Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel

by Jay Wilburn

We turned and started walking forward again. We were moving faster than before we reached the gap. Doc pointed forward with his gun. On the other side of the bridge a few zombies were coming slowly across the bridge. A tall fence picked up on both sides of the track again that was climbing up a slope on the other side. There were more walkers coming down the slope advancing on the bridge. They were all inside the fences in front of us.

  Doc said, “Get ready to hand me your gun once this one is empty and then reload me.”

  I shook my head and pointed off the side of the bridge.

  Doc said, “We aren’t jumping, Mutt.”

  I shook my head again. I lifted my shirt to show the belt was empty except for the knife. He just looked down and then back up at me. I made a gun with my hand and tried to wiggle my thumb to show a moving hammer. My thumb wouldn’t move on my right hand that the zombie had been holding and it hurt to try. It wasn’t really that kind of gun anyway. I pointed off the bridge with my imaginary gun.

  Doc rolled his eyes and sighed. He fired at the first one approaching us in front. She bobbed as bits of her chest spurted out her back. He stopped walking and lifted the muzzle slightly. His next shot hit her forehead but was off to the far right. She whipped around. The projected bits of brain and bone actually threw her head forward. Her body fell as it twisted. Her shoulder hit the rail and she tumbled off the side.

  He fired the rest of his shots hitting two more, but neither one in the head.

  He slowed as he fished bullets out of his pocket. He removed the clip from the gun and thumbed them into place. A couple dropped on to the ties and rolled off between them. He pushed the clip back into place.

  The others were catching up behind us. I reached down to grab my knife, but I got a shot of pain when I tried to close my thumb over it and failed.

  Doc pulled my shirt to speed me back up again. He fired closer in as the dead creatures lunged for us. He had to shove a couple aside as they fell. Eventually he clicked empty. He shoved the gun back into his belt and hissed in pain as it touched his skin.

  We were still some distance from the end of the bridge. There were still a number of them scattered between us and the end. More were coming down the hill in front of us and the crowd thickened as they came over the rise up the tracks. A lot of our followers were falling through and off the bridge, but enough were getting across and were closing in behind us. They were spread out in front of us for now, but there wasn’t much room to maneuver and the crowd coming down the hill was moving faster than we were.

  Doc pulled out his hunting knife. We were in trouble.

  I flexed my hand. Most of the pain was in the wrist that felt hot now. I got the thumb to move, but I felt no confidence or strength in it. I reached down and pulled the knife out in my left hand. I felt like I was picking up a pencil for the first time.

  The next one reached for Doc. He sliced at its fingers three times chopping through them each time it grabbed at him. He grabbed it under its chin and lifted its head up. It stroked bloody trails down Doc’s sleeves as it flexed its missing fingers against him. Doc placed the point of his knife carefully against the soft skin between the edges of the jaw. The zombie moved its tongue inside its pallet making the skin against Doc’s knife pulse. Doc jammed the knife up to the hilt with a wet sound from the blade.

  As it fell, Doc ground the knife against the jaw bone trying to get it out. I thought the body was going to pull him off the bridge with Doc still holding on to it. He placed his foot against the zombie’s neck and pulled the knife loose. The lower jaw came with it with the flesh and teeth still wedged on the hilt. Doc shook the blade until the zombie’s disconnected chin fell away too.

  The one coming at me was missing its arms. I ducked down and shoved at its hips with my shoulder until it fell off the side of the bridge backward.

  The one behind it was reaching for me. I pushed through its arms and stabbed at its eye. I hit the bridge of its nose. The zombie started pushing me backward with the point of the knife braced against the tough bone between its eyes. My left hand felt awkward and weak. It was shaking as the zombie leaned forward. The blade sliced through the skin over its nose and the slid into its left eye. I tried to shove it forward, but the zombie forced its socket down the blade before I could. It collapsed suddenly. I wrenched the knife free using my right forearm to brace the palm of my left hand.

  Doc was sitting on the side of another body pulling his knife up and out of its ear.

