Rotten (26 page)

“She’s right,” Princess replied.

“Moonshine, turn off your PA, but be ready to turn it right back on,” Highland said.

“It’s off now,” Princess said. 

The deadheads didn’t move.

“I’m turning mine off.  It’s off.”

Nothing moved. 

“It must be the signal from the nest,” Rotten said, and I relayed his comment to the others. 

“We can’t just leave them there, you can see them from the road,” Princess said.

“Let’s go back.”  Highland turned around and we followed. 

We parked and stepped out cautiously, knowing that it had to be the signal from the nest that kept them bound and terrified to trust it.  “We have to move them into the woods and out of sight.” Moonshine walked behind one and lifted it by the elbows, his teeth gritted in fear, not effort. 

“Did y’all bring some wire cutters?  We’re here now and we could put some inside the fence.” 

We glanced around at each other as we do and all spoke at once.

“I brought them,” Rotten said.

“We couldn’t move them all,” Highland said.

“We could move some and get it over with,” I said.

“We’d have to kill the rest, cause when they wake up there’s going to be hell to pay,” Princess said.

“We’ll take the meanest looking ones, the strongest ones to the nest.” Moonshine walked into the woods with a large male zombie. 

“Hold up, let’s make this easy, if y’all have some rope we can drag them and it’ll be a lot quicker,” Beth said.

We fashioned a sleigh of a tarp and rope and managed, with four trips, to move twenty deadheads into the fence.  We didn’t carry them very far inside, but we did hide them as well as we could under and behind shrubbery and trees and we placed half a dozen in a small ravine.  We could see a low flat building in the distance, down a hill and off to the left, and counted a couple dozen vehicles in the parking lot beside it, but didn’t see any activity at all.  Then Rotten sewed the fence closed using some thick wire and we ran back to the cars. 

Returning to the cars we had the problem of the other fifty-three deadheads.  Highland reached into the back of the sedan, pulled out the thick canvas bag he’d taken from the gun store and dropped it on the ground with the jangle of metal on metal.  He unzipped it and exposed at least a dozen knives and blades of every description.  “We’re going to have to cut off their heads.”

“I got an ax,” Beth said.

So that’s what we did, and we did it as quickly and quietly as possible.  Luckily, the carcasses were dry so there wasn’t a lot of spatter or leakage, but unluckily some of them were turning leathery and their skin was damned tough to get through.  We finally ended up using the ax and a hatchet and took turns.  It was bad enough that we had to do it and no one person should hold all those images in their head alone, so we shared the job equally.  We pulled out of the field exhausted and ready to go home. 

We took the long way back using a “shortcut” that Beth knew and our only obstacles were the roadblocks set up by the men in black before the zombies got out of control.  We only saw a few slow moving deadheads so far out in the country and left them alone.  Our weapon of sound was a double-edged sword.  If they followed we’d deal with them later.  We went through two other roadblocks and didn’t find any dead men in black or dark sedans, and ended up back at the intersection where we had stolen the cars.  Beth jumped out and moved the sawhorses and replaced them after we passed. 

I was tired, we were all tired, the day had been successful and we had achieved a lot, but the fear was thick.  All those silent and motionless deadheads suddenly springing to life would haunt all of us for a very long time.  The unspoken fear, though, was of the men in black, the gods’ henchmen, who yielded unknown and perhaps unknowable power to control.  And with something as simple as a sound they could flip a switch and control the undead as literal and dangerous puppets.  And if the henchmen were also just puppets of a higher being, an intelligence so beyond our own, how could we ever hope to win? 

As a self-professed expert on depression I say we were all feeling its heavy oppressive weight as we pulled down the driveway to the cabin.  Sully and Will met us as we stepped out of the vehicles.  “We were getting worried, everything go okay?”  Sully said.

We just stood there for a moment without speaking, too much had happened and we were shell-shocked.  “Unbelievable,” I finally managed to say and broke the hold of the silence sweeping over us.

“We planted some deadheads at the nest,” Moonshine said.

“They get faster and stronger after you freeze them, it’s not good,” Rotten said.

“We had to chop off the heads of fifty-three of them, I’m never going to sleep again,” Princess said.

Highland just shook his head and started unloading the cars. 

“Sarah has had a bad feeling today, not her usual monster feeling she says, just a bad feeling.”  Will looked into the bed of the truck at all the guns.  “Cool.”

“She’s been depressed since shortly after you left this morning, maybe she’ll feel better now that you’re home,” Sully said, just as Sarah came running from the house. 

Sarah threw herself in Princess’s arms and held on. 

“We got Ginger some real food.” Princess rubbed the girl’s back.

Sarah nodded.

“We’re back safe and sound,” Princess said.

Sarah nodded again.

“Sully says you haven’t felt good today.”

Sarah shook her head in the negative.

“Wanna tell me about it?”

Sarah lifted her head and looked at Princess.  “I have a bad, bad feeling, not like the monsters coming feeling, it’s worse than that.  Bad, bad feeling.” 

