Cattle: Chapters 31-35 (THE END)
31. Herd
There were dozens of them, just in the one narrow alley, and what looked like thousands at the head and foot of it. The lightning revealed the ragged revenants in strobe light flashes. Men, women, children, their clothes hanging in frayed tatters, or naked, their bodies shriveled and skeletal. Ian had dashed right into the midst of the creatures, and was pivoting around to retreat, eyes wide, dreadlocks swinging, even as the lightning passed and darkness came sliding back down like a shutter.“Get back!” he yelled. In a final blip of lightning, Brent saw the heads of several of the chompers twist in the young man’s direction. Milky white eyes locked onto the source of the cry. Wrinkled lips split back from sharp broken teeth. Roo screamed, and Brent clamped his hand over her mouth too late. He backpedalled, pulling her with him as she screamed against his palm.“Back inside!” Muriel yelled.Lightning flashed again and Brent saw Ian struggling in the hands of several zombies. They had grabbed ahold of him, were inclining their heads to bite, jaws gaping.“Get off me!” he snarled, twisting in their grips, and then he was free, and he went stumbling into the kid and his girl, who stood frozen in shock at the foot of the ramp. Ian and the girl went down in a tangle of limbs.Zombies howl when they’ve spotted prey, and that’s what they did now. The ones nearest to their group began to howl first, but the cry spread quickly through the herd. Within moments, their combined yowls had become a choral hum. It was deafening. The very air seemed to shiver with it.Lightning flashed again and again. Rain slashed the air like silver razors. Brent passed backwards through the warehouse door, Roo in tow, as Ian clambered to his feet and leapt clear of Amy. The kid was bending to his girlfriend, reaching out for her flailing hand.Before he could grab her hand and pull her up, zombies seized her ankles and jerked her away from him.“Amy!” he yelled. “No!”Amy screamed as she was bore into their arms. She reached out to him, her hand a pale starfish, as the zombies encircled her, and then she was enveloped in their dark, writhing mass. With a wet tearing sound, her cries fell silent.A zombie went tottering toward the kid, mouth agape, arms out straight like Frankenstein’s monster. With a furious “Hiyah!” the kid jumped into the air and kicked the creature in the head. Amazingly, the zombie’s head snapped off its neck and went flying into the crowd.Ian stumbled through the door past Brent and Roo, arms and legs pinwheeling. He crashed into a pallet of boxes and crumpled to the floor, panting.“Max!” Brent yelled.The kid kicked another zombie down, then turned and pelted up the ramp, head down, arms and legs pumping. As Brent shoved the door shut, he could see the zombie horde converging on the supermarket.“This door isn’t going to hold,” he said, throwing the deadlock.“We’re dead!” Ian sobbed in the dark. “Oh, daddy, we’re going to die!”“No, we’re not!” Muriel said scoldingly. “We can climb the shelves and hide in the rafters.”Brent looked up, but it was too dark to see.The door shuddered as the first of the zombies crashed into it. The first blow nearly took it off its hinges. Roo screamed again. “Max, have you still got those matches?” Brent called.“Yeah,” Max said. Light flared, revealing his teary face. He held the match up, wiping his cheeks with his free hand.“See!” Muriel said, pointing toward the ceiling. “There’s a partial floor up there. We can climb up there and hide. The zombies won’t climb up after us. I’ve never seen one of them climb, anyway.”The door shuddered again and again as more zombies battered against it.Brent nodded. “Here! Everyone start climbing!” He pushed Roo toward one of the storage units. Hands trembling, Roo seized ahold of one of the steel shelves and pulled herself up. She wasn’t far enough along in her pregnancy for it to interfere with her movements, and she was halfway to the rafters in just a few moments. Brent pushed Muriel ahead of him. She kissed him on the cheek before she started up. An older woman, she progressed a little slower than Roo. Brent put his hands on her plump behind and pushed. Ian was climbing one of the other shelves. The kid stood behind Brent, holding up his match.The match burned down to his finger, and he dropped it with a hiss.“I can’t see!” Roo shrilled.“Hang on!”Another match flared.“Hurry!” Brent called.Roo climbed onto the very top shelf, then hopped to the raised deck. She peered over the side at them as Brent started up, her eyes wide and glistening. Muriel got to the top, and Roo reached out and helped her hop the divide between the shelf and the partial floor.The kid started up behind Brent, trying to hold the match as he climbed. The match went out and he cursed. Brent froze, waiting for him to light another. He heard the kid curse again, and the soft sound of the matchbox falling to the ground.“I dropped it!” the kid cried.In the darkness, the door of the storeroom exploded open. It crashed to the ground, admitting the zombie horde.“Just climb!” Brent yelled, feeling his way up in the dark.He got to the top shelf and crouched there for a moment, heart racing in his chest. In the dark below, the room began to fill up with zombies. He could hear them crashing through the stockroom in the dark, falling over boxes, smashing into the walls. The shelf he was on shuddered as they stumbled into the base of it.Panting, the kid pulled himself up and kneeled beside him. “We can’t jump across in the dark,” he gasped into Brent’s ear. “We can’t see!”Then, dimly from the supermarket, a chorus of screams. Some of the deadheads had stumbled upon the occupied section of the building. The zombie howls increased in volume. The dark below seemed to ripple and heave as the zombie horde stampeded through the storeroom.Lightning flickered in the windows. For a second he could see them below: wall-to-wall zombies, racing now through the plastic partition and into the supermarket beyond.We’ve killed them all, Brent thought, but the horror of it was too great. He instantly blocked it from his mind.They heard gunfire, both inside the building and outside of it.A floodlight went on in the yard, and faint, indirect light spilled into the loading bay. Before he lost that wan illumination, Brent leapt across the gap to the raised storage platform. The kid followed a moment later. Muriel and Roo huddled over them, stroking and kissing them as they crouched there and trembled.“It’s too far!” Ian called from the top of his shelf. He was standing upright, but the gap between his shelf and the platform was a good eight feet.Brent studied the rafters, trying to figure out a safe passage for his friend to cross. Ian could join them if he was brave enough to shuffle across the beams.Before he could find a path, however, several zombies spotted the lanky young man standing atop the shelf. They seized the steel shelving unit and began to yank on it. With a sharp report, its bolts broke free of the cinderblock wall. The shelf toppled forward into the crowd. Ian wailed as he fell backward into the zombie horde. They converged on him, fingers curled into claws, teeth gnashing. Brent closed his eyes a moment before they tore him limb from limb.
