He got behind the wheel, put his shotgun in the passenger seat, closed the door, and turned the key. The engine turned over smoothly.
Well, well, Christmas comes early
. Gus smiled behind his mask. It was the first bit of good news, other than him not changing into a zombie, he’d had in a while. The dash lights glowed, and he saw that it had half a tank of gas.
Cool
. Finding the right buttons, he dimmed the lights and put the vehicle into drive. Depressing the accelerator, he moved forward slowly, pebbles snapping underneath the tire treads. Gus drove it to the rear of the beast and jumped out.
“Look what we got,” Gus said as Scott stuck his helmeted head out the driver’s side of the beast.
“Running, too,” Scott said in approval.
“Yep.”
“Drive it back now or…?”
“Let’s hit a few houses first.”
“Port Williams?” Scott asked. Gus thought the man might be smiling.
“Fuck that,” Gus muttered as he turned back to the Durango. “I’ll drive in front. You keep up.”
They stopped and searched five houses without much luck. Gus scavenged a few cans of mixed vegetables, meat balls, packets of noodles, and mixes for lemonade. It wasn’t enough to fill the bottom of one bin in the van, but it was food, and it allowed them to live a little longer.
The two vehicles inched up a street that looked to loop back out toward the bay and stopped in front of a sixth house. Three zombies appeared from across the street, lumbering with unsteady steps and opening their mouths as if shouting. Scott pointed to them as he backed the van into the driveway. Already out of the SUV, Gus moved to deal with them, feeling his heart starting to race.
Three deadheads, spaced apart, just stepped onto the asphalt. Gus sized the three of them up and propped his shotgun against the rear bumper of the SUV. He smoothly extracted the aluminum bat and practice swung it like a sword. He reached up and adjusted his helmet just a bit and watched the zombies come to him. They were a family of three, an older man dressed in the remains of beige casual pants and a sweater, his wife whose long blond hair had sections torn from her black scalp, and their teenage son who was the size of a football player, in jeans and a T-shirt that was probably once tight on him, but hung loosely off his large frame, and the dull gleam of a splintered collar bone jutted from his dead flesh. Their faces were intact and hissing.
Instead of being afraid, Gus felt a surge of annoyance. When the father figure got close, he cracked the bat off its head and crumpled one side of the dead man’s skull. The impact spun the corpse around to fall to the pavement.
“That’s one, you fucks,” Gus hissed and slipped into a swordsman’s stance with his bat, raising the weapon high above his head. The oversized teenager came on, large arms stretched out as if wanting a hug. Gus caved in the sinus cavity with one bash of the bat. A second bash squashed in the thing’s decayed forehead and dropped it to its knees. Gus then spun and rocked the head from the side with one loud crack, putting the dead thing down.
Taking a breath, Gus confronted the mom. She hissed, exposing a mouth full of stained smoker’s teeth.
“So sick of you. So goddamn sick of being scared of you.”
He butted the tip of the bat into the creature’s chest. The mother staggered back, hissed again, and crept forward.
“I’m through being afraid of you,” Gus said quietly. He pushed the zombie back at bat’s length. “Now, I’m just pissed. With you…” He tapped her again, “…with this whole situation.”
He snapped the bat up and swung it as it trying to smack a fastball. The creature’s knee exploded. The thing lurched over and fell to the ground, rapping its face on the pavement. Not even acknowledging the hit, the zombie crawled toward him, its hiss unchanged, but he noticed that several front teeth had been broken.
“No more goddamn sense than flies on a pile of shit.”
He smashed one of its arms. The zombie dragged it along, moving the upper portion while the section below the break, just at the elbow, twisted slowly backward as it crawled forward.
Gus broke the shoulder. He stepped over the creature, avoiding the slow moving left arm, and shattered the shoulder and hip of that side. The zombie still inchwormed its way toward him, pushing its head into the rough grain of the asphalt with each thrust. The mother hissed again, biting at air, as it checked where Gus stood before slinking in his direction. Gus stepped over the crippled dead thing and then stepped over it again. He gnawed on his lower lip in distaste. In a horde, they were terrifying, but like this, he felt only contempt.
Worse, he felt pity.
He trapped the mother in place, placing one heavy boot against its skull. It mewled and squirmed under his foot like a huge pissed-off nightcrawler, while he lined up the top of the skull with his bat. It would be just like that summer game with the mallets, except he didn’t have any little wire arches to knock the head through. He tapped the skull once, then twice, before breaking it open with one swing and crushing it with two follow-ups.
The mother lay still. Gus stepped back and inspected his bat, then wiped the tissue matter on the red shirt of the mother. He sighed, feeling conflicted. He looked around and met the eyes of Scott staring hard at him, his hands on the wheel of the beast. He recognized the expression of concern even though Scott’s mouth and the edges of his face were covered by the helmet. Without a word, for there really wasn’t anything to say, Gus eased his bat back into his scabbard and retrieved his shotgun. He proceeded up the driveway of the house, passing by the open window of the van.
“You okay?” Scott asked.
“No… but I will be.”
Then he was breaking in the door of the house. Gus dove into the doorway, not even bothering to check the corners before he went in.
After getting back to the mountain and stashing away the few things they had found in town, they went into the kitchen, speaking very little, and ate. After supper, they went down into the den with their bottles of Canadian Club and drank. Sitting in the recliner, Scott swallowed the first shot and grimaced, then studied Gus on the sofa.
“You want to talk about it?”
They had only turned on one light, near the stairs, and the shadows made Gus’s beard and face all the darker. “About the zombies?”
“Yeah.”
“Figured you’d get around to it sometime.”
Scott eased himself back into the recliner and rubbed his ankle.
“How’s that doing?” Gus asked.
Scott shrugged and ran a hand over his thickening beard. “Getting there. Not as sore now.”
