Dead End Stories From the End of the World

by P. S. Power

  Of course none of them had been bitten either, so Jake couldn't blame them. Just as well they stayed out of the way.

  The man had an old pistol in the right hand and clutched his arm with the other.

  Almost all bites happened to the hands or arms, the forearm being the most common place. The human jaw just wasn't designed for biting, not like zombies did it. That meant they rarely hit anything too thick. That left the lower leg, arms and hands, with the neck coming in there about fifth place or so.

  The man cried openly. Well, he knew the drill. Jake got ready to take him out, since it might be possible he'd decide to try and fight. He had a gun, and panic did strange things to the mind. A bite like that always turned bad. Always. Everyone knew it too. Which was why they all stared at him.

  The guy with the bite didn't try to fight though, sobbing, tears tracking down his cheeks, he stuck the gun in his mouth bravely. Then he stopped. Hand on the trigger, he looked to be trying to squeeze, but nothing happened, his hand turned white, it shook, and the gun just didn't fire. After about three minutes of this, he pulled the weapon out, bent over and set it down, then started walking away from the house slowly.

  “God,” The moan came low, sincere and so scared it ripped at the heart. “Jake, I... help me. I can't do it. I'm too afraid.” The man cried softly as he walked.

  The single shot carried across the open fields, ripping loudly and echoing off the house, bouncing back and thudding into his chest. The man fell and wouldn't be getting back up. He may have been kind of useless in life, but a lot of people were a lot less brave when it came time to die. Jake liked to think he'd have done better and pulled the trigger himself, but who knew until the moment came? Everyone stared at him again.

  “Right, let's bandage the wounds, anyone with anything like a scratch comes with me, if anyone is bitten, well, freaking off yourselves, will you?” He sighed knowing that they wouldn't. “Right... That won't work... Fine. Everyone strip. Now. Everyone.”

  It would be the only way to know for certain. The people on the porch all looked reluctant, but the cleaners moved fast enough. He did too. First in fact, holding his arms up and turning around. It made for an awkward ten minutes, but everyone else looked clear, thank god. They could take the three injured away, bury the dead and learn from this.

  Super-zombies.

  And one of them had been Becks.

  What the fuck? He walked over to them and stared, their blood was black and the limbs still moved, just like a regular one would have. The flesh though held a pristine look, almost undamaged, skin clear and free of rot. They'd all had little wounds on them, scratches and scrapes, but they just marred the body, a bit of black ichor leaking out and sealing the wound like blood would, but nothing else. No rot, no stench. It made seeing her worse. Rachel looked almost alive, but not, at the same time. He didn't get it, but collected the information for later. Who knew what would make the difference? If they had to keep fighting these things one thing was certain. He needed to become a better shot.

  That and they needed a whole lot of bullets fast.

  “Vickie, Carl, we need everyone to learn basic fighting techniques, now. I'm taking the injured to the farm house, the one about three miles that way? For quarantine. Five or six days. Less if they all turn. Everyone needs to fight now. We still need wood and the harvest has to get in. Don't let people slack off. They'll be afraid, but we still need to get everything done, worse now if this is what we're facing. If anything people need to work harder. Tell them that. Fear is fine, but we can't let this cripple us.”

  His voice was firm and a lot louder than it should have been, because the people inside needed to hear it too. Carl answered the same way, sounding bold, even though the whites of his eyes showed freely. Scared witless nearly, but he held together. It was enough.

  “Damn straight. Everyone will pull together, don't worry about that.”

  They didn't take much by way of supplies, no food, just some containers for water. It would suck to go that long without, still, he could hunt or scavenge for them. If any of them survived. Odds were, if they turned, they'd all die. He couldn't take three of those things by himself. If they started to turn, he'd have to kill them fast. No one spoke as they walked away, carefully moving past the field of okra.

  Justine carried her shotgun, but the other two, both men, were unarmed. They didn't complain about it. The older one looked scared, but the younger man just shook his head every now and then, disgusted. About what Jake couldn't tell, and the man didn't say yet. Maybe later if they lived through this?

