The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (6 page)

He poured himself a glass of orange juice from the fridge–not real oranges, of course, just the same powdered Tang he’d been mixing himself for years, but at least it had 100 per cent of daily Vitamin C to battle the flu. He hadn’t noticed any improvement from the expired Sudafed. The drink burned his hurting throat.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and picked up the bat, feeling like a parody of a kid going out to play ball on a Saturday. All that was missing was Mom, telling
him to be home for lunch. He exited the kitchen into the garage stairwell; even through his congestion the garage smelled like oil and grease. The Jeep was in its stall, overworked, resting from the long drive home, its tank almost empty. He’d fill it from the reserves out back later.

Unlocking the side door, he emerged onto the yard.

On the ground the shadow was a crisp rendering of the gabled roof behind him. The house was Spanish revival, a contemporary mix of varying rooflines and pilasters carved from white plaster, curving around a wide slated courtyard. A ‘drug lord house’, he’d teased Danielle once, just to embarrass her in front of the realtor, when secretly he couldn’t help admiring it.

For several tense seconds he stood and listened, assuring himself that all was quiet, then walked outwards from cover. At this early hour, the sun already felt like a stinging insect on his neck as he crossed the desert property to the barricade on the western end.

The barricade. His masterpiece. The first year after the Evacuation he’d slaved out here, obsessed with the waist-high wall of brick that ran the property line, the need to build it higher with huge sheets of plywood and corrugated aluminium he’d looted from Home Depot. And then he’d piled whatever else he could find in the neighbourhood along the inside for support–stones, cinder blocks, lumber, wheelbarrows, barbecue grills, patio tables, umbrellas, watering cans, anything at all to add strength and weight–until the structure measured from the left of the driveway gate, all the way around the house, and back to the right.

For weeks that summer he worked in a sadistic heat, afraid to stop despite the sunburn, the blisters, the salty nicks on his arms as he hoisted tons of clutter and spooled a mile of barbed wire along the top; at any moment he expected to turn and see the dead pouring from a weak point he hadn’t
yet addressed. At night he suffocated himself to sleep in the house’s hot attic, insane with sweat, certain the property was not secure.

And then, gradually, things had gotten better. Stepping outside in the mornings, he began to notice a feeling of satisfaction. Calm. Control–the first hint of it in a long, long time.

The barricade stood higher than his head, too tall for the things to climb but low enough so that he could see over the top when he stood on the house porch. Every inch of it allowed survey of the desert and the abandoned houses in the Gold Canyon below.

He recalled one of Danielle’s friends, that hippie Janis with all the beads who lived up in Sedona and made sculpture from random junk. If only Janis could see this–his barricade with its odd arrangements. The chaotic yet purposeful placement, the juxtaposed earth-colour rust and bright plastics. It was as artistically pleasing to him as anything he’d done in his life. All it needed was a name.
Materialism as Defence Mechanism.

Not bad. Or how about
A Lot of Crap That Doesn’t Mean Shit Any More.

Yeah. Second one was better.

Now he followed the barricade, alert for any sign of a breach. Nothing. In the back yard, he could hear the generator chugging in the shed, activated by the timer he’d rigged to save gasoline. He paused to admire the Superstitions to the north, the blue sky clear of clouds and vultures. No aircraft, either. He’d long stopped bothering to be on guard for military planes or Blackhawks; that first summer, he’d dash back into the house at the first drone of a distant engine, but the Air Force had discontinued flyovers three years ago. Jet fuel shortages had pretty much grounded the fleet. And besides, there weren’t any more survivors to rescue, anyway.

Satisfied that the yard was safe, he continued to the other side of the house, crossing behind the empty concrete pit that had been the pool. At the back corner of the property was Danielle’s unofficial garden–nothing she’d planted herself, just a fenced-off section of wild flowers. Yellow evening primrose and purple vervain sprouted there on their own. He’d always appreciated them for the fact that they thrived no matter how he neglected them.

He stopped as he turned the corner.

Something had sprung the trap.

Twenty feet ahead, the white signal cloth waved to him from where the fibreglass snare pole bent over the barricade, pulled by an unseen weight on the other side. The pole was still. Whatever was caught in the snare wasn’t putting up much fight.

