Wake the Dead (5 page)

The sound of dripping water invaded his sleep the next morning as Alex stirred. He threw the blanket off and sat up on the couch. He stood, rubbed his eyes and wandered toward the sound at the back of the cabin.

He looked up to see a water leak in the rear room from the rain last night.

“Great,” he mumbled, looking around the back room. He had not come back here very often, especially after finding the mattress in the condition it was, slick with blood. After cleaning that up, he hadn’t really come back here except on occasion to find some spare clothes.

There was a six-foot ladder in the back room closet, he recalled, seeing it once before. Alex took it and brought it outside, looking for a suitable area upon which to lean it. He propped it up against the rear side of the wall, climbed as high as he could, and then used the edge of the roof to grab on and pull himself up. There was a tree nearby, too, but not close enough for him to grasp.

Once on the roof, it didn’t take him long to find the area, a shingle had come loose in the storm last night, or at least he assumed it was last night, seeing signs of what must have been heavy gusts last evening. He did not even hear it after he actually fell asleep, but signs of strong winds were evident. The leak was coming in from a tiny hole in the plywood under the tarpaper.

He climbed back down, looked around the cabin area and happened upon the missing shingle a long while later, under a thicket of shrubs to the north behind the cabin.

He went back into the cabin, grabbed the bag with his hammer, nails, and a towel, tossed in a roll of duct tape, grabbed a few tuna can lids, and climbed back onto the roof to begin the repair. He first wiped the area dry as best he could with the towel; put down a tuna can lid over the hole, covering it quite easily, then put a few strips of duct tape over it to hold it in place. He the reset the loose shingle and nailed it down as best he could, using mostly the nails that remained in place.

It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but it should hold, he supposed, as he climbed back down and set to his next task.

Alex raked the dirt again as he had a hundred times before, spreading the seed all about and using the shovel to overturn soil so that it was moist and fresh for the new seeds.

Several days passed and he went about his routine, throwing in some old katas he used to do in his martial arts classes, trying to remember some of them. As he did so, he was finally able to forget about the woman who’d haunted his dreams these past few days—a woman he didn’t even know.

Beside the area he worked was a small area roped off that had seen some fresh cucumbers along the vines. He was able to attach some of the vines with some twine to twigs to allow them to grow up along the pole. He had aspirations of making his current garden larger, as the vines were snaked in many directions and required a good deal of space. And as of yet, no animals had gotten to this particular crop, especially not with Shadow guarding it night and day. This morning, however, the wolf had slumbered inside the cabin just as Alex had finished his exercise.

He was particularly excited to find something that he could plug in to see if the solar panels would actually hold a charge and work their magic to run an electronic device of some sort. He found several more lamps in the bedroom that he could test, and had found a package of two sixty-watt bulbs buried deep in a closet, just in case another bulb exploded. Nevertheless, those experiments would have to wait as he had further work outside to finish.

As he continued to work the soil, he heard the crack of a twig in the distance to his right. A man in overalls stood a dozen feet away from him, a hat pulled down over a mop of shaggy brown hair, and he leveled a gun at Alex. Stubble lined his face and a tiny wooden stem escaped from between his lips, chewing on it like one might with a toothpick.

“What have we here, Joe?” asked the gunman, looking toward his companion who was a bit overweight. He had no hair on his head, was dressed in denim jeans and a flannel shirt, and he held a tire iron in his right hand with gore staining its length.

As Alex heard them speak, their voices sparked a hint of recognition and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he believed them to be the same two voices he’d overheard discussing a certain callous act only a few days past. Anger bubbled within him at both his own refusal to act and their exact words he recalled all-too-well.

A woman strode up slowly from behind them both, her blue eyes catching Alex off guard by seeming very warm and friendly, with more than a hint of distress beginning to surface before it was stifled, replaced with a mask of stoicism. Her hair was blonde and appeared partially matted and unkempt, loose strands escaping from her pony tail. A pack was slung over her shoulder. He had not seen the woman to know if this was…well, the subject of the two men’s desires.

“Not sure, Todd,” answered the one named Joe, grinning a smile that displayed a few missing teeth. “Looks like a farmer we got here. Maybe he’s got some food or somethin’ inside…maybe some weapons, too, eh boy?”

“I am no farmer and I have nothing for you,” Alex responded curtly, leaning on his shovel, and trying to suppress his anger. ‘Reacting to situations in anger is what gets people killed’, Alex recalled from a martial arts seminar he attended last year.

He also quickly realized helplessly and abruptly, that all of his weapons were in the cabin. Even his knife as he looked down to see the empty sheath.

Stupid!

“Let’s see what you got inside, boy,” Todd said, adjusting his hat and gesturing with the barrel of the gun, indicating for Alex to head toward the cabin door. “And don’t you try nothin’ unless you wanna’ die. This thing is loaded.”

Alex merely nodded and took a step toward them.

“Uh-uh, pretty boy. Drop the shovel.”

Alex reluctantly obeyed, dropping his only weapon to the ground, and cursing under his breath. He was hoping to get close enough to swing it.

Todd, Joe, and the as-yet-unnamed woman, all followed him toward the door. Todd had the gun pointed at his back and Alex breathed deeply, not wanting Shadow to take a bullet if the assailant entered the cabin.

