuck.
Her eyes drifted down towards the ground, drawn by a sudden movement and that horrid sound that was almost like a hungry baby crying for its mommy. A face pressed against the bars, its eyes milky and shot with the tell-tale black of death, its mouth open wide showing grey gums and stain-flecked broken teeth. He couldn’t have been any older than ten. Kirsten did her best not to feel sad, but this was becoming more and more impossible. She thought that by now she would’ve become immune to the visual tragedy of violent death. Certainly she’d seen enough of it. Well, then why wasn’t she…what was the word?
Desensitized.
You poor thing, she thought. She’d actually started to voice that sentiment, forgetting, albeit only momentarily, about the clothesline cutting into the corners of her mouth and keeping her tongue forced into the back of it.
Kirsten studied the wretched thing. All of the lower lip was gone, allowing for her to get an even better look at its putrid, dead mouth. There were bites taken out of both arms, which she could see clearly as the thing clawed at the cement ground in an attempt to reach her. She realized what it was that was so beyond the norm and had her upset. It wasn’t the child-zombie, she’d seen plenty of those. It was the fact that it had squirmed its way to the front, and now lay sprawled underfoot of the gathered mob. Her eyes had been staring at it, but her mind was just now allowing Kirsten to process that. She could see the small body bending and bucking under boots as well as bare feet. She could hear ribs snapping and popping over those moans, groans, and cries. There were sharp pieces jutting out from the creature’s skin.
Kirsten could no longer help it. This one pitiful thing had managed to do something with no real effort that The Big Man had to work hard to accomplish.
Kirsten cried.
***
Five bodies hung by their necks from knotted sheets. All of them began twitching and clawing at the air in earnest at the sight of him. Against the far wall, two more bodies lay in a heap, one of them ripped open, its guts spilled out in a congealed pile. Its head had been blown almost entirely away, probably by the double-barrel shotgun cast off in one far corner. The other body was in far better condition, but only relatively speaking. There was a bandage dark with dried blood on the left forearm and a neat hole on the right temple. A tiny, two-shot Derringer-style .22 pistol still clutched in one hand.
Garrett was transfixed for a moment by the lack of an exit-wound. He finally shook free of the trance and looked at all the bodies squirming from the rafters of this large storage room. He leaned in and grabbed the bloated ankle of a fat black woman wearing a blood-stained blue frock with an apron. He pulled her towards him a bit and let go. The body swung back, colliding into others and setting off a chain-reaction. The creatures all began struggling even more, some of them able to emit harsh croaking sounds. Garrett clapped his hands gleefully and repeated the action several more times.
Eventually he grew bored. Although, at one point, one of the skinny Latina housemaid’s panties slid down from her legs, stopping at her ankles. Garrett was transfixed by the clot of maggots wriggling in the crotch of the soiled—but long-since dried—red, cotton bikinis. He felt the stirring in his pants and winced at the pain from the injury The Toy had inflicted the other night.
Anger welling up, Garrett waded into the room and swung his machete at the closest dangling body—the heavy, black maid. The blade almost cleaved through the thing’s neck. He had to tug and wrench it free. Gravity finished the job as the body swung and spun before the weight was too much and it tore away.
Garrett’s mouth opened in a silent scream of victory. He looked up and his face went slack. The eyes still followed! The jaw still worked. The body at his feet wasn’t twitching or anything, but the head was still…alive?
He reached up and grabbed a handful of kinky, black hair. It actually took a few solid tugs to yank the neck free of the linen noose. He held it up and stared into its white-filmed, black-bloodshot eyes. Teasingly, he dangled a hand close to the mouth. It snapped shut with a click.
A smile oozed across Garrett’s face…malignant, mad, and malevolent. He dropped the head and stomped it with his heavy boots until it was a large, dark, clumpy smear.
He hurried through the house, taking note of things he might come back for. He did pause in one room; a nursery. Dried blood covered one wall in a huge arc. He went in and looked around, only leaving when he found a tiny hand cast off in a corner.
Two other rooms had bodies, but they were on beds, empty pill bottles on the nightstands beside them. After checking the entire house, he returned downstairs to the kitchen.
Stuffing bags full, occasionally Garrett would giggle. Yes, he thought as he loaded all the food he could carry, The Toy would soon see. He couldn’t wait to get back. At one point, his mind drifted to the memory of seeing her naked body tied to that post. He’d ignored the pain as long as he could, allowing his excitement to try and take hold. Eventually, it became too great.
