by Eli Nixon
THE DREAMS OF FEAR SERIES
HEARTLAND JUNK
A Zombie Thriller
by
Eli Nixon
Part III:
VITALA RISING
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and the other begins.
Edgar Allen Poe
Paradise is too perfect for humanity.
Dario Argento
Chapter 1
I sat on the roof of the house across the street and watched River House burn.
Titan dozed on the shingles beside me. I glanced down at the cat, jealous of its apparent nirvana. Personally, I was coming apart at the seams. My shoulder ached, my chest ached, my foot and legs and back ached. Dozens of cuts and scratches all over my body stung, and despite the warm night, I began to shiver. I was still only wearing one shoe. My shirt was lacerated to shit and the threads in my jeans were fraying and pulling apart.
Everything we'd worked up to in the past few weeks was turning to ash before my eyes. Floating away, scattered. Like us. Jennie and Theo were gone, caught in the clutches of a tribe of madmen. Abby's body burned with the house. Rivet's might be in there, too, but I had no way of knowing. Abby had said only that he was dead, not where or how it had happened. All I knew at that moment was why: For all the shit this town had gone through, there were still fucking assholes out there who wanted to smear even more shit on top. Smear it on so thick and so deep it became part of the very firmament. Fuck them. Fuck them and fuck their petty, selfish bullshit. Maybe the zombies really should wipe us out. Let the planet start clean.
I shivered again and clutched my knees up to my shoulders. My head felt faint and the dirty alcohol buzz was starting to make my stomach jittery. River House became an inferno with flames so high they scorched the stars. The front porch collapsed, decades-old wood succumbing to the ancient strength of the fire. All around the yard and the street below, stags milled aimlessly, some watching the bonfire, others ignoring it completely. I saw several try to shamble over the smouldering porch only to drop as their clothes caught fire and their flesh began to melt. A southern wind swept through the blaze and washed me with heat. I thought I might be getting a fever.
The zombies ignored my presence as long as I ignored them, but if I stared down at them too long, they invariably turned their heads toward me. It was uncanny, as if they were able to catch onto the fact that I was thinking about them. Yet every time I looked away, they seemed to forget about me again.
They had a queer sort of intelligence that I couldn't figure out, some inner guidance that led them to seek out those still living.
Vitala. Abominations. Consume the flesh. Live as one.
Snatches and fragments were all I knew of what lived inside these things, just the echoes that I could remember from falling into the pit myself. Yet I'd always been brought back. Abby had been pushed over the edge time and again, and she'd been brought back, too. How deep could someone go? What kind of evil waits at the far edge of infinity?
I fell asleep on the roof and dreamed about Rivet eating Jennie alive, and when I woke up the next morning, most of the zombies were gone. A handful of stags—including gimpy Jack Freeman—still poked around what remained of River House. Our former home was now just a black skeleton, as empty as I felt. They were coming out in the day now. None of us had seen a stag in daylight since our first trek into Joshuah Hill. Watching them now, finally freed from the obscuring shadows of night, I felt sick. Three weeks exposed to the heat and elements had begun to take a toll on them. Wounds were festering, and their skin had gone pasty and wrinkled, like the muscles beneath were losing their grip on the bone. I guess it made sense—everything dead rots. But were they actually dead? I had no answers.
Head thumping, bones aching, I worked my way back into the house through the gabled window which I'd used to reach the roof last night and rummaged through the house's three bathrooms. I found a bottle of codeine cough syrup and took a long pull, then pocketed it and gorged myself on the fruit of a wilted cherry tomato plant that was growing in a pot on the kitchen windowsill. I hadn't had fresh food in weeks, and the tiny red tomatoes were drops of heaven. I swished the seeds out of my teeth with a bottle of water and headed into one of the bathrooms to see about cleaning myself up.
Jesus, I was a fucking mess.
The face staring back at me was gaunt and filthy, caked in blood and soot. Brighter threads of red gleamed through the black smudges on my cheeks and forehead, scrapes from the glass windows I'd broken through.
