Dead Earth Read online

  “Fuck they’re all around us,” Thrasher shouted. He had his gun at his hip as he swiveled in every direction.

  James saw them, the ones like Phil Rettig — crimson-streaked, heads lolling. They lurched and scrambled over cars and trucks on the two-lane highway, grabbing at the nearest man, woman or child, tugging, tearing, biting and clawing as horns honked. Clumps of people fled on foot. The traffic stopped.

  A young woman in business attire stood bare-footed on the roof of a green Land Rover. She swung a brief case calmly as two bloodied men grabbed at her ankles from opposite sides. She dropped one with a chopping swing and caught the other with a strong back-hand, but even as she re-adjusted her grip on the case, the first one snatched her ankle and tugged her down. She fell behind a taxi out of view.

  James spun around and eyed the father-son duo in the Mustang. The dad was pulling on his son’s collar uselessly; the kid’s Turtle Club Little League jersey tearing. His seat belt still drawn and fully buckled.

  “Sir, his seat belt,” James pointed. The father's eyes remained empty.

  “We can’t stay here, Bonds.” Thrasher screamed at Bondy.

  No time. Dad was going to cost his son his life.

  Time to move, Pops. You’ll thank me when this is over.

  James jumped on the hood and body-checked the father. The dad’s legs caught the driver side door and he fell. His bad arm reached out to brace the fall, but it snapped and his head knocked against the pavement.

  James took the father’s place, standing over the boy as Bondy and Thrasher jumped in and stood on the hood and back seat.

  “Jesus, look at his legs!” Thrasher said.

  The front dash had imploded inward, its club compartment completely wrapped the poor kid’s limbs, pinning him from the knees down.

  “Will you help me?” the boy said with eerie serenity. “Soccer practice is at noon. Hyde Park. Bring shin guards and plenty of water.”

  “We need the Jaws of Life to get this kid out,” Bondy cried. “No use!”

  James glanced at the highway. People fled from all around now, most of them were abandoning their cars and heading away from Monroe City. A few others remained, rolling up their windows and locking themselves into their own tombs.

  “We have to try!” James shot back and he unbuckled the boy. “He’s wearing a leather belt. If we all grab a hold of it...” and they did.

  “On three.”

  “One.”

  Those things were getting close.

  “Two.”

  So close.

  “Three.”

  They pulled and the boy screamed. His head snapped upright, the boy’s pupils focused from the jolt of pain.

  “What happened? Where’s Daddy?” The kid sobbed.

  “This isn't working, man,” Thrasher pleaded.

  “Try again,” James insisted.

  There, a half-block down Riverside, James spotted his long-time buddy, Will Heller, Greenville’s most ornery carpenter. As usual, Will wore his pressed Dickie’s short-sleeve button-down and black steel-toed boots. Will had mounted another man, with his fingers jammed into the man's eye sockets like a bowling ball. Blood poured down the man's slick blond hair. Even over the car alarms and honking horns, James could hear the man scream.

  “Will,” James whispered. In that moment James felt it hit him — the severity of everything — a delay now caught up like a basketball that hangs along the rim before sinking.

  Bondy counted to three again and pulled again. The boy screamed, but didn’t budge.

  “We gotta go,” Bondy said.

  “Don't leave me,” the boy said..

  James had read about a rock-climber whose arm had gotten wedged beneath a boulder. The climber had freed himself by self-amputating. He had a flash-thought about that book. He had a flash-thought about Will Heller, too. Will the carpenter. Will the carpenter with a cargo van full of tools. Will the carpenter, with a cargo van full of nails, and screws, and X-ACTO knives, and not to mention, the shiny, new, razor-sharp, battery-powered Milwaukee circular saw.

  “This here Milwaukee, with its 18-volt pack fully-charged, will cut through just about anything," Will had bragged over morning coffee. It was true. Jimmy Valiant had learned the hard way. The Milwaukee could lop through wrist, and bone.

  James spotted the van — “Heller Carpentry — We do it right the first time” blazoned across its side. The van sat two blocks west, its back doors wide open, exhaust still chugging fumes. Scattered tools lay jumbled inside.

