“National Guard had a checkpoint on the outskirts of town. Somehow, I got there in one piece.”
I listen intently. This is important. This is our history, our heritage. Unwritten, it will be lost with his death. Everything is lost in death.
“You need to go,” he says, reaching for his rifle. A shiver runs down my spine as he adds, “You need to run.”
Twigs snap behind me, breaking softly underfoot as Zee approaches.
With only one good arm, Ferguson rests the rifle on his lap. He works with the box of bullets, sitting them on the rock beside him and taking them out one by one. Like the apartment manager he described just moments before, Ferguson is unusually calm.
“Take the pack,” he says.
I want to say, no. I want to say, I won’t leave you, but that would be the petty folly of a childish girl. He knows it. I know it. There are no illusions between us. No denial. Just bitter reality.
“Run,” he says, coldly, echoing the words of that long dead apartment manager.
Ferguson feeds bullets into the side of his lever action rifle, pushing each round into the receiver with his thumb.
“Get up there quick as you can,” he says. “When I go loud, you run. Go long. Go deep. Get behind them. Double back.”
I nod, holding back tears.
I rest my hand gently on his good shoulder saying, “You sound just like David.” That gets a smile.
“Stay on the move. Don’t go to ground.”
I pick up the pack and sling it over my shoulder.
Ferguson takes one lonely bullet and stands it upright beside the box of shells. We both stare at it for a second, admiring its brass casing, its dark, arrow-like tip, its authority, its finality. We both know what it’s for.
Zee snarls, signaling his approach, but I still have my back turned. I can’t take my eyes off Ferguson. I understand what he’s doing. Why do moments like this end so swiftly? I can’t turn away as I need this memory to last.
“Bye, Ferg.”
“Bye, Haze.”
Tears fall from my eyes as I clamber onto the concrete footing, but I can’t let him see. There’s so much unspoken in our farewell, so much expressed in those soft, endearing terms. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Unity. Friendship. Sorrow. Remembrance. Heartache. Loss.
I hate myself.
I climb because I’m told to.
I climb because if I don’t, his death is meaningless.
My fingers are numb, but I push off with my legs, working my way up the steel latticework. Again, the birds are quiet. It’s as if they anticipate the coming storm. Below me, there’s the soft sound of the lever action loading a bullet into the chamber and cocking the firing pin.
I wait for the break of thunder.
Chapter 06: Spaceman
Dark figures emerge from the scrub along the edge of the river, picking their way through the tangle of bushes and reeds.
Ferguson fires, holding his rifle with one arm. He pulls the butt of his rifle hard into his elbow, keeping his elbow clipped close by his side as he shoots from the hip. Watching him crank the lever between shots, almost throwing the rifle away as he whips his one, good arm back and forth to reload, I feel terrible. I want to help, but we’re out of options. If I stay, we’ll quickly exhaust our ammo and we’ll both be overrun. Ferguson is buying me time. I have to use that or his will be yet another pointless death.
Another shot rings out with a crack like thunder and a head lashes backwards. A zombie crumples, falling to his knees before tumbling into the river and disappearing beneath the torrent of water.
Again and again, Ferguson fires. I don’t know that he ever misses, which is astonishing given his condition. The gunfire brings in hundreds of zombies, and still he holds them at bay. The narrow approach keeps Zee out in front of him, trapped between the raging water and the riverbank. Ferguson picks off Zee with ruthless precision.
The speed with which he reloads and unleashes volley after volley of shots is staggering given his wounds. He taunts Zee between shots. Ferguson is invincible.
“Whatcha got? You got nothing!”
Boom.
“Goddam cowards!”
Boom.
“Traitor!”
Boom.
There’s a slight pause as he slips more rounds into his rifle and then the firing continues.
I climb up beneath the walkway running beside the railroad tracks.
At first, it looks as though there’s roughly a dozen zombies on the wooden planks or clambering over the sleepers, and I steel myself to pick them off with the Glock. I’m not going to be as quick or as accurate as Ferguson, but I need to breakout and get off this damn bridge. Damn. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to use that word without remembering Ferguson.
