Revenence: Dead Silence, A Zombie Novel (5 page)

"What's going on?" Fauna inquired drowsily.

"We have a problem."

Fauna wasn't listening.  She was already climbing down the ladder, and running out the garage door.  Shari had explained to Fauna that she thought the man was her husband, since he was near the front door of the house when she had seen him, fumbling with a set of keys.  He seemed panicked, and there was a large gaping wound on his neck.

"Mitchell!" she heard Fauna shout. 
Well, that confirms it, then.  That's her hubbie.  For now, at any rate.  He doesn't look as if he'll last much longer
.  She looked back toward the bed before she climbed down from the loft. 
Damn it, she didn't even bring her bow. 

She climbed down and exited the garage.  Fauna and Mitchell were standing on the porch, hugging each other while she sobbed.  "What happened, baby?"

"I rushed back here.  Everything's gone to shit, Fauna, there wasn't nothin' but chaos the whole way here.  I don't know what the fuck's going on, but I wanted to get back to you, make sure you were okay.  I should've known better, my girl knows survival better'n anybody, doesn't she?"  Fauna smiled through her sobs, taking his face in her hands as he continued.  "I was on the highway just a couple miles from here, and there was a car crashed into a utility pole.  That car was smashed up real bad.  The front bumper was where the front seats shoulda been.  I drove past, and I could hear a baby in the car, cryin'.  I looked in the car, and there wasn't no one else in there except a little baby boy, maybe a year old, still strapped into his car seat.  The windshield was pretty much gone, glass everywhere.  When I looked around I saw what I presume to be the mom and dad, thrown about thirty feet into the field.  Their heads was split wide open, so I'm certain they was deader'n shit."  He paused, struggling to catch his breath.  "I had already found out by this point that these ghouls don't walk once they suffer a bad brain injury, and since I could see some of their brains oozin' outta their skulls, I knew they weren't gettin' up.  I took that little baby outta his carseat, and I checked him over real good.  Looked under his tee shirt, all on his face and his neck and legs, and I didn't see no sign of cuts or bites.  I saw one pupil was huge, but I didn't think much of it."

"Brain hemorrhage," Fauna said numbly, lowering her head.  Shari sighed.  She could see where this was going just as well as Fauna could.

Mitchell continued.  "I just didn't know.  I felt so relieved for him... I thought the car seat had done its job, kept him safe.  I heard before that if the baby is properly strapped in, those seats can do miracles to save the child's life.  I was gonna bring him back here, figured we'd care for him, least 'till we figured out somethin' else to do with him.  He was still cryin' real loud.  I figured that even if the car seat had kept him alive, he must still be in an awful lotta pain, maybe even suffered a concussion.  Plus, I figured he'd be real confused and scared, possibly hungry to boot.  I held him and cradled him to my chest, told him everything would be alright.  Well, after a couple minutes, he gradually started to quiet down.  And after a few minutes of that, he went silent.  Stupid me, I thought he had fallen asleep, exhausted from the ordeal he had been through.  But Fauna, he didn't go to sleep, he
died
."  He started to weep.  "But I just wanted to help that baby boy. I couldn't stand the thought of him just sittin' in that carseat, not knowin' what was goin' on, his whole family dead.  I just wasn't thinkin'.  I managed to drive here over a hundred miles unscathed, and a tiny baby is what did me in.  Baby just old enough to have all his teeth, and man, did he dig in.  You wouldn't think a baby so tiny could do this to my neck!" he wailed, pointing to his injury. "And then I had to take out my pistol, and I...I mean, I had to, didn't have a choice...." 

Fauna nodded, her eyes closed.  "It's alright, baby.  You don't have to explain that part."

"But I learned a valuable lesson from all this.  Honey, it ain't just the bite.  Anyone who dies comes back.  After that baby bit me, I looked him over again, even more thorough this time.  I thought for sure there must've been some bite or scratch I overlooked.  But there wasn't, not a goddam scratch on him.  Just some welts from where the straps on his carseat had hurt him from the impact.  Nowhere on him was there any sign of broken skin.  He died and he came back, and I'm tellin' you, he was neither bit nor scratched.  I guess the brain injury he suffered was bad enough to kill him, but not so bad he couldn't come back.  So anytime you see anyone die,
any
one, don't matter what the cause of death is...you put a bullet or an arrow or a blade in their head, make sure they don't come back, you hear me?"  Fauna nodded, tears flowing down her weathered cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, baby.  I just wanted to be here with you.  I wanted us to be here for each other, and now I'm gonna be one of them!"  He grabbed her by the shoulders, looking her in the eye.  "You gotta put me down, woman."

Fauna shook her head, her blonde waves tousling about her face.  "No, I won't do it.  I can't."

"You got no choice.  I'm bleeding out real bad, and you know it.  Already lost a shitload, as you can see," he said, pointing to the trail of blood leading from the open door of his truck to the front door of the house.  "If you must, go ahead and wait 'till I'm dead.  But you keep an eye on me, don't y'all turn your backs on me, even for a second.  And no sooner'n that last breath leaves my body, you gotta be ready to do me in."  He handed her his pistol.  "Don't wait for me to get up.  Lord knows it won't take long."

