Authors: Cathy Perkins,Taylor Lee,J Thorn,Nolan Radke,Richter Watkins,Thomas Morrissey,David F. Weisman
Kole waited for Samuel to stop smiling
before he continued. “It’s never across, always with. The movies get it wrong.
Slicing with the vein will almost always guarantee a tub full of blood.”
The train jerked to the left and then
to the right. Kole extended both arms toward Samuel, turning his forearms
upside down.
“So you pulled it off, the tub full of
blood?” Samuel asked.
“You tell me, hotshot. I’m here with
you, the old man and the skinny emo chick. This place ain’t home, and it’s
being eaten by a fucking cloud while zombies parade around the cabin that wild
wolves left to rot. Did I pull it off?”
Samuel stared at Kole’s face until he
blinked.
When his eyes reopened, he saw the
crusty, hardwood floor of the cabin and the wall he faced on his makeshift
bunk.
***
Major stood at the window, his back
facing the others in a cabin that felt more cramped with each passing hour. He
shifted from one leg to the next, muttering underneath his breath. Samuel
looked at Mara. She smiled, legs crossed on the chair. He felt the twinge in
his chest as their eyes met. She was so young. It wouldn’t matter unless he was
a college professor and she was a second-semester freshman. He could see Mara,
dreamy-eyed and optimistic. But this was not a campus and he was not a
professor. He let go of her gaze and turned to face Kole. He had run out of
charcoal and so resumed drawing figures in the dust. Kole winked at Samuel and
dropped his chin. Samuel raised his eyebrows and turned away.
“Thousands, probably,” Major said.
Samuel stood and walked over to him. He
used his elbow to smear more grease from the windowpane and stooped to
look out.
The human forms clumped like cattle in
anticipation of a thunderstorm. They stood underneath trees and out in the
open. The lonely figures canted to one side, always leaning toward the west and
the oncoming force of destruction. Others grouped together, huddled in their
rags, with colorless faces. Samuel stared, thinking the creatures could be
confused for statues. He didn’t see them move but realized they had to have
arrived there somehow. The Barren no longer stretched open and clear to the
tree line. The silent forms hid the ground from view.
“Are they planning an attack?” Mara asked
from the chair, one hand circling and rubbing her other wrist.
“I think they’re guardians. Going to keep
us in here, stand guard until the cloud can consume it all.”
Samuel looked at Major’s face and
grimaced at his response. “Pinning us down with sheer numbers?” he asked.
“Could be.”
Kole stood and threw a piece of kindling
into the corner of the cabin. “I’m out,” he said, walking toward the door.
Samuel stepped in front of him and spun
so his back rested on the cool wood of the door.
“Nobody’s leaving,” Samuel said.
“Outta my way, cowboy.”
Samuel looked at Mara, then Major. Neither
moved.
“I can’t let you do that. If you go out
there, who knows what they’ll do.”
“Looks to me like they aren’t doing
anything but making you shit your pants,” Kole said. “Get out of my way before
I knock you out.”
Major nodded at Samuel, who stepped
to the side and turned a palm up toward the doorknob.
“Fine. Go right ahead.”
Kole snickered. He bent his right arm at
an angle and lifted it to kiss the bicep. “Smackdown.”
Kole turned the knob and Samuel heard the
gasp from Major.
The thousands of faces that had been
staring at the ground turned up to the door in one motion. Every form
revealed a blank, dead gaze, their eyes nothing but eternal black marks, mouths
open with tongues protruding like baby serpents.
“Don’t,” Samuel said to Kole.
Kole pulled the door the rest of the way
open and stepped out on the porch. The creatures groaned in unison. Legs moved
toward the cabin with the sounds of brittle bones snapping under the strain.
The creatures shifted forward in a mass of grey, decaying flesh.
Mara lunged for the door and slammed it
shut behind Kole. She threw herself against it, her chest rising and falling in
rapid succession.
“He’s sparked some interest,” Major said.
Samuel moved back to the window and
watched Kole take two steps off the porch. The bodies continued moving toward
him. They marched at a slow pace, but with the certainty their prey would never
escape. Samuel looked deeper, toward the tree line, and saw wave after wave of
the creatures coming out of the forest and making their way to Kole.
