Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel (22 page)

I looked back at Doc’s bare feet. I could smell them from where I was standing. Bloody gauze was piled in the waste basket with the pink flowered pattern. The hair was matted down on the side of Doc’s calf around the cut. His legs were zombie pale except for a smear of brown and yellow around the small gash. It was still seeping blood.

Doc screwed the top back on the iodine and dabbed with another length of gauze.

I walked to the front of the room and looked out the window between the thick, faded curtains. They smelled dusty and burnt. They helped cover the stink of Doc’s feet.

The road curved in front of our house and went out continuing down through the neighborhood. Yards were being reclaimed by wild grasses, tall weeds, and medium-sized trees. The gutters that still clung to the houses were planters now. The sides of the houses looked to be heavily dented from past hailstorms. Storm drains along the street were packed with trash and debris. Dirt had washed into piles in the streets around the clogged drains and plants were expanding over the new land in waves out from the yards.

There was a minivan over the sidewalk with every door open and every window broken. Bodies were sprawled on the seats inside, but I couldn’t see them well. There was a skeleton on one of the sidewalks with its head under a riding lawnmower. I was curious about that story.

Something was bumping over and over again deeper in the neighborhood. There were long gaps between bumps sometimes. I looked to see if I could spot the source, but I couldn’t locate it.

I turned back around and saw Doc pulling on a fresh sock over his bandage. The tape he used seemed to be highly suspect in its stickiness. He pulled on the sneakers and tied them. He tossed his bloody, smelly boots out into the hall.

“I need stitches,” Doc said. “I have it packed with cotton and the bleeding has stopped, but I will have to walk again, if I’m not infected. I guess I might walk again even if I am infected. I won’t be worrying about the stitches in that case. Do you know what to do, if it is a bite or the wrong kind of scratch?”

I nodded my head. He wasn’t going to get his stitches.

He started disassembling the .45 and began cleaning it. The bullets in the gun were smeared with green when he popped them out. The ones in the box with the cleaning kit seemed to be better preserved.

We ate from some of the preserves. I located a can opener in the kitchen and we ate cold from a few of the cans. My stomach started bothering me from the day’s action and I stopped eating.

Doc opened and sniffed at a bottle of aspirin. He made a face and tossed them aside.

The thumping noise started up again somewhere in the neighborhood.

I pulled up my sleeve and inspected the dark bruise around my wrist. The skin was puffing up giving my arm a misshapen bulge at certain angles. I pressed the bones. It hurt, but it wasn’t excruciating. I was able to wiggle my thumb and close my hand with some effort.

Doc dry fired the gun a few times letting the hammer click on the empty chambers. Everything seemed to move okay. He loaded it and handed it to me.

When I took it, he said, “I’m not feeling feverish and none of the poison lines are traveling up my leg, Mutt. That’s a pretty good sign, but not certain. Make sure I’m really dead before you cap me, if that’s okay, buddy.”

I nodded. In that moment, I still didn’t think this was going to be the gun I used to kill Doc once he became a zombie.

I sat down against a wall and let my eyes close. Doc took out his bloody magazine and leafed through the pages slowly before tossing it in the waste can with the bloody gauze. As afternoon approached evening, Doc spoke again.

He said, “If things don’t go bad in the night, we will make our way out in the morning. We need to be careful, but we should be able to circle back toward the store and see if we can pick up on a trail for David and Shaw. I’m not sure if they left the building before we got separated. If they fell back inside, they probably got trapped and killed. Those things were coming out the back of the store by the time we got to the tracks. Of course, if they went out the front before us or after us, they probably didn’t fare well either. We need to check anyway, if we can.”

Doc started gripping his stomach as the day wore on and he eventually lay down on his side. His eyes clinched tight and his breathing became raspy. He was sweating and the color was fading out of his face. I offered him some more of the food, but he shook me off my offer.

We needed water.

