by Tim Waggoner
There were three of them, all male, all wearing dirty jeans, soiled flannel shirts, and ball caps mottled with old sweat stains. John Deere, NASCAR, and Cincinnati Reds. Two of them carried guns—a double-barreled shotgun and a rifle, respectively—while the third held an axe, the rusty head covered with dried blood and bits of hair. They shared one more horrid similarity: they were all dead. Their flesh was grayish-green tinged with black where it had begun to rot. Dry yellowed eyes were wide and bulging, black mucus running from the corners as if fluid were building up behind the eyes, threatening to pop them out of their sockets any moment. Their lips were cracked and leathery, stretched into grins far wider than they could’ve managed in life, teeth brown, tongues nothing but lifeless lumps of gray meat.
Jared didn’t know how it was possible for these things to chase him, let alone catch him. They took in no oxygen, their hearts pumped no blood, their muscles were dry and tight as jerky. They shouldn’t be able to move at all, let alone keep up with a living man. Jared might not have been the most fit forty-one-year-old man in the world, and he carried twenty pounds too much around his middle, but he was alive, goddamnit, while these fucking things weren’t. They should’ve been shuffling, jerking, stiff-limbed marionettes manipulated by a puppeteer with severe arthritis. But the hunters moved with a swiftness equal to, if not greater, than his own.
A German phrase whispered through his mind, one that he’d heard or read before, though he couldn’t recall where.
Die Toten reiten schnell.
The dead travel fast.
The gray-skinned hunters just stood looking at him with their bulging eyes and too-wide grins for several moments. And then finally the one with the John Deere cap raised his shotgun and aimed it at Jared’s forehead. A rotting finger tightened on the trigger, and Jared tensed for the impact to come, knowing there was no way even a dead man could miss at this range.
Thunder crashed and Jared screamed.
* * *
“God, Hon, you look like death warmed over.”
“Not funny,” Jared mumbled. He pulled out a chair and flopped into it. He leaned his elbows on the dining table and propped up his chin with his hands. Peter and Heather were too busy shoveling Kix into their mouths to pay their dad any attention. He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and saw that it was 7:20. No wonder the kids were eating so fast; the bus would be here any minute. Michelle came in from the kitchen carrying a mug of steaming coffee. As she set it on a coaster in front of Jared, he said, “I knew there was a reason I married you.”
His wife grinned. “You mean beside the fact that I’m a total hottie?”
That got the kids’ attention. They both looked up, but while Peter smirked, Heather—who was two years younger and had just started fourth grade—scrunched up her face.
“Mom, that’s gross!” she said.
Michelle laughed. “Since when did we start raising the world’s youngest prude?”
“Mo-om!”
Jared doubted Heather knew what a prude was, but she sounded mortally offended just the same.
Normally Jared would’ve been amused by the domestic banter, but not this morning, not after the night he’d had. He ran his fingers through sweaty, sleep-matted hair. “Didn’t the alarm go off?”
Michelle sat down next to him. She didn’t have any food or coffee in front of her, but then she was both an early riser and a light eater, especially in the morning. She’d doubtless already nibbled on something before he’d gotten up.
“It did, and it kept buzzing for five minutes before I turned it off. From what I could tell, you hadn’t moved a muscle. Bad dreams again?”
“You could say that.” Though the coffee was still way too hot for him, he took a sip anyway, instantly regretting it when he scalded his tongue. Though everyone else was dressed and ready for the day, he still wore the briefs and T-shirt he’d slept in, he needed a shave, and his mouth tasted sour and sticky, as if a small rodent had crawled inside sometime during the night and died in there. Usually, he was ready to go to work by this time. Of all the days to be late…
He took another scorching sip of coffee. “I gotta hit the shower.”
As he started to get up, Michelle said, “Aren’t you going to eat something?” She worked as a dietitian for a nursing home, and though she was good about not nagging him too much about his eating habits, she didn’t ignore them entirely.
“I’ll grab something on my way out the door.” He picked up his coffee and started shuffling away from the dining table. “I’ve got that presentation today.”
