“Four, maybe five hours. The roads here are shit, but I can move pretty well in the old truck. With any luck the 4x4 cruiser will be back at the station. I’ll just grab that and be done with it. We need to move fast, you brought a frigging trainload of them.” Dan’s eyes never left the windows and the growing mass of undead just outside them.
“Okay, okay. Your parent’s house is really big, that would work great. Let’s go.” Amanda gave Dan another hug, and gathered the kids from the couch. One more drive, and they’d be safe.
*****
Dan and Andrew never arrived. Long days and longer nights of pensive waiting were strung together until everyone collapsed into exhausted realization, and sad acceptance. Amanda had lost her parents. Both Angela and Amanda had lost their husbands. Alan, Tabitha, and Daniel Junior had lost their fathers. In a single day two families were torn to shreds, and the months following had done nothing to make that loss easy to digest.
Gladys and Joe McGreevy took the two shattered families into their home and welcomed them as gladly as they could. They had the space, and in their old farm’s root cellar they certainly had a lot of food to spare. Gladys’ obsession with canning her garden’s harvest had filled shelves top to bottom. The kids ate well, stuffed frequently with sweet homemade jams and vegetables.
Unlike their bellies, their hearts were empty. From inside the boarded up windows of the farmhouse the families watched as the walking dead shuffled up and down the country road as cars drove by. Sometimes the undead would take a day or more before passing the yard outside the fence again once they were led one way. On the fridge Joe McGreevy had named the local undead so they could bet on if and how long it took them to pass by again. Tabitha was currently riding her horse strong into the lead. She’d accurately guessed Zippy McFlannelshirt’s speed and return time enough to create an insurmountable lead. Morbid game? Sure. But it kept the kids from being afraid when the undead came back, and in the mother’s eyes, that was worth it.
The game took a hiatus when the snow came. At times it fell so heavy it blotted the winter sun from the sky, casting a dull pallor over the world. The fireplaces ate log after log hungrily trying to keep the sprawling manse warm through the coldest days and nights. The adults in the house sat down late at night, kids tucked fearfully into their beds as they warmed their cold noses over steaming cups of tea and thanking God that the undead had no sense of smell.
Things were quiet until the thaw.
*****
“You know Dan would call me a goddamn idiot for climbing up here to do this,” Angela said as she hiked up the short ladder to the platform in the yard they’d built. Using the corner of the white fence surrounding the property Angela and Amanda had constructed what amounted to an elevated porch. It was maybe four feet on a side with a pitched plywood roof to fend off the cold drizzle. Lodged securely in the corner of the fence the platform served to reinforce it, as well as giving them a place to destroy the new, steady stream of zombies coming at the farm.
In the early days of May when they had intensely begun replanting the family garden the zombies started to appear in larger numbers. One day when Gladys and Joe sat on the edge of porch to drink some water Joe hollered out for the girls to stop digging and come over. They set down the trowels and hoes and went to the old couple. Joe solemnly pointed his bent finger at the road, and when they all turned and looked, there was a collective gasp.
Normally two or perhaps three of the deceased milled about at the fence. They’d lean over clumsily, pressing hard against the white slats, causing the fence to creak and bend inward. They’d reinforced the fence all around to alleviate the stress, and as long as the numbers were low, there was little to worry about. The gasp was drawn from them due to the line of undead insistently pressing against the fence. Just over a dozen after they counted.
It was more than they’d seen since leaving town, and it scared them. The bloodied and broken dead were unnaturally silent, and in the fresh spring grass their footfalls were deadened further. Had Joe not noticed them, the house could’ve been surrounded with no notice. With little ammunition left for their guns, and a new garden freshly planted, they decided to build the platform out of all their remaining wood. From the top of it the mothers and the rugged Daniel junior were able to use old Joe’s pickaxe or his long shovel to brain the dead folks on the other side of the fence. A sturdy railing prevented them from falling into the crowd, and the few extra feet of elevation gave them enough oomph to smash skulls. They climbed up on the melon cracker as they called it once or twice a week to, as old Joe put it, ‘crack dead guy melon.’