Princess nodded.  “I think we have that feeling too, sweetheart.  Don’t we guys?”

We nodded. 

“Something’s coming,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, we feel it, too,” Highland said.  “Let’s get unloaded, it’s going to be a long night.” 

We loaded and distributed the weapons throughout the house, in every room you wouldn’t have to move more than a couple feet to be fully armed, and then took turns showering the zombie filth and stench off of us only to dress again in our stinky super hero suits.  While Highland and Rotten pieced together our own tone generator and modified the cannon, the rest of us reinforced the barrier outside the downstairs door and moved upstairs to stare at the wall of glass. 

“There’s not much we can do with it,” Sully said. 

We did, however, move the furniture against the inside of the glass and flipped the heavy dining table to work as a shield.  We had dinner on the floor sitting in a circle beside the upturned table.  For a while the only sound was of our chewing and Ginger crunching away in the kitchen. 

“Okay, guys, we need to snap out of it,” Mrs. Williams said.  “We’ve made it this far because we’ve kept a good attitude, we can’t lose that now.”

“I think the men in black saw us today, or at least now they are aware of us,” Moonshine said.  “I don’t know if they saw everything, because wouldn’t they have stopped us?”

“They could have wanted to see where we are staying, but if they didn’t already know of us and where we are, they’re not as all powerful as I have given them credit for being.”  Rotten looked at the kids who had headphones around their necks and ipods attached to their clothes.  “If you hear any tone, be sure to slam those things on, we have no idea how this is going to work.”

The cat darted out of the kitchen, the hair on its back stood on end and it ran up the stairs into the loft.  “It won’t be long now,” Sarah said, scooting closer to her sister. 

We quickly moved the dishes into the kitchen and Sully and Moonshine pulled on the riot gear we’d found in the back of the sedans.  Mrs. Williams and Connie took the girls into the master bedroom, and Princess and Moonshine went downstairs to guard the door.  The rest of us stayed in the dark main room peering through the glass and waiting. 

“I hear an engine, maybe a few.”  Rotten stared through the glass into the darkness.  “I don’t see them though.” 

“Tone,” Will whispered and pulled on his headphones.

“Floodlights!” I whispered down the stairs and Princess hit the switch. 

I ran back to hide behind the table and saw that deadheads, easily a hundred, surrounded us and stood unmoving in the yard and in the woods.  And then a voice came over a loud speaker.  “Please step outside and surrender your weapons, as you can see you are surrounded.”

I peeked over the table and saw an armored vehicle in the driveway, not quite a tank, but pretty close, and a man stood up through the hatch on the roof with a bullhorn in his hands.  In the yard, scattered among the dead, were a dozen men in black, their weapons trained on the house.  It was my first time seeing the henchmen, at least live ones, and they looked much the same as they had been described to me. They were big, muscular, and each had a severe crew cut.  I couldn’t see their eyes, of course, and for that I was grateful because the description of unnaturally blue eyes brought images of night shine to mind.  I ducked out of view. 

Sully, truly looking like a character from a comic book in the all black and padded riot gear, opened the door onto the porch and stood in the opening.  A spotlight from the mini tank illuminated him and he didn’t speak.  I imagined him standing with his hands on his hips like Superman, but he didn’t do that, the rifle he had aimed at the man with the loud speaker occupied his hands. 

“Looting during a national emergency is a felony. You must surrender your weapons and come with us.  You are under arrest,” the man in the tank announced.

“Under whose authority?” Sully yelled back.

“The government of the United States of America.”

“Which branch?”

“The only branch that is left.  We’re it and we’re rebuilding.  You will be treated fairly.  We have a safe community for the survivors where we’re working together to rebuild and we will have a place for you.  You must come with us now, stealing is a crime, but we will be lenient as we do understand the circumstances that pushed you to break the law.”

“I think we’re going to pass on that, we’re staying here.”

“You do not have the choice to stay, you are under arrest and you will be taken by force.”  The men in black pointed their weapons at Sully.

“Now!” I whispered and Rotten hit the switch on a small box that was wired to two amplifiers on the porch and Sully fired, knocking the man with the bullhorn out of the hatch.  Then the screams began. 

Sully ducked down, scooted back in the house, and shut the door.  The spotlight that had focused on the door darted around frantically for a moment and I looked down in the yard to see total chaos.  The zombies moved so fast the henchmen never had a chance.  The armored vehicle attempted to pull away but lost control and crashed into a tree, becoming wedged between the trunk and Mrs. Simpson’s pink Cadillac.  The engine roared and the gears grinded and the tank pushed the caddy across the dirt, spilling it over on its side.  Then the tank backed up again and hit a different tree.

“Kill it,” Sully said.  “You guys be ready, some may still be alive.” 

Rotten hit the switch and the zombies froze, many while in mid air and those fell crazily to the ground.  The tank slammed into the caddy one more time and then stopped, the engine still rumbling.  The men in black who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the deadheads were no more, there wasn’t even enough left of them to make a zombie, and a few of the zombies themselves had succumbed to massive injuries received in the brief and violent melee.