Cattle (The Fearlanders) Read online

  The front door of the farmhouse stood open. The doorway was a dark maw through which he could see little of the house’s interior. A framed picture on the wall. What looked like the arm of a sofa. There could be anything in there. Zombies. Wild animals. Food. Weapons.

  “If you’re lucky, there’ll be a hot nymphomaniac hiding out in there,” Ghost-Harold said. “One that hasn’t seen a man in years.”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” Brent whispered.

  “Never know ‘til you look,” Harold replied, and Brent nodded and eased toward the door.

  5. House

  One of the most vital skills to possess during a zombie apocalypse was a very basic thing: knowing when to move fast, and knowing when to take it slow.

  When a zombie was after you, you ran. You ran as fast as you could. Didn’t matter if it was a slow, stiff, dumb one, you hauled ass. You hauled ass because even the slow ones were dangerous if there were enough of them, and they tended to travel in herds. Even if they seemed to be alone, you either brained them or ran, because they were attracted to noises, and even the solitary ones grouped up with terrible alacrity, and you let just one of them lay their cold, lifeless hands on you and nine times out of ten you were dead.

  But when entering a house, or any other kind of artificial construction, you took it slow. Especially if the building was closed up. Chompers didn’t remember how to use doorknobs, or even what a doorknob was for, so if some poor sucker changed into a zombie inside a house or shed or some kind of public building, they just wandered around inside, shuffling ceaselessly from corner to corner until someone blundered in on them. Even when the doors were open you had to watch your step, because even the dumb ones tended to congregate around objects and places that were familiar to them in life. That’s why towns were so dangerous, and forget trying to forage for supplies at supermarkets or malls! The parking lots of the big chain stores were like watering holes at the height of the dry season in the Serengeti. Wal-Mart was the worst. Wal-Mart parking lots looked like a free U2 concert in Central Park. It was safer out in the country, away from the cities, away from any human things that might be attractive to the wandering dead, but even out in the country you had to be very careful when entering houses. Out in the countryside, houses were often the only artificial constructions visible for miles and miles, and they tended to attract the dead like a beacon on a rocky promontory.

  Take this one for instance. The door was wide open, the windows busted, but there was no telling what horrors might be wandering around its cold and silent halls, ready to jump out and sink its teeth in you the instant you stepped inside. There might be dozens of them in there, just shuffling around like contestants in some nightmarish cakewalk, their minds as empty as the rooms they were pacing until some sound, some glint of movement, roused them to their hunger.

  Brent eased up the front steps, holding the shovel in front of him. He started across the porch, expecting some chomper to spring out at him like a jack-in-the-box from hell. The floorboards of the porch were warped and creaky. They gave under his weight with spongy elasticity. He reached out with the spade of the shovel and tapped it against the doorframe a couple times, then waited to see if anything came stumbling out of the darkness.

  “Give it another whack,” Harold said behind him. “Sometimes they don’t hear so good.”

  Brent almost shushed him before he remembered that his travelling companion was dead. Harold’s voice wouldn’t alert any nearby deadheads because he wasn’t really there. He was just a figment of Brent’s imagination.

  Nevertheless, Brent nodded. He clanked the doorframe again and listened.

  Nothing.

  He licked his lips and stepped forward.

  His left foot crossed the threshold…

  …and an all-but-mummified deadhead whose body was missing from the ribs down latched onto his boot with a bony claw. He cried out as the withered creature jerked his ankle to its mouth and started gnawing on the leather. It was female, naked, its hair as fine as spider silk, but it was surprisingly strong. It almost pulled him off of his feet.

  The deadhead snapped and chomped at his boot, its movements frantic and crablike in its hunger. Thank God he was wearing boots! If he had been wearing tennis shoes, it might have bitten clear through to the skin!

  Stumbling around in its grasp, Brent put the spade of the shovel to the back of its neck and pressed down. He put his weight behind it and the sharp edge of the shovel sliced through. With a crunching sound, the zombie’s head came free and rolled over onto its cheek. He twisted his ankle free of the deadhead’s jittering fingers and stumbled back. The zombie’s jaws continued to gnash together, its one visible eye rolling in its socket.

