This Dark Earth (8 page)

I can hear thumps from the front of the house. It’s hard to know how smart the shamblers are. Can they work out locks? They’re dead, right? Can they figure out how to break windows? Climb over a sill?

I go straight to the sink and open the cabinet doors. It’s where I put the garbage bags at home, so it makes sense
Granny-shambler would put hers there. She’s got sense. A large pack of Glad trash bags. Apple cider vinegar. Pine-Sol.

A yellow flashlight.

I take out a bag, open the mouth, and scoop air, popping the bag open. It makes a sound like a sail catching wind, more volume than you’d imagine.

The noises from the front door get louder—thick wet sounds that hit my ears like the sound of someone gargling with meat by-products or trying to talk around a mouthful of Vienna sausages, angry and confused and vocal—I can hear the thumps and even the scratches too. It’s weird how the mind conjures images. I imagine horribly maimed hands, black and textured like pork cracklins.

The problem with the way the shamblers sound is the same problem I had with my daughter when she was a toddler learning to talk: I want to correct the shamblers. It’s like words are just beyond the soggy, mush-mouthed pronunciation. If only they focused just a little more.

I could concentrate on survival if they’d just pronounce their moans right.

I go to the drawer that has the bloody stain. The boy was reaching for something. Granny-shambler stopped him.

Inside is a hammer with an oversize head and bright orange handle. Nails. Duct tape. I snatch up the hammer and thread it through a loop in my jeans. The tape and nails go into the bag. There’s some batteries in the far back of the drawer. I pop them into the bag.

The moans have died down. But there’s still the sound of scratching, like some big rat, and I don’t like it. I can hear the
floorboards creak and shift as Lucy makes her way around upstairs. The house is old.

I catch a whiff of shambler char, that fatty plastic-barbecue smell. I don’t know if their numbers are growing or they’re just getting stinkier.

God, I hope it’s just stink.

In the corner of the kitchen, underneath the stairs, is a narrow door. A pantry.

I twist the knob and step in. There’s a string hanging in front of me and I pull it before I remember that the electricity is out. I dig through the Glad trash bag and, after a moment, find the flashlight and flick it on.

It doesn’t work.

But I do have my Zippo. It’s seen me through thick and thin.

I chink it open and hold it up high.

Cans. Jars. Bottles.

There are shelves with boxes and bags. I’m sure all of it is edible, but it’s pretty dark, even with the light from the Zippo.

The cans, I dump a few into the bag. I grab a few of the jars, which have got to be pickles or jam.

I don’t know what the bottles are, but I hope they’re booze.

I dump some of the boxes into the bag.

It’s too heavy in my hand now to carry easily. There’s clomping overhead, and the shamblers at the front door have discovered that they do have the gumption to break glass. I dash around the corner and look down the hall. One of the shamblers has put his fist through the little window inset in
the front door. I didn’t even notice it when we came in, but now there’s a blue-green hand groping around. I’d laugh at the cartooniness of the motion if it wasn’t so goddamned scary.

I go back and throw open cabinet doors. Pans. No thank you. China. Fuck that. Lighter fluid and matches? This is good. There’s a wick lantern and two jugs of kerosene. It all goes into my bag.

Next: a Ginsu knife. What the hell would I need that for? I’m never going to grow the balls to get close enough to one of the shamblers to use a fillet knife. It looks pretty, though.

I turn, and the trash bag clanks against a cabinet. I realize it’s as heavy as I’ll be able to carry before it rips. My looting day is done. I set it down on a table with a clank.

I hear more clomps and Lucy appears at the base of the stairs. She’s got a bedsheet in a desperate fist and a wild look on her face.

“There’s about twenty of them outside. Must’ve heard the gunshot.”

She stops and looks at the remains of the boy. I should’ve taken care of that first. From my bag, I take the rectangular can of kerosene.

She understands immediately.

“New plan. We can’t stay in this house.”

The dead batter the door now. Their moans sound like demon-possessed seals, goofy and scary at the same time.

I look to the kitchen window. The daylight has totally died, but there is still ambient light—from the forest fires, maybe. Maybe reflected from the mushroom cloud. The sun might still be shining on it.

