The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (18 page)

He rummaged through the gas
station, finding nothing other than scraps of paper and empty shelves.  It was
like everywhere else.

Jeff packed up and got ready to
leave when another rumble shook the floors and walls and he knew this time, it
wasn’t his stomach.  Somebody was coming; the sound came from down the road and
grew louder and closer by the second.

Jeff crouched down by the window,
crowbar in hand.  The cry of screeching metal and scraping cars echoed off the
walls and he had to cover his ears as a semi-truck with a long trailer slammed
down the road, smashing abandoned cars out of its way before coming to a stop
half a block past the gas station.  He peeked out, wary, as the doors to the
truck opened and two men and one woman hopped from the cab, shotguns in hand. 
One of the men wore a cowboy hat and was tall and lean.  He carried himself
like he was in charge.  The other man, short and stout, wore a jogging suit. 
The woman had permed hair and was a shade taller than Jogging Suit but much
skinnier.  She wore jeans and tee-shirt. 

“Let the others out,” Cowboy Hat
yelled.  The Woman ran around the side and opened the trailer.  A dozen people
flooded out into the light, shielding their faces with their hands, most of
them armed with either a pistol or some kind of blunt instrument.    They
formed a tight circle around the back of the trailer and kept watch. 

Jogging Suit ran to the nearest
store front, disappeared for a few minutes, and returned, shaking his head.

“It’s been picked clean, like all
the rest,” he said.  “I bet this whole place has been.”

Cowboy Hat took this under advisement,
nodding slowly and looking up and down the street.

“Can’t hurt to make sure,” Cowboy
Hat said.  He gestured with his shotgun.  “Okay, people.  Fan out and see what
you can get.  Be back in fifteen minutes or the train is leaving without you.”
The group at the back of the truck spread out and started going into
individual stores and buildings.

One man, skinny and pale, with a
face so drawn Jeff thought it might melt off and fall to the ground, stumbled
towards the gas station.  Jeff ducked down, debating what to do.

“Tommy!  Hold up there,” Cowboy
Hat hollered.  Jeff watched as the sick guy—Tommy—slowed down and waited as
Cowboy Hat, Woman, and Jogging Suit caught up with him.

“How you feeling?” Jogging suit
said.

“I’m fine.  It’s just a cold,”
Tommy said.  And, as if to prove his point, he sneezed twice and groaned. 
“Maybe it’s allergies.”
“Maybe,” Woman said.  She studied him, squinting her eyes and shaking her
head.

“Why are you looking at me like
that?” Tommy said.

“I was a nurse, I know the flu
when I see it,” Woman said.

“Bullshit,” Tommy said.

“You sure?” Cowboy Hat said.

Woman nodded.  Cowboy Hat offered
Tommy a sad smile.  “We can’t have that, Tommy.  We just can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Tommy said.

“What he means is that your ride
with us is over,” Jogging Suit said.  “You’re on your own.”
“What?” Tommy whirled, surrounded now by the three of them.  He waved his
arms, frantic.  “You can’t do that!   You can’t!  I just have a cold!”
“We can’t risk you getting the rest of us sick,” Cowboy Hat said. 

“I’m alright,” Tommy said.  He
held his hands out.  “Don’t do this to me, man.”
“Already done,” Cowboy Hat said.

Tommy didn’t move.  He stood stark
still, his face ashen and his arms at his side.  He held a hammer in his right
hand.  Finally, he sniffled and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

“You can’t,” Tommy said.  “I won’t
let you.”
Cowboy Hat held out his right hand and patted the air in front of him.  “It
doesn’t have to be like this, Tommy.  Just walk away.  We’ll go our way, you go
yours.”
“Fuck you!” Tommy said.  He raised the hammer and shook it at Cowboy Hat. 
“Fuck you, man!  I’m not going anywhere!”
Jogging suit raised his shotgun, pointed it at Tommy’s legs, and pulled the
trigger.

Tommy screamed as his knees were
torn in two in a spray of red mist and chunks of flesh.  He collapsed to the
ground as Jogging Suit walked slowly around him, calm and cool.  He pointed the
shotgun at Tommy’s head and fired.  Tommy’s head exploded, his brains
splattering across the concrete road.

The other people who’d gotten out
of the back of the trailer all watched and when it was over, they turned back
to what they were doing, unaffected.  Cowboy Hat called out to them:

“Remember:  Fifteen minutes, then
we move out!”

He looked at Woman.  “Get that
hammer.  We may need it.”
Woman bent down and pulled the weapon from Tommy’s dead fingers and tucked it
into her belt.

