Undead Ultra

by Camille Picott

  “I had chafing all around my waist and thighs, so I took off my pants and drove away. I was starving, but I knew I couldn’t walk into a store or restaurant in my underwear. I had to drive thirty miles to find a drive-thru. I scarfed down two burgers, two large sodas, and two orders of fries.

  “I had a long time to think on the drive home. What I came to realize was that I wasn’t as tough as I hoped or thought I was. I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to make myself tough. I bought three books on ultrarunning and signed up for the Marin Ultra Challenge. I threw myself into training. The race gave me something to focus on. Made it easier to ignore the booze. Been running ever since.” He pauses. “Aleisha always says I traded one addiction for another. She wasn’t wrong.”

  “They’re not the same thing,” I argue.

  “I’ve always been a man of extremes,” Frederico says. “Aleisha wants a father who’s moderate in his daily practices. I wish I could be that for her. I’ve come to peace with the fact that I can’t. But at least I can be sober.”

  The pain is there in his voice. She’s the wound in his heart that will never heal.

  Mile eighteen.

  The uneven terrain of the rails blurs by beneath me. First there’s the dark, rotted brown of the slots, then the grayish-black of the granite chunks between them. Brown-gray-brown-gray, dotted with invading plants in between.

  “Kate.” Frederico puts out an arm, halting me. “Do you hear that?”

  I scan the countryside around us. It’s quiet; no birds, no hum from the freeway—nothing.

  And then I hear it: soft, distinct moans.

  “Where’s that coming from?” I whisper.

  Frederico turns in a slow three-sixty. “Somewhere up ahead. We’d know if they were behind us, I think.”

  “What do we do?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” I say. “Maybe they’re on the other side of the pasture fence.” I gesture to the barbed wire still bordering both sides of the tracks.

  “Or maybe they’re on the inside.” Frederico grimaces.

  “We can’t go back,” I say.

  “I know. Let’s just go slow. Can you get the lug nut wrench for me?”

  I unfasten it from the back of his pack and hand it off. Then I find a sturdy oak branch on the ground for myself. I grasp it like a baseball bat.

  “Ready,” I say quietly.

  Together, we advance down the tracks, creeping around a bend thick with oak trees. Poison oak wraps around the trunks, thick bunches of it spreading across the ground. Clusters of Spanish moss dangle from the branches.

  The moaning grows louder. We freeze, listening.

  “Just up ahead.” Frederico’s voice is barely a whisper.

  Pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, we creep forward. The moaning makes my stomach knot. There are definitely zombies up ahead.

  What are we doing? I think wildly. Why are we walking straight toward zombies? Blind. They’re blind. Don’t freak out. So long as we’re quiet they won’t know we’re here—

  Frederico’s hand closes around my wrist, his grip like iron. I follow his gaze.

  Bumping up against the barbed-wire fence are three zombies. Their white eyes roll sightlessly in their sockets. From their sturdy boots, shirts, wide-brimmed hats, and dark, tanned skin, I recognize them as vineyard workers. Barbs are caught in their clothing and skin. Drops of blood drip down their fingers.

  Beyond them, out in the rows of grapes, are other workers. From the way they mill about in uneven circles, I surmise that they, too, have been turned. I count another six hats.

  Nine zombies altogether. And only a barbed-wire fence separates us from them.

  Okay, I tell myself. Just move quietly. Don’t make any noise to set them off.

  I give Frederico’s hand a tug. He flicks his eyes in my direction and nods. We ease forward, stepping softly. The weeds whisper against our legs. The soft soles of our shoes are silent against the ground.

  The zombies moan, shuffling against the fence. Another one drifts out of the vines, stumbling toward them.

  One step, then another, and another. Frederico and I keep up a quiet, steady pace. My left hand aches from gripping the tree branch. As far as I can tell, the undead haven’t realized our sounds are not part of nature.

  Snap.

  I cringe as a twig breaks under Frederico’s foot. We freeze.

