The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree (15 page)

A loud bang sounds from outside followed by several shots.  I give Donna the end of the belt and grab my pistol. In the small space outside the metal doors of the conta
iner, light from the dying day pours in from the open cellar door.  I can see Kevin’s boot on the top step.  Empty case after empty case falls back into the hole as he pounds away with his rifle.  His foot disappears when he steps up and out.  The cellar door slams shut behind him. 

Eddie and I watch where he was standing without saying anything.  There’s no way we’ll see Kevin again.  No one could walk through the mess upstairs. 

I look down at Eddie who is staring at the cut on my leg.  I check the .45 to make sure there’s a round in the chamber and hand it to him.  “I think it’s fine.  But just in case.”

He takes the pistol from me.  “Here’s the safety
.  The one in the handle is taped down.  Flip this lever down, then squeeze the trigger.  And remember, it’s got to be in the head.”  I tap my forehead with my finger.

Removal of limits.
  And an invitation to endure things that other people can’t fathom, navigate, understand or execute.  Poor fucking kid.  He’ll never be bored anyway.

Chapter 19:  Down in a Hole

Deep space.
  Total blackness.  It’s cold.  It’s dark.  And I feel like shit.  I move my arm and feel the flashlight attached to my wrist by a lanyard.  I flick it on and shine the bottom of the bunk on top of me.  My mouth feels numb and sticky.  My leg hurts and I can smell the infection coming up from under the blanket. 

I sit up and look around me.  I don’t have a watch.  Didn’t figure time was important anymore.  But now, down here in the dark with no idea of day or night, I wish I knew what time it was.

A chill rolls through me and I feel the heat of my forehead.   I shine the light down on my leg.  It’s all red and swollen around the cut.  It doesn’t look good.  It doesn’t smell nice.  I push on the side of the wound and a small amount of dark liquid seeps out, almost black in color and thick like oil.

I am so fucked.

I cup my hand over the end of the light and shine a trickle of it around the container.  Dawn and Donna are curled up.  Donna snores and Dawn moans.  Ray is crashed on the bunk above them, karate suit and a bottle of booze.  Karen and Eddie are on another bunk.  Tyler must be above me. 

Tyler must be exhausted after working on Dawn for that long.  He removed the remainder of Dawn’s hand at the wrist joint, sewed up the big arteries and veins, packed the whole thing with triple antibiotic ointment and then glued the flap shut.  Kept talking about the Civil War and how they used to do it back then.  He seemed to be happy to have something to
do, even as unpleasant as it was.

I get up off my bunk carefully and walk over to where he had operated.  The tube of antibiotic is
mostly empty, but I manage to squeeze some out and push it into the cut in my leg. 

Christ, I feel bad.  I stagger back to the bunk and lay down.  I take the
pillowcase off, wrap it around the wound and then tie it all off with a bandana.  Pull the wool blanket up over my head and try to get warm but it isn’t working.  Inside my pack, I find a sock hat and pull that on.  Freezing, freezing, shaking and ache all over.  Goddamn it.

I roll up into a ball and think about it.  How long is it going to take for the infection to spread to my brain?  I ought to tell the others.  Maybe sleep out in the other room.  But they’ll shoot me as soon as I mention it.  Or exile me to the world outside the container. 

No.  I must not be infected.  I would have changed over by now. 

Another cold chill wracks my body.  I think about all the little white blood cells in my body trying to fight off the black
Zed blood cells, the Zed blood that must have splashed into the open wound.  Life is nothing but constant war.  Everything fighting everything.  Everything eating everything. 

It is quiet outside the doors.  The howling has stopped.  The banging has stopped.  No gunfire.  Somewhere out there is a big, stoned, Kevin
Zed.  If we make it out of here, I’ll have to put him down.  Betty too.  And god knows who else. Or what else. Or maybe they’ve all wandered off, bored with the people who live underground.

Or maybe I’ll turn and kill everyone in here.  I should crawl to the door and open it while I still know how to work the latch.  Will I recognize Kevin?  Will Betty know who I am?  What part will live and what part will die?  I drift in and out of consciousness as the fever and infection hammer on my human shell.  Images of the last several days flash through my mind. 
The bowling ball impacting a Zed head.  The face being trampled underneath the wave.  The candy wrapper bracelet around white and blue delicate flesh.  The Zed with Dawn’s severed hand in his mouth.  My heart races and deep sleep takes me.

