Day Eleven

I wake up before dawn, and head upstairs to check on the girls. Neither of them has moved since I wished them sweet dreams last night. Downstairs, I flip open my laptop and surf to Facebook. The posts from my friends have dwindled down to a trickle. Thanks to the World Wide Web, I’m watching them die, one by one. I flip on CNN. A lot has happened over night. Israel has lobbed nukes into Iran and commenced a heavy bombing campaign against the Palestinians. Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have mobilized troops and are preparing to mount an attack on the Israelis, who are reiterating their willingness to use nuclear weapons again if a single Arab harms one of the chosen people. Well, fuck. American military personnel are leaving the region, heading stateside to assist with containment efforts in the US. It amuses me a little to think that it takes a goddamned plague to get the troops back home. The fucking mess they’re coming back to is unbelievable. I wonder how many of them have families left.

The President will speak to the nation at eight o’clock Eastern.

The sun is coming up and the birds are making a hell of a racket outside. I move from window to window, checking out the perimeter of the house. The back yard is secure; the fence gate is closed and locked. The grass is out of control and there are leaves and buds from the trees blanketing the water of the pool. I’m not making any plans to mow the lawn. I pull the curtain back from the living room window and my heart stops. On the street, there are several people moving slowly down the center of the avenue. It’s the Thriller dancers, jerking and swaying from side to side as they shuffle toward the rising sun. It’s daybreak, not fully light, but I can see that their faces are an ugly, purplish grey. One, a woman, has no shirt on, and her large breasts are heavy with blood and fluids. I count seven in all, three men, two women and two children. One of the men is missing an arm, a jagged stub of bone juts from his shoulder. They’re passing by the house, and I can hear long, soft moans from the other side of the window.

Behind me, Rachel screams, a high pitched child’s cry of pure terror. I didn’t know she’s come downstairs. I pull her to me, hiding her eyes from the view of the street. The group of walkers jerks to a stop, and one by one, they turn toward the house. The one-armed man is the first to take a shuffling step forward, and the rest of the pack jerks one leg, then the next, along with him. I tell Rachel to go upstairs, wake her mother, and lock the bedroom door. She sprints up the stairs like a jackrabbit and doesn’t look back. The bedroom door slams shut.

Outside, the walkers are on my side of the street. One-arm reaches the curb, stumbles and goes down, face first. The topless woman steps over him, using his spine as a ramp and lurches over the grass and onto the sidewalk. One of the children, a little girl who looks about five, follows closely behind. Most of her face is gone, it looks as though it’s been eaten down to the bone. One-arm pushes up, onto his knees, before being knocked back to the ground by another walker. My heart is pounding out of my chest. I let the curtain fall back and the window is covered.

I can hear them, outside. That fucking moan, it sounds like wind, is right outside the wall now. There’s a scraping as dead fingernails work down the aluminum siding. I dash to the stairs, taking three at a time, and burst through the bedroom door. It’s unlocked and I curse Rachel for never remembering to follow my instructions. Rachel and Amanda are holding each other close on the bed. I tell them to stay there, keep the fucking door locked, goddamn it, I’m going out to try to fight the – what, zombies? – off before they break through the windows.

I grab Bob’s pump action twelve gauge, load it and stuff a handful of shells in my pocket, and reach for the garden shovel with my other hand. I’m out the side door in the garage and around front in just a few steps. I scan up and down the street; thankfully, there are no other walking corpses to deal with. The herd of walkers is scratching, pawing at the side of the house. They’re moaning, ragged, raspy cries from deep within their chests. I raise the shot gun to my shoulder and aim for one-arm’s head. The trigger pulls back, the hammer drops and one-arm’s skull explodes in a spray of grey and red. He doesn’t go down, but he can’t hear or see me. Another shell, another hard recoil of the shot gun, and the topless woman’s head is gone as well. The five corpses left are moving slowly toward me and I’m backing away, trying to load a shell. I drop it to the ground, damned fingers, and quickly slide another into the chamber. The little faceless girl is ambling toward me. The white bone of her skull is shiny and wet, the skin where her nose and upper lip should be is completely gone where something, probably rats, ate away the flesh. Her teeth are clicking together until I fire the gun at point blank range and shower her friends with brains and blood.  

I fumble in my pocket for the shells. There are two left, and four bodies to deal with. They’re all between me and the shell I fucking dropped. I jog a few steps backwards and slam a shell home. The walkers are following me and I back into the street. They keep coming with that jerky, unsure gait. Thriller. One of the men, wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a faded flannel shirt with the sleeves torn off, reaches for me just as I unload a blast to his face, which blows away, leaving nothing but the back of his head sticking out of his neck like am ice cream scoop. Three more walkers, one shell in the gun and one on the ground. I make a mental note to count the fuckers next time and bring enough ammunition. I blast another round through the skull of the kid and he’s on the ground, thick black ooze seeping from the stump of his neck.