I position myself on a support strut just below the walkway, bracing myself as I unstrap the Glock from my ankle. My fingers tremble. The thought of accidentally dropping the gun terrifies me more than the possibility of falling myself.
Bony hands reach for me. Demented, blood-crazed faces snarl in the darkness. Teeth snap. Holding my aim steady, I squeeze the trigger and an explosion of blood, bone and brains flies outward. A body drops, but no sooner has one zombie fallen than another takes its place. I fire again and again. Each shot is on target. Each shot recoils violently in my hand as yet another zombie finds peace. Dead bodies are dragged out of place by dozens of other zombies clamoring to get at me.
I’m trapped below the walkway.
There must be hundreds of zombies up there. I’ll run out of ammo before I’ll make an opening. I fire three more times, hoping I’m wrong but knowing I’m not, and it’s then I realize, I’m the only one shooting at Zee.
Zombies swarm around the concrete footing below me.
I can’t see Ferguson. He’s gone.
I’m alone.
My heart sinks.
Death never comes easy, and I shudder to think about what happened to him in those last few seconds, but he never cried out in pain. I take that to mean his last shot was reserved for himself, and he spared himself the agony of being eaten alive.
The drizzle turns to rain, and I’m soaked. Sitting there, I feel as though I’m going crazy. I slip the Glock back into the holster on my ankle, fastening a leather clip over the pistol grip so it won’t fall. I’ve still got ammo, but not enough. All I can do is unravel some beef jerky and chew on it, pretending Ferguson isn’t dead, pretending Steve is alive out there somewhere, pretending David and Jane are still on the run, pretending there aren’t hundreds of zombies salivating for me just a few feet away. I’d cry, but I have no tears left. I’ve shed tears for Steve, for James, for David, Jane, and Ferguson, but there are no tears to be shed in self-pity. The rain cries for me.
Night falls.
Shivering from the wind, I cling to the cold steel. I’m sleepy, but a few sudden jolts as I almost fall keep me awake. The wind picks up. Gusts buffet me.
What am I going to do?
What can I do?
Nothing.
All I can do is sit and wait, hoping Zee will lose interest in me, which given what I’ve seen over the past few days, isn’t likely.
With the darkness, Zee falls silent. At first, I’m confused. I know he’s still there in the shadows, shuffling around. Zee stinks. And it’s then I realize why he’s fallen quiet. The breeze on my cheek tells me I’m downwind, even if only by ten feet. Zee can’t smell me, he can’t hear me, he can’t see me.
If I move, Zee growls at the shadows. He knows there’s someone here, but with the coming of night, he’s lost me.
The clouds clear and stars appear overhead.
Hours pass.
I’m not sure how much time has elapsed, but my clothes are no longer soaking wet. They’re still damp, but they’re drying in the breeze. I’ve been sitting on this girder so long my ass hurts. No matter how much I move, I can’t get comfortable, and yet the stars are radiant. They speak of unseen worlds. They’re serene, indif
ferent to our suffering.
Perhaps I’m delusional, exhausted after all I’ve been through, but I swear I’ve never seen such a beautiful sight.
My dad loves astronomy. Sitting out on the porch, he’d name the stars, pointing out the constellations, but I could never make them out. Orion is easy, but Ares? Is Ares even a constellation? Or have I confused constellations with mythical Greek gods? Roman gods? I don’t know, but I wonder if my dad is staring up at the same sky right now.
Dark clouds run in a curved, twisting arc across the sky, but these are no terrestrial clouds made up of water vapor, they’re dust clouds some phenomenal distance away. Even with death so close and Zee growling softly in the darkness, I am in awe of the universe. Perhaps that’s what it means to be human—to appreciate what every other species on the planet has overlooked for billions of years.
The stars hide the depth of their treasures. As my eyes gaze up at the sky, I’m aware of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of faint stars on the edge of my vision. There’s so much more to the universe than I can see, so much more to life. The stars tease me with what lies beyond—a vast untamed wilderness. And here I am, slowly dying.