  The walk took an hour and a half, because they went cross country and didn't bother going fast. What was the point? No one would be turning for a while and getting there sooner wouldn't really help anything. When they reached the farm house it looked pretty good. Small compared to the other place, which was why they'd picked the one they were in.

  The space.

  This one had a good cellar though and three small rooms upstairs and two on the bottom floor. There was a pantry, which had been looted bare, by them, when they first scouted the place if he remembered correctly, and not one, but two wood stoves. Heh, everyone had forgotten about that. One of them was a nice size too. He pulled out chairs around the kitchen table and gestured people into place.

  “OK. Hard truths. We can't just lock you all in the cellar, because if one of you turns in the dark like that, but the others don't, you'll all die. So we need to stay together, but where everyone can be watched. If you feel like you're turning, tell us and don't hide it. We can't afford anything stupid here. Everyone agreed?”

  The older man shook his head stubbornly.

  “I... How am I supposed to do this? I can't die now. It's not fair!” His voice rose at the end, but Jake didn't have to go for his weapon, the man just winced and covered his mouth.

  Good. Jake nodded and agreed with the man.

  “Yeah, it sucks and isn't fair at all. But we live in a world of unfair now. I don't want any of you to die, which is why we came here. If you turn into those things, well, at least I have a chance of taking you out. Back at the house, if something like that got loose inside, who knows how many we'd lose?”

  No one would be turning for a time, Jake didn't think, and though it was getting dark, they'd need water and food eventually. Water wasn't as convenient here, but there was a small stream a half mile away Vickie had assured him, it was just starting to turn dark when Jake got there, having left the others to try and find wood. He had a bucket with him, and nearly froze when he saw it. A deer.

  Food. Once upon a time that would have seemed an odd thought to him he realized, as he very carefully pulled the nine out and aimed from not more than fifty feet away.

  Food came in a wrapper, crinkly plastic or waxy paper from a fast-food place. It was ready to eat and didn't try to run away. Most of the time you didn't even have to cook it yourself. Just thinking about it made him remember the smell of Kings drive-in, a retro place in town that always smelled of grease and cooked beef, onion rings and the tang of vinegar from ketchup. His stomach growled softly, making the deer look over at him. He shot it in the head. Habit.

  It worked though, the thing fell instantly.

  Carl had told them about what to do if they got an animal, to keep the meat good, you hung it up and then slit the throat so it would bleed out. There were plenty of trees around for that and he had a knife, but no rope.

  OK, so he'd be clever. He found a boulder on the banks of the river and used that instead, kneeling on the back of the still warm body and reaching forward to make the cut, deep and hard. Blood came out, but it was getting dark, so it was hard to see. After about ten minutes enough had come out that he didn't think more would, letting him walk up stream to get some water in the bucket. Now for the fun part. He set the bucket down, picked the still warm doe up on his shoulders and tried to hold the feet in front with his left hand, then carefully bent and picked up the bucket. The deer was large, at least ei
ghty percent of his own weight. He walked back slowly, trying not to fall. That would spill the water and while meat would be a treat, they had to drink.

  An hour later he got back to the house and knocked on the door carefully after setting everything down. No one answered it at first, but after he knocked again twice, the complicated signaling knock that everyone knew, “shave and a hair-cut” Burt had called it, the door opened, and Justine looked out at him. He couldn't read her face, not well, but the full moon gave him enough light to see by, it was her. She gestured him in to the scene. One man, the younger, sat at the table, hands on it, breathing hard. The other lay on the floor, dead. The older fellow. Jake just waited.

  “It... He tried to run, Jake. He got scared and tried to just take off, we would have just let him, but he wanted to go back to the house first. But... if he turned they'd be in danger, I didn't know what to do, he wouldn't listen, so I shot him.” She had that panicked sound that meant they needed to watch her right now. One wrong step and she'd probably just open fire.

  “All right, that was probably the right move. Did you find any firewood? I got a deer. We should cook it all tonight if we can. Not that I know how to skin it or anything, especially in the dark.”

