This Is Not The End: But I Can See It From Here (The Big Red Z Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter 10

Morning comes slowly, like it shudders to blot out any more stars, but I can plainly see the wreckage, and there is a clear field of view to the open sky above it.  A single flare is loaded and ready to fire at my hip.  It can be shot straight from my leg, and there is nothing overhead to obstruct its trajectory. 

With my back against a stump, I sit, lean to one side in the misty morning.  I have not slept.

At the edge of the still-smoking debris, a figure slinks through the blackened grass, just as dark as the scorched ground.  It is speckled, or my eyes are making look like it is.  Its limbs and body are cat-like, but I wonder if it is Death.  An angel in the guise of a leopard.  Death, the old fellow, he’s at the zenith of his power, and I cannot help but wonder if such a being does exist, if it has grown weary, or does it get drunk on the power.

Or is Death sheepish and silent as it goes about its duties? 

I need sleep, I decide.  Yet I watch.  The cat stares upward into a tree.  The sky beyond is still black, with a small splash of stars still visible in the morning sky.  When it is certain nothing stirs in the towering canopy it returns his attention to the giant metallic mess that has appeared in its domain. 

The beast walks low and quietly past the wreckage, past seats and bits of netting, all of which are already alive with the noises of birds and rats, eating.  There is time, it seems to think. 
I’ll not take them until their meal is complete.

The vultures are not startled by its presence. 

I, myself, am.  I will not emerge from this jungle, and the immutable fact of that is starting to sink in.  My prayers should be repentant, at this point, not pleading.  My mind is no longer stable enough to carry me through this.  Not flexible enough.  I’m like a stone these days, maybe its age.  No longer can I deny that I’m slightly apart from the sort of men who could do this, survive this.  My heart is thudding.  Each breath is long, awkward, and shaky. 

Then this thought:  I have to calm the fuck down.  

Slowly, I move my mind toward a stream that runs through piece of high ground.  It exists only in an imagined world, one without the undead, without compounds and barbed-wire living, where Emily and I can swim naked and raise chubby little babies together.  

Taking another long breath.

I have to push thoughts of her out of my head.  She would love coming along on something like this.  Truly, I think she actually would.  She makes adventures out of tragedies. 

Don’t think about this. 

My heart is still running loose, but I focus my warped mind on more immediate things:  I hear nothing from the cat or cat-like thing.  The air around me smells like mold and oats, and in the growing light, the great rainforest is starting to fully reveal itself. 

It is a sight to behold at this hour.  There seem to be no gaps or trails or breaks, save for the small river beyond the wreckage.  Nothing but crooked rows of treetops with no linear pattern, no discernable end.  The entire vista is crowned with a veil of morning mist.

Nearing the full light of morning, I fall asleep.

***

A warning in my brief dreams:  one would choose a devil if attacked by saints.

Someone is laughing in the distance. 

I wake, catch myself wanting to run. 

I take a breath and pull myself upright, and in the clouded light of midday, I again become keenly aware that I protrude crudely from the workings of this forest; even with my camo, even on this nice perch on this perfect hilltop, a sniper’s wet dream, even though I can smile about it, I feel like a pale fish wriggling in a field of fresh grass.  Almost laughable, shit.  Like every little thing in this bitch is looking at me—and I cannot even spot the source of nearby laughter, despite an effort that leaves my eyes strained and my head thump-throbbing.  There’s nothing.  Just the empty sounds of laughter.  I cannot determine if it ever was.  Or is.  Just a noise, I think, fading, and indiscernible now from the rustle of green leaves in a new wind.

I need shelter.  I think I do anyway, if I’m going to hunker down here for more than a day, I need to get myself hidden.  Keep my ass calm.  There’s got to be a medium between cowering at my death and laughing at it.  Need that sweet spot, quick. 

My hand is shaking.  I feel around my waist for the tomahawk.  I’m still wanting to look in every direction at once, but the ancient weapon feels good in my hands once I have it.  Unsheathing it, slowly, I feel a warmth come over me.  I study the incredibly sharp blade.  Study the opposite tip a moment, the ingenious shape of this simple thing. 

Then I look around for some place to hide.

Just behind me, there is a space between an iron-colored root and something like a tunnel in the underbrush. I insert myself gingerly, getting on my belly and scooting backwards, feet-first, into the brush in a series of soft yanks.  Good.  I fit. 

