Cattle (The Fearlanders) Read online

  He put on an old sweater that was in the backpack, but tossed aside a pair of blue jeans. They were too big for him. He threw away a pair of holy underwear (pinching it between his forefinger and thumb). Kept the extra socks. Tossed the flashlight. Good batteries were as rare as bullets now. Aspirin: keep. Nail clippers: keep. Half-full bottle of Jack Daniels: keep!

  He turned the backpack upside down and shook it.

  “Now, you’ll wanna keep those,” Ghost-Harold said in a low voice.

  A plastic freezer bag full of photographs had fallen out. Brent unsealed the bag and took the pictures out. He had to hold them close to his face to see them in the low light. Here was a picture of Harold looking young and trim and happy, leaning against the grill of a metallic green El Camino. There was an attractive young woman on his arm. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had nice long tan legs and wavy brown hair cut in a bob.

  “Your wife?” Brent said.

  “My first wife,” he murmured.

  “She was pretty.”

  “Yeah.”

  Brent flipped through the rest: Harold with a blonde, Harold with a redhead, Harold with a couple kids who looked like miniature versions of their father. Here was another ginger kid. And another one.

  “Ever hear of birth control?” Brent asked.

  “Couldn’t,” Ghost-Harold replied. “Catholic.”

  “How many kids did you have?”

  “Didn’t I ever tell you?”

  “No.”

  Ghost-Harold didn’t answer.

  Brent put the photos in the bag and resealed it.

  “I can’t take them with me,” Brent said, and he tossed the bag over by the too-big pants and dirty underwear. “It would be stupid. I don’t have enough room in my backpack as it is. Besides, they’re not my pictures. They’re yours, and you’re dead.” Then he got up and retrieved one of the photos from the bag. The one of Harold leaning against his car with his first wife. He folded the picture and put it in the interior pocket of his jacket.

  “Maybe just one,” he muttered.

  He took stock of his keep pile and tried to stuff as much of it into his own backpack as he could fit. It was so tightly packed when he was done he could barely run the zipper. That finished, he opened the canned food and sniffed the contents suspiciously. The green beans and mixed vegetables smelled fine, but the creamed corn had gone sour, and he put it aside with a grimace. He drank the water out of the green beans can, then took up his fork and began to eat.

  He ate until his stomach throbbed, putting as much of the canned vegetables inside of him as he could fit, then he rose and prepared for another day of walking.

  He and Harold had crossed nearly two states on foot, trying to get Home. They had been travelling steadily north since the night, over a year ago, they found a working radio and heard the broadcasts coming from the city of the living. They had listened to those broadcasts whenever they could pick up the signal—usually on overcast days—until their batteries ran dry. The signal was always weak, popping and crackling like Rice Crispies cereal, but it became a beacon, a bright ray of hope, calling them Home from the world of the dead.

  The first time they heard the radio station, they had both wept. It was a Barry Manilow song, “Looks Like We Made It”, faint and distorted. When Brent first heard the music issuing from the radio’s speakers his breath had caught in his throat and blood rushed to his head so fast he thought he was going to pass out.

  After the music played, a man and woman began to speak. They called themselves the Last Living Deejays. It was a husband and wife duo named Rick and Ronni Parker, and they were transmitting from Peoria, Illinois, a city they now called Home, where the survivors of the zombie apocalypse still lived something like a normal life.

  “If you are out there listening to this broadcast right now, know that you are not alone. And know that you have a home here with us, a place where you can live in peace and security among your fellow living human beings,” Ronnie had said. She had a purring, angelic voice. “Come, if you can. There is a place waiting here for you. There are fifty thousand living men and women here. There are children, and there are dogs. You can have a life again. You can be free. Run, you brave souls. Run Home!”

  They gave reports on the activities of nearby meat patrols, warned of herd movements, reported the local news, the births, deaths, and weddings of the citizens of their fortress city. They opined on the politics of their burgeoning civilization. Home was a democratic parliament, they said, much like England’s government before the Phage, though they called their legislature the Board of Trustees and “mayor” was the title of their head of state, rather than “president” or “prime minister”. The day they restored electricity to the entire city they held a wild celebration and played rock and roll music all day long. They observed all the old holidays like Easter and Christmas. They reported on their dealings with the nearby zombie tribes. They put on old-fashioned radio dramas. They had a highly trained militia. They had high walls, and they had nukes.

  It was an education for Brent and Harold, who had done little besides run, hide and scrounge for food for the past eight years. It gave their lives a purpose again, gave them something to live for, something to dream about.

  Something, ultimately, to die for.

  But that was better than the life they had been leading.

  Stomach sloshing with all the vegetables he had eaten, Brent shouldered his backpack and went to the door. He listened again, then peeked carefully outside. A small herd of deer was grazing silently in the field beyond the chain link fence that encircled the pumping station. The sight of the animals brought a smile to his lips, and he stood there for several minutes just watching the majestic creatures. Finally, he eased the door open wider and stepped outside. The sun had risen further, dispelling some of the night’s chill. He felt the light on his cheeks like a benediction. The deer continued to graze for a moment, flicking their tails, then a buck with a large set of antlers noticed him, and they all bolted away toward the forest, some of them scrambling in fear, other leaping high and gracefully above the grass. He watched them vanish into the wilderness, then stood there for a moment, listening to them crunch and crash through the woods until the sounds faded.

