by Brown, TW
“Okay.”
“And I need you to keep your eyes open so I can watch you. Since that is the most definite way we have of knowing your condition, I will monitor you that way.”
It took over two hours to leave the wolves behind to the point of not being able to see them. That only meant we had put distance between us. If wolf zombies were anything like their human counterparts—and we have no reason to think otherwise—once they get on a trail, they are relentless until something distracts them.
As it started to get darker, I kept glancing at Jon for directions. He simply sat silently staring straight ahead.
“I am assuming that you will tell me if and when I need to turn,” I finally said.
“Of course,” was Jon’s only reply.
We drove for about ten more minutes when Jon pointed to a narrow opening in the trees on the right hand side of the road. I turned and began a slow climb.
“There are a handful of trailer homes coming up,” Jon said. “We never stayed in any, so just pull into the first one. We can secure it and stay the night. We will have to finish this in the morning. It isn’t far, but I don’t want to make this last little leg in the dark. Up ahead is where we saw most of the zombie activity.”
The first trailer we came to was set back from the road through a single row of scraggly looking pine trees. I pulled into the first opening I found and parked beside the partially collapsed fence that looked like it had been hit by something moving fast the way it was all twisted and mangled.
“Let me take point going in,” Jon said.
I didn’t see any reason to argue. After all, he was already bitten. If he was infected, another bite would not make it any worse. If he was immune…well, pretty much the same logic.
We climbed the cinder block stairs and stood on the three-quarter inch plywood square that acted as a porch. I was trying my best not to judge…but this was almost too stereotypical. Jon tried the knob at the top of the stairs. It opened and released a rolling wave of stench that made me think of what shoving my face in a dirty cat box might smell like.
I lit a torch and handed it to Jon so that he could get a better look. It seems that the windows were covered in aluminum foil. Jon only took one step in before backing out in a hurry. I had my machete in my hand and quickly stepped in front of Dr. Zahn.
“Don’t bother,” Jon said as he turned his back to the open door. “This was a meth lab. There is nothing moving inside.”
We moved on to the next trailer. This one was a double-wide with no fence. As far as trailers went, this one looked okay. In fact, whoever lived here had put a lot of work into making it look like an actual house. The contrasts were so jarring that I almost missed the hand reaching out from the snow between the screened in porch and the big bush just beside it.
I brought my machete up, but never had the chance to swing as Dr. Zahn drove a wicked looking Buck knife into the snow-crusted face that rose from the powder in a slow motion eruption. I gave her a sideways glance. She simply shrugged and accepted my invitation for her to enter ahead of me.
A walk through revealed that the place was empty inside of anything that might want to bite our faces off. The rest of the night was dull. I did my best to relish the fact that the only problem we faced was staying warm enough. The temperatures plunged as it got dark and I would guess that it went well below zero.
The three of us barricaded the two doors and chose to rely on noise to wake us in the unlikely event that zombies showed up. We huddled under every single blanket and comforter while making a bit of a Dr. Zahn sandwich to maximize warmth from our bodies. It was still freezing. As I drifted off to sleep, I was reminded of a story by Jack London about a guy in the frozen wastes who dies of hypothermia.
Sweet dreams.
***
I woke to Jon shaking me. Dr. Zahn was already on her feet and I could see thick clouds of steam coming from their mouths and nostrils. The cold was so harsh that it made my face sting as soon as I came out from under the covers.
“Take this,” Jon said, handing me a strip of a blanket that he had cut into wide strips. “Put this over your mouth and nose. It will make breathing easier.”
I shrugged and did as I was told, but I also felt a bit of relief when I saw that he had clear eyes. Jon certainly knew more about survival that somebody like me. My idea of roughing it up until this whole zombie thing had consisted of fixing the non-microwavable macaroni and cheese.
“The one thing we have on our side is that there is no measurable wind.” Jon headed for the door. When he opened it, a dazzling white light illuminated him like he was some sort of warrior angel come to lead us to salvation. “We should be at the camp within an hour or two.”
We headed out in the Snowcat after a rather unsettling moment where it looked like the vehicle was not going to start. Did I mention that it was freezing cold?
Walking on the snow, you could actually stand on the surface of it and not plunge through it if you stepped carefully. When you did break through, it was accompanied by a loud crack that echoed in the deathly silent (no pun intended) forest. It took me a few seconds to realize how quiet it was before I brought it to Jon’s attention.
“None of the snow is melting or falling off the branches for one. I will say this…if it warms up any, it could get interesting.”
“How so?”
“If it keeps thawing and refreezing, not only will everything be a sheet of solid ice, but the snow will start to cascade down the branches and eventually the lower ones will become overburdened. This place will be a symphony of breaking wood.”
We made the trip in silence. I was fascinated by one field in particular that we passed by. It was like a zombie farm. I counted a dozen of the things standing in waist-deep snow. They were stuck, but strangely not frozen solid. I know this because their arms were very animated as we passed by. They reached, and I bet if it were not for the growl of the engine on the cat, I would have heard them making their assorted zombie noises.