  So do the zombies. The moaning ceases. They lift their noses, scenting the air like dogs. Their eyes roll in their heads, out of sync with the rest of their bodies.

  Sweat beads along my forehead and drips off my nose. My palm, still gripping Frederico’s, is slick. The air is unmoving and crisp, sunlight brilliant as it shines through the trees.

  He gives my fingers a squeeze, ever so slightly tilting his chin north. He wants us to keep moving.

  Holding my breath, I take several ginger steps. Frederico eases his foot off the broken branch and inches up the tracks with me.

  The zombies moan, bumping against the barbed wire. For some reason, their movement makes me relax. There’s nothing frantic or predatory in their postures. They no longer scent the air, no longer search for us—or at least, I don’t think they’re searching for us.

  Thank goodness for blind zombies. It might be our one saving grace on this mad mission.

  We turn a corner, the vineyard zombies disappearing from sight. Frederico’s shoulders sag with relief. He drops my hand.

  “That was a close one,” he whispers. “We—” His sentence turns into a wild shout.

  A zombie half stumbles, half crawls out of the poison oak. One mottled hand latches around Frederico’s ankle. One yank, and he goes down.

  Chapter 12

  Spikes

  The zombie has shaggy gray-black hair and skin seamed from years of sun exposure. He’s wearing a thick flannel shirt and blue jeans ripped at the knees. On his back is a large frame backpack filled with supplies. Half his face is missing, the blood-red muscles of his face exposed. Dried blood is matted in his hair and shirt. A stench that has nothing to do with being dead rolls off his body. Who knows how many months have passed since the poor man’s last shower.

  Another homeless vagabond. I hadn’t considered the possibility of running into one—dead or alive—on the tracks. I now realize how stupid that was.

  Frederico lands gracelessly, one shoulder hitting the steel of the track. He yelps in pain. The lug nut wrench flies from his hand, landing in a blackberry bush ten feet away. The zombie snarls, trying to haul Frederico toward the poison oak.

  I scream, all my caution swept away in a burst of panic. Leaping forward with my oak branch, I swing with all my might at the zombie’s head.

  It connects. Instead of splitting the zombie’s skull, the branch splinters in half.

  Rotten. The fucking branch is rotten.

  “Dammit!” I fling the branch aside. Why hadn’t I tested the wood when I first picked it up?

  “Kate, help!” Frederico braces his free foot against one rail, straining against the zombie as it tries to drag him into the poison oak.

  I leap forward and deliver a kick to the zombie’s head. It snarls and releases Frederico, taking a swipe at me. I scramble backward, trip on a rail, and fall on my ass.

  Moving on all fours, the zombie scuttles toward me. I frantically look for something to defend myself—god forbid another rotten tree branch—and I spot a railroad spike sticking halfway out of a tie. Before I can reach for it, the zombie pounces. It lands on my stomach, teeth blindly snapping at my face.

  His breath brings with it the rancid smell of death. I grab the creature around the throat, struggling to keep it from reaching me. A wordless shriek pours out of me as I grapple for the loose railroad stake with my free hand.

  “Get off her!” Frederico looms over us, reclaimed lug nut wrench in hand. He swings it like a golf club. It connects with the zombie’s ear.

  Unfortunately,
it doesn’t puncture the skull. The creature snarls and spins toward Frederico, momentarily forgetting about me.

  In that instant, I roll onto my side and wrap my fist around the stake.

  “Come on, you dead slug!” Frederico yells, drawing the zombie up the tracks and away from me. “Come and get me!”

  The zombie staggers to his feet, groping after Frederico.

  Two strong yanks, and the spike slides free in my hand. I jump to my feet and take one, two, three steps—and slam the railroad stake into the back of the vagabond zombie’s head.

  Blood sprays me in the face. I yelp, spitting and wiping at my mouth. The zombie drops without a sound, landing in a boneless puddle at my feet.

  I slump and lean over my knees, breathing hard. I spit a few more times, making sure my saliva is clear. Using the sleeve of my shirt, I do my best to wipe away the blood. It mingles with a few tears. My heart hammers in my chest.

