The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree

by David Andrew Wright

  The man who had been driving the jeep leans forward and clears his throat. “What are we going to do?”

  Ray shrugs. “Ride it out. We’re set here in Wayne’s World.” He leans in a little. “Wayne was the guy who, uh…”

  “I heard the story,” I tell Ray. “Dumb Chuck.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ray says his eyes dropping down into mock seriousness. “And what did Dumb Chuck tell you? Wait. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. That fucking guy… but, what were we talking about? Yeah, right,” he snaps his fingers. “The wave, the locusts, the zombie tsunami.”

  Kevin appears on the stairway and sits down at the table next to me. He looks terrible. He fires up a bowl of weed without saying a word. After a long inhale, he lets it out of his lungs and into the room. “That’s better. Morning.”

  “Morning,” I tell him. “We’re just discussing what to do if there’s really a wave of undead Zed’s headed this way.”

  Kevin’s head shakes up and down. He pauses for a minute and then hits the pipe again. “Do we need to do something?”

  “That’s what I was saying,” Ray chimes in. “It’s not like they’re airborne or can crawl over the walls or tunnel in. What are you worried about, Lou?”

  The Jeep driver sets his coffee cup down on the table and fiddles with the handle before talking. “My dad was in Nam. He didn’t talk about it much unless he was drinking so he talked about it a lot, if you know what I mean.” He pushes his coffee cup forward and leans back in his chair. “He told me a story one time that I remember really well. There was a bunch of them, dug in, waiting. Out there in the jungle. I don’t remember how many but a few. So they’re waiting for the Viet Cong to attack but they’re not really sure of the numbers. They just know there’s going to be a bunch. So it gets dark, and there was this, just… rush. All these fucking guys just running straight at them. So they all open up and start dropping these guys one after the other. Rifles, machine guns, pistols up close, grenades. Just let them have everything they had. So the bodies, the bodies start stacking up. The guys behind are running up on top of the dead ones and basically, Dad said, they just sat there and kept shooting them as they came in over the top of the pile. And they were coming in from all directions. He said there was like this wall of bodies around them and the other guys just kept pouring in.”

  “So they shoot and shoot and shoot. And finally one of the VC manages to lob a grenade into the middle and that’s all Dad remembers until he woke up in a hospital. He was the only one who survived. But they told him he was buried under a mound of bodies. They almost didn’t even find him.”

  “So you’re saying,” Ray says and leans in. “What are you saying?” He laughs again. “I mean, I get the story, lots of bodies piling up but… what?”

  Lou turns his hands up and out, “I’m saying that if there’s millions of these things all coming in a wave, they might stack up outside a place like this. You know, barns, houses, stores, whatever, they can get around those, there’s space. But out there is all vines and weeds and shit and if they start getting stuck, they pile up next to the wall. You get enough of them, you got a ramp leading right up, in and over.”

  “Cofferdam,” Kevin says through held breath, a fresh hit of pot percolating in his lungs.

  “What’s that? What did you say?” Ray asks.

  “Cofferdam,” Kevin repeats and exhales. Hank is nodding his head. Kevin points at Hank. “He knows what I’m talking about. We need a break out there in the woods to funnel them around us. They’re coming in from the east. We just need to make a cofferdam out of someth’n.”

  A man in the back leans forward and offers up an idea. “We could start shooting them out away from the walls, let them pile up like Lou was talking about. Except keep them out at about a hundred yards or whatever. Don’t shoot the ones up close; just shoot the ones out further.”

  “That’s a good idea, Jerry,” Ray says. “I like that. We’ll stack some ammunition up around on the catwalk thing and then just have a duck shoot. First one to get over a hundred wins a stuffed animal.” He laughs again. But again, no one else laughs.

  Betty comes down the stairs followed by Tyler. They both look terrible. Betty grabs a spot on the couch and Tyler sits next to her. Kevin shakes his head and says nothing.

