The Zombie Letters (21 page)

              “Christian!! Get the fuck out of there!”

              “Harold?”

              It was Harold Crawford . . . a neighbor about three houses down. He always had barbecues every weekend during the summer and would invite the whole block. Christian and Ana always went. Every Sunday afternoon. That guy was a queer if Christian had ever seen one, but the ol’ boy could grill his ass off. Harold was at the ground-level window, extending one of his meaty arms. His face was covered in a thick layer of sweat. Dark stains of what looked like blood dotted the white tank top he was wearing. He purposely bought shirts that were one size too small for him for some reason. His pot-bellied frame allowed those shirts to challenge the imagination of a heterosexual man. “Get out of there! Now! Ana is up here . . . they’re comin’ down the
STAIRS!
”

              Christian turned around to see three of them running down the flight that led to the basement. All three of them were charred black. Their skin was loose and bubbling . . . their clothes tattered as if someone had simply attempted to boil them alive. The one at the front was wearing a belt that had a large metal buckle on it like those shit-kickers in Texas wear. The buckle had melted into its skin. Christian Garner jumped on top of the bed as Harold extended his arms. Christian took both of them and used his feet to balance himself on the headboard. “Christ, hurry up Harold, they’re coming!” he screamed. Harold hoisted his neighbor up. The man of the Garner household crawled through the window on his stomach just as the moaning, burned objects of his secret nightmares took him by the ankles. He could feel their hot breath on his bare feet; the horrible smell of burned flesh and hair. The window was tiny. If Christian were Harold’s size, he wouldn’t have made it. The second he got through the window and crawled away, one of the dead reached up and snatched Harold by the shirt and pulled him into the window frame. One of his arms was quickly seized and yanked into the hole. Christian immediately grabbed Harold and attempted to pull him back.

              “Help me!
They got my arm!
” he screamed as he struggled to get out of their grasp.

Ana, who had been nervously pacing back and forth, yanked her husband back by his shoulders. “We’re out of time!” She pointed to the edge of the property line that spanned acres of dry farm land. At least a couple hundred of the runners were racing toward them . . . and gaining within one hundred yards from the house. “Come on!” Amy pulled her husband’s shirt collar, ripping it open to the middle of his back. Christian stumbled backwards, losing his grip on Harold. The man was pulled in farther and fruitlessly struggling against them. The tank top was torn from his body. The poor man’s mouth was open, but he didn’t scream. He couldn’t.

“I’m so sorry, Harold,” Christian said. He and his wife took off running into the dense woods at the edge of the property. They got well into the wooded area when they finally heard Harold Crawford scream. Just one scream . . . then silence. They stopped after God knew how long they had been running.  “How the
fuck
did that happen . . .” Christian leaned against a tree to catch his breath. His bare feet throbbed and he still had such an awful headache from being awake nearly all night. Christian Garner slinked down the tree trunk and sat in the dirt, rubbing his eyes with his fists.

Ana sat down next to her husband and stammered for a moment. He hated it when she fucking stuttered. She sounded like a goddamn retard when she did that. “I . . . went upstairs to get something. When I left, I accidently left the door unlocked.” She spoke slowly and quietly, like a child in time-out.

“You
what
?”

“I must not have locked the door from the inside because I didn’t have my key on me. I’m sorry, Christian. I’m so sorry . . .”

He took a deep, shaky breath and clenched his fists so tight that his knuckles turned white. In a rare moment of self-collection, he loosened up his fists and stood up slowly with his back sliding against the tree. “We had to get outta there, anyway. If you didn’t make a mistake today, one of us would have eventually. We couldn’t spend our whole lives in that basement. They’d have found a way to get inside. I can guarantee you that. When something’s hungry enough, they
will
get through. I saw a dog chew through a chain-link fence once. Took him a week to make a hole big enough for him to walk through, but he did it.”

