Deadville

by Tessa Leon

Jenny cried herself to sleep at night.

  She couldn't help it.

  Her grandfather's house had a musty, uncared-for feel to it. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be. A thin layer of dust covered the tables and desks. She looked up and saw that a large spider was making a web in the corner of the wall.

  She turned the knob on the old transistor radio. Just looking at the old thing gave her a tinge of nostalgia as she remembered her grandfather taking it with him wherever he went. She thought hearing voices, any kind of voice, kept him company.

  Jenny sipped gingerly at her hot coffee and idly looked up as Megan walked sleepily into the kitchen. Her straight, raven black hair shined as she stood against the sunlight from the window. And despite the sleep rocks in the corner of her eyes, she had a face that sparkled with a devil may care attitude.

  “This is way too early to be awake,” Megan complained. “I can't believe I agreed to this.”

  “Yeah, well, I can't sleep much anyway,” Jenny returned her attention to the radio, noodling around and getting only noise.

  “Sleep,” Megan yawned as she poured some coffee into a tall glass. “How I love thee.”

  “There are some eggs ready to go.”

  “They're sunny side up,” Megan said, looking at the eggs laying on the frying pan.

  “So?”

  “So I only eat scrambled.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes and continued to fiddle with the radio.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can't get it to work this morning. I know reception is bad around here but there's nothing, just a bit of crackling.”

  “Let me try,” Megan leaned over Jenny and twisted the tuner on the old radio.

  White noise.

  “What you think that you have the magic touch that I don't?”

  “Of course,” Megan said. “Everything around here is so ancient, the place has been deserted for so long. I'm sure it'll pick up later, it was like that on the day we got here.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.” Jenny pushed the radio away and stared into her coffee cup. Her mind going elsewhere.

  “Anyway, that was the whole point of it, wasn't it? Volunteer for the field trip, escape from the world for a long weekend, give you some space after what happened with your parents and everything?”

  Jenny shrugged her shoulders. She stared into her coffee cup, eyes welling with tears.

  “I'm sorry,” Megan said. “I shouldn't even go there. Are you doing okay?”

  “I'm fine,” Jenny said, not looking Megan in the eye.

  “You're so not fine, talk to me.”

  “I told you already, I didn't sleep well, dreams and all that.”

  “I'm an insensitive bitch, okay,” Megan put her finger into a shape of a gun and pointed it at her head. “Maybe talking about it isn't the right thing to do, you know? How long has it been? Four months?”

  “Six. I still can't believe they're gone,” Jenny blinked her eyes hard and pounded her cup against the table. “Stupid idiot!”

  “Who me?”

  “Not you. The guy who fell asleep at the wheel in his ten ton truck. My Dad didn't even have a chance to react. The police said he and Mom died instantly. But I'm not so sure.”

  Megan walked over and hugged Jenny. “Don't torture yourself, Jen. Look, let's finish this coffee and head off to the trails. Maybe we'll even find some more slimy stuff today. Remember when we were kids and we used to look for bugs?”

  Jenny laughed. “Mom would have been so proud. And my Dad. He would have declared that thing to be a whole new species.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “It was so gross, looked like some mutant grub. We're supposed to be bird-watching and all we're going to be famous for is discovering a mutant slug.”

  “It could be worse,” Jenny smiled. “What time do we have to leave today?”

  “By mid-day. We get picked up not far from the freeway and its about an hour or so walk to the nearest side road to get a bus. And don't forget we've got to 'leave everything as we found it.'” Megan mimicked a British accent. “So let's get out there and get to it.”

  Jenny smiled again. “That sounds exactly like Miss Brown. She is so very English.”

  Megan kept her arm around Jenny. “Your Mom would have been so proud. You are so right.”

  “Sorry Megan, its been well, you know. Thanks for being such a great friend. It couldn't have been easy for you, four days of of isolation with a party pooper like me.”