There’s a light in my eyes.  “Are you alright?” Tyler is asking me.  I can’t quite focus on his face with that damned light in my eyes.  The lights are on
everywhere.  Fingers pry my eyes open.  “Look at that shit,” Tyler is telling someone.  I can hear the gas generator running in the other room.  Overhead, the fluorescents are on.  I hear women crying.  I can feel my wrists being tied to the corner posts of the bed. 

Karen places a cool, wet rag on my forehead.  Eddie stands near her, the .45 looks gigantic tucked in the front of his pants.  He looks burdened; heavy, dead in the eyes. 

“Why wait?” Tyler is asking.  “We already know.”

I start to drift out again.  Bits and pieces blink by and in and out.  People are arguing.  I hear the lever of Karen’s Winchester slide open and closed.  Someone sits on the bed.  Instead of a gun barrel pressing to my head, a hand, delicate and smooth runs over my cheek and forehead.  A soft kiss lands on my temple and sleep takes me again. 

When I come to, I am soaked with cold sweat but I feel better.  I want to take off my sock hat but my hands are still tied to the corners of the bed.  A big candle burns on a makeshift table on the far wall.  Karen is lying next to me, curled up around her rifle and facing the other way.  Eddie is sitting at the end of the bed, hand on the .45, watching me intently.

“Morning,” I croak and lay back down. 

“Hey,” he says back.  I look over at him again through one squinted eye and see that he is actually smiling.

“Where’s the… what, uh…” I’d like to know to what’s happened but I’m not sure what to ask.

“You’ve been knocked out for a while,” Eddie says.  Karen stirs next to me then moves away from me with a jolt.  “It’s okay,” Eddie tells her.  “He’s fine now.”

She wipes the drool from her chin and pushes my hair back off my forehead.  She looks into my eyes and studies them intently.  “What?” I ask her.

“We thought maybe you were changing.  Becoming one of them.”

Tyler turns the corner of the doorway from the other container.  “Well,” he says shoving something into his mouth, “you made it.”  He doesn’t sound happy or unhappy about it.  “I figured we were
gonna have to shoot you.”

“
Mmmhuh,” I nod and put my head back down. 

Karen gives me some water to drink.  Ray comes out of the container with an armload of cans and boxes.  “All of that food in the house and all we have out here,” he pauses and licks something off his thumb, “is spray cheese. 
Canned meat.  Crackers.  And rice and flour.  With no way to cook the shit.  I mean…” The laugh again.  The big crazy smile. Then his mouth drops open in shock. “Oh shit.  He’s awake.  Is he awake?  Or is he… you know.”

“Let’s have a look at his eyes,” Tyler says and walks towards
me, winding up one of the flashlights.  “Can you talk?”

I nod.  Then clear my throat.  I need more water.  “Water was nice,” I croak out and Karen gives me some more.  “Be nice to have my hands untied.”

“We’ll get to that,” Tyler says.  “I’m not convinced that you’re you, dude.  If you know what I mean.”

“I have no fucking idea what you mean.”  Obviously I’m me.  If I was going to change over, I would have by now. 

Tyler pries my right eye open and shines the light into it.  “What color did your eyes used to be?”

“Green.”

“Well, they’re a lovely shade of gray and black now.  Just like all the fucking ghouls outside.”  He switches off the light and stands up.  His expression is blank as he sucks in a big breath.  He pulls out his Beretta 9mm and checks to see if there’s a round in the chamber.  Karen pulls the Winchester up across my chest and points it at Tyler.  Eddie slides the .45 out of his pants and looks up at Tyler with a scowl.  “Alright,” Tyler concedes and puts the pistol away.  He slowly starts reaching in towards my face with two fingers.  The two fingers slide down to my neck and press into the flesh just above the collarbone.  “Well, you’ve got a pulse.  But I don’t have any idea if that means anything.”

“How’s my leg?” I ask.  Karen pulls the covers back and begins to untie the bandana wrapped around my thigh.  Black and red stains have soaked through the
pillowcase.  I crane my neck forward to look down.  The area around the cut isn’t nearly as swollen and red as it was before.  But the same strange yellow growth that the Zed have over their wounds covers the cut like a scab. 

