The Headhunter (Shorting the Undead & Other Horrors) (5 page)

“I still believe, Bill. But sometimes faith isn’t enough, right? Faith won’t put food on the table. It won’t keep the beast from your door.”

Bill kept silent for a moment. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’m glad we had one last chance to hunt together, Bill. I’ve always respected your…choices.”

“So, just like that, you’re leaving? Where will you go?”

“Well, to start off, someplace where there are fewer hunters, less competition.”

“Yeah, but where?”

Reggie didn’t answer at first. Then: “North. To Canada.”

“No, seriously.”

“I am serious. It’s less crowded up there.”

“Hell yeah it is. Why do you think it’s less crowded? It’s too fucking cold!”

“We’ll make do.” Reggie hesitated before adding: “Why don’t you come with us, Bill? There was going to be more of us, Gary and the Cartwright twins, but….”

“So that’s why you hunted with them the other night. You were recruiting? Who’s the headhunter now? But, no, I can’t, and you know why.”

“Finding the one who took Karen from you won’t bring her back.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
Revenge isn’t the answer, Bill.”

“Maybe not, but it’s all I’ve got.”

Bill watched his friend go. A part of him wanted to follow, but he knew that he couldn’t. What Reggie was looking for didn’t exist. There was no salvation for any of them.

But there was redemption.

He walked on, letting his feet drag, dreading the river crossing. When he came to the old farm, he stopped to look for his glasses.

Dawn was still a couple hours away, and the winds had picked up, bringing the night’s first hints of the approaching winter. He shivered, mostly out of habit since he wasn’t cold. The breeze had shredded the fog, carried it away. Somewhere, a rooster crowed, apparently surprised by the sudden shift in the weather. A dog barked in the distance. Trees swayed, shrugging off the last of their dead or dying leaves.

He cut across the barnyard to the scene of their earlier encounter. The body was gone from where they had left it, almost certainly scavenged by now, probably by wolves, though possibly by the dog he’d heard just a moment ago. The blood that was left behind was congealed and cold. He marked the trail it left into the gloom, past the corner of the old house and up toward the woods. There was no sign of his glasses in the scuffed up dirt.

His legs shook from the night’s exertion, from his hunger, from the incredible weight of his guilt.

He truly was the Damned, wasn’t he?

There is no Damned, only the hunter and the hunted.

But if there is no Damned, then how can there be Redemption?

I never asked for it. And neither did you.

No, but he realized now that it had always been what he wanted. Not the kind of redemption one got by satisfying some personal vendetta, but by making a much larger sacrifice.

There will be no sacrificing.

But he already had sacrificed, hadn’t he? For her.

With a sigh he entered the barn. He laid the knife beside the chopping block and settled himself on top. Wind blew through the open door but did not reach him.

He let the sack drop between his feet, watching it settle in a small hollow a short distance away. He toed it back within reach.

Sunrise was now only an hour away. He’d have just enough time to get back to his apartment—no time to let the river wash his clothes this morning. Another promise broken. How long had it been since he’d last felt the sun on his skin? Twelve months since the Outbreak, he remembered again. Such things were getting harder to recall. After that, the surprise attack on the Carcher Building, the day he had made Karen wait for him in the lobby. They had tried to run; he had escaped.

She hadn’t.           

It was all his fault: he’d been the one who had kept them there past dusk with his last minute reports. With that one decision, he’d damned her to the undead. Now she was gone.

He’d spent the next few months looking for her. And when he did find her—in the shell of the old GAP store downtown, though he couldn’t understand why she had chosen such a place—she hadn’t even recognized him, not until he had followed her into that darkness. Then, finally, they were together again.

At least until the monster came and stole her away from him again, this time for good. Six months ago now. The image of the she-beast came to him then, the crazed look in her eyes when they had surprised it in that alleyway off Second Street. With her last dying breath, Karen had made him promise her that he would track it down and take its head.

Six months. Now he wondered which he missed more: his wife or the sun.

You never really wanted to be a Headhunter, did you?

He frowned. The voice wasn’t Karen’s this time, but his own.

I did it for Karen. Always for her.

And what do you do for yourself?

Nothing.

That’s why this all felt like an exercise in futility. Nothing would bring his Karen back. Nothing would give him his life back. With a start, he realized he didn’t know how to do anything else, not in this world that didn’t need executive recruiters for insurance companies. He almost laughed then at the image of him sitting behind a desk and answering phones, as if the undead had any need for human resources.

