Zombie D.O.A. (24 page)

“But honey…”

“Hush!” Betsy said again, “I’m through talking.”

“I never could win an argument with you,“ Tom mumbled.

After I’d tied Tom to the pillar, we turned out the gas lantern, but I didn’t sleep at all that night. I lay in the darkness listening to Tom and Betsy reminiscing about times past, their conversation punctuated at times by tears, but more often by laughter, as though they didn’t have a care in the world.

After a while they fell silent and I heard the sound of Tom snoring. “Good night, sweet prince,” I heard Betsy say and then I heard her quietly crying in the dark.

Not long after I heard the sound of Tom clearing his throat in the way the Becka had done, and I knew that the virus had taken him. I thought about turning on the light, just to be sure, but I didn’t want to see him that way, and more importantly, I didn’t want Betsy to see him either.

It had been quiet upstairs for a long while, and I decided it was probably time to check things out. I
crept up the stairs
, slid the key into the security gate and heard it click open. Then I crawled the last few steps to the wooden door and p
ushed it open a crack. I surveil
led the room at floor level, saw glass and broken crockery. It was gloomy in there with the half-light of dawn doing a poor job of illuminating the place.

I was about to stand
when I noticed a familiar shape, lying on the floor against the counter, the Louisville Slugger. I stood
up
, pushed through the door and made a dash for the bat, picking it up in one swoop and adopting a stance that would have done Hank Aaron proud. The kitchen was empty.

I walked furtively towards the hall, and peeked around the corner looking towards the front door. The hall was empty too but the door had been smashed and hung off its hinges. Beyond the porch I could see that Tom’s prized lawn had been trampled into a quagmire by hundreds of feet.

I took the stairs three at a time and walked quickly along the short passage to Tom and Betsy’s bedroom. It was less chaotic up there, but darker.

The bedroom door was open, and I crossed the room in three strides and slid the nightstand drawer open. Inside,
there
was a yellow chamois
cloth
enclosing a bulky object. I flipped the chamois
aside
and picked up the .38. It was oily to the touch and when I spun it open there were only two rounds in the cylinder.

I slipped the revolver into my waistband, picked up the baseball bat and turned to leave. Becka was standing in the space behind the door, blood on her face and a low growl thrumming in her throat.

She charged me and I swung the bat, two-handed, at its widest possible arc. The bat collided with her cheekbone and drove her into a solid oak closet. It was a blow that would have
killed most grown men outright
, but Becka staggered to her feet and scowled at me with one side of her face caved in.

She blundered towards
me and I swung again,
catching her on the ear. She stayed down this time and I finished her off with three solid blows that
crushed
her skull.

I stepped over Becka and walked from the bedroom into the gloom of the passage. To my left I heard a low growl from the darkness, and I instantly brought the bat up in a batter’s stance.        

A boy of about twelve stepped out of the shadows. Billy. He had a wicked sliver of glass protruding from his neck and he had obviously been at the hens. His face was covered in blood and chicken feathers.

Billy showed his teeth and then rushed down the passage towards me. I brought the bat down and drove it into his midriff like a battering ram. Then I spilled his brains on the carpet with one blow.

Downstairs I found Betsy standing at the kitchen counter, staring through the broken pane into the distance.

“You found the gun?” she said, without turning towards me.

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

“Betsy, I…”

“Give it to me,” she insisted.

I walked towards her, took the gun from my waistban
d and placed it on the counter
next to her.

“When this is done,” she said, still staring into the distance. “I want you to burn this place to the ground.  Take Tom’s truck and whatever else you need, but burn this place down, you understand.
”

“Yes.”

She turned towards me then and there were tears in her eyes but also a steely resolve. “You’re a good man, Chris,” she said. “Both Tom and I have enjoyed your company immensely.”

Then she picked up the gun and walked towards the cellar. A short time later I heard a shot fired and then another.

I burned down the house as Betsy had asked, but before I did, I buried Tom and Betsy next to each other under the Tulip trees.

Then I got into Tom’s pickup and drove away. 

I headed west, avoiding the clogged interstates and sticking to the auxiliary roads. I still wasn’t sure exactly where I was going but the dreams told me that Ruby was being held in a house near a beach, and for some reason I believed that house to be out west.

Something about the color of the sky, the ocean, the lay of the land told me that. But it was the rusted sign that most convinced me my daughter was in California. Don’t ask me why. The dreams were frequent now, almost every night. But the sign remained elusive, never allowing me to see the clue I knew was there. And yet, even without seeing it I knew that it was pointing me west, towards California.

I traveled across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, avoiding all but the smallest of towns.  I saw very few humans and no Zs, but one incident bears mentioning, simply because it provided me with the means to stay alive.

