Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel (32 page)

He said, “She held it to her own head. I almost let her do it, but ended up taking it away again. That night while she was sleeping, I held it to her head right on top of the bruise I left on her face. I thought it might be easier for both of us, if I just finished it in her sleep. I didn’t. The next day a military convoy came through and busted us out.”

“I don’t think you have anything to be sorry about here,” Doc said. “She was alive because of you even if things got heated or rough under the pressure of … you know, everything.”

“I don’t think he’s finished,” Chef said.

Short Order rapped his knuckle against the bottom step. He didn’t say anything for a moment. A shadow drifted across the stairs through light coming from windows and openings in the ceiling and roof. It could have been a cloud.

I still watched.

Shaw said, “She was standing right her on the step as I broke out the front window through the boards. She begged me to let them go by. She said they were trouble and we should just hide. I yelled out and they busted through the door and took us to one of their transports.”

Another shadow passed by going the other direction from the first. I didn’t think clouds did that.

Shaw said, “Things were very good at first. Everyone worked at the Green Zone to keep up security and life. Major Mathew Hadley was the commanding officer and he was in contact with the North American Theater Command. He ran an efficient operation. As time went on, things got more desperate. The military personnel had to employ civilians in helping gather supplies outside the Zone while they ran security for the missions. I helped with that. Eventually, NAT-Com went dark and Hadley had us start going after other survivors’ supplies instead of rescuing them. He started using us to raid other military green zones at night and not everyone was coming back. He started hanging people who refused orders. He didn’t want to waste the bullets.”

I heard something in the grass outside. I looked through the window, but saw nothing. The wind was blowing. It rocked against the sides of the house. It cut over the boards in the open side of the living room and rustled our clothes. More of the termite mound crumbled away and peppered across the floor.

The top step popped and I whirled around to look.  Nothing was there. Doc saw my motion and sniffed at me. He patted my shoulder. I didn’t feel comforted. Short drummed his fingers on the bottom step as he kept talking.

He said, “Hadley pulled a few civilians up into military status to replace soldiers he had lost or had executed. The rest of us were declared workers. He went off the deep end. He started having his initials carved into the bodies of zombies and humans we killed outside the Zone as a warning to raiders and scavengers that were picking up in the area. He set up traps drawing groups in for us to ambush and take their supplies, weapons, and fuel.”

A piece of shingle fell through a hole in the ceiling above the stairs. It bounced down a couple steps. Doc glanced up and saw it, but then looked down at Shaw’s back again. More dust sprinkled down from the roof around the floors above our heads. Shaw tapped the bottom stair some more with one fingertip.

Shaw said, “Then he started branding us like cattle to mark us as his property.”

“Branding?” Chef asked.

Shaw rubbed his right shoulder through his shirt sleeve. He scratched at the bottom stair with one nail from the other hand. It made my teeth hurt.

Shaw said, “With a hot iron like with cows … Everyone worked day and night. I started cooking and worked my way up from the troops to Hadley himself. He killed workers for minor mistakes. I had to be perfect every meal or I was cooking for the last time.”

Chef and Doc looked at each other and then looked away suddenly.

Shaw said, “I watched him do terrible things to people. Sometimes it was payback for some slight, sometimes it was for information, and sometimes he was just bored. Women were … taken advantage of … He brought Carrie in a few times. Sometimes he got bored.”

Shaw hit the step twice with the heel of his hand. He started crying. Most of the drops missed the steps and mixed with the loose dust blowing around our feet from the termite mound.

He said, “I just cooked for him. I watched and did nothing. One night Carrie was crying … from what he was doing to her. She kept yelling at me across the room where Hadley had me preparing his dinner. I just kept cooking and ignored her. She was screaming at me about why I hadn’t let her kill herself. Hadley thought she was talking to him. He stopped and laughed at her. He hit her … just like I had.”

Shaw punched the step again. He breathed in and out one uneven time.

