The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (17 page)

He went up top and sure enough,
the zombies were still there, on the shore, stumbling and lurching.  Jeff
decided at some point he must have died and was now in hell.  It was the only
thing that seemed to make sense.

“Fuck it!” he shouted, shaking his
head.  He grabbed the crowbar by his side and smashed one of the upstairs
cabinets in.  He’d had enough of this, all the thinking and recriminations and
stupidity.  He was tired, so goddamned tired, of wondering and mulling and
hurting.

He stormed downstairs and trashed
the place, bashing in cabinets, ripping up the bed, and destroying everything
in his path but the collection of goods for going onshore.  His rage churned,
leaving nothing behind but splinters and shards, and he kept going until he had
no breath left. 

But despite it all, the pain
didn’t go away.  It stayed there, nailed to his heart like Christ on the cross.

Only, for him, there would be no
coming down, no release, no resurrection.  Jeff was dead inside, now and
forever more, amen.

He raised the anchor, started the
boat, and drove up the coast until he left the zombies far behind and ran out
of gas.  He steered for the shore, crashing the boat against a series of rocks
just under the surface, tearing great gashes along the sides, ensuring the boat
would never go anywhere, ever again.

Jeff gathered his backpack and
crowbar, slinging the rifle over his shoulder.  He jumped off the boat and into
the water, walking ashore and into the woods waiting for him.

He never looked back.

2

The brush was thick and hard-going
and he wondered if maybe he should just turn around and go to the beach and
follow it instead.  But he plunged onward, branches and limbs scratching his
face and hands.  He hardly noticed.  He got tangled several times but he didn’t
care much; he just kept going, whether his clothes ripped or not.

After a half hour, he stumbled out
onto a highway that stretched from South to North in a long, straight line. 
Several abandoned cars sat along the way, with their doors and trunks left
open, obviously scavenged.  It probably wasn’t smart to be out like this, an
easy target, but he was tired of struggling against the woods and decided that,
for a time at least, he would head north along the road and hope for the best.

Not that there was much hope in
his heart.  He was going to live; oh, yes, Jenny had decided that for him.  To
do anything less would be to spit in the face of her memory and they life
they’d shared together.  But anything beyond that was too much to ask.  He
would walk and fight and carry on, just as they’d planned.  If he got killed
along the way, so be it.  He wouldn’t go down easy and he would never give up,
but he also didn’t care much, either.  His only life would be to honor her
sacrifice. 

He had nothing left to give.

Jeff put one foot in front of the
other and pretty soon, an hour passed, and then another, and he was a few miles
down the road.  The scenery had stayed pretty much the same:  the road was
lined with trees, thick and heavy and foreboding.  On his left, the side
closest to the ocean, the growth was even worse, a tangled mess.  The the road
itself was occasionally littered with dead bodies, ones that weren't coming
back.  He tried to ignore them and keep going, but occasionally he would stop
and take a closer look.

  He stopped and crouched near the
corpse of a woman and her dog, both showing visible signs of having been gnawed
on by human teeth.  She was rotting, her face caved in from a gunshot and her
brown hair matted with dried blood and chunks of bone and decaying meat.  She
wore a light brown summer dress that was bunched around her waist and exposed
her naked chest and legs.  In her arms she held a small, black-haired Toy
Poodle—with its head also blown off and pieces snarled in its fur.  He shook
his head, wondering where they’d come from and how long they’d survived out
here before they ran across someone who had it out for them.

Jeff studied the bodies for a long
while, noticing the bite marks where a zombie had happened upon them shortly
after being put down, while their skin was still warm.  The woman was missing
chunks from her exposed arms and legs; her breasts were gone, the left one
ripped off and the right one chewed from the side so it was only a flap of thin
skin with a nipple at its crest.  The dog’s legs were stripped clean of flesh
and fur, its stomach torn open and bits of innards dripped out, dried like long
strings of uncooked spaghetti. 

Someone had killed her and the dog
and the dead had feasted. 

Jeff stood and walked off, keeping
his eyes and ears alert.  Maybe their killers were close by, maybe they weren’t,
but there was no sense in taking any chances.

A half-mile later and he passed a
car full of dead bodies.  A family sat inside; two kids—a boy and a girl—were
in the back and in the front were the parents, the man—rugged, about thirty—and
the woman—nice body, pretty face, somewhere in her late twenties.  All the
bodies but the man’s had been arranged, sitting up like they were taking a
drive or on their way to a family vacation somewhere.  And all would have been
right with the picture except that each of them had been shot through the side
of the head.  The man must have done this, Jeff decided.  He must have killed
his family, sat them in their seats, and then put a bullet in his head because
only his body sat slumped over, against the car door, head hanging out.  When
he glanced inside, to see if the man still had the gun, he saw that the guy’s
right hand had been sawed off at the wrist.  Someone had gotten there before
him.  None of the bodies were touched by the zombies.

