by Mark Tufo
“Harvest time, you little brat,” Delphus said. He couldn’t help but smile. He was almost starting to enjoy this.
- - -
Robert and Jenny emerged from the barn like the last surviving pair from an ambushed platoon. If this was the end, it might be a happy one for them, Delphus thought.
That Jenny, she’s got a lot of spunk. She’d make a man a good wife.
But thoughts of the future were pointless. The woods were crawling with kids who didn’t know they were dead, and didn’t seem to care. Maybe that was the true definition of evil—something that wouldn’t even bow down to Death.
“Get inside,” Delphus said to the couple. “It’ll be a damn miracle if any of us live the night.”
- - -
Eva Dean was busy closing the windows and turning on what lights weren’t broken while Jenny tended to Robert’s wounds. Delphus took up a post by the front window while Lewis hobbled up the stairs as best he could with a shattered shin. His leg felt like a nuclear weapon had been detonated in the bones but that was okay. Samantha could set it for him.
“Samantha?”
A boy-creature appeared at the top of the stairs. He was covered in blood and eating something that looked like a human liver. Strands of long blond hair clung to it. He giggled.
“No!” Lewis screamed.
“Duck!” Delphus yelled, and Lewis did but his leg gave way and he tumbled down the stairs.
Delphus unloaded a round. The boy popped like a pack of taco sauce. Organs and bits of bone splattered the walls, the overhead light, and the stairs. The stained light fixture cast a dappled pattern of splotches across the floor.
“Samantha,” wailed Lewis, struggling unsuccessfully to get to his feet on the blood-slickened stairs.
Eva Dean helped him up and then he limped the rest of the way to his mauled wife. He knelt beside the bed and cried. Samantha’s body was sprawled across the bed, the rib cage torn open. After a moment, Eva Dean went to him and gripped his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Lewis.”
“Her heart’s missing,” he said, choking back a sob.
“She loved you.”
“How could she love me without a heart?”
In the hall, Robert stood with his arm around Jenny. Lewis could not bring himself to touch his wife. What was left of her.
There was no rational way to face what he saw on the bed. Death of a spouse, even from an act as mundane as a heart attack or as cruel as cancer or as sharp as a car accident, was not something a husband ever wanted to face, but this was beyond comprehension.
Lewis had once seen a video online of a man attacked by a baboon. The animal had thumped the man beneath monstrous fists, crushing his chest, cracking his skull. By the time it was over, all that remained was a mutilated husk. Bloody pieces lay all around. And the man’s wife had watched the whole thing, her frantic, horrified screams peaking somewhere behind the person recording the attack.
At least Lewis had been spared the witnessing.
But maybe he’d get another chance.
And it wasn’t a chance he was eager to have.
“Oh, God…don’t let her come back!” he pleaded. The fear that the infection was in her now and rapidly multiplying was so sudden and intense that he screamed his plea again and again. His voice caught in his throat and he sobbed into his hands.
- - -
Robert’s wound was oozing through the bandage Jenny had applied. “Wonder what the incubation period is on this infection?”
Lewis wiped his eyes and spoke with a distant clarity, as if science offered a brief reprieve from his suffering. “It’ll happen within an hour, judging from what we’d observed.”
No one spoke for a moment. In the distance, chuckling echoed through the woods.
“Maybe you guys better lock us up,” Robert said.
“Daddy’s going to love that,” Eva Dean said.
“Beats me having to use an arrow,” Jenny said.
- - -
The farmhouse basement had a dirt floor and shelves of canned goods. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. Robert and Delphus looked up at the top of the stairs where Jenny stood with the shotgun.
“It’s only for an hour,” she said. “That’s what the vet said.”
“At least I finally found a vet who makes house calls,” Delphus said.
“Sorry, guys, but we have to be sure.
Jenny swung the door closed and locked it.
Robert looked at Delphus. The old man was grimy and weathered, as if he had aged two decades overnight. “No matter what happens, I’m glad Cloudland didn’t buy your property.”
