John told horror stories about murders inside the forests surrounding his home. Everyone was amazed at the force of his theatrical prowess. He was deep, interesting, and forthright in his deliveries. It was obvious, as a commander of forces in battle, he had been called upon to narrate to the troops at bonfires, as he was doing for them now. John was far more talented than they had realized. He was a force to reckon with, a man to follow and to trust. His voice was motivating for all of them.
They were beginning to like the man. Sure, he was a kind of dictator over them, but they were like delicate little green peas in this new garden from hell that fortune had cast them inside of, and they needed someone to lead them and teach them the ropes before they died at the hands of the deadly menace that was all over Pennsylvania and might be moving directly toward them with malevolence in its heart.
It was bizarre to be hearing about Indians crawling upon the early settlers and killing them. The connection between the early natives with their arrows who were merely defending their lands from the white invaders was closely tied to the present situation in which the zombies took the place of the Indians and the refugees to John Wilson's safe house had now become the new unwelcome visitors. Actually, everyone was unwelcome, because the world had become a rapid study of a deadly and unwanted new horror show building itself from the ground up and preparing itself for Broadway and the lights of New York. The lights had already gone out over there in the cities, and the only brightness in the night air were the stars and planets as the world danced backward to 1835 where candles, wood, and fire hearths took the place of electric lights, ipods, and gas stoves. The clock had turned backwards nearly two hundred years. The ways they used to know would soon be identified with the moniker of the old days which were gone forever. The new days they now lived in were new to them, but as old as the hills, even trailing back into history with the early Greek democracies and the fascism of the Roman Empire when the only light at night was from tiny oil lamps that people held in their hands as they made their nightly rounds inside their Roman stucco homes.
"The murderers were upon them in an instant!" John Wilson said. "Even though they were strong and trained in combat, since they were half asleep in the night, the Indians slaughtered and carried away their light skinned babies and women to their villages. Some of the men, those whom the Mohawks captured alive would scream during their last moments of life burning atop cruel funeral pyres. The Indians meant these painful deaths by fire as a punishment for them having invaded their sacred Indian lands and burial places. So, tonight as you sleep, I want all of you to keep your hands on your guns and your clubs to fend off the zombies who are close by out there in the woods watching even as you sleep for more zombies like them whom we just burned inside our bonfires."
The audience loved it. They were frightened a bit, but their theatrical juices were now totally alive. They stood and applauded for John Wilson's dramatic performance as an entertainer, because his theatrical ways of speaking were hypnotic and carried them into a better place.
"Let's get some sleep," John said. "I have already set the watches for the night. I can assure you that all of us, including myself, the sheriff, and his family will all stand our turn each evening to make sure that we can sleep safely and not be overrun in our moment of greatest danger which is always when we are sleeping soundly.”
“Thank you.”
“Lights out and no talking after thirty minutes. Sleep tight, my friends. Remember, I have more fun for you tomorrow!"
They booed knowing he would be working them to death again, but they also understood that it was work they needed to perform in order to insure their survival in a new and deadly world.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Deer Hunt
John Wilson led Orren Lasswell and Eliott Blakely from the truck to the narrow winding pass leading down to a small river bank. The forest was luscious. Large green oaks interspersed with pine, eastern red cedar, and northern spruce rose in a cushy green umbrella overhead. Birds fluttered inside the branches nursing their babies in small, well constructed nests of twigs and whatever else their parents had scrounged up for their needs. Here and there a small garden snake or a five line neon skink slithered across the ground's brittle carpet of dead leaves before plunging beneath the cluster of tree bark and leaves to hide in the dark coolness below.
"It's a verdant forest, for sure," Eliott said. "Reminds me of the scenes in the big movie, Last of the Mohicans. I hope it's true that Magua was killed. He was such a vicious bastard, trying to kill General Munro and his daughters. Not that I cared about the General. He was not only an old angry red coat but a real prick."
"Shut the fuck up," John Wilson cautioned. "We sound like a goddamn army of noise the way it is."
