by Jay Wilburn
As we approached the Complex again, a zombie in coveralls with a rifle over his shoulder stepped out in front of the Jeep. I swerved to miss, but clipped him with the fender. He twisted and fell to the ground. Linda jumped out as I slowed down to be sure I didn’t wreck.
She walked up on him and drove the knife into his head with her usual deliberate care. She lifted the rifle and searched his pockets for ammunition. We had more at the Complex, but she didn’t know how close we were.
As we drove on, she worked the chamber and checked the bore.
She said, “It still works. It’s nice when they bring the weapons to you.”
I didn’t respond.
We approached the fallen fence and the entrance to the farm. There was a ragged body sitting in the road leaning on his knees. He looked up as we rolled to a stop. His shirt was unreadable, but I could still make out the shamrock.
I lifted the gun out from between the seats. The zombie was starting to get up from his waiting place. I shot him through the head before he went to the trouble.
I used the scope and scanned the hill as several walked out over the crest at the sound of the shot.
Linda said, “Mutt, we need to go.”
I kept scanning until I saw one in overalls I recognized. I fired sending bits of brain into the air as he fell. We drove along.
I parked in front of the collapsed garage door. I left the Jeep in the street with the keys in the ignition.
As we got out, Linda helped the kids down from the back.
She asked, “Is this it?”
I nodded as we walked around the metal and bodies that would have to be cleaned up and fixed eventually. We walked quietly into the garage. I stretched up and got a key down off the shelf. A cork rolled off into the floor. As I was looking down at it, I heard a noise across the room.
A zombie in a trench coat was walking toward us in heavy boots. I raised the rifle and dropped him.
We went inside and looked through the supplies we had packed away in case we returned. I leaned over the stove and felt the tiles that spelled out Fourth Floor Bistro. After Linda helped me set back up, I cooked dinner.
It was nothing special.
Afterward, I cleaned up the dishes and erased the chalk marks off the wall. Later, we scrubbed off and painted over the messages on the walls.
We had begun restoring the greenhouses and built windmills for water and power. We started cleaning up some of the adjacent buildings for health reasons. We have talked about the farm, but we have no plans yet.
We’ve done well these last few months.
We’re making progress.
The other day there was a knock at the door. It was just a regular knock on the front door. I looked through the peephole and saw a woman standing there out in the open holding a child’s hand. I was frightened for a moment that I was looking at my mother’s ghost. I just picked up a gun and opened the door before I thought about it. It was a woman and her six-year-old son. Looking back, it could have been a trap and I would have just fallen right into it. She said her name was Cadney and her boy was Blake. They were just standing there like they stopped by after a stroll.
Once the door was opened, I saw we had missed a black, painted message on the outside of it. It read, RD done! We needed to clean that later when we finished repairing the garage door.
She asked, “Are you him? You are, aren’t you? You’re Mad Dog Mutt. You’re the boy general of the Complex army that brought the fire of Shy down on the Riders and the Rezzers. You led the dead through the gates after Shy Porter returned and sacrificed himself to unleash the Second Liberty War.”
I just stared at her. She lifted her bangs and showed me “MDM” carved into her forehead. She lifted her son’s hair and showed his mark as well. I stepped aside.
“Come in,” I said.
I’m making progress.
I wrote this so everyone would understand what happened. I don’t know what happens next. I’m not sure if Coop, Old Cuss, or any of the others are still alive and looking for revenge. I want to believe in God, but I don’t want another religion forming around what we did. I don’t want to write a new legend or to hide new secrets because no one said anything. This is who we were and what happened because of it. Secrets and lies can be as deadly as a zombie bite; they just take a hell of a lot longer to kill sometimes.
I don’t know what we unleashed.
My concern is that if Cadney and her son were able to track us back here based on the trail we left behind, then other people can too. I am ready to help rebuild the Complex, but there are others that are ready to tear it down again.
We have to be ready to deal with both, when they come.
About the Author
Jay Wilburn has published several horror stories with Dark Moon and Dark Eclipse. He has a steampunk/ghost story crossover piece that has been accepted for Post Mortem's The Ghost IS the Machine anthology, He has also had a piece accepted for Crowded Quarantine's Grindhouse anthology, for the Zombies Need Love Too anthology by editor Max Booth III, and for A Quick Bite of Flesh by Hazardous Press. He writes a monthly horror column for Dark Eclipse e-zine. Jay came in third place with Stony Meadow Publishing's zombie writing contest.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Day We Lost Our Appetites
