After the Roads- Sidney’s Way

by Brian Parker

  She glanced sidelong at the old man, who’d refused to let the girls go without him. A lifetime spent working cattle, mending fences, and taking care of the farm had kept his body thin and muscular. At sixty-five, he was in better shape than half of the guys back at the University of Kansas where she’d been a sophomore when everything went to hell.

  The thought of her friends at the university made her throat tighten, but she didn’t have any tears left to cry for them. All of her sorrow had been used up with the death of her father. Those outward signs of weakness were behind her. She had to be strong enough for both Katie and herself, because the Lord knew that her mother was a fruitcake and was no help to anyone.

  “So what should we expect up here, Grandpa?” she asked, more to pass the time than having a need to know. She’d cornered Jesse one morning and gleaned as much information as she could from the farmhand.

  “Well, sweetheart…” Her grandfather trailed off, likely trying to organize his thoughts. “It’s like this. These people, the infected, they aren’t really people anymore. They may look like you and me, but whatever they’re sick with has destroyed their brains, taking away their humanity. They—”

  “So they’re zombies then?” Katie asked.

  Sally grinned. She and her sister had talked about this distinction at great length. Katie relied on her understanding of popular culture instead of making the mental leap that their reality was something completely different. Sally may have been the blonde, but her brunette sister was much more of a ditz than she was.

  “No,” Grandpa replied. “They’re not zombies.”

  “How so?” Katie pressed.

  “For starters, they don’t have to get shot in the head to die. They can be injured just like you and me. The best we can tell, their brains don’t register pain, so it makes it seem like they’re indestructible—which they most certainly are not.”

  “So they’re kind of like a druggie high on flakka or something?”

  He looked around Sally to Katie. “I don’t know what that is, so I can’t really compare it. Reminds me of how people on PCP back in the 80s and 90s would act. Your grandmother—God rest her soul—was infatuated with the news after we got cable television out here. She would have it on in the house all day long while she did her housework. When I’d come in at night, she’d give me the condensed version and she thought those dust-heads were one of the signs in the Book of Revelation that the Lord was coming back soon. Shoot, maybe we are living in the end days and we are enduring the Tribulation. We just have to keep doing the right thing during these Trials.”

  Sally groaned inside. Her parents hadn’t raised them as Christians, something her grandfather never forgot to mention during his nightly bible reading sessions with them. Since most of what he talked about was completely foreign to the girls, he took it upon himself to teach them the Word of the Lord. The two younger Campbell women entertained the old man, it was only thirty minutes a night, and since there was no television to help pass the time, it didn’t really matter that much. The few solar panels that they did have were dedicated to keeping the freezers in the basement working and the well’s water pump running.

  “So, back to the infected, Grandpa,” she said, redirecting the conversation to her original question. “What else should we expect?”

  They were less than a quarter of a mile from the furthest field from the house that Grandpa owned. The “back forty” was actually a 65-acre plot that was primarily used for grazing the herd back before a group of infected had decimated it a few months ago. Grandpa had already told them that once they reached the field, they would have to be quiet because the infected had very good hearing.

  “You men go ahead,” Grandpa told Jesse and Scott. “Make sure the back forty is secure and that we’re only dealing with the two that are tangled in the fence.”

  The two farmhands picked up their pace, each carrying a long metal pole, sharpened to a point on one end. They wore heavy jean jackets, long pants, and heavy gloves. Both of the girls and Grandpa wore the same type of clothing. A smaller metal bar dangled from leather straps hooked through the farmhands’ belt loops for close up work and each carried a holstered pistol for the last resort. Non-suppressed firearms were the worst weapons to use against the infected though because it brought any infected within hearing distance screaming toward the sound.

  “Let’s see,” Grandpa continued after the men left. “I already told you girls that they can be killed like any other person, and that they are not human, no matter how much they look like it.”

  “How are you sure that they aren’t human?”

  Grandpa grunted. “Because humans talk, think, have emotions… These things don’t do any of that. All they know is death.” He paused, waiting to see if either of the girls would ask anything further about the crazies’ humanity. When they didn’t, he continued. “They are strong—way stronger than a normal person. I’ve thought a lot about it, I don’t think they have any special abilities or any of that Hollywood bull, I just think that their bodies are free to do whatever it can without their brains limiting them. Kind of the same way a hundred and twenty pound mother can lift a car off of her child. That adrenaline rush gives her the strength that she normally wouldn’t have.”

  Sally nodded. She understood the concept. She’d heard stories like that often enough out here in the farming communities when she would stay for the summer with her grandparents. Nothing cool like that happened in Wichita, where her childhood home had been before her parents sold it and bought the RV last year.

  She wrinkled her nose when the wind shifted and the smell of rotting meat assaulted her nostrils. “Ugh. Is that—?”

  “The sickos killed six of my cows before we got out here and took care of them,” Grandpa said, pointing toward the gate leading to the back field. “They cornered the poor cows and gouged out their eyeballs… Really tore them up, eating parts of them. That’s when I truly understood that the infected were beyond the Lord’s help. The only thing we can do is put them out of their misery before they infect anyone else.”

