This Shattered Land - 02

by James Cook

  “No way did you just do that blind.”

  I smiled back. “One way to find out.”

  I reached out and knocked on the door a few times. Silence. I raised a boot and tried breaking down the door. The jamb broke, but the door would not budge. Finally, I strapped the barrel of my gun around to my back and pushed hard against the door. The body on the other side slid backward. I poked my head inside and almost gagged on the stench. I stepped out for a second, took a couple of deep breaths, and looked back in. The corpse lay on the floor of a bathroom leaking red and black ichor from an exit wound on the back of its head. I stepped further inside and noticed that someone had tied the thing’s arms behind its back. That was strange. I kicked it over onto its back to make sure it was dead. The bullet had gone through the creature’s nose and sinus cavity, and bored a hole through the lower part of its brain on the way out. A lucky shot.

  A quick glance around showed me the usual things you find in a toilet. I stepped over the corpse and opened the medicine cabinet.

  “Um, Eric?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah.” I replied, looking over.

  “Shouldn’t we finish searching before we start rooting around for things?”

  I frowned. “What else is there to check?”

  “I think there was a door in the kitchen that leads to a basement, and we haven’t checked the barn or set up a perimeter yet.”

  When I shut the door to the medicine cabinet and saw myself in the mirror, there was a bright avaricious gleam in my eyes. I have to admit there was a big part of me that actually liked finding abandoned buildings and houses and searching them for anything useful. After all, what else was there to get excited about at the end of the world? Every once in a while I would score something really nice, and when I did I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I looked down and shook my head. I would have to be more careful. Getting distracted like that was a damn good way to get myself killed.

  “Okay. You’re right. Let’s get to work.”

  It took us another hour to finish searching the property. The basement had a water heater, a workbench, and an impressive array of tools, but nothing that was of any use to us. We left the corpses where they lay for the time being and went outside to check the barn. It had actually been converted into an oversized garage, complete with a cherry picker, a large air compressor, arc welder, cutting torch, and several work benches lined with tools and buckets of old car parts. The gutted remains of a ’68 Camaro Super Sport squatted on blocks in the middle of the dirt floor.

  “Looks like someone had a hobby.” Sarah said.

  “And good taste in cars.” I replied.

  Sarah glanced over at me. “Really? That piece of junk?”

  “What, you got a problem with classic Chevy’s?”

  “No, not really, aside from the fact that it’s not a Ford.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh lord, another purist.”

  Sarah punched me on the arm, and moved her rifle around to her back so that she could climb the ladder leading up to the loft. It didn’t take us long to search it, there was nothing up there but a bare plywood floor and old cobwebs. We left the barn to walk a circle around the tree line, but other than a few bare-boned skeletons scattered about, we found nothing worthy of note. I turned in the direction that I knew Gabe was watching us from and waved him over. Sarah and I sat down on the sagging front porch to wait for him.

  Birds chirped in the trees, and a gentle wind stirred the grass in rippling waves. It reminded me of the time my father took me fishing on Lake Michigan one summer when I was in high school. The wind over the lake caressed the water with the same kind of steady patience. After a few minutes, the wind shifted and the fields went still. Several tall peaks that bordered the valley stopped the breeze in its tracks and redirected it around the farm. The valley went silent.

  That has probably been one of the hardest things to get used to about life after the Outbreak—the silence. Before the world ended, one could almost always hear some kind of sound that indicated the presence of man. The humming of power lines, the distant roar of aircraft flying overhead, cars moving along roads and highways, there was always something. But not anymore. Sitting on that porch with Sarah, the only thing we heard was birds, crickets, and our own breathing. Without the ever-present drone of humanity at the fringes of our hearing, the ambient noise of the forest was like a dark weight pressing down on us, pervading and oppressive, reminding me of everything that had been lost.

  “Much, but not all.” I muttered, staring down at the ground between my feet.

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked.

  I looked up and smiled self-consciously. “Nothing, just thinking out loud.”

  “Oh.”

  We gazed off across the yard again. Out of nowhere, as per usual, Gabe appeared like an apparition. One second all we see is a field of tall grass, and then suddenly there is a big dark haired guy with a sniper rifle glowering at us.

  “How the hell does he do that?” Sarah said.

  “Dunno. Shit like that makes me glad he’s on our side, though.”

  Sarah chuckled, and got up to go greet Gabe.

  “Find anything interesting?” He asked when he reached us.

  “Three dead in the house. One suicide, one walker, and one hell-if-I-know. A few more out in the fields, probably infected.” I said.

  Gabe nodded. “I’m not worried about anything in the field, we’re not going to be traipsing through that crud any more than we have to. Too much danger of running into a crawler. Those other three still in the house?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to remedy that. Sarah, you want to go ahead and get Tom up here? Eric and I can take care of the mess.”

  “Sure. Have fun guys.” She smiled and waved as she walked away.

  “Yeah, lots of fun.” I drawled. I noticed that Gabe was watching Sarah’s departure with rapt attention, and a dull dread began to settle into my gut.

  “Hey Gabe?”

  “Yeah?” He said, not looking away.

