The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree (2 page)

I can feel the force of his breath as he screams in anger and pain and hunger.  I spin around as
the dirty, bloody hand of his good arm grabs for my poncho.  His long, sharp fingernails slide off me as I swing wild again and feel the cleaver dig up and through his armpit.  The blade finds the bone of the shoulder socket and slides free. 

He pauses for a moment, both arms useless now.  I see his head shaking back and forth as a strangling, gurgling fury erupts from his throat.  A moment of panic seizes in my chest as I fight to keep the adrenaline from overrunning me. 
“Dickhead,” I spit at him.

He charges again.  In the near total
darkness, I can hear his jaws snapping through the horrible roar.  He brings his arm with the shattered elbow up, but I stomp him hard in the chest and bring him down flat on his back.  I pick up my heavy work boot and slam it down onto his face.  As I twist my foot around to get a shot at his neck, I feel his teeth biting and tearing at the hard rubber sole of the boot.  I push down with my foot and wedge his mouth open before bringing the cleaver down again and again and again until the head is no longer connected to the body.

The body falls limp but I can stil
l feel the fucker trying to bite me.  I scrape down and away with my boot and free myself from the head.  I can hear the jaws snapping together, teeth breaking on teeth.  I lean down and bury the cleaver into the long side of his skull. For good measure, I stomp on the shattered melon until it is fully ground into the mud.

I am out of breath.  I hunch over for
a moment, hands on my knees, breathing heavily.  “Fuck me,” I say to no one.  I stand again quickly and look around to make sure there are no more.

I see the flashlight on my pack and walk towards it.  Without the light
on, I might never find it out here in the darkness.

I reload my gear onto my back and head off the way I had origina
lly started.  “Game, set match,” I sputter as I stop and wipe the cleaver on the back of one of the now fully dead zombies.  A flip of the handle and it goes back in its sheath, as it is now too heavy to carry.

After a few minutes of walking, the barely discernible
black shadow of a building appears at the top of the next ridge.  Hopefully, it will be empty.  Of Zed and people.  I pull my .45 auto out of its holster.  “No wonder I’m tired,” I say as I jack a round in the chamber. “One more gun and I’d have to get a little red wagon to pull behind me.”

I pull out the
flashlight again and hold it under the .45.  I listen first and then shine the light all around the small metal barn.  A built-in ladder leads to a small loft with a few bales of straw.  “Holiday Fucking Inn,” I smile as I slide the big metal barn door shut behind me and latch it.  Jam a stick through the clasp.  It won’t keep any humans out, but Zed isn’t smart enough to work locks or latches.  Doorknobs sometimes… definitely not an internal latch. 

I crawl up in
to the loft and take another quick look around before sliding my pack off.  “Heavy goddamned thing,” I say.  My voice sounds too loud in the metal building and I stop and listen for a moment after speaking to make sure I really am alone.

I feel taller
and lighter without the pack.  I pull out my little sleeping bag, and shuck my wet and bloody clothing off before climbing in.  The black blood has a stink about it that I’ve never known before.  Like old sweat and rusted iron. 

Tomorrow, I’ll go
back and take a closer look at that tree.  There’s got to be some sort of reason for going to all the time and trouble to hang a bunch of Zed in a fucking tree out here in the middle of nowhere. 

“
Cleaver on the left, .45 on the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle.”  I repeat the same bedtime ritual every night.  “Single shot by the cleaver, rifle by my head.”  I turn the flashlight out and put it by the cleaver.  Pack for a pillow.  Sleeping bag zipped up tight. 
And I don’t know why I came here tonight…

Away in a manger.

“Good
night, John-boy,” I tell the empty barn. 

A flash of lightning answers back.

I am asleep almost instantly.

Chapter 2:  Prime Directive

Space.  The final frontier.  I pry my eyes open slowly and survey the discolored corrugated tin roof of the barn.  My arms uncoil from the filthy, reeking sleeping bag in a big stretch.  Goddamn, it’s cold.  “Captain’s log:  Double Naught Noth’n, 2014.  I am in some… primitive dwelling that might house… sheep.  Or cattle.”  My eyebrow arches into a William Shatner question mark. 

Gray daylight streams in through the gaps of the barn boards.  Rain is pounding overhead.  My stomach says it is mid-morning.