Kole crouched, bent his knees and raised
his fist. He yelled something, but the sound was swallowed by the dying
locality. The first two undead who came close to Kole wore men’s clothing. They
extended their arms, thumbs touching. Their eyes locked on Kole and their
mouths opened and closed at irregular intervals. Kole cocked his right
arm behind his ear and stepped into the punch. The form closest absorbed the
strike with his cheek, its head twisting with the force of it. The creature’s
legs continued to propel it toward Kole.
Kole reared back and struck the
walking corpse two more times in the face, each one sending a spray of
skin and rotted cloth into the air, but not stopping its forward
momentum. Its fingers grasped Kole’s shoulder, while the second one grabbed his
waist. Kole flailed, and fists flung through the air as if tethered by rope
instead of arms. Every landed punch sounded like a sledgehammer striking a
rotted pumpkin. Others continued walking toward the altercation, mobs beneath
the trees and more coming from the forest.
“They’re going to tear him apart,” Mara
said, the nail on her index finger secured between her teeth.
“It’s what he wanted,” Major said.
Samuel shook his head and turned back to
the fight in the yard. Four more creatures made it to Kole.
“Move,” he said to Mara.
Samuel nudged her aside and opened the
door. He heard the grunts of the creatures and Kole’s heavy breathing
from underneath their arms. Samuel took two strides from the bottom of
the steps and into the middle of the undead mob pinning Kole to the ground. He
grabbed the shoulder of one. The creature turned and Samuel froze. Its dead
eyes stared into his and he felt his heart stammer in his chest. He regained
his composure and tossed the creature to the side, where it crumpled to the
ground, struggling to stand again. Samuel heard Kole gasp, but couldn’t see him
beneath the pile of rotted flesh. He shoved a hand toward where he thought Kole
might be.
“Grab my hand,” he said, shoving his arm
among undead bodies and ratted clothing.
The creatures ignored Samuel and his
rescue attempt, determined to rip Kole apart.
A colorful sleeve of tattoos reached out,
snapping tight on Samuel’s wrist. He pulled until there was enough for him to
grab Kole’s elbow with his other arm. Samuel dug his heels in and yanked again.
Kole’s head emerged, his eyes frantic. With his free arm, Kole swatted at his
attackers as if they were hornets from a crushed nest. Samuel took another step
backward until the resistance dropped, sending him into the railing of the
front porch. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. Kole landed on top of
him.
The door swung open, and Major and Mara
each grabbed one of Kole’s arms and dragged him inside the cabin. They dropped
him in a whimpering pile as Samuel burst through the doorway, slamming the door
shut. Major ran to the window. The forms had stopped moving, standing in place
as if shut down by a master switch.
“Are you okay?” Mara asked Kole.
He brushed her hand aside and grabbed
Samuel by the shirt collar. Kole turned his head toward Samuel, trying to force
the words over his hitching breath.
“Thanks for nothing, asshole,” Kole said.
He reached back and punched Samuel in the nose. Samuel saw the explosion of
color in his field of vision and felt the warm flow of salty blood starting to
ooze down his throat. Before he could wince in pain, he lost consciousness.
Mara slapped Kole in the back of the
head. He stood, wobbled to one side, and backhanded her across the face. The
sharp slap bounced off the walls of the cramped cabin. She dropped to one knee,
her hand massaging the red mark blooming on her cheek. Major stepped up, and
Kole met him in the middle of the room.
“Back off, old man,” he said.
Major saw the fury on Kole’s face and
knew he could not overpower a man half his age and twice as mad. He
looked at Samuel and Mara before responding to Kole.
“Sit and calm down.”
Kole looked at Major and then at Mara. He
snickered and slumped down the wall to the floor.
“It don’t matter. Death by zombie or by
reversion. It’s all the same to me.”
***
Samuel winced as he rolled over and sat
up, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. The heel of his palm glanced off
the bridge of his nose and he felt the pain radiate through his entire body.
His eyes watered and he bit his lip. When his vision cleared, Samuel struggled
to see past the swollen mess of his face. Major, Mara and Kole sat in a circle
on the rickety chairs, Major keeping one eye on the window.