Marco took a deep breath and set down the baseball bat, switching the Glock to his damp right palm.

Another coyote. A bobcat.

Jesus Christ. Did he want it to be her, or not?

Near the base of the snare pole rested a worn wooden ladder. He set it against the barricade, then hesitated. No noise from the other side. He gripped the pole and tugged. It swayed towards him and then away, a natural momentum, nothing forced. But still the end dipped towards the ground outside the wall, the cable taut. Definitely something there. He continued up the first few rungs, sweat chilling his armpits, his crotch.

He held his breath and stuck his head over.

Danielle…

… was not there, not smiling up at him with a putrid face and black crusted lips, the way she did in his awful nightmares.

He laughed once, not amused, feeling the pressure rush from his lungs.

At the end of the cable was an arm. A man’s arm, hairy, torn from the body at the humerus above the bicep. Flies swarmed around the fresh exposed meat and the knob of bone. The jackrabbit carcass Marco had left as bait was gone. Around the wrist, the wire loop cut a bloodless purple trench–the more you pulled, the tighter a snare got–and Marco guessed that the corpse had simply yanked hard enough to escape, minus one limb.

He glanced around. Wherever the thing had wandered next, he saw no sign of it.

He set his Glock on the wall ledge, needing both hands free, and hoisted himself forward. His abdomen rested atop the barricade as he reached for the wire, his body stretched flat, an awkward distribution of his weight. Immediately he realised his mistake–almost a premonition, ‘zombie sense’ again–and with a startled reflex he hooked his foot around a rusted metal pole poking from the barricade rubble, an old red stop sign…

… or else he would have toppled when the corpse attacked, striking from the shadows outside the wall.

The dead thing had been hugging the blind spot along the base, hidden from view–yes, Marco should have checked there, he always did, but this goddamn time he hadn’t, because he was distracted, and sick, and exhausted, and heartbroken–so that when Marco leaned out, the thing hissed and leaped straight up at him. Its rough fingers clamped his wrist and yanked him a foot over the wall. He yelled out in surprise–heard his jeans rip against the concrete, felt his ankle twist painfully under the stop sign. His free hand slapped at the wall, seeking the Glock.

Couldn’t find it. Couldn’t turn to look.

He shouted, cursed, his face burning with frustration.

The corpse tightened its grip on his wrist. And pulled.

Marco hung at the waist over the barricade, looking down into the eyes of a tall male corpse with thick grizzled eyebrows and a small knobby chin. Its corneas were red and disgusting, pooled with blood, and its gaping mouth had no tongue–but sure as hell the teeth were all there, gnashing and slicing at the short distance between itself and Marco.

The left arm was gone, a ragged stump. It didn’t care. With its remaining hand it raged against Marco, thrashing, hanging its weight on him, and Marco watched in horror as his own forearm inched lower and lower towards those wild snapping teeth. A bite would be fatal; the Resurrection transmitted through large wounds. A scratch might not kill you–but if the teeth broke deep into the skin’s hypodermis, the bottom layer where fat blood vessels crisscrossed the body and your red stuff really pumped… well, if that happened, you were fucked. Big-time.

Christ
–the thing was strong. Fingers like a handcuff.

Cold. Unbreakable.

Marco resisted, pulling back as if curling weights in the gym. The tendons in his neck bulged, and his bicep shook. With his free arm he grabbed hold of his elbow for extra leverage but, as he did, he felt himself slide farther out across the wall, his balance thrown even more out of whack. He arched his back desperately, keeping himself as high as he could, terrified the thing might jump and bite his face.

The muscle in his arm boiled. He fought back a growing panic, an excruciating need to release. If his strength gave out, his arm would be hamburger–and so he twisted his torso, trying to summon power from all points of his body and direct it to his wrist.

His arm dipped lower. Lower.

The corpse dug its heels into the desert, grunting like a
boar. Brown spittle from the thing’s rotten mouth peppered Marco’s hand. Marco squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated. He continued to slip forward, losing an inch at a time to the dead man pulling him.

