No More Fear: Part Three

Darkness came again, along with the sounds of the night. After another meal of canned delicacies, I threw a few larger logs on the fire, tossing swarms of glowing embers up into the air that quickly died out. The logs would keep the fire going through the night and hopefully take the edge off of the night chill. A heavy mist crept in across the mountain, but the skies were clear. The moon was nearly full and shone down brightly through the mist, casting eerie lines of light between the shadows of the forest.
I made myself comfortable on my side of the shelter and surrounded myself with my sleeping bag. Though the cold wasn’t terribly unpleasant, I eagerly waited for my body to warm the bag. My sidearm rested next to my head with my flashlight. Zach sat at the fire for a few more minutes before retreating to his sleeping bag as well. We slept with our feet towards the back of the shelter, our heads almost sticking out the front, Zach on the right, I on the left. I dozed for a few minutes at a time, until a sound I heard, or I thought I had heard, would startle me awake. I would listen for it to repeat itself for a few minutes, holding completely still, barely breathing, before dismissing it as my over-active imagination getting the better of me and once again trying to sleep. Zach was asleep long before I was, his breath rising and falling softly.
* * *
The next sound that woke me wasn’t a quiet sound in the distance. It came from a source near my head. It came from Zach’s mouth.
A startled yelp.
I was instantly awake, but still bleary-eyed and completely disoriented. I became aware of another sound, a deep throaty groan that I instantly recognized. I looked up towards the dying fire and saw what Zach had yelled about. There was a man standing between us and the fire, shoulders slumped, arms outstretched, reaching for Zach who was lying on his back looking up at the figure and grasping for something blindly on the other side of his body, his eyes locked on the horror before him. I took all of this in in a moment and my hand immediately flung out for my sidearm, but in my haste I accidentally pushed it farther out of my reach. I stretched my arm as far as it would go, almost crawling to where I thought my gun must be, but I knew it was already too late for me to reach it before the invader reached my brother. I had wasted my precious seconds which would have ensured a quick and easy kill.
I glanced back towards my brother, lying helpless on his back, as the figure stumbled to its knees, still reaching, mouth agape, ready to tear into my brother’s flesh. As it began to lean over him, Zach screamed in rage and his arm lashed out for the undead’s head. The moonlight glistened off the blade of my hatchet as Zach swung it in a wide arc and buried it deep in the side of the infected’s head. The figure toppled in my direction, and I lunged for my weapon, finally finding it. I rolled and came to my feet, swiping the safety off and activating the laser pointer as I brought my arm up to take a shot. The red light traced a radiant line through the mist to the bright red dot that rested on my target’s head. But the corpse stayed still. As did I and Zach, both of us frozen in disbelief, breathing heavily. I snapped out of my trance before Zach, immediately found my flashlight and quickly swept the surrounding darkness with the beam of light, searching for more attackers. I found nothing but shadows. I heard Zach scramble to his feet. I turned back as he began kicking the corpse in the stomach over and over.
“Hey, take it easy!” I yelled. Zach continued kicking.
“Zach!”
No response, just three or four more kicks. Then Zach turned away from the corpse as if he suddenly realized he was repulsed by it. He took a few deep breaths and paced back and forth for a few seconds before settling on one of the logs near the fire. He closed his eyes and rubbed his knees with his hands, still breathing heavily. Finally he drew in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds and let it out slowly.
“You done now?” I asked, somewhat amazed by my brother’s erratic display. He’d never done anything like this before. Of course he’d never been almost killed in his sleep by a walking corpse before either.
“Yeah. I’m okay,” he said rather shakily, “I’m okay.”
“That was a close one,” I said.
“Too close.”
“I woulda had him, but I missed my gun.”
“Yeah, way to drop the ball,” Zach laughed his short laugh.
I shined my light on the corpse. It was a cop. A State Trooper actually. Aside from the hatchet protruding from his head, he had a nasty bite mark on the base of his neck and his shirt was nearly covered in blood. I spotted a leather belt on his waist with a row of loops. Each loop held in place a single bullet. It was an Old West style gun-slinger belt with a matching holster. A revolver’s grip jutted out of the holster.
“We got ourselves a cowboy, pilgrim,” I said in my best John Wayne. I rolled the body over with my foot and pulled the belt off. It held about thirty cartridges. I took the revolver out of the holster, a hefty .357 Magnum, and looked it over. Not exactly a cowboy’s gun, but I wasn’t complaining. I opened the cylinder. Three of the cartridges had been fired. So this was the one who was doing the shooting yesterday. And he wasn’t shooting at food. The infection had reached the mountain, and we were no longer safe here. We would have to be constantly on the look-out from now on.
“To the victor go the spoils,” I said as I offered Zach the weapon. He took it silently and examined the whole set-up. I bent to retrieve my hatchet. I pulled on it half heartedly, expecting it to slide out easily, but it didn’t budge. I pulled on the handle sharply but it still didn’t budge, just jerked the head awkwardly.
“Geez, remind me to never let you hit me in the head with a hatchet,” I joked, “You really got this guy good.”
I put the toes of one foot against the head and tried again, this time the hatchet came loose with a wet, sucking sound. I stuck the hatchet into the trunk of one of the pines, blood oozed from the blade where bark and metal met, as if the tree itself was bleeding.
“Oh crap, I unplugged the hole and now he’s oozing everywhere,” I said, “Help me get him out of here before he makes a mess over here.”
We each grabbed a leg and dragged him a good distance away from the camp, so he wouldn’t stink up the place when he started decomposing.
“Suppose we should bury him?” Zach asked.
“Did you bring a shovel?” I inquired.
“Nope. You?”
“Nope.”
“Oh well. He did try to kill me.”
“I don’t think these people have a rational mind after they become infected. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Oh yeah, it really looked like he was joking from where I was sitting.”
“Don’t take it personally; maybe he was just being friendly. Just a lonely undead cop out on a midnight stroll to make new friends.”
“Where do you get this stuff?” Zach smiled and shook his head.
“Just comes to me. You gonna be able to sleep when we get back?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, good. ‘Cause I will. I was just getting into a nice deep sleep when your girly little scream woke me up.”
“Oh, ha ha. I’d like to see your first reaction if you woke up nose to nose with that.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the body.
“Okay, but in all seriousness, if you see any more tonight, try not to make too much noise when you take ‘em out. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Hey now, don’t hurt my feelings.”
Our childish exchange went on until I was half asleep in my bed. I left Zach sitting on his log in front of a freshly stoked fire, rifle across his knees, launching wood shavings into the flames.
* * *
I woke up slowly, moaned and rubbed my face with the back of a hand. I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my elbows. Zach was where I left him, looking bored. Only instead of the KA-BAR and stick, he was holding the dead trooper’s revolver in his right hand. The cylinder was open and he gave it a spin with his left hand. A quick flip of his right wrist and the cylinder locked into place with a satisfying click. He opened the cylinder again and deftly repeated the process.
Spin.
Flip.
Click.