Michelle started to say something more, but a loud horn sounded outside.
“There’s the bus! C’mon guys!”
Jared waved to his children as they jumped up from the dining table and hurried into the living room to grab their backpacks. They didn’t wave back. He trudged down the hallway toward the master bedroom, hearing the front door open, Michelle saying goodbye to the kids, the door closing again. By the time he’d gotten a towel and washcloth out of the linen closet in their bathroom, Michelle had joined him.
“Want to tell me about it?” She leaned back against the bathroom counter, arms folded, gazing at him with slightly narrowed eyes. She might’ve been a dietitian, but she’d always been interested in psychology and fancied herself something of an amateur psychoanalyst. As far as Jared was concerned, it was one of her less-endearing qualities.
“Not much to tell, really.” He turned on the water in the shower, leaving it colder than he usually liked in the hope it would help him wake up faster. He then took off his clothes, stepped into the shower stall, and slid the door closed. He hoped Michelle might take the hint and leave, but she remained leaning against the counter.
“You haven’t slept well all week.”
Jared picked up the soap and began lathering up. “Don’t make it out to be a bigger deal than it is, Shell. I’ve been working on these budget cuts for the last several weeks, and while I think I’ve done a good job, I don’t know how the rest of the department is going to react to them. Especially Ned.” Ned was his immediate supervisor and the man who’d first tasked Jared with coming up with budget cuts. Almost certainly so Ned wouldn’t have to do them himself. “We’re going to have to eliminate some personnel, and Ned hates that.”
“You mean he hates looking responsible for it,” Michelle countered.
“Yeah.” Jared rinsed the soap off his body, then reached for his shampoo. “One way or another, he’ll make sure I’m the bad guy.” He began working thick blue goo into his wet hair. “I’m really not looking forward to today.”
“Look at it this way: by the time you get home tonight, it’ll all be over. Maybe then you’ll be able to get a decent night’s sleep.”
As Jared scrubbed his scalp, he thought of the three dead hunters grinning at him, heard the sound of a rifle blast cutting through the woods.
“I sure hope so.”
* * *
Michelle had already left for the nursing home by the time Jared pulled his Nissan Maxima out of the garage. It was late July, and the interior of the car was stuffy, the air thick and humid. Breathing it made him think of how he’d had the wind knocked out of him when he’d fallen in his dream, and he turned the AC to high. He reached for the remote attached to the visor and thumbed the button to close the garage door. He then backed into the cul-de-sac, braked, put his car in drive, and started forward. He glanced at his house as he drove away—a large Tudor with perfect landscaping and a neatly trimmed and edged lawn. On days like today, it helped to remind himself why he worked, and this house, along with the picturesque strand of woods it sat next to, was a big part of the reason. Michelle had been right. Today might not be a whole lot of fun, but he’d have his family, this house, and their woods to come home to. It was a good life he had, and today he was going to earn it all over again.
As he drove down his street, he saw Dale Baxter out watering his front lawn, ever-faithful border collie Zoe s
itting next to him. Dale was a retiree and a widower, and roamed about the neighborhood always looking for someone to talk to and ease his loneliness. Jared felt sorry for the old guy, but not so sorry that he didn’t run inside whenever he saw Dale walking down the sidewalk with Zoe. Jared had learned from experience that if Dale caught you, he’d bend your ear for the better part of an hour, if not longer.
Dale waved as Jared drove by, and though Jared wanted to ignore him—for he was certain Dale was outside right now only to wave at whoever was leaving for work or school—he waved anyway. As if she recognized his car, Zoe barked once and wagged her tail. Jared had always liked dogs, though since Michelle was allergic they’d never had any pets. He smiled as he continued driving. Maybe Zoe’s greeting was a good omen and today wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.