I get back out, stand, then loosen the entire side of bark from a nearby tree with striking ease.  Kissing the tip of the tomahawk, I lay the eight-foot strip of bark of over my little cubby hole.  Some leafy saplings on top of that.  No straight lines.  I pull the thermal bag from my sub-belt, unfold it, and put it in.  When I hold it open, I stare inside, briefly satisfied out how markedly neat it is.  It seems vast for some reason.  Every manner of vine and flower is scaling the impossibly high canopy in an endless sea of trees and yet there is a whole, tidy world in this bag.

I slither inside.   Curl up a like a boa.

Running my hand along the sides I slowly soak in every inch of it. Only when I have run my palms and spread fingers across the entirety of its reassuring smoothness do I sheath the tomahawk.  I want to keep the little tunnel intact, but that’s an idiot’s wish, so when I get out, I refold the bag and put it back in my belt.

Less gloom-ne-giddiness is fogging my head as I stand.  I’m not exactly steady and vibrant, but I feel better.

Then a sudden screeching resounds.  I duck and retreat on pained legs pack into my camouflaged burrow, look out.   It’s a creature.  A little beast is staring at me, right in the face.  An anteater.  The likes of which I have never seen.  It looks like Pinocchio, spliced onto a porcupine. 

And just like that, it saunters away like it didn’t like what it saw. 

I wonder for a moment if I should kill and eat it.  Save my rations.  I can feel my pulse in my belly. 

In the end I just watch it go.

And there it is, the thing I need:  Maybe if such a lumbering, awkward thing can survive in this place, I can too.  The weakness makes me sturdier, and I inhale this miserable place with a little more
fuck
it
in my heart.  Impossible shit happens.   Emily ever existing seems unlikely.  Her going nuts over me.  Impossible.  She’s too pretty.  But every time I come home, she’s throwing all of her clothes in the Kentucky blue grass and whisking those equally blue-veined titties lightly across my chin.

Monkey screeches carry dimly on the wind.  Birds fly northward out of high places in the trees behind me.  Smiling bigger now.  Yeah.  The air is full of the smell of wreckage, and fuck that, too, because the bare mud in its wake is littered with a half a million butterflies, drinking from the rainwater that has collected in its gouges. 

Then a sudden, loud creaking noise in the sky high above gets a look.  Nothing up there. 

The shock of that takes a minute to overtake me. 

I look again. 

I hear a low phwooshing sound.  I think for a moment I see a vaporous dancing snake across the clouds, so small and distant.

Then I snort and duck as explosions rock the wreckage.  A missile.  Now I see it, the helicopter that sent it.  It drops and swoops, and I grunt, embarrassed I have not anticipated the machine gun fire than blankets the wreckage.  Of course.  They’re not going to suspect survivors—they’re going to plow the road, clear out any undead.  What else did I think they’d do? 

The blades like the flapping of wings in your skull.  Then there’s a cold sensation in my belly.

And another realization:  That’s not our bird. 

These are blackwaters.  Mercenaries.  Former military that whore their bullets to any warlord willing to pay their price.

Chapter 11

I look up at the copter as it makes one more pass.  Slowing, halting.  Hovering.  Then it’s dropping a deccon team down ropes to search for the uranium we were carrying.  Uranium.  The mineral the world had agreed we would no longer mine.  So that’s it.  The flight recorder was working this whole time; they’re not coming for us.

I wonder, just for a just a fool’s ponderous moment, if the blackwaters would take me.  And the answer is this:  Yes.  Then of course, they’d kill me, dump my ass. 

I rub my face and slowly disappear into the brush. 

People enjoy the notion of Armageddon.  The straightforwardness has in it the elegant simplicity of mountaineering.  You and the mountain or you and the world.  But there’s always more to it.  Always, it has the one complication that no one acknowledges, which is, in a word, motherfuckers.

I hobble downhill, westward, on no particular path.  Just getting on with the business of putting one foot in front of the other.  There is no determination.  No fear.  Just the soft, grape scents of vine flowers, perfuming the afternoon steam within a canyon of trees.  

As the helicopter rises, some five or six clicks behind me now, the smells rise from everywhere within the great consuming green.  There’s a peculiar freedom in the moment it leaves.  Like letting go of something that was bothersome to hold.  The curiosity of that might mean something, or will.  For now nothing significant comes to mind.  Just a certain macabre peace.

I walk down, edging my way toward a clearing of tall grasses, crouching, still for a moment as the copter passes overhead. 