  Can I at least get me a local anesthetic, kind sir?

  There’s no time sonny boy, no time. Those legs gotta go and they gotta go quick.

  James bolted down the yellow center line. for the van as Will lifted his face from his victim’s body and looked at him. James stood out. Out of all the fleeing residents, only James ran toward the Monroe City skyline.

  Don't you mess with me, Will. Whatever’s got you by the gonads, you fight it. You fight like the Devil’s on your back.

  Three round bursts of rifle fire popped and one of them went sprawling. It smashed the back window of a Chevy Tahoe. Bright red blood sprayed from its stomach.

  Almost there.

  Will locked on to James. The carpenter stopped clawing at the eyeless body and staggered to his feet. Will was stumbling at first, but coming forward nonetheless. He was gaining equilibrium, Then, just as Phillip Rettig had something click in him just before he killed the Prom queen runner-up, William Heller began running. It would have shattered world records. Will shrieked at the cloudless blue sky as he ran. As if he knew James came for his precious, 18-volt, razor-sharp circular saw. How dare he.

  James pumped his arms and charged onward. Will’s scream ended with a thump. The carpenter had fallen over what looked like a dismembered leg. James dove through the van doors and landed with a wince on jagged carpentry tools.

  “Tell me you brought it with you, Will. Tell me it’s charged and ready to go.”

  Something hissed from behind him, but James didn’t look. He reached back and slammed the rear door shut. His fingers found the lock-button and shot it home. Will’s fists pounded against the window. It shook the van with each thrust.

  “Where the fuck is it?” James spat to himself.

  Utility belts, screwdrivers, toolboxes, a power drill, no saw.

  The window shattered. Glass bits stung James’ face. From the corner of his eye, James saw an arm reach inside and fumble with the lock. Will was pawing at the handle. The door opened.

  Don’t do it, Will. Brothas from different mothas. Remember?

  Will grinned. His eyes fully dilated and clouded yellow.

  James grabbed the front seat armrest and pulled himself away from Will’s reach.

  There!

  In the front seat, glistening in the afternoon sun — the saw. James reached for it, but Will grasped his foot.

  James was yanked back. For such a stringy runt, Will’s grip felt impossibly strong. Strong enough to bend James’ steel-toe boot right on the edge where it flared out and stopped at the top of his foot. The leather edging bowed and pierced his skin. James looked up from his tortured foot to see Will staring back at him full of hate.

  Will held a flathead in his free hand. James flailed his leg, but Will held on with seemingly little effort. Will raised the flathead and stabbed it downward. James felt his thigh explode with heat. A bolt of electricity seemed to pulse upward and arc through James’ hands.

  “Will!” James screamed. For a moment, Will’s expression changed. Will’s fiery stare cooled and his lips drooped into a frown. James saw a remnant of his best friend far back within the dilated pupils of the monster.

  “Do it,” Will responded. “It hurts.”

  Will’s lips tightened. The fiery eyes began to billow once again.

  James pulled his unpinned leg up, bringing his knee to his chest. He stomped with all his might on the hand that held his boot. Will’s grip broke with a snap and James scr
ambled into the front seat. He snatched the saw.

  The monster hissed and reached for James. Without hesitating, James flipped the “on” switch, pulled the trigger, and yanked the safety guard back. The motor revved and the blade spun, all 5800 rpm. James swung in one upward arc. Blade met skull. The teeth dug across Will’s hairline. Bone smoked, blood sprayed and the van smelled like a dental surgery. James wrapped his legs around Will's torso, closed his eyes and powered through it.

  “Kheeee!” Will shrieked — it was the sound old TVs make when the channel shows white snow. The blade dug deeper. The density of bone slowed the revolutions into choppy spurts. Will’s blood sprayed until it turned James’ world black. He kept his finger on the trigger as Will’s screams became soft hums. When James finally felt the weight of Will’s body sag,. he stopped the saw and pushed Will’s twitching frame off of him.

  Oh, Jesus, James thought, his mind not on Will, but on Will’s blood covering his face and clothes. He wiped the gore from his eyes.

  Is this shit contagious?