  The young man clicked. A sound that indicated a laugh that had been shut off hard, the throat closing on it without letting any air escape.

  “I can do it. Where is it? I need a knife.”

  While the other guy did that they got the body outside and shot it in the head again. Jake hated to waste the ammo, but they didn't have any tools to hand for beheading. The one knife he had was with the other man, who was using it on food. They couldn't leave the man intact, in case he turned. Just being dead didn't mean that wouldn't still happen. The wood had been collected and the chimney checked, but the others didn't have matches with them. Jake did, five in a little plastic case that he always carried. Just in case. It took two of them to get the fire going and they had to cook everything as steaks, which took the whole night.

  No one slept and they didn't talk much. The day had been a little too raw for that. Too close to death. The next day Jake went for more water and saw another deer, but had to leave it. He did notice something though, a small field with at least a dozen cows in it.

  He couldn't carry a cow back. Not even a little one.

  But they could walk, if they were alive, right? Jake had no clue how that worked, but if they lived, they'd try it. Cows could be useful. They made hamburger and milk. Somehow. Jake smiled at his own feigned ignorance. Oh, he couldn't milk a cow, but he had a general idea what part it came from. Mary had been in charge of animals, or would have been, but with her dead, someone else would have to do it. All they could do was try.

  He checked the other two every few hours. They buried the older man, taking him a good ways away and ate a lot more deer meat than they'd normally have gotten, the protein fairly seeping into his system. He actually felt full for once. Jake made himself stop eating then, because too much would make him slow and possibly sick. Wasting food wouldn't work well. Warm or not, they kept the fire burning all the time, at least smoldering. That way they wouldn't have to waste any more matches.

  No one changed into a super-z or even looked sick, though the other two started to smell by the third day, on the fourth they all went to the stream for a bath and to check the cows. The kid, Randy, smiled when he saw them.

  “We can just walk them back when we're ready. One person in the back, one on each side, they'll try to move away from us, but with a little noise... Crap.” He grimaced. “Maybe if we hit wood together instead of yelling?”

  That was a good idea, and worth trying. Zombies didn't come to every odd click or anything. The man had coppery hair and freckles, pale skin from being inside most of the time lately, but had been raised on a farm not too far from where they stood. Jake considered it for a second and smiled.

  “Right, well, you're in charge of livestock then. We need as much as we can get, I think. Tell me what you need for it, and we'll try to get it or do it.”

  So two days later, sounding like a woodpecker gone insane, the three of them walked back to the house driving fifteen cows in front of them. Randy found a section of barbed wire fence that made a huge square, filled with weeds and grass about a quarter mile from the main house to put them in. They'd need water, but this way they wouldn't eat Jose's fields. There were two huge silver stock tanks just sitting in the weeds, and each could hold about five hundred gallons of water. The setup had an old spigot, but no water came out. They'd need a new well and probably a hand pump.

  “Hey, Randy, will these cows need both tanks?” Jake pointed at the shiny galvanized metal, which got the man to shake his head.

  “Not really, and pumping by hand we'll be lucky to keep one half filled all the time, why?”

  “Hot water heaters. We need a tank.”

  That they'd had something this close for so long made Jake wonder what else they were missing. They got back at about four in the afternoon, to find everyone outside working, though half of them, nicely spread out, stood holding weapons instead of doing anything useful. Fear would do that. At least they weren't all hiding inside. No one said anything as they walked up, but Sammi ran over and gave Jake a hug. A big tackling thing. Silent, but strange.

  She'd never hugged him before. A little awkwardly he hugged her back. She'd saved his life after all. She needed to practice shooting, but her instincts had been nearly dead on given what little they'd known at the time. Get the thing's attention and shoot it in the head. Zombie protocol one-oh-one. That she'd been willing to move when everyone else had frozen was... amazing. That she'd done it for him was a thing he didn't know how to process. They didn't talk, just walking toward the house after that. Nate and Burt separating out to come see them. Nate spoke first.