  “Four days of an important field trip for our science project to discover new civilizations, to go where no super sassy students have gone before!” Megan hugged Jenny again. “Come on, dude! You are no party pooper. Let's get the gear and go. A beautiful day is a terrible thing to waste.”

  “I'll get it,” Jenny scooted out of the kitchen and into the living room.

  Megan sat in Jenny's vacated seat and tried to tune in the radio. There was some faint crackling of voices amidst the noise. Then it died out.

  “Piece of crap.”

  Jenny returned to the kitchen. She laid down a digital camera, two rucksacks, sunglasses and a sun hat on the table. “Do I look like an intrepid scientist or what?”

  “Now let me think-” Megan picked up one of the rucksacks and looked inside. “Good to see you've got the water bottles, sampler boxes, pens, paper, binoculars-oh very impressed.”

  Megan held up a bottle of sun protection cream.

  “Factor 30? Are you fucking kidding? How am I ever going to get some color?”

  Megan tossed the sun cream to the side and it fell to the floor.

  “I'm looking after you, like you've looked after me.”

  “Hey, come on dude, let's get this show on the -er – trail.”

  The girls headed out of the kitchen. The radio crackled and a voice came on.

  “Stay indoors...Close all windows...”

  Cool weather ruled the day as they headed across the dirt trail. Megan stopped in her tracks and Jenny wandered ahead.

  “Wait,” Megan gazed down at the ground. “Jenny wait a minute.”

  Jenny turned around and looked annoyed. “What's the problem?”

  Megan put on a pair of gloves and picked up a dead bird from the ground. “Eww, gross, they're all dead.”

  “That's our dream of a new bird species gone then.”

  Megan followed what looked to be a trail of the dead carcasses. She knelt down and peered under a bush.

  “Look at these guys! Dozens of dead birds.”

  Megan pulled some of the carcasses out and held them away from her face. “What a stink!”

  She dropped the birds and brushed herself down.

  Jenny walked back toward her, studying the dead birds on the ground.

  “That's so strange, I wonder if they were poisoned? They're all dead, worms, insects, birds, everything-”

  Jenny got on her knees. She took out a pair of gloves from her rucksack then picked up one of the birds herself.

  “Dude,” Megan said. “You're the biology expert. What's happened to them?”

  Jenny lifted the bird to her eye line, scrutinizing it.

  “What do you-”

  “Shhh,” Jenny said. “Listen-”

  “What? I can't hear anything.”

  “Exactly,” Jenny said. “No birds singing. No wind. No nothing. It's like there's nothing else in the whole world except us.”

  “I'd say it's more a serious case of food poisoning or one hell of a big cat. We are close to the mountains you know and look at the chunks of flesh taken out of those poor birds.”

  Jenny opened the rucksack again and took out her camera. “I don't care what it is, but let's take a pic.”

  “You and your scientific evidence. I'll leave you to it. I'll see what else I can find out.”

  Megan strolled off the trail and entered the brush.

  Jenny snapped a photo of the birds on the ground. Then another. She didn't turn around when dirt-shuffling footsteps came up beh
ind her.

  “Did you find anything else, Megan?”

  Her question was greeted with a groan.

  Jenny turned around startled.

  In front of her stood a man. He whirled and danced and spun around while his flesh blotched and bubbled and popped and oozed. His face looked like a grinning mask of festering boils. Dressed in a floral shirt with a sunhat and sunglasses, blood poured from his mouth. He ambled toward Jenny with his one arm outstretched. In his other hand, he held a map.

  “What the -”

  Jenny screamed, scrambling away in the dirt. The zombie continued to move toward her.

  Jenny's movements were stiff and wooden, just like the zombie. She felt as if she were in a nightmare, but this was no dream. She felt her heart pounding in her chest so hard that it hurt.

  Jenny had only one thought- get the fuck away from this guy.

  The zombie's hands extended out to her, fingers bent into claws. A mixture of sputum and blood oozed from his mouth and hung in a bobbing, bloody thread from his chin as he shuffled forward.