32. Aftermath
The morning of their third day in the rafters, Brent woke and discovered that the stockroom below was clear of zombies. He sat up and tried to summon some spit in his dry and sandpapery mouth. In the silent supermarket, the breathing of his companions seemed overly loud—to Brent, they sounded like The Three Stooges from the old black-and-white comedy shorts-- but it was a good sound, a reassuring sound. Muriel had slept on his left, Roo on his right between Brent and the kid. Muriel was snoring softly. The kid was on his side, one arm draped across Roo’s waist.Three days… It had taken the zombie herd three days to pass through the town of Manfried. For three days, the quartet of survivors had huddled in the rafters of the building, with no food and no water to drink and nothing to keep them warm but their own body heat. It was the longest three days of his life, the miserable tedium relieved only once, when the kid attempted to amuse them by hanging his rear end over the side of the platform and crapping on the heads of the zombies below.The screams of the dying had faded shortly after the zombie horde invaded the building that first night, but the sounds of destruction had continued on until dawn. By the end of the second day, the stream of zombies passing through the building had thinned, but there were still too many for them to chance climbing down and making a run for the truck.Brent sat and watched the doors for over an hour, but saw no zombie stragglers. Not a single one. Perhaps they could climb down today. They had to come down today. They were dying of dehydration.Sadly, Brent thought his need for a cigarette was almost as maddening as his thirst for water. He had gotten terribly addicted during his captivity. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d die for a cigarette right then, but it was a close call.Muriel woke next, and sat watching the doors with him for a while. She sat close to him for warmth, and he put his arm around her shoulder, thinking vaguely that he liked the way she smelled. Even unwashed, she had an appealing odor.“I think we should climb down,” Muriel said finally.“I agree,” Brent replied.“Let’s do it before the young ones wake up,” she suggested. “We’ll scout the area. Bring them back something to drink.”“Okay,” Brent said.He stood, and for a second he had to hold onto a beam as his head swam dizzily, the world around him fading in and out.“You okay?” Muriel asked.“Yeah. Just give me a second.” Brent weathered the dizzy spell, blinked his eyes rapidly. When it had passed, he held his hand out to Muriel. “Careful standing up,” he said.“Whoo,” Muriel breathed when she stood. She smiled at him, eyebrows arched. “I used to have to smoke some weed to get a feeling like that.”Brent chuckled.They stepped carefully over Roo and the kid, made their way to the edge of the platform. Now that it was light out, the gap between the shelf and the partial floor looked trifling. Funny how wide it had seemed the night they’d tried to escape! In the dark, with zombies rampaging beneath them, that little gap had looked like a bottomless chasm. Brent stepped across, waited for Muriel, and then they climbed to the floor below.The back door of the loading bay lay flat on the concrete floor. Brilliant sunshine angled through the open doorway. It was warmer out today than it had been previously. The storm had passed, and the sky was blue and clear. Easter lilies had bloomed at the edge of the lawn directly across the alley from the supermarket. In the sunshine, each of the bright little yellow blooms was surrounded by a bright little yellow nimbus of light.Muriel a step behind him, Brent crept to the open doorway and stuck his head outside. He looked up and down the alley.“No zombies,” he said.“Is the truck still there?” Muriel asked.Brent looked back to the east. There on the corner at the end of the alley was a large blue Ford.“Yep,” Brent said. He withdrew his head.Muriel looked at him anxiously. “Do… do you want to go up front?”Brent considered.“There might be survivors,” Muriel said.“Might be zombies, too,” Brent replied.She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with her eyebrows raised.“All right,” he relented.They crossed the loading bay. The plastic strips that separated the loading bay from the interior corridor had been torn down. The plastic blinds lay sprawled throughout the hallway, covered in muddy footprints. Brent led the way, Muriel close behind him. The swinging doors were still intact.“Be careful,” she said.Brent leant his ear to the doors. Pushed through.“Good Lord!” Brent whispered.The interior of the supermarket had been destroyed, looked like the wreckage left over from a tornado or some other natural disaster. The main doors were torn off their hinges. The big display windows were smashed out. (The slivers of glass jutting from the frames made them look like gaping mouths with sharp teeth.) All the barricades the zombie crews had erected the morning the herd arrived had been torn asunder. The partitions were knocked over and lay in untidy piles of lumber and paneling. Tattered pieces of clothes and bedding drifted in the breeze. Brent expected to see bodies, lots of mangled bodies, but there were no bodies. There was dried blood everywhere-- on the walls, on the floor-- but not a single corpse. Not even a gnawed on bone.Muriel followed him onto the sales floor, staring around in amazement.“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s all gone!”“Oh… my… God!” a croaking voice exclaimed.Brent and Muriel started as a deadhead stepped from the manager’s office. It was the heavyset female zombie with the flat, jowly face. She aimed a pistol at them, squinting one eye. “How did you survive?” she demanded.Brent put his hands up. A moment later, Muriel overcame her surprise enough to do the same.“Look what I found,” the female zombie said, grinning toward someone in the office behind her. “Breakfast!”Brent opened his mouth to speak, and the woman’s head exploded. Blood, brains and bone fragments erupted from the left side of her temple. She dropped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.Harold stepped out of the office, brandishing his own pistol. He grinned at Brent as he holstered the weapon. “What a cunt, right?” he said.“Harold!” Brent exclaimed. He started to embrace his friend, but Harold flashed his palms, warning him off. “Not too close!” he said. “I’m having trouble controlling myself… lot of blood in here… the smell, you know...”Brent stopped. “I’m glad you made it,” he said.“You, too, kiddo,” Harold responded. “I saw the truck was still in the alley. I figured you and your friends got ate.”“We climbed into the rafters,” Brent explained.“I hid in your old bunkroom. Pulled some mattresses over me. Me and ugly over here. We just crawled out this morning.”“Did anyone else survive?” Brent asked.“Several,” Harold said. “You gotta get out of here now, kiddo. They’re roaming around town, rounding up anyone who got loose during the attack. They could be back any minute.”“Well, come on then,” Brent said with a wave, turning toward the storeroom. “Let’s shit and git!”“No,” Harold said.“What? What do you mean? Come on, man! Let’s go!”“I can’t go with you,” Harold said, and he gave Brent a funny smile. It was one of those smiles that were joyful and sad at the same time. The kind of smile you gave someone when they were going away for good, but you knew they were going to be happy.“What are you talking about? Why can’t you go with us?” Brent asked.“They’re not going to let me into the Free Zone. I’m not one of you anymore,” Harold said. “I don’t think I really thought about it until this morning. Until I came out here and… you know… all the blood… I was just trying to get us out of here. I never stopped to think…” “Harold!”“I can’t even trust myself to be around you,” Harold said. “It’s taking all I got not to run at you right now.”“Harold…”“You know what you smell like to me right now, kiddo? A big porterhouse steak with all the trimmings. Ain’t that a bitch? All I want to do right now is tear you open and eat your guts!”Brent’s shoulders fell. “So this is goodbye? You want me to leave you behind?”“No,” Harold said. He pulled out his pistol and held it toward Brent, grip first. “I want you to put me out of my misery.”Muriel gasped, and Brent’s entire body rocked back, as if Harold had taken a swipe at him. “Harold, I can’t do that!” he gasped.“You have to,” Harold said. “I can’t do it myself, kiddo. You know that. I’m Catholic. I’ll go to hell.”“Harold--!”“I don’t want to be this way!” Harold said urgently. “It hurts, Brent! It hurts all the time! They give us drugs, but the drugs only dim the pain. They don’t make it go away. It hurts so bad I can’t think straight, and all I want to do is hurt someone. Hurt them and kill them and eat them. It’s worse than being dead. It’s a living hell.”“Harold…”“Please!” Harold begged. “I’m already dead anyway. My heart don’t beat. My dick don’t work. What good is a life like this? I’m already dead, kiddo. I died that day in the woods.”Brent felt tears running down his cheeks, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. He let his friend see them. He wanted Harold to have them.“Please?” Harold said, one last time. “I’d do the same for you…?”“Okay,” Brent said. He stepped forward, hand out.Harold placed the gun in Brent’s palm. He got down on his knees and clasped his hands, said a quick prayer. “See you when you get here,” he said.“You, too,” Brent said, pressing the barrel to his friend’s forehead.