When it is gone I make toward the edge of the clearing.  No visibility within.  The grass is taller than me.  A good sightline is going to be tough to find.  Maybe impossible.  Maybe west isn’t the way to go.  I should probably go upriver instead.   Then again, maybe I need to quit thinking like a sniper and keep my ass moving.

I do.  Instantly sweaty.  It’s autumn back home, springtime here, so every day is just going to get hotter.

After an hour, breathing a too heavily, I discover I’m at the edge of a plateau.  The hillside at my feet is rocky.  Pretty clean, by comparison.  I can see for miles.  Circle to another break and I can see the Andes are in the far, far, east.  Maybe I’m closer to the coast than I thought. 

I make sure they’re mountains, not just clouds the color of a bruise.  They are.  Their peaks are not as tall and ragged as they are in Peru.

But yeah, they are, in fact, mountains. 

Okay.  So not too far from the coast, I hope, but this tired, I’m hesitant to leave this perch. 

Stepping gingerly downhill, I freeze.

Unmistakable smell.

The undead. 

I’ve known the Shado since I was young. Ten, I think.  My first meeting was out with my mother on a hunt. She was afraid of the undead, of course.  How stupid would it be to day she was more afraid of raising me alone after my father died fighting them?  Very.  Arrogant too.  But she made sure it would not happen to me so easily.  With her, I learned their scent.

Which is getting stronger.

Suddenly, there they are.  A pair of female Shado, right  beside me, just as startled as I am, yet they come, growling at me, hissing, and even as they let loose a blood-sizzling roar, some stupid part of me wants to reason with them.  I’m not here to bother them.

But I do. 

I run to meet them grabbing my tomahawk and my 40.  There on the hillside, I plunge the tomahawk into the nearest skull and jump back, afraid she’ll snap at me. I leave the weapon in her, and in an effort to save bullets, grab up my knife and run across the vine-filled stretch of hill toward the other one.  The shadows of the hilltop trees leave the hillside striped and dappled, and the vines make running awkward. So I halt. 

She’s coming at me, snarling, as I draw the 40.  Taking note of her position, I sense something, and I reluctantly turn my back to her. 

The one with the tomahawk in her head is coming again, hard and fast.  I fire.  The bullet enters the cheek, blows out her other eye and the side of her skull.  She crawls, jerking, as I turn to the other. 

She is close.  Real fucking close.  I duck as she reaches me.  She swings, hitting the back of my neck with a powerful swipe of her hand, trying to grab the back of my head, I guess, to bite my face.

I fire into her mouth. 

She thuds onto her back.  She clutches the vines.

I look at her, at my feet, nearly headless, acting like she’s afraid to fall down hill, then I look around, I’m sure I can’t be this lucky to have just these two. I’m waiting for the rest of them to come as I pull the tomahawk free of the one behind me. 

She flashes her teeth, but otherwise she does not move.  I kick her downhill.

When I soften my focus the steamy air reveals the approach of several small figures.  More Shado.  A ways downhill.  Just boys.  A gang of sorts.  They are staring uphill, at my lips, it feels like. 

I fight to muster what breath I can; two of them are subconsciously thumbing the meat in their teeth to clear way for my flesh.  I urge the inglorious truth of what must be done into my hands, raising the gun. 

They crouch, or seem to, roaring like hideous lizards or apes in pain.  Not smart or old enough to scatter, several run toward me as I open fire. Don’t mind admitting I wish the bullets would miss them, or go through them.  But like all juvenile Shado, they’ll not escape. 

They die, tangled in honeysuckle.

I don’t have the energy for their age to stab my heart. 

People call the young ones ‘smalls’.   It’s easier.  Just like it is easier to call these beasts zombies, rather than vampires, the case being decided not by intelligence, but by whether the soul is still intact, I suppose.  Neither feels accurate. I’m a little unnerved just questioning it, but a little rejuvenated.

The dead young ones, still crawling uphill downhill after me, sad and black, are pulling their way through the vines, scaring away the hummingbirds.  I feel like puking.  Which is odd. Could be that’s just blood sugar. In case it’s pity, I think of other dead animals I don’t want to think about. Dead, friendly dogs, their still-open eyes passing judgment like would-be prophets.  Like that pity will override this pity.  Who knows.  I can hear myself make an exasperated sound, exhausted by my own thoughts.  Then I do what soldiers do.  Even ones with low blood sugar. 

I carry on.  I carry the fuck on.

Then I see a break in the trees at the bottom of the hill.