Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel (36 page)

Doc crawled out from under the Jeep and stood up slowly in front of me. His eyes wouldn’t focus. His head shook on his broken neck as he raised his bitten hand toward me. He was still holding the aluminum bar down by his side with the other. I turned Caleb away as I raised the .45 at Doc again. He pursed his lips and I fired through his head pitching him to the ground and curing him of whatever disease his brain had carried.

As we stepped over the body, I reached into the Jeep and felt the keys in the ignition.  The Riding Dead followed Doc’s approach to keys. We loaded the children in the back and Linda crawled in with them.

As I was about to start it, Linda yelled, “Mutt, look out.”

I turned as Vike reached over and closed his hand over mine. He was so big. I started to reach for the .45 in my belt.

Vike said, “Scoot over, I’m driving.”

I did what he told me.

He started the Jeep and whipped us out into the road and down an alley between shacks.

He said, “I know the way out. This place is screwed. I know we’ve had our differences.”

He looked back at Linda and stopped talking. He started to smile and then stopped.  He looked away from her.

He continued. “But we have to work together to survive. I was never like them. I just got along to get along. We’ll go find a place where we can start over. We will be in charge and run things how we like. What do you say?”

No one answered.

He pulled off by an open garage near the edge of the settlements. He jumped out, shut off the engine, and took the keys.

Vike said, “We need fuel and food. I’ll be right back.”

As he went inside, Linda whispered, “We can’t. He can’t be trusted. He’s not like us.  He did things to me … to us … things that can’t be forgiven. Don’t let him take us, please, Mutt, please.”

I opened the roller for the revolver and every chamber was empty. I closed it back with a wash of fear and helplessness.

Vike came running back out with two large fuel cans. He set the red, plastic canisters in the back pushing the kids aside. He also dropped a pack off his shoulders and a couple canteens.

As he came around the back of the Jeep, I slid back into the driver’s seat.

He said, “I found gas, food, and water, but no weapons. I know one more place to try.”

He stopped when he saw me. He held out the keys and jingled them in my face.

He said, “Mutt, we’re going to have to trust each other or we’re not going anywhere. The fact that I haven’t wrung your skinny neck should count for something, right?”

I smiled and held the .45 out to him handle up. He smiled and took hold of it. He reached over the steering wheel and slid the key in the ignition. As I slid over, he started to step up on the running bar into the vehicle. I reached down and pulled the dagger out of the sheath on his belt. He looked down with both hands occupied as I jammed the knife up into his throat.

He let go of the keys and grabbed my throat with his meaty fist. He was too big. I started to choke.

Linda leaned up and kicked the knife three times with the heel of her sneaker. The third time it twisted and fell out in the floorboard. Vike staggered backward and fell onto the road.

I coughed and gagged waiting for the spots to clear from my vision.

She whispered, “Just go somewhere else … it will all be over soon.”

I couldn’t tell if she was talking to the kids or to Vike.

He slowly raised the gun I had handed him. He pulled the hammer back with both thumbs. I started the Jeep and he died with it in his hands just like the original owner had.

I’ll even let you keep your eyes, I thought.

I left him holding the gun and staring up in dead shock, as we drove away.

Chapter 13: The Year I Opened My Own Kitchen

Linda asked, “Do you know where we can go from here?”

I nodded.

We drove on down the road Linda indicated would lead us away from immediate danger. We hadn’t used this section coming into Portown, and I was afraid one of the living or undead armies would be waiting on it as we traveled in the open Jeep. The explosions and light from the fires continued behind us, but the road remained clear ahead of us for that night.

We drove through the night. Linda offered to drive, but I shook my head and we kept going. As natural light from the morning sun began to replace the dying fires miles behind us, we came to a section of road I recognized.

I slowed down and pulled off the road. I stepped out of the Jeep and walked over through the trees. Linda leaned back and checked on the sleeping kids as I lifted the branches off our old truck. It appeared they hadn’t found it after all.

We should have just hidden inside, I thought.

The hand swung around the side and closed over mine against the handle of the cargo door. Half the split hand closed around my wrist. The other half of the alien claw crawled along the side of the door. The head rose up over the top of the truck and licked its white tongue out at me. It lolled forward on its wounded neck.

The blade passed over my shoulder and pressed slowly through the tall zombie’s skull. The claw released my hand as he slid down the side of the truck to the ground. The blade went in red with Vike’s blood and came out black from the zombie’s skull.

Linda said, “That was easy.”

There wasn’t much in the truck. I wanted to take it, but I had no idea how to fix it. Linda gave the purple pony to Tabitha before I could throw it away. I supposed it didn’t matter. I did look for Doc’s file folder, but didn’t find it.

I found Lt. J. Berry’s badge and necklace. I looked back and saw the others weren’t looking. He was dead and brained. I wasn’t sure what was proper. I didn’t know him. He had failed to kill Trasker. He had failed to save all the people Trasker had killed. We were all guilty of that. I flung the badge out into the trees just because I didn’t want to keep it.

After we rested, we bypassed the campground and most of the town. We ended up staying at the Christmas store for the night. I had trouble sleeping at first. I moved all the babies out of the feeding troughs and I felt better.