“I think I spotted another house. So—”

“We’re gonna let ’em in here. Trap them.”

She nods, cocking her head at me.

I can see it all in my mind’s eye.

I say, “I’ll douse the hall with the kerosene, open the door, and haul ass back here. We’ll go out the back door, through the kitchen.” After a moment of pure terror, I realize I haven’t even peeked out the back. There could be an army out there, and we’d just run right into their welcoming arms. And mouths.

She has the same thought. Watching her, I can see the way she thinks, coming to the same conclusions I’ve come to. I can see the movement of decision on her face.

Lucy dashes to the back door, pulls aside the curtain. She sighs. Nothing bad.

“Okay, then.” I raise the tin can of kerosene and twist off the top. “You better not burn my ass up. It’s already a little charred.”

I pull my Zippo from a pocket, kiss it, and hand it to Lucy.

I douse the boy with liquid. I want to pray for him but can’t imagine that a God who would let him die this way would give a shit about my prayers. When he’s thoroughly sodden, I motion Lucy to the back door to stand ready, and I go to the front of the house.

The hall seems bigger now. But that’s probably a trick of the light. There’s a blue arm coming through the little window in the door, and a charred black one. The black one sloughs off dark ash. The blue one, nothing. Jagged edges of glass cut into it, but they don’t draw blood.

I splash the walls with kerosene. I pour kerosene on the hallway floor. There’s a runner carpet, and it soaks up quite a bit of the stuff. The can is empty quicker than I’d like, but it lasts to the kitchen and I squirt the last of it into a small puddle on the floor. I drop the can and, crouching, go to the front door.

It’s bizarre, but they know I’m there. They moan and howl louder the closer I get. They can smell me. Or hear my breath. That’s almost too frightening for me to bear.

Lucy barks from down the hall, “Knock-Out, come on! You’ve got to do it.” I turn to look at her and see she’s got the lighter ready.

I open the door and run.

I don’t look back, but in my mind’s eye, the door opens just a bit before the shamblers realize they can enter. Thinking this makes the itch on my neck and the rippling goose bumps on my skin subside a little.

I feel the wounds on my arms and neck and back open with my dash toward the back of the house. Hot fluid leaks into my clothes. The burns have given me extra senses—I can feel the shamblers knocking the door aside and lurching into the house. But I’m long gone.

I pass Lucy and snatch the garbage bag from the kitchen table. She flicks the lighter and throws it onto the floor, into a puddle of kerosene. I’m already out the back door, waiting, when she barrels through the opening and jumps the three steps down to the turf of singed lawn, her bedsheet bundle in hand.

I shut the back door. I pull the hammer from my belt,
drop the garbage bag full of loot for a moment, pull a nail from my pocket, and drive it through the wood of the door into the frame. I’m not a good shot, but I’m hell at construction. I drive in a second nail.

One of the plates of glass in the door cracks.

The flames rise and flicker in the house. Shapes, like ungainly devils, move through the blaze into the kitchen.

“Come on, Knock-Out!”

A shambler appears in the door’s window, hair aflame, and slams a fist through the glass, grabbing for me.

I turn, snatch the trash bag, and perform the same jump into the yard that Lucy made. I land heavily and fall to my knees, dropping the hammer, but the turf is springy and she’s there to help me up. I pick up the hammer from the ground.

We run through the pines in the dark. All the light has gone from the sky, and it’s nearly pitch dark now. It’s hard running and carrying the trash bag. I’m cradling it to my chest, trying to support the bottom so all the goods don’t fall out.

I feel like a robber running from the cops. Except these cops will eat me and the world has changed.

I sense more than see the mass of a building rising in front of us. Lucy runs ahead of me, and I know where she is by her breath and footfalls and an occasional glint from her watch reflecting the far-off yellow light of the flames. We stumble and grope in the dark. I look back and see the house behind us burning. It casts a faint orange glow on the building in front of us.

We find a door and it’s unlocked. We duck inside the house. She fumbles at the dead bolt, and I hear the metallic
click of the mechanism locking. For the second time today, I hear a muffled boom, and then there’s yellow light filtering through the window. The first house just exploded. I hope it’s taken apart the shamblers at the seams. I know I shouldn’t feel that way about fellow human beings, but there it is. I hate them.

