The Headhunter (Shorting the Undead & Other Horrors) (3 page)

“Bad place to run out of gas,” Reggie remarked. Bill snorted nervously.

A baby seat in the back was empty. In the flattened weeds alongside the road, they found a long smear of blood and the bodies of the family. Steam still rose from them in the humid night. Their skulls were cracked open and the tops of their heads were gone. The brains were missing.

“Fucking monsters,” Bill said, turning away in disgust.

He went over to turn off the car’s headlights. A strange twilight descended upon them, a red washed glow alternating with the coldness of gunmetal gray.

 “We’re all God’s children,” Reggie commented. He quietly adjusted his backpack, then kneeled over each of the bodies and said a quick prayer while Bill stood on, impatiently scanning the shadows. Except for Reggie’s quiet murmur and the click of the traffic light, the night was silent.

“Just make it quick. This place makes me jumpy.”

They walked on for some time, but saw nothing. The newly risen moon gave off a meager, pasty glow from its perch low on the horizon. They eventually came to a farm.

Once again, no lights showed in the windows. There were no cars parked out front and no animal sounds came from inside the barn. A single white shirt hung on the line, flapping like a ghost trying to warn them away.

“Check the house?”

Bill nodded, though the barn would’ve been his first choice.

Reggie led the way across the patch of barnyard and around the corner to the back porch. He held the unlit flashlight like a club in one hand, a knife in the other. He’d walk a few steps, stop, sniff the air, then take a couple more steps. As far as Bill could tell, there was nothing that indicated they were anything but alone.

But he couldn’t be sure.

The first porch step creaked quietly under Reggie’s boot. They paused, but only the wind answered. Two more steps, two more creaks, and then they were fully in the shadows beneath the porch roof. The torn screen door stood open, but the inner door was shut tight, the glass, miraculously, still intact.

“What if it’s locked?” Bill hissed.

Reggie fumbled with his flashlight, switching it to the hand that held the knife, but the fog had greased his fingers and the light slipped out of his hands. It hit the wooden floor with a loud
bang!
The light snapped on and the beam jabbed the darkness around them as it tumbled down the steps.

“Fucking Christ,”
Bill whispered.

The back door crashed open. Instinctively, Bill stepped back. The figure hurtling out at them narrowly missed him. It howled incoherently and crashed into Reggie, who lost his knife. The blade flew into the yard. The two figures, zombie and human, tumbled down the steps in full embrace, hands grasping, teeth gnashing.

“Bill!” Reggie screamed.

Bill snapped out of his stupor and leaped off the porch. His ankle twisted painfully beneath him as he landed and his glasses flew off his face, but he ignored the pain and threw himself at the grappling pair. Hooking his elbow around the attacker’s neck, he pulled it off his partner, but the monster was too strong and twisted out of his grip. Now it turned to face him. Bill swung his foot up and kicked it in the stomach. It backed clumsily away before tripping over Reggie’s knife.

“Need some help here!” Bill cried. He chanced a quick glance behind him, but Reggie seemed to be having trouble getting to his feet. He was stumbling around like a drunken sailor, apparently still dazed by the fall.

Bill turned. The attacker was stupidly reaching down for the knife. Taking advantage of the distraction, Bill raced across the yard, willing his injured ankle not to collapse under him. Lunging at the hideous thing, he swung the machete with every last ounce of energy in him.

For a moment it seemed that he’d missed. The beast continued to bend down, then, slowly, as if it were reconsidering, it paused. Without a sound, it pirouetted on its toes then tumbled onto its back on the dirt. Its head rolled to a rest at Bill’s feet.

He kicked it away, then fell to his knees. He suddenly felt drained. Hunts were not supposed to go this way.
He
was supposed to be the hunter.

He dropped the bloodied machete and crawled over to the porch railing where he tried desperately to vomit, but his stomach was empty and all that came out was a dry cough. He dry-spat, then wiped his mouth.

After a few moments, he turned. Reggie had recovered and had already bagged the head. He was standing over the body, finishing his prayer. When he was done, he bought the sack over to Bill.

“You take it,” Bill panted. “You have a family to take care of and—”

“No,” Reggie said firmly. “Your kill, your trophy. That’s the code.” He pulled it out of the sack by its hair and nodded appreciatively, trying to make light of the situation. “You bagged a good one,” he joked. “A few more like this and you might even be able to retire to the Bahamas.”

“Put it away,” Bill growled, though he managed a weak smile. He took the sack from Reggie’s hands, tied a knot in the drawstring and slipped the loop through his belt.

“You okay, Bill?”

“Think so.”

“Good. Now get with the program. There’s likely to be more.”

They made a quick sweep of the downstairs of the house. The staircase leading to the upper floors had long since been torn down, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. But all they found was a soiled mattress in the back room, darkly stained and stiff. The barn was similarly deserted. A few stray shafts of hay dangled from the cobwebs, the rest long since carried away by rats or the autumn winds. Stalls stood open and empty, their gates hanging loosely on rusted hinges. In the center of the barn stood a large wooden chopping block, the top softened by blood and scarred by hatchet marks. The hatchet was long gone.