“We don’t have to do this, do we, Todd?” asked the female from behind, her voice full of unease. Alex turned to regard the scene, as Todd looked her up and down sternly, as if he was going to backhand her. He even reared back to strike her.

But Alex, incensed by what was about to happen, and angry at himself for not confronting the men earlier when he had the chance, grabbed the outstretched arm, yanked it, and spun him around. He shoved Todd hard against the cabin wall, the man’s face pinned against it, as Alex held him in a hammerlock. He had the man’s gun arm pinned against the wall.

Alex could see that Joe had raised his tire iron and moved to strike Alex, and he readied a back kick. But, before he could launch that kick, a growl sounded through the din of their struggle, preceding the arrival of Shadow. His dark form crashed into the heavier man, who lost his weapon in the process, Shadow pinning him to the ground with his great paws. He growled and began tearing into the man’s flesh. The unnamed woman turned to run and Alex had no choice but to watch her go.

Todd must have felt the relaxation in Alex’s grip as he spun and shoved him to the ground, landing on top of him. The two of them wrestled with the gun until a shot sounded between the two of them. Alex felt the trigger in his finger, but wasn’t sure if he shot Todd or himself. Blood covered the both of them; Todd’s eyes were wide with the understanding that his death was imminent as his hands made to cover the freshly made bullet wound in his abdomen.

Alex shoved him off and got to his feet. As he did, he watched the blood pour from beneath Todd’s hands to stain the earth red beneath him. Shadow was tearing at the flesh of Joe, who screamed in a panic, trying to fend off the wolf.

Shadow, a pup no longer, would have none of it.

He continued to tear at the flesh and garments of the man until Alex, unwilling to hear the screams any longer, turned the gun on Joe and pulled the trigger.

Click
.

Nothing happened.

Only one round left,
he thought with a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. He stood, ran into the house, retrieved his bow, and shot an arrow straight through the howling man’s skull, silencing his screams directly.

“I am never leaving the house without my knife on my belt ever again,” Alex vowed to the wolf. “And I
really
need to brush up on my self-defense.”

He watched uneasily while the wolf tore more flesh from the man and wasn’t sure if Shadow was hungry or if he simply wanted to make sure that his attacker was dead.

Alex heard the distinct sounds of branches giving way in the distance and saw the woman as she scampered up a tree. She was off the ground and into the lowest hanging sturdy bough, but was high enough that Shadow could not reach her. Alex made his way to her, lowered his bow, and stood within earshot, some twenty paces from her.

“He won’t hurt you,” Alex offered, not truly confident if that was true or not. “You can come down now.”

“No thanks,” she said. “I’ll take my chances up here.”

“Suit yourself,” he answered, turning around and heading back toward the cabin. “I’ve got some canned food inside if you are hungry.”

“Don’t think I’m in the mood to eat after…all of that,” she called after him.

Alex stopped and yelled back to her. “Who were those assholes with you?”

“Well, they kept me alive after our group was overrun by a zombie mob,” she said, brushing a strand of her blonde hair out of her face. “They treated me pretty good at first and hadn’t really done anything to me. But I heard them talking earlier today that they were gonna…you know…
’have their way with me’
,” she said, using air quotes and almost losing her balance from her perch on the bough. ”I was contemplating killing them before they had the chance, but…I don’t know.”

“Real nice guys,” Alex quipped, not offering any information on the subject. “And there aren’t any more in your group?”

“My sister was…and so was my husband up until a few weeks ago. He was one of the ones who were killed in that last attack. And these two promised to keep me safe. At least I think it was weeks ago. Maybe even a month by now, I can’t really remember. I think my sister might still be alive out there somewhere, too….”

She appeared to Alex as if she was going to divulge more of that story, but no more words passed her lips. He did not pursue it.

“And these two were the only ones left?”

“Yep. And I guess they were getting tired of what little chivalry they had left.”

“Well, they didn’t do a great job,” Alex said sarcastically. “Protecting you, that is.” She turned a pained expression upon him then, and he realized that whatever had happened to her in the recent past was all too fresh for him to make light of it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—“

“It’s okay,” she said. A moment of silence passed uncomfortably. “Is that blood from you?”

“No. It’s from that jackass over there. The one with the gun,” he added moving to stand before the deceased man. “So, they were going to…?”

“According to what I overheard. Tonight probably would have been—”

“Why didn’t you run?” he barked angrily and with much more ire than he’d intended.

“Run where, man?! Into the arms of one the fucking zombies?! In case you hadn’t noticed—“

“All right, I’m sorry. You’re right.”  He stared at her as she hung there in the tree branch, and she was clearly upset. “Really, I get it.” She nodded and looked around, her eyes landing on the wolf.

“He won’t hurt me?” she asked him nervously.

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t hurt me yet.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It’s either that or you can stay up there in that tree the rest of your life,” Alex said matter-of-factly as he turned and walked away.

“Can you put him on a leash or something?” she called after him as the distance between them grew.

“No. He’s as free to come and go as you are,” he was quick to reply as he made his way inside, Shadow following right behind. He closed the door and watched out the window as the woman climbed down hesitantly, dropping her back, and then losing her footing. She fell rather unceremoniously to the hard ground.

Alex flung the cabin door wide and ran out to check on her and when she got to her feet, she was laughing.