by Bobby Adair
I teased myself with vignettes of Whites waking in the morning and looking at the bloody, cold bodies lying around them. I decided that their wretched little brains had the capacity to fear what haunted their nights. I wanted them to know the price of their sins and to dread the moment when they’d wake with a machete through their throats, choking as they drowned in their blood.
The memory of Steph’s dying hand wounded my heart again as I felt her lifeless fingers slip away from my grasp, and I hoped to God every White beneath my gaze would soon feel the heart-rending fear of the night monster that stalked them, reaping his revenge.
I wanted them to walk through their days afraid to lie down to sleep. They needed to taste remorse. To suffer.
Movement along a hill crest off to my left caught my attention. A discoloration on the down slope of the hill showed vaguely against the background of the Whites sleeping there.
I stared into the dark, missing my night vision goggles again, trying to discern what I was seeing.
A house?
A farmhouse?
Along the crest, something moved again, and I watched the pale silhouettes against the starred background. Three—thin, muscular, and naked—walking together.
Sentries?
I continued to watch. To the right of the house—it had to be a house—another three Whites cast silhouettes as they tiptoed through the sleepers along the crest.
Yes. Definitely sentries, walking in wide circles around that farmhouse.
Gotcha, motherfuckers.
The Smart Ones leading the naked horde had to be in that house. Why else would sentries be walking a perimeter around it?
My problem with Mark was going to find its solution before the night’s end. I wished I had some hand grenades. Then all of those smart white fuckers in the house would die. I entertained a fantasy of pounding a grenade into Mark’s mouth, breaking his teeth and watching the blood pour out, humiliating and hurting him before I pulled the pin.
Pointless, but fun to think about.
Still, I had my nicked-up machete. It had served me well in killing. It would do for turning Mark into a carcass.
I climbed quietly down from the harvester and made my way through the sleeping Whites.
As I drew closer to the house, the Whites seemed to get more aggressive. No longer did they docilely ignore my nudging and pushing as I stepped over them. Missteps earned me grunts and angry growls. More than once, I bumped a White too hard and the reaction knocked me off my feet. Of course, I landed on other sleeping Whites who woke, none too pleased.
Each time it happened, I brandished my machete and faced aggressive Whites with a silent promise to swing my blade. Their goldfish brains understood the threat because they’d seen blades kill. None pushed me past the threat to slice their throats. Not that I minded killing any of them. My concern lay in making enough of a commotion that I’d chance waking the Smart Ones in the farmhouse.
I was maybe a hundred yards from the house when I caught the attention of one of the trios of sentries. They were a good distance to my left, standing still and apparently staring at me.
I raised my machete and shook it at them, hoping to ward them off.
They were unfazed and continued staring.
I pressed on toward the house, keeping an eye alternately on it and on the three Whites, who were keeping an eye on me. It was only through the luck of hearing an animal scampering on the metal roof of a shed near the farmhouse that I looked to my right and realized I’d fucked up.
Chapter 10
Six or seven Whites had fanned out to my right, the closest standing only a few dozen paces away as I tiptoed between sleeping bodies on the ground. A few sentries were coming directly at me. Others weren’t. The lizard core of my brain recognized the trap immediately and shouted inside my head, “Run, motherfucker!”
I ignored it as irrationality trying to raise a panic and I looked at the house where I suspected—knew—the Smart Ones were sleeping. I estimated the distance to the Whites closing in on my right. I looked at the three who’d been standing to my left, but were now hurrying past their sleeping brothers and sisters. There had to be Smart Ones, or semi-Smart Ones among them because their actions were too deliberate for stupid white monsters.
They were clearly coming at me, or at least encircling me.
But they weren’t running. Why?
Maybe they couldn’t because of all the sleepers littering the ground who might wake and make a mess of everything. Maybe the sentries weren’t sure what I was. Maybe they were afraid of me and my machete. Maybe they wanted to capture rather than kill me.
That last one was a frightening thought, because it implied a lot about the command and control abilities of my adversaries in the house.
The panic I’d felt a moment before was the correct response. It wasn’t irrationality.
It was time to move my feet.
Glancing back and forth for the safest vector, I spun around and took quick steps over the sleeping Whites.
No surprise, the pursuing sentries quickened their pace. And if anything, they were moving faster than I was.
Running wasn’t a solution I thought would work. That was only a path to twisted ankles and falling into a tumble of Whites, from which I suspected I’d never get up again.
Instead, I put my own virus-tainted brain to work and dredged out an inspiration. I usually have no trouble coming up with an idea on the fly, though I try not to evaluate the quality of those ideas too closely.
I smacked a sleeping White across the head with the flat of my blade and leapt across a few sleepers, not aiming my foot at a shadowy spot of ground between two prone Whites, but at the nearest, flattest spot I saw on a white body.
As my foot landed, driving the wind out of an unsuspecting dreamer, the guy I’d smacked with my machete was already winding up an irate bellow.
And before the sleeper was awake enough to catch his breath, I’d leapt to my next victim, taking care to swing my machete across as many Whites as I could reach, hoping to hit them hard enough to wake them.