* * *
Jared was stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, when the smooth jazz station he’d been listening to cut out. Not particularly a patient man, he began pushing pre-set channel-select buttons, searching for another station. But they were silent as well, and he’d begun to fear the radio was broken when he pushed the last button. At first there was nothing, but then he heard soft moaning punctuated with occasional grunting. What the hell was this? Some kind of rock song with simulated sex noises, like those Donna Summers disco hits when he’d been a kid? But there wasn’t a sensual quality to these sounds. They were mournful, bestial, mindless… Then a new noise was added to the mix, a wet tearing followed by what sounded like chewing. Jared imagined someone sinking teeth into raw meat, ripping away ragged crimson mouthfuls, jaws working rhythmically as blood trickled over the lips. The image was nauseating, and yet on some level, it was appetizing as well. His stomach gurgled, but whether in discomfort or hunger, he couldn’t tell. Michelle had been right. He should’ve eaten breakfast.
A car horn blared, startling him. Jared looked up and saw the light was green, and the car ahead of him was already through the intersection. He glanced at the rearview mirror, at the same time raising his hand in an apologetic wave to the person behind him. A woman at the wheel of a dark blue BMW was shouting at him, her face contorted with anger, and he was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He started to take his foot off the brake, intending to stomp on the accelerator and get through the intersection before the light changed. But in the rearview mirror, he saw the face of the woman begin to transform. Her skin took on a grayish cast, and her blond hair became waxy and coarse as straw. Her left eye deflated like a balloon losing air and subsided into the socket. A flap of skin peeled away from her right cheek all the way down to her jaw, revealing bone and teeth.
Jared gripped his steering wheel tighter as he stared at the thing reflected in his mirror. It looked just like the undead hunters in his dream, same ghastly pallor, same dead eyes…er, eye. The woman was still yelling, the motion jiggling her flap of cheek-skin. Bloody spittle flew from her mouth, stippling the inside of her windshield. She flipped him the bird with a skeletal finger, and jammed her other hand into the center of her steering wheel and let out a long blast on her car horn. When the horn’s noise died away, the woman was normal again, left eye restored, cheek unmarred and intact, skin pink and healthy.
Jared looked at the light and saw it was yellow. He stepped on the gas, his tires squealed, and he fishtailed through the intersection. The light turned red before he was halfway through, leaving the woman in the BMW stuck behind him. She honked once more, but Jared refused to look in his rearview mirror this time. The radio was playing smooth jazz again—a David Sanborn tune, he thought—but he stabbed his finger at the power button and turned the radio off anyway. He drove the rest of the way to work in silence, telling himself that there was no need to be stressed, it would all be over soon.
* * *
“Today’s the big day, eh?”
Jared had been running through his PowerPoint presentation for the fifth time that morning, tweaking a little here and there. He made one last change before looking over the top of his monitor and seeing Malcolm Posner standing at the entrance to his cubicle. Malcolm was nine years Jared’s junior, though sometimes he acted much younger than that.
“Guess so,” Jared said.
“Nervous?”
Malcolm was a good enough guy, but he was one of the prime distributors of office gossip, and Jared knew he was fishing for information.
“A little,” Jared said, knowing that Malcolm would never buy it if he denied being nervous at all, but not wanting to give the office weasel any more ammunition than he had to. “But that’s good, right? Gives you a little extra energy when you present.”
Malcolm shrugged, clearly disappointed with Jared’s less-than-forthcoming response. “If you say so. Nice suit. Is it new?”
Jared had bought it earlier in the month just for today, though he had worn it to the office on one previous occasion, so it wouldn’t look like he’d bought it special for today’s presentation. “Not that new. I’ve had it for a while. Still, it’s the nicest one I own, so I figured today would be a good time to wear it.”
The suit was navy blue, and Jared wore a white shirt and a maroon tie along with it. He’d found the suit at a closeout sale at the Right Look in the mall, but he’d never tell Malcolm that.
“Can’t argue with that.” Malcolm paused, as if waiting to see what, if anything, Jared might add. But when Jared just kept looking at Malcolm silently, the younger man said, “Well, I’d better get back to it. Good luck today.”
“Thanks,” Jared said as Malcolm departed. Jared wondered what the it was that Malcolm intended to get back to. Whatever it was, Jared bet it wasn’t work.