The bodies of the walkers I’ve already shot are scattered over the front lawn. A couple of them are trying to walk. The others are rolling in the grass, arms reaching for something, probably me. The shell I dropped is in the hand of the little girl, so I spin around, grip the shot gun by the barrel and swing it like a baseball bat, connecting with the head of a walker for a homer. The gun stock makes a squishy crack as wood meets flesh, splitting the face and flattening the nose into pulp. The shovel, my new best friend, is leaning against the porch railing and I make a dash for it. The other child, a Hispanic boy named Hector that I recognize from Rachel’s school, is close so I swing the shovel in an arc, sideways. The blade of the spade cuts deep into Hector’s neck, and the black ooze flows generously down the front of his Pokemon tee shirt. I swing again, screaming, and feel the satisfying crunch as the blade cuts through his spine, and Hector’s head falls to one side, resting for a moment on his shoulder before gravity pulls it forward. It’s hanging by a thick piece of muscle and skin; the weight of his head hanging against his chest makes Hector stumble and fall forward to the ground. His arms, outstretched, crumple beneath him and I hear the sharp snap of a bone breaking as he drops.

The headless little girl is still clutching my last shell, and I swing the shovel high and down across her forearm, neatly separating it from her elbow. The blade sinks into the turf. I leave the shovel standing there in the ground and grab the severed hand, prying the shell from tightly closed fingers. The hand is still flexing. I grab the shot gun, slam the shell into the chamber and spin around behind the last body, pressing the barrel tightly against the back of the walker’s head before pulling the trigger and sending a shower of brains and bone fragments skyward. 

I’m standing there, covered in gore. Of the seven, only two walkers are standing. One is shuffling in circles in the street, and the other is against a tree in the front yard, its feet making a burrow as it tries to force its way through the trunk. I run my hand through my hair, and it’s slick with that wet, black shit that passes for zombie blood. My heart is pounding and I’m having a hard time catching my breath. From across the street, I hear Sanjay yelling to me from his kitchen window. He’s been watching me fight off the onslaught of walkers, which I’ve decided to call these… things. Walkers, with a capital W. “Doot”, he yells. “Doot, that was fucking pretty awesome!” I generally like the guy, but I’m so pissed that he didn’t bother to lend a hand that I can’t see straight.

“You fucking cocksucker!” I scream back. I’m seeing red, and shouting at the top of my lungs. “That was awesome? Thanks for the fucking help, you motherfucking fucking fuck!” Sanjay slams the window shut and I’m left to clean up the mess in silence. I punch the code into the keypad and the garage door rises. Inside, I grab the regular shovel, a lighter from my tool box and a can of gasoline. I hit the keypad again and the door eases down. In the yard, I swing my garden spade at the legs of the walker by the tree and she drops to the ground. I swing a few more times and her legs and one arm are torn away. I do the same with the rest of the bodies, removing an arm here, a leg there, just enough to take away any remaining mobility. I have to jog half a block to catch the walker in the street, and take him down by cutting through a knee. When I’m done, I use the regular shovel to pile the limbs, still flexing, into a heap. I roll the torsos together and pour a liberal amount of gas onto each pile and flick the lighter. It takes a few tries to get a flame, it must be low on butane, but it lights and in a few seconds, both mountains of flesh are burning. They sizzle and pop, it sounds like hamburger frying in a pan on the stove. I’m not hungry.

Around back, I do my pool routine again. Mandy isn’t there to greet me, and I walk through the garage and into the house, shivering. I’m still dripping as I stand in the kitchen, bare feet on the hardwood floor, freezing as I try to dry off with a hand towel. Upstairs, I turn the knob on the bedroom door. It’s locked. I knock gently, and Amanda lets me in. I put on a pair of shorts from the dresser, towel my hair dry in the bathroom and crawl into bed. Rachel and Amanda curl up next to me, and they’re warm. The clock on the night table says eight fourteen.

It’s already been a long day.

Later, I’ll check on the smoldering corpses. Later. For now, in here, I’m warming up, I’m safe and I’m just so goddamned tired. I close my eyes, and sleep comes quickly. When I wake up, it’s almost noon. The girls are still next to me. Rachel is snoring lightly and Amanda is propped up on one elbow, watching her sleep. Our eyes meet and she smiles, just a little. She looks at me, then at Rachel, and at me again. “It’s Friday”, she says. “Movie night.” I laugh a little at that. Fridays are always our night to eat pizza and watch movies in the basement. I tell Mandy yes, let’s do that, let’s watch a movie.

                After a shower, I’m dressed and back outside. The corpses have burned down nicely, leaving piles of grey ash and bones. Nothing is moving, and I’m glad for it. I dig a hole in the grass and rake the remains in.

There’s nothing left in the yard but a dirt covered mound and a few pieces of scalp and hair. Shrek, I think to myself. Tonight, we’ll watch Shrek. That’ll do, Donkey. That’ll do.