“I have a new game, bitch,” Garrett snarled as he hefted the pack onto his back and headed for the door that would take him to the back yard.
***
Kirsten tried to bring in a slow, deep breath through her nostrils. She was miserable. Her drool had long since dried, leaving her skin feeling itchy all down her front. Her tongue felt three times its normal size and made of sandpaper. Her eyes were swollen and sore from the crying. It’d been so strange, once she’d started, the tears had poured unlike anything she thought possible. It was worse than that first night after her daddy was attacked. Worse than when her parents didn’t come back. Worse than when Arturo didn’t come back. Even worse than when The Big Man had shoved himself inside her the very first time.
Kirsten stared out at the mob of undead faces that yearned to reach her. The tiny body on the ground had long since been crushed to a pulp underfoot. She’d actually felt relief when that tiny head, wedged so tight and awkward against the bars began to crack. The right eye actually burst in a gray bubble of goo.
After awhile, all the faces seemed to blur together. Pain came from every part of her and her skin began to blister under the burning sun that continued to creep slowly across the sky. Would it be terrible to die right here, Kirsten wondered. Maybe The Big Man ran into a pack of zombies. No, Kirsten scolded herself for such foolish hopes; she’d have heard the screams. He wouldn’t have gone far looking for food.
More than once as the day drew on, she considered simply sagging and letting that line around her neck finish her off. Every time that thought gained traction in her mind, Kirsten remembered the satisfaction of making him scream when she’d bitten down. She made a vow to herself that if he ever stuck that thing in her mouth again, he wasn’t getting it back.
The constant pain and the horror she was forced to watch furthered her resolve. The day would come when The Big Man made a mistake. He certainly liked to drink whiskey and beer. He would slip. Perhaps fail to tie her up properly one night…and she could wait. She was a Malloy, A family that not only survived, but prospered. Her daddy had shared stories of how her thrice-great-grandfather came home from the War Between the States to find the family property razed, the main house nothing but a blackened husk, and rebuilt bigger than before.
The Malloy’s were fighters and survivors.
Over and over she let that mantra play in her mind. She was so engrossed that Kirsten didn’t notice The Big Man walking towards her. A series of slaps to the face brought her around and she glared up defiantly at The Big Man.
He grinned like the idiot she assumed him to be. She watched as he pulled a cinched-up garbage bag loose from his belt. He opened it, peeking inside and then looking up, his grin even bigger…more idiotic. Carefully, he reached in and pulled out…
A head! More accurately, September Thomas’ head. The eyes stared at Kirsten and the mouth opened and closed, teeth gnas
hing inches from her face.
Kirsten looked up at The Big man…and laughed. His smile quickly faded.
***
Garrett stared out the window. His eyes unable to tear away from the figure still tied to the post near the gate. The head was mostly hidden from his view, but he knew that it would still be sitting in the grass, staring up at The Toy, gnashing its teeth.
“Are you still laughing, bitch?” Garrett growled.
He glanced down, his anger ramping up another notch. He could clearly see the teeth marks that decorated his shriveled manhood. The angry redness seemed to throb with his pulse rate. Three times he’d attempted to work it up to readiness, but it was simply too painful.
Grabbing the loose fitting sweats he’d found, he put them on. He didn’t care that they were cotton-candy pink, or that they barely went past his knees. All he did care about was that they didn’t rub his tender, sensitive injury.
Storming down the stairs, Garrett fumed. If he hurt, then The Toy would hurt as well. He would see to it. He stalked up the driveway to the post. There was a distant rumble of thunder as he reached down, grabbed the detached head by its long, stringy hair, and hurled it at the brick wall. It hit with a satisfying crack and burst, a dark stain visible where it struck. The now-lopsided head rolled onto one side, the eyes still moving in their sockets. He picked it up waving it menacingly at The Toy before turning and throwing it. Again and again he repeated the act, each time taunting The Toy. Eventually the ruined mass broke open.
Garrett looked at his hands, horrified. His palms were sticky with a dark, sap-like goo. He ran inside finding a red jug of liquid laundry soap and washed. It took half the jug and several bottles of water before he felt clean. Looking up, he saw his shadowy face in the mirror. His eyes were wide with…fear. He didn’t want to die. Even more, he didn’t want to become one of those things!