Eliott smirked. There was always some fucking school teacher trying to shut people up so he could bore them with his crummy lectures. The world was full of these types. It reminded him of his dad slamming the table, demanding peace and quiet or else. Everyone wanted to play Hitler wherever there was fun to be had.
"Sorry, sir. I'll be quiet."
Wilson figured it was just like a green horn who'd never been deer hunting to bust his chops with needless conversation. What did they think? That deer wanted to hear people discussing politics and religion in the woods? That bucks and does were that bored? Wilson wondered if the Indians three hundred years ago discussed tribal bullshit incessantly the way white people did. No wonder the Revolution occurred. Americans were never satisfied. They were always tearing down their representatives, senators, and presidents. Not that these people ever represented anyone but the rich. It seemed that whether a democrat or a republican won, they still asked the rich which laws they should author and exactly how they wanted them written, because they were the only ones who would ever be represented. There should have been a law making conversation with the pathetically rich people a capital crime. Ropes should be displayed in the senate and congress and those that spoke with the rich would hang from them as the sessions took hold. The fact those ropes were never displayed there revealed just how corrupt the world of government had always been.
What the heck. Everything that ever touched the Earth was distorted by the experience.
John Wilson held up his fist, meaning stop. Be still. Something big is about to happen. The forest was as still as sin. No noise. Not the sound of a leaf falling against branches. Even the birds were quiet. Suddenly a cracking sound up ahead, then louder. Hooves against stone and leaf broke the silence as something big approached them at breakneck speed. Something had spooked a deer. Wilson motioned for Orren and Eliott to hug the ground and keep their guns aimed in the direction of the noise. Their M-14's glistened like well oiled death fetishes beneath the trees, each of them aimed forward in the promise of an impending fuselage of death and destruction of whatever was coming. Suddenly a doe scrambled from the trees, running for her life. Wilson's arm pointed forward, and he aimed his rifle in her direction. So did his corporals. Orren fired first, and the doe's legs instantly ceased their gallop as she sailed another thirty feet in their direction and fell dead on the forest floor. In less than a second three figures emerged a hundred feet from her, running as fast as they could. Droolers had been spooking the doe, causing her to bolt toward Wilson's little hunting platoon. John aimed at the brain of the farthest one, figuring the military boys with him could hit the other two more easily as they were closer to the ground and he was halfway above it. The shambler's head exploded in a spray of red claret that hit the trees to either side of him, coloring them brightly with his escaping pellets of destruction as he fell to the ground and slid forward another fifty feet before assuming his final sleeping position. Orren saw the nearest one, and squeezed off with the gun sight kissing the sweet spot in the center of his forehead which caved the moment his trigger sent the deadly shot into his collapsing skull. The blood spewed outward in a globalist spray of wild red colors coating the bushes and trees with his brain's cluttered a
nd ruined innards. The second one plummeted ground ward at the same time. He, too, sprayed the woods creating an instant Jackson Pollard canvas against the surreal greenery.
John Wilson returned his arm and fist to the caution position. "Keep your eyes aimed straight at them, boys. There might be more on the way." Sure enough. The runners had been fast for droolers, slow for people, but the ones coming next were typical shamblers, moving in slow motion, staggering their walk like people in the last throes of mad cow. Fourteen of them stumbled from the trees with their hands reaching forward in a cliche of zombie vogue. They had the death look about them, the hint that something was not right with them that zombies always had. The only difference was that most of them seemed to reek of Amish or Quaker inheritance. Their clothes had that low farm boy look of poverty and hard work that they were used to seeing in the old days. Those days had occurred before the world had changed into the present configuration in which the distortion of plague and thousands of stumblers roamed the woods. Wilson's arm cut through the air ahead of him in the signal to commence firing. Blood pellets sprang from the droolers' expanding craniums as their bones sprang loose into the air in a spray of brains. The woods around them received a final red coat as they went down and assumed the gentility of dead men sprawling on the ground. Five minutes of silence, then a third round of spoilers staggered out of the woods. This group had fifteen walkers. Their dead faces contained the typical rapture of lostness that living human breathers had begun to associate with them. The men followed Wilson. They moved forward, smashing zombie heads in with their gun butts, feeling their dry hollow skulls give way to the force of their impelling thrusts. Stepping over them to reach the next load of stragglers the men raised their rifles again to apply another coups de gras into the zombie force. They went down one-by-one. Then, it was over. After fifteen minutes, John Wilson declared the coast was clear by shouting, "Clear!", as the blood from the deer and the walkers oozed across the forest floor in testament to the cruelty in which they were now called to live or die.
