by David Moody
We piled the bodies out back and burned them. The fire pushed the deadfucks back to the treeline that bordered Zamora’s estate. Fired off a few rounds in the air to remind the hard-headed ones who’s boss. If they had half-a-brain they realized that they had us outnumbered. The fuckers had been creeping since we returned, circling the fringes of the estate like sharks on ketamine. ‘Looks like we’re gonna have to do some cleaning,’ I go.
‘I could use the target practice,’ says Holly.
We all could.
We said a little prayer for the group as the fire raged on. None of us are even remotely religious, but it felt like the right thing to do. We’re doin’ the whole ‘moment of silence’ thing, when Graeme goes, ‘Please tell me you can see that?’
Me and Holly look up, unsure which one of us he’s talking to. He’s looking toward the tree line. So we look, too.
‘Over there,’ he goes. ‘The tree lying on its side...’
But I had already spotted her; our number one fan. The area had been hit with a monster storm a few days before we arrived. An old tree trunk, hollowed out from rot, lay on its side, victim of the wind. The dead girl was standing on top of it like some kinda lookout for the deadfuck army meandering in the woods around her. And, as usual, she was looking in our direction. They all were, in fact. But there was a difference in the way she stared. The others seemed more interested in the flames than the scruffy-looking Rock ‘n’ Roll dinosaurs standing in front of it. But not her.
You could literally feel her eyes on you. It still gives me the chills. Don’t know if you’ve had the privilege of sharing your living space with cockroaches, and I’m talking the big German kind. Just the sight of one haunts you for hours. Especially if it gets away. You know it’s there, but you can’t see it. Meanwhile it sits there, patiently waiting for an opportunity to crawl up your pant leg or across your plate or onto the bed while you’re sleeping. That kind thing.
‘So I wasn’t seeing things.’ Holly goes as if a weight had suddenly lifted off his shoulders. I was thinking the same thing, to be honest.
It took us three more days to get the Grotto back to livable condition. Zamora had put a pretty good dent in the food, but there was a few months’ worth of canned vegetables, Ramen noodles, and oatmeal to go with our supply of potatoes and Spaghettios. Yum!
We gave up on Zamora’s room after several attempts to get rid of the smell, and sealed it off from the rest of the bunker.
During that time we shared stories about our number one fan. Each of us had seen her since that day six months ago when we bolted from the Grotto. Come to find out, Gramps had even attempted to communicate with the girl at one point.
‘It was back at Somerset,’ he goes. ‘Behind the old church, just outside the perimeter of the compound. The one by the lake.’
‘Tha Hell were you doing way out there?’ I say.
‘The black chick,’ Holly says as if I should’ve known.
He’s right. I should’ve known. Her and Gramps’ quickie behind the church was the reason we were ‘asked’ to leave the place. Turned out the girl was spoken for. By whom was the question. There were two people laying stake to that claim. Three if you count the leader’s wife. I often wonder how that ended. Probably not good.
‘Her name was Siobhan,’ Gramps says like he had real feelings for her or something.
Holly throws his hands up in surrender, makes a face. ‘Excuuuse ME.’
‘I bummed a cigarette from her and stayed out there and smoked it after she went back inside. That’s when I saw the girl. She was standing at the edge of the lake looking up the hill at me. This was maybe the third time I had seen her since we left the Grotto. I thought it was all in my head. You know? I was afraid to say anything and have you guys start looking at me sideways.’
We had each arrived at a similar conclusion from our individual encounters with the dead girl in the soaking wet groupie digs and the ‘Ride the Serpentine’ Concert Tee. No use mentioning it to the others and raising concern about your mental state and/or risk losing the trust of the only people in the world that you trust. These days trust is about as rare as deodorant or fresh breath.
