Running with the Horde Read online

  In one of the back bedrooms I found the place Dave tried to hold off the zombies. I wondered how he became separated from Brenda during those last frantic moments. Did he watch her kill herself or did that happen later? I tried to imagine the terror and panic they felt but I found I couldn’t. This was a sad testament to the tenuous hold I had on my humanity.

  There was a shotgun on the floor. It was one of those big bastards that could hold up to five shells. I admired the dull black metal of the barrel and stock before slinging it on my back. It was perfect. I also located a box of shells and a holster for the big revolver I’d taken from Brenda.

  When I finally unloaded all of the booty from the Robertsons into my house it had to be getting close to midnight and I was very tired. I just wanted to lay on the floor and sleep but first I had to eat.

  I looked through my newly acquired goods and settled on a can of corn and two cans of chicken. With my can opener in tow I headed out to my porch. I was getting more comfortable being outside but I still brought the shotgun.

  The food was heavenly, even raw and cold. I can still remember popping the corn kernels between my teeth and how good the juice tasted. As I slowly ate (I’d learned my lesson from my water guzzling fail), I kept coming back to poor old Dave and Brenda. I felt really bad about how they died, the first time I mean.

  While I’d been snug as a bug inside my house less than fifty feet away, they had been torn apart by former members of their own species.

  The word coward wormed its way into my head and I couldn’t get it out. I hated to think I was a coward. I tried to justify my failure to protect the Robertsons or any of my other neighbors by being cold and logical. It had truly been an every man for himself situation. I guess if we’d all been better prepared maybe the outcome could’ve been different. I am sure if they were still alive to share their thoughts, they would admit they hadn’t considered that the cannibal rumor had meant flesh-eating zombies any more than I did.

  It had been rioters and looters, those were the clear and present dangers and, of course, the Sickness. My neighbors would’ve agreed with me. That was a guess though, as I stated earlier, I’d been a drunken asshole most of that time.

  I still felt like a coward. I should have tried to do something for them.

  Dave had done his best to include me but for the most part left me alone. They’d respected my privacy in life and donated food and weapons to me in death. For this I could not leave them unburied.

  I would drag Brenda, Dave and the five zombies I’d put down to my front yard and figure out a way to bury them in the morning. As much as I deeply wished someone else was around to take care of it, I knew it was the right thing to do.

  I finished every last morsel of my food, cleaned up my mess and retrieved my leather work gloves from the garage.

  The next hour was pretty awful but I managed to get Dave and Brenda out of their house and my five new friends to the corner of my front yard where they laid in an undignified heap. I left my gloves on top of the pile as I would not be using them again and headed inside. It was very early on the morning of what would be my first full day as a killer and I was really damn tired. I locked my door, changed my clothes and was sleeping as soon as I hit the stinking pillow.

  Chapter 11

  “Creepy Doings”

  The next morning I awoke with the sunrise, refreshed and reinvigorated. Aside from being physically dirty and probably very smelly, I was well fed and watered and therefore somewhat happy.

  A cup of coffee on the front porch would’ve been the cherry on top but I settled on a warm diet soda instead. I nestled into my chair, popped the tab on my soda and basked in the gentle heat of the sunshine.

  The morning dew was a blanket of diamonds on the tall grass. Somewhere close, a bird sang loudly into the crisp autumn air and two squirrels chased each other up and down the large oak tree in my yard. It was so easy to forget the world had been overrun by zombies.

  Fuck! I ran inside and snatched Dave’s shotgun from the table. I poked it barrel first out the door and did a full zombie scan everywhere that I could see. The street was clear, I’d gotten lucky. I hadn’t been thinking and once again I’d forgotten about the undead.

  No zombies, I thought as I sat down and went back to my soda. I was relieved but troubled for some reason.

  No zombies was a good thing, right?

  I leaned forward and looked again, slowly and carefully from right to left, still there was nothing. I was considering this information when it hit me, the bodies were gone!

  I bolted out of my chair, grabbed the gun and raced down to the edge of my front lawn. I could see trampled grass and some dried blood where I’d laid them but they were gone. I stood there like a moron for a few moments just staring at the spot as if my eyes were simply playing a trick on me and I could just will the bodies back into the place they were supposed to be.

  Then I felt it, like a buzzing inside my head, someone or something was watching me. I hurried up the driveway backwards and stumbled into my house, unable to shake the horrible feeling I wasn’t alone.

  Locking the door and shoving a kitchen chair under the knob, I went to my lookout spot and stared out frustrated at an unchanging landscape. The bird had stopped singing at some point and the squirrels were gone too, I knew that couldn’t be good.

  The missing bodies were exceedingly worrisome.

  Were they not really dead?

  Did I not bash their heads in enough?

  Could they really have walked away at some point during the night or did someone move them?

  I eliminated reanimation because Brenda had been dead all along and she was gone too. That left removal by an unknown third party and frankly I liked this scenario much less than reanimation.

  Why move six rotting dead bodies? I supposed there could have been some form of official removal team around but that seemed unlikely because I had not seen one single regular person during my weeks of isolation and believe me I’d been looking.

  Sure there had been strange noises. Loud noises even, spurts of music, muffled explosions, strange lights in the distance and even heavy machinery. But the noises always sounded so far way, I had written them off, thinking they were the death throes of overrun cities and surrounding neighborhoods.

  I knew somewhere out there some fraction of humanity raged on. I could hear it through the occasional gunshot or the sound of some far away engine. But I hadn’t heard or seen anything in my immediate vicinity in many weeks.

  For several days after my street had been overrun, there was an overwhelming amount of noise as humanity died. I’d even held out hope for a rescue team of some kind but eventually those sounds dribbled away to nothing. I had been left with only the unsettling din of zombies.

