The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree (4 page)

Chapter 5:  Twist and Shout

“Find tracks, follow tracks, get hit by train,” I say to myself as I follow the woman’s trail through the forest.  It’s the punch line to an old joke about three hunters.  First one finds deer tracks, follows them, gets a deer.  Second one, an elk.  Third one… yeah… well… you get the idea.  I figure most of the time, the punch line is funnier by itself.  For instance,
So the farmer says to the salesman, ‘But I don’t have a daughter!’ 
See what I mean?

Gut-buster.

I’m not sure why I’m following her.  The sky overhead is growing darker and more menacing.  The air is yellow again and what I can see of the horizon is dark green.   It isn’t exactly nuclear winter like they said it would be on the news but it is damn strange weather to be sure.  I can’t remember how many kilotons of crap got blown into the stratosphere by that rock that landed in the Atlantic, but it has been a long time since the sun came out.

I’m still in the woods and it is a bad, bad place to be if a twister drops down.  A flash of lightning hits close enough to make me duck. 
Having all of these trees around kind of sucks for lightning too. 

I see a smudged boot print on the edge of a puddle.  The leaves on the ground leading away from it are disturbed in evenly paced gaps, far enough apart to indicate running.  “I’d run too if I were chasing me,” I say softly.  I take off after her, moving quickly but quietly.  The electricity in the air stokes my adrenaline and I slide between the trees and around the bushes like an electron sliding along the wire of a hot cattle fence.  If she had invited me to come with her, I would have said
hell no.  But after taking a shot at me, I’m running after her like a starving man called to a free chicken dinner.

The tracks are closer together now.  She’s run out of air.  I slow my pace as well.  She probably knows I’m following.  “And should that concern me?” I ask myself.  I stop for a moment and look around me.  What the hell am I doing?  “You need to get laid
, buddy,” I tell myself.  But she waited for the Zed kids to get close enough before unloading on them with the birdshot, why shoot me from so far away if she wanted to kill me? 

Another blast of lightning hits close and the first few heavy drops of rain hit the leaves around me.  I can see the clouds moving overhead at great speeds but it is perfectly calm on the ground.  The sound of the raindrops should be enough to cover the sound of my approach
, I decide, and I pick up my pace.  Both hands stay on the little Ruger.  All she has to do is hide behind a tree for a second, wait for me to walk past and then let me have it.  And I figure she’s that kinda girl.  Call me crazy.

The trees thin ahead and I find a dirt road.  Her boot print sits on top of a heavy truck tire track.  I step to the grassy middle of the road and follow after her. 

I’m jogging now and my shoulder hurts like hell.  I feel goofy and slightly euphoric from the endorphins.  But there’s no mistaking all hell is about to break loose behind me.  My eyes scan from side to side hoping to spot a barn or an old house or anything.  I need a place to hole up, clean up, take a few aspirin and get some kind of game plan together.  Chasing Goldilocks over the river and through the woods just for the sake of doing it is just plain stupid.  I can feel the lightning hit before the crack.  I duck down as flat as I can go without hitting the deck.  Something heavy falls in the woods behind me.

Finally,
I see a farmhouse off to my right.  It appears to have been abandoned long before zombies and angry women with shotguns roamed the forest.  The wood siding has been bleached gray by time and the porch wrapping around the front and sides has long since fallen in.  The roof appears to be mostly intact and covered in green moss, only a few small holes penetrate the old wood shingles.  The front door is slightly ajar and I can see the foot of a staircase.  This oughta work, provided I’m not in the direct path of anything rotating. 

I walk around the side of the house and find two warped and broken cellar doors.  Bingo.  All of these old houses have root cellars.  It may not save me from a big tornado
, but it may keep me upright and breathing after a little one.  I lift the corner of one of the wooden doors and look down inside. 

I pull out my flashlight and shine the steps.  From what I can
see, the steps are covered in coon shit and leaves.  Cool stinky humid air breathes against me.  The old house groans and creaks and a big limb from one of the trees lands on the roof.  I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound of it.

