by Jay Wilburn
Buildings along the roads were made from cheap particle board or patched siding. They had been stripped away quickly by the elements and they were nearly erased now. The back roads were hidden by grasses, invasive trees, and creeping roots or vines. Sometimes we wouldn’t realize we were crossing one unless we caught a glimpse of broken pavement between carpets of leaves and ground cover. Even if we still had our maps, we wouldn’t have been able to locate ourselves on the Earth.
We saw three zombies in as many days and managed to avoid them.
We were short handed on equipment and hunting didn’t go well. Traps we were able to set did not snag the rabbits, birds, or squirrels we desired. We couldn’t stop catching rats. They had overrun the forests. They had driven out most of the other animals. Having to sleep outside involved sweeping them off several times during the night. Chef tried to make the most of it with the Rat-Tat-Touille challenge, but we were eating rats, sleeping with rats, and stepping on rats.
On the fourth day, Doc declared his own fishing challenge and we spent the time trying to fashion poles and tackle from strings, braches, and trash.
“This isn’t going to work,” Chef said.
Doc ignored him as he fixed the bits of rat to the bent wire.
Chef explained, “You have to have something with barbs. We’re more likely to catch a fish diving in or using a spear.”
Doc dropped his hook into the water of the pond. I thought about the boy I had dropped into the water with his brain still intact. He had swum down and retrieved his ball.
I stepped back from the water.
Doc said, “Go make a spear.”
“I’m always afraid there are zombies down there,” Short Order said. “Every time I eat a fish I think about them picking at zombies under the surface.”
“Fish don’t eat zombies,” Doc said.
“How do you know that?” Chef asked.
Doc said, “Why don’t you pay attention, Chef? Have you ever seen anything eat a zombie? Vultures, rats, flies, or worms … nothing eats them. They eat us. Man, it is a wonder you stayed alive this long.”
“Because I don’t pay attention to what fish eat?” Chef asked.
“Because you don’t pay attention to anything,” Doc said. “Outside the kitchen you’ve got no focus and no plan. That’s why our great escape plan is just wandering around the woods and eating rats.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve snapping at me, John,” Chef said walking away from the pond.
Doc pulled his string out of the water and stood up from the shore.
He called after Chef, “How’s that, Chef David?”
Chef turned back around at the top of the bank.
He said, “I never came up with a plan that involved trying to get you killed so I could live.”
“That’s not what happened when you took us into the Super Max?” Doc asked.
“You fired your gun, Doc,” Chef shouted. “That’s why we got swarmed. Another example of how you tried to get us killed.”
“Say what you mean, Boss,” Doc said.
Chef said, “I did. Your plans involve saving Doc and that’s where they stop.”
“Say what you mean,” Doc repeated.
Chef stared at him a moment.
He answered, “You came into that raider camp looking to get me killed, so you could live.”
Doc said, “I had Mutt with me and I had to buy us time. They were grilling us for information and then they were going to kill us. I had to come up with something to give us a chance and I did. I didn’t know it was you they had.”
Chef answered, “They had somebody. You were just going to sacrifice whoever it was.”
“So?” Doc said. “You think we lasted this long because we politely let other people survive. We survived because we played our parts and either hid or ran away when we got the chance. Who the hell are you to lecture me on surviving at the expense of others?”
“Once you saw it was me,” Chef said, “Your plan became to ass kiss the crowd to make up for the fact that you knew I would cook better. You had no plan, but to survive. I was just another obstacle.”
“I was trying to buy time,” Doc said.
“Like hell,” Chef said.
He started to walk away again. Doc walked up the bank and grabbed hold of a tree to catch his balance. He shouted at Chef again to stop him.
“You got no room, boy,” Doc yelled. “If you’re so interested in the group, why did you keep the damn keys in your pocket?”
Chef turned back and walked up to the edge of the slope looking down at Doc.
He answered, “John, what the hell does that have to do with anything? I was driving.”
“You should have left them in the ignition,” Doc snapped. “Mutt and I were almost killed because of that … more than once. Anything could have happened to you at any time, but you were fine as long as you could drive away when you needed.”
I looked over at Short Order. He was sitting on a rock by the water tossing in bits of bark and moss. Someone needed to stop them, but he had his back turned to them.
“That’s ridiculous,” Chef said. “I kept the keys with me so the truck didn’t get stolen.”
“Oh, that plan worked out superbly,” Doc said. “Mutt and I ended up jumping right into the back with the gang because they stole the truck. If the keys had been inside, we wouldn’t have had to run for our lives down the train tracks. I can’t even count how many times we almost died for that one thing. If we had the keys, we could have led the zombies away and come back for you two the same day. We would have been gone before the Riding Dead knew we were there.”
“How dare you?” Chef snapped.
“How dare I?” Doc laughed. “If you want to hold the keys, champ, you better have the balls to get to the truck when the pressure is on.”
Chef said, “You better know your limits, Doc, because your bullshit bravado puts other people in real danger.”
“We’re all in real danger,” Doc said. “If you’re not up to surviving, you better lay down now before we get used to you being around.”