“Huh,” Tyler says.  “Get me a pair of needle nose pliers.  And that bottle of vodka.”

A knot twists up in my stomach.  This isn’t going to feel good.  Ray brings over the bottle of vodka and Eddie hands Tyler the needle nose pliers that were last used to stitch up Little Dawn.  I look away as I feel the tips of the pliers begin to look for a place to bite on the scab.  I try not to look but after feeling nothing, I tip my head forward again to see what Tyler is doing.  In the yellow light of the flashlight, Tyler is slowly pulling a long string of the zombie rot off in one piece.  It looks like a strip of kitchen sponge or coral; maybe a fishing lure or really big booger.  A sickly sweet nutty smell fills the air.  I see Ray dry heave and cover his mouth with his hand.  The words ‘spray’ and ‘cheese’ pass through my mind.

“The scab looks like some kind of tree fungus or mushroom.  The shit underneath though…”

“It looks like a slug,” Eddie says in a whisper.

Tyler looks at him for a second.  “It does.  Where’s that box of salt?”

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Karen snaps.  “You’re going to pour salt into an open wound?”

Tyler shrugs.  “What would you do?”

I look again now that the scab is pulled away.  Red flesh still shows on the edge of the wound, but the middle is a dead-ish gray with black flecks across the top.  It appears to be contained but only just.  I clear my throat and they all look at me.  “Do it,” I croak. 

Eddie brings the salt
over, and without ceremony, Tyler opens it and pours the salt into the cut.  The meat on the outside screams with red hot pain as the salt aggravates the living tissue.  But nothing happens in the deepest part of the channel.  At least not at first.  But slowly, the pain grows and a horrible smell fills the air.  The pain cuts deeper and deeper and I grit my teeth and swear.  The socks tying my arms to the bunk bed strain as I pull against them.  Tyler pours more on the leg and I struggle to keep still.  Tyler takes out his wallet and shoves it into my mouth so I have something to bite on. 

Again the pliers dig in and begin to pull things out.  Ray leaves the room and
re-sprays his cheese loudly outside.  Eddie holds the flashlight and Karen holds me down around the shoulders.  Tyler continues ripping things out and digging around.  The pliers must have found bone as a huge dull pain rides up my leg and into my stomach.  I fight not to throw up all over myself.

  “Wow,” Tyler says and looks into the wound.  The pain begins to ease but only slightly.  I hear the sound of a metal lid being unscrewed.  “Well, this is going to suck just as muc
h,” Tyler tells me.  The vodka tears through my leg like lightning.  I scream and pull and one of my arms comes free.  Tyler grabs it and forces it down to the bed where he then sits on it and continues to irrigate the wound with the alcohol. 

Everything goes slack and the pain in my leg cuts off as the black closes in and takes me away. 

Chapter 20:  He Has Risen

I slowly open my eyes.  My head hurts like crazy.  I go to rub my forehead but I’m still tied down.  I remember the surgery from before and look down to see if my leg is still there, if there’s a bandage or a hole or a stump.  The outline of my leg leads down to my foot sticking up from under the end of the blanket.  I move it a little and the pain of the wound returns but in a much more manageable way.  I look around me and see that the others are sitting behind me at the far end of the container.  It looks like they’re having lunch.

“Good stuff. 
All these preservatives and food colorings.  It’s no wonder the zombies last so long after they’re infected.  They’re full of preservatives.  It’s like we’re embalming ourselves before we die.”  Ray is talking.  I can hear the aerosol cheese dispensing onto something, followed by a crunch.   “You’ll never find this kind of stuff ever again.  Hopefully.”  Something crunches then Ray talks with his mouth full, “Goddamn, that’s terrible.  All of modern man’s greatness and technology and some egg-headed dweeb figures out how to put fucking cheese-
food
into an aerosol can.”

I clear my throat and try to speak but it comes out garbled and unintelligible at first.  Like a moan.  I hear chairs move behind me and the sound of a hammer cocking.  For a
moment, I wonder if I have crossed over, if I am able to speak intelligibly.  Or is this where the Zed live; locked inside and driven insane by an existence of having one foot in this world and another somewhere else.  I swallow hard and try again.  “Hey,” is all I can manage at first.