Cowboy Hat stared down at Tommy’s
body and shook his head.  He spat a wad of spit by the dead man’s torso and nodded
to the others.  Woman and Jogging Suit fanned out, searching through the
buildings.

Jeff ducked back into the
station.  Jogging Suit was coming his way.  There was nowhere for him to hide,
nowhere to run without being seen, so he headed to the bathroom and slipped in,
locking the door behind him.  Just as he did, he heard the front door open and
Jogging Suit enter.

“Who’s there?” Jogging Suit
hollered.  Jeff grabbed his rifle and pointed it at the door as the doorknob
suddenly rattled.  “I heard you.  Come on out, if you know what’s good for
you.”
Jeff reached up for the small window in the wall, ready to open it when the
door banged open and Jogging Suit ran in, shotgun in front of him, eyes wild.

“Hold it,” Jeff said.  He had the
rifle pointed straight at Jogging Suit’s chest.  “Just hold it.”
“Put down that gun, boy,” Jogging Suit said.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Jeff
said.

“Then put down the gun.”
“No way.  Not after what I just saw,” Jeff said.

Jogging Suit studied Jeff for a
moment and smiled.  “Did what had to be done.  Don’t tell me you haven’t done
the same yourself at some point.”
Jeff said nothing.  Jogging Suit was bigger in person and up close, his chest
was broad and his arms and legs thick.  He wasn’t somebody Jeff wanted to get
in a fight with.   

“Just leave me alone.  I don’t
want anything.  I just want to leave,” Jeff said.

The smile never left Jogging
Suit’s face.  “Why don’t you put down that gun and come with me?  We could use
a guy like you.  Confident.  Strong.  You’re just what we need.”
He thought about it.  There would be strength in numbers and it would be nice
to be around people again.  He thought of Tommy outside and the men in
Alcatraz.  Jeff shook his head.

“Well, then, I guess it’s looking
pretty bad for you,” Jogging Suit said.  “See, all I’ve gotta do is go out
there and get some friends of mine and you’re a dead man, understand?  And I
have to tell you, it really pisses me off when somebody points a gun at me for
no good reason.”
Jeff shrugged.  He kept the rifle tight and clean.  Of course it was empty,
but Jogging Suit didn’t know that.

Outside, gunshots rang out
followed by a series of shouts and a couple of screams.

“Drifters!” he heard one guy
holler.  “I found a couple of Drifters!”

Jogging Suit spun to look and Jeff
leapt forward, flipping the rifle and slamming the butt into the side of
Jogging Suit’s head.  The short man grunted and Jeff heard something crack
under his weapon as a slice of blood arced through the air where he’d struck
his blow.  Jogging Suit crumpled to the floor, dazed and helpless.  He dropped
his shotgun and Jeff bent down and scooped it up.  He backed away towards the
wall, grabbing his backpack and putting it on.  He slung the rifle around his
right shoulder and was about to run when Jogging Suit looked up at him, wiping
the blood from the side of his face, amused.

“You’re quick, I’ll give you
that,” he said. 

“You say a word and I’ll shoot
you,” Jeff said.

“No, you won’t.  You would have
already if you were going to do it,” Jogging Suit said.  He turned his face
into the station. 

“Tony!” he shouted.  “In here! 
I’ve been attacked!”
Jeff cursed and kicked Jogging Suit under his chin, cracking his teeth and
knocking him out.  Jogging Suit hit the floor, hard, his head bouncing up and
settling down gently. 

Outside, commotion headed Jeff’s
way.

He opened the window and squirmed
out just as he heard the others enter the station. 

“Doug!” he heard a woman cry out
and there was a rush of noise inside as Jeff dropped to the ground and dashed
into a thicket behind the station.

More tumult clamored from the
window as Jeff trundled to his left, slicing through the brush and away from
the station back towards the road.  He heard people behind him plunge into the
woods in pursuit.  A shot rang out and something hot whizzed by his left ear
and bit a tree next to him.  Jeff spun and fired the shotgun once, its roar
filling the air.  The stench of gunpowder burned his nose as he spun back
around and ran even harder.

“Drifters!” somebody yelled and
Jeff heard more gunfire behind him, this time not aimed his way.  He used the
distraction to put some distance between him and the others, kicking up dust as
he ran back onto the road out front. 

He ran across, the truck and
trailer about a hundred yards to his left.  One of the people in the group
spotted him and raised a rifle.  Jeff dove behind an abandoned car as the
bullet whanged off the hood and whistled by.  He stayed down and crawled
towards another section of forest on the opposite side of the highway.  He was
just about to get under the cover of the trees when a man stepped in front of
him, blocking his way.