I set about the arduous task of bandaging myself up. I stripped and, with a gallon of water and a pile of washcloths, cleaned myself from head to toe. My torso was etched with hundreds of tiny scratches and a few deep gouges, as were my arms and legs. The fist-sized gash on my chest from where Janet Wazowski had gotten ahold of me still had a week-old bandage taped over it, and when I pulled the gauze away, the reek of old cheese filled the tiny bathroom, making me gag. Some kind of thick, white fluid was oozing out of it, and little red, pus-filled bubbles covered the damaged tissue.
I hadn't seen any antibiotics in my earlier search, but I swallowed a dozen Vitamin C pills from a fat green bottle, figuring I might be able to kick my immune system into action before this fever got any worse. One of the other homes on the way was bound to have some amoxicillin or something. I could wait.
For the time being, I dumped half a bottle of iodine over the wound—fuck, that stung—and taped a new bandage over it.
After nearly thirty minutes, I stepped back to look at my patchwork naked body in the mirror. On the bathroom floor behind me, Titan cocked his head, putting on a good show of being as interested as I was. Most of the scrapes I'd sanitized and left to heal in the open air, but there was still half a box's worth of Band-Aids on my arms, legs, chest, back, and face. Finally, I took a green Sharpie and wrote one word on the bandage over my right forearm:
RIVET.
My first bite of the apocalypse, the son of a bitch.
He couldn't be dead, and that was the end of it. The game's never over. And as long as he wasn't dead, I wasn't alone. I'd find him, and together we'd rescue Jennie and Theo and live happily ever after.
I took another swig of codeine. It cheered me up.
Happily ever after.
Titan followed like a puppy as I explored the house for things I could use. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, I found a pair of black running shoes that were only one size too small. I slipped them on over a clean pair of socks from the bureau, then squeezed into a tight-fitting brown t-shirt with a picture of a horse on the chest. There weren't any pants that fit right, so I kept my threadbare jeans.
A multi-pocketed leather toolbelt from the garage got filled with bits and pieces I figured I might need for survival—BIC lighters, matches, a folding knife, a bundle of twine, a claw hammer and a mini crowbar for breaking into locked homes, and a bag of beef jerky to snack on while I traveled.
I also stuffed a little black backpack with five bottles of water, a pint of whiskey from the kitchen, and two boxes of granola bars. It wasn't much in the way of supplies, but then again, I didn't have much room for storage. Titan climbed in on top of everything before I zipped the bag.
Upstairs in the bureau of the master bedroom, I stumbled across two guardian angels straight from the Almighty's holy hosts: A nine-millimeter handgun with an extra magazine and a small baggie of weed, both of which had been hidden at the back of the drawer where I'd pilfered my clean socks. I'd never used a gun, but every kid who's played video games knows how to. It only took a few seconds to figure out the safety mechanism and the little button beside the
trigger guard to release the magazine. I pulled back the slide on the top of the pistol, popped out the magazine, then pulled the slide again to remove the round I'd just put in the chamber. The little brass cartridge cartwheeled into the air and clinked to the ground, dodging my attempt to catch it on the downswing. My ragged jeans popped a seam when I bent to pick it up.
Whatever, I still felt like a badass. I pressed the bullet back into the magazine, then slid the magazine into the gun's handle. Each of the magazines held twelve bullets. I didn't know if it would be enough, but fuck enough, it was better than nothing.
The semi-automatic had been in a small leather holster when I'd found it, and that was now strapped to my belt. The gun went into the holster, the weed went into my pocket, and I went out to the garage. It was time to go. The thugs who'd kidnapped Jennie and Theo had a day's headstart on me, but thanks to Abby, I knew how to follow them. Clearer than a memory, the directions she'd showed me were seared into my mind with a branding iron.
