The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead (21 page)

2

OCTOBER

Days went by.  Endless days of
trees and weeds and grass and birds and small animals, scurrying out of his
path.  Sometimes it seemed like his whole life had been lived in those woods,
in the rural parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon and that
everything he’d lived up until that point, up until he entered the forests, was
nothing but a dream.  There were no zombies, there was no Jenny, he hadn’t
lived near San Francisco and he hadn’t killed his Dad in a hunting accident. 
He also hadn’t murdered anyone and the world was just fine, thank you, and he
was simply crazy, with insane visions of a world that simply wasn’t.

Then he’d run across something to
remind him that he may be insane, but the world was much madder than he'd ever
be. 

He stumbled into a small township
that wasn’t on his maps, emerging from the woods, head down to keep from
tripping through some dense underbrush, when he suddenly emerged into a town
square.  Jeff stopped and looked around, stunned to find a town where there
shouldn't have been one. 

The town was small, maybe ten
acres square, and its downtown consisted of two roads that crossed in the
middle.  There was a few shops down one stretch, paralleled by offices and
official government buildings, but all the structures were no more than two
stories tall.  The other stretch featured a couple of feed and grain stores and
a church.

Ringing the downtown was a
neighborhood of houses set close together.  All the homes looked identical, the
kind you’d see back in the 1950’s in the suburbs.  The only distinguishing
marks between them were their different colors.

It was a strange sight, like
walking onto the middle of an empty movie set.

He heard moaning coming from all
quarters and he knew zombies were around, but where were they?  Carefully, he
crept up the street, passing by a feed store that had its doors shuttered.  Trash
blew down the sidewalk, pushed by a harsh gust of wind that died as quickly as
it began.  Up ahead, he heard the moaning, louder, and curiosity got the better
of him.

The moaning was coming from the
church, an old-fashioned, one-room building with a big white steeple at the
front and a long sanctuary at the back with a row of windows lining each wall. 

Jeff snuck up to one of the
windows and risked a look inside.

The pews were lined with zombies,
sitting and staring at the front of the room where a zombie strolled back and
forth behind a pulpit, his right hand raising occasionally as if he were making
some kind of emphatic point.  The zombie wore a black suit with a white
button-down shirt underneath.  He was tall and skinny and missing half his face,
the meat underneath dull and dried, like a piece of old beef jerky.  He moaned
and stumbled and seemed to be trying to simulate speech.  On top of his head, a
flap of a jet-black toupee fluttered, hanging onto the side of his head like
top of a can of soup that had been opened and left standing. 

The congregation consisted of
twenty zombies, all dressed in their finest Sunday clothes.  They were in
various states of decay and disrepair.  Most of them moaned and rocked in their
seats, holding hymnals in their dead hands, the pages fluttering in the wind. 
Others clung to bibles and hardly moved at all.

Jeff stepped away from the
window.  Those poor people.  He could see it, in his mind’s eye, them running
to the church to seek God’s help for the curse upon mankind and then, whether
slowly or all at once, getting bitten and killed by the living dead.  Then they
turned and stayed there, some ancient spark telling them to keep up their
prayers and their songs and their preaching.  God would save them, eventually.

He shook his head.  God wasn’t in
the business of saving anyone anymore, if he ever had been.  God was in the
business of cleansing the world of all mankind.

A hand fell on Jeff’s shoulder and
he spun, swinging the shotgun he’d been carrying.  It caught the zombie behind
him on the chin, clipping it and sending the creature stumbling off to the
right.  The zombie was a woman in a sleeveless blue dress, her hair pulled back
into a ponytail.  Some of her teeth shattered with the blow and clattered against
the side of the church as she stood upright and lurched towards him again, her
arms outstretched and a wretched moan on her ragged lips.  Her arms were
completely sheared of skin from her shoulders to her wrists and, like the
preacher inside, the exposed meat was dry and leathery. 

Jeff raised the butt and slammed
it into her forehead, cracking her skull open with one blow.  He watched as the
woman staggered back and her brains oozed through the front of her head where
he’d caved it in.  She tripped and fell and her head jerked back when she hit
the ground.  Her brains oozed from the open wound and she stopped moving. 

He moved away from the church,
afraid of being discovered by any more of those things, and fled the town. 

Days later he realized he was
lost. 

He studied his map and realized he
was deep into Oregon now, but he’d drifted further east than he’d intended.  He
had stayed east of the coast but hadn’t crossed so far that he got anywhere
near Mt. Shasta.  He skirted the Round Valley Indian Reservation and continued
north, passing by Orleans and Clear Creek.  He stayed at the edges of the
mountain ranges, never climbing them, working around into clearer going.  Now
he wasn’t sure where he was and what he should do.