“Yeah, looks like I’m going to need it for a burial ground.” He paused, unsure how to proceed. “So you’re sweet on that gal?”
“She’s one of a kind.”
“After the hell she’s been through, she sure seems like a keeper.”
“We’ll see.”
“When this is over, I reckon we’re going to need a new camp counselor. You looking for a job?”
“Assuming I don’t turn into a crazy mutant zombie and try to eat you?”
“Yeah, there’s that. I can’t sign your paycheck without any fingers.”
- - -
Eva Dean and Jenny stood over Samantha’s body, now wrapped in blankets. Lewis was in the hall, leaning against the wall. He wasn’t crying but he kept making odd, strangled, coughing sounds.
“What if he’s infected, too?” Jenny whispered.
“That’s how a man grieves,” Eva Dean said. “Men don’t cry. They fight it every step of the way. I remember when my mother died. Delphus sounded like he had whooping cough for about three weeks. And the wind got in his eyes a lot.”
“I hate to put her on the pile,” Jenny said.
“Think how hard it will be on her husband if she gets up and gives him a hug. His mind is hanging on by a thread, and that would snap it completely.”
“Yeah. When they said for better or worse, I don’t think this was what they had in mind.”
“Grab her feet.”
As they lifted the blanket, Samantha’s hand flopped out and the fingers curled. Jenny dropped her end and the bedsprings squeaked. She stood back, shook her head. “I thought I could handle this.”
“Everyone has a breaking point,” Eva Dean said. “But this isn’t yours. Come on. Pick her up.”
Lewis appeared in the doorway, propped against the wall. “I’ll do it.”
“But your leg.”
He didn’t even look at them, just at his poor, slaughtered wife wrapped in blankets. “It’s just a leg. I still have my heart.”
He hobbled into the room, picked up the body, and turned toward the doorway. His first step was awkward and it looked like he was going to collapse, but he stood strong. Then he carried her out, wincing as he went, the busted leg bone making a grinding sound. He barely felt the pain, carrying her just as he had on their wedding night when he’d said, “Hey, it’s part of the deal—sickness and health, life and death, and carrying you across the threshold.”
This time, he carried her down the stairs and outside to the corpse pile for burning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Lewis kissed his bride and her eyes popped open. For a moment, those eyes were still blue and sweet and calm. Then she tried to bite Lewis’s face, jaws snapping, but she couldn’t untangle herself from the sheets. Lewis brushed her hair back from her forehead. “I’m so sorry,” he said, dropping the fabric back over her face.
Jenny stepped up with a Bic lighter and lit the pile.
Flames whooshed over the bodies and the scrap wood tossed among them, devoured the kerosene that had been spilled over everything, and the three of them stood back to watch it all burn.
The boy-creatures writhed and moaned. Samantha screamed.
“Those boys are still alive!” Eva Dean said.
“Nothing lives in hell,” Jenny said.
The world isn’t a magic place waiting to fulfi
ll your dreams, Mom had said.
Jenny knew that now. Boy, did she ever.
“Maybe hell is when you’re dead and don’t know it,” Lewis said, staring only at his charring wife, using a shovel as a crutch.
Eventually, she stopped moving.
- - -
Delphus and Robert watched the fire through a narrow basement window. The pile shrank as it burned. The bodies melted and scorched into blackened pods.
“Hell of a way to roast a weenie,” Delphus said.
“Say, Mr. Fraley, I had an idea.”
“People under forty shouldn’t get ideas.”
“About your property—you know the cops and the media are going to be all over this place when the news gets out.”
“No respect for property rights.”
“You can’t stop it, so you might as well turn it to your advantage. How about ‘Meat Camp, the horror theme park’? People will pay a fortune to stay here.”
“You sure you didn’t eat Max Jenkins’s brain? ‘cause you’re starting to talk like him.”
“T-shirts, action figures, movie rights. I’ll bet we can get Christopher Walken to play you.”