Samuel stood and swayed, reaching out
with both hands to grasp the wall and keep the room from spinning. Dried blood
caked in the creases of his face and stained his neck with dark, maroon lines.
Samuel touched the bridge of his nose until the pain began to blossom. He
grabbed a chair and swung it around until it sat between Kole and Mara.
“Sucker punch,” he mumbled to Kole.
“Whatever,” Kole said.
“Are you okay?” Mara asked as she touched
his forearm. “I mean from them, not your nose. That looks pretty bad too,
though.”
“Isn’t the first time I broke it.
Probably won’t be the last.”
Major glanced over his shoulder and then
turned back to the window.
“What did I miss while I was bleeding on
the floor?”
“More,” Mara said. “You can barely see
anything but the tops of their disgusting heads. Filthy, stringy hair as far as
you can see. They sway back and forth like long grass in the wind, but none of
them move. It’s like they’re filling in the gaps so we’re packed in here.”
Samuel stooped and leaned over Mara to
look out the window. He saw countless, empty, dead faces staring back in the
maddening silence. Samuel thought it wouldn’t be so bad if they made noise, or
screamed, or pounded on the door. The silence of this decaying place combined
with the ominous approach of the cloud overhead sent a chill up his spine.
“They won’t move unless one of us tries
to leave the cabin. Then their brittle bones shuffle ahead in one mass.”
“The fuckers wanted a piece of me,” Kole
said, never taking his eyes off the window.
“No,” Major said. He shook his head.
“They were holding you down. I don’t think they were trying to harm you.”
“Nice to know I risked my ass and took a
sucker punch to the nose for nothing.”
Kole looked at Samuel’s nose and then at
Mara. “Got your pity pussy all worked up. You should thank me for that.”
Mara sent a glare of disgust toward him.
Major pushed back on his chair until the
front two legs came off the floor. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight
through so many of those things, but I do know if we don’t, the cloud will
reach this cabin soon, and the reversion will take us with it. If there is any
hope of survival, we have to get out of here.”
Mara reached out again and placed a hand
on Samuel’s arm, while Kole shook his head and snickered under his breath.
***
The fire smoldered over the coals, the
heat failing to dispel the chill from the cabin as if the flame itself was
losing its will to exist. Mara stirred a wooden ladle of broth inside an iron
pot with a steady, mindless motion while staring at the wall. Kole and
Major sat next to each other on their respective chairs, shoulder to shoulder,
casting long gazes across the undead landscape. Samuel walked over and stood
next to Mara. He inhaled and recognized the scent of her hair. He thought that
when the reversion dulled the rest of his senses, he might lose his mind. A
chuckle escaped his lips as the term “cabin fever” rolled around in his head.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“So you laugh at random times about
nothing? Are you psychotic?”
“I remembered a phrase that made me
laugh, that’s all,” he said.
Kole stole a glance over one shoulder and
decided the rotten horde was more interesting than Samuel and Mara’s
conversation.
“Do you remember stuff?” Samuel asked.
Mara stopped stirring and let the ladle
rest against the side. “More than I care to,” she said.
“I get snapshots. I see a picture from my
past, and the story fills in around it. One second, my past doesn’t exist, and
the next, an image brings back a chunk of it.”
Mara shrugged. “If this reversion is
really the end, and those things aren’t letting us out, I’m not sure it really
matters. Not sure anything does.”
“I agree.”
“I don’t think this . . .” Mara said,
with an arm spinning to unfold the cabin, the Barren, the locality, the entire
situation. “I don’t think this matters. It’s not in our control.”
“Kind of depressing.”
“Kind of true,” she said.
Major and Kole remained seated and
silent, their eyes following the swaying bodies.
Samuel felt a desire for privacy, a need
to have Mara’s conversation all to himself. He looked about the cabin and its
four menacing walls, which seemed to creep in further toward the center. He
remembered his dream and the conversation with Kole.
“I think I need to rest,” he said.
She nodded. Samuel balled a rucksack for
a pillow and curled up in the corner, while the heat from the fire did little
to comfort him.