33. Ford
The report of the pistol echoed and died away. Harold, blood dribbling from the hole in his forehead, toppled onto his side. Brent looked at the gun in his hand. He wanted to throw it down, never wanted to touch a gun again, but they might need it later. Better hang onto it.“Brent?” Muriel said behind him.“He was my best friend,” Brent said, his voice toneless.“I know, honey, but we need to go.”Muriel had turned her head away when Brent put the barrel of the pistol to Harold’s forehead, but now she looked. She was pale, her lips a thin, downwardly bowed line. She tugged on Brent’s arm.“Brent?”As if to underscore her statement, the distant hum of a car engine drifted through the gaping display windows. It seemed to be coming from the west. Whoever the driver was, he was putting the pedal to the metal.“Brent!” Muriel said again, speaking, and tugging on his arm, much more emphatically.Brent nodded. “Okay,” he said. He turned and followed her.The gunfire had awakened Roo and Max. They peeked down from the elevated platform like a couple of lion cubs.“Is it safe?” Roo said.“Who’s doing all the shootin’?” the kid asked. He saw the pistol in Brent’s hand then and said, “Hey! Where’d ya get that gun?”“The herd has passed,” Muriel called up to them. “It’s safe to come down now.”“And hurry!” Brent added. “We’ve got to get out of here!”“Hurry? Why?” Roo asked, hopping across the gap to the top of the shelves.“Some of the deadheads survived, too,” Brent said as she climbed down. “They’re out looking for escapees right now. If they come back and find us here…”Roo climbed down a lot faster. Max slid over the side of the platform, hanging by his fingers for a moment, then dropped. Everyone cried out, thinking his ankles were going to shatter when he hit the concrete, but he landed in a crouch and rose up with a proud grin. “What?” he said, scowling at their fear-struck expressions.No time to scold him. Probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, Brent thought. “Come on,” he said, and he jogged to the door. He stopped to peek out as everyone filed up behind him, then ran down the ramp and made his way to the blue Ford at the end of the alley.There were only four of them now. They piled into the cab of the truck, Brent behind the wheel, Muriel next to him, the kid beside the passenger window, and Roo plopped down on his lap“Oh, no!” Muriel gasped, staring down at the gearshift lever. She looked at Brent anxiously. “Can you drive a manual?”“Of course, I can,” Brent assured her. “I’m from Tennessee.” He handed Muriel the pistol to hold. She put the safety on carefully, like it might explode at any moment, then held it in her lap.Brent examined the controls of the vehicle, trying to familiarize himself with its workings as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was a little disconcerted. It had been years since he’d driven an automobile. It had been so long that sitting behind the wheel of the Ford was like sitting behind the controls of some exotic spacecraft. He felt like he didn’t belong there.Just do it, he encouraged himself. Like riding a bike.He flipped down the visor and caught the key as it fell. Thrust it into the ignition slot. Gave it a twist. The engine caught on the first try, thank God. He had expected the old truck to give him fits, maybe refuse to start at all, send them packing on foot. He depressed the brake and clutch, shifted into first.“Rotter,” Max said, and they twisted around in the seat to look. At the head of the alley, a thoroughly decayed deadhead was shuffling slowly but determinedly in their direction, dragging one leg behind it. It was hardly recognizable as human, its flesh hard and glossy, like the mummified remains of some Egyptian prince. It was sexless, missing an arm, a sad specimen of its kind. “Must be a straggler,” Brent said, dismissing the harmless creature. “It can’t hurt us. It’s going to take half an hour for it to get over here.”“Yes, but if there’s one, there may be more,” Muriel said. “Maybe a lot more.”“We’re going,” Brent said, and he promptly popped the clutch.The Ford died. Muriel looked panicked. Brent turned the key in the ignition—pleaseohpleaseohpleasestartagain!—and started the truck a second time. This time he released the clutch a little gentler.With a lurch, they started forward.Max and Roo cried, “Yaayyy!”“See,” Brent said, as he guided them onto the street. “I got this!”“Why are you stopping at the stop sign?” Muriel asked.“Oh, yeah!” Brent said, blushing, and pulled out onto the main road. “Sorry about that!"
34. America
Their journey to the Free Zone passed mostly without incident.Brent wasn’t familiar with the town of Manfried, but he and Harold had possessed an old road map, an atlas they had pored over countless times as they ran for the Free Zone, and he remembered enough to get them from Manfried to the nearest interstate highway.It was a short jaunt, just a few miles. Nevertheless, it took them nearly fifteen minutes to get there, as the road was buckled and there were clumps of weeds bursting through the pavement like tall green feather dusters. The first mile of road leading from the grocery story was also littered with broken glass and boards and clumps of mattress stuffing from the breeding facility. He had to steer back and forth to avoid the worst of it. “They must have pushed it along ahead of them after moving on from the place,” Brent said, steering carefully around the wreckage.There were bodies, too.Well, pieces of bodies. The pieces were barely recognizable as human, or even as originating from a living creature of any kind. But Brent considered that a blessing, as he did not know how he would react if they should come across an identifiable chunk of Maudelle, or Traci Hewlett, or Bernice Mitchell, or God forbid, one of the little ones, one of the babies the women had been allowed to keep. Brent did not believe he would be able to bear it if he saw one of the little ones… or maybe he would. When life gives you lemons, you don’t always make lemonade, you just get used to the smell of lemons.It’s our fault, Brent thought as he steered around a clump of grass. A ragged sheet had gotten caught up in the weeds and was flapping in the wind. We let them in when we made for the Ford. We let them in the back door, and they tore the place apart.He knew it would do no good to let that guilt tumble over and over again in his head, like rocks in a rock polisher. Nothing shiny was ever going to come of it. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He had always been very good at feeling guilty.At least now it was justified.About a mile from the facility they began to pass a few more zombie stragglers, creatures like the one in the alley who were too worn out or injured to keep up with the herd anymore. The kid wanted Brent to run them over. “Are you crazy?” Brent cried. “That would be like hitting a deer!” Brent steered around the creatures instead, and the kid had to content himself with yelling disparaging comments from the passenger window. The withered deadheads groaned and swiped at the passing vehicle but could do little to impede them.The onramp of the I-25 was on a hill. As Brent prepared to turn onto the ramp and get on the interstate, Roo spotted a great concentration of zombies on the plains to the east. “Look!” she cried, pointing in that direction. Brent hit the breaks and they just stared, amazed by the sheer number of zombies in the valley below. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. They covered the entire area, which must have been at least four or five square miles, before vanishing into a large wooded ridge.“It’s like a murmuration of starlings,” Muriel said quietly.“A what?” the kid asked.“A large flock of birds,” Muriel supplied.“Ah.”“They’re going east, too,” Brent said. “The Free Zone is north of here. I don’t see any tanks herding them along, either. Guess your friend Luke was full of shit.”“Maybe not,” Muriel said. “That could have been resurrects preying on the herd.”“What do you mean?” Brent asked.“Like Indians hunting buffaloes,” Muriel explained. “They ride out to the herd in their cars, stay at the fringe of the mass, shoot from their windows. Later, after the herd has moved on, they would just have to collect the bodies. Be a good way to get some food. Efficient. Relatively safe for the hunters, too. To an outside observer, though, it might look like they were herding them along.”Brent nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds logical. That’s probably what he saw.”They watched the herd for a minute or so, then continued on their way.They did not see any other survivors.By nightfall they were halfway to the Free Zone. In the Before Times, the drive from Manfried to Peoria would have taken four, five hours, tops, but Brent was only able to drive at any respectable speed in fits and starts. Here and there, the roads were in good repair and he could put the hammer down for a bit, but most of the time they had to creep along about thirty miles per hour, threading in and out of abandoned vehicles and gaping potholes, clumps of weeds and fallen limbs. They passed a good number of wandering chompers, but no great herds and no meat patrols. Nearly a decade had passed since the Phage swept across the globe, and since deadheads could not reproduce like living men and women could, the world was becoming bigger and emptier every day.