Finally, Jeff decided to keep
going west.  Up ahead he figured he’d run into Interstate 5, and once he did,
he could get his bearings.

Later that day, he did just that,
pushing through some brush and emerging onto the highway itself, a sign
declaring not only was he now on 5, he was only four miles from Myrtle Creek,
Oregon.  He sat by the side of the road and studied his maps.  He’d really come
far west, too far for what he’d been intending.  He wanted to stay within
twenty miles of the Pacific Coast, if he could.  He knew that his route had
meandered a bit due to more towns and cities out there, but now his path was
leading him straight up to Salem and, eventually, Portland. 

Jeff folded the maps and looked
around.  The road here was pretty clear, a few abandoned cars dotting the
landscape like zits on a teenager's face.  He didn’t see any zombies or
people.  There wasn’t much out here other than some small towns and, given the
way the zombies had begun behaving, most were probably back in their homes,
living their half-remembered lives, rather than out roaming, looking for food. 
God knows there weren’t many humans left, for sure.

He decided to follow I-5, staying
to the left of it by a dozen yards, keeping out of sight as best as possible. 
He would keep by this route until he reached Eugene and then go west more. 
From Eugene on, it seemed, there was a lot of cities and suburbs sprawled out,
and more cities meant more zombies. 

He sat and watched the clouds blow
over, the air crisp and chilly, the sun obscured by the gray skies. 

3

NOVEMBER

He'd kept west of I-5 and had
traveled almost as far north as Salem.  When he saw signs saying the town was
only a few miles away, he went further west, into the woods, towards Valsetz.

Winter was coming down faster than
he’d expected, and he needed to find a spot where he could hole up, gather
food, and hopefully find someplace that had canned goods. 

It was here, deep in the woods,
far from any town, where Jeff stumbled across the house that would change his
life forever.

He was heading in the general
direction of Valsetz.  He knew nothing of the town except it was nestled in the
wildlands of Oregon, over closer to the Pacific Coast, about middle distance
between Salem and the ocean.  It was an area that seemed ripe for all the
things Jeff was looking for, including seclusion, a large area to hunt in, and
few homes.

He found the exact house he was
looking for on his third day of foraging and exploring outside of Valsetz.  It
was a good five miles from the city, tucked into a series of rolling hills that
kept the house fairly sheltered from the elements and also made it hard to
get.  Zombies could conceivably make their way there, but once winter settled
in, that seemed pretty improbable. 

The house was two stories, with white
aluminum siding, black shutters, and a short, roofed front porch.  The front
yard was long and sprawling, devoid of the trees that ringed the property like
a fortress of wooden spears, and the backyard was also large, with a rusty
swingset and a large storage shed.  A winding, gravel road led to the house,
and if he hadn’t stumbled across the road he never would have known the
dwelling was there.  It would be an easy matter to go back to the main road and
disguise the entrance to the property.  He could tear down the mailbox and drag
some fallen trees and brush across the road and no one who was looking hard
would even know it existed. 

He circled the house four times,
making sure it was unoccupied.  He couldn’t be positive because he couldn’t see
through walls, but it seemed as if nothing stirred inside.  After sitting for
an hour, waiting to see if anything was happening, he decided it was time to
move in.

Jeff went to the front door and
found it locked.  He walked around the house, glancing in the windows, but the
shades were drawn.  He held his shotgun in front of him, his rifle shouldered
but ready.

The back door was unlocked.  He
slipped inside, enveloped by the darkness and a sweet, sickly smell.  He’d
experienced that stench before:  there was a zombie inside.  Almost as a lark,
he flicked the light switch but of course there was no electricity; he hadn’t
been in a house with one in months.  It didn’t matter.  He stepped over and
opened a couple of shades and found, just as he’d thought, that he was in a
kitchen.  It was big and open, with a chair and tables in the far right corner,
forming a breakfast nook.  There were long counters on two of the walls,
forming a V.  Above those counters were a series of cabinets, all oak, and in
the middle where the V met, was a stove and oven.  On the right side was a sink
and on the left a built-in dishwasher.  This place would have been heaven if
there had been any electricity.  Over on the right, next to an open doorway
that led into the rest of the house, was a large, walk-in pantry.  He went
inside and checked it out, marveling at all the canned goods.  His eyes grew
wide with delight as he saw row upon row of vegetables and tuna and soups.  At
the bottom, on the floor, were several boxes.  He was about to open them when
he heard the moan.  It drifted down the hallway and carried lazy on the air.