  The weight of the saw brought his thoughts back to the boy and what he needed to do to free him. James popped the door and rolled out of the van. Testing his leg, he held onto the door-handle and then looked up and saw something his eyes could never unsee.

  Bondy and Thrasher ran from the Mustang, abandoning the kid, their rifles slung behind their backs as they fled. The soldiers ran along the park towards the Green River docks, their utility belts clanging with grenades and fresh magazines. They could have ended it there. Given the boy a quick death. But instead they ran and the boy suffered.

  It was useless, but James tried to get to the Mustang anyway. He ran as one them grabbed the boy’s mouth. He ran as it pressed the boy's forehead tightly against the backrest, pulling at the child’s jaw like a giant fishhook through a wide-mouth bass, tugging and yanking and stretching, the child in full realization, tears streaming, eyes wild.

  And the memory haunted him — an unwanted appendage, like an ugly mole or ingrown hair that can’t be removed or ignored. James replayed the boy’s final moments time and again. Sometimes he’d run to the boy along the sidewalk, other times down the highway’s centerline, but each time was the same, with it pulling at the boy’s mouth without mercy...

  Then James would lie in bed thinking, sweat cooling, breath panting, recalling the father’s pleas, pleas that continued long after his son’s face is torn away, the dad sitting against the wheel well, soon to be taken as well, right arm dangling as he screams “My son! My son! My son!”

  #

  CHAPTER 4

  The Last of Us

  “What did you say to Hal Black?”

  James woke to Gaffer hovering over him.

  “What did you say to Hal Black?” Gaffer repeated.

  James groaned and rolled to his back, the camper bed lumpy beneath him. Gaffer showed no sign of giving up. James cleared his throat and said. “I told him, ‘Leave Geenville or I’ll shoot you.’”

  That was the truth. James reached down and felt the new lump below his right groin. It seemed smaller today.

  “Well, now he’s in the produce market, along with the rest of Greenville. It isn’t good. Come now.”

  “Two hours sleep,” James grumbled.

  Gaffer left him. James grabbed his shirt and winced. The feel of cotton sent needling pain through his hands. He grabbed the gloves that he had cut from a pair of old nylons. As James slipped them on, he caught his reflection in the camper’s mirror. He had avoided it for the last few weeks, knowing that he was changing fast now. He mustered the courage to look anyway.

  “Shit.”

  The mirror’s long, rectangular shape made him appear thinner, even more gaunt. His eyes stared back through raccoon rings.

  James rushed out of the Coleman pop-up camper, washing down a handful of pills with a cup of cold Alpine instant coffee. A parade banner hung overhead, stapled into the stout concrete light posts:

  “Mac’s Camper and RV Grand Opening: October 7th.”

  Spring doors from other trailers slapped shut as other residents scurried toward the highway. In the distance, a hazy sun loomed over a barricade of scrap metal and barbwire.

  James walked through the double glass doors of Al’s Produce & Deli, past the empty market bins to the cash registers. Most of Greenville’s forty or so survivors stood in a crowd below Hal Black’s corpse arguing about how to best get him down. Hal hung from the rafters, neck noosed with black cable.

  Greenville’s family physician, Dr. Marcus, stood on a four-foot stack of blue pallets, trying to shush the small crowd. Her hair hung in tangles over a gleaming lab coat. In a world without washing machines and detergent, that said a lot about her fussiness.

  “Please, everyone stop for a moment so I can fill you in,” she pleaded as they shouted over her. The arguments switched from dead bodies to the dwindling food stockpile.

  “I know you got a stockpile of canned goods in your basement. You’re hoarding it all for yourself!” A man in flannel roared at an oversized woman.

  “What I have is my property. I was prepared for years. Why should I divvy my supplies now?”

  “Because it looks like you can afford to give up a can or two, you fat slob!”

  Kapoosh!

  The survivors fell silent and spun around. James stood in the far back of the store — a pale gargoyle looming over the survivors. His Bearcat single-action revolver smoked, barrel pointed up.

  “I’m tired, hungry, and just last night, I found a new tumor festering below my balls. I’m also low on ammo. Guess which one you just made worse?”