“Someday there’s going to be more people than zombies,” Brent said. “And then the world will be like to used to be.”“I hope not,” Muriel said. “I can do without politics and war.”“And taxes,” Brent added.Muriel laughed. “You know what they say about death and taxes. But hopefully we’ll do better next time.”They stopped at a small roadside motel just before sundown, parking in the back so the Ford wasn’t visible to any passing vehicles. None of them wanted to stop, but Brent didn’t want to drive with the headlights on. “If there are any smart ones nearby,” he explained, “they’ll be able to see our headlights from miles away.”Armed with the pistol he had killed his best friend with, Brent and the kid checked the premises for chompers. Finding nothing but a sun-bleached skeleton lying in the parking lot, they broke into one of the rooms on the second floor. While the women barricaded the window, Brent and Max ranged through the building for supplies. They broke open a soda machine and stocked up on bottled water, got towels and blankets and robes from the linen room, even managed to scrounge up a couple cans of food. Everyone put on robes when they returned to the room with their bounty, laughing at the strangeness of it, all of them wearing the same style white terrycloth robe. They feasted on canned vegetables and bottled water as the light drained from the world, and then they bedded down for the night. The room had two full size beds. Brent and Muriel slept in one bed. Roo and the kid slept in the other. Roo wanted to sleep with Brent and Muriel, but they both said no at the same time-- and hopefully, Brent thought, for the same reason.That night, after the kids had fallen asleep, Muriel rolled over to face Brent and whispered, “I know I’m several years older than you, but I’d like to be your woman, if you’ll have me.”“I’ll have you if you’ll have me,” Brent whispered back.She stroked his beard very lightly with her fingertips and he bent his lips to hers, sliding his hand beneath her top.They continued on the next morning.They came across a wrecked RV a few miles from the motel they had stayed the night in. It was a white and tan Winnebego Vista, lying on its side on the shoulder of the road like a dead horse. It looked like a prop from a fantasy film, saplings growing up through its shattered windows, a toupee of grass speckled with tiny white flowers perched atop it. Brent thought it looked like a Hobbit house. Muriel was the only one who knew what a Hobbit was. The only reason he pulled over was because several large suitcases were scattered across the road beside it.“Be careful,” Muriel called as he and Max slid out of the cab of the truck. As the girls watched the area for danger, Brent and the kid hefted the suitcases onto the tailgate and popped them open.A couple of the suitcases were buggy and useless, but the others were fine, and there were quite a few clothes inside of them, men’s and women’s.Muriel jumped out of the truck when Brent held up two pair of high-heeled shoes, grinning like a triumphant fisherman.“Heels!” she breathed, her eyes alight. She grinned naughtily at him. “Oh, you are going to get it so good tonight!”They all managed to find a few outfits that fit, even the kid, who was kind of short. He just rolled up the legs and sleeves of his outfit and he was good to go. Roo put on a scoop neck white lace top and a very pretty pair of blue silk capri pants.Dressed in black dress pants and a white shirt and tie, Brent turned around in the middle of the road, arms out to his sides. “How do I look?” he asked.Walking a pretend catwalk in a shin-length red dress and high heels, Muriel pushed her hair up and said, “Almost as fine as me, sugar daddy!”They had to flee then as a chomper came running out of the woods at them. It was a big Bubba chomper in bib overalls with a stocky gray body covered in sores, but they got away without injury, and they all agreed that stopping for the RV had been a good idea, even though the zombie had scared them half to death. They say clothes make the man, but the truth is clothes make the human being, and they felt like human beings again with their slightly musty smelling newfound clothes.Shortly before noon, Roo suggested they try the radio. Brent and Muriel looked at one another with a flabbergasted “why didn’t we think of that?” expression. The thought hadn’t occurred to either of them, they had gone so long without the luxury. Muriel immediately turned the radio on, and gaped at Brent when it actually worked. She dialed through the stations until it picked up, faint and crackly with distance, the Free Zone radio station.It was just music for a while, what they used to call easy listening. Roo and the kid watched in dumbfounded amazement as Brent and Muriel sang along to “Right Here Waiting For You” and “Islands in the Stream” and Neil Diamond’s “America”.That last brought tears to Brent’s eyes as he sang, but they were happy tears. “Home! Don't it seem so far away?” he sang, grinning at Muriel as he steered. “Oh, we're traveling light today! In the eye of the storm…!” By the time the song was over, both of them were weeping, and Roo and Max, who had very little memory of a time and place called America, were looking a little misty eyed themselves.The song ended. The dulcet tones of one half of the duo known as the Last Living Deejays purred through the old Ford’s crackling speakers. (“Ronni!” Brent cried at the sound of her voice, remembering all the times he and Harold had squatted in the cold and dark and listened to her on the radio.) “Home,” she said. “Isn’t that a beautiful word? Sometimes I think it’s the most beautiful word in the English language. That song was “America” by legendary performer Neil Diamond. We dedicate it to all you people trying to make it Home right now. Wherever you are, however hopeless your situation may seem, just know that we are still here, and we are waiting for you to come join us. However near, however far, however young, however old, sick, healthy, happy or in despair, it’s time to put on those walking shoes and come Home. Come Home, you brave souls. Come Home.”And they did.
35. Home
Muriel mopped the sweat from Roo’s forehead and replaced it with a kiss. “Come on, honey,” she said, stroking the girl’s cheek with the other hand, “you heard the doctor. Give us one more big push!”Roo’s entire body went rigid, teeth clenched, the muscles in her neck standing out. “I caaaaan’t!” she cried.Despite her denial, she could and she did. She held her breath and balled her hands into fists and pushed.Standing beside the doctor at the foot of the bed, Brent watched as his child spilled moistly from the teenager’s body. It came all at once, after what seemed like years of intense labor. The baby slithered out into the doctor’s waiting hands, all purple and wrinkly and covered in viscous goo, and Brent thought for a moment that he was going to faint. As the doctor wrapped his child in soft white swaddling, and a nurse stepped in to suction the baby’s nostrils and mouth, Brent stepped away and leaned against the counter.“Are you all right, Brent?” Muriel asked, as the world faded in and out on him for a moment.“I… Yeah, I’m fine,” Brent said. His legs felt like they had magically transformed into rubber. Or spaghetti noodles. Whichever was wobblier.“Is it over? Is it out?” Roo panted, and when the doctor said it was, she began to sob exhaustedly. Young as she was, and being her first child, her labor had been long and difficult. She was worn out. They all were. Brent and Muriel had stayed with her the whole time, from the moment her water broke at their apartment, nearly two days ago. They had all piled into the big blue Ford, just as they had when they escaped the town of Manfried, and drove her to the hospital: Brent, Muriel, Roo and Max.Max was here, too, waiting in the hallway. He wasn’t able to stay in the delivery room, not after the blood and shit started flying. He had bowed out with a distinctly queasy expression on his face, apologizing to Roo, who was his girlfriend now, but that was okay, because Roo had Muriel and Brent, and that was more than enough.“Would you like to hold your baby, Roo?” the doctor asked, rising from his stool with the baby in his arms.“Oh, yes! Yes, sir!” Roo exclaimed, smiling radiantly and holding her arms out. “Is it a boy or a girl?”“It’s a boy,” the doctor said, and he laid the newborn on his mother’s chest, the umbilical cord trailing across her belly for the moment. Brent had followed the doctor around the bed, and he leaned over Roo after the doctor stepped aside.The baby boy was pudgy and purple, looked like an beat up old baseball, but Brent thought he was just about the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Waving his fat little arms in front of his face, the little boy opened his mouth and began to squall.Muriel laughed and kissed Roo on the forehead again. “Oh, he’s just beautiful!” she said. “What are you going to name him?”Cradling the baby in her arms, Roo said, “I’m going to name him after my father. My father, and the man who helped us escape from that awful place. His name is Charles Harold Wilson.”“That’s a wonderful name,” Muriel said, and she smiled up at Brent. “Don’t you think so, hon?”“It sure is,” Brent said, shaking his newborn son’s tiny hand. “Welcome to the world, Charles Harold Wilson. It’s not as nice as it used to be, but we’re working real hard to fix it up for you!”