Leap number two worked as hoped. I was off again.
The trick, it turned out, was to get off fast. To linger too long on a single step was to risk all kinds of bad outcomes. As that thought came to me, I figured the faster I ran, the better my chances, as long as I didn’t misplace a foot. So I bet my sense of balance and what I hoped was a traction advantage with the soles of my boots against my pursuers. I sprinted, leaving a wake of commotion I hoped would slow them down.
I’d made it a few hundred yards when I came to a clear spot and stopped, panting heavily. I turned to get an idea of the state of things behind me. My plan was working.
Oh yeah, bitch, that’s right. The genius is back in the game.
A wedge-shaped swath of pandemonium grew out along my path and pointed right at me. It was a sign that even the stupidest of Whites coming after me would be able to figure out. Too bad for them that they were caught up in the crowd of grouchy Whites waking from their sleep and bouncing to their feet.
Whites were sitting up in all directions or climbing to their hands and knees. Awakened by the sounds, many were already on their feet.
Things were about to get dicey, and if enough pissed-off Whites decided I was the entrée, things would zip right past dicey and on to straight-up fucked again.
It was time for a new tactic.
Time to put that ever-useful machete back to work. I spun in a quick circle and whacked or lacerated the skull of every White within reach. It’s surprising how quickly some of those damn things wake. They don’t waste any time groaning about needing a coffee. They bounce right up, ready to rumble.
I pushed between a pair of them and took off at a jog, zigzagging back and forth, kicking and slashing, running in circles. I was trying to raise as big a mob of them as I could in the twenty or thirty seconds of safety I figured I had before the first of the sentries reached that clear spot I’d just left.
I was putting the smell of blood in the air, wounding a bunch of Whites, some—enough—to make them vulnerable to their hungry comrades, and I was inciting a riot, or whatever passed for a riot among the naked Whites. I was betting that if I got enough of them up, the odds of the sentries finding me would sink to zero.
Whites started to howl as the smell of blood worked its way into their nostrils and reminded their empty stomachs that a meal would come in awful handy.
Screaming started as some saw the machete cuts as an invitation to partake of their comrade’s flesh. The noise woke more, and the undefined perimeter of my mob spread.
Before I knew it, thousands were up all around, and none seemed particularly interested in me.
I couldn’t have hoped for better.
It was time to go.
I hurried through the mob, keeping a wary eye out for any Smart One with a knife or any stupid one looking to make a bad decision. Bad, as defined by my possession of a machete I’d use without hesitation or guilt.
Soon enough, I found myself among Whites, of whom only about half were on their feet, the other half either still sleeping or lying down and looking around. I wasn’t irritating them with my kicks and slashes by then, just being careful as I passed, so as not to disturb any more.
I kept on in that fashion while I continually glanced back to make sure that no Whites were following along my path.
When I got to the crest of the hill from which I’d originally spotted the house that contained the Smart Ones, I figured I was home free. The valley floor was in a state of pandemonium, and still, no Whites appeared to be moving in my direction.
None was paying me any attention.
Off to my left, along the crest and a good distance away, that combine and its accompanying tractor trailer still stood, inviting me to go over and make myself comfortable sleeping on a padded seat. To do that would probably have been a mistake, as I figured that the sentries might look there for me if they suspected I was intelligent.
Instead, I dropped to the ground in a gap between two females, laid my machete in the dirt and lay down on top of it. I then spooned my way in close to one of the females and pretended at being as sleepy-still as I could manage, while I kept my eyes open and listened.
Well aware of the trouble that always seemed to come when I dared such thoughts, I congratulated myself for my quick wits and clever plan. I’d escaped my pursuers and slipped away from another brush with death’s dirty maw.
I wanted to laugh.
Of course, I didn’t. I snuggled with my new girlfriend, thankful the night was chilly enough to keep my little friend at bay, and I watched.
Chapter 11
For all the adrenaline pumping through my veins, stoked by the memory of my victory—escape—as I replayed the event in my mind over and over again, I didn’t sleep. What I wanted more than anything was for Murphy to have witnessed it or lived through it with me, so we could grin and laugh and retell the story to one another.
As it was, all I had to distract me from my story were naughty thoughts, as the female White in front of me kept pushing back, sandwiching me tight with the naked woman in back who’d embraced me and pressed her chest against me. When I wasn’t looking around, I laid my head on my bent arm, which put my face in the dirty mop of blonde hair on the head of the girl in front of me. Though I’d expected it to stink with all manner of rot, it didn’t smell bad. Or maybe I was just so used to the stench of my own unwashed odors that the woman’s smell didn’t bother me.
And then the smell of the blonde’s dirty hair would remind me of all the times I’d wished I’d run my hand through Steph’s hair and smelled it over my face as I held her tight, and that only served to bring my rage to a boil.
It took a few hours, I guess, but the mob I’d aroused down in the valley finally found their way clear to lying back down, and a kind of peace settled over the sleeping horde again. No Whites ever wandered up from the valley to the hill crest on which I lay. I did prop myself up on my elbow with some frequency to look around at the valley behind. There was always that possibility the White sentries had seen through my plan and had snuck up behind me. But they didn’t. It all worked out just as I’d hoped.