Cracking dead guy melon was a far cry from Angela’s previous job as a dental hygienist. Her sister Amanda shared the same profession, and she acclimated to it just as poorly. Fourteen year old Dan junior on the other hand was a natural. Dan was already six feet and corded with athletic muscle. He’d climb up, heft the pickaxe, and plunge it into skulls as if he were putting tent stakes in the ground, or hitting a home run. He claimed video games and baseball led him to his prowess, and the mothers couldn’t argue.
“Be safe up there Angela. There is a LOT of them out there today.” Amanda looked around the plywood railing and did a quick count. Eight moving bodies. 15 eyes, and only 13 arms. At least the dismemberment factor was in their favor.
“I got the safety belt on, I’ll be fine,” Angela said as she adjusted a nylon strap to the back of her belt. It prevented them from being pulled over the fence and eaten alive. She hefted the garden shovel, and with a guttural roar, swung it into the temple of a dead old lady. The old lady went down in a heap, but slowly rose again. First time wasn’t always a charm. Angela settled in for the long haul, and got back to work.
*****
Joe McGreevy got out of bed earlier than everyone else. It was his way. It had been his way for decades, and the Armageddon wasn’t about to change that. He hiked up his pants, slung his suspenders over the white tee shirt covering his sagging shoulders, slipped into his worn slippers, and shuffled over to the window overlooking the yard.
“Good Lord Almighty.” He whispered under his breath. Down below just beyond the fence there were nearly twenty of the forsaken dead. They ambled back and forth aimlessly, clinging to the area for no sane reason. Joe shook his head and uttered a string of curses. The girls wouldn’t be up for nearly an hour, and he decided he’d take matters into his own hands. It’d been over a week since he’d made the trek to the top of the melon cracker.
He got his boots on with an arthritic wheeze and slipped through the bedroom door with a creak. Gladys rolled over as he did, resting her hand where his hip normally was. When it landed softly on the bed instead of his body, she opened her eyes, searching for her husband.
“Joe?” Gladys asked the empty dawn filled bedroom. “Joe you there?” This time she sat up with some effort and looked around. “Damn you Joe, you’re gonna burn something in that kitchen.” Gladys tossed the covers off, and sat up to try and stop her husband from ruining breakfast again.
*****
When Gladys got down to the kitchen, Joe wasn’t there. The old cast iron pan was still sitting on the oak counter, and all the food was where she’d left it the night before. It was almost as if he hadn’t even been in the kitchen, which alarmed her. Joe had his habits, and eating breakfast with a hot cup of instant coffee and a Marlboro Red was the one habit that couldn’t be skipped. The only times he’d skipped breakfast was when something quite important needing tending to.
Gladys hollered down the cellar steps, and then looked out on the back porch where he would sometimes take his coffee to smoke. Both places were empty. Gladys sat down at their old butcher block table and scratched her head, wondering where her husband might’ve gone off to. She figured he might’ve gone to the barn to get some extra logs maybe, or he was walking the fence to make sure it was still standing and solid. Gladys decided she’d take a look outside.
With a grunt she rose to her tired feet and went to the heavy front door of the house. The deadbolt wasn’t turned, and the 4x4 normally across the door was out of the cradle, which confirmed to her that her husband was surely outside. She stepped out into the damp chill of the early May morning, and immediately saw Joe standing on the platform in the corner of the yard. He was standing still, pickaxe dangling at his feet, watching the handful of dead people reach up over the railing at him. Gladys thought his posture was strange, but walked across the yard to see what he wanted for breakfast.
Gladys called out to him as she crossed the yard. “Joe honey, what do you want for breakfast?”
Joe didn’t respond. In fact, he did nothing. His body was still, head drooped low, arms lazily dangling. His right hand held onto the haft of the pickaxe by only the barest of margins. Gladys suddenly wondered what was wrong.
“Joe honey? Joe you okay?” Gladys asked her husband as she took hold of the handrail on the short ladder. She pulled herself up and joined him on the small platform. From the higher elevation she could see the large crowd of the dead people outside the fence. Unless she was mistaken, it looked like a few of them had fresh red blood on them.
