Zombie Anthology (27 page)

    
His unit had been assigned the duty of trying to hold the containment line around Richmond. The battle had been raging for days when he and his fellow troops arrived to offer reinforcements to the poor souls who had held it during the early days when humans still emerged from the city intermingled with the dead as they tried to flee. The army was fully dug in around the city fighting a pointless war. The containment lines around New York and many other places had fallen.

    
There were rumors of nuclear strikes on American soil in places where the lines had failed to retrain the dead but no one believed them and hearing or seeing actual news was a thing of the past. Most civilians were too busy just trying to keep breathing, journalists included. Burke fought with his unit two days before things began to fall apart. They were taking heavier losses each day as their arms stockpiles grew smaller and the dead pushed closer with each wave of rotting flesh leaving the city in search of new meat. People began to desert the line in droves, heading off in search of their own families, whether to say goodbye or to try to start over, Burke had no idea. He stayed to the end until only he and the commanding officer General Stark were left.

    
They enclosed themselves in the fortified walls of the command bunker and took pop shots at the dead still flowing from the city out into the world beyond. Stark's thoughts of gloom and hopelessness cut into Burke like a razor more and more with each passing hour. There was no way he could shield his mind from them trapped in such close proximity. He had no choice but relieve the General. He'd blown the man's brains out with a point blank shot from his sidearm. He felt no guilt over it. He knew it was what Stark wanted and would have done himself if he'd been able to give him the time to.

    
Burke had never been a long range telepath but he tried now. He spent his time attempting to understand his gifts and force them to grow. He would sit perfectly motionless with his eyes closed and reach out into the world seeking someone else alive. He always saw death in his visions and never heard a single other thought which wasn't his own. In fact, all he could feel in the world was a coldness which seeped into him and made him consider following Stark on to the next life every time he awoke from one of his trances. Today was no different.

    
His mental searching left him hollow and the food he was opening turned his stomach. He listened to the pounding outside for a moment once more and then let go, simply willing his heart to stop. Burke blinked or would have if he'd still had eye lids in a normal sense. He looked down at his body on the floor of the bunker as shock flooded his mind. What the hell had he become? A ghost? He didn't know but he was sure this wasn't what death was supposed to be like. He reached for his weapon but his fingers glided through it as if the metal wasn't there. It began to sink in that he was no longer part of this plane of existence though he could see it. He laughed silently at the madness of it all. Deciding he would make the most of God's little joke on him, he walked out of the bunker and literally through the horde of mindless dead outside to bare witness to the last days of the human species. He hoped deep down that maybe he'd meet another ghost like himself.

THE END

6 - Deadtown

    
The scent of the corpses littering the ground stank to high heavens.

    
The flaming summer sun baking their rotting flesh and us as we stood there didn't help matters none. I can sympathize with Peter. He didn't ask for this job like I did. He's just the sheriff, not a professional killer.

    
I can tell from the slight glint of tears in his eyes he wants this all to be over with. That this massacre is all it will take to right the world once more. But it's not. These poor bastards were just the beginning.

    
Others will smell the blood here or sense the life in Springtown in the valley below and they will come again. Next time it likely won't be a few dozen either. It never is after they find you. It will be hundreds, maybe thousands. I have been on the run from them for a while now since I saw the first ones walking around in Mexico. I move north from place to place always warning the folk of what's coming in my wake and offering them my services. Never found a town that's held against them yet even my guns added to theirs. But Hell, the money's good and I ain't dead yet.

    
I spit into the face of the closest corpse at my feet as Peter finally gets it together and starts barking orders. Dillon and his brother, Jack, are the only two others left alive in our little hunting party. Peter tells them gather up the bodies and burn them. I don't bother to help. No one says a word to me about it. Those dead things are scary but people like me are scarier and that's why we'll be the last to die besides I know the whole thing is a waste of time, seen it done before, but if Peter wants to try to clean up our tracks and lower the odds of more of the dead things coming down out of the hills, who am I to crush his hope.

    
I think deep down Peter knows the truth too on some level though he would never admit it to the folk in his town or even to himself. Peter watches the fire as the “brothers dim” get our horses and the sun falls from the sky then we're all in the saddle on our way back to Springtown. Too bad for us, they have beaten us there. I can smell the dead before our horses crest the hills around the town and we see the fires burning. Once glance at the mess below would be enough to tell any sane person to get the hell out of dodge and make dust in another direction, any direction but down there, only Peter ain't sane when it comes to his town. He's got to try to save them. He kicks his horse's sides, charging down the hill, so fast it surprises even me.

    
The brothers follow him. I pause for a second, taking the time to light up a smoke, weighing my options. The town's already paid up, no reason for me to go down there but I decide to play the good guy anyway and do them all a favor. I hear the sound of metal scraping leather as my revolver comes free of its holster. My first shot splatters Peter's skull open before anyone so much as hears the shot. The brothers are stunned, too confused by my actions to go for their on weapons on instinct. I take out Jack next because he's the smarter and faster of the pair of idiots. I put a bullet in his face and watch him topple off his horse then I get sloppy. Don't know why, bad luck, the glare of the stars, who knows? It takes me three rounds to drop Dillon for good. I feel a bit bad about the gut shot, never should have happened but the third one I put in his eye means he won't be getting up later so it's not like he'll be upset about it.