“Did he say a word or was it…”

I swallow again.  And I’m mad.  “Goddamn it,” I mutter and try to move around a little.  I can hear myself clearly but I don’t know if anyone else can.  Fear collides with the anger and rolls out in a hoarse condemnation.  “If you mutherfuckers don’t untie me, I swear to god you’ll have more to worry about than fucking zombies.”

Quack.  Laugh.  “I heard that.  I definitely heard that.  You heard that, didn’t you?”

Karen appears at my side and works to untie the arm closest.  Small hands work on the knot holding my foot.  Karen stops and kisses my forehead before going back to work on the sock around my wrist. 

Hands free, I sit up and point at my
other foot.  I’m too weak to do them myself.  I shake my head a little and try to get the cobwebs out.  “How long?” I ask.

“Three days,” Tyler says. 

“And on the third day, he arose,” says Ray under his breath.  I shoot him a sideways glance and he smiles at me and nods.  “Well, you know,” he says, “if you believe in that sort of thing.”

“How do I look?” I ask Karen.  She smiles but her eyes dart all over my face.  I must look pretty bad.   “Get me a mirror.”

Eddie brings a small mirror over from the table and hands it to me.  The image staring back looks like me.  Right color.  Texture.  I look a little pale but not a little dead.  Tyler reaches over and tilts a flashlight beam over so that I can see my eyes.  The lids still pump red blood but the whites are gone and the irises are no longer hazel.  Both eyes are now the mottled gray patchwork of the undead. 

“Can you see alright?” Tyler asks.  I nod without answering.  “What’s two plus two?”

“Twenty-two.”

Tyler smiles for the first time in a long time.  “I checked your leg a few hours ago.  Looks like you’ll have a helluva scar. 
Whatever it is eats away at the flesh pretty quickly.  What started as a cut turned into a helluva rotting gash.  But other than that, you’ve had some kind of miracle recovery.”

“Yeah,” is all I can manage to
say. 

Tyler continues.  “It’s pretty obvious that you got exposed.  Some of the zombie blood got in through that cut.  The rest of it, I don’t know.  I know vaccines started back in the 17
th
century.  People would inject themselves with powdered scabs from others who had survived smallpox.  Maybe you had just enough of an exposure to the virus or bacteria or whatever it is.  Your body managed to beat it back somehow.  At least partially.”

“So I’m immune now?” I ask him.  My wrists hurt like hell and every muscle feels like I’ve been beaten up in my sleep.

“Maybe,” Tyler says.  “Hard to say.  You might be a carrier just as much as the zombies out there.  You might be a mutation of the disease.  You might be the cure.  You might be neither.  I have no idea.”

My stomach growls and I point at my pack which is propped up near the end of the bunk.  Eddie pulls out several packages of MRE’s and freeze dried food.  There are a couple of candy bars I managed to get before Daisy took them for her farewell party.  The silver can with no label rolls out onto the bed as Eddie digs through.  “What’s that?” he asks and points at the can. 

“Lottery ticket,” I say with a smile.  He screws his face up into a question.  “I don’t know what it is.  I was saving it for a rainy day.  We can open it if you like.”

Eddie shakes his head no.  “We got this other stuff.  I like spray cheese.  The canned meat is pretty gross though.”

The others pass things around and dig out mouthfuls with their fingers and crackers and forks and spoons.  I eat beef stew out of a packet that I don’t share.  I wonder if I’m contagious, if I’ll be able to touch other people again.  Karen sits beside me.  She’s already kissed me and touched me.  It felt nice at the time, but the more I think about it, the worse I feel about it. 

There are two Snickers bars on the bed.  I tell Eddie to take one to Dawn.  She’s going to need her strength.  I tell him to keep the other one for himself.  He shrugs and breaks off a piece of his candy
bar, handing it to Karen.  They pass it all around so that everyone gets some. 

I take the last piece and chew.  Karen gently places her hand on my arm and talks to me in a whisper.  “I don’t want to stay in here.  I don’t think I can stay in here. 
Not for much longer anyway.”

“We’ve got water,” Ray says as he reclines onto his bunk.  “Wayne had it all figured out. 
Mostly.  I think he ran water from the bathhouse down here.  We could stay in here… I dunno.  For a shit long time.”

“There’s an acetylene torch set up out in the other room.  I’ve been working on how to cook with that. 
Lots of rice.  Beans,” Tyler adds.  “Composting toilet in the back if you need it.  Once you get rehydrated anyway.”

