I looked down at the now crumpled and somewhat moist scrap of lined yellow paper.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m so sorry. I did what I thought was best, and I know I will become dangerous if I don’t take care of myself. They were turning on one another, and I didn’t know which ones were bitten. I didn’t want this to get out. God help me, I locked them all in.
Two men came to camp one night. They came from up the hill. They looked sick and hungry, but acted strange. Mr. Davies went out to greet them and they attacked him and tried to eat him. After that, a lot of the counselors got scared and ran away. All the children were so scared. I tried to keep them safe, but those two men kept following us, and then Mr. Davies got up again, and he looked like them. We couldn’t run any further and they bit some children. I killed them with a shovel after that.
The children that were bit kind of died but then they came back. I didn’t know what to do, but after one of them bit me, I put them all inside the gym before I could get sick. I didn’t want them to get out and hurt more people, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m so sorry. Tell the children I’m sorry.
I love you,
Jim
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back slowly against the wood paneled wall, hearing the shuffling sound of leaves crackling outside as more creatures moved about. This was all so fucking pointless. What was happening? I opened my eyes as a thought occurred to me-where had the one larger body in the gym come from? That was certainly odd.
I offered the paper to Lansing and he shrugged, refusing it. I folded it carefully and put in my breast pocket, realizing as I did so that the goddamn zombie hand was still firmly attached to my ankle. I drew my combat knife and started prizing the fingers back, taking care not to cut myself. The fingers were ice cold and as hard as steel. Knuckles crusted with what used to be blood stared at me as I worked, removing first one finger, then the next. The situation was so absurd, I had to fill the silence. I spoke to Lansing in a soft whisper.
“So what do you do when you’re not stuck in the mountains killing dead people?” I asked.
He grunted in amusement, staring at the far wall vacantly as if daydreaming. “I’m a carpenter,” he said, taking a swig of water from his canteen.
Nodding in respect, I returned to my grisly task. He turned to me, deep voice muted and his eyes flickering to the window and back down, “Hey, man. Since I know what you do… or did… and since we’re not doin’ nothin’ right now… maybe you could say that line from the movie? I loved that damn movie.”
I stopped mid-chore, holding a cold white finger in one hand and a combat blade in the other, and looked at him for a long moment until a smile struggled to my face. I shook my head and looked away. “That’s part of my past. It’s not me anymore. Or maybe you didn’t catch the news.”
He smiled, and the words came out in a plaintiff groan. “Aw, come on. You can’t get rid of it that easy, man. That’s who you are. Don’t matter what they said you did, or what you say you didn’t do. You got a rep to uphold, you know?”
“Not anymore.”
He chuckled wryly, shaking his head slowly from side to side and plucking a cigarette from his pocket. “Whatever, man. You’ve been branded, whether you like it or not. Like cattle. You can’t ever get away from that. That shit owns you.” He lit the cigarette.
“Say it, don’t say it, I don’t give a fuck,” he took a draw, exhaling slowly so the smoke dispersed almost invisibly into the woody, musty air before continuing.
“I’m just trying to pass the time. But if you tryin’ to get away from bein’ that guy? You gotta run a lot farther and lot goddamn faster before you find people that don’t know who and what you are. Til you do, you’re always gonna be that guy.” He looked at me with a smile on his face. “And we always gonna want you to say that shit.”
I laughed despite myself and pulled out a snack bar, eating silently. Occasionally, a zed would wander close to the bunkhouse, but would meander thoughtlessly away when it wasn’t afforded entrance. Not hearing or seeing anything, they apparently lacked the capacity for suspicion or dissemblance, and no alarm was raised on account of a locked door.
As the daylight slowly dwindled, the late summer sun now slanting in the house from the West, we sat in tense silence. Whispering at times to one another, the imperative was to avoid detection, so little talk was wasted as we attended the creatures’ departure. At steady intervals, Anaru or Lansing would peer carefully into the main yard and quickly pull their heads back in, shaking them mutely. Sam drifted off sometime during the late afternoon, but had to be awakened by Anaru when she started to talk in her restless sleep, head turning from side to side and sweat beading her brow. When she awoke, she had developed a fever and her eyes darted nervously about, as if paranoid. Anaru and I exchanged questioning glances, uncertain of what to do.