I reach in my pack and pull out a can.  “Pumpkin pie filling,” I say out loud to myself.  “Or,” pulling out another can, “lima beans… or…
the mystery can
.”  I roll the shiny can with no label around in my hands.  “
That’s right, Bob, this vintage, 2011, all stainless steel 14 ounce can could hold any number of fabulous prizes. If….the price is right.”

The last house I checked out had been emptied already, except for this stuff, the stuff nobody wants.  The cans of crap that get donated to canned food drives for the homeless.   Why waste chili on the starving?  Let them eat creamed corn.

I give the mystery can a shake.  It could be something wonderful.  Or it could be sauerkraut.  It might be a delicious beef stew or canned spaghetti.  Or it might be a stinking tin of butter beans.  It goes back in the pack.  “Ya gotta have something to look forward to in life or it just ain’t worth live’n,” I tell the barn.  I place my hand on the pack for a moment.  “My shiny little lottery ticket waiting to be scratched off.”

I put the lima beans back in the pack also.  Maybe I’ll meet someone and trade them.  Or pull the label off and make it a lottery ticket for them.  “Hell, some people actually like lima beans.  I’m not sure how hungry I’d have to be to actually eat them.  However hungry that is, I
ain’t there yet.”  My voice sounds hollow in the big empty barn.  I set about opening the tin of pumpkin pie filling.  Pie for breakfast is fine.  Even though I hate pumpkin, it is still better than goddamned lima beans.

A large spider is slowly plodding across a web slung between two posts, its long hairy black legs stepping carefully from strand to strand.  I shovel in a mouthful of sickly sweet pumpkin puree and shake my spoon at the spider as I speak.  “It’s all Star Trek’s fault
, I figure.  The original series, not that Captain Picard bullshit.  I’m talking about the real deal with Kirk and Spock and McCoy.  Know what I mean?”

The spider has stopped moving.  I don’t think it likes my spoon waggling.  I put another mouthful in and park the spoon in the half-full can while I talk and chew.  “Sorry. 
Bad manners.  And god knows what spoon waving means in the animal world.  But like I was saying, it’s all about Star Trek, my little friend.  Those guys were highly moral and disciplined soldiers, out exploring the universe, all dressed in primary colors.  You weren’t around in the 70’s but it wasn’t a decade for pastels.  Christmas tree lights were the big ceramic bulb type, all in primary colors.  People wore red, white and blue clothing, or tie dye or those insanely stiff dark-blue blue jeans.  Orange shag carpet.  Avocado green stoves.  Harvest gold refrigerators.  Things had a certainty to them.  None of this wishy-washy pastel nonsense.  And then you had Star Trek.  All those uniforms in dark blue, dark red, and gold.  Half-naked green women.  My god what I wouldn’t give for a half-naked green woman just now.”

The spider has resumed its building.
It is black with dark yellow streaks.  It must understand what I’m saying. “Yup.  Star Trek did it.”  The spider pauses for a moment and fiddles with something intricate.  I choke down another mouthful of pumpkin.

“How?
  How, you ask?  That… is a very astute question, my little hairy friend.  You see, when I was a kid, we didn’t have automatic doors.  Some places had doors where you stepped on a mat and the door opened, but nothing like on Star Trek.  Lo and behold, a few decades later, boom… doors that open just like on Star Trek.  No guys with push sticks off camera sliding the doors open and shut.  This is real technology.  And it ended up everywhere.  Right?  Am I right?”

The spaces in the web are wide. 
Big spider, big web.  Big web, big catches.  Big catches, big meal.  “They had these little communicators they used to call up the ship.  ‘Hey Spock, you pointy eared fuck… send down some hot wings, goddamn it.  We’re have’n uh… Neptunian green woman orgy and these bitches are wild for hot wings.’  You know, like that.”

“And so a lot of things that the science fiction writers thought up, well man… that shit eventually came into being. 
Tricorder scanner thing?  We end up with ultra-sound and MRI and NMR.  And you know, there’s probably a million other examples out there.  But Star Trek man, that’s what I’m talking about.”

I finish off the pumpkin gruel and toss the can down off the loft.  I lick the spoon clean and take a long pull of water.  Pumpkin farts all day. “What am I talking about?” I ask the spider as I round up my gear.  “I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the zombies.  All these writers come up with shit in stories and then the shit really happens.  Everybody kept writing about zombies and well… here we are.”