“Actually, they do,” he said out loud. His voice echoed off the bare walls of the barn.

He reached down and tugged open the sack and grasped a handful of hair. Most of the blood had already drained out of the head, but he didn’t care about that. It was the brains he was after. And Reggie had been right about one thing: it was a good one.

“Fresh is best,” he told himself, chuckling. “Not like the old dried out crap I’ve been eating for the past week.”

He found a flap of skin beneath the back of the neck and, with a grunt, yanked it up and over the glistening white skull underneath, just the way Reggie had taught him. If he’d had any saliva, his mouth would have been watering, but the undead do not salivate. He reached down to retrieve the knife to crack open the skull.

And that’s when he heard the footstep.

He slowly raised his eyes to the door of the barn, at the figure standing there in silhouette. He could tell it was a female, though that was all.
Damned glasses!
Or maybe it was a girl. It had a slight frame, so much like Karen’s.

Had it seen him?

The figure didn’t move. Neither did he.

In her hands was a large axe. He wondered if it might be the one that belonged to the chopping block he was sitting on.

He licked his dry lips with an even drier tongue and waited. As always happened whenever he encountered one of them, he became acutely aware of everything around him: the distance separating them, the knife just beyond the reach of his fingertips, the head of the man he’d killed earlier that evening still in his hands.

“Daddy?” the monster whispered.

A flood of feelings came over him: confusion, love, longing, loss. His eyes dropped back down to the head. Then, without knowing why, he raised it up in her direction, as if offering it to her.

A sob escaped her lips. “You killed….
You killed my daddy!
”

His heel nudged the knife. He felt the handle slipping over the block and coming to a rest against his calf. All he’d have to do was reach down. It’d be in his hand before she could even take a step into the barn.

The she-beast lifted the axe in her hands. A growl rose in her throat. He could see the tears on her face, tears of anger and sadness for the father he had taken from her. Tears of fear and hate for him. He knew all those feelings. He knew them all too well. And he wished for the thousandth time since Karen had become infected that day that he could cry for his own losses: for the life that had been taken away from him when she had crossed over, for the life he forsook when he followed her into the night. He wanted to cry out for the loss he had suffered when the monster had taken his Karen away from him the second time.

And yet there were no tears.

The girl wailed. She raised herself up and, in that moment, as the predawn twilight fell upon her face, he recognized her. His shock was complete. This was the monster who had taken Karen away from him! This was the beast he’d been hunting for the last six months. This was the girl who haunted his waking dreams, who ushered to him his only remaining memories of his wife.

But what’s she doing all the way out here?

He stood then, the knife somehow once more in his hand. He stepped forward, even as she raced toward him.

He watched as the girl raised the axe over him, raised it to bring it down upon his head. Everything, it seemed, was happening in exactly the same moment: the past six months, this moment, everything.

“Damn you to hell!” she screamed.

She skidded to a stop in front of him, and in that eternal moment the sun broke over the horizon and spilled its burning fire onto his face.

Yes, he thought, I am damned to hell. And the truth of it made him smile.

He raised the knife. In the corner of his eye, he watched as the blade arced through the air. He saw it leave his fingers, heard it clang as it hit the floor. He smiled as he lifted his head.

I am Damned, yes, but here is my redemption.

He felt the gentle whisper of the hatchet’s cold steel against his neck, and it was like the sweet kiss of his dear sweet Karen.

Now, at last, I will sleep.

†

Author’s note

What is it about the Undead that we love to fear? Other than the visceral terror they can invoke in us, what makes zombies and their ilk so horrifying? Is it because they’re mindless? Is it because they hunt and feed with no rational motivation, driven only by some carnal instinct, uncontrolled by rational thought? Is because
we
are their prey?

While working on an upcoming zombie pandemic novel (tentatively called
Touch Me & Die
), I began to question the whole concept of the monsters as “mindless” creatures. Of course, classic zombie lore is heavily founded on the idea that these monsters are mindless; it
is
why the brain-eaters so frightening and compelling.

But what if they weren’t as mindless as we think they are? What if a story were written from their point of view? What we flipped the idea of “monsters” on its proverbial ear and
we
became the monsters?

It was with these questions in mind that I wrote
The Headhunter
.

I hope reading this story was as thought-provoking and entertaining for you, Dear Reader, as it was for me to write.

†

Thank you for reading

The Headhunter

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All my best,

Saul

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