Zombie. 

Jeff crept over to the doorway.  A
darkened hall greeted him, spilling out into another large room.  Sunlight was
weakly dribbling in from under the closed shades so it illuminated enough to
let him know about how big the room was.  He fished in his pack and pulled out
his flashlight and clicked it on.

He was in the living room.  It had
two couches, a big-screen TV, a fireplace, and a recliner.  After he checked
around and found nothing, he opened the shades.  He turned his flashlight off
and looked in the two closets over by they set of stairs that led up to the
second floor.  In one he found plenty of winter coats and a pair of skis.  In
the other was  a number of blankets and other sundries.

Jeff climbed the stairs, gun
ready, careful and slow.  He didn’t need any surprises now.  From what he’d
seen, he’d struck a goldmine.  He just had to find the zombie and dispose of it
and he’d be on easy street.  

He reached the top of the stairs
and looked down the right and the left.  There were three doors along the way,
two to his right and one at the end of the hall on his left.  That door was
open and he could see it held a bathroom.  The other two were closed and,
shuffling at the end of the hall by one of the doors, was the zombie he’d been
looking for.

It was a woman.  She wore a blue
housecoat and stumbled around on a foot that was bent crooked at the ankle and
was swollen and bruised.  Her neck jutted at an odd angle and as Jeff trained
the flashlight on her, he determined that she must have fallen at some point
and broken her ankle and snapped her neck.  That didn’t stop her from coming
back, though.  She groaned and turned to face him.  Jeff raised the shotgun and
then thought better of it.  Why blow her brains out and dirty up the place up? 
He crouched down and opened his pack.  Inside was the hammer, from so long ago,
back when he and Jenny were together, back when the world, even though it was
insane, was at least tolerable.  He pulled the hammer out and stood up.

A funny thing happened, then.  The
woman turned away from him, ignoring him, disregarding the warm meal in front
of her.  She seemed much more intent on the door, on getting inside to whatever
was in there.  Her fingers scratched hard at its wooden surface, her
fingernails breaking, fresh blood smearing in streaks down the door.  She was
recently dead, maybe as early as this morning, so she still had blood and her
skin hadn’t turned ash-gray yet. 

He took a step towards her, hammer
raised and ready.  She still kept her back to him.  Jeff couldn’t understand
it.  Whatever was in that room was more important to her than a meal.  He got
two feet away before she finally turned, teeth bared and clacking together. 
She lunged for him but she was too late and too slow.  He brought the hammer
down, crunching through the top of her skull.  Blood squirted up into the air
and splattered on the wall to his left.  The woman spasmed and shook as Jeff yanked
the hammer out, a flap of skull the size of a CD stuck to the end of it, and
slammed it down again.  This was the killing blow.  The woman quivered and sat
down, slumping against the wall, dead for good.

Jeff pulled the hammer out and
wiped the blood and gore off onto her housecoat.  He stared at her a moment,
noticing for the first time she had red hair, a true strawberry blonde.  She
was close to his age and, if she hadn’t been a member of the walking dead, he
would have found her very attractive. 

He stood and faced the door.  On
the other side was something very important to her.  He wondered what it was. 
As always, though, he didn’t much care.  Every day was about surviving and
moving on.  Today was no different than any other.

How wrong he was.

Jeff grabbed the knob and turned
it, the door unlocked.  He shook his head again and laughed and flung it
inward, hammer at the ready.

The door creaked open on rusty
hinges, revealing a nursery.  He froze at the threshold as he looked around. 
The walls were papered images from children’s cartoons and in the corner sat a
crib and in the crib, something moved.

Despite his misgivings and his
fears, he trudged forward, his heart in his throat.  He couldn’t take seeing a
dead baby, moving around, squalling for his flesh.  But he had to know, he had
to look.  When he reached the side of the crib, he stopped, took a deep breath,
and looked down.

In the bed was a rosy pink baby,
her mouth open and cooing and her eyes bright and shiny.  She wore a white
shirt with something written across it in rainbow colors, and pair of diapers. 
She had a shock of red hair on the top of her head and when her eyes spotted
him, they danced with pleasure.  The word written on her shirt burned into his
brain and panic surged through his body.

Jeff screamed and turned and ran. 
He dashed from the room, leapt over the woman’s dead body, took the steps in
three bounds, hit the front door, fumbled with the locks, and darted across the
front lawn and into the woods.