Zombies crowd around the rail bridge. A few bodies still lie on the wooden planks. Blood drips into the river. Most of the zombies have moved off the bridge, but there’s hundreds of them on the bank, and I wonder if I should creep back to the other side, but dark figures wander in scattered groups along the edge of the river.
Lights appear at the far end of the bridge, surprising me.
Zee doesn’t react.
The bridge spans roughly two hundred yards, with four support pillars. There are so many girders and sleepers supporting the rails that I can’t get a good look at the far end without climbing up higher. Working my way to the outside of the bridge, I climb up on the far side of the outer rail, with my head peeking above one of the sleepers.
Zee is silhouetted against the night sky. Dark mannequins, partially dismembered and seemingly disjointed, they stagger on the wooden service path beside the rails, but their motion is chaotic. They seem more perturbed by the lack of space than by my presence. I’d like to think they haven’t noticed me, but I’m not sure. I take pains to move slowly so as to avoid attracting attention.
Two sets of lights come along the walkway, but these are lights unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They’re set at head height. Tiny spotlights point straight ahead. Two men? Mining helmets? But their clothing is white. They’re in suits of some kind. Hazmat? I think that’s the term. There were so many of these terms bandied around on the television in the final days of the overthrow, and now they gently bubble to the surface of my mind.
As they approach, their lights flicker.
Spacemen?
Two astronauts move into view. I watch as they pick their way past the zombies, occasionally knocking one of the zombies off the bridge and into the river. With white, gloved hands, they move most of the zombies to one side, pushing their way through as though they were walking down a crowded alley. Zee ignores them. It’s as though the astronauts are not really there, and I blink, rubbing my eyes, doubting the sight before me.
Golden visors reflect the light around them, providing a fisheye view of the rails. Spotlights ripple across the bridge.
The two astronauts stop and examine the zombies I shot, stepping carefully over the bodies. Thick, padded arms reach out with white gloved hands to hold onto the railing. The red, white and blue of an American flag. The NASA logo. An oversized white backpack. I don’t know that I’ve seen such a sterile, crisp, almost painfully white color since the apocalypse began. Back at the commune, our whites are an off cream at best.
Thick folds of fabric disguise any semblance of gender, but the height has me thinking these must be men.
A zombie stands up to the lead astronaut, snarling at its own tortured reflection in the golden visor, but it doesn’t attack. Perhaps it’s as confused as I am.
The astronaut moves slowly, which is unnerving. Speed is life in the apocalypse. To hesitate is to die a painful death, but the spaceman is in no rush. Slowly, his thick-gloved hand reveals a white gun, only this is no gun I’ve ever known. There’s no sound, no deafening report of a bullet firing. The astronaut touches the gun to the pliant zombie’s forehead and instantly blood explodes out of the back of Zee’s head.
Zee keels over, crumpling to the boardwalk.
If the other zombies notice, they pay no attention.
The astronaut steps slowly over the dead zombie, taking pains to avoid getting blood on his crisp, white boots. A fan starts, whirling madly. I haven’t heard the sound of a fan in almost a decade, but the hum is unmistakable, reminding me of a computer’s CPU cooling fan with its frantic, breakneck pace.
The lead astronaut glances back as though responding to something the second astronaut said, but no words have been exchanged, none that I can hear.
I’m terrified.
Spotlights ripple across the rails and sleepers, briefly flickering across my face and I duck from view. I’m not sure what scares me more. Zee? Or these silent deadly spacemen from another world? Part of me wants to call out, to get their attention, to plead for help, but there’s an ominous feel to how they interact with Zee. So long as Zee ignores them, they’re happy to push on past. Any disruption is met with lethal force, and I’m afraid I might upset the balance and get caught up in the slaughter. How can there be an uneasy truce between the living and the dead? There’s tension in the air, as though the slightest imbalance could cause the world itself to implode, and I breathe in hushed tones.
The second astronaut carries two white suitcases, both of them covered in white padding like the spacesuits.