  The next one was hunched over and she went for my leg. I grabbed her by her greasy hair that was in elaborate braids down past her waist. My right hand quivered with pain as I lost my grip. The filthy braid slid past my worthless thumb link by link as she went for my thigh.

  I stabbed down through the knots on her scalp. She paused as if she wasn’t sure if the blade had gone in deeply enough. She relaxed and curled up on her side without moving her bent spine. She looked like she was going to sleep.

  As I pulled my blade back out, Doc came back and stabbed over the top of my head. I heard the body land behind me. Doc’s knife came back with a nice chunk of grey brain skewered on it.

  He yelled, “Faster, Mutt, they’re on us.”

  I didn’t look back.

  As we neared the end of the bridge on the far lip of the canyon wall, the crowd was about to arrive to greet us. Doc ran ahead of me with the canvas backpack bobbing on his back. Blood was dripping through the seams in bright red. He started shouldering the zombies in their sides and chests. He hit a couple with enough force to make them grunt as they fell off into the canyon. He hurtled others that fell with their legs wedged or broken between the ties.

  Doc met one on the rocky ground between ties back on the solid Earth. He pushed it back against the chain link before shoving his knife into its eye. He did it with enough force to lodge the bit of brain on his blade into the empty orb. The extra addition of brain did not help the zombie. It slid down the fence and remained seated upright. Its head rolled to the side on one shoulder as thick, yellow slime oozed out on to its moldy shirt.

  Another grabbed Doc harshly around the shoulders. It leaned in and bit at Doc’s neck. Doc pushed back, but didn’t break free. They tripped over the rail and fell hard between the tracks.

  I tried to run to him. One of the dead wrapped her arms around my waist as I went by her. I tried to pull away, but just yanked her leg off that was twisted between the ties of the bridge. Most of the thigh bone came with her.

  I closed my right hand in her thick, mangy hair and pulled her head back as pain traveled up my right arm from the effort. I turned the knife around in my left hand to stab down into her ear. Her scalp ripped like Velcro as she pulled forward over my thigh. I stabbed down wildly, but missed the side on her head. Her teeth closed over the skin through my pants leg and locked down on something hard. She shook as she clamped her jaws down harder. Her teeth grazed over my pants and then they began to crack and shatter against the blade of my knife.

  The knife was wedged between her jaws. I pulled my leg back as the edge started to slice through her gums between her broken teeth. I tried to pull the blade out to finish her, but she was locked on it. I tried to walk away, but she kept hugging my legs. I stepped on her exposed thigh bone as I dragged her along with me. It broke off under my foot.

  I reached down and grabbed up the broken length of bone with my right hand. I jammed it down into the top of her exposed skull. It collapsed in as the sharp end punctured through. The force of the impact traveled painfully up my arm. She let go of my legs and her gums squeaked as they pulled away from the knife.

  The tall zombie in his silk shirt reached down for me over her body on the tracks. I stumbled back out of his reach and ran to Doc on the edge of the slope. His zombie was cast across the tracks. He was leaning over it carving one side of its mouth wider open towards the ear.

  Doc whispered, “Why so serious?”

  I didn’t know if he was talking to me or talking to it, but neither ma
de sense. As I came up on him, he stood back up and stretched. The bridge zombies were almost back to the ground with us. The pack on the slope was tripping over themselves to get down to us as well.

  Doc dropped the backpack and pulled off his shirt revealing a sweaty, white tee shirt with deep stains under the pits. He flung his shirt up over the pointed ends of the chain link above the cross support bar of the fence. He sheathed his knife and I followed his lead by doing the same. He laced his fingers together and leaned down for me.

  He yelled, “Step in and climb over.”

  I stepped into his hands and he heaved me up into the air. I placed my hands on his shirt and pushed. I could still feel the points at the top of the fence through the material. My right wrist gave out under me and I collapsed back down on the inside of the fence. Doc shoved me back up as I held my right hand against my chest.

  He grunted. “Over, damn it!”