Jeff looked up.  A zombie stood
over him, half its face pulled down and hanging by a thin thread of flesh, its
dead eyes locking on him.  He froze as the creature moaned and reached down for
him, stiff in its movements.  Jeff pushed away from the zombie and slid back
across the ground.  In his panic to escape, he’d left his crowbar back at the
station so he had no bludgeoning weapon to use other than the shotgun, and he
wasn’t about to risk cracking its stock.  He looked around and spied a rock the
size of his hand and scrambled over to it.

The zombie wobbled forward as Jeff
grabbed the rock and sprung to his feet.  It was moving slower than a normal
one would and, as it staggered towards him and he readied his blow, he saw
why:  jammed into its back was a long, silver object.  It was lodged between
the exposed vertebrae of the creature and must have been impeding its movement. 
He took a closer look and saw it was part of microphone stand, the kind that
performers used on a stage.  How in the hell had that happened? 

Jeff swung the rock with all his
might, cracking it against the side of the zombie’s head.  The rock shattered
and the ghoul pitched to the side, its cranium shattered.

It struggled on the ground, not
dead again yet, but unable to move other than the twitching of its legs.  Jeff
leaned over it, pulled the microphone stand out, and rammed it through the creature’s
left eye.  It stopped moving.

Out on the street, he heard more
gunfire and more cries of “Drifters!”  He looked around, making sure he was
safe and unobserved, and crept over to the tree line.  What he saw both amazed
and thrilled him.  The people from the truck were fighting their way back to
their vehicle, surrounded by more than a dozen of the living dead.  Cowboy Hat
and Woman were shooting them as fast as they could, but still the dead pressed
into them, unrelenting.  The others used their hand weapons, keeping the
zombies at bay, but it was fairly obvious they’d soon fall if more of the dead
arrived.  And, as if on cue, the combined moans of another three dozen rose on
the wind.  Jeff turned to see this contingent, walking together in a great mass,
up the road towards the humans.

Where had the zombies been?  They
were so numerous it made Jeff’s head spin.  The last time he’d seen so many
together was back at the Food Bank.  He shuddered, remembering being
surrounded, the nearness of their rotten, fetid bodies, and the sure sense that
he was going to die. 

In the end, it didn’t matter where
the zombies had come from, why they were hidden, and if it was the ruckus the
humans were causing that attracted them or if it was something else altogether. 
All that mattered was he had to get out of there, and the only way was to go
deeper into the woods.

Jeff fled, leaving behind the
people on the truck, not giving a good Goddamn whether they lived or not.

After a time, he could no longer
hear the echoes of the gunfire or the screams of the living and the dead, all
mixed together. 

He walked to the east for what he
assumed was about a mile or so before he turned towards the north.  He had some
maps and a compass, so he was good to go for the most part, but he needed more
supplies—a tent would be nice—and eventually, if he stuck it out in the woods,
he’d need more food. 

Those were thoughts for another
day.  Right then, he needed to keep pressing onward, putting as much distance
between him and the zombies and the other humans as possible.  There was no
telling if any of them had seen him and followed, or if he’d gotten away
clean. 

Jeff stopped and checked the way
he’d come every ten minutes or so, watching in case he’d been followed, but so
far, he’d seen nothing. 

After a while, he figured he was
okay.

3

Two days passed.  Jeff had kept
walking, hardly sleeping at all.  Finally, weary beyond comprehension, he sat
down on a fallen tree trunk to have a bite to eat.

He looked around, absorbing the
scenery.  A redwood tree sprouted here and there, some tall and thick, others
mere seedlings.  The other trees he didn’t recognize.  The air was clean and
felt good as he breathed it in, filling his lungs.  He was in a small clearing,
the grass tall as his ankles.  Trees surrounded him and provided him with his
seat and shelter from the overhead sun.  A bird chirped to his left and was
answered by its mate to his right.  He listened for a moment, enjoying the
melody of their voices.  A breeze blew through the area, stirring the leaves in
the trees, making them whisper, a perfect counter-point to the singing of the
birds.

Jenny would have loved it here.

He dipped his head, his appetite
suddenly gone. 

Jeff sat for a long while, weeping
occasionally.   When the grief had run its course, he wiped his eyes, blew his
nose, and opened his backpack.  He fished out a can of soup and opened it.  It
was beef stew and even though it was cold and thick, it was delicious.  After
he finished, he rummaged through the bag, checking his supplies.  He had six
more cans of tuna and four more soups.  There were a couple packs of peanut
butter crackers and that was it.  Before long, he’d need to find some more
food.  If he couldn’t, he’d be forced to learn to hunt again or starve.