During the night, I heard thumping outside against the wall. I quietly took the knife outside while Linda and the kids were sleeping. If the boy was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. He threw the ball at my head, but I was ready to duck. He advanced onto the blade and I made sure to plant it solidly in his brain right in the center of the indention in his forehead. I lowered him slowly to the ground instead of letting him fall. I went and got his baseball out of the street as I looked to see if any others had spotted us. I placed it back in his hand and went back inside to finish my shift of watch.

As we drove out of town the next morning, we drove around two zombies walking down the road together with a sword connecting them through one’s neck and the other’s chest.

Linda asked, “Do you ever wonder how stuff like that happens, Mutt?”

I shook my head.

She asked, “Do you want to get it?”

I shook my head again.

The trip back was much faster since I knew the safe places to stop. We slept at the cabinetry store and the caretaker’s house. I thought about putting something on Shaw Porter’s mother’s grave. He had meant something to a lot of people and she meant something to him. In the end, I couldn’t think of anything, so I didn’t even go.

I slept hard that night in the cabin. Linda had to shake me awake. She offered to drive again, but I shook my head and she handed me the keys.

I avoided the town with Collin Trasker’s mystery mansion entirely.

As we approached the Complex again, a zombie in coveralls with a rifle over his shoulder stepped out in front of the Jeep. I swerved to miss, but clipped him with the fender. He twisted and fell to the ground. Linda jumped out as I slowed down to be sure I didn’t wreck.

She walked up on him and drove the knife into his head with her usual deliberate care. She lifted the rifle and searched his pockets for ammunition. We had more at the Complex, but she didn’t know how close we were.

As we drove on, she worked the chamber and checked the bore.

She said, “It still works. It’s nice when they bring the weapons to you.”

I didn’t respond.

We approached the fallen fence and the entrance to the farm. There was a ragged body sitting in the road leaning on his knees. He looked up as we rolled to a stop.  His shirt was unreadable, but I could still make out the shamrock.

I lifted the gun out from between the seats. The zombie was starting to get up from his waiting place.  I shot him through the head before he went to the trouble.

I used the scope and scanned the hill as several walked out over the crest at the sound of the shot.

Linda said, “Mutt, we need to go.”

I kept scanning until I saw one in overalls I recognized. I fired sending bits of brain into the air as he fell. We drove along.

I parked in front of the collapsed garage door. I left the Jeep in the street with the keys in the ignition.

As we got out, Linda helped the kids down from the back.

She asked, “Is this it?”

I nodded as we walked around the metal and bodies that would have to be cleaned up and fixed eventually. We walked quietly into the garage. I stretched up and got a key down off the shelf. A cork rolled off into the floor. As I was looking down at it, I heard a noise across the room.

A zombie in a trench coat was walking toward us in heavy boots. I raised the rifle and dropped him.

We went inside and looked through the supplies we had packed away in case we returned. I leaned over the stove and felt the tiles that spelled out Fourth Floor Bistro. After Linda helped me set back up, I cooked dinner.

It was nothing special.

Afterward, I cleaned up the dishes and erased the chalk marks off the wall. Later, we scrubbed off and painted over the messages on the walls.

We had begun restoring the greenhouses and built windmills for water and power. We started cleaning up some of the adjacent buildings for health reasons. We have talked about the farm, but we have no plans yet.

We’ve done well these last few months.

We’re making progress.

The other day there was a knock at the door. It was just a regular knock on the front door. I looked through the peephole and saw a woman standing there out in the open holding a child’s hand. I was frightened for a moment that I was looking at my mother’s ghost. I just picked up a gun and opened the door before I thought about it. It was a woman and her six-year-old son. Looking back, it could have been a trap and I would have just fallen right into it. She said her name was Cadney and her boy was Blake. They were just standing there like they stopped by after a stroll.

Once the door was opened, I saw we had missed a black, painted message on the outside of it. It read, RD done! We needed to clean that later when we finished repairing the garage door.

She asked, “Are you him? You are, aren’t you? You’re Mad Dog Mutt. You’re the boy general of the Complex army that brought the fire of Shy down on the Riders and the Rezzers. You led the dead through the gates after Shy Porter returned and sacrificed himself to unleash the Second Liberty War.”

I just stared at her. She lifted her bangs and showed me “MDM” carved into her forehead. She lifted her son’s hair and showed his mark as well. I stepped aside.

“Come in,” I said.

I’m making progress.

I wrote this so everyone would understand what happened. I don’t know what happens next. I’m not sure if Coop, Old Cuss, or any of the others are still alive and looking for revenge. I want to believe in God, but I don’t want another religion forming around what we did. I don’t want to write a new legend or to hide new secrets because no one said anything. This is who we were and what happened because of it. Secrets and lies can be as deadly as a zombie bite; they just take a hell of a lot longer to kill sometimes.

I don’t know what we unleashed.

My concern is that if Cadney and her son were able to track us back here based on the trail we left behind, then other people can too. I am ready to help rebuild the Complex, but there are others that are ready to tear it down again.

We have to be ready to deal with both, when they come.

About the Author

Jay Wilburn has published several horror stories with Dark Moon and Dark Eclipse. He has  a steampunk/ghost story crossover piece that has been accepted for Post Mortem's The Ghost IS the Machine anthology, He has also had a piece accepted for Crowded Quarantine's Grindhouse anthology, for the Zombies Need Love Too anthology by editor Max Booth III, and for A Quick Bite of Flesh by Hazardous Press. He writes a monthly horror column for Dark Eclipse e-zine. Jay came in third place with Stony Meadow Publishing's zombie writing contest.