The sun finally faded completely, and as the last of the daylight slipped across the dirty wooden floor we agreed in soft whispers to take turns on watch, while the others slept. We had been fortunate, and no zed had gotten too close or heard or seen anything, but we had to be alert.
As darkness fell, the steady and calming sound of rain on the roof was in conflict with the nervous tension I felt, sitting against a three-inch thick wall of wood that was the only thing separating me from the living dead. Kate was sleeping on one of the many short beds, legs curled to her chest, eyes moving beneath her eyelids. Sam slept restlessly, still in the grip of the fever, and still muttering softly under her breath. I stared at the narrow beams that met in the middle of the roof, thinking about Maria and remembering the girl I kissed so long ago in a camp not unlike this one. She had been impressed by my bravado and ego, and I had been impressed by… well, the things that hormone-filled twelve year old boys are impressed by. I remembered diving into the lake, swimming to the buoy in the middle, and ringing the bell, all on a dare. A dare that ended in that first encounter.
Wrapped in that comforting memory of happier times, I slept in an abyss of darkest night, my mind and body for once too mentally and physically exhausted to dream. Like all good things in this world, however, that small respite from reality eventually came to an end. Not with a whimper, but with a moan.
Chapter 25
I awoke to the smell of fresh air, which I knew instinctively to be wrong. The soft whisper of a cool night breeze must have been so jarringly refreshing that my unconscious refused to accept it, even in sleep. The door to the cabin stood wide open, the dark shapes of the trees and the gymnasium beyond outlined by the soft glow of the moon.
I looked around the room, noticing after slow inspection that Sam was absent. Cursing myself for not anticipating some sort of lunacy inspired by her infection, I got up and moved to the door, peering out into the dark. Only the sounds of crickets and frogs. I squinted, trying to make out moving shapes. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the diminished light, I started to track what appeared to be a human shape. My hand tightened on my pistol before my brain reminded my hand not to get too slaphappy with the shooting. I nervously looked around, remembering that only six hours ago those things were everywhere.
It was Sam, and she was moving toward the gym. She was moving slowly, with what appeared to be a limp, but she wasn’t shuffling. Besides, if she had turned, she wouldn’t have tried to leave. She would have just started to eat, merrily enjoying the sleeping buffet around her.
Checking the tree line a final time, I pulled the door shut behind me and stepped off the wooden porch, trying to make as little noise as possible. She was within ten feet of the large double doors leading to the basketball court, and was moving determinedly forward. I caught up with her easily, jogging as much as possible on the soft, silent dirt, ever vigilant for movement or sounds from the trees. I caught up with her as she started toward the handle of the doors.
“Sam,” I whispered as softly as possible, “What the fuck are you doing? Get back inside!” I put my hand on her shoulder and pulled her around to face me. What turned before me, however, was only a shadow of Sam.
Her eyes were sunken and red, her skin a pallid gray. Blue veins stood out prominently from her pronounced forehead, her hair still pulled back severely in a tight pony tail; there was a sour smell about her, almost like turned milk. She snarled at me, stepping back and raising her good hand, which held her pistol.
“Get the fuck back, you crazy bastard.” Her voice was strained and dry, and the air rasped audibly in her windpipe, as if all the moisture had been sucked away.
“What are you doing? Where do you think - ” She interrupted me as she suddenly started to laugh. Loudly. Her head moved on top of her neck in what must have been painful gyrations, back and forth as the laughter boiled out. Insanely, she looked back at me with those red eyes, a trickle of drool leaking from the corner of her slightly slack lower lip.
The crickets and the frogs had gone silent. Her hand tightened on the pistol and I knew I didn’t have much time.
I lashed out at her with my gun hand, pistol-whipping her sidearm into the dirt. It discharged once, kicking up leaves and dirt as the bullet tore into the soft soil. Her eyes flared with rage, but she simply stood there. Her smile hadn’t vanished and the spittle was now dripping to her chest. She looked at the weapon lying out of reach, and then at my hand, aiming my own at her chest.