***

I looked through the house but didn’t find any options. I grabbed a few things from the kitchen, I picked up the key, set the frog on the floor, wrapped my stuff in a bundle using the table cloth, and I slipped outside leaving Doc alone upstairs. I slipped back into the woods through the gate that we had left open.

I stood at the head of the trail by the woodpile looking down the way we had come. I knew what might be that way, but I was tempted to follow it just the same because I knew what kind of monster might be waiting up in the guest bedroom. Doc had saved me more than once, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around him for a number of reasons.

I looked back at the houses. The hail dents I had seen in the neighborhood were missing on the back sides. The sliding glass doors on the back of the blue house were shattered and the skeletons trailed inside. I recognized the scene.

I heard the thumping noise again.

I followed the tree line through the woods behind the houses. I wasn’t exactly sure what I expected to find, but I knew the sorts of things I was looking for from our brief time on the road since leaving the Complex and from my time alone before they found me.

Rebuilding the Complex alone didn’t seem so bad at this particular moment. I did not like what I was doing or where I was. We had not accomplished anything to justify this adventure. We had not found what we said we were looking for and I did not like any of the things I had discovered so far.

The thumping stopped again.

There was someone leaning against a tree in front of me. I could see their shoulder and one foot braced against the root of the pine. I set my bundle down. I was still holding the .45 Doc had handed me that I didn’t trust. I pulled my hunting knife out in my right hand. My thumb closed over it without too much pain, but I didn’t trust it either.

I circled around the tree and then put my knife away in the sheath.

The body was pinned into the tree with the pole of a solar light. The base was jammed through the body’s open mouth and up through the top of its head into the trunk of the tree. The tree was dark and pitted around the body leaning against it. The bark had grown out and around the body in several areas.

The thumping started again.

I picked up my bundle and continued on through the trees. As I did, I heard the thumping getting louder ahead of me somewhere between the houses. I stuck the .45 into my pocket and pulled out the knife again.

I slipped up behind a large pine and looked through the side yards of two houses. A baseball bounced off the side of the house and then out of view. There was a pause. Then, the ball flew against and back off of the dented siding of the house again.

I walked forward through the open space and got behind a thinner pine farther along the tree line.

The pitcher was a boy.

He reached down and lifted the ball back out of the grass. He was at least a foot shorter than me. He was wearing a tee shirt. It had something printed on the front, but was distressed beyond legibility. He had on cargo shorts that sagged below his waist. His face was misshapen. His nose was flattened and twisted to the left.  His eyes weren’t level and his lips were broken in several splits. His forehead was elongated and curved into his skull below this patchy, crew-cut hairline.

He threw the ball against the house again. It thumped back off and flew by his throwing arm. He made no attempt to catch it. He slowly picked it up again. He walked a few feet closer to me. I crouched down behind the tree with the knife ready. He threw it against the house again. It thumped off and struck him in the chest. He rocked back slightly, but stood staring at the house with his uneven eyes. He looked down and picked up the ball at his feet. He threw it against the house again. It bounced back and hit him in the face. He picked it back up and walked toward the house next door. I could see the dark scar of a bite mark around his calf at about the same position where Doc’s wound was on the side of his leg.

I used to throw a baseball against my house. My mother had made me switch to a tennis ball because the baseball left dents. She was sorry that my dad wasn’t around to throw it with me.

My stomach tightened with fear and something else I couldn’t place. I had never remembered my father or thought about him since the day I left my house. I hadn’t remembered anything from before the day my mom hid me under the bed and told me to be quiet.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember either. Remembering didn’t seem to be good for Doc or the others.

As the boy turned, I shuffled through the opening in the trees and into the thicker woods behind the house the boy had been using for throwing practice. I stopped again and waited. I couldn’t see between the houses anymore.

I was only ever one bite away from being that boy. I wondered how much he remembered.

The thumping started again and I kept going.

I came through the trees as the houses turned along the street and curved away from me. The ground became muddy under my feet and I slogged along away from the neighborhood. I emerged near the shore of a lake that had probably been a retention pond. It wasn’t my first choice, but it would work.