  “You don’t see many deer anymore,” Brent said to Ghost-Harold.

  “Naw. The deadheads eat ‘em when they can’t get any human meat.”

  There were not many dogs, cats or cows anymore either. Dogs were vulnerable to the Phage, had gone all but extinct when the Phage first swept the globe. The cats and cows had been eaten by the eternally hungry zombies. Birds and fish had thrived, mainly because they were hard to catch, but not any of the larger or more friendly mammals, like horses or pigs. Zombies ate any warm-blooded creature they could get their claws on.

  Brent crossed the small yard and stepped carefully across a section of the fence that had fallen over. He eyed the waist high wildgrass, looking for any suspicious movement. One of his old companions had been bitten by a legless zombie while walking in high grass. He hadn’t seen it until it was too late. Usually zombies moaned or snarled constantly, but sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they couldn’t. The one that had gotten his old running mate had had its throat ripped out, but it was still bitey.

  Brent put the rising sun to his right and headed north.

  4. Road

  He pushed through the high wildgrass until he came to a road, if that’s what you wanted to call it. It was really just two gravelly ruts zigzagging through the grass and brush. Brent decided to follow the road. It would not be safer, but he would make better time, and expend less energy, than if he continued through the wilderness.

  “Just have to keep our eyes and ears open,” Brent said.

  “Yep,” Harold agreed behind him. “Don’t want to get caught with our pants down again. Not like yesterday.”

  They were so thrilled to find some canned food and ramen noodles at the Pack ‘N’ Tuck yesterday they hadn’
t noticed the approaching drone of the meat wagon until it was too late. The last thing they’d eaten was a possum they’d found dead on the forest floor two days before. It had looked fresh-dead, not too bloated or maggoty, so they’d made a fire and cooked it. Possum flesh was disgustingly greasy and gamey, but they’d tucked into it like a couple of zombies that hadn’t had brains in a month. Compared to possum, canned vegetables and ramen noodles would make for a gourmet banquet.

  When they finally noticed the rumbling of the truck engine, they had scurried outside, intending to retreat into the forest, thinking they’d have time to duck out of sight before whoever was coming ever saw them, but they were just a moment too late. They stumbled out of the collapsed service station just as a vehicle came zooming around the bend. It was a huge maroon truck with a barbed wire cage in the bed, a cage meant for Homerunners. It shot past them so fast the wind blew their bangs back. For a moment Brent thought they would just keep on going, that they were too distracted, or too slow in the head, to take note of the two live men standing like dummies on the side of the road. But the Resurrects saw them as the big red Ford whooshed by, and the truck had screeched to a halt, smoke curling up from the loudly sliding tires.

  “We should’ve just ducked down in the store,” Brent said. “Waited for the vehicle to pass. Then they wouldn’t have seen us.”

  “True,” Harold said. “Well, hindsight’s twenty-twenty. We were both startled. We hadn’t seen a meat patrol for weeks. It was just instinct to run.”

  “And look what it got you.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault, kiddo.”

  Brent walked most of the morning, stopping to rest only once. The gravel ruts he was following wound back and forth and up and down through the wooded countryside. Sometimes the forest closed in and formed an arching green roof over the road, like the ceiling of a church, and sometimes it fell back to prairie grass and brambles. He heard no sounds but the sounds of the forest.

  Brent listened very carefully to his surroundings as he walked. You had to be careful following roads nowadays. The zombies had begun driving again shortly after their awakening, which was what Brent had dubbed the reemergence of their intellects. They didn’t drive very well. Whatever made them regain their intelligence hadn’t done anything to counteract the damage that had been wrought to their bodies while they were mindless, but they were reckless, and they were single-minded, and they weren’t afraid to chase you over rough terrain if they saw you. They were, after all, already dead. What was left to be afraid of?

  Thankfully, there were not many running vehicles, not after a decade of disuse, and he supposed they had to ration their gasoline, too. Deadheads didn’t have the numbers, or the mental capacity, to take up the industries they had manned when they were alive. They might be smart, but he had seen very few of them actually working. They didn’t clear or repair the roads. They didn’t restore their houses. They didn’t even mow their lawns. They just ate. Ate and fought and hunted the living. Mankind had been replaced by the most debased, cruel and voracious version of itself imaginable. It had been consumed by its own evil twin.

  At noon his stomach started gurgling queasily and he walked out into the grass to void his bowels. He dropped his pants and held onto the trunk of a small tree so he could squat and relieve himself. He kept a wary eye on his surroundings as he took care of business, then wiped himself on a page of Cormac McCarthy. He pulled up his pants, slung his backpack over his shoulders and continued on.

  The gravel road finally came to an end. Brent leaned out like a safari guide peering from elephant grass and scanned the paved blacktop the gravel road abutted. Time and the elements had shattered the once smooth surface of the road into a concrete jigsaw puzzle. Grass and saplings had sprouted from the cracks, but it was still negotiable, and frighteningly visible to the environs.