A flush of relief washed over her. She expected him to lose it. Maybe pick her up and toss her into the woods. Maybe tie her to a tree and make enough noise to send every infected human being in the area to a free meal. He didn’t. Much to her surprise. She turned her back to him; hands on her slender hips and spoke in the same whipped-puppy voice. “It’s not safe out here. We need to figure something out. Didn’t you say once that you had a friend in Kentucky that had like a whole bunker built for himself? That’s what . . . eight hours away? State highway ninety runs all the way there, though. No one takes that road because it is almost entirely gravel and there’s always some big farm vehicle going twenty on it? I remember you talking about a place like that.”

“Hey, Ana?” Christian said in a small, friendly voice. She turned around. In no more time than it took to blink, Christian sailed his fist into her nose, knocking her back against the tree. She stared at him with watering eyes as her nose gushed blood . . . a sickening feeling that nearly caused her to swim away into the familiar unconscious void. As difficult as it was, she remained standing and lightly swayed on her feet to battle the coming unconsciousness. She had never been punched before. It wasn’t like in the movies when someone can get hit square in the nose and keep fighting. This fucking
hurt
. Her husband had smacked her around from time to time. Only when she was being stupid or unreasonable. He even shoved her into things before, but this time he balled up his fist and slugged her. He’d never done anything like that before. She just stood and stared – sorrowful eyes and bleeding nose.

              “Let’s go. We need to move . . .
darling
wife of mine.” Christian smiled and rubbed the knuckles on his right hand.

              He was right. They
did
need to get going.

              It would be getting dark before they knew it.

              Harold’s house was overrun. Their plan to hole up in there would be a fruitless one. It looked like the bald, fat nancy had boarded up every window and placed four-by-fours over every door from the inside. It appeared as though one plank that covered up a hole in the back door was removed in order to peek out . . . or it was ripped from the house by a violent storm the night before. One four-by-four missing was all it took for the dead to gain a foothold to the building. Once even one of them was inside, the game was over.  That was the time Ana Garner was perhaps the most frightened. Her eyes stayed blurry and watery. She couldn’t smell anything with the throbbing sack of nerves attached to her face. Thank God he hadn’t broken it. If it were broken, Christian would probably want to set it himself; fucking the whole thing up and turning her favorite feature into a misshapen hunk of human clay. With every second of the day that progressed, her thoughts kept coming back to the same silent, accepting disbelief. He punched her. He actually punched her. What would he do if they had kids and one of them drew on a wall or tore up one of his books?

              They rested in the early afternoon at the point where the woods began to clear out a bit. The small town of Rockland, Iowa was only a mile hike, more or less.
It wasn’t a huge city
.
. . not as large as Indianola or Des Moines, but it would no doubt be a hotbed for those creatures. The only way out was the foresty-area that surrounded Jackson and Steele counties. So far, Mr. and Mrs. Garner didn’t see one of them. Harold had seen a few. Poor Harold. For a moment, Ana felt ashamed of herself for feeling sad that she wouldn’t get to have another one of his famous boneless steaks again. She should have been feeling for the man himself, not his cooking. She assured herself that she was actually mourning normalcy. The life she once had. There was a spot in her heart for the people afflicted, but there was a bigger one in never seeing another movie at the theater or another ballgame on TV. The world wouldn’t just bounce back from this. She knew it.
Felt
it deep within her soul. Harold was a kind and generous man and it was disrespectful to think something like that. She pushed it from her mind and focused on the sting inside her face that was subsiding, but still leaving the strange smell one gets when they are popped in the schnoz. It kind of smells like chlorine. It had only happened to her once before, now that she thought about it. Schoolyard fight. Funny how fate was . . . she once won a fight because the sun was in her opponent’s eyes. Fate dealt another card later in her life. Her husband hit her. The sun was in
her
eyes this time.

              Christian hadn’t decided what they were going to do when they got to the edge of Rockland. Ana just prayed that they would get the hell out in one piece. Who the hell knew what they would do and where they would go? She had mentioned what she thought was a great idea. Christian didn’t seem to notice. Maybe he was pondering it himself and weighing it out. He often did that and claimed it was
his
idea. If she corrected him . . . oh, buddy. Don’t wanna think about that shit. That friend of his in Kentucky. Ana knew that was the way to go.