‘It was a real secluded spot me and Siobhan had picked,’ Gramps goes. ‘No other deadfucks in sight. So I’m like, “I need to deal with this.” For the sake of my sanity, at least. Right? So I walk closer to the chick. She doesn’t move. I ask her; “Can you hear me? Who are you? What do you want from us?” She looks at me like she wants to tell me something…’
‘Yeah. Come over here pretty-boy and let me eat your lanky ass,’ I say to lighten the mood.
But Gramps was lost in the memory. He talks right over me. The sound of my voice was just background noise at this point.
‘I walk closer,’ he continues. ‘I get within 10-feet of the chick and she starts walking toward me. The look on her face changes. Almost like she’s happy. But happy like a cult-member about to drink the Kool Aid. She’s like… smiling through a peaceful expression. I can see that her eye makeup is smeared from crying. When’s the last time you saw a deadfuck cry? Right? She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, but it just kinda hangs open.’
Then the son of a bitch trails off with me and Holly sittin’ firmly on the edges of our seats.
‘Then what?’ We say it almost simultaneously.
‘Then I ran is what I fucking did!’
‘Weren’t you packin?’ I go.
‘I had the Glock 19.’
‘Why didn’t you just plug her then?’
‘I don’t know. Something about her. I can’t put my finger on it. I just had to get outta there.’
Remember what I said about cockroaches? Imagine being bitch-slapped by the physical manifestation of that vibe.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I must’ve lay there for hours with the lights on scrolling through the same three questions over and over in my head.
Who the hell is this girl?
How the fuck does she keep finding us?
How is it that she always looks the same?
Six months is a lifetime in deadfuck years. If they even survived that long, you’d expect a certain degree of rot or some gaping, oozing memento of his or her death or of some encounter with the living.
Lights-out in the Grotto was a special kind of dark. Sensory deprivation dark. You want to wait until you’re dead tired before turning in. If you weren’t asleep within the first few minutes then you were liable to be taken places you’d rather not explore. Absolute darkness and absolute silence provides the perfect platform for a fractured psyche to run free. I made the mistake of turning in on half-a-tank. But I was determined to will myself to sleep and NOT to dream. Short of death, it’s the only escape from this Hell.
I was on the waking end of a nod-off cycle when I heard a noise like a faint tapping in the distance. I thought – I hoped – it was one of the boys up for a late-night piss, but there were no residual sounds to support that scenario.
I hear the sound again. I lay there and listen. Was it coming from the main entrance of the Grotto? Maybe someone knocking on the main door? My heart sank. That someone would have to know exactly where to look to find the entrance. Then they’d have to remove the fake fireplace display and lift the panel of steel flooring underneath it to reach the door, which resembled the hatch on a submarine.
Holly appears at my doorway and scares the shit outta me. He’s wriggling into his shirt as he says, ‘Someone’s at the main entrance.’
My brain spits out a stupid question, ‘Who?’
‘How the fuck should I know. A friend of Zamora’s?’
‘That’s just what we fucking need.’
‘Come on.’
He calls out to Gramps as he heads off toward the control room. I jump out of bed and into my clothes. Something on the monitors has Holly and Gramps’ undivided attention when I reach the control room. I shove my way between them and have a look.
It’s her. Our number on
e fan. She’s down on one knee by the fireplace. A puddle of water on the floor beneath her knee. The fake display is spread across the living room. The steel flooring lifted onto one side exposing the main entrance door. She knocks again.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
And then she waits. We stand there in silence trying to process what we were seeing.
‘I vote we put her creepy ass down before she attracts more of ‘em,’ I go. We had yet to clean up the area and it was getting thick with the deadfucks. That’s when they’re the most dangerous.
‘How do we know this isn’t some trick just to get us to come outside?’ Holly says.
‘A trick?’ I go. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? Orchestrated by who? Rod-fucking-Serling?’
The girl knocks and waits again. Meanwhile me and Holly bicker like a married couple. Afterward she stands up, turns, and looks directly at the camera.
It was like somebody let all the air out of the room. The camera in the living room, which is about the size of an AA battery, is hidden in a vent. There was no way she could’ve known that.