  He looked up and down the long stretch of highway, listening for car engines or the telltale moans of the forgetful dead. The smart zombies, who called themselves Resurrects, had taken to killing and eating the ones who’d never recovered their minds—less competition for resources, he supposed—but there was still plenty of chompers shambling around in the wilds. Whole herds of them sometimes.

  On a hill about half a mile to the north was a derelict farmhouse. It was a big house, two stories with a wraparound porch and gables facing the road and the back yard. The house was barely visible amid the grass and trees that had quickly reclaimed the world once man quit chopping them down regularly. There was a collapsed barn behind it, and what looked to be an old farm truck subsiding in the front yard. There didn’t appear to be any signs of occupancy, but you never knew until you looked. Nevertheless, it was in the direction he needed to go, and it would be dark in another three hours or so, so he decided to make it his next goal. There might be food inside, supplies he could use. Maybe even a bed he could sleep in for the night.

  Nerves taut, he eased his left foot out onto the highway. He took a calming breath, then shifted his entire body out. Clear of the concealing grass, he felt terribly exposed and vulnerable.

  “Just stay alert and you’ll be fine,” Ghost-Harold reassured him.

  “Easy for you to say. You’re dead,” Brent muttered.

  He walked down the center of the highway, for it was safer to stay in the middle where nothing could snatch out at you from the grass. He also whistled as he walked, which might seem like a foolish thing to do, but his whistles would stimulate any nearby deadheads and make them start groaning, giving him a heads up on their location before he blundered into them.

  He was about halfway to the farmhouse before he allowed himself to relax a little, though he did not dare drop his guard completely.

  He pulled his jacket together in the front, shivering. The sky had grown more and more overcast as the day wore on, and the blustering autumn wind was beginning to feel a bit moist. He was starting to suspect there was some bad weather on the way.

  “Maybe some snow coming,” Brent said.

  “I think you might be right,” Ghost-Harold replied. “First snow of the season, too.”

  “I hate snow.”

  “I no longer have an opinion.”

  Brent laughed softly. Even dead, Harold was a cut up.

  He heard a guttural moan then and snapped off the chuckle like a Slim Jim. He jerked his bowie knife from the side pocket of his backpack, reaching up and behind him with practiced speed. Body tense, he turned in a circle, trying to locate the source of the moaning. Already his adrenaline was kicking in. His heart was galloping in his chest. A greasy film of sweat oozed from his pores. His skin felt prickly, like someone was poking him with hot needles. He hated the feelings that came over him when his adrenaline was pumping, but it would make him fast and strong and alert. It had saved him on more than a few occasions.

  “Careful, kiddo,” Ghost-Harold murmured.

  He heard another low moan and realized it was coming from the front yard of the farmhouse. He started forward, staying low. It sounded like there was just the one, but they didn’t all groan.

  He peered up as he came around the bend, scanning the property. Near his left elbow was a mailbox, nearly cocooned in ivy. The mailbox said The Johnsons on the side in fancy cursive script. The paint had all but worn away over the years, but it was still legible. In the center of the yard was a tall, broad-shouldered deadhead.

  Judging by the way it was moaning softly, just swaying back and forth like a hypnotized cobra, it was a chomper, one of the living dead that hadn’t yet regained its senses. It was dressed in bluish gray rags that might once have been bib overalls. It’s visible flesh looked like beef jerky stretched over bone, and in a couple places the bone shone through where animals, or some other zombie, had gnawed on it a little. It was too old and withered to be wormy. Probably couldn’t move much further than it was already moving. When they didn’t get enough flesh to eat, the Phage sucked them dry from the inside out. Their skin shriveled up like
raisins, and their joints sort of locked up, like rusty old hinges in need of oil.

  Brent tiptoed forward, keeping the truck between them. He crouched behind the vehicle, breathing through his mouth, trying to make as little noise as possible. He was planning to rush up behind the creature and stab it in the base of the skull, but before he made his move, he spied a rusty shovel laying in the bed of the truck amid years worth of fallen leaves and windblown debris. He put away his knife and gently lifted out the shovel. He hefted it in his hands. Better. If he used the shovel, he wouldn’t have to get so close.

  The zombie seemed to notice his furtive movements. It let out an inquisitive gurgle and tried to turn its head. The desiccated flesh of its neck crackled and split open as its head twisted around.

  Brent trotted forward and swung the shovel at its head with all his strength. He did it silently, moving as quickly as he could. The shovel connected with the zombie’s head with an almost comical clunking sound, and the withered creature’s head went flying across the yard. He had knocked it clear off the deadhead’s shoulders!

  The head hit the ground and went rolling through the grass. The zombie’s body swayed from the blow, then just stood there, too stiff to fall.

  Lips curled back from his teeth, Brent used the shovel to push the dead thing forward.

  It toppled over with a thump.

  He waited, listening intently. If there were any other chompers in the vicinity they would have been roused by the clonk of the shovel. He jumped a little when a bird came fluttering from beneath the roof of the farmhouse’s porch, squawking irately, but that was the only sound he heard besides the hoot of the wind in the eaves and the susurration of the shifting grass.