Behind Marco the stop sign had pulled loose from the barricade–no good now, unable to moor him in place. The sign’s broad metal face clattered against the concrete, then cut into the bend of Marco’s knee as he teetered at the brink of the wall. Only his upper legs supported him. His waist, his chest, his face dangled out into nothing.

The congestion in his head drained to a spot behind his eyes, an intense pressure that dizzied him, almost emerged as vomit. Feverish sweat squeezed from his pores.

Fight this
, he thought. The fire in his arm, his spine, unbearable.

He was going down.

‘Fight this,’ he gasped.

He would die today, finally.

No. Not today.

He opened his eyes and stared at the corpse. It watched him in return, its pasty face too close to his own, close enough to touch if Marco unarched his back; the dead man’s right eye had burst from exertion, and blood oozed like tears down its cheek, along its broken nose, into the gaps between its jagged teeth.

For a moment Marco pitied it, even understood it–a creature fighting to survive, not really so different from himself. And then he aimed and swung his upper body down like a mallet, pounding his forehead square into the dead man’s skull.

A bright flash blinded him, sharp pain, but it cleared quickly and he saw the corpse sit hard on its ass, releasing his wrist, its mouth rounded into a shape of surprise. Marco’s chest whipped downwards, slamming the wall, knocking his breath
away. He hung there, suspended, his left leg caught around the stop sign that extended into the blue sky above him.

Shit.
He needed that sign.

He jerked his leg, hard as he could, wincing at the bite of metal into his skin. He heard the corpse grunt, and so he swung his arms blindly to ward off the attack he couldn’t see coming. And then the sign popped free from the wall and crashed atop him as he fell to the solid earth.

He scrambled to his feet and turned just as the corpse rushed him. He dodged and delivered a rough kick to the thing’s back, sending it face first to the ground again. Its half-arm flailed as it rolled, kicking up dirt and a bad, shitlike stench. Marco wheeled to find the stop sign.

There
–in a bed of brittlebrush. He bent and grasped the green metal pole with both hands. The corpse righted itself into a crouch, tensing, now up and staggering towards him.

Hurry
, Marco thought. He swung his shoulders and drove with his legs; the sign’s weight snapped his arms taut, popped his elbows as it grated forward, dragging on the ground.

He wrung himself in a frantic circle, gaining speed; the sign scrabbled along the rocky soil then lifted off into space–slicing sideways like the blade of a giant octagonal axe, sailing across a panorama of red hills and plump cactus, the majestic Superstitions in the distance.

As his body spun he lost sight momentarily of the corpse, heard nothing but the hollow whistle of the swinging blade, heavy in his hands, and then his line of vision wheeled forward again, and there was the corpse, lunging at him, crazed.

The sharp edge of the stop sign caught it at the neck…

… slashed upward under the jaw…

… burst out the other side. Marco didn’t even feel a check on the pole.

In one fluid motion, the head tumbled into the air, cut
free, and Marco continued his swing around again, another complete circle, arriving back just in time to see the headless, one-armed body topple. A spasm of black goo spurted from the neck-hole.

Marco relaxed his arms and let go. The stop sign skidded along the dirt and crashed back into the brittlebrush. He stumbled a few steps, letting his momentum subside, then stood shaking in place. His breath rattled through the congestion in his throat. His hands hurt. The rusted pole had sawed two bloody lines across his palms, the kind that would sting for days. He wiped his arm across his forehead, feeling the fever.

Should’ve gone to bed an hour ago.

He walked to where the decapitated corpse lay, a foul pile of brown clothes, its legs and single arm splayed out in three different directions like a broken, soiled doll. The head rested on its side a few feet further–face turned away from Marco, as if insolent.

‘Hey, come on,’ Marco said. ‘Nobody likes a poor loser.’

He almost smiled. And then, just as abruptly, his eyes singed, tears hot on his lower lashes.

Quit screwing around
, he thought, blinking.
Get back in. Another twenty corpses probably heard the racket, and they’ll be sniffing around.

He crossed to the shadow of the barricade, passing the sign where it had settled. The white letters flashed at him from the red octagon.

STOP