END
There were dozens of them, just in the one narrow alley, and what looked like thousands at the head and foot of it. The lightning revealed the ragged revenants in strobe light flashes. Men, women, children, their clothes hanging in frayed tatters, or naked, their bodies shriveled and skeletal. Ian had dashed right into the midst of the creatures, and was pivoting around to retreat, eyes wide, dreadlocks swinging, even as the lightning passed and darkness came sliding back down like a shutter.“Get back!” he yelled. In a final blip of lightning, Brent saw the heads of several of the chompers twist in the young man’s direction. Milky white eyes locked onto the source of the cry. Wrinkled lips split back from sharp broken teeth. Roo screamed, and Brent clamped his hand over her mouth too late. He backpedalled, pulling her with him as she screamed against his palm.“Back inside!” Muriel yelled.Lightning flashed again and Brent saw Ian struggling in the hands of several zombies. They had grabbed ahold of him, were inclining their heads to bite, jaws gaping.“Get off me!” he snarled, twisting in their grips, and then he was free, and he went stumbling into the kid and his girl, who stood frozen in shock at the foot of the ramp. Ian and the girl went down in a tangle of limbs.Zombies howl when they’ve spotted prey, and that’s what they did now. The ones nearest to their group began to howl first, but the cry spread quickly through the herd. Within moments, their combined yowls had become a choral hum. It was deafening. The very air seemed to shiver with it.Lightning flashed again and again. Rain slashed the air like silver razors. Brent passed backwards through the warehouse door, Roo in tow, as Ian clambered to his feet and leapt clear of Amy. The kid was bending to his girlfriend, reaching out for her flailing hand.Before he could grab her hand and pull her up, zombies seized her ankles and jerked her away from him.“Amy!” he yelled. “No!”Amy screamed as she was bore into their arms. She reached out to him, her hand a pale starfish, as the zombies encircled her, and then she was enveloped in their dark, writhing mass. With a wet tearing sound, her cries fell silent.A zombie went tottering toward the kid, mouth agape, arms out straight like Frankenstein’s monster. With a furious “Hiyah!” the kid jumped into the air and kicked the creature in the head. Amazingly, the zombie’s head snapped off its neck and went flying into the crowd.Ian stumbled through the door past Brent and Roo, arms and legs pinwheeling. He crashed into a pallet of boxes and crumpled to the floor, panting.“Max!” Brent yelled.The kid kicked another zombie down, then turned and pelted up the ramp, head down, arms and legs pumping. As Brent shoved the door shut, he could see the zombie horde converging on the supermarket.“This door isn’t going to hold,” he said, throwing the deadlock.“We’re dead!” Ian sobbed in the dark. “Oh, daddy, we’re going to die!”“No, we’re not!” Muriel said scoldingly. “We can climb the shelves and hide in the rafters.”Brent looked up, but it was too dark to see.The door shuddered as the first of the zombies crashed into it. The first blow nearly took it off its hinges. Roo screamed again. “Max, have you still got those matches?” Brent called.“Yeah,” Max said. Light flared, revealing his teary face. He held the match up, wiping his cheeks with his free hand.“See!” Muriel said, pointing toward the ceiling. “There’s a partial floor up there. We can climb up there and hide. The zombies won’t climb up after us. I’ve never seen one of them climb, anyway.”The door shuddered again and again as more zombies battered against it.Brent nodded. “Here! Everyone start climbing!” He pushed Roo toward one of the storage units. Hands trembling, Roo seized ahold of one of the steel shelves and pulled herself up. She wasn’t far enough along in her pregnancy for it to interfere with her movements, and she was halfway to the rafters in just a few moments. Brent pushed Muriel ahead of him. She kissed him on the cheek before she started up. An older woman, she progressed a little slower than Roo. Brent put his hands on her plump behind and pushed. Ian was climbing one of the other shelves. The kid stood behind Brent, holding up his match.The match burned down to his finger, and he dropped it with a hiss.“I can’t see!” Roo shrilled.“Hang on!”Another match flared.“Hurry!” Brent called.Roo climbed onto the very top shelf, then hopped to the raised deck. She peered over the side at them as Brent started up, her eyes wide and glistening. Muriel got to the top, and Roo reached out and helped her hop the divide between the shelf and the partial floor.The kid started up behind Brent, trying to hold the match as he climbed. The match went out and he cursed. Brent froze, waiting for him to light another. He heard the kid curse again, and the soft sound of the matchbox falling to the ground.“I dropped it!” the kid cried.In the darkness, the door of the storeroom exploded open. It crashed to the ground, admitting the zombie horde.“Just climb!” Brent yelled, feeling his way up in the dark.He got to the top shelf and crouched there for a moment, heart racing in his chest. In the dark below, the room began to fill up with zombies. He could hear them crashing through the stockroom in the dark, falling over boxes, smashing into the walls. The shelf he was on shuddered as they stumbled into the base of it.Panting, the kid pulled himself up and kneeled beside him. “We can’t jump across in the dark,” he gasped into Brent’s ear. “We can’t see!”Then, dimly from the supermarket, a chorus of screams. Some of the deadheads had stumbled upon the occupied section of the building. The zombie howls increased in volume. The dark below seemed to ripple and heave as the zombie horde stampeded through the storeroom.Lightning flickered in the windows. For a second he could see them below: wall-to-wall zombies, racing now through the plastic partition and into the supermarket beyond.We’ve killed them all, Brent thought, but the horror of it was too great. He instantly blocked it from his mind.They heard gunfire, both inside the building and outside of it.A floodlight went on in the yard, and faint, indirect light spilled into the loading bay. Before he lost that wan illumination, Brent leapt across the gap to the raised storage platform. The kid followed a moment later. Muriel and Roo huddled over them, stroking and kissing them as they crouched there and trembled.“It’s too far!” Ian called from the top of his shelf. He was standing upright, but the gap between his shelf and the platform was a good eight feet.Brent studied the rafters, trying to figure out a safe passage for his friend to cross. Ian could join them if he was brave enough to shuffle across the beams.Before he could find a path, however, several zombies spotted the lanky young man standing atop the shelf. They seized the steel shelving unit and began to yank on it. With a sharp report, its bolts broke free of the cinderblock wall. The shelf toppled forward into the crowd. Ian wailed as he fell backward into the zombie horde. They converged on him, fingers curled into claws, teeth gnashing. Brent closed his eyes a moment before they tore him limb from limb.