He didn’t bother looking any further
to see if there was anything he could use.  It was pretty obvious all the cars
and bodies had already been picked clean. 

So he walked on.

By dusk he finally reached a short
strip of businesses.  On his right were a couple of gas stations and a short
outlet mall with shattered storefronts and looted interiors.  On his left were
a couple gas stations and a few storefronts for smaller, local businesses.  All
of them had broken windows glass-strewn parking lots.  They all appeared
abandoned.  He was sure they'd been scavenged, too, but he decided to take a
look, anyway. 

After all, what else did he have
to do?

He walked up to the first gas
station noticed the nozzles were lying on the ground.  He picked one up and
tried it but nothing came out; the tanks were dry.  He went inside the store
and discovered the dead body of a fat man in overalls sitting behind the
counter, the top half of his head gone, now part of the wallpaper behind him. 
His chin was stained with tobacco and a thick chaw of it hung out the side of
his open mouth.  Jeff rummaged through the store but didn’t find anything left,
not even a stick of gum. 

He spent the rest of the daylight
searching through each of the gas stations and finding nothing but dead bodies
and empty racks.  Before the sun was almost gone, he discovered a drug store. 
He went inside, found it had been looted, too, and barricaded the front and
rear doors, just in case.

Jeff sat down, leaned back against
the wall, and fell into a deep sleep.

He woke with a stiff neck and
back.  His whole body was a network of pain and inflammation, from the wounds
to the effects of all the walking. 

He got up, found the restroom, and
washed his face, pleasantly surprised the water was still running.  After he
did his business, he sat back down with his backpack.  Popping open a can of
Spam, Jeff ate slowly, making it last. 

Eventually, he decided he needed
to stop dawdling and get back on the road.

Sunlight burned his weary eyes. 
He raised a hand to shield his face.  Sunglasses were something else he’d add
to his list. 

It was all like he’d left it the
night before; abandoned cars and looted buildings, the streets and sidewalks
littered with shards of glass and pieces of trash and papers floating around on
the occasional small breeze.  Jeff half expected a tumbleweed to come rolling
through.

He hadn't seen any zombies, and
although at first he'd been surprised, he eventually figured they must have
moved on, once all their hot meals were gone.  Where they went was anybody's
guess.

He slid his backpack on and
started walking.

  Around noon he stopped and sat
down under the shade of a tree next to the highway.  He discovered he was
walking up Highway 1 and the scenery so far had been  picturesque.  The road,
however, hadn’t changed much.  There were still cars dotting the way, making
the roads impassible except for bikes or motorcycles.  

He opened a can of tuna using the
can opener and thought of Jenny, holding the opener in the Food Bank, a smile
on her face. She'd been so proud.  He set the can down and drew his knees to
his chest and wept.  His body shook as he sobbed.

For about the millionth time, he
cursed God or whatever was out there.

After a while, he wiped his eyes
and got his emotions under control.  He thought about suicide again but
shrugged it off.  There was no point in even thinking that way ever again.

He was about to take a bite of his
tuna when he heard a moan off to his right.

Jeff spun, crowbar jumping to his
right hand.  Standing five feet away were two zombies, both children, a boy and
a girl.  They were four and a half feet tall, with brand new shirts, pants, and
shoes.  Their skin was gray and pasty, faces slack except for  chattering teeth
and outstretched arms.

They were held by steel collars
and chains around their necks and leashes leading into the bushes behind them. 
A man emerged, splitting the overgrowth in two, his left hand wrapped in both
chains, his right pointing a pistol at Jeff.

“Now, what do we have here?” the
man said.  He was six foot tall, thin, with a craggy, worn face, sunken,
haunted eyes, and big, strong hands.  He wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and
a pair of new boots.

Jeff stared, crowbar at this side,
studying the group. 

“Put that stick down,” the man
said.  He gestured with his pistol.  Jeff didn't budge.  “I said, put it
down.”    

Jeff did not move.

The zombies edged closer, three
feet away now, straining against their collars.

“I will shoot you dead right here
and now if you don’t put that thing down,” the man said.  “Don't be a fool.”

“You’ve been killing people,
haven’t you?  You’ve been shooting them and feeding them to these things,” Jeff
said.