The garage contained two four-door sedans and a sleek, black-and-white Kawasaki motorcycle. The sedans would be safer, but what I needed right now more than anything was speed. I climbed aboard the Kawasaki and used my heel to flip up the kick-stand, then slapped my foot down on the starter. The crotch rocket roared to life on the first try, the throaty rumble of its engine working my bones like a massage. I kicked into first gear, revved the engine...then flipped back to neutral. The garage door was still closed. I swore and threw down the kick-stand. It didn't go all the way, and the bike crashed onto its side when I climbed off. Shit.
I heaved up on the garage door, then struggled to right the motorcycle. I climbed back on. Put it into gear. Titan poked his head out of the backpack and cooed. I should have just left the fleabag behind, but Jennie would be wanting to see him when I rescued her, and I aimed to let her.
Chapter 2
River Street was now overflowing with zombies. It was disorienting, freaky. For over a week now, we hadn't seen any of the bastards, and now there were hundreds, maybe even thousands. They walked, stumbled, trotted, limped, and crawled, depending on their state of decomposition. Summer in the midwest can be a bitch for heat, and the long days were taking their toll on these creatures.
Between the smoldering house and the decaying flesh, the whole street smelled like an abandoned barbecue.
I rolled down the street on the motorcycle at a solid clip. There were too many stags on the blacktop to open up the throttle, so I had to settle for short bursts of speed followed by slower moments to maneuver around a particularly stagnant post-human cannibal.
Every now and then, one or two of the quicker guys ran after me. I wished I had a baseball bat or a golf club or something. Hell, a croquet stick would have worked, if there had been one within a hundred miles of Joshuah Hill. Something to knock away the zombies that got too close and tried to latch on. I didn't want to waste any of the bullets in the handgun. Those I was saving for someone special. I did try to wrestle the crowbar from the toolbelt on my hip, but it was wedged against my thigh from the way I was sitting on the bike.
So I ignored them as best I could and kept rolling.
In my mind, I saw the map Abby had given me. It was all I needed. After following River Street for a mile east, I took the first crossroad north, revenge burning through me with all the heat and power of the roaring engine between my legs.
For the first time in six years, I was leaving my hometown. For the first time in maybe my whole life, I had a reason to live.
After a few more miles heading northward, the zombies were thinned out enough that I felt safe poking through a few houses in search of antibiotics. Out here, it was all scattered farmhouses, dilapidated barns and musty sheds. Miles of dying crops with nobody left to water them. In a month, agriculture would be a dead art. In a year, everything else would have died with it, all buried in the same dusty grave called planet Earth. I searched a few homes, but couldn't find a single bottle of penicillin.
Something had severely fucked us up, and I felt no comfort knowing that the Earth would recover. The universe, which had never cared that we were here in the first place, would continue to exist as it always had. On the grand scale, we were just an ant dying under a leaf in a forest in some uncharted section of a faraway country where no sane creature had ever desired to live.
Specks of existence, winking in and out, sunbeams and shudders and sighs. Nothing that had ever been real for more than a moment.
I punched the next zombie I passed with a closed fist. His teeth popped away with a crunch and a glimmer of spittle, and I was left with yet another bleeding scratch on my knuckles.
God damnit.
The stag raised his broken head off the pavement and gnashed bloody gums as I sped away.
After a long stretch of fields and mercifully empty road, a farmhouse slid into view on my left. I pulled into a long driveway overgrown with weeds and climbed off the bike. There was a shambling, shirtless figure in the field across the street and another past a wooden fence and down a slight hillock. As I watched them, they turned to me and began walking closer.
I left the backpack with Titan on the seat of the bike and broke into the house, searched it for antibiotics. Came out emptyhanded. The fever was getting worse. When I stepped out onto the cobwebbed porch, the two zombies had become four, and they'd come together down at the bottom of the driveway, still a good thirty feet away. Their softly glowing pink eyes followed me as I walked toward them.
"What are you?" I asked, then screamed it. "What the fuck are you?"