32. Aftermath
The morning of their third day in the rafters, Brent woke and discovered that the stockroom below was clear of zombies. He sat up and tried to summon some spit in his dry and sandpapery mouth. In the silent supermarket, the breathing of his companions seemed overly loud—to Brent, they sounded like The Three Stooges from the old black-and-white comedy shorts-- but it was a good sound, a reassuring sound. Muriel had slept on his left, Roo on his right between Brent and the kid. Muriel was snoring softly. The kid was on his side, one arm draped across Roo’s waist.Three days… It had taken the zombie herd three days to pass through the town of Manfried. For three days, the quartet of survivors had huddled in the rafters of the building, with no food and no water to drink and nothing to keep them warm but their own body heat. It was the longest three days of his life, the miserable tedium relieved only once, when the kid attempted to amuse them by hanging his rear end over the side of the platform and crapping on the heads of the zombies below.The screams of the dying had faded shortly after the zombie horde invaded the building that first night, but the sounds of destruction had continued on until dawn. By the end of the second day, the stream of zombies passing through the building had thinned, but there were still too many for them to chance climbing down and making a run for the truck.Brent sat and watched the doors for over an hour, but saw no zombie stragglers. Not a single one. Perhaps they could climb down today. They had to come down today. They were dying of dehydration.Sadly, Brent thought his need for a cigarette was almost as maddening as his thirst for water. He had gotten terribly addicted during his captivity. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d die for a cigarette right then, but it was a close call.Muriel woke next, and sat watching the doors with him for a while. She sat close to him for warmth, and he put his arm around her shoulder, thinking vaguely that he liked the way she smelled. Even unwashed, she had an appealing odor.“I think we should climb down,” Muriel said finally.“I agree,” Brent replied.“Let’s do it before the young ones wake up,” she suggested. “We’ll scout the area. Bring them back something to drink.”“Okay,” Brent said.He stood, and for a second he had to hold onto a beam as his head swam dizzily, the world around him fading in and out.“You okay?” Muriel asked.“Yeah. Just give me a second.” Brent weathered the dizzy spell, blinked his eyes rapidly. When it had passed, he held his hand out to Muriel. “Careful standing up,” he said.“Whoo,” Muriel breathed when she stood. She smiled at him, eyebrows arched. “I used to have to smoke some weed to get a feeling like that.”Brent chuckled.They stepped carefully over Roo and the kid, made their way to the edge of the platform. Now that it was light out, the gap between the shelf and the partial floor looked trifling. Funny how wide it had seemed the night they’d tried to escape! In the dark, with zombies rampaging beneath them, that little gap had looked like a bottomless chasm. Brent stepped across, waited for Muriel, and then they climbed to the floor below.The back door of the loading bay lay flat on the concrete floor. Brilliant sunshine angled through the open doorway. It was warmer out today than it had been previously. The storm had passed, and the sky was blue and clear. Easter lilies had bloomed at the edge of the lawn directly across the alley from the supermarket. In the sunshine, each of the bright little yellow blooms was surrounded by a bright little yellow nimbus of light.Muriel a step behind him, Brent crept to the open doorway and stuck his head outside. He looked up and down the alley.“No zombies,” he said.“Is the truck still there?” Muriel asked.Brent looked back to the east. There on the corner at the end of the alley was a large blue Ford.“Yep,” Brent said. He withdrew his head.Muriel looked at him anxiously. “Do… do you want to go up front?”Brent considered.“There might be survivors,” Muriel said.“Might be zombies, too,” Brent replied.She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with her eyebrows raised.“All right,” he relented.They crossed the loading bay. The plastic strips that separated the loading bay from the interior corridor had been torn down. The plastic blinds lay sprawled throughout the hallway, covered in muddy footprints. Brent led the way, Muriel close behind him. The swinging doors were still intact.“Be careful,” she said.Brent leant his ear to the doors. Pushed through.“Good Lord!” Brent whispered.The interior of the supermarket had been destroyed, looked like the wreckage left over from a tornado or some other natural disaster. The main doors were torn off their hinges. The big display windows were smashed out. (The slivers of glass jutting from the frames made them look like gaping mouths with sharp teeth.) All the barricades the zombie crews had erected the morning the herd arrived had been torn asunder. The partitions were knocked over and lay in untidy piles of lumber and paneling. Tattered pieces of clothes and bedding drifted in the breeze. Brent expected to see bodies, lots of mangled bodies, but there were no bodies. There was dried blood everywhere-- on the walls, on the floor-- but not a single corpse. Not even a gnawed on bone.Muriel followed him onto the sales floor, staring around in amazement.“I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s all gone!”“Oh… my… God!” a croaking voice exclaimed.Brent and Muriel started as a deadhead stepped from the manager’s office. It was the heavyset female zombie with the flat, jowly face. She aimed a pistol at them, squinting one eye. “How did you survive?” she demanded.Brent put his hands up. A moment later, Muriel overcame her surprise enough to do the same.“Look what I found,” the female zombie said, grinning toward someone in the office behind her. “Breakfast!”Brent opened his mouth to speak, and the woman’s head exploded. Blood, brains and bone fragments erupted from the left side of her temple. She dropped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been snipped.Harold stepped out of the office, brandishing his own pistol. He grinned at Brent as he holstered the weapon. “What a cunt, right?” he said.“Harold!” Brent exclaimed. He started to embrace his friend, but Harold flashed his palms, warning him off. “Not too close!” he said. “I’m having trouble controlling myself… lot of blood in here… the smell, you know...”Brent stopped. “I’m glad you made it,” he said.“You, too, kiddo,” Harold responded. “I saw the truck was still in the alley. I figured you and your friends got ate.”“We climbed into the rafters,” Brent explained.“I hid in your old bunkroom. Pulled some mattresses over me. Me and ugly over here. We just crawled out this morning.”“Did anyone else survive?” Brent asked.“Several,” Harold said. “You gotta get out of here now, kiddo. They’re roaming around town, rounding up anyone who got loose during the attack. They could be back any minute.”“Well, come on then,” Brent said with a wave, turning toward the storeroom. “Let’s shit and git!”“No,” Harold said.“What? What do you mean? Come on, man! Let’s go!”“I can’t go with you,” Harold said, and he gave Brent a funny smile. It was one of those smiles that were joyful and sad at the same time. The kind of smile you gave someone when they were going away for good, but you knew they were going to be happy.“What are you talking about? Why can’t you go with us?” Brent asked.“They’re not going to let me into the Free Zone. I’m not one of you anymore,” Harold said. “I don’t think I really thought about it until this morning. Until I came out here and… you know… all the blood… I was just trying to get us out of here. I never stopped to think…” “Harold!”“I can’t even trust myself to be around you,” Harold said. “It’s taking all I got not to run at you right now.”“Harold…”“You know what you smell like to me right now, kiddo? A big porterhouse steak with all the trimmings. Ain’t that a bitch? All I want to do right now is tear you open and eat your guts!”Brent’s shoulders fell. “So this is goodbye? You want me to leave you behind?”“No,” Harold said. He pulled out his pistol and held it toward Brent, grip first. “I want you to put me out of my misery.”Muriel gasped, and Brent’s entire body rocked back, as if Harold had taken a swipe at him. “Harold, I can’t do that!” he gasped.“You have to,” Harold said. “I can’t do it myself, kiddo. You know that. I’m Catholic. I’ll go to hell.”“Harold--!”“I don’t want to be this way!” Harold said urgently. “It hurts, Brent! It hurts all the time! They give us drugs, but the drugs only dim the pain. They don’t make it go away. It hurts so bad I can’t think straight, and all I want to do is hurt someone. Hurt them and kill them and eat them. It’s worse than being dead. It’s a living hell.”“Harold…”“Please!” Harold begged. “I’m already dead anyway. My heart don’t beat. My dick don’t work. What good is a life like this? I’m already dead, kiddo. I died that day in the woods.”Brent felt tears running down his cheeks, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. He let his friend see them. He wanted Harold to have them.“Please?” Harold said, one last time. “I’d do the same for you…?”“Okay,” Brent said. He stepped forward, hand out.Harold placed the gun in Brent’s palm. He got down on his knees and clasped his hands, said a quick prayer. “See you when you get here,” he said.“You, too,” Brent said, pressing the barrel to his friend’s forehead.