They headed away from the road then, striking out across an open field that looked as if it hadn’t been sown in several seasons. The weeds stood tall and dry, their seed pods rattling in the night breeze. Bill had never been out this way, and the unfamiliar terrain was playing havoc with his knees. His ankle felt hot and stiff and swollen inside his boot, but like the shoulder injury, it was more an aggravation than anything serious.

He couldn’t help feeling like he was being watched. He knew Reggie felt it too. Several times he caught him glancing nervously in the direction of the dark trees that crowded them on either side. He disliked the openness of the field and the light of the rising moon, feeling much too exposed. But he also knew that if anything hiding within the darkness decided to attack, the openness would give them ample warning and plenty of room to fight. Or run.

This time you won’t run.

“Road’s just up ahead,” Reggie announced.

Bill reached up a finger to straighten his glasses. “
Shit!
”

Reggie turned to him, raising an eyebrow.

The glasses were no longer on his face. He’d left them lying on the ground in the barnyard.

“It’s nothing, Reg. Never mind,” Bill said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “What’s the plan?”

“The power station,” Reggie replied.

“Why there?”

“Fence, lights.”

Bill nodded. It was a good plan. Strong lights attracted their prey. And the fence could be used to their own advantage. If they could isolate one or two of them against it, then they could easily corral them before taking their heads. The fence would act like a third hunter, blocking any chance of escape.

“You know you never talk about yourself, Bill,” Reggie said, startling him with the unspoken question. “I mean, you’ve told me all about…Karen. About what happened. I know that’s why you decided to become a hunter.” He shrugged. “But you never talk about what happened before…you know….”

“The Rapture?”

Reggie grunted. “Not everyone is willing—or capable—of seeing God’s hand in our lives.”

“God’s hand? I see only the devil’s.”

“The Lord’s.
I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I,
the LORD
, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob! The dead will rise!
”

“Really? The Redeemer? Then why do
I
feel like the Damned?”

“Why do you say you feel like the Damned?”

“Because the past year has been nothing but hell, Reg, that’s why.”

“Maybe it is Hell, as you say. And maybe we are the Damned and
they
are the Damned. We’re all Damned. But even if it is Hell, it doesn’t mean any of us have to be cast forever in this place.”

“Where else is there?”

“Canada?”

Bill laughed, even though it seemed for just a fraction of a moment that Reggie was dead serious.

“Anyway, I don’t believe we’re the Damned,” Reggie said, sighing. “I choose to believe that we’re the Deliverers. It’s our job to help bring God’s children to His Kingdom.”

“Even if they’re soulless monsters?”

“I don’t think you believe that, Bill. Karen—”

“Don’t bring her into this!”

“We’re all monsters, Bill, in one form or another.”

Bill slid his eyes over at Reggie. Tonight his broad shoulders slumped more than usual. Was he having his own crisis of faith? There was clearly something bothering him.

“I was a desk jockey,” he said at last. “You asked what I did. That’s it.”

“Disk jockey? You mean you played music for a living?”

“
Desk
. As in office furniture. Not disk. I was a manager in Human Resources.”

“Like, hiring and firing?”

“More hiring than firing actually. Could never stand giving people the axe.” He chuckled at the irony. “Now look at me. Anyway, I was a paper pusher, a recruiter. The firm specialized in finding talent for the insurance industry. Executive level. You know, CEOs and board members and shit like that. My office was on the thirty-fifth floor of the Carcher Building on Seventy-First Avenue, looking out over the river.” He realized with a start that maybe that was why he disliked being close to the river. It was from the river the zombies had first come. For a while, they even thought it might’ve been something in the water.

“Karen worked a few floors up, for First Midland. That’s how we met. She was in the lobby waiting for me one evening when the Uprising reached us. Those of us that survived got out, but a lot died when they torched the place.”

Reggie was silent for a moment. Then he stopped walking and started chuckling. His laughter grew until his body shook with it.

“What’s so funny? It was a horrible thing that happened.”

“I’m sorry, Bill. I wasn’t laughing about that. It’s just that…I just realized you were a headhunter before you became a Headhunter. It’s destiny. You should be really good at this.”

“Funny. Ha ha.”

They walked on in silence a few minutes more before Bill asked, “Do you really believe in what we’re doing?”

“What choice do I have?” He shrugged. “I’m leading the flock home.”

“You’re rationalizing.”

“Yes, maybe I am.”

The pain in his eyes surprised Bill.

When they reached the far edge of the field and their feet once more settled on the reliable surface of a paved road, Reggie said, “I do sometimes wonder if this is what God intended of us. I have to believe it is. It’s hard, though, trying not to be distracted by…earthly considerations. My family, for example, wondering if they’re safe. Always having in the back of my mind how we’re going to survive. But then I think about my precious, innocent Isabelle—so young and vulnerable and unable to fend for herself—and I know I have no choice. Other than to believe this is all for a reason. It must be His will, otherwise….”