  I bent over the sharp wire at my waist as he hurled my feet after me. I flipped over and fell flat on my back in the pine straw. I barked out in pain in a voice I didn’t recognize. As the wind left my lungs and blackness started to close on the edges of my vision, I was still frightened by the harshness and deep tone that had come out of my throat.

  I managed to keep consciousness, but I stayed on my back looking up at Doc through the fence from a hundred miles back in my head. He threw the backpack over, but it hung on one of the posts by its strap. He scrambled up the chain link awkwardly and hissed as his hands rested on his flimsy shirt at the top. He kept coming as the dead from the bridge reached him before the ones from the hill.

  Doc kicked one in the face and then kicked again. Another grabbed hold and closed in on him. Doc grunted as he flipped over sliding up and out of their grip. He stumbled as he landed on his feet.

  He yelled out, “Christ, no!”

  Doc pulled up his pants leg and showed a tiny red dot expanding out into the material of his sock around a definite tear where he had the sock pulled high up on his calf. He looked over at me on the ground and then back at his bloody sock. I forced myself to sit up off the straw. He didn’t pull the sock down to look at the wound.

  Doc said, “All this time. All this distance and the shit we’ve made it through and I get bit climbing a fence made to keep teenagers from playing on the tracks.”

  ***

  He dropped his pants leg and pulled the gun out of his belt. The zombies from both directions were mingling on the other side of the fence from us. It rattled and shook under their hands. He took out the clip and then looked in the chamber. He fished through his pockets, but didn’t find any more bullets. He tapped the empty muzzle against the side of his head.

  Doc said, “This is going to get dicey, Mutt.”

  He slid the empty clip back in and shoved the gun back into his pants over his tee shirt.

  I looked up and pointed at the top of the fence. Doc looked.

  “The pack, right,” Doc said, “One last goose dinner, I guess.”

  I shook my head, slapped at his leg, and pointed again. He followed my gaze up to his shirt. The points of metal had pierced through the material in a couple places. One of the points had a thick glob of blood resting on it and slowly running into the torn shirt. He looked down at me and then up at the blood again.

  “Just a scratch, maybe?” he said. “That is a dangerous thing to say now-a-days, isn’t it?”

  The tall zombie was looking up at it too. He reached up to close his hand over the shirt. It wouldn’t come and he pulled down harder. As he did, the metal sunk into his palm and then pulled through with his own force. It sliced through his palm all the way up between the fingers.

  As his hand jerked loose, the sides folded away from each other in the middle. Two fingers and a thumb folded down on one side and the other two fingers flopped over with the other half of the hand. The zombie stared down at its new, alien hand. He stuck his tongue out and licked between the split in his hand. As his white tongue made a dry sound through the gap in his palm, he stared through the fence at Doc. The white tongue lapped up the single, red drop of Doc’s blood that had been pulled down from the sharp end of the wire.

  Doc ran his hands back through his white hair as he stared through the fence at his blood soaking into the dry surface of the zombie’s tongue. He didn’t say anything.

  He reached up and grabbed the strap of the backpack and tried to wrest it free from where it was looped over the post. The zombies jostled each other trying to take up the position across from where Doc was standing close to the fence pulling. Their fingers reached through the links. One hand popped through and then hung up on the forearm. Others tried to walk through the fence pressing against it and pumping their legs over the gravel beside the tracks.

  The pack hung on a corner of the ripped fabric over the sharp wire. One of the zombies looked up at the strap waving over his head on his side of the fence. He tilted his head as he grabbed it and pulled. Doc pulled harder. The zombie stretched his neck up and locked his teeth on the strap. Doc pulled harder.

  I stood up slowly and walked behind him. I put my hand on Doc’s shoulder. He threw an elbow back and nearly caught my nose. I stepped back. He reached back and shoved me in my chest. He yanked harder on the bag joining the zombies in rattling the fence.

  The bag ripped some more. Others looked up and reached for the bag.