We turned down a long road with a deep ditch on either side. In the distance, I could see an obviously hastily erected fence. It was a mix of corrugated steel, chain-link, wooden slats, and aluminum siding all topped with coils of razor wire. What I didn’t see was any signs of life. As loud as the Snowcat is, the inhabitants of that compound would have heard us coming several minutes before we even came into sight of their location.
When we pulled in and shut down, I looked to Jon for an indication of what to do. He seemed to be scanning the area with an abnormally—even for him—intense gaze.
“Did we come here to look at a fence?” Dr. Zahn finally broke the silence.
Jon said nothing, but he opened his door and climbed out while simultaneously allowing a painfully cold wave of air to fill the cab and ensure that neither the doctor nor I would simply sit in its relative warmth while he tromped around in the ice-crusted snow. I did a quick self-inspection of my gear. I didn’t know what I was feeling exactly, but it wasn’t anything good.
“Hello inside!” Jon called. Not exactly subtle, but I was nitpicking. Considering the fact that we’d driven here in the Snowcat and probably activated or re-directed every stationary zombie for miles, his little yell was probably not making things worse.
I hopped from the cab. That was my first mistake. I guess I really haven’t been out much. That is my best excuse when it comes to what is a complete ignoring of common sense. I promptly sunk up to my thighs in the snow. Looking around, I realized that the Snowcat had plowed its way to where we were currently parked. I also noticed that we had driven in the tracks made the last time Jon had come this way. At the nose of the cat was a mound of snow that rose about three or four feet above my head.
“Took us three days to make it this far last time,” Jon said with a smirk as I looked around for anything that could extricate me from my current situation. “Then we had to shovel our way to their wall. They’d made a path, but it was mostly filled in when we arrived. Wa
sn’t sure if we were gonna find anybody alive.”
“So what led you here?” Dr. Zahn asked. “This is obviously off the beaten path.”
“Jesus saw a flare. The only problem we had with that was that once we got here, nobody admitted to firing one. We talked to everybody that was able to speak…but nobody owned up to it.”
“And that doesn’t seem a little weird to you?” I asked as I flopped down on my belly and tried to wiggle my way across the snow.
“Of course it does.” Jon reached the edge of the unpacked snow and offered his hand to help pull me across. “But I stopped trying to figure out everything that seems weird to me a few months ago.”
“Boy howdy,” Dr. Zahn chimed in.
Boy howdy? What the hell was that about?
“And did they completely ignore your attempts to make contact with them when you arrived that first time?” I tumbled off the snow bank and came to a less than graceful and somewhat painful stop against the rear treads of the Snowcat.
“Actually…no.” I could hear the concern in Jon’s voice, but there was something else that I couldn’t quite identify.
“Maybe they’re all dead,” Dr. Zahn offered.
She wasn’t being callous. Actually, the best way I could put it was that she was finally being ‘Dr. Zahn’ again instead of the strange person who had been walking around in a funky haze since Teresa and Jamie’s death.
“So we are going to have to climb over,” Jon said with a sigh. “The best place is just around the corner. See that tree?” He pointed.
“I don’t think I’ve climbed a tree since before you were born,” Dr. Zahn grumped.
For some reason, that tickled my funny bone. It was something that I suddenly realized had been completely absent from my life these past several months—those spontaneous moments when you find something to be the most hilarious thing in the world. It is made worse by those around you who do not get in the slightest what you find so damned funny. Then, the harder you try to stifle the laugh, the worse it gets. Pretty soon your eyes are tearing up and you are laughing like a lunatic with no idea if you will ever be able to stop.
“Are you quite finished?” Dr. Zahn said as I wiped away the last of the tears in my eyes with my sleeves.
“I think so,” I managed. I was so out of breath that I really have no idea if she understood the words as much as just picked up on the sentiment.
We made our way to the corner…and that was where we encountered our first ‘surprise.’
“Holy Jesus,” Dr. Zahn gasped.
I felt my stomach shift just a bit and my knees give way until I somehow ended up on my butt in the snow beside the almost still defined trail. It took my brain a few moments to truly untangle the image and let me know what it was that I was looking at.
My best guess is that she could not have been any older than Thalia—five or six years old. She was leaning against the fence. More accurately, she was frozen to the fence. Somebody had taken the time place her exactly as we found her.
From just below her neck, there was nothing. Not a speck of flesh could be found on her frame—and that is all that was left…her frame. They had left the head untouched. So that one cold, dead eye still stared out at the world. She wasn’t alone. Beside her were seven others, all of varying ages. Each one had been stripped of every speck from the neck down, but for some reason, they’d left the heads.
Dr. Zahn pushed past me and knelt beside the first figure. She pulled something from her pocket and began to poke and inspect in a way that was far too clinical for me. I wanted to scream.
“They were boiled,” Dr. Zahn said, not looking away as she continued to inspect the collection.
That was the name my mind could handle referring to this group of individuals. They would now be etched forever more as ‘The Collection.’
“How do you know?” Glad to see Jon was still capable of forming words. I was just staring like an idiot.
“The bones are cracked and brittle.” Dr. Zahn duck walked to the next one. “And if you look close enough, you can still see filaments of tissue. But for the most part, these people have been stripped clean of all the juicy bits.”