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered shakily. He shook off his surprise and brought the shovel back up, ready to do battle with the next mindless chomper.

  He surveyed the room he was standing in. It was a small livingroom with country-style furniture, a flat screen TV sitting atop an old-fashioned console TV, and several bookshelves lined with paperback romances. The matted carpet was covered in several season’s worth of blown leaves, and the wallpaper was peeling from the water-stained gypsum. Some of it had unfurled all the way down to the wainscoting. Ivy had infiltrated the house through the broken windows and green runners of vegetation wavered up the walls and across the ceiling like thick green veins. Beside one of the recliners was a wooden basket with skeins of yarn still in it. On the wall above the couch was a large reproduction of “The Last Supper”. On the wall above the TV was a framed print of praying hands. It seemed the Johnsons were a god-fearing couple. Didn’t keep Mr. Johnson from eating his wife from the waist down, though. That’s what Brent assumed had happened. Her pelvis and leg bones were scattered about the living room, looking a little gnawed on.

  He glanced at the chomper he had just beheaded. The female zombie had lain beside the door for so long its body had kind of fused to the floor. He shuddered. The arms of the creature had stopped moving, but the head was still animated, its teeth snapping like a metronome, the milky gray eyes rolling to follow him as he crept toward the kitchen doorway.

  The kitchen was even more dimly lit, the windows coated with dust so thick only a weak yellow light shone through. The room was like a sepia-toned photograph brought to life, everything stark and lifeless. The dingy yellow wallpaper bore an apple motif. The kitchen table was covered with chunks of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling. There were no zombies, but before he ransacked the cabinets for food he needed to case the entire house, make sure there were no surprises lying in wait for him in another room.

  He crossed the kitchen and checked out the rest of the first floor. Past the kitchen was a short hallway that connected to four other rooms as it circled back around to the living room. Two of them were bedrooms. The third looked like it had once served as Mr. Johnson’s office. It was wood paneled and masculine, with a large boxy desk, several filing cabinets and a wide-mouthed bass mounted on the wall. There was a calendar with a photo of a pretty blond bent over a tractor engine. She was grinning, her daisy dukes riding so high the globes of her butt were visible. She was wearing a flannel shirt tied around the waist so that her midriff was bared, and there was a little smear of grease on her cheek. There was also a gun cabinet standing beside the filing cabinets, but the front glass was shattered. Whatever firearms it had once held had long ago been pilfered.

  “Ammunition too, I bet,” Brent muttered.

  The final downstairs room was a bathroom. It was small, very blue, and featured an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. Beside the bathroom door was a narrow staircase.

  He crept up the creaking steps. The second floor was partially obstructed by the collapsed roof, an impenetrable jumble of drywall and wooden beams and mounds of yellow insulation. The two rooms he could get into were empty but for some boxes and plastic storage bins and some physical fitness equipment.

  “You should work out up here,” Ghost-Harold said. “Try to get buf
f for the ladies.”

  Brent chuckled. “You’re the one that needs to work out. I don’t know how anyone could stay fat after the Phage. No food to eat. Always running from deadheads.”

  “This ain’t fat, kid. This is muscle.”

  “I’ve seen you without a shirt,” Brent said. “That isn’t muscle.”

  “When you get my age, it’s not so easy to stay trim,” Harold said as he explored the rooms a little. “You can starve and workout every day, don’t make any difference. It’s just middle age, boyo. One of these days you’ll get fat, too.”

  “I’ll get eaten before that ever happens,” Brent said, going back down the stairs.

  Before he settled in, Brent stepped out the back door and scanned the rear lawn, making sure there were no other deadheads out back.

  The wind was blowing even stronger now, whipping the trees and grass violently back and forth. It whooshed across the yard, making a hooty-whistly sound that seemed to be the aural equivalent of foreboding. A section of the collapsed barn’s tin roof wagged up and down like a giant rusty tongue, creaking and booming. The gusting winds had driven the lumpy, steel-colored clouds completely across the sky, and with the overcast had come an early twilight. The temperature had plummeted while he was exploring the old farmhouse. In the west, the sun was just a dim, glowing patch pasted above the horizon.