There’s a moment of fumbling in the dark, and Lucy grabs my hand and pulls me up some stairs, down a narrow hall, into a bathroom. How she knows where to go baffles me.

I slump to the floor and let the trash bag full of stuff clank on the tile floor.

“Get up, man,” she says, low. “We’ve got to cover the windows and doors. You brought the trash bags?”

I nod, slowly standing back up, and then realize she can’t see me nod. “Yep. Hold on. Shit.”

I rifle through the trash bag by feel. My fingers land on a hollow cardboard box that rattles. Matches. I hand them to her. She strikes one, and I find the bags.

The lantern is intact. I set it aside. I fill it from the other tin of kerosene and light it.

“We’re not going to be able to use that in here.”

“What? Why?”

“We’re going to seal the room as best we can. I don’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning and stupidity after surviving zombies and a nuclear explosion.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“We’ll have to use matches. You got the bags?”

I hand one to her.

She opens up her makeshift linen sack. She’s like a very
prim and proper hobo. She pulls out a roll of duct tape and fastens the bag to the door. The adhesive makes
brrrpt
sounds as she tears it from the roll.

I hand her another bag. It takes three to secure the door.

Once the lantern is out, she tapes the window but leaves a corner free, so we can lift it and look out. I’m having trouble standing. My feet are swollen and painful.

She plugs the sink and turns on the water. It’s surprising how loud it is. I can hear her clothes whisk and whisper. I can feel her stirring the air in the dark with her movement.

“I don’t want to do this, but while that house is burning, we’ve got to get as much water in the sink and tub as we can. After we wash. We need to stay inside for the next twenty-four hours, until the cloud has dissipated. We should stay inside for longer, but—”

“Your family.”

“Yes. Take off your clothes.” I can hear rustling in the confines of the bathroom and what sounds like keys hit the floor.

“What?”

“Take off your clothes and get in the shower.” Her bare feet slap on the porcelain of the tub. She draws the shower curtain inside the tub; it’s loud and sticky. The whole room echoes like a cave. The plastic is thunderous in the dark. Who knew plastic could be this loud?

“I . . .” I don’t know what to do. This day has been a doozy, as Meemaw might say. First zombies, then nuclear explosions, then fire consuming the whole world, then running and shooting and more fire. Now I’m supposed to shower with a beautiful woman.

I think she’s grinning but know there’s nothing sexual in it. “I know it sounds crazy. But we have to do it, and the more noise, the more likely the . . . the revenants . . . will come sniffing for us. There’s radioactive particles all over you. We have to wash them off. And clean your burns as best we can. I’m sorry I didn’t get my—” She stops. She’s thinking about what’s happened. “My purse. I had some medical supplies. But I raided the last house’s medicine cabinet in the dark and haven’t checked this one. Let’s just get clean as fast as we can.”

I shrug and pull my shirt over my head. I drop my pants. And even though it’s still summer—as if seasons have any meaning anymore with that cloud hanging overhead—I have goose bumps. I know she’s in the shower, naked. I’m ashamed, but my body responds.

She cranks on the water and it is very loud, louder than the sink. But the water is hot and it burns on my wounds. I yelp.

“Shhh.” She puts a hand on my arm and then removes it quickly. I crowd at the far end of the shower, away from the spigot, hands over my erection. I can’t see anything. But I can smell her. The handles squeak as she adjusts the water flow.

I don’t know if it’s that we’re both naked, in a shower together, but she says in a lower, almost husky voice, “It hurts bad, huh? The burns?”

“Yeah. But . . . we’ve been so busy, this is the first time I’ve really felt it.”

It’s a strange moment. Pitch black, naked, in a shower with a beautiful woman. A woman I’ve just met. A doctor. She’s like some kind of superhero. My back is on fire again.

She’s quiet for a long time. The water is loud.

She squirts something from a plastic bottle into her hand—a little bleat of shampoo—and the smell of kiwis fills the shower. It’s such a sweet smell, I realize how much I stink of ashes and dust and char.

I can hear her working up a lather, the sloppy sounds of soap in body crevices. I hear her gasp once, and I remember the gouge on her scalp. Then she’s rinsing.