She stands there for a good minute, and then she turns and walks out through the sliding doors on the east side of the house. Holly turns on the exterior floodlights and switches to the cameras mounted high up on the light posts. We watch the girl wander out into the east yard.
Now the argument between me and Holly becomes about whether or not we should go after her and put a period on this whole thing. We hadn’t even noticed that Gramps had left the room until…
Movement on one of the monitors...
It pulls my attention away from the intellectual bullshit falling out of Holly’s mouth. I look and see Gramps taking long strides across the East lawn like a hound-dog locked on a scent. He’s plugging deadfucks like it’s an afterthought, letting them get dangerously close before pulling the trigger, and doing so without even looking. He’s armed with a Glock 19. That’s fifteen rounds versus three times as many deadfucks. At least.
Holly throws attitude my way on his way out the room, ‘Happy now?’
Video
Floodlight Security Camera (East Yard)
An overhead view of a 1-acre field boxed in by Spartan Juniper trees and gaudy Romanesque sculptures atop faux Corinthian columns. The tatters of a volley ball net hangs sadly between rusted steel posts. A gazebo meant to resemble ancient ruins. Floodlights on tall posts impaled in the dirt. Three on each side of the yard, spaced 10-feet apart.
Upright corpses materialize from the spaces between junipers. More pour in from around the front of the estate. They converge in the middle, a sedated stampede, hive-minded, hungry-eyed and salivating at the source of their heightened aggression.
Graeme Gunz moves with purpose toward a gap in the Juniper wall. A trailed of bodies laid out in his wake. An unruly crowd hot on his trail. An ambitious young corpse lunges from the side. Graeme caps it without missing a step. His focus, on the stone pathway winding off into the woods, locked in and unwavering. A headless bust stationed on either side of the pathway. Darkness beyond the trees…
Jules and Hollister explode from the East doors armed with M16s. A canvas satchel strapped across Jules’ torso. They run out into the yard and immediately take aim…
Hollister: GRAEME!
Jules (to Graeme): What the hell’re you doing, man!
They work to thin the herd of undead, starting with the ones closest to Graeme. They move toward Graeme’s position, firing away. A misty cloud-canopy of exploded cerebral residue rains down, painting heads and shoulders red. The herd marches forward like some tribe of stiff-jointed, lead-limbed berserkers worked into a frenzy and covered in war paint. They are unfazed by the bodies dropping all around them and by the obstacles those bodies present. The idea of warm flesh is just too intoxicating. A small faction of undead changes direction, like a deformed tentacle extending away from a larger body and reaching for the two armed men standing on the sideline of the stampede.
Graeme is standing at the mouth of the stone pathway now. His arms hanging by his sides. Shoulders slack. His right hand wrapped around the handle of his gun. Just beyond the junipers, a shadowy figure moves toward the relative light. Seconds later a dead man in blood-stained medical scrubs and a face-mask of third-degree burns steps through the gap. His pace quickens, he reaches out to Graeme, fingers flexing and curling into claws.
Graeme stands there, posture on Mesmer. His body language suggests that he has every intention of allowing the undead man in scrubs to approach him.
Hollister turns his weapon on the approaching undead. He takes out a few before his gun clicks empty.
Hollister (to Jules): I’m out!
Jules reaches into his satchel and tosses a clip to Hollister. He grabs another clip from the satchel. As he reloads his gun…
Jules: GRAAAAAEEEEME!!! (to Hollister) What’s he doin’?
Hollister shakes his head, ‘I dunno…’
Graeme doesn’t respond. Instead, he opens his arms to the undead man in scrubs and third degree burns. The man staggers closer all gums and gnashed teeth shining through an oblong ball of charred meat that used to be a face.
Scrubs is just about on Graeme when Jules takes a shot and then, in one motion, he returns to clearing the herd. Scrubs’ head jerks violently to the right. Blood. Graeme whips his face away from the hard, wet kiss of airborne brain matter. Scrubs crumbles to the ground, leaking moist chunks from the jagged hole in the top left side of his head.