“You’ll be able to play soccer soon.”
“Hockey, you mean.”
“That, too.”
“So how about it, then?” Scott fixed him with a pensive look. “You okay?”
Gus leaned back into the softness of the sofa and didn’t say anything for a while. The wind rose outside, and the timbers creaked.
“I think I hit my limit,” Gus said quietly. “For the last two years, I’ve been scared of those things, living up here, away from the city and everything. But when I thought I was about to turn into one and didn’t… that did something to me. I ain’t never been scared of much in my life, and I think I’m tired of being scared of these things. They’re nothing. The only thing they got goin’ for them is they don’t stop comin’ at you. Ever. That one deadhead I bashed up today? The woman one?”
“Yeah?”
“I fuckin’ immobilized her ass, Scott. Crushed her. And all she did was just squirm and try to gnaw her way through my boots. There was no pain there. No fear, but I used to think there has to be a bit of thinkin’ going on up here for that.” Gus tapped his bald head for emphasis and took a heavy shot of whiskey.
“There ain’t nothin’ goin’ on up there. Not a goddamn thing. They really are as mindless as… as fuckin’ rocks. As shitcakes. And I, I ain’t afraid of that. I broke down, or at least I thought I broke down. I didn’t. Not completely anyway. I think all the fear’s gone from me now. Like… therapy. ”
“Therapy?”
“Yeah, like you know how some folks are scared of spiders? And their shrinks force them to confront the spiders? Let small ones walk on their arm, then work their way up to big ones, right? Until you have like wharf spiders or tarantulas there. Big, mean, scary fuckers that would shock a person dickless.”
“What if it’s a woman?” Scott smirked.
“Pay attention here. You asked if I’m all right, and you’re bein’ a smart ass.”
“Sorry, man. Go on.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, my point is, being exposed to the spiders gets a person over their fear of them after a while. When I thought I had swallowed a piece of them, I thought… man,
everything
was goin’ through my mind. But in the end, I thought that was it. I was done. Dead. I freaked out––and you can only freak out for so long––and I remember being okay with it. Just waitin’ for the change. Then, the change didn’t happen, and I realized I was worked up over nothin’. Scared over nothin’. Swallowin’ that piece of corpse, or at least
thinkin’
I did, was my big fuckin’ spider on my arm. I’m not scared of them anymore, Scott. If anything…” Gus thought about it for a while, his dark eyes looking grim in the scant light.
“If anything, I hate them. For puttin’ me through hell for the last few years. For forcin’ me to pen myself up here. I hate the things now.”
“That could be dangerous,” Scott offered.
Gus nodded. “I agree. Just as dangerous as being terrified of them. And I’ll have to be just as careful of that. But I’m
through
being scared of those dead fuckers. I’m through. Christ above. I’m having visions of goin’ on a fuckin’ safari for the packs of them.”
“Not sure that’s wise.”
Gus regarded him. “I know it’s not. I’m not stupid, man. I’m not. So don’t worry, I’m not gonna start doing stupid shit like risking my life or anything. Even though I was up here, here
is
the best place to be. With the heat and water and electricity. Here is the best place to be. No doubt. But I’m not scared of them anymore. Not those brain-dead fuckers. Not ever again.”
Scott listened and remained silent. After a long considering moment, he nodded and took a long drink of his whiskey.
Gus sat and stewed on his emotions a little longer. He felt he spoke the truth, and it felt good to do that. He wouldn’t do anything crazy, either; he promised himself that. But he also promised to kill them all. Pick them off where and when he could. He figured he had one hobby in this new world, and that was getting drunk. Gus took another drink of whiskey and considered adding a new one.
*
Two mornings later, under an increasingly overcast sky, they suited up, gassed up the beast, and headed for the city. Scott drove while Gus rode in the passenger side with his bat in gloved hands. It neared the end of the first week in December. Snow would be coming any day, and any day might be the last for access to Annapolis. They had to get what they could before winter dug in. Gus figured they had enough food, water, and booze, but he wanted to be sure––especially on the booze.
They passed the landmarks on the road they had come to expect and appreciate in some lost old days nostalgia: billboard with semi driven through it, motorcycle on its side with a gutted seat. Wrecked cars became a blur of colors splashed against a canvas of asphalt and steel.
Up ahead, two figures wandered into the road. They turned at the sound of the van. The way they staggered, it was easy to identify them as long dead.
“Wait,” Gus said quietly.
“What?”
“Stop alongside those two.”
Scott looked at him, his brow crunched up in a question. “Huh? Why?”
“I got an idea,” Gus said.
Scott did as he was told, though his expression said he didn’t understand why.
“Hold on for a minute.” Gus got out of the van, taking his bat with him. He walked right up to the first undead, who had already detected him, and clubbed the head so hard that a pulpy jawbone flew from its mouth. Gus crushed in its skull with an overhead strike, driving the dead thing to its knees before watching it fall over.
Rolling his shoulders, Gus stepped up to the second zombie and bashed in one side of its head. Then the other side. When it dropped to the pavement, he clubbed it a third time.
A fourth and final time just to make a point. He no longer feared the once-thought-of-as predators. And he’d had enough of them. He went on to crush the joints of their knees, elbows, and shoulders.
He cleaned off his bat on one’s shirt. Studying both of them for any sign of movement, Gus stood in the highway for a few moments more before returning to the van. He got in and slammed the door.
“What the fuck was that?” Scott asked, looking at him.
“What?”
“
That!
”
“Experiment.”
“An experiment in what?”
“Remember I said I thought these things were thinning out? And how when I killed them, they up and disappeared from sight?”
Scott hesitated before answering, “Yeah.”
“We take this road every day. There’s another marker. Let’s see if they’re still there when we come back this way.”