I shine the light around some more.  Could be possums down there or rats. 
Probably a million spiders and millipedes.  Hope to god that’s all.  I’m not sure why there would be a Zed down there but they tend to turn up in the damndest places. But it looks like mostly shit. 

The clouds overhead are rotating.  It is hard to see through the treetops so I leave the cellar entrance and enter the house.  The stairs creak and groan under my weight.  I walk as close to the wall as I can, hoping the stairway will hold. 
Upstairs, I move quickly to one of the windows and look outside. 

In the
distance, I can see what looks like a small but dark funnel moving towards me.  At the top of the tree line, I can see dirt and debris flying up and out of the spinning vortex.  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say God hated me,” I mutter.  I lean outside the window frame and listen intently but cannot hear it.  In fact, I hear nothing at all.  No birds, no bugs, no wind.  It is perfectly still.  I look up and see that everything is spinning faster in the sky as the storm gathers strength.  Another great arc of lightning splits the sky downward followed by an instantaneous thunder clap that shakes the entire house. 

I look around the room.  Old shoes, moldy magazines and empty beer cans litter the floor.  In the next room, the floor has collapsed and odd bits of wiring jut away from the walls.  In the third room, I see what I am looking for.  A torn section of blue vinyl tarp lies crumpled in the corner.  I snatch it up and run downstairs. 

The branches on the trees are beginning to sway violently and small bits of debris dance in the air.  The air temperature is falling as I throw open the root cellar doors.  I wrap the tarp around me, leaving myself exposed from the knees down.  As I step down into the cellar, I can hear a growing roar in the distance. 

I step carefully into the coon shit and muck of the cellar.  I can see a simple
hook and eye latch on the inside of the closed cellar door.  I grab the edge of the open door and pull hard to bring it shut.  I flip the hook into the eye just as something heavy lands on the door.  It occurs to me that I could become easily trapped in here, pinned in a cell of my own choosing.

I carefully move down the last couple of steps and put my back against the wall.  The wind pulls upwards and the little flashlight dims to nothing before going out.  I shake it but nothing happens.  “You
gotta be kidding.”

I reach out from under the tarp and feel the sandstone surface
of the wall and use it to guide myself further into the cellar.  I step on something metal and lose my balance, falling around a corner into what feels like shelving.  My shoulder sends a bolt of pain and I start to gasp but a noise cuts my agony short.  A low howling moan.   My heart stops and my eyes open wide in the pitch black.  I hold my breath and listen for the source of the howl.  It comes again in the same place and I feel the air in the room move against my face.  My mind races.
It has to be the wind pushing through the cracks in the floor above.  I know it is the wind.  It has to be.  But my god, it sounds like…
I crouch down against the wall and hold the rifle with my knees.  I pull the cleaver from its sheath and hold it at the ready.  Jesus Christ, I hope that moan was the wind.  If there’s a Zed down here…

My ears pop as the pressure drops and the storm hits.  The sound of small rocks spraying against the house is joined by
heavy impacts of tree branches pummeling the dilapidated building.  I duck my head and pull the tarp around me.  If the cellar doors fly open, it will be the proverbial shit storm down here.  Something brushes my arm and I swing the cleaver out from under the tarp but find nothing but air.  The floor above shakes hard and dust fills my nostrils.   I pull my bandana up and breathe through my nose.  Something very big slams the house and the floor shudders again. 

Then
just as quickly, all is silent.  I hold my breath and listen.  My ears are ringing as another low moan comes from the corner of the basement and I hold the cleaver in front of me like a crucifix.  Something above me breaks with a loud crash.  A heavy board lands flat on the floor upstairs with a jarring smack.  I keep my grip on the cleaver, my ears straining in the dark.  I hear no footsteps.  I hear no breathing.  The moan is silent.  But the goose bumps continue to run over my skin in wave after wave.  I have to get the hell out of here.