33. Ford
The report of the pistol echoed and died away. Harold, blood dribbling from the hole in his forehead, toppled onto his side. Brent looked at the gun in his hand. He wanted to throw it down, never wanted to touch a gun again, but they might need it later. Better hang onto it.“Brent?” Muriel said behind him.“He was my best friend,” Brent said, his voice toneless.“I know, honey, but we need to go.”Muriel had turned her head away when Brent put the barrel of the pistol to Harold’s forehead, but now she looked. She was pale, her lips a thin, downwardly bowed line. She tugged on Brent’s arm.“Brent?”As if to underscore her statement, the distant hum of a car engine drifted through the gaping display windows. It seemed to be coming from the west. Whoever the driver was, he was putting the pedal to the metal.“Brent!” Muriel said again, speaking, and tugging on his arm, much more emphatically.Brent nodded. “Okay,” he said. He turned and followed her.The gunfire had awakened Roo and Max. They peeked down from the elevated platform like a couple of lion cubs.“Is it safe?” Roo said.“Who’s doing all the shootin’?” the kid asked. He saw the pistol in Brent’s hand then and said, “Hey! Where’d ya get that gun?”“The herd has passed,” Muriel called up to them. “It’s safe to come down now.”“And hurry!” Brent added. “We’ve got to get out of here!”“Hurry? Why?” Roo asked, hopping across the gap to the top of the shelves.“Some of the deadheads survived, too,” Brent said as she climbed down. “They’re out looking for escapees right now. If they come back and find us here…”Roo climbed down a lot faster. Max slid over the side of the platform, hanging by his fingers for a moment, then dropped. Everyone cried out, thinking his ankles were going to shatter when he hit the concrete, but he landed in a crouch and rose up with a proud grin. “What?” he said, scowling at their fear-struck expressions.No time to scold him. Probably wouldn’t do any good anyway, Brent thought. “Come on,” he said, and he jogged to the door. He stopped to peek out as everyone filed up behind him, then ran down the ramp and made his way to the blue Ford at the end of the alley.There were only four of them now. They piled into the cab of the truck, Brent behind the wheel, Muriel next to him, the kid beside the passenger window, and Roo plopped down on his lap“Oh, no!” Muriel gasped, staring down at the gearshift lever. She looked at Brent anxiously. “Can you drive a manual?”“Of course, I can,” Brent assured her. “I’m from Tennessee.” He handed Muriel the pistol to hold. She put the safety on carefully, like it might explode at any moment, then held it in her lap.Brent examined the controls of the vehicle, trying to familiarize himself with its workings as quickly as possible. To tell the truth, he was a little disconcerted. It had been years since he’d driven an automobile. It had been so long that sitting behind the wheel of the Ford was like sitting behind the controls of some exotic spacecraft. He felt like he didn’t belong there.Just do it, he encouraged himself. Like riding a bike.He flipped down the visor and caught the key as it fell. Thrust it into the ignition slot. Gave it a twist. The engine caught on the first try, thank God. He had expected the old truck to give him fits, maybe refuse to start at all, send them packing on foot. He depressed the brake and clutch, shifted into first.“Rotter,” Max said, and they twisted around in the seat to look. At the head of the alley, a thoroughly decayed deadhead was shuffling slowly but determinedly in their direction, dragging one leg behind it. It was hardly recognizable as human, its flesh hard and glossy, like the mummified remains of some Egyptian prince. It was sexless, missing an arm, a sad specimen of its kind. “Must be a straggler,” Brent said, dismissing the harmless creature. “It can’t hurt us. It’s going to take half an hour for it to get over here.”“Yes, but if there’s one, there may be more,” Muriel said. “Maybe a lot more.”“We’re going,” Brent said, and he promptly popped the clutch.The Ford died. Muriel looked panicked. Brent turned the key in the ignition—pleaseohpleaseohpleasestartagain!—and started the truck a second time. This time he released the clutch a little gentler.With a lurch, they started forward.Max and Roo cried, “Yaayyy!”“See,” Brent said, as he guided them onto the street. “I got this!”“Why are you stopping at the stop sign?” Muriel asked.“Oh, yeah!” Brent said, blushing, and pulled out onto the main road. “Sorry about that!"
34. America
Their journey to the Free Zone passed mostly without incident.Brent wasn’t familiar with the town of Manfried, but he and Harold had possessed an old road map, an atlas they had pored over countless times as they ran for the Free Zone, and he remembered enough to get them from Manfried to the nearest interstate highway.It was a short jaunt, just a few miles. Nevertheless, it took them nearly fifteen minutes to get there, as the road was buckled and there were clumps of weeds bursting through the pavement like tall green feather dusters. The first mile of road leading from the grocery story was also littered with broken glass and boards and clumps of mattress stuffing from the breeding facility. He had to steer back and forth to avoid the worst of it. “They must have pushed it along ahead of them after moving on from the place,” Brent said, steering carefully around the wreckage.There were bodies, too.Well, pieces of bodies. The pieces were barely recognizable as human, or even as originating from a living creature of any kind. But Brent considered that a blessing, as he did not know how he would react if they should come across an identifiable chunk of Maudelle, or Traci Hewlett, or Bernice Mitchell, or God forbid, one of the little ones, one of the babies the women had been allowed to keep. Brent did not believe he would be able to bear it if he saw one of the little ones… or maybe he would. When life gives you lemons, you don’t always make lemonade, you just get used to the smell of lemons.It’s our fault, Brent thought as he steered around a clump of grass. A ragged sheet had gotten caught up in the weeds and was flapping in the wind. We let them in when we made for the Ford. We let them in the back door, and they tore the place apart.He knew it would do no good to let that guilt tumble over and over again in his head, like rocks in a rock polisher. Nothing shiny was ever going to come of it. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He had always been very good at feeling guilty.At least now it was justified.About a mile from the facility they began to pass a few more zombie stragglers, creatures like the one in the alley who were too worn out or injured to keep up with the herd anymore. The kid wanted Brent to run them over. “Are you crazy?” Brent cried. “That would be like hitting a deer!” Brent steered around the creatures instead, and the kid had to content himself with yelling disparaging comments from the passenger window. The withered deadheads groaned and swiped at the passing vehicle but could do little to impede them.The onramp of the I-25 was on a hill. As Brent prepared to turn onto the ramp and get on the interstate, Roo spotted a great concentration of zombies on the plains to the east. “Look!” she cried, pointing in that direction. Brent hit the breaks and they just stared, amazed by the sheer number of zombies in the valley below. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. They covered the entire area, which must have been at least four or five square miles, before vanishing into a large wooded ridge.“It’s like a murmuration of starlings,” Muriel said quietly.“A what?” the kid asked.“A large flock of birds,” Muriel supplied.“Ah.”“They’re going east, too,” Brent said. “The Free Zone is north of here. I don’t see any tanks herding them along, either. Guess your friend Luke was full of shit.”“Maybe not,” Muriel said. “That could have been resurrects preying on the herd.”“What do you mean?” Brent asked.“Like Indians hunting buffaloes,” Muriel explained. “They ride out to the herd in their cars, stay at the fringe of the mass, shoot from their windows. Later, after the herd has moved on, they would just have to collect the bodies. Be a good way to get some food. Efficient. Relatively safe for the hunters, too. To an outside observer, though, it might look like they were herding them along.”Brent nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds logical. That’s probably what he saw.”They watched the herd for a minute or so, then continued on their way.They did not see any other survivors.By nightfall they were halfway to the Free Zone. In the Before Times, the drive from Manfried to Peoria would have taken four, five hours, tops, but Brent was only able to drive at any respectable speed in fits and starts. Here and there, the roads were in good repair and he could put the hammer down for a bit, but most of the time they had to creep along about thirty miles per hour, threading in and out of abandoned vehicles and gaping potholes, clumps of weeds and fallen limbs. They passed a good number of wandering chompers, but no great herds and no meat patrols. Nearly a decade had passed since the Phage swept across the globe, and since deadheads could not reproduce like living men and women could, the world was becoming bigger and emptier every day.“Someday there’s going to be more people than zombies,” Brent said. “And then the world will be like to used to be.”