“You pompous ass,” Chef said, “You would have lost your stupid ‘Burger to the Death’ game and Mutt would be dead too. Why’d you put me in that spot, John?”
“You don’t want to have this conversation with me, David Sharp,” Doc said. “There’s nothing worse than a liar in the kitchen.”
Chef said, “No, Doc, I do not want to have this conversation and I’ve tried to walk away from you twice, but you never shut your mouth for all the …”
There was a long pause. Chef was looking across the pond.
Doc asked, “All the what?”
Chef said, “We have a visitor.”
I pulled out my hunting knife and looked around me. Doc pulled out the .45 and looked for his aluminum pole he had left near the water. Short Order just sat on the rock and stared across the pond.
I saw the boy standing on the opposing shore looking across at us. He had a real fishing pole and tackle box in one hand. He was black and had long, straight hair. He was wearing a flannel shirt and overalls that were too big for him. I pictured a dead boy attacking us with a baseball, but this one was alive. He was a little younger than me.
“Hello,” Doc said leaning back against the tree again with his .45 in one hand and the aluminum pole in the other.
The boy said, “Identify your people.”
We just stood and stared.
Chef answered, “We don’t have people; we’re just passing through. Who are your people?”
“Turn around and go back,” he said. “You don’t want trouble from us.”
Doc looked up at Chef and then back to the boy.
Doc said, “We can’t do that. People are chasing us, bad people, and we have to get away.”
“That isn’t my problem,” he said. “Look for your trouble somewhere else, if you know what’s good for you.”
“We’re looking for help not trouble,” Doc said
. “You got someone in charge that we can talk to about our situation?”
“No,” he said, “Turn around and go pester the fish in some other hole far away.”
“We’re not going,” Doc said. “What’s your name, son?”
“My name is Shy Porter,” the boy yelled, “and I’m not your son!”
He lifted a plastic tube on a handle that looked like a flare gun. When he pulled the release, an arrow sailed across the pond at Doc’s face. He ducked away, but not fast enough.
The boy ran up the hill with his fishing gear and his harpoon gun. Doc slowly lifted up the .45 from where he was pinned to the tree and aimed at the boy’s back as he topped the bank across from us. Chef reached Doc and grabbed his arm. He closed his hand over the hammer of the .45 to keep Doc from firing.
“Are you kidding me?” Doc snapped.
The boy disappeared over the hill and his clattering box receded into the forest. Chef pulled the gun out of Doc’s hand.
He said to Doc, “Are you kidding me, Doc? You planning to shoot that kid?”
Doc pulled against the bolt holding him to the tree.
He said, “He shot me first.”
Short Order got over to Doc and grabbed the arrow that had caught Doc’s hair as he tried to duck away. He wretched it from side to side until it pulled loose from the scar in the trunk. Bits of Doc’s hair floated down into the packed leaves on the bank.
Doc said, “We need to go after him.”
“No,” Chef said, “I don’t think we do. We really need to put some distance between us and whoever he’s going back to tell on us to.”
“We didn’t do anything to him,” Doc protested.
“We tried to fish in his water hole, I guess,” Short Order said.
“And he’s been taught to shoot first and ask questions later,” Chef said.
“No,” Doc said, “He asked a question, but we didn’t have the right answer. By the way, did anyone else hear him say his name was Shaw Porter? Do you have some explaining to do about that, Shaw Porter Sr.?”
Shaw said, “No, I got nothing to explain that.”
“He said, Shy,” Chef said. “He said his name was Shy Porter.”
“What the hell is the business with Shy?” Doc said, “That is coming up a lot. What does it mean?”
“It means we need to go before Shy comes back with his people to defend his fish,” Chef said.
Doc reached out and closed his hand back over the .45 Chef had taken from him. Chef looked down at the gun and back up at Doc. He let go of it.
Chef started gathering up and moving away from the pond at a different angle from the boy’s retreat. He didn’t wait for agreement and we followed him.
“You’re the pompous ass,” Doc said to Chef’s back as he shoved the .45 back into his waistband.
We pushed through the trees roughly southwest. We passed a rusted out tractor, a park bench, and a complete set of dining room furniture. Doc acted like he was going to pull a chair out to have a seat, but it broke apart and collapsed.
We spotted a cinderblock structure and a partially collapsed rain cover. Once we were closer, we realized it had been a gas station. There were slots for the pumps, but they were nowhere around. The road and most of the parking lot were obscured by kudzu vines. I kept watching for the leaves to start whipping back and forth to announce the arrival of the dead.
“Okay, this kid has quite an ego,” Doc said, “and a lot of paint.”
***
I rounded the wall and walked behind them to see what they were looking at on the side of the building. There was a picture of a man with an angular face and long, curly hair looking up at the sky or up at the message above his cartoonish head. The message above it read, "The people of Shy are free indeed. Free Soil forever!"
I walked up closer to the wall to see the smaller writing and carvings. Most of it was initials or numbers that didn’t mean anything to me. Other pictures and symbols were washed or faded out. Other messages were legible, but still didn’t make sense. Rezzers will die like zombies, Riders will pay in blood, Shy Porter lives, Shy uses the Mad Hatter’s skull for a piss pot, Ask the Mad Hatter, and vertically up the corner of the building was written, Shy will return to Free Soil.