  Ray clears his throat and coughs into his hand. “I want to uh, offer my condolences on your friend. I obviously didn’t get to meet her but she looked like a beautiful girl. Really sad.” Betty and Tyler remain motionless, staring into the patterns of the linoleum floor. Ray isn’t smart enough to leave it alone. “You know, I guess the nice thing is, she’s in a better place now. I mean, it’s so fucked up down here. I’m sure she was a good person and I’m sure she’s…”

  Betty’s voice is soft but crisp and cuts Ray off cleanly. “Say one more goddamn word about her and I’ll cut your fucking throat.” She doesn’t look up. She doesn’t look mad. But the viciousness, hurt and despair is leaking out of every pore and every syllable.

  Ray looks around the room to see how he should react. He lets it go without saying another word.

  I push away from the table and gather my stuff. Before leaving, we all agree to meet by the bunker in a little while to start moving ammo and people.

  Halfway across the compound, Karen meets me. Her eyes are puffy and red. Everybody looks like shit this morning. “I thought you left. I thought you left me.”

  I let out a heavy sigh and take her by the arm and walk her back towards the bathhouse. The Zed are making so much fucking racket that you can’t really talk over them. I don’t want to have this conversation shouting. But then I remember the house isn’t empty. It suddenly strikes me how rich we were before everyone else came. Privacy has always been the yardstick of poverty. I turn her towards the bunker. We can talk down there.

  “You were going to leave me. Just up and go?” she asks me when we get down the first flight of steps.

  I chew the inside of my cheek a little and think. What to say? “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.” She’s starting to cry again.

  “It’s getting messy here,” I tell her. I put my pack back down and lean the rifle in a corner. “We all get close, start caring, start depending on each other. Then bad shit happens. Always does. Out there,” I motion towards the outside world, “out there by myself, bad shit happens and that’s it. No mess.”

  “I need you,” she says.

  I feel like I want to throw up. But then it passes. It always does. The little switch inside flips and all of the heavy feelings, all the misery, drains away into nothing. Same thing when I start to feel too happy or good. The drain in the back of my head collects everything that runs over a certain frequency.

  I don’t answer. I just nod my head. I don’t really want to hurt her. I don’t want to not hurt her either. She needs. And I just don’t want.

  She throws her arms around me suddenly and damn near knocks me down. She cries into my shoulder and kisses my neck. I leave my arms hanging where they are. I leave my body with her and go far away.

  I look over her shoulder and see a small redhead looking down the open door to the bunker. I push Karen off me and try to think of what other people would say right now. “We’ll be alright. I’m not leaving.”

  She kisses me and I push her back again. I motion towards the open door with a nod of my head. “Good morning,” she says with a big sniff of snot and tears.

  Eddie doesn’t say anything. The redhead disappears from the opening above. I grab my stuff and walk away, leaving Karen to collect herself, down there in the dark.

  I catch up to Eddie who is milling around outside the bath house. “Get your gun,” I tell him and put my stuff back inside. I open the pack and root through the pockets to find all the ammunition and magazines I can find for the little Ruger.

  “My gun?” he asks without moving. I point at the little .22. “That’s not my gun.”

  “Is now,” I tell him and hand him a big box of lit
tle bullets. “How old are you, 12? 13?”

  “Twelve.”

  “I was about your age when I got my first rifle. And in this world, you’re way overdue.” He looks back to the rifle and puts his hand back on the barrel. “I’ll show you how to use it. How to take care of it. We’re gonna need someone we can rely on up there on the catwalk when the shit hits the fan.”

  Eddie takes the bullets and the magazines and holds them all wadded up in his arms as best he can. I grab the Ruger and we walk towards the bowling scaffolding to do a little target practice. Eddie walks fast to keep up with me and I look up onto the catwalk to where the best place would be. I see a dark haired woman dancing there and flipping the bird to the people below. My father sits on the tractor parked by the wall. Archie’s footprints are still visible in the mud of the courtyard. And the Zed scream and roar and moan and bang on the metal gate out front.

  The ghouls keep us inside but the ghosts live inside us.

  Chapter 17: Damming It All Too Hell

  “Put the stock on your shoulder, not over it.” The little .22 is short but still a little long for Eddie. The butt of the gun is on top of his shoulder and the scope is jammed up against his eyeball. He adjusts the rifle out to hold it correctly but his arms are completely straight. He looks more like a crossing gate than a marksman. “Now leave the butt against your shoulder and bend your arms. Just hold the rifle further back. You can hold the stock with your left arm right in front of the trigger guard if you need to.”