They watched me dumbly, children, animals. Uncomprehending gazes almost innocent in their vacuity. The pattern made no sense. Why the seeming randomness? I'd seen intelligence in these creatures; they'd lured me into an ambush with forethought and malice. That wasn't animalistic. It was human behavior.
We were close now, twelve, fifteen feet apart. I took a swig of codeine and pulled the crowbar from my toolbelt. They were as disparate as anyone you'd see on the street on a normal day. An older man, maybe a little past middle aged, wearing torn, greasy overalls and a baseball cap. A little patch on the breast of the overalls said "Sid."
A woman who could have been a mom, a CEO, a grocery store clerk. Nondescript blue skirt and a short-sleeved yellow blouse. One side of her blonde head had been beaten in, leaving a gnarled mass of bloody tissue from her left cheek up to the top of her scalp. One foot in a flat-bottomed heel, the other bare with flecks of green polish still clinging to her filthy nails.
A kid, a teenager maybe, in jeans and no shirt. Hell, he could have been in his twenties. It was hard to tell through the blood. His left shoulder sagged as he walked; his right hand was gone from the wrist down. It hadn't been a clean cut—the mangled flesh dangled in strips, black and putrid. He looked like a farmhand, hired work for the summer months. Probably got his hand caught in a combine harvester or a thresher. A bottle-opener necklace dangled over his bare chest. I had a glimmer of recognition. We'd gone to school together, a few years apart? In this tiny town, it wasn't surprising.
The last zombie in the quartet was older, although younger than Sid. He still wore the police uniform that he'd had on when he shifted to the dark side. He looked, if I could pin a phrase on it, brand new. There was a nasty rip in the left arm of his brown deputy's shirt and a trace of blood around the ripped fabric, but other than that little wound and the pink eyes, he still looked completely human. He must have turned last just last night, even today sometime, which meant he must have had a stash of some kind. Rivet would have appreciated the irony. I wondered if he'd run out of drugs or if he'd been forced away from them somehow.
I took in all these details in a second. The crowbar was slick in my sweaty hand. The codeine warmed my chest uncomfortably in the midday heat, turned my head into cotton. I ought to turn back and hop on the bike. Leave these guys alone.
But I couldn't.
Behind me on the motorcycle, Titan hissed at the zombies. They'd stopp
ed when I did and were just...watching me. Dumb, but almost with an underlying sense of curiosity. Then Sid snarled, his teeth chattering. I knew what was happening in his mind, could see myself through the insanity of his eyes.
Abomination.
Rend the flesh. Consume.
Live as one in Vitala.
Well, fuck Vitala, whatever the hell it was. And fuck these things. They weren't people anymore. Rivet was right. I'd spent the past three weeks still thinking of these creatures as people. He'd asked me, before I'd left River House yesterday, before he'd died, why I always stopped myself just before I killed one.
I'd avoided the question. I didn't think anyone had noticed, but I should have known. Rivet always noticed the little things.
I'd left then for the pond on the outskirts of town and never saw him again. I didn't have an answer for him anyway.
Maybe I believed that I could still bring them back. Was that bullshit? Was it weak? Maybe if I'd killed a few the way Jennie and Rivet had I wouldn't have withdrawn from them during our week in River House. We should have been closer. I'd never get that time back. If this clusterfuck had taught me anything, it was that.
There was no going back.
"What are you?" I shouted again, shuddering with the force of it. Shaking with rage, with confusion, with loss. "What's controlling you? What is Vitala?" Sid stuttered forward, caught in his own rage. His teeth beat staccato clicks in the breathless, humid air. The others stood still, statues of decay.
I hefted the crowbar, holding the straight edge with the hooked side pointed out.
"Bring it on, fucker," I muttered. This was for Rivet. I'd tear his body into a million fucking pieces. Let the rest of them carry that away.
Sid charged and I swung with all my strength at his fragile ceramic skull, envisioning it shattering, spraying me with blood and brains. Do it. Bathe me in your death, freak.
