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DEAD COUNTRY

Bonnie Dee

Copyright © 2011 by Bonnie Dee

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After the End

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author
’
s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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* * * * *

Dead Country

* * * * *

Chapter One

Severing a human head isn’t like cutting roses. You have to saw through gristle and bone and the rose isn’t exactly holding still, waiting to be decapitated. Either way you could end up bloody—from the scratch of thorns or from clawing nails and tearing teeth. But with roses you don’t have to worry about contracting an infection that might turn you into one of them.

“
Over here, Pasman. Don’t leave me hanging,”
Fes
bellowed from the other side of a pile of garbage.

“
Coming.” I tugged on my axe buried deep in the throat of a zombie. The blade hadn’t quite severed the spinal cord so the creature thrashed like a landed fish, eerie in its silence as it fought to continue a semblance of a life.

At last I wrestled the blade free, my arms screaming in protest at the unexpected workout. Blood spouted from the severed artery in the zombie’s neck as he rolled to the side and pushed up on all fours, attempting to rise. I brought down the axe once more, grunting with effort. This time the blade cleaved through the back of it’s neck. The head dropped to the ground and rolled down the slope into the ditch. The body continued its awkward scramble to rise upright. I didn’t wait to watch it go still before running to aid
Fes
.

My patrol partner was pinned and wasting a lot of breath on swearing as he fought a petite woman with the preternatural strength of the undead. He was too close to her to wield the Japanese sword that was his weapon of choice. The antique
katana
used to hang in a display case, but had been pressed into active service with the advent of zombies.
Fes
’s attempts to slice his opponent were hampered by the woman’s tenacious grip on his arms.

The white-haired woman lunged up, snapping at
Fes
’s throat like an angry little terrier attacking a Golden Retriever. When I caught a glimpse of her face, my heart plummeted. The zombie was Mrs. Jackson, my second grade teacher, the lady who’d begun my lifelong love of books. Kind Mrs. Jackson, who’d already been cotton-haired when I was in elementary school, must be almost ninety now. Or would be if she were still alive. Her denture-less mouth snapped at
Fes
’s chin. I grasped her and tried to pull her off
Fes
, but her clawed fingers were stuck to his jacket like a burr.

“
She’s got no teeth. There’s not a lot she can do to you,” I pointed out. “Pry her hands free.”

“
Get her off me!”
Fes
screeched like a girl. “God, she stinks!”

It was hard to tell how much was the decaying odor of zombie breath and how much was the stench of the dump where we were fighting. Summoning reserves of strength, I seized the back of Mrs. Jackson’s cardigan, hauled her away from
Fes
and tossed her to the ground.

Before I could swing my axe,
Fes
swung his sword, nearly cutting me as it whirred through the air and severed the old woman’s neck. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Jackson’s face, then her hair, then her face again, as the head rolled across the ground and came to a stop beside a car tire with weeds growing through the middle. My former teacher regarded me with wide-eyed surprise like she used to on the rare occasions when I couldn’t answer a question in class.

I looked at
Fes
. “You all right? Did she bite you?”

His round face was as pale as the moon instead of its usual ruddy color. “No bites, but damn, that was disgusting.” He wiped his hands along the sleeves of his jacket, smearing the bloody handprints the old lady had left behind.

As we trudged up the hill of garbage to the pickup, I glanced at my watch. “Another hour till our shift’s over. I’m starving. Did you bring anything?” It might seem callous to have an appetite after seeing a beloved schoolteacher get beheaded, but I’d developed a cast iron stomach since being bombarded with enough blood and guts to fill a war’s worth of battlefields.

“
Yeah, I brought food. You shoulda thought ahead.”
Fes
retrieved his pack from the pickup and took out a paper bag containing a couple of sandwiches and apples. He proceeded to devour a sandwich with the savage intensity of a feeding zombie.

My stomach rumbled and I offered a sarcastic “Thanks” as I squatted beside the truck.

Fes
tossed me one of the apples and, more reluctantly, the second sandwich.

“
Thanks,” I repeated without the sarcasm before biting into tuna and soggy bread. Once upon a time you would’ve had to tie me down and force-feed me tuna. Now I demolished the smelly fish nearly as fast as
Fes
did.

