The Zombie Letters (24 page)

              “Hey yourself,” Elijiah replied with a smirk. His accent was a watery mix of that normal Kentucky twang and the Native American way of speaking that makes R’s sound like O’s and E’s sound like W’s. Dennis hated to be racially ignorant, but he thought Elijiah talked like one of those spaghetti-western Indians.

              Dennis forced a smile. “It’s nice to see another person out here. Yeah, I go by bike. Makes less noise.”

              “Yeah. I could use a bike like that. One can’t just buy a good one at Wal-Mart anymore.”

              Dennis moved his hand to his back pocket, where he hoped to god he brought his knife. The slow and careful, nonchalant movement of his hand found the butt of the six-inch long Gerber sticking out of his pocket. He carefully brought it out and held it with his palm, keeping his arm turned in such a way that Elijiah couldn’t see it. Motherfucker was a peculiar guy and probably harmless, but it was always best to be safe.

              Any knife can be thrown if the person knows how to do it. Dennis’ brother Jordan taught him how. He’d done a tour in Iraq and one of the Shiite Muslims who helped out around the base was a master at it. When Jordan returned home, he couldn’t wait to tell his survivalist brother the amazing skill he had learned. There are only three types of knives, when it all came down to the art of throwing. There are blade-heavy, handle-heavy and balanced knives. Most professionals only learn balanced throwing, but in a pinch, that would be useless. Knives used specifically for sport throwing are only found in movies and Asian antique stores. Nobody just carries those around all the time. A true pro can throw anything they can get their hands on. A real survivalist can throw everything from a tomahawk to a run-of-the-mill Gerber pocket knife, to a goddamn plastic-handled garden trowel. The trick is, among others, is to throw the weight. If the blade is heavier, hold the handle. If the handle is heavier, hold the blade and throw it that way. Dennis Jackson used his thumb to open the Stiletto-style spring-assist blade without it clicking. “Yeah . . . I don’t remember where I got this particular bike.”

              Elijiah reached around to the back of his pants and pulled out a handgun . . . a 9mm from the looks of it. Elijiah smiled and raised his eyebrows as if someone told him an amusing joke. “I remember where I got
mine
.” He pointed the gun at Dennis’ head with a small half-smile peering from the corner of his lips.

              “Woah . . . take it easy. There’s an actual bike store right by Thirteenth Street, man. I can show you where it is.”

              “It’s over a mile from here.”

              Dennis slid the knife up, holding the blade with the tips of his fingers. “I’m here to get some things for my baby. I have a wife and two children, man. You don’t want to do this. You
know
who I am. Think it through.”

              “
Everyone
in this situation has a baby, don’t they?” Elijiah wrapped his finger around the trigger. The gun, pointed no less than three feet away from Dennis Jackson’s head inched closer as the crazed man took a step forward. “I’ve been to that store. Whole place destroyed. There was one of the managers on the floor with one of those
skinwalkers
on top of him. The horrible thing was slurping his intestines out like they were made of spaghetti.”

              “I bet you got off watching that, didn’t you?”

              Elijiah shrugged his shoulders and gave Dennis that playful, ‘what me worry’ look. He laughed in his thick Cherokee accent and lowered the gun slightly. He was laughing so hard that he was nearly hysterical. Large tears welled in the corners of his eyes. The young man reached up with his free hand to wipe them away. As soon as he did, Dennis slid the knife further down his hand and threw it underhand. The long spring-assist hunting knife hit exactly where Dennis had aimed. The sharpened blade whistled through the air quicker than Elijiah could open his eyes. The knife buried itself up to the hilt right above his Adam’s apple.