  “I’m not cut out for this,” I mutter.

  A hand squeezes my shoulder. I look up into Frederico’s face.

  “Do you think the sickness is transferred by contact with blood?” I display the stained sleeve of my shirt. A knot has formed in my stomach.

  He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No way to know for sure, but you can’t get AIDS from just touching blood. This could be the same.” He shrugs. “There’s a chance we’re going to come into contact with a shitload of zombie blood between here and Arcata. Let’s not worry about it until we have to.”

  I nod, some of the tension in my gut loosening.

  “We have to move,” he says. “The others may break through that fence at any moment.”

  My focus swivels outward. Around the corner from us, I can hear the vineyard zombies rattling the barbed-wire fence. One of them makes a terrible baying noise, sounding like a sick hunting dog. Others take up the cry, baying and rattling the fence.

  The only things holding that pasture fence in place are metal pickets driven into the ground.

  Heart still thudding, I straighten. I spare a single glance for the vagabond’s backpack. It’s too heavy and cumbersome for us to carry, and there’s no time to scavenge. Nothing to do but turn north and run.

  We don’t look back. It’s only a matter of time before the vineyard zombies break down the pasture fence, but we hope to be long gone by the time they do.

  Mile nineteen.

  The baying fades into the distance. No sign of the zombies behind us.

  I check my phone. Still no message from Carter.

  “Quit looking at that thing,” Frederico says. “Focus on our task.”

  He’s right. I put the phone away and keep moving.

  We hit an incline, the tracks snaking up a steep hill. We drop into a power hike. We know better than to run the hills with so many miles before us. Running hills in an ultra can kill a runner’s race. Better to power hike and conserve energy for the long haul.

  “I was scared,” I say, huffing alongside Frederico. “When that zombie grabbed you. Really, really scared.”

  “Me, too, Jackalope.”

  “I—I don’t think I’m cut out for zombie killing. I got lucky.” I shake my head. “Luck isn’t going to get us to Carter.”

  “I know.”

  My voice goes up an octave. “We almost died back there!”

  Silence. Our rhythmic breathing fills the space between us.

  I expect Frederico to call me Jackalope and tell me everything is going to be okay. I expect him to tell me we’re going to get the hang of this zombie killing thing, even if he doesn’t believe it himself.

  He doesn’t do any of those things.

  “Do you remember the day Carter told you and Kyle he wanted to be a craft brewer?”

  The question takes me aback. “What does that have to do with—”

  “Do you remember that day?”

  “Of course. He was fifteen. His friends rode their bikes downtown to get ice cream during the craft beer festival. He came back dazzled by the brewers with their big beards and long hair.” Despite my current mood, I warm at the memory.

  My son has always been on the granola side. The first girl he ever took on a date was a wannabe hippie girl who went braless and wore patchouli. He grew a lumberjack beard at age sixteen. He chose Humboldt State University, probably the most granola campus in the continental US.

  “Do you remember Kyle’s reaction to the I-wanna-be-a-craft-brewer proclamation?” Frederico asks.

  That sobers me. A recovering alcoholic with a son who wants to make beer for a living?

  “He had a hard time with it.” Actually, he had called Frederico and gone to an AA meeting that night, though Carter never knew about it.

  “After that meeting, he bought the Homebrewing for Dummies book. And helped Carter make his very first keg of beer.”

  “Then wouldn’t let him drink any of it.” I remember my angry adolescent son trying to take on his stubborn father. “Made him donate the entire keg to the Kiwanis Club for their annual fundraiser.”

  “They made quite a few kegs together, if I remember correctly.”

  “Three. And he never let Carter drink any of it. ‘Not until you’re twenty-one,’ he’d say. There’s one keg left in our garage. After Kyle died, Carter couldn’t part with it.”

  Frederico halts. He stoops, bending down to stick his hand into a patch of weeds. When he straightens, there’s a railroad spike in his hand.