Holding the cleaver in front of me, I try to retrace my steps in the dark.  My body spasms involuntarily as I remember the feeling of something touching me earlier.   I swing the cleaver back and forth just to make sure.  My right foot dances forward feeling for what tripped me earlier.  My grip tightens on the cleaver handle, ready to deliver as much force as possible without swinging it.  The tarp wrapped around me falls off.  I leave it where it lands. 

My toe finds the first step and I start going up.  My breathing is fast and shallow as I tell myself over and over again, ‘
Nothing here, nothing down here,’
I take another step and reach up for the cellar door.

  Dayli
ght comes from between the gaps in the cellar doors illuminating the cross piece of the latch. With the back of the cleaver, I flip it open and push.  The door swings halfway before hitting on something outside.  I hold it open with my shoulder and lay the rifle on the closed door and toss my pack out behind it.  With a quick shove, I wriggle through the opening into the devastation above.  I feel something brush against my foot and I land on the cellar doors, pushing and kicking to get whatever it is off of me.  A strand of honeysuckle blows away in the wind.

Again,
my body convulses as my hands feel all around me for bites… or leeches… or cooties or…  My boots are covered in shit, but the rest of me is unsoiled and unharmed; or at least no worse than when I went in.  I sheath the cleaver, grab my pack and rifle, and survey the damage.  Another shudder rolls through me as I look at the cellar doors.  I’ll take the tornado next time.

A large maple tree leans across the overgrown front yard and into the window I had been looking out of earlier.  Its top is broken off and lies in the overgrown backyard.  The front door is still accessible and the stairs are still in place. 

From the side of the house, I hear a gasp, almost a cough.  I can hear it clearly against the calm, cold and damp air.  I step quickly to the wall of the house and check the end of my barrel for shit or mud.  All clear. 

Again from around the corner comes a noise, this time a great gurgling inhale.  It sounds wet and painful and then again, another cough.  I raise the rifle to my shoulder and step out quickly.  Pinned to the ground by one of the maple tree branches is a
Zed; a naked female Zed.  She is young, probably early twenties.  The twister has not only stuck her to the ground but has also torn all of her clothes off.  A tree branch runs through her left shoulder, pinning her to the underbrush like a kid’s bug collection for science class.  One leg sticks out at an impossible angle.  Her hair is in pigtails that stick straight out from the sides of her head.

“Christ,” I mutter to myself.  “It
ain’t like it’s bad enough to have Zed sneaking up on you all of the time out of nowhere but to have fucking airborne zombies flying all over the place… well… I just don’t know.”

I lean my rifle against the house and pick up a heavy piece of green maple branch.  It is about three feet long and big enough around that I need both hands to hold it. 
I’d just shoot her but then anyone and everyone would know where I was.  As I stand near her head, her jaws snap and her arms reach to grab me.  “Ignore the man behind the curtain,” I tell her and bring the branch down hard into her face.  Her skull and the branch bounce and her arms flail more intensely.  She snaps her jaws again but her teeth are now gone.  Her broken leg flops up and makes a popping noise as I bring the branch down again.  And again and again until finally she is still.

I find a length of heavy wild grapevine and hack off a section with the cleaver.  Inside the
house, I tie it off to a rafter upstairs and let it hang down the stairwell.  I stand on the first step and jump.  It snaps through.  I repeat this on the second and third steps.  The fourth is sturdy and refuses to break so I split it up with the cleaver.  Just for good measure, I take out the fifth step as well.  Zed can use stairs but he can’t climb a rope. 

I pull myself up the grapevine and settle down in the corner of the undamaged room.  I am exhausted.  My shoulder has returned to complaining and all of the adrenaline from earlier is long gone.  I want to go to sleep but my arm will need tending and I need to eat. 

I rummage through my pack and find the mystery can and the remnants of a tube of antibiotic cream.  “Two great tastes, one candy bar,” I tell myself. 

As I strip off my jacket, I look outside.  From my view on the second floor, I can see that the dirt road is blocked by fallen and splintered trees for as far as I can see.  If the three or more bears return tonight, they won’t get far, at least not by driving.