              Val Dobbs and Christian Garner went back a long ways. Val lived in Bardwell, Kentucky, but they both met at a doctor’s convention in Chicago. They were both surgeons at the time . . . right before Christian switched into the specialty area of electrophysiology last year. He is, or was, the youngest electrophysiologist in the state. Possibly the country. He liked that work more. He studied heart rhythm disorders and treated different disorders related to electrical activity of the heart. Yep. Val and Christian. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-asshole. Those two were up for some kind of award and both won in a draw when whatever committee deliberated. The convention lasted a solid week and even after Dobbs had to catch his plane back to Kentucky, Christian and he remained great friends. Doctor Dobbs stood out to Ana because he had a very odd hobby. He called himself a theoretical survivalist. There were lots of people like that in Bardwell and people living in the area of western Kentucky known as ‘the bottoms.’ It was the layout of the land. It was all hidden away and virtually untouched. Another reason was the Civil War. Western Kentucky was the site of many battles in the war. Kentucky stayed neutral before the bloodshed broke out, but would soon sympathize with the Union. The Confederacy could never take over the bottoms, which would have been the prime place to set up a base of operations. An approaching army would have been heard approaching a hell of a long way away. The bottoms . . . referred to as the land itself- all lake bottoms and swampy areas . . . were so large that the cities of Wickliffe, Mayfield, Kevil and Paducah could be accessed by navigating the river and lake beds. In modern times, the areas were developed as the country progressed and grew their cities, but the bottoms still remained around parts of Mayfield, Barlow and Bardwell. Paducah had some of it left, but most of the bottom-areas were converted into parks and recreational areas.

The Union soldiers, realizing how valuable that huge section of land was, trained their children to survive out there with nothing. They were taught to protect the land from any possible scenario, no matter how far-fetched. Shit, parts of the land were
still
owned by the same families that were around when the country was in its infancy. Survivalism remained a tradition there. It survived here and there well into the modern day. Just a part of the culture. It was an odd tradition, but one that Ana bet all those Theoretical Survivalists were grateful for now. The Garners had to get out there. Being in the bottoms of Western Kentucky was like standing on Mount Sinai. It was just one of those places in which Mother Nature saw fit to provide a fortress for her two-legged caretakers.

              Christian didn’t seem agreeable to it, but he didn’t exactly object, either. Ana didn’t press it. They were in a dangerous situation. She’d left the security door unlocked and practically invited death inside, leaving her husband boxed in. Harold. Harold . . . Ana wished he could have come along with them. The hubby didn’t like gay people. As if what they had was contagious or something. Didn’t stop him from eating like a pig every barbecue weekend and steal two or three cans of beer on the way home. Homosexual or not, Ana wished there was another man with them. Christian always seemed calmer when other men were around. He would actually
listen
to reason. The husband didn’t have that whole alpha-male thing out in the world. He was actually quite cowardly. Maybe he was just intimidated around other men. Christian is a doctor. The man’s hands were soft, free of the burly hard work that all his neighborhood friends did. Christian spent half his life in school and he never had a father. He didn’t know about cars, he didn’t know how to boil an egg and he spent more time hovering over medical journals than other members of his kind fought and fucked. Christian wouldn’t dare to speak to another of his persuasion the way he talks to her. Even after he slugged her, she found herself still making excuses for him. She didn’t see them as excuses. Her husband was just a misunderstood man. He was kind of like his Daddy was before the old man took off when Christian was fourteen. Ana had met him a couple times after he and his son reconnected. Pops didn’t seem to like her. Actually, he didn’t seem to like anyone. He was that kind of guy that acted like everybody else always feasted on the pleasures of life and all he got was the indigestion. Men in the Garner family are a little rough around the edges, but they were good men. Strong men. Their love was just as fierce as their anger. They are passionate people . . . about everything. Men in his family seem to mellow a bit with age. All men do eventually. At least that’s what Christian’s mother said. She walked with a permanent limp.