I was traveling through a mountainous wooded area that a sign identified as Mark Twain National Park. As I rounded a bend I came across a faded red Dodge pickup stopped at an angle in the middle of the road.  Both doors stood open.

I reversed my vehicle back around the bend so it was hidden from view. Then I took Tom’s .38 from underneath the seat and holstered it in my waistband. I’d taken the gun from the house and I’d been able to find half a box of ammunition. I figured Tom had probably used the other half getting Betsy used to handling the gun.

I walked back to the curve in the road and peered around. It was quiet, perhaps too quiet. Aware that this may be a trap, I removed the .38 and held it two handed, like a TV cop.

I edged my way towards the pickup using the cover of an overhang at the side of the road. The tailgate was up and as I got closer I noticed thick blood seeping from under it and dripping to the tarmac.

For a brief moment I considered just getting the hell out of there, finding another route or trying to push the Dodge out of the road with my truck. But I figured that if this was a trap I’d already taken the bait, and if there was someone lying in the bed of the Dodge, they were either already dead or in need of help. With that amount of blood, probably dead.

Edging slowly forward, I finally reached the Dodge. In the bed were four deer, including a young buck, and a stag with a majestic set of antlers. They hadn’t just been shot, they’d been raked with gunfire and blood seeped from multiple bullet holes. The buck had taken a bullet that had blown away his lower jaw.

Now, I’ve never been a hunter and I’ve never under
stood the appeal of killing
a beautiful creature just to stroke your ego. But I accept that some people see it as sport. A professional hunter prides himself on a clean kill. On taking the animal down with a single shot, so he never even knows what hit him. But this wasn’t hunting, this was a massacre, and it filled in me a rage deeper than I’d felt for a long time.

Just then I heard automatic gunfire, then a whoop and laughter and someone shouting, “You got him, son of a bitch, you got him!”

I instinctively ducked behind the truck and edged my way towards the cab. Inside the floor was covered in crushed Budweiser cans, candy wrappers and other debris. There was a half eaten bag of beef jerky and half a six-pack of Bud sitting on the seat. A shotgun was wedged into a rack above the
rear window
.

From my crouching position I could see through the windshield towards the woods from where the shots had come, and as I watched two men emerged from between the trees. The guy in front was big and overweight with lanky red hair and an unruly beard. He wore a bandana across his forehead and a blood-stained St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt.

The guy behind him was taller and thinner. He was wearing a red and black plait shirt and a matching deer-stalker hat. He had the corpse of a small deer slung across his shoulder. 

The front guy carried a weapon, an AK-47 like the one I’d lost in my encounter with Jake and Elwood. The other guy had a sling belt across his chest.

I watched them approach and looked wistfully towards the shotgun. I knew I couldn’t make a move for it without being spotted. I also knew that with my .38 against their AK and whatever else, I was hopelessly outgunned.

I could hear them approaching now. The St. Louis guy was talking, “I tell you, that bitch was pure hell on wheels. And the best thing about it was her old man worked my shift and he never had a clue. I’d look at him and just chuckle to myself, thinking he never…”

He paused to slide down the overhang. The other guy did the same, after first dropping the deer the eight feet or so, then sliding down and picking it up again.

“…he never knew that the mouth he was kissin’ goodnight had been blowin’ on my clarinet just a few hours before.” His laughter boomed in the silence and then I stood up from my crouch with the .38 pointed at him and the laughter died in his throat.

They stood there wide-eyed looking at me as though I was some peculiarity and then St. Louis’ eyes started to narrow and I was sure he was going to try and bring the AK up and get off a burst.

“Don’t,” I said simply, and I could see him visible exhale, as though he suddenly realized how close he’d come to dying.

“Mister, we got no fight with you,” the other guy said. With his emaciated face and the earflaps of the deerstalker hanging down he looked like an old hound dog.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do,” I said
ignoring him
. “You,” indicating the big guy, “move your hand away from the trigger of that AK. Good. Now bend down and put it on the ground. I said bend
,
not crouch. Oh, fuck it. Just put it down. Now push it towards me. Now step back. Another step. Okay, stop.

“You, Hound D
og, first I want you to put down
the deer. Gently now, l
ike it
was your own little girl. Good,
now unsling the rifle. Put it on the ground like I showed your friend. That’s good. You’re a quick learner. Now join your friend over there where I can watch both of you.”

I watched Hound D
og walk over and then I said, “You boys been doing some hunting.”

“Yeah, so what the fuck’s it got to do with you,” St. Louis said, “You some kind of park ranger?”

“Just a concerned citizen who takes exception to fellers like yourselves blasting off at animals with automatic weapons.“