  Jenny picked up a small rock from the ground and threw it at the walking dead man. Hitting him point blank in the nose, he rocked back slightly.

  Jenny rushed toward the brush where she last saw Megan.

  The zombie stood in place for a moment then staggered. He looked at the dead birds on the ground and picked one of them up.

  He took a bite then threw the bird back on the ground, spitting out the dead flesh in disgust.

  “Megan!”

  Jenny ran up to her friend, out of breath.

  “What the shit?”

  “Megan, there's a weird dude with blood dripping from his mouth. I managed to throw some rocks at him and get away. He tried to grab me.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Back at the trail.”

  Jenny bent over and gasped for breath. She looked up at Megan and realized her friend had more dead birds in her hand.

  “What? What do you mean? There's no one around here, this place is deserted, there can't be anyone.”

  “He was dressed like a tourist,” Jenny said. “Bad shirt, stupid hat. Here look-” She took out her camera and sifted through the stills.

  “Look, there he is, I was taking photos, and when I turned around I took a photo of him.”

  Megan looked at the still photo. “What the heck is that? How disgusting. Look at all that blood, he looks like he's murdered someone-what's with the sunglasses?”

  “We need to get away from this guy, get back to the house and get our shit together and go, we can wait at the meeting point. I'm not sure I want to hang around, there's some freaky stuff going on here.”

  “Wait,” Megan said.

  Groaning noises seem to echo from the trail.

  Emerging from one of the bushes, the zombie walked toward them, screaming “heeeeeyyy” in a low-pitched voice.

  “Quick, Megan, run!”

  The girls screamed as the zombie approached. Megan pulled Jenny along the trail, both of them shaking with fear.

  “Holy shit!” Jenny said as she stopped in place, looking down.

  Megan followed her eye-line and saw a dead body of a nude man, clutching a surfboard. Gray flesh across his stomach sagged in wrinkled folds. His upper chest bore a scar that ran down from his neck to his stomach, the markings of a heart transplant patient. High on the inside of his right arm was an open bite eight inches long. The severed end of a rubbery artery protruded from the opening of the wound.

  The hair on the man's head was blonde but his pubis was curly black with wiry gray strands running through it. He had a mole with a hair growing atop his right eye.

  But it was his face that made the young women want to retch.

  It was covered with pink, puffy lesions that looked like a cross between acne and gangrene.

  Then the man's eyes shot open. He lerched up immediately, surfboard in hand.

  Jenny and Megan looked on in panic. They were trapped between the two zombies.

  “Quick Megan,” Jenny said. “Run this way!”

  They went off into the bushes again, running through thorns and tall grass. They finally reached a clearing after a few minutes. Making their way close to a hill top, they sat against some rocks, both out of breath.

  And the zombie groans could no longer be heard. A feeling of relief came over both of them. Still spooked, Megan felt there was something about the empty trail that gave her the creeps. Ghosts seemed to lurk in the shadow corners and behind the dark bushes.

  “I have never seen anything like that in my life. I thought it was a joke. What the fuck were they?”

  “Some kind of mutated humans,” Jenny said, breathless. “Do you remember that slug yesterday? And the birds? And the silence. There's something going on here and I don't like it. It's freaking me out.”

  The girls leaned against the rock. Megan took a pair of water bottles out of their rucksack and passed one to Jenny.

  They sat and drank, breathing heavily.

  “Somehow we have got to get back down to the house and head out of here,” Jenny checked her watch. “They'll be expecting us in a few hours at the meeting point. How long will it take us to get to the shuttle stop?”

  “An hour to the shuttle stop and then another half-hour on the shuttle to the freeway.”

  “If we can just get to the shuttle station we can sound the alarm. We need to get down to the house and avoid these things somehow.”

  “Jen, I'm scared.”

  Jenny put her hand on her friend's shoulder. “Don't be, it's okay. We'll figure something out, we can out run them at the very least, they are ugly freaky dudes and they are very slow.”

  They both stood still for a moment and just listened.

  “I don't like this silence though,” Jenny said. “What is going on?”