A twig snapped to his left and
Jeff spun.  Nothing was there.  Nothing he could see, at least.  Still, he had
the uneasy feeling that something was watching him.  He stood, snatching up the
shotgun and pointing it in the direction he’d heard the noise.

“I’m armed,” he shouted.  “And I
will kill you if you try anything.”
He stood quiet and listened, the sound of his voice ricocheting off the
trees.  Nothing moved, not even the breeze.  It was like the whole world
inhaled and held its breath, waiting for the outcome of whatever was
happening.  But nothing else moved or made noise and eventually, Jeff relaxed,
figuring it was a squirrel or something else out there.

After a while, he sat back down
and, eventually, fell into a deep nap.

He walked the rest of the
afternoon, keeping to the long strip of nature he’d found.  He never
encountered any zombies and didn’t run into any other people.  His entire way
was serenaded by birds.  It was all very pleasant and serene.

Jeff hardly heard a note of their
songs.

That night he camped out but
hardly slept.  The open surroundings made him feel uncomfortable and exposed. 
By the time the sun rose, he was grouchy and so tired he could hardly stand it.

He walked the next day and the
next, trying in vain to sleep when night fell.

After another week in the woods,
he emerged into a small hamlet.  Up ahead was a suburban neighborhood of sorts,
abandoned houses with their doors either open or torn off.  Corpses littered
the streets, all rotting and filling the air with their stench.  It wasn’t as
bad as it could have been, he thought, because these bodies weren’t fresh, but
it was still hard on the nose.

He stayed at the fringes of the
forest, carefully observing the area.  After waiting two hours, sure that no
one was out there watching him and no zombies were near, he slipped from
between the trees and started scouring the houses.

There wasn’t much to be found. 
Scavengers had been through this area, too.  But there were some amenities,
like a toilet and a bed and, despite his misgivings, he found the temptations
too pretty to resist.  He picked a small house with an upstairs that had a
trellis outside the master bedroom window.  He locked all the doors and
windows, went up to the room, barricaded the door and opened the window.  He
took off his backpack and set it against the wall next to his shotgun and empty
rifle before climbing into the bed. 

He was asleep before his head hit
the pillow.

It was hard not to just stay
there.  He discovered he was in a perfect spot, no zombies around, no people,
shelter, and, lucky for him, food.  He found a door to the cellar the next day
and discovered the family that lived there had canned a lot of food.  There
were jars of peaches, tomatoes, potatoes, and on and on.  He could really set
himself up, if he wanted.

He stayed a few days, exploring
the area around Mill Creek Drive, which was the neighborhood he was in, and
getting the lay of the land.  He’d made it as far north and east as Willits,
California.  When he consulted his maps, he was astounded at how far he’d come
in so short of a time.  He must have traveled further north on the boat than he
had initially thought because there was no way he could have covered so much
ground in so little time. 

He rested and ate and did little
to nothing, except for thinking about his situation.  He wasn’t as far north as
he needed to be so he’d have to keep moving.  What was his best way? 

He could find another boat, he
reckoned, or a car, but then again, those presented their own problems.  He’d
been lucky with the boat earlier.  But now, he was pretty far from the ocean. 
As for a car or truck or something like that, it seemed more dangerous than it
was worth.  First off, the streets were one constant obstacle to overcome, and
second, the noise of the engines seemed to attract the living dead.  He
shivered when he thought about how those zombies back in that small town had
come from seemingly nowhere to attack Cowboy Hat and his people.  He didn’t
want those kinds of complications.  He kept the idea of driving in the back of
his head, though.  Once he got far enough north, into Canada maybe, and into
more open country, he figured he might be able to use one then.  There wouldn’t
be as many wrecked and abandoned cars and not many zombies, for that matter. 
All because, simply, there wouldn’t have been as many people up there, not like
in the cities down here.

He decided to stay on foot, for
the time being, as long as the weather held out, and to stick to the woods. 
The going was slower, but no zombies, so far, and no people.  Jeff considered
these thoughts, mulling them over, as he fell asleep in the middle of the day,
sealed up in the bedroom he’d adopted as his home.

“Baby,” Jenny said. 

His eyes fluttered open and she was
next to him, on the bed, lying on her side, her head propped-up on her elbow. 
She was so beautiful, her eyes soft and smiling, matching her mouth. 

“What are you doing here?” he
said.  Tears filled his eyes.  He knew it was a dream, but he didn’t want it to
be. 