As the night wore on, I found myself looking again and again at that combine, thinking what I could do with that hulking beast of a machine. I started to think that if I could make my way over to it—and I surely could—I might be able to get it started up. And I bet myself I could get all that spinning harvesting machinery running at full tilt and just plow it over that farmhouse on the other side of the valley.
I wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing Mark’s bulging eyes as I choked him to death, but there was always that remote chance that I might see his lopped-off head fly over the cab, eyes still blinking, when the farmhouse and its occupants disintegrated under the harvester’s violent might.
I almost giggled wickedly at that, but did my best to make it sound like a cough that twitched through my body and prompted the girls to snuggle closer.
It was time to go.
I extricated myself from the embrace of my girls and took another good look around. Nobody on his or her feet was nearby. I headed through the sleeping Whites.
I arrived at the side of the truck first and figured I’d check it out before moving on to the combine. Besides, I saw in a movie once where one of these big rigs had been driven through a house or something. I wasn’t married to the idea of the harvester. I just wanted to kill Mark and his smart, infected buddies. The first thing I noticed was that the truck had sunk into the dirt up to its axles. A result of the torrential rains back in September, I guessed. All that water had turned the field into a soupy mix of mud and chaff. I saw that the driver’s side door was swung open and pushed all the way forward on bent hinges. Likely caught in a howling wind in that same storm.
I didn’t have high hopes for the tractor trailer.
Inside the truck’s cab, a couple of Whites lay entangled across the seat, looking the part of two lovers, worn out after wrestling for hours to bring one another to pleasure. Pressed together as they were I couldn’t tell if they were male and female or two of a kind? Were they lovers or simply two beasts sharing the comfort of a padded, narrow bed, and the warmth of one another’s bodies, while the cold air bit at their skin?
Of course, the pair made me think of missed opportunities. Anger followed, and I hefted my machete, feeling ghoulish for wanting to hack and slash at two people, entwined and looking as human as any that lived before the virus came.
Why couldn’t the certainty of my hatred for these things stand a little more firmly?
I asked myself whether the pair had feelings for each other. Was it possible? Did any of these Whites still have clear thoughts about anything? Did they feel sorrow for those they killed to fill their bellies? Did they cry in the dark for the children they’d lost?
Or the ones they murdered?
I blinked away emotions that threatened to swell, as the shameful side of everything I’d seen and done found room to run in my thoughts.
I turned away from the two lovers and gritted my teeth, doing my best to embrace the hate I felt for all in the naked horde. I brought to mind memories of the friends I’d seen die, and that was all I needed.
Rage.
I turned away from the truck’s cab and nearly stepped on a gaunt-faced White, lying on his side, with a grimace on his sleeping face. I told myself it was meanness and rammed the pointy end of my machete down through his temple.
He jerked and choked and then a slow exhalation of his last breath leaked out of his throat.
He didn’t move after that, though a few of the Whites lying by him stirred.
I’d taken my first step toward being the nightmare beast I’d been imagining all evening. It wasn’t as satisfying as I’d imagined. It felt more like stomping on a rat and hearing it squeak as it died.
I wrenched the machete out of the dead White’s skull and made my way pas
t the other sleepers until I was next to the combine.
It was a big green monster, shaped roughly like an enormous refrigerator pushed over on its side, with huge wheels on the back and large, triangular shaped tracks on the front. The tracks hadn’t sunk into the mud. That was good. On the front of the harvester, a glass cab bigger than the kitchen in my apartment was tinted in black and looked like a dark-colored head on a giant green bug. The yellow stripes painted down the sides were worn and scraped from years of hard work. Out of a big storage bin on the back, a boom swung, with its tip angled down toward the following truck’s trailer.
I made my way past the prone bodies to examine the wide, orange-colored corn harvesting device mounted on the front of the giant green bug. Wide enough to cut twenty or thirty rows of corn simultaneously, it looked to have been born from torture and crafted for violence.
Just above ground level, dozens of long, metal, arrow-shaped pieces served as guides to route everything back to the mechanical nightmare of big-toothed saw wheels, thrashing strips of metal, gears, and conveyors. Still across those wheels were stuck stalks of dry corn plants that had been too jammed in the machinery to blow away in the hurricane wind. All that sharp, spinning steel guided the corn toward the mechanical bug’s throat, a pipe that sucked all the mangled corn from the shredders into the beast’s belly. Whatever lay in there was designed to separate chaff from cob, and cob from kernel. What it would do to flesh and bone sent a shudder down my spine. I involuntarily stepped back.
My weathered green bug was violence on an industrial scale.
Lovely and wicked, it embodied my every sadistic dream.
Dim-witted, murderous Whites were going to spill torrents of red blood before my savage metal pet. And I was going to see Mark’s screaming fear as the spinning steel blades dismembered his body and juggled the warm, drippy pieces through the machinery.
No matter what ambivalence I felt over the gaunt White I’d just killed, I’d feel only satisfaction when Mark’s life leaked out of his veins.