I hold up my wet, bloody, mud-covered jeans.  A chunk of black rotten skin is stuck to the back of the calf.  I spread them out on the straw floor to dry.  Washing machines were nice.  Dryers were cool.  Electricity… clean water… cans with labels.

The pumpkin-
pie-filling-lima-bean-mystery-can house had yielded some extra duds as well.  I pull on a worn out pair of brown cotton duck pants and a brand new black t-shirt that says, “Her mother was better” in big white letters. 

I pace around the loft and think about what to do.  A slat in the barn wall is missing and I jam my face up against the opening to look out across the muddy cornfield that I crossed last night.  I have no idea where I’m going.  Just heading west
, I suppose, out to the mountains.  “Manifest destiny,” I mutter.  Kill the natives.  Rape, pillage and destroy.  God’s will.

The spider continues working on its web. 
A strand, a joint, an arch, a long slide down to the next part.  So intent in its purpose and I find myself with no purpose other than survival. Which puts us in the same proverbial boat, I guess.  Except its chances are better than mine.  “No more pesticides, no more pollution.  The whole place is yours, man.  We’re done fucking it up.  At least for now.”

It’s pretty comfortable up here.  I chew on my bottom lip as I think.  The spider has settled down in the middle of its web. 

“Course, there’s that tree full of Zeds and god knows what else back in that woods.  Could be gravy.  But, it would be nice to hunker down here for a while.  Cept if some kinda truck load of idgits pulls up, then I’m fucked.  That’s why I had to leave the farm in the first place, you know.”  I pick up a small flat board and fiddle it around in my hand.  “Let themselves in real quiet, prowl’n through the house.  I listened for a while.  They talked about the big wave of zombies come’n.  How the disease spreads through bites.  They had a lot to say till they saw the cigarette I left burning in the ashtray.  One was just start’n to say something when I cut’em down.  They never felt noth’n though.”

I remember emptying the .45 on all three of them. 
Two skinny dirt bag hippie types and some young girl.  She was pretty good look’n.  But somehow, that made me feel even more right about it.  Not that it mattered, right or wrong.  It just had to be done.

“You think I should stay, yeah?” I ask the spider.  “Hang out all
day, have a few laughs, pals forever?”

I look around at the nothingness. 
The no-one-ness.  Images of people I used to know flash through my mind.  Then the loop starts.  The pictures I always see when I stop and think.  The mud, the big red International Harvester tractor laid over, the crushed red wooden feeder trough, the red metal barn, the red pool of blood and cow shit.  Ringing in my ears and the smell of shotgun smoke in the air.  Little pile of goo where a head used to be.

No sense living in the past.  Although I decide to tell the spider
, “When the weather started to turn and the Zed started to get more frequent, Mom left with Aunt Wanda and Uncle Merv.  They all headed down to Wanda and Merv’s 160 acres in Missouri.  She only asked me once if I wanted to go with them.  She knew I wasn’t going to come.  She knew that after everything that had happened, I was better off on my own in a way.  And besides, Merv is an asshole.  His hand on my shoulder as they were leaving, ‘You should come with us.  We could use somebody like you down there.’  Big stupid smile on his big empty head.”

The pumpkin puree churns in my stomach and I feel ill.  I watch the spider string another piece of lattice across the arc of its web.  I try to concentrate on the spider and ignore the picture in my memory.  But
the harder I try not to see it… well, there it is.  The little brass bb soldered onto the end of the barrel.  Everything beyond the bb is a blur. 

The board in my hand lands flat against the bulbous body of the
spider, smashing it flat and dead in a nanosecond.  The shattered web and broken legs of the spider stick to the end of the board as I pull it away.  “That’s the way to go,” I tell the dead spider.  I look at the bottom of the board.  I look at the death and the guts and the pieces and the parts.  A calloused heart takes work or it softens into useless tenderness. 

The board lands with a thud in the corner of the loft.
On the bottom floor of the barn, I unsling my little rifle and slip my poncho on over my head and pack.  My new pants are a little big and I have to hike them up and retighten my belt.  To hell with that other pair.  They’ll be walking around under their own power in a couple of days.

Rain will provide a good cover for slipping across the road and into the trees.  Maybe there are people back in the woods.  Maybe there’s an old truck with a tank of gas.  Maybe there’s a half-naked green woman. I look back
towards where the spider was.  The world seems so flat and empty and limitless.  

The sound of the rain on my plastic hood is deafening as I step outside into the deluge.