“Having fun?” I asked as I joined him, sitting down facing him across the fire.
“A blast,” he replied sarcastically.
“Tired yet?”
“Not really.”
“Good ‘cause we have a new project to work on today.”
Zach flipped the cylinder closed again and looked at me inquisitively.
“You remember how you always wanted dad to build us a tree house?” I said.
“Oh boy,” Zach rolled his eyes.
“What? I think it’s a good idea! Unless you like standing watch all night. This way we can both sleep safe and sound, out of reach. And it won’t be a whole house, just a platform to sleep on. They don’t stand a chance against us during the day. Did you see how he moved?”
“I can’t say I was really in an observative state last night.”
“And on the news—wait, did you just say “observative”? Is that even a real word?”
“I don’t know. It is now. You were saying?”
“Yeah, well, on the news, I never saw one running, even when they were on fire. They’re clumsy, they trip over each other. There’s no coordination between them. One guy with a semi-auto rifle and a crap-load of ammo could—”
“Wait, did you just say “crap-load”?”
“Yes, and no it’s not a real word.”
“Okay, so your point is that the two of us shouldn’t have a problem dispatching these things in short order.”
“Correct.”
“Then why is the city still burning?”
That question stopped me cold. I hadn’t thought of that. It was a good point. How come the military was still trying to regain control? What was I missing? And really, there was no way for us to know for sure what was happening with the news off the air. I thought for a moment, not reaching any conclusion.
“Shall we go find out?” I asked with a smirk. Before Zach could answer, I heard a rustling behind me. Zach’s eyes darted over my shoulder, locking on to the source of the sound. I saw his pupils dilate slightly.
“There’s one right behind me, isn’t there?” I said without moving. Zach sighed.
“Yep,” he said as he stood up, “I got this one.”

Flip.
Click.
Boom.

I glanced over my shoulder just as the body hit the ground.
“We’re tied now,” Zach said matter-of-factly, “Two-two.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant. I grinned and said, “It’s early in the game, sports fan.”
Zach blew the smoke from the muzzle in a showy fashion and holstered the revolver with a grin.
“To answer your question: yes. Let’s go find out,” he said.
“No more fear,” I said. Zach nodded.
* * *
So it was settled. We would go back down the mountain to see what we could see. If what we saw was undead, we’d put a bullet in its head and move on. I guess we were too proactive and impatient to sit around and try to wait this out. I should have known that before we left. We’d had many week-long camping trips in the past. But even on our week long camping trips gone-by we’d stayed busy. But here we were more or less trapped, waiting to be ambushed in the dark while we slept. It would have become unbearable in a very short time.
No.
We were going to fight on our own terms, not the terms of a horde of mindless walking corpses. We had both seen what these creatures were and were not capable of and we were both confident in our own abilities. We were done running, done hiding. It was our move.