Delphus grinned. “Get Eastwood and that orange monkey, and I’m in.”
The basement door creaked open. Eva Dean stood at the top of the stairs. Her face was blackened by smoke. “Been two hours. You guys can come out now.”
- - -
Delphus peered out the front window, shotgun at the ready. Lewis slumped at the table, broken and defeated. Eva Dean made coffee. Robert was still bandaged up, as was Jenny and Delphus. Robert’s trusty poker was on the table. They all looked like they have crawled through a war zone.
“Why didn’t we turn?” Robert asked Lewis.
“I don't know. Maybe the infection played out. A virus that strong . . . it was probably mutating by the minute.”
“So if you’re infected, it might hit you any time? Maybe days or weeks from now?”
Lewis shrugged and nodded. What difference did it make, anyway?
“Shit fire. I got zombie AIDS,” Delphus said. “Hell of a way to start the day.”
Jenny kissed Robert on the top of the head. “I’d better keep a close eye on you, mister. You might grow fangs.”
“I only bite when provoked.”
“I’ll try to not rile you up.”
“I’m sure the time will come.” Robert turned to Eva Dean. “How many did you guys burn?”
Lewis made a disgusted sound.
“Eight. I guess the rest of them are still out there.”
“When the camp caught fire, they probably scattered like rats.”
“We’d better try to get to town. This thing could spread fast.”
“I’ll drive the tractor in if you ride shotgun.”
Delphus turned from the window. “Hell, another one of ‘em’s comin’.” He aimed the gun toward the edge of the woods.
In the yard, smoke rose from the body pile—all that remained was a hump of ash. Distant smoke also twirled from the forest, where the camp site was nestled in the Appalachian autumn forest. At the edge of the yard, a figure staggered against the shadows of the trees. Like a walking shadow.
Delphus eyed down the barrel. “This one’s easy meat. Get ready to light that pile again.”
The figure came closer, shuffling, staggering. Had to be infected, except . . . He lowered the gun slightly. “Eva Dean, how many colored boys was they in the camp?”
“Daddy. They’re called African-Americans. All of the boys were some kind of color.”
“Well, this one’s real dark.”
- - -
To Sheriff Hightower, the glowing farmhouse was a beacon. He stepped out of the shadows, face blackened from smoke, clothes scorched. He stumbled toward the farmhouse. There was a bonfire in the front yard. Were those people in that fire?
He was too shocked to let the image bother him. He still couldn’t quite process how he’d managed to escape Booger and the fire. No matter how he thought about it, there were only two options: act of God or pure damn luck.
In the end, maybe those were the same.
Delphus stood out on the porch. “Evenin’, Sheriff. You’re just in time for a midday snack.”
“No, thanks. I’ve lost my appetite.” His throat hurt when he spoke and he sounded scratchy.
“You sure? I can have Eva Dean whoop up some sausage biscuits.”
Slowly, he ascended the steps. Delphus slapped him on the back and led him into the farmhouse. Hightower wanted to find a bed and crawl in and sleep for a week. But he knew his duty was to get to town and bring help. “I just became a vegetarian.”
“We’ll cure ya of that,” Delphus said. “My boy Robert’s got in mind a brand of Meat Camp barbecue. Catchy, huh?”
Delphus sniffed the smoky air, shook his head, and followed Hightower inside.
- - -
Even in the wake of chaos and awful death, life goes on. No matter the awful toll of misery, the living must find a way to stay sane, must try to make sense out of the insensible. Their hearts seek out the next beat, their lungs draw another breath.
Jenny fussed over Robert, Eva Dean sat at the table, Delphus stood watch at the window. Hightower stood beside Eva Dean, his face cleaned of soot. Lewis got up from the table and limped into the kitchen. Maybe he actually was hungry.
Or maybe not.
“Coffee’s by the stove,” Eva Dean called to him. “Check the back door again while you’re in there.”
“How many of you got bit?” Hightower asked.