I looked at the water to see if anything was hiding below the surface. I couldn’t see three inches down.

The thumping stopped.

I opened my bundle and began filling the containers I had brought with the water from the dark pond. I stopped and tested their weight in the table cloth. It was going to be heavy, but I could make it. I knelt down the fill one more.

I heard something slogging through the mud behind me. I turned and held my knife ready. The squishing continued and then stopped. It started again and then stopped. Our deer stepped through the trees and stared at me. I’m not sure if it was the same one, but it looked the same. The deer sniffed at me and then turned. It bounded away along the shore and back into the trees farther down the line.

I heard something in the water behind me. I turned with my knife out. The bubbles were moving along the surface in my direction. The head slowly rose up out of the dark water at my feet. The turtle stared at me for a moment and then dove back out of sight.

I gathered my heavy bundle and left the containers that I hadn’t used lying on the shore. No one would miss them. I hoisted it all up with a grunt and turned back toward the neighborhood.

The boy was standing at the trees staring at me. He had mud coating his bare feet up nearly as high as the bite mark on his calf. His uneven eyes blinked out of time with each other.

I lifted my knife and he threw the ball at my face. I ducked out of its path, but dropped my bundle with a crash. The ball splashed somewhere out in the lake.  He advanced on me and I tried to stab at one of his eyes, but the knife wasn’t in my hand. He grabbed me with his cold fingers around my throat.

I lifted my knee into his chest and pressed against his breast bone to move his teeth back away from my face. I slid my hands up under his fingers on my throat. My wrist ached as he squeezed. I slowly pushed his fingers away from the skin of my neck hoping to avoid a scratch. If he broke the skin, Doc and I wouldn’t know who to have hold the gun anymore.

I pushed his arms back and reached for the gun in my pocket. He pressed forward and we fell. I rolled on top of him and held his arms to his chest with my knees. A frustrated squeak and groan escaped his throat as he peeled back his battered lips and snapped his teeth up at me. He was missing several and two of the ones left were broken into sharp points. I imagined him swallowing them from getting thumped by his own baseball.

I pulled out the .45 and pressed the barrel against the soft dent in his forehead. I thumbed back the hammer and then paused as I pinned his head against the muddy shore.  I looked back at the trees. Birds were still calling in the quiet around the pond. Unless I planned to walk away and leave Doc as soon as I fired, this was not going to be a good idea. I still considered it. My wrist began to throb as he pressed his head against the gun under me.

I saw the handle of my knife poking out from under the corner of the open, table cloth. I released the hammer on the revolver slowly and rested it back in place without firing. I leaned out to get the knife and the boy managed to thrown me off of him. He climbed on top of me clawing at my face. Before he got me, I struck him with the butt of the revolver three times to the side of the head. He was uninterested in the impacts and kept grabbing.

I scooped up the hunting knife and jammed it up under his chin. Black fluid began to ooze out of his mouth over me. I rolled him off quickly before it dropped in my face. I stood up and slid the gun back in my pocket as he lay on the ground.

As I reached for the knife, the boy sat up and looked at me. He stood and began reaching for me again. I pushed his arms away and turned in a circle as he pressed toward me hissing over the blade through his tongue and nasal cavity. He kicked one of the empty containers into the lake.

I grabbed the handle under his chin as I was holding him from behind on both sides of his head. He tried to reach back over his skull at me. I twisted the blade several times before pulling it free and stepping back. He stumbled forward and fell into the lake.

I watched him float out away from the shore face down in the water. He sank away into the dark water leaving only the one piece of Tupperware on the surface. I waited, but he didn’t come back up for more.

I scraped the knife off on one of the trees and sheathed it. Once I was sure all the tops were on tight, I hoisted up my heavy bundle and slogged back through the trees. I looked down at the three sets of tracks in the mud as I went. The hoof prints, my shoe prints, and the boy’s bare feet all followed the same path under me headed back toward the pond.