    
I stare at Dillon's body still telling myself I took the high road. Peter never had the chance to see his dead wife coming screaming at him with red smeared lips wailing for the taste of his flesh. And for the brothers, my sloppy work was at least cleaner than being ripped apart and eaten.

    
I turn my horse away from Springtown's ruins to try to find somewhere else to breathe a while longer but I know even the last to die has to die sometime. Though I won't see Hell tonight, other than the one on this earth now, I'm still just the walking dead myself. There's a set of yellow teeth or a bullet out there somewhere waiting for me to find it. And somehow, with the way the world is dying, I think it will be sooner rather than later.

THE END

7 - Sunday Watch

    
The cities were dead. At least that's the way Travis figured it.

    
Most folk here in Jackson died that first night when all hell broke loose. It'd taken every officer in the department and every able bodied man sheriff Morgan could enlist to clear out the town and bring back some semblance of order. Travis knew Morgan was doing all he could.

    
Hell, everyone in town was but he still hated sitting out here in the field by the interstate on a Sunday afternoon. He'd rather have been home watching the races except there weren't any races anymore.

    
Travis guessed the NASCAR drivers were dead too. He hated to imagine Dale Jr. stumbling around in the pit at some track somewhere, his rotting flesh stinking to high heavens because the poor bastard was too mindless to get out of the sun.

    
Travis picked up the AK-47 from the passenger seat and opened the patrol car's door to stretch his legs. Time passed slowly these days whether you were sitting on your ass in a field keeping an eye out for the wandering dead or sitting in the bar with your buddies, it didn't matter. It always felt like you were just waiting to die.

    
The once high grass crunched under Travis's boots as he got out of the car. Even the damn dead getting back on their feet and eating the living hadn't ended the drought here in Jackson. Everything green was drying up and dying like the rest of the world. He caught the sight of something moving on the interstate from out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a dead man dressed in National Guard combat fatigues making his way down the interstate's exit ramp to the road beside the field. Travis checked the silencer attached to the barrel of his rifle and sighed wondering how many of the dead he'd sent to hell over the last few weeks. Had to be going on a hundred, he was sure.

    
He leaned over the hood of the car and took aim, only squeezing the trigger when he was sure of his shot. The bullet struck the man's head snapping it backwards before the man's body stopped in its tracks and toppled to the asphalt.

    
"Head shot,” Travis muttered and smiled. “That fucker is staying down."

    
He walked out of the field, shouldering his weapon as he went.

    
This was the part of his job he hated the most. Now that the thing was dead again, he had to drag its body out of sight so that any other corpses which strayed by wouldn't see it and come to investigate in hopes that the body was still fresh enough to feed on.

    
The man was Travis's third kill of the afternoon. The things were showing up more and more with each passing day. If their numbers didn't level out soon, Travis would have to start walking out to the fields because Morgan would convince the town that it was the noise of the patrol cars in an otherwise silent word which was attracting the dead. Travis admitted that Morgan might be on to something with that theory but sooner or later a good portion of the dead from Asheville and the other close cities would wander their way into Jackson regardless. It was just cold and simple logic that the creatures would spread out in search of food and there were so many of them that it was a statistical certainty that enough of them would eventually make it to the town to wipe it off the face of the Earth.

    
Travis reached body of the man and stood over it. He thought he recognized him in spite of the maggots which swam over the man's flesh and the gapping hole in his skull. Yep, it was Billy Clayton alright. There was no doubting it. Billy's unit had been called up by the governor to help contain the outbreak of dead in the cities when the shit first hit the fan. Travis remembered driving out to Billy's house with Morgan the day before Billy had left. Morgan had done all he could to convince Billy not to leave the town but Billy was young and stubborn. He bet Billy wished he'd listened to Morgan now.

    
Travis squatted down and pulled Billy's military issue sidearm from its holster and inspected it. He popped the clip and checked the firing mechanism before he slid the gun into his own belt. A good weapon and ammo were not things you left to go to waste no matter who their owner had been. Travis picked up Billy's body with his hands under Billy's arms and started to haul his remains over to the ditch beside the road. The sound of someone moaning caused Travis to jerk his head up. Billy's body thumped to the road as Travis let go of it. “Oh, holy... ” Travis breathed. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Hundreds of bodies were heading down the interstate's exit ramp towards him, pouring onto the road like ants from a hill, only they weren't just coming from the interstate. They were coming out of the damned trees all around the field too.

    
Travis raced back to his car. The creatures were already dangerously close as he slid into the vehicle's driver seat and grabbed up the radio. “Morgan! Answer me damn it! They're coming! Hundreds of them!” The radio crackled but remained silent otherwise. No response came.

    
Travis fished around in his pocket for the keys. He had to stand up and get out of the car before he could dig them out keeping his eyes locked onto the approaching horde of decaying bastards. In his hurry, he dropped the keys as he yanked them out. He whirled around to pick them up from where they'd landed behind him to come face to face with Morgan himself, only it wasn't Morgan. Dull, glazed over eyes stared into his own above the blood stained uniform Morgan wore. They told the tale of the town's fate. The dead must be pouring in from everywhere,

    
Travis thought. He screamed as Morgan's cold hands grabbed his shoulders and held him in place as the sheriff's teeth sank into his throat. Travis's scream became a sickening gargling noise as his blood welled up inside him and leaked out from his mouth as Morgan chewed. He fell to the ground with Morgan on top of him still tearing into his flesh. A few of the dead stopped to join Morgan in his feast but the rest walked on towards the town of Jackson to see if anyone else was left alive.