  Gaffer held his laughter in with one cupped hand.

  “You’re gonna listen to the Doc,” James continued. “Because the next round won’t be wasted on pressure-treated rafters.”

  He holstered the Bearcat in his shoulder harness. “All this arguing won't do jack shit but waste energy. Energy we can't afford to burn.”

  The survivors stood in silence for a moment. The man in flannel found his voice first. “What gives you the right to say what's what around here? Last I saw, the sheriff diced his daughter up with a box cutter then ran headlong into Mr. Hillier's Colt .45.” The man jabbed a pointing finger in the air as he spoke.

  “You’re a salt miner, ain’t ya?” James asked him.

  “Ya, so?”

  “Ya, so the time for unions and safety codes is done. The only complaints that matter now are the ones that shoot from the business end of a loaded gun. And I can see you’re not carrying much of an argument.” James pointed at the man’s utility knife hanging from a belt pouch.

  “Now, let the doctor speak.”

  The doctor cleared her throat and continued: “Hal Black came to me last night complaining of all-too-familiar symptoms. I ran blood tests to confirm it.”

  “So it’s airborne, too?” Delores shouted from the back row. At 66, she was the oldest healthy person in Greenville, a testament to a life of labor in the beet fields.

  “No. Strange as it may seem, he contracted it sexually,” Marcus responded.

  The residents erupted in shouts again. James placed a thumb on the Bearcat’s grip, but thought better of it.

  “I can vouch for that,” James roared. It irritated the tickle in his throat and he coughed. The crowed waited for his coughs to settle. Gaffer handed him a rag.

  “We all know Hal started peeping on Kaitlin Drummond the day she grew breasts. Guess who spotted Kaitlin rummaging through a dumpster in the church parking lot? He caught, muzzled, and chained her in his basement. Saw him last night wandering Riverside with a fever and he told me everything. My response? I told him, ‘Leave Greenville or I’ll kill you.’ Truth is, I planned to wait at the barricades and drown him in the creek. Maybe he saw me thinking that.”

  Jenny, the pregnant librarian yelled from the back of the crowd — “How can we be sure no one from the outside will just swim across?" She asked, no longer interested in Hal Black’s fate.
/>
  "Not likely," Doctor Marcus responded. “Tweakers seem to be case-by-case, but the one common denominator seems to be reasoning, and motor skills impairment.”

  That’s what people began calling them — Tweaks. It amazed everyone how quickly, uniformly, the nickname spread. A surprising achievement without the aid of Facebook or the internet. It also confused everyone at first, because really, Tweakers don’t actually “tweak” in a convulsive, jittery way, and so the name became one of those non-sensical words with a literal meaning that doesn’t add up but people grow to accept anyway, like babysit, bathing suit, and parkway.

  They seemed to be prone to seizures, though. Maybe that was it.

  “Every Tweak we’ve seen drowns,” James said. He walked the near side of the creek each evening. Sometimes the Tweaks on the other side would go into a rage and swim for him. They sank almost immediately. But he’d seen one carrying an air rifle a few months back, pointing the useless weapon in all directions and squeezing the trigger. If some of them could do that...

  “The one thing to remember,” Marcus added, straightening her pristine lab-coat. “They are highly unpredictable. The ones that speak will try to get you to do things. Ignore all Tweaks, even when you have a barricade between you and them.”

  Jenny shouted again, “But my husband’s out there. He just wants to know about the baby.”

  Gaffer rubbed his strawberry blonde mustache. His voice was neutral. “Has he tried to get you to let him in?”

  The woman crossed her arms over her belly. “He’s just curious how the —“

  “Answer my question.”

  The woman stood looking up at the rafters, as if Hal might vouch for her.

  “Did he ever try to get in?” Gaffer’s words sharpened.

  She dropped her hands to her sides. “Yes.”

  “Why do they seem more restless, now?” Dorothy asked. A valid question. “I always see at least five or six over The Wire.”

  “Runnin’ out of food,” Gaffer said. “I’m just about the only one dumb enough to leave Greenville, and lately I’ve seen skeletons picked to the bone. Their shops are runnin’ out of food is all. Now we look tastier all the time.”