  “You want to stop drooling and get your eyeballs back in your head?”

  Gabe turned to me and scowled. He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped and closed it, looking away.

  “Come on. We got work to do.”

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t tried the front door to see if it was unlocked. When Gabe stepped up onto the porch and turned the handle, it didn’t budge.

  “Come on around back. That one’s unlocked.” I said.

  Gabe grunted and followed me to the back yard. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and drew his sidearm.

  “Ya’ll cleared that basement, right?” He said, shining a flashlight down the stairs after we entered the kitchen.

  “Yeah, it’s clean. Can’t say the same for the living room, though.” I replied.

  I followed him through the doorway and waited while he looked around. He noticed the pile of rags and bones in the corner and walked over to have a closer look.

  “What the hell happened here?” He said, running his flashlight around the bloodstains on the walls and carpet.

  “I think I might have an idea, but I want you to take a look upstairs before I run it by you.”

  Gabe glanced at me and nodded. The stairs groaned under our weight as we climbed to the second floor. I pushed open the broken door to the master bedroom and stepped away. Gabe took a few steps inside, shining his flashlight around.

  “Suicide.” He said.

  I nodded. “That pistol is a thirty-eight. About the same size as the holes we found in the skulls of those skeletons out in the field. Come look at this.”

  I motioned toward the bathroom. Gabe peered around the corner and whistled.

  “Smells like a damn slaughterhouse in here.” He looked down at the corpse, a puzzled expression crossing his face. “Now why do you suppose this one is tied up?”

  I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “Here’s my guess.” I
pointed into the master bedroom. “That guy is responsible for the dead walkers in the field. I imagine him and his family holed up here and did their best to ride out the storm after the Outbreak. One day Dad comes home and finds that not only has his wife turned, but she attacked their son and ripped him to pieces.”

  Gabe nodded solemnly. “That would explain the mess downstairs.”

  “So after that,” I continued. “He manages to tie up his wife and lock her in the bathroom. Sometime later he decides that life just isn’t worth it without his wife and son, so he grabs his gun, makes himself comfortable, and punches out.”

  I pantomimed putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger. Gabe shook his head and heaved a sigh.

  “Damned shitty way to go out.” He said.

  I nodded a silent agreement, allowing a few moments of pity for these people, but only a few. Think about it too much, and it will start to eat away at you.

  “Well,” Gabe said, breaking the silence. “You want to move ‘em, or leave ‘em?”

  “Why leave them? Aren’t we going to use the house?”

  Gabe shot me a sidelong stare. “Really? You want to sleep in here after seeing all this?”

  I thought about that for a moment, and realized he was right. “Good point. The loft of that barn is clear, we could all bed down there for the night.”

  “Sounds like a winner. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “Actually, I think I’m going to scavenge around a little bit. I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

  “Suit yourself.” Gabe said as he started down the stairs.

  Dust puffed out from beneath my feet as I stepped into the room that once belonged to the child of the dead man across the hall. I laid my harness on the floor next to my rifle and extra ammo, then sat down on the bed and stretched out my back. Gabe closed the front door behind him as he left, leaving me alone in the silence of the house. I sat quietly for a while, soaking in the stillness. Boards creaked as the afternoon sun began to fade and the air outside cooled. I recognized the bikini model on the wall calendar, Kate something-or-other. She had blond hair and an amazing rack. I wondered if she was still alive. I cast a glance around the room, and decided to start my search with the dresser.

  Nothing in the drawers but clothes I didn’t need. The closet was full of comic books and baseball equipment, a few trophies, couple of pairs of shoes. A quick peek under the mattress revealed a rather diverse collection of porn magazines, but nothing useful. The laundry room had some clothes that looked like they might fit, and usable laundry detergent. I left it behind. We had plenty of that in the trailer. In the master bedroom, I picked up the revolver from beside its former owner and checked the cylinder. It was loaded except for the one spent casing. I tossed it back onto the mattress and checked the rest of the room. There was an old single shot rifle in the closet that I didn’t have any use for, and two boxes of .308 ammunition. That we could use. I placed them on the mattress beside the pistol and checked the drawers. Most of them were a bust, but the top drawer on the dead farmer’s bedside table yielded four boxes of .38 caliber pistol cartridges. That was a good find. I could use it in the revolver or in my Henry repeater if I ever ran out of ammo for the M-6.

  In the bathroom, I found an old-fashioned safety razor, two boxes of blades, and a can of shaving foam. I ran a hand over my jaw as I looked at myself in the mirror. It had been nearly ten months since the last time I shaved, and much longer than that since my last haircut. Several inches of blond beard covered the lower half of my face, and my hair was almost down to my shoulders. This from a guy who used to pride himself on his immaculate grooming.

  “You look like shit.” I told my reflection.

  The razors, the pistol, and the ammo all came downstairs with me. I put them on the kitchen table so I could search the lower part of the house unencumbered. As usual, I didn’t even bother opening the refrigerator. Anything in there had long ago rotted away to a stinking mush. I stuck to the cupboards and pantry, and scored some canned food and a plastic container of rice. In one of the drawers, I found some double-A batteries, a few candles, and a sharp pair of scissors. That was it. Not much of a haul, but ammo is always useful, and maybe I could talk one of my companions into using the scissors to cut my hair.