“
Enjoy it while you can.
Nancy
said they’re planning on cutting rations again,” he reminded me. “Guess the council is starting to doubt we’ll get our share of the government bailout, but I know they’ll get to us eventually.”

I pictured faraway bureaucrats and military types who were supposedly getting things under control in our post-apocalyptic
United States
and highly doubted Durbinville was on their radar.

“
Radio says order’s restored in some of the major cities now and they’re distributing vaccine to other parts the country. Our turn’s coming.”
Fes
continued his Pollyanna speech, but we both knew our town was off the grid.

I stared at the crumbs in the bottom of the sandwich bag before crumpling it and digging a hole in the dirt to bury the plastic.
Fes
let his blow away on the breeze like a transparent ghost. I tracked the bag’s flight up into the sky before the sun dazzled my eyes and the bag disappeared from view. For a moment, the rich gold of the late afternoon sun caught my heart with its beauty and normalcy. I could imagine I lived in the world I’d always occupied, unchanged and unremarkable.

But impossible. I glanced at
Fes
. In the old world, we never would’ve been together—not here, not anywhere. Maybe, back in the day, Fes and his buddies had come to the dump to shine and shoot rats on a Friday night when they weren’t out on the football field playing small town gladiators, but I’d never set foot here until recently.

I grunted as I rose on aching legs and reached into the pickup for my canteen. A long drink of tepid water emptied the container. I tossed it onto the floor of the truck. “Ready?”

“
Sure.”
Fes
waved away a persistent deerfly as he walked to the driver’s side. He always drove. I didn’t mind. I was better at zombie-spotting and he liked driving.

Fes
put the truck in gear and revved the engine. “I’ll cruise out to the reservoir. See if there’s any action there.”

“
Why so far? Shouldn’t we patrol closer to town? Zombies are looking for food not water.” Conserving gas was crucial. Once our supply ran out we’d have to add more foot patrols to protect the ramshackle fence around Durbinville. The makeshift nature of the fence illustrated the town’s expectation this crisis would be short-lived. People believed the cavalry was just over the horizon and grumbled about the council’s insistence on rationing food, gas and oil for our generators. A lot of people were still in denial. I wasn’t one of them. I knew things were likely to get much worse before they got better.

Fes didn’t answer my question so I shut up and stared out the window, scanning the dump one last time. Nothing living moved in the mounds of garbage. Only trash fluttered past in the breeze.

I supposed the reason Fes headed away from town was because he didn’t want to have any more encounters that night. We’d done our job and earned a little peace after two kills. Besides, it wasn’t like it had been in those first weeks after everything fell apart. There were fewer zombies now. The isolation of living in a town plunked down in the middle of miles of cornfields had its advantages. With the closest city so far away, it was easier to get the zombie population under control.

Fes turned the truck onto Reservoir Road. “We used to come out here on summer afternoons or at night and build a bonfire. Me and Denise, Cal, Jimmy and the guys, and whoever they were dating at the time. Good times.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t add much besides “I imagine”. A guy like me hadn’t been invited to those reservoir parties. I’d spent most of my time with my computer even on the sunniest days. My friends had been online. My deepest wish had been to shake off the dust of Durbinville and never return. I’d escaped to college and freedom after high school, but here I was again. Fate brought me home just before the zombies attacked.

Fes glanced at me. “You were a weird kid back then.”

“
It wasn’t that long ago. You sound like a forty-year-old looking back on his glory days.”

“
Seems a lot longer than a few years.” He stared through the windshield, his face returned to its normal, rosy hue. “Hey, man, I’m sorry if I used to be a dick to you.”

I remained silent a moment, wrapping my head around the astonishing fact of Mike Fessenden apologizing to me. “You weren’t. I don’t remember you ever talking to me at all.” Some of his buddies, on the other hand, had given me shit on a regular basis. But he was right. A thousand years had passed since those days.

Fes changed the subject. “So you went to Caltech. What was that like? Lots of hot California chicks, am I right?”

“
Not exactly. “

“
But Pasadena, man. You must’ve gone to the beach sometimes and you’re not blind. Hell, even
you
must’ve gone to some parties.”

“
I was pretty swamped with work. I can’t say I partied much.”

Fes clicked his tongue in disgust. “College was wasted on you. I would’ve known what to do with an opportunity like that.”