  He scoots his arm back. We work on where to put his eye, how to squeeze the trigger. Kids his age learn things like this faster than adults. But give him a couple of years and he’ll be dumber than he ever was. All full of hormones and puberty. Everyone over twelve and under twenty-two is mentally retarded. “Line up the crosshairs, squeeze the trigger.”

  I’m 27. I must only be mildly retarded. Or maybe it’s gone into remission.

  Eddie squeezes the trigger and an Asian looking guy drops. The zombie crowd is looking more diverse today. They must have walked here from much further away. This part of the world is usually more monochromatic.

  “Pick one further out,” I tell him and look over his shoulder. “See the old lady with no lower jaw? Yeah. Send her out.” The rifle barks a little and the little old lady pitches straight forward and onto her face. She’s about 75 yards away.

  “Shoot as many as you like at that range, kid. We can start building the wall with the few blockheads we have.”

  At the other end of the scaffolding, people I don’t know are loading boxes of ammo onto the wooden walkway. Guns are evenly placed on the eastern wall. Bows and crossbows, axes and chainsaws; all positioned here and there for quick access. Someone has a golf club sitting at the ready. Over by the jeep, Lou is carrying out boxes of ammo for the big .50. It’s a lot of gun for mushroom hunting.

  Ray is still wandering around in his karate outfit. He sees me looking at him and heads our way.

  “It’s jammed,’ Eddie says and holds the rifle up to show me. An empty casing sits stuck halfway out the side of the bolt.

  “Lean it over, pull the slide back, give it a shake, then drop the bolt.” He does what I tell him and the little gun chambers another round. “Keep the sling wrapped around your left arm. If you need to haul ass, you don’t want to drop it. And you especially don’t want to drop it off the side of the wall.” Below us, in the mud and the vines, they stand with necks craned upwards, arms straight down. Eddie slips another round into one on the perimeter of the woods and the empty shell falls into the open mouth of a skinny Zed below us. The Zed doesn’t choke but rattles a horrible rasp with every inhale. He won’t be sneaking up on anyone. I lean over and shoot him in the face to stop the noise.

  “Getting Opie all ready?” Ray asks as he climbs up the ladder. “We can use a good marksman.”

  Eddie Opie carefully pops the empty magazine from the rifle, puts it in his jacket pocket and pushes a fresh one into the mag well. He hits the mag release button and takes the fresh clip out and practices putting it in again. He repeats the process and watches the movement of his hand. On the fourth load, he pulls the bolt back and chambers a round.

  “That’s good,” Ray says. “It’s the ritual, man. It’s all about the ritual.” Ray looks over at me. “It’s control. The ritual gives you control. Or at least the illusion of control. Because there is no control.” The big smile. The quack laugh.

  I take a cigarette out and light it up. “Rituals, huh?” I watch Eddie line up a shot on a young black Zed stumbling out of the brush. I think he’s black anyway. The advanced degree of rot gives all of them a shade of gray. They are all one race now and we are the minority. Equality came in a rock from the sky. Must be really irritating for white supremacist idiots to discern which of the zombies has superior undead genes. The Zed Eddie is aiming at is a hundred yards out. The round takes him in the neck. “Aim a little higher out there. Put the cross hairs right above his head.” The Zed drops. I turn back to Ray. “Is that what the Zed in the tree were? Ritual?”

  Ray laughs. “Yeah,” he says with a snap of his fingers. “I forgot about that. But that… that was the illusion of control at its finest.” He leans on the wall and spits a big glob onto the woman below him. “Goddamned wretched things. And they’re not alive, are they? They aren’t human anymore. The soul, the soul’s gone. The human part left and the human body part got left behind.” Eddie stops shooting and listens with his eye still up to the scope. Ray continues as he folds his hands across his stomach and leans against the rail. “And so the preacher gets bit and the rest of them are chewed on and they’re turning into these things and everybody is freaking out and I’d watched this thing on television about the Mayans and nobody wanted to shoot a little girl, even if she’s not a little girl anymore. But you know, you still have to be some kind of sick freak to shoot a little girl, right?”