Karen kisses my cheek and whispers into my ear, “I don’t want to stay in here.  I don’t care how I get out.  I just want out.”

“What’s the last thing anybody heard outside?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Ray says. 
“Haven’t heard a thing.  No moaning and groaning, no gunshots, no helicopters, no storms.  Rains a lot still.  But it’s like, crazy quiet out there.”

Eddie walks over to the bed where I’m
sitting, pulls the .45 out of his pants and puts it into my hand.  He doesn’t say anything. I pop the magazine out and check to see that it’s full.  “Nobody’s even looked out there?”

“Nope,” Tyler says as he sits down across from me.  “I thought about it but we can’t open the outside door without making a bunch of racket.  I figure if they’re moving past us, then we just need to be quiet for a while.  If they figure out we’re still in here, we may never get out.
”

I nod and think about it.  “But at some point, somebody’s
gonna have to go out there.”

“I can still feel where my hand was,” Little Dawn says from the back of the room.  “It hurts so
bad, but I keep trying to wiggle my fingers.”

“That’s going to screw up your sex life,” Ray says with a laugh. 
That laugh.  The loneliest laugh in the world.

“Jesus Christ,” Tyler says and covers his eyes with hand. 

“Well,” Ray offers with raised hands.  “I was just trying to add a little levity.  And you know, since you guys are…”

“It’s alright,” Big Donna says.  “We’re used to Ray.  And we’ve dealt with a lot worse.”

Little Dawn is staring at me as Big Donna talks.  She still looks like she hates me.  Or maybe she’s just terrified.  She wraps her good hand around the stump of where her other hand used to be and leans back on a pile of pillows.  A small para-cord noose hangs down from the upper bunk and Little Dawn attaches this to the end of her bandage to keep her arm hanging above her heart.

“I don’t guess we have any cigarettes left,” I ask.  Eddie throws a half a pack of
Salems in my lap.  “What are you doing with these things?”  He shrugs but watches as I light one up.  “They’ll stunt your growth you know.  Don’t let me catch you smoking these things.”

“Can you stand?” Tyler asks.  I don’t know if I can.  I move my leg slowly waiting for the pain but it isn’t too bad.  “After you passed out, I took the scalpel and cut out the stuff that looked infected.   We washed it all out with iodine and put some more antibiotic cream in there.  It wasn’t as
wide as it was deep. but it is still a pretty long cut.”

I bend my knee down over the side of the bed and everything in my thigh complains.  But I can move.  I limp across the floor a few times and practice straightening it and bending it.  “I’ll be alright to walk in a couple of days probably.”

That night, Karen slides in next to me and leaves Eddie to sleep on the bunk above us.  Sleep has become our new drug as we while away the hours, waiting to emerge from our cocoon. Karen snuggles up next to me and her hand finds its way to my crotch.  I feel her pulling my belt loose and unbuttoning my pants.  “Sure you want to do that?” I ask her.

I feel her head nod yes against my shoulder.  “I don’t care.  Even if I switch over, I’ll be free of all of this.  Just promise you’ll take care of me if I do change.  Make it quick. Make it painless.”  Her hand pulls me free of my pants and I lift my ass so that I can pull them down a little.  Her head moves down from my shoulder and her hand moves to the base of my cock.  It seems like it has been a long time.  Her lips take me into her mouth and I rest a hand on the top of her head.  She works silently in the complete quiet of the bunker.  Only the sound of my breathing could give us away.  I grit my teeth as orgasm builds. 

If I’m contagious, she’s killing herself.  If I’m the cure, she’ll live through all of this, regardless of whether or not she ever gets bitten.  If I’m neither, then it is just a wonderful blow job.  My toes curl inward as the first few spurts of death or life or nothing fill her mouth.  I hear her swallow.  My breathing slows and she remains there for a long while, lying still as a suicide victim with an exhaust hose from a car snaked through the driver’s window.  My eyes become heavy and I can feel myself shrinking.  She brings her head back to my shoulder and kisses my neck, a tooth grazing the sensitive skin.  Little Dawn lets out a moan in the darkness and Ray sighs and turns in his sleep.  Eddie mutters something and I have the feeling Tyler is listening.

Karen begins to snore softly and I wonder again if I’ve killed us all.