Graeme (re Scrubs): Noooooo!
He turns and charges at Jules, a madman covered in the undead blood. Jules catches wind at the last minute…
Jules (re: Graeme): Hey! What the fu—
…and moves to defend himself against the lanky, pretty-boy juggernaut. The two men tussle.
Graeme: Why’d you have to kill her?
Hollister hurries over and divides his time between separating Jules and Graeme and keeping the herd momentarily at bay. He manages to get between them, wraps his arms around a thrashing Graeme and walks him backward, away from Jules.
As Graeme continues to thrash…
Graeme: Why’d you fucking kill her?! She was trying to communicate with me you stupid fuck.
Jules nonchalantly picks of a few undead between gestures of disbelief.
Jules: Well, excuse me for saving your skinny ass!
Graeme: I had it under control. She wasn’t going to hurt me.
Hollister fires a few rounds with equal disregard and then leans into Graeme’s line of sight.
Hollister: Whaddayou mean, she? She, who?
Graeme points to Scrubs’ expired corpse lying facedown in the dirt.
Graeme: The girl. Our “fan.”
Jules fires without looking. A few more drop.
Jules (to Graeme): Tha fuck are you talking about?
Graeme eyes Jules with suspicion.
Graeme: Waaait a minute, now. I thought we all agreed that she was real.
Hollister calmly drops a few more undead and then grabs Graeme by the shoulders and points him in the direction of Scrubs’ body.
Hollister: We did. But that ain’t her.
End Video
Interior of van/scenery outside windows.
Jules (V.O.): There were so many deadfucks. The damn things were coming out of the woodwork faster than we could plug ‘em. We couldn’t chance having them follow us inside, so we led them away from the estate and ducked into a house down the road where we settled for the night and waited for them to lose interest. Turned out the place used to belong to that basketball player who was outed as a furry by one of the gossip rags. Damn near killed his career. Wouldn’t you know he had a photo of himself with Zamora in his den. Figures.
The place had been thoroughly ransacked and looted to shit, but the doors and windows were mostly intact. We found a stash of liquor hidden in a heap of boxes in the basement. Medicine for the night. Gramps snagged the Patron. Holly took the Jack Daniels and I was packin’ a fancy-schmacy bottle
of Absolute Citron.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Gramps goes once the Tequila kicked in and washed away the shock trance he’d been under, ‘But I’m not slipping. I’m fine.’
‘Nobody thinks you’re slipping,’ Holly says.
‘I would if I was in you guys’ shoes.’
‘We all saw the girl on the monitor,’ I go.
‘I’m not talking about the monitor. She was there in the east yard, too. Standing right in front of me. Not more than 10-feet away. I threatened to put a bullet between her eyes unless she came clean. She just gives me this look, same as before. Then she takes off her clothes and starts walking toward me. I knew what was happening was fucked, but it was like I couldn’t move. When you plugged her… It felt like… like being jarred awake from a deep sleep.’
We must’ve sat there for an hour, taking long swigs and not knowing what to say. With everything we knew about this girl, we had no reason not to believe Gramps’ story. But what did it mean? Holly was the first one to offer up a theory.
‘What if she’s a ghost?’ he says like he expected us to laugh in his face. No one did.
Gramps nods like he’s on the same page and has been there for some time.
‘Why not a ghost, right?’ Holly continues, enlivened by Gramps’ nodding endorsement and half a bottle of Jack. ‘We live in a world where dead people come back to life and eat living people. How fucked is that? So why the fuck not? Why not Chupacabres, too? And fairies. And Leprechauns. And fucking… Bigfoot sitting on a goddamn unicorn, surfing a UFO across the Bermuda fucking triangle?’
I raise my bottle in support. ‘Why the fuck not!’ I take a drink then add, ‘Maybe not Leprechauns, though.’
‘What does she want?’ Gramps steps all over my comic timing like not knowing causes him great pain.