Now I wanted to be sick.
“So why not the heads?”
“Who knows,” Dr. Zahn said with an absentmindedness that let me know she was now fully engrossed in her inspection or autopsy, or whatever the hell you would call it.
“I never even stopped to ask,” Jon whispered.
“Ask?” I tore my vision away from the doctor and tried to focus on Jon.
“There were these big metal garbage cans—”
A flood of images filled my mind so quickly that I couldn’t shuffle them off to a nice dark place where they would only be able to torment me in my sleep. I fell on my side and threw up.
When I was finished, I looked up to see the doctor had moved down the line. Jon was at her heels and they were talking in low tones. I was too shook up to care. And now I understood the haunted look in Jesus’ face. Now I realized why he did not want to ever see this place again. If this was what waited for us outside the compound…what in God’s name was on the inside. What could be so horrifying that men like Jake and Jesus would make excuses in order not to have to return?
“We better get inside,” Jon said with obvious hesitation.
“So why would they freeze them to the fence?” Dr. Zahn made her way back to us, doing her best to stay on the narrow trail of packed snow. “This is very deliberate. They sat each of these bodies here and then, by the looks of it, poured water on them to freeze them in place.”
“Nothing about the fact that they left the entire head intact?” I gasped. “You fixate on them being frozen in place…not the fact that we have a half a dozen skeletons with heads staring out at us?”
“I agree that is peculiar,” Dr. Zahn spoke in a level tone. “However, that can be attributed to a number of possible reasons.”
“Such as?” I challenged.
“They wanted to remember the sacrifice these people made or simply the fact that there is little to be gained from eating a person’s face. Or perhaps they were aware of the possibility of kuru.”
“What the hell is kuru?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer.
“Basically it is like mad cow…but in humans. It comes from eating the brain or spinal material of a human being.”
Dr. Zahn said that with such matter-of-factness that I was stunned into shutting my mouth and simply going along. I followed like a scolded child as Jon climbed up onto a low hanging branch. I watched his face, but he remained as grim as always when he was doing anything that didn’t revolve around Sunshine.
That got me to thinking. It was obvious that the two were a couple, so why was he so set on trying to act otherwise? That was something I would have to find out later. And now that he’d been bitten, what could that do to a new relationship. So many questions about what many would consider meaningless drivel.
I glanced at the doctor who was eyeing the tree like it was swarming with cobras…or zombies. She caught me looking at her and scowled.
“You go on up,” she said with a curt nod. “I will require the two of you to pull me up as I will absolutely not be climbing that thing.”
“You ain’t that heavy, Doc,” Jon called down.
“I would prefer two sets of hands if you don’t mind,” she retorted with an icy glare that held its own against the temperature that was providing us with this frozen landscape.
I grabbed the lowest branch and slung my leg up. Just as I did, a dry mewling sound came from the nearby pines. They shook a bit just before an elderly woman and young child of about four or five stumbled out into the open. The elderly lady took a tumble but wasn’t quite heavy enough to break the icy crust that made up the top layer of the snow. The child stopped, glancing down at the struggling figure beside it that now fought for purchase and managed to punch one frail arm through the snow. That only made the situation worse for the p
athetic creature as its left arm vanished up to the shoulder.
“I got this,” Jon called out as he swung his crossbow up into his hands. His shot was true and literally vanished into the crown of the woman’s skull. Not even the feather quarrel remained in sight.
The child looked up. I couldn’t say for certain, but it looked as if it might actually be angry. It wasn’t so much that the face changed. It remained slack just as all the other zombies that I’d ever seen. It was something around the eyes; almost as if they narrowed or squinted. I had to be imagining things and chalked it up to how few child zombies I’d actually encountered.
And then something strange happened. That is a statement I can make in a world where the dead walk and eat the living, so…
The child took a step back. It watched us intently, cocking its head from side to side a few times as if trying to consider exactly what we might be. In between those jerky head movements, it would glance at the downed woman. For some reason, I had a gut feeling that the woman must be this little boy’s grandmother. For the first time ever, a zombie was retreating. It slipped back into the trees and, for a few seconds, we could hear it moving away through the woods.
“Okay…” I was at a loss.
“Have you seen anything like this in your travels out and about?” Dr. Zahn asked, looking up at Jon with a raised eyebrow.
“We don’t run into many of the little ones,” Jon admitted. “But I have to be perfectly honest when I say that we don’t usually wait for them to get close enough for us to do any in depth studies.”
“This wouldn’t require too much depth,” I muttered. “The damn thing walked away.”
“And was giving us the zombie version of the stink eye,” Jon added. At any other time, that comment might have elicited a few chuckles, but not after what we’d just witnessed.
“I really wish I had a research facility,” Dr. Zahn grumbled.
“As much as I’d like to have an open forum about what we all saw, we need to get over the fence and inside this place.”
Maybe it was me, but I was having a real problem with the fact that we’d been talking in conversational tones—which, these days when you are out in the open where the danger of zombies is so great, is almost like yelling—and nobody had come to investigate. That did not bode well for the inhabitants of this compound.