  “Snow for sure tonight,” Brent murmured. “Or a… what did they call it back in the day?”

  “A wintry mix?” Ghost-Harold suggested.

  “Yeah, a wintry mix.”

  Shivering, Brent retreated inside. He pushed the heavy kitchen table against the door, then walked quickly into the living room and used the shovel to scrape Mrs. Johnson off the floor. The two chompers he’d encountered this afternoon might not be the original Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, but that’s what he was calling them.

  He scooped her head up first, wrinkling his nose at the sight of her snapping teeth and rolling eyes. He stepped out onto the porch and gave her head the old heave ho, tossing it in the direction her husband’s noggin had rolled, and then he returned inside and did his best to pry her stiff body off the carpet. He got a good portion of it up, wincing at the fibrous tearing sound her torso made as it pulled loose of the carpeting, and then one of her arms broke off at the shoulder with a dry crunching sound, like someone snapping kindling in their hands, so he had to make an extra trip outside. But he got most of her out. He even scooped up her scattered and gnawed on bones, so old now they were gray and striated.

  He blocked the front door with the sofa, pushed the bookshelves in front of the broken windows, and then he sat and rested for several minutes. He was sweaty and out of breath, and utterly exhausted, but he would rest easier tonight knowing he had made his hideout as secure as possible.

  6. Snow

  The snow began to fall shortly after dark. It came in big, moist flakes, some almost as big as silver dollars, splatting on the windows with such force that it sounded like moths batting against the glass. The tapping startled Brent, who was trying to cook some ramen noodles over a candle he had found in one of the cabinets. He jerked around, almost knocking over the sauce pan he was cooking the noodles in, which he had perched over the candle on two other, larger pans. He stared at the window a moment, his heart galloping in his chest, before he realized what the drumming on the glass was, and then he smiled, let out his breath in a gust, and even laughed a little.

  “Little jumpy, aren’t we?” Ghost-Harold asked.

  “I don’t like using candles,” Brent said, walking toward the window over the sink. “I don’t like making any light at all after dark. It’s not safe. You can’t see what’s outside, but anything can see inside.”

  “You covered the windows,” Ghost-Harold said.

  He had. He had emptied the linen closet, hanging the musty sheets over every window and door in the house. Both for heat… and to keep any bogeys from peeking in at him.

  “I know,” Brent said. “The light still shows through, though.”

  He pushed the sheet that he had hung over the kitchen window to one side, just in time to see a big nugget of wet snow clout against the glass and slither down it.

  “Just a little,” Ghost-Harold said.

  “That’s all it would take,” Brent replied, and he let the makeshift curtain fall back into place.

  He tried very hard not to imagine the creatures that might be wandering out there in the windblown snow-- in the fields, on the empty highways. Had any of them seen the faintly glowing window, the wink of light that had escaped when he pushed aside the curtain to peek outside?

  The thought made his skin prickle with anxiety.

  Despite the difference in their age, Brent had always been the more cautious one. A person might expect Harold to be the careful one, being the older of the pair, but it was not so. Harold had been the reckless one, the devil-may-care wiseguy, and Brent the nattering ninny. If not for Brent, the old Irishman probably would have died a lot sooner. It was a miracle he had survived as long as he had. “Tis the luck o’ the Irish,” he sometimes claimed, but his luck had finally run out, as luck almost always does-- even Irish luck. If it didn’t, there would have been a lot less casinos back in the day, and a lot more wealthy Micks.

  Brent returned to his pan and stuck a finger inside. The water was not even lukewarm, the brick of fossilized ramen noodles only slightly softer than it had been when he stripped it from its plastic wrapping. The water wouldn’t be safe to drink if it didn’t boil. He had scooped it from a rain barrel that was sitting outside by the back porch. No telling what kind of bugs were swimming around in it.