He ran through his presentation one more time, nearly nodding off as he reached the last slide. He needed another cup of coffee. The last thing he wanted was to be yawning and fighting to stay awake during his presentation. He got up from his desk, walked out of his cubicle, and headed for the break room. His limbs felt heavy, as if they were weary and trying to drag him down into sleep with them. Later, he thought, almost as if he were trying to placate his body. I can take a nap after I get home.
The break room wasn’t much—just a couple snack and beverage vending machines and a half-dozen round white tables with black plastic chairs. There was a microwave oven on the counter for those who brought their lunch and wished to heat it up. No refrigerator, though, so there was a limit to what you could bring from home. The break room was often empty throughout the day, but three other people were there at the moment, two women and one man, all sitting at the same table. They held 16 oz plastic soft-drink bottles in their hands, and they looked up as Jared came in, staring at him with empty expressionless gazes. Jared smiled and nodded to them, though he didn’t know any of them well, couldn’t even remember their names. But none of them acknowledged his gesture. They just continued looking at him.
Jared felt a nervous, crawly-tingly feeling in his stomach, but he did his best to ignore his three rude co-workers as he stepped over to the vending machines. He wasn’t really all that hungry, but coffee—especially the thick tarry stuff that came out of the machine here—had a tendency to upset his stomach, so he thought it best that he nibble on something. Besides, nervous as he was, he doubted he’d eat any lunch before this afternoon’s meeting, so he’d better put something in his stomach now.
He scanned the snack machine offerings, expecting to see chips, cookies, candy bars, granola bars, and chewing gum. But today the machine contained a very different selection: severed ears, fingers, toes, noses, tongues, eyes, lips, nipples…At first he thought it was some sort of grotesque joke, that the body parts were merely rubber novelties, the kind of thing you could buy anywhere around Halloween. But the texture and color of the skin was too realistic, and the blood smeared on the end where each part had once been connected to a body looked like the real thing too. Jared glanced to the right of the snack machine at the cold beverage dispenser. Instead of colas, lemon-lime drinks, or bottled wa
ter, this machine offered plastic bottles filled with blood (both white and red cells), plasma, spinal fluid, urine, pus, and bone marrow.
Unable to believe what he was seeing, Jared backed away from the vending machines. He turned and started for the doorway, but he stopped when he saw the trio sitting at the round table still staring at him. In unison they raised plastic bottles to their lips and drank deeply, various bodily fluids dribbling from the corners of their mouths.
* * *
A branch only inches from Jared’s head exploded in a shower of splinters, a number of which became embedded in his cheek, barely missing his eye. It felt like dozens of fiery needles had been inserted into his flesh, and he could feel warmth as beads of blood began to well forth from the tiny wounds.
John Deere lowered his shotgun, and his undead companions shook with silent laughter. Jared understood that the hunter hadn’t missed; the sonofabitch was toying with him. Even so, Jared had an opportunity, and he was determined not to waste it. He turned and started running through the woods once more, ignoring the pain that shot through his twisted ankle with every step. This time, he wove between trees, hoping their thick trunks would shield him from the hunters’ guns. His tactic seemed to be working when he heard two more shots—the boom of John Deere’s second barrel and the crack of Nascar’s rifle—but neither hit him.
Jared was running downhill now and picking up speed. His surroundings became a blur as he plunged through the woods, knocking aside tree branches, crushing undergrowth beneath his clumsy feet, birds and small animals fleeing to get out of his path. He heard the stream before he saw the gurgling, rushing water, and he knew it was flowing high as a result of last week’s rains. Normally the stream was so narrow that even a pot-bellied middle-aged man like himself could jump over it, but now…Still, he felt a surge of hope. The stream was not far from his home. The edge of the woods was maybe twenty, thirty yards on the other side, and his house lay just across an open field, perhaps an acre-and-a-half beyond that. Once he made it home, everything would be okay. He’d be safe, because that’s what home was, right? The place where you were safe. Home-free.