He continued. “He pulled his own knife and handed it to her. He pulled his gun and backed up pointing it at her. He told her to do it, if she was serious. She sliced her own throat deeper than I thought was possible. Hadley stood over her holding his gun and laughing. He said he didn’t think she would do it. Then, she sliced him across the back of his ankles. He screamed and shot at her in the floor, but he was falling and missed. She grabbed him and sawed the knife back and forth across his neck. I don’t know how she was still moving. The guards came in and shot her. They grabbed me and hauled me out. One of the guards yelled out that Major Hadley was dead … that he nearly got his head chopped off by that damned slave. He was calling for help, but the other workers heard it and all hell broke loose.”

Shaw rubbed his eyes. He rapped his knuckles on the step again. I looked up at the top of the stairs we hadn’t searched.

He said, “They started attacking the soldiers and guards. People were getting shot. In the confusion, I ran and-”

The board over the top of the bottom step burst up from under Shaw’s knuckles. The grey arm lashed out slicing itself across the exposed nails and latched on to Shaw’s forearm. He screamed as the creature pulled him toward the gory nails. Shaw grabbed his own hand and pulled back from his knees, but the creature held on and kept pulling.

***

Doc and Chef came forward as the boards under us in the foyer were pushed up from below in the crawl space. We all stumbled backward. I turned and tried to jump on the porch.  Four more hands reached from under the porch to the steps. Two zombies pulled themselves out and up the steps toward us.

The second one locked eyes with me. He hooted, hissed, and then clicked in the back of his throat as they advanced on us. I had never heard one make a noise exactly like that before then.

The boards under us were separating. I fell to the side into the living room.  Doc swung his aluminum bar down on the step. He connected with the exposed elbow breaking it off from the arm. Shaw was flung backward with the severed arm still holding him. He fell to his back and collapsed through the foyer floor out of sight.

The two from the porch came through the front door and grabbed at Doc.

The termite mound fell over and exploded on the floor. A dusty corpse squeezed up through the gap in the floor and crawled across the living room.

Doc swung the bar into the side of the first zombie’s head through the door. Its skull crumpled and it fell through the gap in the foyer. Shaw screamed again under the floor.  The second one through was the hooter and he grabbed the bar on Doc’s back swing. Doc pushed back against it and pinned it to the floor.

Chef pulled the banister loose from the rails and the wall. He ran forward and swung as the dusty body was standing up in the living room. The banister shattered over the side of its head splitting the skin. It stood up. Chef swung again. The banister broke the zombie’s arm, but splintered in Chef’s hand. He backed up as the dusty monster charged.

Doc pressed his bar into the zombie’s neck on the floor. Its larynx crunched and its tongue came out with an airy hoot, hiss, and click as it inhaled in its broken throat. It kept snapping up at Doc.

I pulled my hunting knife and crawled toward Doc. A grey skull crashed up through the boards in front of me up to its shoulders. I fell back dropping the knife. It squirmed to get its arms up out of the floor. One arm popped out and reached for me while the other was a stump at the elbow waving in the air.

Chef kicked his zombie back with a puff of termite soil from its ragged clothes. He pulled out a rail support rod from the staircase and jammed it into the zombie’s eye. The zombie twisted its head and snapped it off in Chef’s hand. It grabbed Chef and pushed him into the wall causing him to drop the broken rod. As it leaned forward to bite, Chef jammed his forearm up into its throat stopping it before it stabbed him with the sharp piece of wood projecting from its eye socket.

Doc lifted his bar up, turned it around, and jammed the end through the hooting and hissing zombie’s forehead. The bar punched through the floor underneath and the zombie exhaled slowly with one last click. Doc pushed himself up to his feet and ripped the shaft back up out of the floor and shook the dry skull off of it.

I kicked the arm away that was reaching for me. I reached careful for the knife so I got the handle and not the blade. The creature had my ankle and pulled me forward across the floor. I leaned up as he leaned down. I punched the blade into its head. As the creature fell back into the hole I pulled the knife back out of its brain. Its face smacked the floor on the way back down leaving its nose and a couple teeth on the edge as it disappeared.