  Grandpa was silent for the last several hundred feet, allowing Sally time to think about their situation and the fact that he’d sheltered the girls from all the killing they’d done over the last several months. Nowadays, they would go several days without an incident, but in the past, they were putting down the infected almost hourly. She’d asked what they did with all the bodies, but he’d always told her that it wasn’t her concern.

  When they got to the gate leading to the back field, Sally realized that the smell wasn’t only from the dead cattle near the fence—those were almost completely rotted away at this point. The smell of death and decay was coming from the mounds of dead bodies. Hundreds of them, maybe more.

  They’d piled up bodies ten or fifteen feet from the fence line, usually only as tall as the fence itself. Sally thought that was smart, that way the lookout at the house could still see creatures along the fence without the dead blocking their view. She gained a new appreciation for the old man and the three farmhands who’d stayed on to help.

  “Oh my God…”

  “Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain, young lady,” Grandpa chastised Katie.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Grandpa,” Sally said. “Is it safe for all these bodies to remain? I mean, what about disease? Aren’t you worried about the diseases from bodies?”

  He snorted. “Like what? A virus that could turn us into mindless, feral animals?”

  “No, Grandpa,” Sally groaned at his attempt at a joke. “I took a freshman history class last semester. And—”

  “Freshman? You’re a sophomore.”

  “I was a little behind,” she replied.

  “All that partying with the fraternities. I heard,” he said with a disapproving look.

  Unbelievable! Sally thought. Even during the apocalypse, the old Bible thumper finds a way to bring up old shit. “Anyways…” she drew out the word in annoya
nce. “My professor said that it was a common tactic in the old days to use catapults to throw dismembered bodies into cities under siege because of the diseases that they carried.”

  “Plus, it’s kind of nasty that you have all these bodies out here,” Katie added.

  “Jesse figured out that they’re attracted by sight,” Grandpa said, ignoring Katie’s unhelpful statement. “I don’t know what a big old cloud of smoke would do. They’d be able to see it for miles around out here on the plains. Might bring more of ’em.”

  Sally shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about that part.”

  The old man nodded. “We gotta try to think three or four steps ahead, sweetie. Those things won’t give us the option to mess up.”

  “If we can’t burn them, could we bury them or something?” she asked.

  “Sure. But I don’t know that the effort is worth it. We’ve already got them piled up in the back forty. Every kill that we make on the opposite side of the farm is brought out here to keep away from the house and the rest of the herd. I’m not sure what else we could do.”

  Sally considered his words as she examined the mounds of bodies. If the infected were attracted to sights, like Grandpa said, then it really didn’t make any sense to burn them, as long as nobody from the farm bothered the mounds. Sure, they stunk something awful, but they weren’t actively bringing any more of the infected from town out to the farm, so leaving them, as her grandfather suggested, was probably the best option that they had available to them right now.

  “So, what should we expect when we get up to that fence line?” she asked, gesturing to Katie as she said it.

  “Well, girls, here’s the messed up part about the Tribulation—or whatever it is that we’re in,” Grandpa said. “There will be two—hopefully only two—of the infected tangled up in the barbed wire. Scott and Jesse will make sure that they don’t get loose and wait for the two of you to come up. It’s going to be your responsibility to put them down.”

  They walked as Grandpa talked. Ahead, probably only a football field, maybe one-and-a-half football fields, away, Sally could see two people struggling in the wire. From the look of it, the barbs on the fence line were embedded in their skin and what little clothing remained, so she wasn’t worried about them getting loose, but the idea of being so close to them freaked her out.

  Involuntarily, her hand sought out Katie’s and she intertwined her fingers between her younger sister’s. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Katie replied, hoisting the fireplace poker that she’d brought as her weapon. “I just want to get this over with.”

  Sally bobbed her chin in agreement. The sooner they’d gotten this mission under their belts, the sooner they could begin preparing for tomorrow—and the next day. Because, sooner or later, they wouldn’t simply stay on the farm; they were going to have to leave to begin the next stage of their lives.

  “Okay, girls. This is gonna sound harsh,” Grandpa said as they closed the distance between the fence. “I want each of you to take one of them. Sally, you take the one on the right. Katie, you have the one on the left. I know you both think that I’m an old fool, but I want you to hit them a few times in their bodies, in the arms, the legs if you can reach them. I don’t want you to think I’m being mean, now. The lesson here is that they don’t feel you hitting them anywhere, so in an emergency, you can’t waste your energy hitting them anywhere but the head. Are you girls okay with that?”

  They both nodded, neither speaking as they stood only a few feet from their targets. Sally hated herself for thinking of them that way, but if Grandpa was right—and she hadn’t seen anything to make her question his tactics—the thrashing and moaning things in front of them were nothing more than a problem to be dealt with.

  “Okay. Move on up and hit them a few times in non-vital areas,” Grandpa directed.

  Sally did as he directed. The thing before her had once been a woman, maybe even the same age as her, but it was clearly emaciated, long months of little or no food had taken their toll on the creature’s body. It was nude, except for one shoe, and had an innumerable number of scrapes, cuts, bruises, and even what appeared to be chunks of skin missing from its body. She refused to think of it as a woman, it was simply a threat that had to be dealt with.