  He returned to the cabinets, looking for shorter pans, something that would lower his soup pan closer to the flame. You could boil water over candles, but it usually took at least three of them, and he’d only been able to find the one. Whoever had liberated the guns from Mr. Johnson’s gun cabinet had helped themselves to nearly everything else of practical use as well: food, candles, batteries, weapons… He had found a few handy items after securing his new hideout, but nothing to jump for joy about, nothing he didn’t already possess.

  “I miss microwave ovens,” Brent said, pushing through the pots and pans beneath the cabinet. He squatted down and reached into the far corner, feeling around with his fingers. He heard a snap and felt a sharp pain in his index and middle fingers. Cursing, he jerked his hand out and pulled the mousetrap off his hand, throwing it angrily across the room. “Stop laughing,” he said, shaking his throbbing hand. “That could have broken my fingers.”

  “You ought to know better than sticking your arm in places you can’t see,” Ghost-Harold said.

  Brent stood with a grunt and began to rummage through the upper cabinets. He pulled around one of the kitchen chairs, climbed on it and examined the top of the cabinets.

  “Yes!” he exclaimed.

  He jumped down with an unopened package of tea candles. They had been hidden behind the trim of the upper cabinets. He returned to the stove, tearing the package open, and rearranged his cooking setup. He lit four of the tea candles, put the large candle aside, and placed the grill from one of the stove burners directly over the squat little tea candles.

  “Now we’re cooking,” Brent grinned, putting his pan directly over the tea candle flames.

  Within thirty minutes, the water in the pan was steaming. Forty-five minutes later, the soup was bubbling, and the noodles were soft and plump. He opened a can of mixed vegetables, drank the water, then added the veggies to his soup.

  “Gonna be go-ooood!” he sang excitedly, his belly gurgling.

  He ate quicker than he intended, then blew out all but one of the candles and crept upstairs with it, his shadow jumping in its wavering light. He had made a little nest for himself in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs, using the sheets and blankets and pillows he had stripped from the beds downstairs. It would have been nice to sleep in an actual bed for a change, but it was safer to sleep on the second floor
. He would have a better view of his surroundings from its window, and he would have more time to escape should anything nasty bust in through one of the windows or doors downstairs.

  “Always have an escape plan,” he said, and Ghost-Harold made a sound of agreement.

  He set the candle on a large tower speaker, shut and locked the bedroom door, then piled some boxes and plastic bins against it. The bins were not very heavy-- they looked like they contained mostly women’s clothing, shoes, seasonal decorations and family photos-- but barricading the door made him feel more secure.

  “Gonna to look through all this stuff tomorrow,” he said.

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Maybe I can find some clean new clothes to wear.”

  “You could use some.”

  He sat on the bench of Mr. Johnson’s Bowflex machine and took off his boots, then retrieved his candle and walked to his nest of blankets and pillows and settled in. He had made his pallet on the floor beneath the window so he could sit and look outside until he got sleepy. The snow was still splatting against the window. An occasional gust of wind rattled the glass in its frame. He blew out the candle as soon as he was situated and then just sat there and gazed out at the snowy, benighted world, his elbows on the windowsill, his forehead and the tip of his nose lightly touching the cold glass.

  “This might be a good place to hole up for the winter,” he said softly. “It’s pretty warm for an old farmhouse.”

  “I don’t know,” Ghost-Harold replied. “It’s awful close to that town. I think you should push on north after the storm passes.”

  Harold was probably right. The farmhouse Brent was waiting out the storm in couldn’t have been more than ten miles from the town his friend was talking about. They had come upon the village not long after picking their way across the Ohio River Bridge, which had been littered with wrecked and abandoned vehicles. Took them nearly half a day to get across. It was a nondescript little rivertown. Manfried, the sign said. Population 5,000. They had expected it to be like almost every other Midwestern town they had encountered: derelict, depopulated by the Phage, a few dumb chompers shuffling along the empty streets. But it wasn’t. A thriving community of Resurrects occupied the town. Brent and Harold had watched the zombies for a little while, hunkered down in the woods at the edge of town, and then they’d headed east, planning to circle around the zombie village. They had only put Manfried a few miles behind them before running afoul of a meat patrol.