“I hope not,” Muriel said. “I can do without politics and war.”“And taxes,” Brent added.Muriel laughed. “You know what they say about death and taxes. But hopefully we’ll do better next time.”They stopped at a small roadside motel just before sundown, parking in the back so the Ford wasn’t visible to any passing vehicles. None of them wanted to stop, but Brent didn’t want to drive with the headlights on. “If there are any smart ones nearby,” he explained, “they’ll be able to see our headlights from miles away.”Armed with the pistol he had killed his best friend with, Brent and the kid checked the premises for chompers. Finding nothing but a sun-bleached skeleton lying in the parking lot, they broke into one of the rooms on the second floor. While the women barricaded the window, Brent and Max ranged through the building for supplies. They broke open a soda machine and stocked up on bottled water, got towels and blankets and robes from the linen room, even managed to scrounge up a couple cans of food. Everyone put on robes when they returned to the room with their bounty, laughing at the strangeness of it, all of them wearing the same style white terrycloth robe. They feasted on canned vegetables and bottled water as the light drained from the world, and then they bedded down for the night. The room had two full size beds. Brent and Muriel slept in one bed. Roo and the kid slept in the other. Roo wanted to sleep with Brent and Muriel, but they both said no at the same time-- and hopefully, Brent thought, for the same reason.That night, after the kids had fallen asleep, Muriel rolled over to face Brent and whispered, “I know I’m several years older than you, but I’d like to be your woman, if you’ll have me.”“I’ll have you if you’ll have me,” Brent whispered back.She stroked his beard very lightly with her fingertips and he bent his lips to hers, sliding his hand beneath her top.They continued on the next morning.They came across a wrecked RV a few miles from the motel they had stayed the night in. It was a white and tan Winnebego Vista, lying on its side on the shoulder of the road like a dead horse. It looked like a prop from a fantasy film, saplings growing up through its shattered windows, a toupee of grass speckled with tiny white flowers perched atop it. Brent thought it looked like a Hobbit house. Muriel was the only one who knew what a Hobbit was. The only reason he pulled over was because several large suitcases were scattered across the road beside it.“Be careful,” Muriel called as he and Max slid out of the cab of the truck. As the girls watched the area for danger, Brent and the kid hefted the suitcases onto the tailgate and popped them open.A couple of the suitcases were buggy and useless, but the others were fine, and there were quite a few clothes inside of them, men’s and women’s.Muriel jumped out of the truck when Brent held up two pair of high-heeled shoes, grinning like a triumphant fisherman.“Heels!” she breathed, her eyes alight. She grinned naughtily at him. “Oh, you are going to get it so good tonight!”They all managed to find a few outfits that fit, even the kid, who was kind of short. He just rolled up the legs and sleeves of his outfit and he was good to go. Roo put on a scoop neck white lace top and a very pretty pair of blue silk capri pants.Dressed in black dress pants and a white shirt and tie, Brent turned around in the middle of the road, arms out to his sides. “How do I look?” he asked.Walking a pretend catwalk in a shin-length red dress and high heels, Muriel pushed her hair up and said, “Almost as fine as me, sugar daddy!”They had to flee then as a chomper came running out of the woods at them. It was a big Bubba chomper in bib overalls with a stocky gray body covered in sores, but they got away without injury, and they all agreed that stopping for the RV had been a good idea, even though the zombie had scared them half to death. They say clothes make the man, but the truth is clothes make the human being, and they felt like human beings again with their slightly musty smelling newfound clothes.Shortly before noon, Roo suggested they try the radio. Brent and Muriel looked at one another with a flabbergasted “why didn’t we think of that?” expression. The thought hadn’t occurred to either of them, they had gone so long without the luxury. Muriel immediately turned the radio on, and gaped at Brent when it actually worked. She dialed through the stations until it picked up, faint and crackly with distance, the Free Zone radio station.It was just music for a while, what they used to call easy listening. Roo and the kid watched in dumbfounded amazement as Brent and Muriel sang along to “Right Here Waiting For You” and “Islands in the Stream” and Neil Diamond’s “America”.That last brought tears to Brent’s eyes as he sang, but they were happy tears. “Home! Don't it seem so far away?” he sang, grinning at Muriel as he steered. “Oh, we're traveling light today! In the eye of the storm…!” By the time the song was over, both of them were weeping, and Roo and Max, who had very little memory of a time and place called America, were looking a little misty eyed themselves.The song ended. The dulcet tones of one half of the duo known as the Last Living Deejays purred through the old Ford’s crackling speakers. (“Ronni!” Brent cried at the sound of her voice, remembering all the times he and Harold had squatted in the cold and dark and listened to her on the radio.) “Home,” she said. “Isn’t that a beautiful word? Sometimes I think it’s the most beautiful word in the English language. That song was “America” by legendary performer Neil Diamond. We dedicate it to all you people trying to make it Home right now. Wherever you are, however hopeless your situation may seem, just know that we are still here, and we are waiting for you to come join us. However near, however far, however young, however old, sick, healthy, happy or in despair, it’s time to put on those walking shoes and come Home. Come Home, you brave souls. Come Home.”And they did.
35. Home
Muriel mopped the sweat from Roo’s forehead and replaced it with a kiss. “Come on, honey,” she said, stroking the girl’s cheek with the other hand, “you heard the doctor. Give us one more big push!”Roo’s entire body went rigid, teeth clenched, the muscles in her neck standing out. “I caaaaan’t!” she cried.Despite her denial, she could and she did. She held her breath and balled her hands into fists and pushed.Standing beside the doctor at the foot of the bed, Brent watched as his child spilled moistly from the teenager’s body. It came all at once, after what seemed like years of intense labor. The baby slithered out into the doctor’s waiting hands, all purple and wrinkly and covered in viscous goo, and Brent thought for a moment that he was going to faint. As the doctor wrapped his child in soft white swaddling, and a nurse stepped in to suction the baby’s nostrils and mouth, Brent stepped away and leaned against the counter.“Are you all right, Brent?” Muriel asked, as the world faded in and out on him for a moment.“I… Yeah, I’m fine,” Brent said. His legs felt like they had magically transformed into rubber. Or spaghetti noodles. Whichever was wobblier.“Is it over? Is it out?” Roo panted, and when the doctor said it was, she began to sob exhaustedly. Young as she was, and being her first child, her labor had been long and difficult. She was worn out. They all were. Brent and Muriel had stayed with her the whole time, from the moment her water broke at their apartment, nearly two days ago. They had all piled into the big blue Ford, just as they had when they escaped the town of Manfried, and drove her to the hospital: Brent, Muriel, Roo and Max.Max was here, too, waiting in the hallway. He wasn’t able to stay in the delivery room, not after the blood and shit started flying. He had bowed out with a distinctly queasy expression on his face, apologizing to Roo, who was his girlfriend now, but that was okay, because Roo had Muriel and Brent, and that was more than enough.“Would you like to hold your baby, Roo?” the doctor asked, rising from his stool with the baby in his arms.“Oh, yes! Yes, sir!” Roo exclaimed, smiling radiantly and holding her arms out. “Is it a boy or a girl?”“It’s a boy,” the doctor said, and he laid the newborn on his mother’s chest, the umbilical cord trailing across her belly for the moment. Brent had followed the doctor around the bed, and he leaned over Roo after the doctor stepped aside.The baby boy was pudgy and purple, looked like an beat up old baseball, but Brent thought he was just about the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Waving his fat little arms in front of his face, the little boy opened his mouth and began to squall.Muriel laughed and kissed Roo on the forehead again. “Oh, he’s just beautiful!” she said. “What are you going to name him?”Cradling the baby in her arms, Roo said, “I’m going to name him after my father. My father, and the man who helped us escape from that awful place. His name is Charles Harold Wilson.”“That’s a wonderful name,” Muriel said, and she smiled up at Brent. “Don’t you think so, hon?”“It sure is,” Brent said, shaking his newborn son’s tiny hand. “Welcome to the world, Charles Harold Wilson. It’s not as nice as it used to be, but we’re working real hard to fix it up for you!”
END
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