  Jenny stood up to look around. The surfboard zombie came behind them with a guttural growl that sounded like a Grizzly bear. He dropped his surfboard and grabbed Jenny from behind.

  Jenny struggled to get away, she screamed and fell to the spongy dirt.

  Megan jumped up and screamed like a banshee.

  The zombie froze in place and screamed just as loud as Megan, mocking her.

  Jenny crawled away from the zombie but he lunged after her, his raisin sized testicles scraping across the dirt but causing him no pain. He bit down on Jenny's calf and she screamed for bloody murder.

  Megan screamed herself hoarse. She didn't know what else to do.

  Jenny tried to get up but her legs folded underneath her like loaves of soft dough. The zombie grabbed her again and bit down onto her shoulder.

  “Oh God, Megan!” Jenny said. “Help me! Help me!”

  The zombie munched on Jenny's flesh. Blood poured out from her wounds and his mouth.

  Megan looked around desperately for some kind of weapon.

  “Megan,” Jenny implored. “The surfboard. Hit him with the surfboard. Hurry!”

  Megan snapped out of her funk and grabbed the board. She whacked the zombie across the head with it and knocked him off balance.

  She hit him again and he fell backward. Dazed.

  Megan dropped the surfboard and sprinted over to Jenny, helping her up.

  Jenny gasped for breath and winced in pain, holding her shoulder. “Our backpacks-”

  Megan picked up the rucksacks and helped Jenny up. Her friend limped badly as blood streamed down her leg and arm.

  “We've got to get away from that thing, where's the other one, my ankle, my shoulder, damn!”

  Megan dragged Jenny further away from the trail until they got to a clearing.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Megan, get it together!” Jenny pulled at her own t-shirt and tore some strips from it. Blood poured from her leg.

  Megan tore her t-shirt as well and wrapped the strips around Jenny's ankle and shin. The wound continued to bleed and she held another piece tight to her shoulder and around her neck.

>   “You need to see a doctor,” Megan said. “That could get infected, he took a whole chunk out of your ankle! And look at your shoulder-and your neck! We need to get back to the house, you can rest there, I can get help.”

  Jenny didn't look so hot. Her eyes rolled a bit and her face began to look pale.

  “Let's get back to the house,” Jenny nodded. “There are only two of them and you hit that last guy pretty hard.”

  “What are they? Are they zombies? I've seen some of those movies. They look like zombies. Real life Walking Dead!”

  “Zombies are fictional, Megan. They don't exist. You've been watching too much television. They are just psychos. Maybe they are on drugs. That new PCP or heroin or something.”

  Jenny's voice lowered to nothing more than a whisper.

  “Are you sure you're alright?”

  “I'm fine,” Jenny said softly. “We have the photographic evidence, remember, I got the photos. They are in the bag. The police will be able to identify them.”

  Megan looked in the bag.

  “I can't see the camera, where is it? It must have fallen out when we ran.”

  “Megan, can't you look after anything?”

  Megan threw the bag down in frustration.

  “I'm sorry,” Jenny said, trying to sound appeasing. “We need to get back to the house. I'm bleeding everywhere.”

  Jenny struggled to her feet, panting and sweating. She held on to Megan as they began to head back from where they came.

  After about a half-mile, Jenny stopped walking.

  “Wait,” she said. “We're going the wrong way! Where are we? I don't recognize this bit at all.”

  Jenny looking very pale now, collapsed to the floor. Blood seeped from her shoulder and leg into the dirt.

  “Jenny!”

  “Megan, I-I can't-need to sit awhile. You go on and get help and I'll wait here.”

  “I'm not abandoning you. Sit there, I'll have a look around.”

  Jenny sat, her eyes now jaundice, her body covered with dried blood. She grabbed some water and started to drink.

  She watched as Megan wandered out of sight. Then she looked down at the ground covered with dead birds.

  Jenny placed her hand on her bitten shoulder and then looked at her palm, drenched in blood. She held back tears and self-pity.