When I made it to the top, he finally stopped and all I could hear was the wind rustling through the trees and the pounding of the rotters below. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on my face, smelled the scent of pine from the forest mingling with the stench of decaying flesh; if not for the stabbing pains of hunger shooting through my gut, I could have almost imagined I was back home, sitting on my porch with a cold beer at my feet and a fridge full of food.
And then I started to cry. It was like there had been something bottled up so tightly inside me that it finally came spewing out. I cried for the little girl in the forest who’d somehow wandered away from the interstate and was lost and scared and needing an adult so badly. I cried for Monica, for the way she’d kept reminding her son that she loved him when she knew the end was near. Even for little Jason, driven to the brink of insanity all because one man was frigging cocky enough to think he could ride in and save the day.
I don’t know how long I sat there with my knees pulled up to my chest, but eventually the tears kinda dried up and I was left feeling as hollow inside as those chocolate bunnies I used to give my niece for Easter. I opened my eyes and watched the tree branches sway in the wind. And I began to think.
Those branches kind of hung over the far side of the church roof. True, the angle of the roof was something fierce and looked like it would be easy as hell to just slide right off if you weren’t careful. But I could take the rope off the bell maybe. Lay myself flat and kinda shimmy over to the trees. Then if I could tie one end of the rope to a branch and one end to that there bell tower…. If I could do that, then maybe Jason could hang onto my back like a baby chimp. The rope would make sure we didn’t fall. And once we’d made it to the trees we could just go from branch to branch until we were a good piece into the forest.
Yeah, I thought it just might work. After all, the zombies were all clustered around the front door. As long as the boy didn’t start that crow shit, they’d never know we were even up there. They’d still be hammering away at the door and never even realize we were eating berries and roots and drinking cool water from a mountain stream.
For the first time in days I felt excited and hopeful. It was crazy, but it really could work. And even if we did slide off that roof and fell to our deaths, at least it would be quick. Not like the slow torture we’d been suffering through since the tuna ran out.
I felt like dancing or jumping up and down, clapping my hands and giggling like a damn idiot. In fact, it took about every ounce of willpower I had to keep from doing so. After all, with his bum leg the boy would pretty much be dead weight. I had to save my strength. Maybe catch a few hours of shut eye and then we could make our big escape under cover of darkness.
I shimmied down the ladder much more easily than I had scaled it and when I got to the bottom, I saw that Jason had drug himself over to the body of the freshy I’d shot on that first day. I shoulda gotten rid of it, but to be quite honest I didn’t really want to touch the damn thing. And whatever brings those fuckers back to life seems to slow the decaying process a little, so it had really started smelling too bad yet.
“Hey buddy,” I called out, “we’re getting out of here. I’ve got a plan and by this time tomorrow our bellies are going to be full and we won’t ever have to set foot in a church again.”
If he heard me, he didn’t give any indication. Not even so much as glancing back over his shoulder at me. What the hell was he doing anyway?
I’d crossed about half the distance and thought maybe he hadn’t heard me.
“Jason, you hear? We’re getting out of here and …”
This time the boy did turn around and there was something clenched between his teeth. Something that looked like a pink piece of rubber. Only it had these dark streaks on it that looked like they’d been flung there with a paintbrush.
He pulled with one hand and tore a long strand away and then slowly began to chew. I noticed the dark streaks were on his lips and chin, that his hand was covered in this goo and that it looked as if something had ripped the corpse’s lips away all the way down to its chin.
The boy swallowed and looked at me with those dark eyes of his. Licking his lips, he made a single sound:
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: JOSIE
The air within the barn was like cold hands against my thighs and I felt revulsion twist my guts into a concrete pretzel. This couldn’t be happening: we had simply wanted a place to come in out of the cold, a shelter where we could be warm, where we could rest…. we had fought out way through hordes of rotting flesh, had buried one of our own in an unmarked snow bank outside some bullshit little town, had lost everything we had ever loved or cared about. Everything except each other. And now these two greasy assholes were just going to waltz right in and steal everything away from us? These two low-life degenerate sons of bitches with their stupid fucking leers?
My jeans were around my knees now and Jerry had bent my legs as he pulled so savagely that the burn of friction cut through the blurry haze that had become my world. For a moment the barn was thrown into sharp focus: the sunlight filtering through the gaps in the walls, the little pieces of hay and dust that drifted through the shafts of light, the smell of old manure, the floor cold and gritty against my bare legs. I saw the redhead lifting Carl’s head by the hair, saw the knife and that obnoxious grin on his twisted, evil face.
Anger exploded within me with more force than Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. It felt as if every muscle in my body had simultaneously released all the frustration, all the wrath and bitterness that had been stored within its cells since this whole fucked up apocalypse had begun. How dare they try to steal the only person I fucking gave a damn about when everything else in my sorry excuse for an existence had been ripped away from my clutches and trampled in the dirt! How fucking
I yelled or screamed or growled or something. I can’t even say if there were even any words. All I knew was that my vocal chords felt raw and torn as this primeval sound erupted from my lungs and my legs had begun kicking with more force than I’d ever guessed I had.
My foot slammed into Jerry’s nose and I could feel as well as hear the sharp snap as blood began to gush from his nostrils. But still I kept kicking, inching my way toward him with my feet flailing in the air, connecting again and again with the soft flesh of his face. More blood from a lip split open like an overripe tomato, but still kicking, still yelling, still unleashing the full force of my rage. I wanted to stomp him into a bloody pulp, to see his brains squish through crushed eye sockets, to hear him cry and scream for mercy, to feel his skull crush beneath the fury of my feet.
At the same time, I was keenly aware of everything. I knew that Roscoe was frozen, the knife mere inches from Carl’s throat as he stared at the scene playing out before him. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe he didn’t expect a mere piece of pussy to so completely eradicate his friend’s features. I don’t know.
At some point I had stood and stepped out of my jeans and was now kicking Jerry in the head with the tip of my boots again and again. Blood splattered up and dotted my panties and thighs and I became aware of someone yelling at the top of their lungs. The voice sounded like a demon unleashed from the gates of Hell, gravelly and overflowing with contempt and hatred.
“You like that, you cock sucker? Huh, you like that? What’s a matter baby, can’t you take it? Come on, bitch, take.
I saw bits of shattered teeth slide down Jerry’s chin in a foamy soup of spit and blood. His eyes were swollen slits encased in puffy dark bruises and his nose was mangled to the point that it would have looked entirely flat if it hadn’t been for the shards of bone jutting through the broken skin.
He was trying to say something as he crawled backwards and his words sounded as if he were speaking through a mouthful of mush. But, quite frankly, nothing he could have ever said would have made one damn bit of difference.
“Yeah, you fucking cum rag, we’re gonna have us a hot time tonight!”
I kicked him in the face again and noticed that his friend had let go out Carl’s head and was standing now, apparently free from whatever paralysis had gripped him. His face was warped with anger and he held the knife in front of him in a stance that somehow reminded me of a fencing match.