"Let's drain this bitch and get home with her," John said.
He tossed his hunting rope over a branch, tied it to the back legs of the animal, then used it to haul the doe's two hundred pound carcass into the air. Then, he cut her throat to bleed her out. Next, he opened her stomach to the air and pulled out her steaming guts. Working with the gross efficiency of an outdoor butcher shop, he soon had his arms seeping with the doe's blood. He gathered up her useful organs including her liver and kidneys so that nothing useful went to waste. He placed them in a plastic bag along with the intestines which would be used as sausage casings for some of the meat which he planned to grind along with pork and spices for a tasty treat. Once the doe was clean, John jumped down into the icy stream and cleansed off his arms and face which were covered in zombie blood. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," John chuckled. It was an old bromide, but Orren and Eliott chortled when they heard it. Wilson knew they would, but he'd never know if they laughed because it was funny or because they just wanted to be on his good side. That was the way of leadership. It cut through the edges of pure bullshit through which the world always plunged stupidly ahead in its futile madness.
They checked the zombies to insure their skulls were crushed enough to silence them forever. Their boots stomped the zombie heads into the ground as they yelled out "Clear!" through the verdant forest.
"Clear!"
"Clear! Clear!"
#
John Wilson found a straight branch and hacked it down to size. He carefully cut off the twigs along the sides to insure that there would not be any way they would hang up as the team carried the doe back to the road. It was miles away from where they had hiked. Next, Wilson, who was now called either commander, boss, or general depending on the occasion, secured the doe to the stick by crossing its hooves over the pole and securing it with pieces of rope. The total weight with the carcass was about one hundred and forty pounds give or take ten pounds, so each soldier had to support seventy pounds.
They started off down the trail the way they came with John Wilson running point to ward off any zombies who might have come this way by picking up their scent along the path. Wilson placed himself twenty-five feet ahead. He not only watched the forward position but gazed back at his hunters and eyeballed the sides and the narrow opening behind them for fear that more droolers might come down that way and attack them from behind where they were most vulnerable. In addition, because of the stick with the deer, they couldn't see behind, so Wilson's eyes were necessary for their total security. However, in the woods where droolers could be propped up behind rocks and trees, there was never anything that would be secure for them, because that is the nature of outdoor activities. A thousand hidden positions came by as they made their way toward their truck with the meat that would keep their party filled with nutritious proteins. At least three pounds of meat for each of the twenty-three adventurers was contained in this package of men and prey.
After a mile, Wilson traded places with Eliott, taking on the dangerous rear position. He had promised his men that he would work with them, take on the exact duties he assigned them, and would expose himself to the same dangers, to which they were exposed. The general seemed to thrive on exposure to crises. He had survived wars, fire fights, and several wives. He was bone hard, mentally resilient, and expected his men to follow him into dangerous times without doubt or flinching. "I am an ace in the hole in battles," he told them, "or I would be useless, and I don't intend to be useless. I will earn your trust and respect, and each of you will do the same for me or I'll be burrowing into your ass like maggots feeding inside a dead pig." They had no desire to find out exactly what that meant, but they knew it was going to be bad news, and that was enough.