              Elijiah mumbled. He was unable to scream. He put his hand to his throat and felt at the knife with a horrified look. He tried to say something as he stumbled backwards. The guy couldn’t make a sound. Dennis had severed his windpipe. The would-be assassin crumbled to the ground; the knife bringing blood down his chest in waves. He gargled and choked. It was a sound Dennis wished he hadn’t heard. He hated to hurt anyone, let alone kill them, but there was no option other than returning back home safely to his family. He didn’t murder anyone in cold blood. Elijiah was fucking warned. Dennis walked past him and picked up the bike. He mounted it with his eyes cast away from the man drowning in his own blood. Just hearing the sounds he made was bad enough. Dennis had one foot on the pedal when an ear-splitting bang rang out. Out of instinct, Dennis hit the ground and flattened himself. That bang was incredibly loud. That shot came from somewhere close. He shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears when he saw Elijiah holding up the gun with a shaking, blood-soaked hand. He let the gun drop with a strange look on his face. It was like he had been smiling. He let the gun drop and rolled flat onto his back. The dying man let his hands stay at his side and did not attempt the pull the knife out. He must have known that despite the blood loss, it was actually keeping him alive. If knife were to be yanked out, Elijiah would bleed out in less than a minute. He forced a smile with teeth stained a reddish-brown from the blood still coming up from his throat.

              “Why the hell are you smiling, you crazy . . .” Dennis looked down and saw the small puddle of spreading red underneath him. He couldn’t believe he didn’t
feel
the bullet that passed right through the thigh of his right leg until he looked at it. He’d just been shot in the upper leg at close range. If it didn’t hit bone, it would just be a flesh wound. Dennis wobbled to his feet and kicked the gun out of Elijiah’s weak grasp with his good leg. The man with the new hole where his windpipe was uttered a thick, syrupy cough that almost sounded like a laugh. His teary, fluttery eyes turned toward Dennis and his smile widened. He wasn’t looking at Dennis. He was looking at something behind him.

              The sound of them running went from a distant echo to a thunderous approaching hum . . . like someone turning up a volume knob. They were a block away. At least a hundred of them were running as fast as their shredded, burned, boiled and rotting legs could carry them. If Dennis had made just one second-long mistake, he wouldn’t have gained even the slim opportunity to escape with his life. If the spreading fire in his thigh caused him to fall or lose his footing for even a second, he’d have died. Despite the incredible pain, he pedaled with every ounce of strength he had. They were directly behind him. Dennis didn’t want to, but he looked behind himself. There were a little more than ten chasing him. The two in the front were partially skeletal. One ran after Dennis with a lower femur exposed. It had bite marks all over it. Another one had its neck broken or dislocated. As it ran, its head rolled left and right at the shoulders. There was one that appeared as though he was buried quite a long time ago. He was wearing a Confederate Army uniform. As Dennis pedaled faster than he knew was possible with a bullet in his leg, he heard Amanda’s voice in his head. She was the voice of comfort. The voice of reason. Now, she was the voice of warning.

             
GET HOME.

              He only glanced behind him one more time. The runners had caught some movement in the public library. Someone had opened and shut a door. The advancing dead had stopped chasing Dennis. Probably went to get some more easily-accessible sustenance. He also saw something at the front of the church. The zeds had torn Elijiah in half at the waist and tossed the upper half of him aside, where it was ravenously dug into by the large group that had split. The lower half was cleaned out . . . everything pulled out by the horde of the infected and eaten. Just looking back for another quick second was enough to see a bit more. Some of them were hunched on the ground, pulling out whatever they could from Elijiah’s upper half. Others were ripping his arms out of the sockets and tearing the skin off with their teeth. Ol’ boy was not going to come back as one of them. He’d been ripped apart and every piece of him scattered throughout the crowd. Fate had no interest in preserving any part of the strange and disturbed young man. Those that attacked him were starved and desperate to fend off the painful hunger inside of them. Elijiah won’t have anything left of him. They’ll even suck the marrow from his bones.