  Right as I was finishing up, I heard the MUV pull into the driveway, making an incredible racket in the empty house through the thin walls. I wondered how many infected it was going to attract. After stuffing everything into my pack, I went outside to join the others at the barn. Everyone but Gabe had climbed up into the empty loft to lay out their bedrolls. Old tall dark and ugly was busy tending a fire in the driveway for the evening meal. I grabbed a metal bowl out of my mess kit and ladled some of the hot water from the big pot into it.

  “The hell you doin’?” Gabe asked.

  “Something I haven’t done in a long time.”

  In spite of the chill in the air, I stripped down to my waist so that I would not get shaving cream all over my shirt. After soaking a small towel in the hot water, I wrapped it around my face and held it there for a few minutes. Once certain that my beard was sufficiently soaked, I set a little mirror on a camp stool in front of me, sat down on the ground, and went to work with the scissors. It took me the better part of half an hour to trim the coarse hair on my face down to a manageable level. I soaked my face again, and then shook up the bottle of shaving cream. What came out when I pushed the little button on top was roughly the consistency of cocoa butter, but I managed to work it into a suitable lather. Enough to get the job done, anyway.

  Fifteen minutes, and a few bleeding nicks later, I wiped my face down with lukewarm water and checked my reflection. It was a little strange to be clean-shaven. I had worn the beard for so long that I had almost forgotten what I looked like without it.

  “Wow.” Sarah said, wandering over to take a look. “You look about ten years younger.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, I think.” I held up the pair of scissors. “Don’t suppose anyone here ever worked in a barber shop?”

  To my surprise, Gabe raised his hand.

  “You’re kidding me.” I said. “When did you do that?”

  “My uncle Aaron owned a barber shop. I used to work there weekends and summers when I was a kid. Got pretty good at it.”

  “Huh. You never told me about that.”

  Gabe shrugged. “You never asked.” He stood up and reached for the scissors.

  I handed them to him. “No Mohawks, please.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry, Nancy, I ain’t gonna mess up your pretty little head.”

  Gabe fished a comb out of his gear and poured some water on my head to wet my hair down. I am fairly certain that he used way more water than he really needed to, and I’m pretty sure he was bullshitting me when he said that it was important for the water to be cold. After a few dozen snips, a small carpet of long, sandy blond locks began to pile up around my feet. I put my left boot next to one, and was surprised to see that the hair was longer by a couple of inches.

  “I don’t have clippers, so this won’t look like it did back before the Outbreak, but it should still be more comfortable.” Gabe said as he finished up.

  I stood up and rinsed my head to get all the stray cuttings off. After drying off with a towel, I looked in the mirror again, moving it around to see how I looked. I had to admit, Gabe did a pretty good job. Sarah seemed to notice too.

  “Well I’ll be damned.” She said, grinning. “Turns out there’s a handsome boy underneath all that ruffage.”

  I shot her a look of mock irritation. “Handsome man, thank you.”

  That got a laugh out of her. Tom shook his head and sipped at his tea, a smirk curling one side of his face.

  “I think you looked better before.” Brian said. “You looked kind of like Robert Redford from Jeremiah Johnson.”

  I laughed and reached out to ruffle his hair. “Dude, I’m surprised you even know that movie. When did you see it?
”

  “It’s one of my favorites.” Tom said. “We watched it during family movie night a couple of times. That movie is so old I’m honestly surprised you’ve seen it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re pretty young yourself.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “I don’t know, twenty-five, twenty-six maybe.”

  I chuckled. “I’ll be thirty this September.”

  He stopped with his teacup raised halfway to his mouth. “No shit? Really?”

  “No shit. Really.”

  “Well, you don’t look it.”

  “Aw, you have a baby face.” Sarah said. Brian pointed and laughed.

  I frowned at him. “Look who’s talking, Opie Taylor.”

  He looked confused. “Who’s that?”

  “Dude, come on. Opie? Ron Howard? Little red headed kid? The Andy Griffith show?”

  “Oh, right…yeah, I never watched that.”

  I heard Gabe chuckling behind me. “Kids these days, no appreciation for the classics.”

  I was about to say something else when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye at the tree line. Gabe saw it too, and was on his feet with a pistol out before I even had a chance to say anything. Without thinking about it, I reached down, grabbed my rifle, and did a quick perimeter scan before turning back to the figure emerging from the trees. It was hard to make out the figure. The sun had just gone down behind the mountains a few minutes ago, and a hazy, dark blue gloom had settled over the fields surrounding us. I raised my rifle and began to draw a bead on its head. Then I got the biggest surprise of the day.

  The figure raised its hands. “Don’t shoot!”

  I kept my rifle up, but eased off the trigger a bit. Gabe and I exchanged a quick sidelong glance.

  “Stop right there.” I called out. “State your business.”

  “Really? ‘State your business?’ What are you, the sheriff now?” Brian said.

  “Make yourself useful and get your gun.” I hissed. “Watch our backs.”