Fauna and Mitchell stood holding one another for another twenty seconds or so, before he went limp.  She slowly let his corpse fall to the ground and backed up. 
It's time
, the voice in Shari's head told her.  The voice that floated up eerily, gurgling up through the bottom of a well.

"Damn it, I don't want to do this!" Fauna moaned.

"You don't have to," Shari replied.  "Don't look."  And with that, she stepped into the shadow of the covered porch, lifted the fifteen-pound sledgehammer she had found on her way out of the garage, and brought it down onto Mitchell Astley's head.

Fauna joined Shari on the balcony, two glasses of lemonade in her hands.  She handed one to Shari.  "Fixin' to be a ham?" Fauna enquired with a smile as she sat down in the lounger across from Shari.

"I figure it's most likely going to be the standard form of communication now that most of the 'net's down," she replied.  "Hell, people could be using it now, for all we know."

"Most likely," Fauna said, lighting up a smoke.  "I take it you saw the radio I got down in the garage, and the tower out back.  To be honest, I'm thinkin' about usin' it.  It's time we try to contact the outside world."

"Yeah," Shari agreed. "I doubt anyone's really considering it a priority right now to fix the internet servers that are down...if anyone's even left that
knows
how to do it.  Same with TV, cell phones.  The satellites are all still there, and I'm sure everything'll eventually be up and running again.  But most likely, it'll be a long time before that happens."  She looked toward the southern horizon, past the road, her eyes scanning the rolling hills.  "You and me, we survived...but from what I saw that first day, we might be in the minority."

"Yep," Fauna agreed quietly.  "Radio's the way to go for now.  Now, our radio signal can be tracked, so we're gonna have to be on our guard.  And it's best if we don't tell people the kinda safety we got here.  We don't want anyone gettin' any brilliant ideas to come tryin' to take our shit from us."  She looked Shari square in the eye.  "We need to make it to where, as far as anyone knows, we're just as far up Shit Creek as everybody else.  But, just in case, I still got a decent security setup, and enough power to keep it goin'.  If I get all that in order, we should be fairly safe.  It's still a gamble, but what isn't these days?"  She chuckled.  "Besides, you and me'll get tired of each other real fast if we ain't got no one else to take to.  No sense in the radios goin' to waste.  There's one in the garage, one up in the loft.  Mitchell and me ain't used it in years, but it won't take much to get it goin'.  Should make for a strong, far-reachin' signal.  Mitchell was a true ham radio enthusiast back in the day, 'fore everyone had cell phones and such, so everything's top-notch.  I'll get all that in order, start teachin' you how to use it.  Maybe we'll get some idea of what's goin' on out in the world without havin' to leave the safety of my property."

"That's the plan," Shari said.

"And in the mean time, you read up.  Keep it up, and maybe you won't need me to teach you after all."
             

"Are you sure you're up to it?" Shari asked tentatively.

"Don't you enable me, alright?" Fauna said flatly, her face hardened.  "This is a survival situation.  If one intends to survive, that sometimes means grievin' while you go about your business.  I still gotta do what needs to be done."  She paused for a moment, gazing out the balcony doors.  "And while we're on the subject, don't give me none of that, 'Oh Fauna, I'm so sorry I smashed your husband's head in,' bullshit, 'cause you gotta know you were doin' me a favor.  Needed to be done."  She paused.  "I say it's common courtesy.  If someone's gotta do some re-killin', it shouldn't be kin or close friends if at all possible.  We ever see anyone you know all zombified, needin' to be put down, I'll return the favor."  She locked gazes with Shari.  "Truth be told, I was impressed.  Least in retrospect, once the shock wore off and I thought long and hard about it.  I mean, you didn't hesitate.  You focused on the task at hand, stayin' alive.  You just keep doin' that."

Shari became lost again in the memory of the incident, as she had a handful of times since it had happened.  She thought back to that voice she had heard in her head just before she took the sledge to his head, the one that told her all the things she didn't want to hear, prepared her for things she didn't want to face.  She reflected on how disembodied she had felt as she lifted that sledge and brought it down onto Mitchell's skull, a man who only moments before had been quite alive.  Alive and sobbing, a look of anguish in his eyes.  Alive and telling a tragic story of how he had let his guard down trying to save a baby boy.  A hardened survival man who saw something good and innocent in the world and wanted to protect it....a man who died trying to protect it.  She remembered how the fifteen pounds of metal had torn into his skull the way a wrecking ball tears into a condemned house--with the greatest of ease.  Mitchell Astley's partially-functioning brain was a condemned house.  It was a danger to everyone around it, and it was best taken care of.  At least she had the comfort of knowing he wouldn't have had it any other way.  He was dead when she brought the sledgehammer down onto his head, dead but not yet reanimated.  She hoped that when she had to do it again...and she knew all too well it was a matter of
when
and not
if
... that she could always have it that way.  Dead, but yet not reanimated.  Every last breath is sacred, every final moment.  The light of life shining in a person's eyes was something never to be taken lightly.  She knew she never wanted to take life, if at all possible, only to stop the dead from getting back up as less than human.

The thoughts nearly overwhelmed her.  On the other hand, she knew she had to be strong for Fauna's sake.  Fauna was strong for her, even after what had happened to her husband just the day before in front of her very eyes.  Shari felt the least she could do was summon the same fortitude.