“Come on, Sam. It doesn’t have to be this way. Come back with me.” As I said it, I knew that couldn’t happen. I knew that it did, in fact, have to be this way. She knew it too.
She backed away clumsily, toward the gym. “Yes,” she said, reaching toward the metal bar on the doors, “it does. It’s time you joined the majority, you insane-“
My first shot took her in the arm she had reached forward toward the doors, and she looked up in surprise. She lifted the wounded appendage up, staring at the hole in her gray flesh that was oozing an odd amalgam of liquid human blood and congealed brownish gel.
“If you’re going to be crazy, be crazy. Join the club.” I leveled the gun again, this time at her head. “But I hate a hypocrite.”
She snarled in response and fell toward the door as my second shot flew wide. The weight of her body collapsed against the door, forcing it open. The creatures inside, excited by the noises and voices outside, were waiting for the opportunity. They crowded outside as I leaped back, leveling my pistol once more. But there were too many. I tried for a clean shot on Sam, wanting to end it for her, but it wasn’t necessary. They shuffled past her as if she weren’t there, seeing only me. From the tree line, more sounds and movement.
It was time to leave.
The others, awakened by the gunshots, stood at the door to the cabin, geared up and ready to go. I burst past them and grabbed my bag.
“OK, kids. Party’s over. Time to check out.” I stared back at the gym, trying to distinguish Sam’s form from the others, but it was still too dark.
They moved toward us en masse, as if directed by some morbid, undead general. Small faces gleamed in malevolent hunger, small jaws working feverishly up and down, teeth grinding audibly against one another.
“Yeah, we need to move,” Kate said, grabbing her pack.
“No argument there,” said Anaru, shouldering his rifle.
From behind the group of children, a taller shape moved into view, staggering forward awkwardly. It’s face emerged from the shadows, the ruined stump of her left arm hanging uselessly at her side. Her face bore the now-familiar slack-jawed look of desperate hunger, as her feet shuffled forward behind her minions.
“Hey, she didn’t have a lot of time anyway. Let’s stay focused. We’ve got half-pint zombies on the way, and those things from before are still out there in the forest,” said Lansing.
“The big ones might not have been able to triangulate our position just from those shots, but we need to keep the gunshots to a fucking minimum. That means use your stocks and your speed, got it?” He showed his rifle barrel, to which he had already affixed a six-inch bayonet. “I’m gonna use this here to keep me honest.”
I nodded and saw Kate holster her pistol beside me. Lansing turned to Anaru, “That means you too, Bubba.”
Anaru broke off his stare and flicked a dirty look at Lansing as he holstered his pistol and grabbed one of the ladders from the foot of a bunk bed. He swung it quickly against the wall, detaching a six-foot length of two by four and hefting it easily. Lansing smiled and vanished quickly into the dark.
Anaru followed as the first of the children came within feet of the door. A girl, maybe all of ten, grabbed his arm. He shook the arm violently, but was unable to withdraw from her vise like grip. Disgust passed across his face as he brought up a massive leg and kicked her sharply under the knees, taking her support from under her. As she struggled to reach his arm with her teeth, he leveraged that same foot down on her throat and pushed. The firm sole of his combat boot crushed the soft tissue housing her larynx, and the visceral snapping of her spine cracked like a gunshot as he twisted his boot abruptly to the side. He shook off the hand as he backed around the corner.
A small boy with a ravaged torso and bloody arms moaned at me as I followed behind Anaru and Kate and skirted the corner of the building, nearly tripping on a hidden downspout protruding from the structure. His braces gleamed brightly in the light from the moon, small particulates of what was most likely human flesh clung to the metal. I swung the metal butt of my rifle in a wide arc, striking a glancing blow to the side of the head but knocking the child to the ground nevertheless. The children behind him stepped clumsily over his fallen body and continued toward me as I moved away.
In front of us, Lansing had encountered a group of three. They came at him from behind the shelter of two large trees behind the cantina, surprising him as he jogged forward. He came to a halt, bringing his rifle up in front of him like a lance and smoothly jamming the long bayonet into the eye of the closest zed. It’s body crumpled to the ground like a bag of rocks as he pulled the metal free and swung the butt into the face of a small Asian child that had reached for his leg.