Gladys reached out to touch her husband’s shoulder and get his attention finally. “Joe your hearing has finally gone. What do you want for breakfast?” Just as the old housewife put her fingers on him, she noticed he was cooler than normal. Then, with a quickness Joe had lost decades ago, he twisted and faced her, dropping the pickaxe to the floor with a thud.
Gladys took a step back when she saw the blood covering the front of her husband’s shirt, and his pale white eyes. He'd been bitten. “Joe what happened? Oh dear Joseph…” Gladys took one more step back, and missed the edge of the platform with her foot. The stairs had no railing in front of them, and Gladys’ arms spun wildly as her weight tipped too far back. She plummeted the several feet to the hard ground, impacting with enough force to crack vertebrae and send her into the cold darkness of unconsciousness.
Joe looked down upon her with lifeless eyes, and made the clumsy trip to the ladder to get down at his helpless wife. Joe had missed breakfast after all.
*****
Angela screamed for an hour when she saw Joe and Gladys wandering the yard a few hours later. Joe had destroyed Gladys in every sense of the word getting his meal out of her. Her face had been scoured of flesh and her nightgown torn asunder. Her old, loose skin was scratched apart as if she’d been torn at by a feral monster. Joe was covered in his beloved wife’s blood, his white tee shirt now dark red from neck to waist.
Amanda awoke to the sound of her older sister screaming, and ran downstairs half naked to the open front door just in time to grab her and pull her inside. Gladys’ leering skull face was bearing down on her and was just a few instants away from tearing into warm, soft woman. Amanda slammed the door and twisted the knob on the deadbolt.
A few minutes later Daniel Junior, Tabitha, and young Alan gathered together at the landing above the two sobbing mothers. The kids watched for minutes, eventually grasping out to hold one another’s hands as they tried to make sense of the senseless world.
Two more skulls were crushed later that day.
*****
“I don’t know what to do anymore.” Amanda said to Angela a few nights later.
The older Angela nodded in response. She’d lost the energy to respond.
“I wish Andy was here.”
“I wish Dan was here.”
Painful silence.
Angela spoke first, “Do you think they are still alive out there, somewhere?” Angela slowly twirled her cup of lukewarm tea. Deep in the bottom she watched the tiny flecks of black tea leaves sway. Just debris really. Like the remnants of humanity. Like them.
“There’s always a chance I guess. I just wish I knew one way or the other. It’s the not knowing that kills me every night.” Amanda rested her face in her palms, inhaling slowly, measuring the steady intake of oxygen to keep her mind quiet. A distant memory was jostled free, and she looked up at her sibling. “Remember how I said Dan wanted to go to that expensive private school? The one on the other side of town? I think he thought it was safe. I wonder if they made it there and haven’t been able to leave? I know it’s a stretch, but maybe?”
Angela looked up from the debris in her cup with the faintest glimmer of fragile optimism in her eyes. “We could make it back to the houses first to check for them. And if they aren’t there, then maybe drive to the school. The roads have been pretty clear lately, and that fence out there won’t hold much longer. There are more of those…
things...
out there every day. Eventually it’ll break, and then what? We only have a handful of shotgun shells left, and we’ll exhaust ourselves beating them to death a shitload sooner than they’ll stop coming at us.”
Amanda looked at her sister in silence. Both knew it’d be risky. “What if they aren’t at home, and aren’t at the school either? Where do we go then?”
“We’ll find somewhere. If the school is safe, we can stay there. Maybe we can go to Westfield, we have family there. Maybe we’ll find other survivors too. Maybe the moon will fall and crush us, who knows Amanda? We know we can’t stay here. We might as well try something. Load up all of Gladys’ jars and maybe dig up the garden too so we can plant it wherever we land. We have Joe’s big ass old diesel truck and the minivan still runs fine. We’ve got gas in the basement. Shit or get off the pot time. I don’t want to die here, not like they did.” Angela tilted her head in the direction of the front yard where Joe and Gladys met their demise.
Silence.
The sisters debated in the dark kitchen without saying a word. Both of them had the same concerns, the same fears, and thought the same thoughts. Despite the danger, the writing was on the wall. Staying here meant hoping the fence would last forever, or until they found more wood to make it stronger. Finding more wood meant going outside the fence, and if they were going to leave the protection of the fence for any reason at all…