Eliott took his point position seriously. First, he was afraid of being bitten unawares, and the point and rear were the most dangerous positions in the field. Eliott was also a good sport who felt that his responsibility to his team was of paramount importance. "You never want to let your men down," Grayson Andrews told his platoon. "When you are under the authority or the watch of another man, you are as vulnerable as he decides to make you. Never do that to a man whose back you are watching. If I catch you doing such a thing, I will personally cut your nuts off." Eliott figured his nuts would stay in tact, but whatever the general planned in terms of punishment for shirked duties, he didn't want to find out. Besides, his daddy had never been slow in wasting the belt when one of his sons deserved it. A good whipping is something a boy never forgets, and it has been used effectively to change many a wastrel lad into an enthusiastic and loyal son, eager to do his father's will and escape the horror of his anger. Eliott's dad had hammered him with his belt so hard the second time he whipped him that he was lame on one side for a week and had to stay home so the school wouldn't know what his dad had done to him. He had told his dad, "You'll never beat me again," and his dad said he would certainly do so, and in a heart beat. "No, you won't," Eliott said, "because I ain't never going to do a thing to make you want to beat me like that." His dad had smiled and said, "Son, I never wanted to beat you in the first place, and I certainly didn't mean to beat you that hard, and I ask that you forgive me." He had hugged Eliott tenderly. "I love you, boy. Know that." So, Eliott had straightened himself out then and there. His dad loved him, but he was dangerous, and Eliott knew it. He looked out through the forest on all sides, front, back, left, right. No one was going to die on his watch if he could help it. Eliott would walk the point with total cunning. Wilson and Lasswell would reach the truck unscathed or Eliott himself would take the bite and die for having done it right.
Turning the corner of a crick in the path three zombies suddenly appeared coming from behind the hump in the wall of stone and trees to the left. Eliott lifted his rifle and crushed the first one's skull, then shot the second and third zombies in their heads. He saw their blood fly out from the opposite sides of their entry wounds as they fell to the side of the pat
h. He turned, shouting, "Clear!," and the two men with the meat saw the blood splatter on Eliott's face and army shirt. He had a close call, and they knew the droolers were on top of him the moment he turned that corner. He had taken the attack that they would have had if he had not been their point man. "Good work, son!" General Wilson yelled. "They were right on you and you never flinched a second, because at that range you never had a second to waste. You reacted perfectly and without hesitation. Way to go!" The boy looked at his new commander. "Thank you, general," Eliott said. "It was nothing. I just did my duty."
The general smiled quietly and looked behind at Orren, tossing him a knowing nod. "Your buddy is okay, son." Orren smiled. "Yes, sir. He's covered my back. He does all right."
Eliott motioned for them to come forward. "The coast is clear," he said. He stomped the skulls of the three new zombie corpses, listening with satisfaction to their bones cracking. "Clear! Clear! Clear!" He wanted everyone on the hunting team to be totally comfortable in knowing they were dead. If not, they'd leap up and bite his buddies and he wasn't going to allow that to happen if he could help it. If Orren was bit, he'd have to shoot him, and Orren's death would haunt him the rest of his life, the same way killing child zombies was already giving him nightmares and flashbacks. The karma he already carried on his back was such that one more twisted memory might become the wicked straw that pushed him over the edge and carried him into insanity. He knew intuitively that would come anyway. There was no way he was going to the grave without breakdowns, depression, and possible suicide attempts. He lived on the edge, and there was no way out of that, unless time contained some sort of healing elixir that would cover him in its warm healing balm. If that happened, it would be nice, but Eliott had discovered in his young life that the future would surely fling more curves filled with horrors beyond his imagining. If nothing else, the ending of the world as he knew it had shown him that even the worst could become even more sinister and might even make previous horrors seem like good times by comparison. Out of nowhere, two zombies jumped him from the trees. He barely saw their shadows move against the leafy forest floor as they dropped down from above. Being quick, Eliott jumped to the side, slammed his rifle into the nearest skull, then recovered and shot the second straggler in the head. He stomped their already shattered skulls, crushing the bone to achieve his kills' certainty.