  I remember the angel at the top of the tree, the dead eyes on a China doll face. Ray straightens the front of his karate outfit. “So we’ve got to do something with them, right? It’s just mean to turn them out into the world to do… this.” He sweeps his arms over the crowd below. “So, I don’t know. We put them up in the tree as an offering to God or something. It doesn’t make any sense right now. As I say it. Out loud. Of course, it didn’t really make any sense right then either.” He stops and smiles at me. “I’d eaten a bunch of Xanax and drank some red wine.” He leans in and quietly says, “But these people. They’ll believe anything when they’re scared.”

  Eddie snaps off a couple of quick shots and two drop at once. He brings the rifle down and his eyes are red like his hair. In a voice I can hardly hear, he looks down at the gun in his hands and asks me, “You really think they aren’t human, anymore? When they get like this?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “They’re not human anymore. I don’t know what they are, but they’re gone. We’re just doing them a favor. And trying to survive all at the same time.”

  “You got that shit right,” Ray says. He’s oblivious to what Eddie is really asking. Eddie doesn’t know how lucky he is to have not had a choice.

  Hank drives by and parks the tractor in front of the gates to fortify the flimsy steel panels. He raises the bucket on the front to act as a crow’s nest. The tractor is sitting crooked on the hill that slopes away from the gate and the raised bucket makes it look like it is about to fall over.

  Lou has the big .50 loaded and all of the ammo for that gun arranged in the back of the jeep. Ray yells down to Lou, “Good. Now move it over to the thing. Like we talked about.” Ray points towards the bunker. Lou drives off and parks the jeep facing the eastern wall. Ray turns to me, “Custer’s last stand. I figure if something goes wrong and we’ve got to get underground, we can leave someone on there to mow them down while the rest of us, you know, run like hell.” Again the laugh. Eddie is practicing putting the clip in the rifle. He takes it out, puts it in his pocket, finds it again and loads. Faster every t
ime. More efficient every time.

  Kevin has climbed up onto the walkway from the opposite end and walks up to join us. He looks more stoned than ever. He’s got the sniper gun with the night-vision slung onto his shoulder. He carries the rifle he had earlier in the maw of his great, meaty hand. I can see that he has added the words ‘Death Eats Death’ below the words ‘Pig Sticker’ on the side of the cardboard scabbard of his machete.

  “They’s a bunch of them, ain’t they?” he asks. Ray nods, but clearly doesn’t know what to make of the big man. “Teach’n the boy how ta shoot?”Eddie’s eyebrows fold in at the word boy. Kevin puts his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. You’ll do fine.”

  The eastern side of the compound is getting crowded and the Zed are starting to file around to the south and north. A few have already gathered along the muddy western side, having waded in from further away.

  Kevin pops a thirty round clip into the Mini-14 and slides the bolt home. “Reckon we oughta pile a few of them critters up out there. Gonna take a buncha rounds to stack’em up. Don’t know if we got that much ammo.”

  “Well,” Ray says with a big pull of misty morning air through his nose, “even a little hill will slow them down, push them around.”

  Kevin laughs. “Ain’t never built a damn before, have ya?” Ray shrugs. “Problem with not building the wall high enough is that you just end up letting the water pour in. It gets trapped there. Be like building them a ladder if we fuck it up.”

  Eddie is listening pretty intently. I’ve given him two boxes of ammo, 1100 rounds. Kevin looks down at Eddie and lays a hand on the barrel. “Watch your barrel, man. If it gets hot, take a break. Don’t let it get too warm.” Eddie nods and pulls a loaded clip out of his pocket and loads it into the rifle without looking. Kids pick up things so fast.

  Kevin wedges a piece of toilet paper into one ear and offers a torn piece to the rest of us. “This bitch is loud.” We all plug up as he leans the barrel over the top log. I watch behind us as he lets the first round loose. The people in the courtyard all jump as the .223 erupts with a flash of flame. Two Zeds lose their heads and two more behind them spin and stumble from the round. A fifth one falls on a busted leg but continues to crawl.