Zach went over to inspect his kill.
“Hey, check this out,” he said, calling me over. I went and stood over the body. It had fallen flat on its back. It was a male, late twenties, black hair. The rest of his facial features had been rearranged slightly by Zach’s bullet. But instead of just one bullet hole in the head, this guy was also boasting three more holes. They made a triangle on his chest four or five inches apart, surrounding his heart.
“Twenty bucks says this isn’t the first time he’s been shot by that gun,” I said.
“Sounds like a solid bet,” replied my brother, “You wanna see something gross?”
Before I could object, he rolled the body over with his foot.
“Nice,” I said dryly, observing the carnage wrought by the Magnum. Besides the dripping head-wound, there was a hole the size of a bowling ball where the three chest shots had exited in close proximity.
“Effective,” Zach speculated. I nodded in agreement.
“We gonna get out of here today or what?” I asked after a few seconds of silent observation.
“Yeah. I’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes, tops,” Zach replied.
“Well, alright. Let’s move. I’ll kill the fire.”

We hadn’t unpacked very much over the time we’d been here, and it took less than ten minutes to get everything back in the Jeep. All that was left was the axe we picked up on the way here. It was stuck in one of our log benches. I went to retrieve it as Zach closed the doors on the Jeep.
“We’re all set,” he said.
I yanked the axe from its resting place. I heard a raspy moan emanate from some low bushes. I turned to the sound as a pale hand was thrust out from near the bush’s roots. The hand gripped the ground, fingers clenched, and the hand was followed by an arm, a head and finally a torso. But that was it. This thing was half missing; everything from the waist down was gone. All that was left were bloody, dirty shirt tails dragging behind it. It was moving very slowly, putting one hand in front of the other dragging itself maybe a foot at a time, eyes locked on its target, me. I stayed where I was but my hands gripped the axe handle tighter.
“Uh, Zach,” I said, without taking my eyes off of the creepy-crawly ten feet away and closing, however slowly.
“Hmm?” Zach mumbled back, distracted by whatever he was doing, unaware of our latest guest.
“You wanna see something gross?”
“Wha— whoa! That’s new.”
“Yes it is.”
The creature finally got one hand on the log that I had pulled the axe out of. Then the other. It was less than five feet from me now, and I watched in morbid fascination as it struggled to pull itself up, trying to climb the obstacle between us in its determination to get to me.
“So,” Zach began, a hint of uncertainty in his voice, “You gonna kill that thing or what?”
“Patience,” I said. The head was directly over the log now, chin resting on the top surface, right where I would have placed a piece of wood I wanted to split. I brought the axe down on the head with everything I had, slicing down through the top, splitting the face almost down the middle and sinking the blade into the wood below it. The body went limp and became a corpse again.
“Effective,” I said over my shoulder to Zach. I braced the log with a foot and pulled out the axe then wiped the goop off on the zombie’s back. I tossed it in the back of the Jeep and looked at Zach across the roof.
“Three,” I said with a smirk.
“Get in the car, you disturbed person,” Zach said returning the smile and shaking his head in disbelief.
“Oh come on,” I said, “A guy can’t split a skull now and then without getting slapped with a label? What’s the world coming to?”
Zach got in, slammed the door and started the engine.
“You should think about seeing a doctor or something. I think you might have some underlying aggression issues or something,” Zach jested as he turned the Jeep around and headed back down the trail we came in on. I turned on the radio. Static. Tried another station. More static. I went up and down the dial with the same result on every station. Zach glanced at me.
“I’m going to bet that no news is bad news this time around,” he said.
“I think you’re right,” I responded as I turned the radio off. I stayed silent for a few minutes, deep in thought.
“We’re going to have to be really, really careful down there, Zach,” I said somberly.
“I know.”
“We need to keep our heads on straight and pay attention to everything around us. Everything.”
“I know.”
“No mistakes.”
“No mistakes,” Zach repeated.

I’m not sure if my little pep talk was for myself or my brother. Looking at him, he seemed perfectly calm, no longer afraid or unsure or whatever it was that he had been the night we left. I on the other hand, the one who had done all the killing the first night with hardly a second thought, now felt like my stomach was trying to climb out my mouth. Maybe it was just the adrenaline left over from my encounter a few minutes ago. I took a deep breath and let it out, trying hard to not let Zach notice my unexplained discomfort. Slowly but surely, I was able to calm myself. I felt better now. Focused.
“So what are we going to do when we get down there?” Zach said after a few moments, shattering my thoughts.
“Well, we can cut through the suburbs and see if anyone knows what’s going on. You know that area with the strip mall and those five or six department stores?”
“Yeah, I think I know where you’re talking about.”
“We’ll head down that way. If we don’t find anyone, we’ll stock up on some stuff and head north until we find someone who knows what is going on and where we’re supposed to evacuate to or whatever.”
“Sounds like an elaborate plan.”
“I like to keep things simple. That way we can stay flexible.”