The lead astronaut stops, turning slowly and surveying the bridge. He looks down, touching at a camera mounted on the side of his bulky helmet just below one of the spotlights. He’s looking at the carnage by the bridge footing. I wonder what he can see with his fancy camera. Dead bodies? A rifle strewn to one side? Does he realize a man died down there?
I watch intently as the two astronauts walk slowly off the bridge.
Zee disperses. It’s almost as though there’s an agreement between them, and I see my opportunity. I scramble up onto the bridge, swinging my legs onto the blood soaked walkway. Behind me, zombies growl in the darkness, but I stay low, darting off after the astronauts with my pack over one shoulder and my gun drawn.
Zee sees me.
The lead astronaut shoves his way through a bunch of zombies. There’s ten or twenty of them and yet he pushes through them like a shopper in a crowded department store. They can smell me. They’re becoming enraged by the scent of my blood. Although Zee allows the spacemen safe passage, several zombies try to bustle past the astronauts to get at me and my heart sinks.
The astronauts have no tolerance for any zombie that doesn’t let them pass quietly by. The lead astronaut places his gun to the head of one zombie and then another as they snarl and snap at me. Skulls shatter. Blood sprays across the other zombies in response to a swoosh rather than an Earth-shattering boom. The spaceman doesn’t see me. He’s preoccupied with Zee.
I’ve got to stay close to them. I creep forward, hunching down, hoping I’m hard to see in the dark. I can’t do anything about smell, but I can keep sight and sound to a minimum. Something brought in more zombies after the shooting stopped. I only hope my scent has slowly spread around the area long before now, masking my movement as I catch up to the astronauts.
The zombies are confused. It’s as though the astronauts are invisible. Another two zombies drop as the lead astronaut dispatches them with his silent gun, each time pushing his gun against either the forehead or the temple of a zombie. Zee sees his comrades fall, but he doesn’t see the spacemen.
I creep up to within a foot of the second astronaut, tagging along behind him. I’m so close I could reach out and touch the US flag on his backpack. Strips of velcro line the pack, while white cloth covers various tub
es twisting around his waist and into his suit. The backpacks and helmets are so big and cumbersome they must severely restrict vision. That suit must weigh a ton.
Even though the astronauts are in big, bulky white spacesuits, Zee ignores them, staring at me. Dark eyes follow my movement, but they don’t advance. Those few that do show any interest are killed by the astronauts. It seems the astronauts are acutely aware of any zombie aggression, but they ignore any zombie that lets them slip past. I’m confused, but I’m not complaining. My fingers are just inches from the humming backpack of the second astronaut as he clears the bulk of the zombies, following a path through the woods.
Leaves and twigs crunch beneath boots that should be walking on the moon or Mars. The astronauts pick up their pace, moving with a gentle lope, more skipping than running. I’m expecting to see a spaceship in the clearing ahead—not a UFO with sleek lines and smooth, reflective surfaces, but something ungainly like an Apollo lunar lander with its crumpled gold foil and spidery metal legs.
Suddenly, spotlights illuminate the forest, casting long shadows through the trees back toward the bridge. The astronauts move out into the grass clearing as I duck behind a tree. As much as I want to, I can’t follow them. Astronauts are anachronistic—they’re a relic of the past. Something’s horribly wrong. Astronauts don’t belong in the zombie apocalypse. As bad as zombies are, they’re a known quantity. I’m afraid of the unknown. I have to know. I have to see what happens next. I have to understand where they’re going before I can follow.
I peer out from behind an old oak as the astronauts seem to blend with the blinding white light, disappearing from sight. And as quickly as it came, the light is gone and darkness falls again, only the night is now pitch black.
Temporarily blinded by the sudden drop in light, I hear growls from behind me. I stagger across the grass with my gun drawn, turning and pointing at the sound of zombies advancing through the woods. I stumble, tripping over a curb. Slowly, my night vision returns and I realize I’m standing in a parking lot on the outskirts of town.
All Our Tomorrows Page 9