              Dennis Jackson rode until he couldn’t breathe in that gas mask any longer. His leg was on fire . . . and the fire spreading everywhere. He was still bleeding, but only one thought entered his mind.
GET HOME.
GET HOME.
He reached the house and stumbled off the bike. The throbbing, oozing leg turned one whole pant-leg red. The slightest amount of weight on it was excruciating. He could see a military vehicle. It was one of those armored personnel carriers, parked about thirty yards from the house. It was there . . . and three men with assault rifles were standing around the APV, forming a tight circle around it.

              Amanda was at the door. He raised his arms and attempted to shout her name. Nothing escaped his lips. Just a whispering as he limped forward on the grassy hill that lead to the gravel driveway. She stared at him and as she made contact with his eyes, Amanda was pulled back into the darkness of the candle-lit house. Her scream echoed through the air and past Dennis, where it hung in the air behind him somewhere in the heart of the bottoms . . . like the voice of a phantom. For a moment, he thought
they
had entered the house. The worst images played around in his head. She imagined those horrible things coming through the windows and dragging his beautiful wife away from the door and out the hole in the window, where she would be eaten alive.
Oh, god . . . what if the kids are infected? Ryan could not have dragged her back like that. Ryan. Jason . . . my little baby. How could this happen? Please let them be okay.
As he lurched forward on his throbbing leg, he noticed that he began to feel terribly cold . . . that pins-and-needles feeling one gets when an extremity falls asleep. As much as he tried to will himself out of it, he knew he was going into shock. A fine trail of blood had followed him from where he got off the bike.

              The look on her face was so strange. She looked at him as if he were something else. Like he was what the Cherokee called skinwalkers. Just demons . . . empty, lost souls that were known to inhabit the bodies of the living in order to move about the world freely. That look in her eyes. She didn’t see her husband. She saw the skinwalker that had taken his place.

             
She thinks I’m one of them.

             
What if all the legends were true about the skinwalkers? What if the Native Americans somehow knew that this would happen? Dennis had to force the thought out of his mind. It was enough to make someone mad.

              Mad.

              Raising his hands to wave to his wife, Dennis saw a group of men with large rifles strapped to their backs run out of the back door toward the APV. Amanda walked with them. She was crying hysterically and had the baby in her arms. She walked with them with her head lowered. Ryan followed closely behind, holding the hand of one of the armored men. They appeared to be American military. Dennis attempted to shout at them, but as soon as he opened his mouth, all that came out was a scratch. Sparks nearly swallowed his vision. It seemed to take everything out of him just to walk. His right leg had gone completely numb. Both feet were as cold as ice. Dennis didn’t want to look down at them. “A . . . Amandaaa . . .” he moaned, lifting his arms to signal to them. The house was coming into view a bit clearer now. Dennis had barely crested the hill when his family was escorted into the APV. She had gotten into the back of it with them.

              “No . . . wait . . .”

              Chief Petty Officer Englund ran out of the house with two large duffel bags slung around his shoulders. Running to the now idling vehicle and tossing them into the back, his eye caught the stumbling, bleeding man making his way up the driveway. He could hear the woman screaming over the loud diesel engine. Englund reached into the APV and grabbed his rifle. Dennis could see it from his vantage point. A flash emitted from the long barrel and Dennis felt a rush of air by his head.

             
What the hell are you shooting at?! I’m not one of them, you assholes!

             
More rounds popped off, hitting the ground around him and kicking dust into his eyes.

              “No . . . stop . . .” Dennis waved a hand in the air and caught one in the palm. It just grazed the meat of his hand, but it was enough to stumble backwards and fall into the shallow water that lined both sides of the driveway. Dennis lost his footing and fell into the cold, murky moat. He could still hear the loud pops from the rifle under the dirty water. Bullets were striking the surface all around him. The water was so dark that all he could hear was the strange, high-pitched wooshes of the projectiles as they passed around him. After a few seconds, the bullets stopped. Dennis lifted his head just past the surface. They were gone. The APV had left with his wife and two children inside.