Around another side of the building between broken windows, the long-haired character was standing in a robe with a sash. He was holding a machete or a sword in one hand and a smiling, severed head with a puffy, top hat in the other. Above the robed man’s head was one word in block letters, NEXT!
“That’s a different take on the savior,” Chef said.
Doc said, “Maybe that’s what happens when you mix Jesus, Alice, and the zombies.”
We walked around to the barren doorway and looked inside.
Shaw said, “Not much chance that we’re going to find cigarettes in here.”
As soon as we stepped inside, rats scattered around the empty floor. They scuttled to the corners and slinked along the walls under rocks and broken pieces of the building placed in small piles along the edges. There was more graffiti inside. Most of it was drawings including women’s bodies without heads, hands with hearts or nails in the middle, top hats, and skulls with bloody, bullet holes. There were names written in swirling script. I could see Chloe, Star, Lola, Chyrece, Tamara, and Lydia.
I went to Chloe’s stack of stones. There was a photograph in a broken frame, but the face had been either burnt out or chewed away from the photo. There was a necklace. There was a piece of cloth over one side of the top stone. The pattern was blackened out with filth and it was definitely chewed. There were beads. I started to pick them up, but when I touched them, my hand was coated by a greasy film that I couldn’t wipe off my fingers.
One of the rats stood up on Star’s stack of stones and sniffed the air. He stood on his hind legs and bobbed his head at me like he was offering the objects to me or he was daring me to take them. Star’s picture was in an open locket under the black rat. His foot and splayed toes covered most of her face.
Doc said, “If there is a Wonderland, this must be the shit hole you fall through to get there.”
Shaw cleared his throat, “Let’s just go. I feel like we’re about to piss off a witch that’s going to kill us in the woods.”
“Juju, Shaw!” Doc moaned.
There were melted candles on some of the stones closer to the corners. I couldn’t see all the names, but the ones I could see were all women. It seemed lots of people had lost their mothers and sisters. Lots of people had let the monsters have them. Maybe this was the secret thing zombies did when they dragged the bodies away. We had just never walked far enough into the woods to see it.
This is where they took your sister when you let them have her and erased her face from your mind, I thought.
I stood back up facing out the window. I saw the boy staring at me from the kudzu. I gasped and choked on my own spit. The others were walking out the doorway. I reached for Shaw’s arm, but missed. I looked back and the face was gone. The rat squeaked up at me and waved his claw in the air to tell me to go or to tell me to sit down and wait for the others to come.
I left.
As we walked along the trail between the kudzu and the trees, the wind was blowing and the leaves on the vines were whipping back and forth along our path. We slept in the woods farther along away from the gas station shrine. I was exhausted, but didn’t sleep at all.
While I was sitting up for my watch, I saw shapes moving through the trees. They would stop and just wait with one shadow standing on top of another staring at me. They would linger for impossible amounts of time just through the trees. I wished for the zombies to come and drive the shadows away from me. I would look away and look back to try to kill the illusion, but they were still there waiting for me. They would move again a few feet one way or the other and then they would stop for another stretch.
I heard whispers when the wind would die down. Usually, they would tell me to go, but I was trapped in the dark t
rees. I was trapped with these strangers I called friends. I was trapped outside with men who kept mystery houses full of bodies and bones. The shadows were closing in on me.
When my shift was over, I didn’t lie down and I didn’t sleep. The shapes were waiting for me to look away from them.
The next morning we shuffled on through the woods. We came out near a collapsed barn and some abandoned irrigation equipment. The buckling roof of the barn had a bull’s-eye target painted and declared, If you can see this, Shy, piss on it.
We moved on from the barn and came to the back of a billboard being eaten by vines on both support poles. Between the spread of vines, the message read, Keep going. You are DEEP in Shy Territory. Get Out!!!
I couldn’t have been happier to try. We walked along the dirt trail under the board between the overgrown posts. As we walked away, we turned and read the front. It was some sort of ad, but the paper had been torn and corroded away. There was a long message painted over it.
It read, Shyland Free Soil Territory: You are not welcome here. We will beat, torture, rape, and kill any and all intruders, scavengers, raiders, slavers, Rezzers, Riders, bandits, fugitives, or walkers, both living or undead. Go away.
“What do you suppose a Rezzer is?” Doc asked.
Chef answered, “Maybe we can ask between the raping and the killing. Let’s just keep going.”
We did.
We followed a trail that led under some high tension power lines. We occasionally had to step over or through wire fence. The hills dipped down into deep valleys and over steep ridges. The thick posts of the silent lines were rusted all around.
Doc, Chef, and Short didn’t even look up at the massive structures as we traveled under them. They ignored them the way we walked past soda cans or rusted cars. I had read and seen pictures of the pyramids and of Stone Hinge. I looked up at these monoliths in an endless row and I thought about them as the relics of some great, tragic civilization.