He didn’t stop until he was
fifteen yards into the brush, out of breath and freaking out.  That was a baby
in there.  A child, helpless and alone.  He’d killed its mother.  The poor
creature was trying to get in that room and check on her child.  But what for? 
Would she have eaten the baby? 

Why was he even thinking those
things?  So many thoughts shot through his head, confusing him, driving him to
the brink of madness.  There was a baby in there, a girl, and she was all alone
now, unable to fend for herself.  What was he supposed to do? 

He wanted to run, as far and as
fast as he could, deep into the woods, and never look back.  Every instinct
cried out for him to leave, to go his own way and leave the child to die.  It
was horrible, yes, but in the end, wouldn’t it be an act of mercy?  To raise a
child in this mess was beyond cruel, it was evil.

Still, the baby didn’t know that. 
It was lying in its crib, innocent and helpless.  He couldn’t just leave it
behind, could he?  Was he really so far gone he could turn and walk away from
somebody who needed his help?

Jeff bit his lip and steeled his
courage.   He had to.  If he didn’t, if he tried to take care of the baby, or
at least get it someplace where someone would, it meant a certain death for him
and the child.  There was no way he could walk around, baby strapped to him,
with an army of the dead roaming the earth and marauding humans who’d eat the
baby quicker than a zombie would. 

Or, he could go in, put a bullet
in its brain, and walk away.

He was sickened he even had that
thought, but the practical side of him, the part of him that had pushed him to
leave, to keep walking, to do whatever it took to survive, thought it was quite
rational.  He could put the child out of its misery.  And he could go on,
living day to day, fighting the fight.

Jeff sat on a fallen log in the
woods.  He needed to think about this.  He needed to weigh all the options
before he went and did anything.  The only trouble was, there wasn’t any good
to come of the possibilities.  They all led to death or horrible pain, for him
and the child.  So what was he supposed to do?

And there he sat, for almost an
hour, wagering back and forth about which was the best action to take.  If he
left the child to die, he’d be responsible for its death.  If he killed it,
he’d be responsible for its death.  If he tried to take care of it, he’d likely
be responsible for its death because he didn’t know what the hell he was
doing.  If he tried to take it somewhere to somebody else, he’d probably be
responsible for its death, too.

What was he supposed to do?

Through it all, through the
debating and recriminations, he very carefully blocked out of his mind what
he’d seen written there, on the baby’s shirt.  Any time that word crept up to
the surface, he pushed it away like a plate of poison.  Because, in the end,
that’s exactly what it was.  The word would tip the scales of the inner debate
he was having and it made the arguments about leaving or killing the child
irrelevant.  He needed a clear head to think things through; he couldn’t be
clouded by emotions.

A twig snapped behind him.  Jeff
spun and raised the rifle and froze.

There, standing in a clearing, ten
feet away, was Jenny.  It was impossible; she couldn’t be there, and she
couldn’t look like she did before they went to Alcatraz, but it was true.  She
was there, standing quiet and still, staring at him.  He knew then he’d either
lost his mind or was about to.  She didn’t speak; she just stood and watched
him. 

And standing there, all the
debates raging in his mind dropped away and became irrelevant.  That word
printed on the baby’s shirt, the word that was haunting him, was clearly a
message.  The baby needed him, and he needed her.

That word was the name of the
baby, scrawled in rainbow script.

Jenny.

As soon as he thought it, as soon
as he acknowledged the baby’s name, tears sprang to his eyes and the vision of
Jenny, the woman he loved, shimmered and faded and disappeared.  He screamed
out her name and ran to where she stood but she wasn’t there anymore, only a
lingering scent of her perfume. 

It was crazy, it was insane, but
Jeff knew he’d been given a second chance to live.

He turned and trotted back to the
house.  Jenny needed him.

Jeff ran harder by the second, his
legs pumping like they hadn’t in a long time.  He would check on the child,
make sure she was okay, and then he’d move her mother’s body out into the
woods.  There was no sense in Jenny seeing her dead mother, was there?  Then
what would he do?  He’d go downstairs and see where the baby food was and feed
her.  And then what? 

He didn’t know.  He didn’t have a
clue.  He just knew he had to do something.

Jeff ran into the house, his mind
a whirl of worry and planning.  He looked up and and skidded to a stop.

A big black bear sat on the
stairs, sniffing the air.

The bear turned and growled.  Up
the steps, baby Jenny cried out.  The bear looked at Jeff and turned towards
the upstairs.  It was big, hundreds of pounds in weight, and the stairs groaned
under each footfall.  To his eyes, the bear was the size of a small car, its
frame wide and powerful and filling up the entire staircase.