  He holds it out to me. “Take it.”

  I obey, hefting the chunk of rusted metal in my hand.

  “I was with Kyle the night he had to come to grips with the fact that his son wanted to make alcohol. I’m going to tell you what I told him that night: you go the extra mile for your kids. You dig deep, get over yourself, and do whatever you have to do to support them. For Kyle, that meant helping Carter make beer. For you, that means sucking it up and learning how to bash the brains out of undead fuckers.

  “Remember when you ran the Western States One Hundred and your shoe came off at the Rucky Chucky river crossing? It got swept downstream and we discovered you had accidentally left your spare shoes at home.”

  I nod. Forgetting my second pair of shoes had been a complete rookie move.

  “You ran fifteen miles to the Highway Forty-Nine aid station with only one shoe,” Frederico says. “Kyle spent that time bartering with the other crews to get you a replacement. Your foot looked like hell when you arrived. When I asked you how you ran all that way without a shoe, you told me that you just put your head down and focused on your goal. Remember that?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. Kyle had cracked jokes about me losing pieces of my mind on all the training runs I had done. Meanwhile, he had lovingly cleaned my foot and doused the cuts and abrasions with peroxide.

  I recall the extreme focus and determination I’d summoned on that race. I’d wanted so badly to finish under twenty-four hours. The shoe fiasco had set me back, and the one-hundred-mile course ended up taking me twenty-seven hours to complete. But I had finished. I hadn’t quit. I hadn’t let the setback or the pain stop me.

  “That’s all you need to do here,” Frederico says. “Put your head down and focus on your goal. Bashing in some zombie skulls should be a walk in the park for a woman who can trail run with only one shoe.”

  Again, I nod. I’ve done a lot of crazy things on races, but running fifteen miles without a shoe was definitely at the front of the nut job train.

  “You’ve got the mettle for a post-apocalyptic world,” Frederico says. “Stop thinking you’re a helpless first-world woman who can’t survive more than twelve seconds without her smartphone. Be the tough runner who endures utter hell to get a job done. That’s who you need to be.”

  Frederico’s words are like a slap of water in my face. They snap me out of my self-pity, reminding me that I’m capable and tough. My grip tightens on the railroad spike.

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am cut out for this world.

  “Do you understand what I�
��m saying?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I slide the spike into the front strap on my running pack. It fits snugly and is easy to pull out in a pinch. “Carter needs me. I have to put on my big-girl pants and get this done. No matter what.”

  I can feel my mental space shifting. I find the place that exists deep inside me—that place of impenetrable toughness that helps me endure long runs and prolonged physical pain.

  Frederico, who’s watching my face, sees the shift. “That’s my girl.” He pats my shoulder. “Kyle would be proud.”

  “He’d tell us we’re batshit crazy,” I reply, lips quirking. “Do you remember when he showed up at the American River Fifty dressed in that gorilla suit?”

  Frederico laughs. “The Cal Trans orange gorilla suit? Yeah, that was grand. He thought a good laugh would get you to the end of that race.”

  “I got a PR in that race. Never ran a fifty miler in under ten hours again.” PR stands for Personal Record. The pride of that day come back to me, along with memories of Kyle’s beaming smile. “He kissed me with his gorilla mask and told me I was his batshit crazy woman and he loved me.”

  “He was proud of you, you know,” Frederico says.

  Yeah. Proud of his insane, ultrarunning wife. God, I miss Kyle so much. I could use a husband in a fluorescent-orange gorilla suit right now.

  “Come on, Frederico,” I say. “Let’s find some more spikes.”

  There are some perks to running on an abandoned railroad. Within ten minutes, we are both armed with two spikes. They fit perfectly into the front straps on our running packs.

  Without another word, we set out.

  Chapter 13

  Ultra Dog

  Mile twenty.

  The hills keep coming, one after another, undulating before us. We run down the declines and power hike up the inclines. Yellow, white, and purple wildflowers dot the countryside.