  “Larry turned?” He spoke grimly, but seemed happy to see the three of them back.

  “No, he flipped out and tried to leave while I was gone to get water the first day. He wanted to come back here. Justine stopped him.” Jake shrugged and gave the girl a sidelong glance. “It was the right call. Randy got fifteen cows, too. We need to get water to them, but there are two giant stock tanks, Randy thinks we only need one out there. I put him in charge of them, but that can change if needed. He seems pretty solid though.”

  That got Burt excited. He grabbed Jake by the arm and pulled him inside to show him a book, it described how to make a well just by pounding a few pipes into the ground. It was an instruction manual from the forties or fifties for the public works program back then. Once put in place, you primed it with a little water and pumped it with a simple hand unit.

  “It only works to about thirty-two feet deep, but the water table here is only about twenty. If we pick the right place this should work, no problem. We can have it up tomorrow. The day after, latest.”

  They spent the rest of the night collecting the sledgehammers, fence post drivers, pipes and a new hand pump that Burt had already been working on. Then loading it all on the wooden cart. Burt looked nervous, but didn't say why, not until the next morning, when he and seven others met Jake and Randy by the cart after breakfast.

  Carley was there too, having decided that the group had too many men and needed someone to cut the testosterone. Her words made Jake smile, but if she wanted to help and had the wood gathering in hand, why not? How often did you get to pound a well into the ground after all?

  Burt hadn't left the place since they'd gotten there, not even to go as far as the more distant fields. He was clearly shaken and walked unarmed. No one else did, but his pacifism wouldn't let him carry anything that could easily kill. Well, he had some knives and a sledgehammer, but that wouldn't do much for him if they were attacked. Still, everyone else could cover him, so it would be all right.

  The only problem they had was the well itself. They had to hammer, drive it with fence post drivers mainly, so as to not damage the threads on the pipes where they hooked together and twi
st the pipes in a circle to drive them down and the bottom one had to have a special end on it. Burt had only made one of those, so if it failed, they'd have to find something else to do with the cows for a while. That would be a pain in the rear, so Jake kept hoping the little well trick would work. It took a lot longer to prime it than he figured and he'd about given up hope when the first tiny trickle of water came out as Randy worked the wooden pump handle madly.

  Then, as he kept going the stream got larger until it worked nearly as well as the one at the house. Everyone looked relieved and Carley smiled and looked at Jake as if he'd had something to do with it. A bit misplaced, but better than being scowled at.

  Then they had to dig out a hole for one of the stock tanks to sit in about a foot deep, right next to the spigot. Otherwise they couldn't get the water in without adding another joint to the pipe, which could lead to air leaks according to Burt. It took hours, because the hole had to actually be the right shape. Even standing there, taking turns pumping, the thirsty cows walked over and started drinking, taking the water out at least as fast as they could get it in. It was funny in a way.

  While they pumped one at a time, the other stock tank had to be loaded onto the cart for the return trip. It couldn't sit on the cart flat, it was too big and the wagon had a wooden wall on it, about three feet high. So it rested at an angle, but seemed secure enough just sitting there. They could hold it in as they walked, given that the trip wasn't that long.

  They ran the little hand pump for nearly three hours, but even taking turns Jake's shoulders ached before they were done. A dull throbbing that everyone seemed to feel and no one talked about. They rubbed their shoulders and arms as they walked, Jake and Carley pulling the little wagon along, standing inside the little pulling area, both hands on the bar. It was a mistake for the two of them to be doing it, which got pointed out when the crawler came out of the brush and everyone else panicked. It could hardly move, both its legs gone already for some reason.

  The men with them were all armed with guns, except Burt, and he turned out to be the only one that didn't freak out or freeze, just knocking the decaying thing's arms from under it with a sledgehammer as it moved toward them, over and over again. Jake didn't scramble as the others ran around, but Carley did, fighting to get her side arm out and aimed as if it were a runner. That normally would be a good point, since runners and shamblers tended to move toward the same stimuli, which is what made groups. Crawlers just got lost for the most part, but getting complacent wouldn't help.