“I just wanted to say hello,” she
said.  She leaned into him and suddenly she was naked, as if she hadn’t been
clothed at all, and he could feel her hard nipples pressing against his naked
chest.   Her hand slid down his belly and touched him between his legs and he
groaned and moved up hard against her as she kissed his forehead and giggled
softly.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

Jeff couldn’t speak; the words
choked in his throat.  He cried, tears pouring down his face and wetting her
cheek.  Jenny leaned back and put her hands to his face, rubbing his chin and
pushing open his eyes with her thumbs.

Her face was slick with blood and
the top of her head was crusted open where the bullet had blown her brains out.

“Hungry,” she said.  Her lips
parted and her teeth leaned out, all sharp fangs.  Jeff screamed as she tore a
chunk from his neck.

He woke up to a dark room, shaking
and shivering, all alone.

He wept for nearly an hour before
finally falling back into a fitful sleep.

The next day, he explored farther
east, coming to the downtown of Willits proper.  He moved cautiously, keeping
to the shadows and out of sight of anything if he could help it.  He stuck to
side streets near South Main Street, his eyes and ears open and alert.  He spotted
a couple of zombies, both women, both wearing torn dresses, smeared with brown,
dried blood, ambling up and down the street like they were out shopping for
bargains. 

Jeff decided not to engage them. 
They weren’t bothering anyone, least of all him, so he didn’t see the point. 
As long as he could stay away from them and them from him, he was fine with it.

He explored South Main Street,
waiting until the women zombies disappeared down the way.  It was lined with
small shops and several motels on each side.  All of the storefronts were full
of shattered glass where people had ransacked the businesses, so he walked with
extra care to avoid crunching the glass underfoot and thus draw attention to
what he was doing.

There wasn’t much useful to him
out there.  He found a couple sets of clothes to change into and a new pair of
boots to put on his feet.   He was happy for both.

Along the north end of the street
he found a used bookstore and in it, he found gold.

Books.

Hundreds and hundreds of books,
all lined up in neat rows, arranged by subject matter, from fiction to
non-fiction, magazines and comics.  Jeff stood outside the locked doors and
marveled at the selections he could see through the windowed entrance, amazed
and appalled at the same time that no one had ever bothered to break into this
building.  All the others had been picked clean, but this one was hardly
touched.

He found a rock and broke one of
the windows, sticking his hand inside to unlock the door.   He went in and lost
himself for a few hours.  By the time he was finished, when he’d found what he
was looking for, he had two sacks full of books.

It was a long walk back to his
house, but for the first time since he could remember, it was one filled with
something close to happiness.  Closer than he’d seen in a long time, at any
rate.

He got to the house and unpacked
his treasure, displaying the tomes on the kitchen table.  He quickly rifled
through the ones he’d need right away, the non-fiction books that showed how to
hunt and trap, to clean what he killed.  He set aside the survival guides, how
to survive a cold winter, exposed to the elements.  He also had found a book
that had maps of Canada, topographical as well as highway, leading all the way
up to Alaska itself.  These were the essential books, the ones that could save
his life one day.  The other books, the works of fiction, from mysteries to
Shakespeare, he stacked into another pile.  This one was full of
less-than-necessary tales, but they would provide something else his mind needed,
which was distraction.  When everyday life becomes one long struggle to
survive, then it becomes mundane in its sameness.  He needed his imagination
stirred.  It would give him hope, and dreams, and these stories would press him
forward on days when nothing else would work.

Excited, he opened a can of soup
and sat down, pouring through one book then another, distracted by the wealth
of knowledge splayed at his fingertips.  He read until the sun went down and
then fired up a couple of candles and read by their light, until he literally
fell asleep, faced-down, in an open book.

The next few days were much the
same.  He made a study of all the important things he had to learn before he
embarked back out into the rotten, horror-filled world of  the walking dead and
the living dead.  Because that was how Jeff had started viewing things:  there
was the walking dead and there was the living dead.  The walking dead were the
zombies, resurrected by some strange power to kill and consume mankind, a
purified, boiled-down to essential representation of man himself.  And then
there was the living dead, the people like him, who struggled to survive, day
after day, killing anything that got in the way.

He tore out relevant pages from
the survival guides, things he’d need to know, information he could not
possibly store in his memory.  When he finished, he had a new book, about two
hundred pages long, that he bound with a length of string, rolling it up into a
long funnel, and tying it. 

Jeff also kept a few other books,
works of fiction by authors he admired back in the old days.  He wasn’t the
kind of guy to get caught up in “important” works; he liked what he liked.  He
chose a mystery, a graphic novel, a book of poetry, and a play.  One of each of
the things he loved.

And finally, after two weeks spent
in that home on South Main Street, he decided it was time to move on.