  What she’d thought of as clothing caught on the fence when she was walking up turned out to be sagging skin snared by the barbs of the fence. Drooping breasts flopped over the wire, the sharpened metal embedded in the soft tissue underneath. Wire dug into flesh, adding to the numerous cuts. It tried to scream, to call others to its location as Grandpa had warned about, but the creature was so dehydrated and parched that only a hoarse, hollow moan came from its throat.

  The most unnerving part, Sally thought, was the thing’s eyes. It watched her every movement, almost as if it understood what was about to happen, but it couldn’t do anything about it. As she stepped closer, those eyes burned into her, consumed by hatred for her. She was alive, uninfected, and the life of the thing in front of her had been taken months ago. It was a shell now, nothing more than a vessel to carry the virus.

  Sally swung her bat hard down onto the creature’s shoulder. She winced as she felt the clavicle collapse underneath her blow. Just like Grandpa had said, no pain registered on the thing’s face. It continued to reach for her, oblivious to the obvious damage to its shoulder.

  For some reason, the lack of acknowledgement infuriated her. She’d broken the damn thing’s collarbone and it didn’t even seem to notice it. She took another downward swing, this one connecting with bone-jarring force along the creature’s forearm. A sickening snap of bones told her all she needed to know before the hand fell useless, flopping to the side.

  Still, the infected didn’t register that it had been injured.

  “See,” Grandpa said. “I told you. They don’t feel any pain—watch yourself. It can still get you with its other hand.”

  Sally grunted in acknowledgement. It was time to put an end to this thing. She set her feet and pulled the bat back over her right shoulder, as if she were in the batter’s box, ready to face off against the opposing team’s pitcher.

  “Careful, now,” Grandpa warned. “Make sure you connect cleanly with the head. Otherwise, you’ll end up exposing your back. That might not be important right now, with that thing caught on the fence, but it’s a good habit to get into and you should strive to keep your movements to a minimum.”

  “Okay, Grandpa,” she groaned, swinging hard after she’d said his name. The bat arced from right to left across her body and connected against the temple of the infected in front of her. The bat sank several inches as the skull shattered, driving jagged shards of bone into the brain. It collapsed instantly.

  “They still follow our basic human anatomy, so you might have just knocked her out,” her grandfather cautioned. “You gotta smash the head in to be sure.”

  “Eww! Do I have to?”

  “No. I can do it if you can’t.”

  That set Sally’s jaw hard. She could do the same things as the old man. She raised the bat over her head and then brought it down hard on the back of the creature’s head. All resistance gave way to complete relaxation when the thing under her bat died completely. It slumped into the fence, dragging the wire downward. A thick, bubbly froth poured from its slack mouth.

  The bubbles of gore on the trampled blades of grass mesmerized her. The creature’s life was over and she’d been the one to do it. The reality of what she’d done began to sink in, adding to the nausea already rumbling in her stomach from the smells.

  “Okay, Katie,” Grandpa was saying from nearby. “Just like your sister. One hard hit to the head to end its miserable life.”

  Sally jumped at the thud of her sister’s fireplace poker impacting with the head of the infected she dealt with. The sounds of its dying made her dry heave for a moment before its body stopped thrashing.

  “Good job, girls,” Grandpa praised them as he slid a knife along the throat
of each body. Dark red fluid oozed out, mingling with the frothy bubbles on the grass. The blood didn’t spurt out in fountains of red mist like the movies, but then she remembered that the creatures were probably already dead from the head injuries. Their hearts weren’t pumping blood out of the gash in their necks.

  “Now comes the hard part. Jesse, Scott, can you give the girls a hand? I want these corpses off my fence in ten minutes so we can go back to the house and have some iced tea.”

  The two men grunted in agreement. Sally could tell that they were annoyed at having to escort the girls out there, but Grandpa had insisted on it.

  Scott stepped up close to her. “Okay, first, make sure you have your gloves on. You don’t want to accidently get stabbed by the wire and get any of their body fluids in it. That happens, and you’re a goner.”

  “Got it,” she replied. Just to be safe, she pulled on the cuff of her gloves to make sure they were firmly in place.

  “Next, we always make sure that they’re really dead and not just passed out or something. Your grandfather already took care of that part for us this time, but that’s an extremely important part of this job. These things can take a lot of damage—stuff that you and me would be out for the count with—so we usually slit their throats and wait a minute to ensure that they’re dead.”

  The fresh smell of feces stung her nostrils as the muscles in the body in front of her relaxed, adding to the months’ worth of dried dung on its legs. Scott wrinkled his nose. “That’s actually a good sign,” he confirmed.

  “After we’re sure they’re dead—I can’t stress that part enough, Miss Sally—we begin untangling ’em. Sometimes they’re so tangled up in the wire that we have to cut part of their skin away. It gets pretty gross.”

  She assisted him as he lifted the body and tried to push it backward. The barbs in the body’s chest held it in place, so she had to lift the shrunken, fatty breast tissue up, wiggling the wire until it came free, then the body fell away into the next field.