  The tall zombie got down on his knees quietly between the feet of the stretching, pulling zombies. He stared at Doc’s calf. His white tongue slid over his teeth and out of his cracked lips. The blood was gone from the tongue’s rough surface. He leaned his face into the chain link about a foot off the ground. He stuck his tongue through the link as far as it would go. He waved it up and down in the air. I could see a long, dark slash in the skin under his tongue. It spread apart as the tongue strained up toward his own nose. The gash closed again as the tongue dropped back toward the silk shirt pasted to his skin.

  The fingers on the zombie’s split hand still worked. They crept up the fence like alien worms. Each finger seemed to operate independently of the others. They laced through the links of the fence and pulled the spilt flesh upward. Then, they wriggled up and into the next link crawling up higher.

  The zombie with the flappy, claw hand ignored this alien motion as he continued to try to lick at the blood spreading on Doc’s calf. I wiggled my thumb over my hurt wrist without realizing I was doing it until the pain stopped me.

  The backpack ripped and then ripped some more. The goose’s limp neck and one, dead wing slid out on the zombies’ side. The corpses on the sides and in the back of the press pitched themselves forward and in to grab at the bird. Their weight bulged the fence out on to our side briefly. The ones in the front were pinned immobile for a moment. Doc was able to pull the torn backpack on to our side.

  The bird’s wing was ripped off by one pale hand. The bird’s belly sliced on top of the fence. Blood and bile dripped into their faces. The zombies lunged again. The bird was pulled over on their side and ripped apart in an instant. Feathers and flesh flew in every direction as the zombies bit each other trying to get a piece of the shredded carcass.

  Doc stepped back and dropped the bag. Slappy was still on the ground with his wriggling claw ignoring the splatter from the bird as he stared at Doc’s feet.

  Doc said, “I’m starting to think shooting that bird wasn’t worth the trouble, Mutt. What do you think?”

  I didn’t say anything. He reached down into the torn canvas and pulled out a rolled up magazine. It was speckled with blood. He slid it into the back of his pants smearing the tail of his shirt with the bird’s splatter.

  The fence tilted over us a few inches as the zombies turned their attention away from the bird pieces and back to us. I thought it was just my imagination. The hook loops that connected the sheet of links to the posts of the fence began to strain and pop audibly. The chain link became loose suddenly. It bowed out and the post in front of us tilted toward us several more inc
hes.

  We both stepped back.

  Doc said, “Time to go, Mutt.”

  We angled up through the pines up the slope and away from the tracks and weakening fence. I glanced back once. Slappy was licking his split hand again and was watching us go. He was still kneeling on the ground calmly as the others struggled to get through the fence.

  ***

  We could still hear the fence behind us as we went deeper into the woods. There was a noise in front of us. Someone was walking through our path. Doc patted my shoulder as he kneeled down. I did the same. I was afraid our earlier gunfire was going to bring more of them through the woods to drive us back into the canyon.

  A deer stepped out and looked over at us. It sniffed the air and then ducked its head to bite up a tuft of green poking through the mat of pine straw.

  Doc’s hand rested on the butt of the gun stuck in the front of his waistband and belt. I was thankful it was empty. He had a bad habit of wanting to kill things at the worst times. I’m not sure he was holding the gun consciously because he didn’t pull it.

  The fence rattled more loudly behind us. The deer raised its head and looked past us. It sniffed the air again. This time it turned and bounded up the slope through the trees away from us.

  We decided to follow as we fled more slowly after it.

  The ground leveled out and we kept moving through the woods. I listened, but didn’t hear them behind us or any new ones around us. They had to be coming. We had fired off dozens of rounds in our escape which wasn’t quite resolved.

  We found a trail and began following it. I was nervous. It seemed like a bad choice to me for some reason. I had no reason to think zombies paid any attention to trails, but it still made me uneasy. I felt exposed.

  I kept looking back behind us.

  Doc glanced back at me and whispered, “Do you hear something?”

  I shook my head and looked back again.

  He said, “I’m worried about them too. We’ll go back and look for them when it’s safe. If I don’t make it, you can do whatever you want, I guess.”