“Delphus and Robert.”
“But they’re okay.”
“For now,” Eva Dean said, as though she sensed that the madness had not yet ended.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be okay again,” Hightower said.
Lewis was rattling cutlery in the kitchen. A pot clanged to the floor.
“Lewis?”
Hightower headed for the kitchen, and Eva Dean followed.
In the academy, there had been a lot of talk about “cop sense.” It was a certain mentality a cop was expected to have, something informed by law and conditioned through protocols. But it was also like a sixth sense. A good cop, a good veteran cop, could sense when shit was about to go down. Hightower always thought that was a bunch of fairy dust the instructors liked to throw at the gullible new recruits.
Walking into the kitchen, he got his first ever cop sense and knew it wasn’t fairy dust after all.
- - -
The back door was open. Three boy-creatures were hunched on the floor—Billy, Freddie, Roscoe—pulling flesh from Freddie’s body. The sheriff drew his gun and pointed. The kids looked at him and grinned, drooling blood.
“Do it,” Eva Dean said from the edge of the living room.
“They’re just kids.”
“This is a crime against nature if there ever was one.”
Hightower hesitated. The kids munched away on flesh and even cracked through bone, Freddie as eager as any of them, even though it was his body. Roscoe offered a puppy-dog look and then started crawling toward Hightower. His fingers left trails of blood. His grin grew bigger and bigger.
Another memory from the academy came to Hightower: an instructor had been reviewing shooting procedures to a bunch of recruits, half of them filled with anxious energy to fire a gun and half scared they would shoot off their own foot, and the instructor had said, “Shooting is not something we do lightly. It is very serious. Taking life is not something we ever do easily or take lightly. I hope to God you never have to know what it’s like. But sometimes, and hear me now, sometimes it has to be done.”
So, Hightower did it.
“Chop chop,” he said as he pulled the trigger.
- - -
Robert hugged Jenny tightly and Delphus waited with the gun by the window. Four shots rang out from kitchen. Everyone jumped with each shot.
Eva Dean and the sheriff appeared at the doorway. He looked haggard, walking hun
ched over, pounds of invisible weight off his back but it was too soon for him to have recognized its absence.
“You done what you had to,” Delphus said.
The sheriff nodded.
“Where’s Lewis?” Jenny asked.
As if on cue, Lewis ran in from the kitchen, hobbling on his busted leg, white bone protruding through the skin, chuckling with madness. He raised a large carving knife overhead and charged the sheriff. His eyes were crazy like all the rest of the freaks, but Hightower still wondered if maybe this was an altogether different kind of madness. Then he saw the bite wound in Lewis’s side.
Lewis slammed into the sheriff, knocking his gun from his hand. Lewis bit into the sheriff’s arm, gnawing into tendon. Robert and Jenny yelled and jumped out of their chairs. Delphus tried to aim his gun but he couldn’t get a clean shot. If he fired, he’d definitely kill the sheriff, too, if not his own daughter.
Eva Dean flipped the table toward Lewis. The poker slid off the table and clanged against the floor. Jenny grabbed it and whacked Lewis across his broken leg. The bone cracked further, ripped through his leg several inches, but Lewis turned and slashed at Eva Dean.
Hightower yanked the trophy deer head from the wall and ran at Lewis. “You son of a bitch,” he said.
Lewis looked up just as the antlers skewered him. Lewis squealed and dropped the knife. Jenny stepped forward and slammed the poker against his skull. Lewis dropped like a rock.
They all stood in silence, stunned. Finally Robert said, “Nobody better call him ‘dearly departed.’”
“Guess we better throw him on the pile with the others,” Eva Dean said. “At least he’ll be with his wife.”
“Man,” Robert said. “What happens when the rest of us turn? This could go on forever.”
Silence fell again.
- - -
Delphus, Robert, and Hightower stood in the basement. Even with the bare bulb, it was nearly dark—they could barely see each other’s faces with any clarity. Outside, a tractor engine roared to life.