That’s for my mother … and sister, ankle grabber, I thought.

I exhaled slowly looking at my ankle that the zombie had been holding. It didn’t feel like nearly enough.

Another hand reached out and grabbed the floor. The body pulled up slowly. I raised the knife above my head in both hands. Shaw looked up at me from the hole in the floor and held out both hands when he saw me. I dropped the knife and helped him climb out of the crawlspace. I pictured dozens of them chewing off his legs below the floor. He seemed less concerned as he climbed out slowly.

Chef was behind his zombie slamming it into the wall over and over. The head kept smashing through the plaster in clouds of dust and coming back out with plenty of scratches, but none deep enough to destroy the brain. Both eyes were leaking dark jelly down the zombie’s cheeks as it clawed and snapped back at Chef.

“A little help,” Chef yelled.

Doc walked toward him with the shaft over his shoulder. Through the boards in the broken, front window, I saw one walking up the front steps. Another one followed behind it and then two more.

“There are no more down there,” Shaw said as he climbed out of the floor.

They were all coming up the porch steps. As the first one stepped through the door, more were walking up onto the porch. I looked through the boards. There were a dozen more spread across the front yard looking at the house. I remembered the back door was boarded shut. I looked down the hole Shaw had busted through the floor with the zombie’s head. I wasn’t sure which version of hell I was more afraid to face. We could face an army through the door or let them chase us under the house.

Doc walked toward Chef with his back to the ones entering the house and stepping around the hole in the floor.

Doc said, “Step back, if you want your head.”

Chef let go and took several steps back. The blind zombie turned toward Doc’s voice and reached. Chef pointed at the front door. More were walking in slowly. More were walking up the steps outside. Doc swung collapsing most of the wall under the stairs as the zombie finally fell to the living room floor dumping out what was left in its open head.

The one that came through the door first stopped as the others spread into the room. His long hair hung over his narrow face in greasy, grey strings. The visitors were thin, their clothes hung on them threadbare and torn, and they all looked hungry.

Doc turned and froze.

The one in front opened his mouth as he looked at each of us.

He said, “You boys don’t read so well, do you?”

Chapter 10: The Day We Served up Our Best

“We read fine,” Doc said. “We passed your sign and kept going until we got here. We’re going to keep going too and not ever come back to bother you.”

The black man with long stringy hair said, “Yeah, that sign said you were deep in our territory. We saw you at the shrine too. Did you find anything you liked? Take a few souvenirs?”

“No,” Chef said.

“No?” the man said as he looked at Chef through the grey strings in his face. “No, you didn’t go in the shrine like my boy said or no, you didn’t take anything?”

The men began to walk around behind us in the living room as the grey-haired man spoke.

“Why don’t you all stay where you are while we talk this through?” Chef said.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” the man countered.

The men continued to surround us. Doc reached slowly for the .45 in his belt. Several men raised harpoon guns with the think, wooden bolts projecting out of the bores. The leader shook the hair back from his face and smiled.

He said, “Listen, troll head, you don’t want to be the example. We’re going to be holding your weapons at the end of this conversation. You are deciding whether you are going to be dead when that happens.”

Doc lifted his hand away from the gun. The leader nodded causing his hair to fall into his face again.

He said, “Good choice, brother, we would have speared you dead before we’d let you fire off that zombie whistle in our territory.”

The man nodded. The others began lifted weapons and items from our pockets.  Doc was the only one with guns and one was empty. They took his bar from him and he looked particularly pained. They searched through my pockets and pulled out the cards.

The man took the cards from the guy who was searching me. He spread out the wadded up news story that I never got around to reading. He partially unfolded it and then just tossed it down the hole in the floor. He looked through a few items from the others’ pockets as the men passed stuff to him.

He said, “David Sharp and Dexter Lyons … You boys do collect souvenirs.”

Chef’s face contracted and it looked like he had been punched in the chest when he saw the licenses and heard the names.