“Watch what you say, boy,” the man
said, his dark eyes clouding over. 

“I keep finding these bodies, all
along the road, that’ve been shot and eaten.  That was you, wasn’t it?” Jeff
said.

The zombies were two feet away.

“Kids got to eat,” the man said.

Jeff raised his crowbar.

“Get them back, or I’ll use this,”
Jeff said.

“I’ll shoot you,” the man said.

“I don’t think so,” Jeff said.  “I
think you’re out of bullets.  Otherwise, you would have shot me already.”

The man’s hand wavered.  He stared
hard at Jeff. 

“They need to eat,” the man said.

“They’re not alive,” Jeff said. 
“They’re dead.  They’re zombies.  They aren’t your kids anymore.”

The man’s face flushed red as he
scrunched his eyes and glared.  “Don’t you say that.  Don’t you dare say that! 
These are my kids.  They mind me, they do what I say.”

The zombies were one foot away
now, their fingers clawing the air inches from Jeff’s face.

“I warned you,” Jeff said.

He swung the crowbar, smashing in
the side of the boy zombie’s head, the force of the blow crushing the skull. 
Brains blasted through the boy’s ear and through the top of the ruptured head
as the boy fell to the ground. 

The man screamed and released the
chains as his finger clicked the trigger a dozen times, the gun clacking
empty. 

The girl zombie lurched forward,
chomping down on the crowbar.  Her teeth shattered like glass as Jeff spun and
elbowed the back of her head, knocking her to her stomach.  He flipped the
crowbar in his hands and stabbed her through the back of her head.  The girl’s
skull crunched like a dry taco shell, brains and black blood spurting out.

The man jumped on Jeff’s back,
pistol-whipping him.  Jeff reeled and shook the man off, sending him tumbling
to the ground.  If he’d been heavier, or stronger, Jeff would have fallen and
not gotten back up.  But Jeff was in better shape and younger.  He jerked the crowbar
out of the girl’s head and swung it like a baseball bat, clipping the man’s jaw
and spinning him back to the ground.

Jeff stood over the man, holding
the crowbar waist-level.  The man got to his knees and looked up, his face
dripping blood and his eyes wild.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jeff
said.

“My babies,” the man said.  “My
babies.”

Jeff bashed the man’s head in with
the crowbar, splitting it wide open.  The man collapsed, blood gushing from his
head.  Jeff swung the crowbar, again and again, battering the man until there
was nothing left but red mush where his head had been.  When he finished, he
stumbled away, grabbed his backpack, and made his way back onto the road.

The sun beamed down, hot and
persistent.  He wiped the sweat from his brow, the blood on his hands smearing
across his forehead. 

He didn’t notice.

By the time the sun was almost
gone, he found a gas station to hole up in.

He went into the bathroom to
relieve himself and splash some water on his face.  When he looked at his reflection
in the mirror, the person who stared back at him was someone he didn’t know.

His face was streaked with dried
blood and sweat.  His hair was matted and dotted with flecks of brain matter
and tiny bits of bones.  His lips were pursed and his nose flat and low but it
was his eyes that he did not recognize.  They were dark and hollow, with pupils
blacker than the night sky. 

Jeff stared at his reflection for
a long time before he ran water and washed his face.  He found a spot to lean
against the wall in a locked room with a window and fell asleep without eating.

A distant roar stirred him from an
obsidian dream.  He raised his head, his vision foggy and his mind blurry.  He
couldn’t tell where the sound was coming as he sat up and looked around.  Where
was he? 

Memories flooded in like unwanted
neighbors.  The man with the kids.  All the walking.  The desolation.  In a
month’s time, it was like human’s had never even existed.  How could it all
have fallen apart so quickly?

Jenny.

He pushed her out of his head.  He
shoved it all out.  There was no yesterday, only today.  There was no used to
be’s or had been’s, only whatever the coming day held.

The rumble came again and he
realized it was his stomach.  Jeff crawled over to the back pack and pulled out
a can of tuna.  He ate its slowly, letting it go down smooth.  There was no
rush, after all.  He had nothing but time.

Sunlight filtered in from the
front window.  It looked like early morning, very early, so he had a full day
of walking in front of him.  Jeff went through his maps again, picking out his
route.  He was on Highway 1 but at some point, he’d probably have to get off of
it.  There were undoubtedly many more zombies out there and they’d be attracted
to roads and towns where people might potentially be rather than the woods and
countryside.  Still, he’d hardly run into either, so maybe it would be okay to
stick with the highway, at least for now.