  Thoroughly stumped and terrified, I ran through an escalating series of crazy theories in my head. Did other zombies take them? That would imply some sort of intelligence I hadn’t seen them demonstrate but I certainly didn’t know everything. Then there was an even creepier scenario, there was a group of humans out there rounding up zombies and eating them or something. I really hoped that one wasn’t the winner. I hoped it with all my heart. I sat there thinking about it the rest of the day, only taking a break to use the bathroom and eat.

  In the end I could think of only one way to get answers.

  Chapter 12

  “Waste Management”

  The plan was to start on my street and clear the houses one by one. I would lay bodies out in the yard again to see if my mysterious disposal service was a one-time thing or a regular occurrence.

  I started the next morning with the house next to Dave and Brenda’s. No zombies were on the street that I could see but I kept my head on a swivel anyway. It was so much easier to spot them in the daylight. Of course that probably meant it was easier for them to see me too.

  This particular house looked like it had hosted an out of control rave that had turned homicidal. The front door and windows were
smashed in, with debris and gore strewn everywhere in the main room.

  Roland and his family had not lasted long. I seemed to remember he had young children. I knew it was inevitable but I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to see any dead or undead kids anytime soon. I did not get my wish. I found the remains of Roland’s family in a back bedroom.

  The pathetic barricade Roland had erected hadn’t been enough to keep the zombies away from the kids. Their little bodies must have been too badly mangled to reanimate or maybe they’d been immune.

  I was prepared this time with vapor rub under my nose, heavy duty rubber gloves, tools and landscaping tarp. Thus began my new career as an unofficial mortician. I eyeballed the amount of tarp I thought would be the right size and cut it with a box cutter. I laid it out and moved the two little bodies onto it as gingerly as possible.

  It was all very disgusting but still there was no mistaking the bodies had belonged to children. I’m sure it was because they were the first children I’d ever seen dead but that remains one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

  I kept the bodies wrapped in the tarp, I wasn’t sure if that would hinder their removal but I didn’t want to see them again.

  The rest of the house was empty which wasn’t a surprise, I’d seen what happened to Roland first hand. The house had a lot of guns in it. I remembered Roland and his rifle and thought perhaps he may have been a little bit off. In any case, the guns and a decent amount of food and water went into my house to join my growing cache of supplies.

  Three more house were cleared by the end of that day.

  My pile of bodies grew to seven. Four of them had been zombies which I dispatched with ease. A surprising amount of ease.

  When I encountered them they would either ignore me altogether or just turn and look at me. I almost felt bad smashing their brains in. Almost.

  Maybe they only attacked in numbers or maybe they were in some kind of dormancy cycle. I had no idea but wasn’t about to curse my good fortune and risk some kind of cosmic lesson in gratitude.

  At the time there had been no reason to believe it had anything to do with me so I didn’t even consider it.

  My immediate worries were centered around the pile of bodies on my front yard, now gift wrapped in landscaping tarp and waiting for whomever to come take them away.

  My other concern was how much stuff I now had in my house. I always knew America had been the land of plenty but it was never more evident than seeing the amazing storehouse of goods I had acquired from just four middle-class homes.

  I decided to shut it down for the evening, locked my house up tight and hit the rack after a delicious can of beef stew. I drifted off to sleep wrapped in a newly acquired heavy-duty sleeping bag that smelled vaguely of cedar wood.

  As I had on a few previous evenings, I thought I heard the rhythmic thumping of a bass drum. Before I chalked it off to my diminishing sanity, now it made me wonder.

  My head was pounding when I woke with the dawn. Shaking the rust out of my bones and dreaming once again of hot coffee, I made my way over to my lookout spot in the living room and peeked through.

  I was surprised to see the bodies still there. I found it both frustrating and scary. Why were the original stack of bodies taken? Was I being watched or screwed with by some loony tune with a weird sense of humor? Paranoid thoughts tumbled through my overtaxed mind like winter boots in a dryer.

  I decided it would be a good day to stay locked inside and organize my house.

  For the most part that is what I did, though I had to haul some of my now pointless furniture out to the backyard where I intended to burn it in a big bonfire. I didn’t think I’d have to worry about zombies back there. My security fence was pretty solid even with the boards Dave had borrowed.

  Hell, I thought, I might get crazy and boil some water for a bath. I never got that far though, moving all that shit around had left me exhausted. By then I’d grown accustomed to my own smell anyway.

  By the end of the night I’d made a pantry in the basement, in which I inventoried and organized all the goods I had into their own sections. I even had a candy section which I raided liberally throughout the day.

  I stowed guns and ammunition all throughout the house in case of emergencies with the bulk of it in an empty upstairs bedroom which I formally used as an office. With most of my furniture tagged as useless, my living room was now mostly bare. I kept one comfortable chair I enjoyed sitting in and one end table.

  I created a list of things to look for during my house searches that included; oil-burning lamps, candles, generators, booze, medicine and books, among other things.

  Sipping from a glass of whiskey, I sat in my chair pleased with my work until I remembered winter was coming.

  I wouldn’t survive a winter in Minnesota with no heat.

  My life was becoming a constant blooper reel.

  …

  The next morning I resumed my grisly street activities with the intention to finish clearing the cul-de-sac by the end of the day.

  I stared at the stupid bodies on my lawn wishing they would have disappeared in the night. I thought about including them in my bonfire knowing something would need to be done about them soon.

  The remaining eight houses on my street took me a day. Four of them were easy, those neighbors had packed up and left, so their houses hadn’t been trashed.

  I had it down to a science and was feeling pretty badass about my room clearing skills. Mostly I emulated cops I’d seen do it on television. Usually they had a team or at least a partner but I only had myself. This meant I was doing a lot of spin moves and rolls. A combination of stealth and luck produced another twelve zombies for the pile on my lawn. Later I would reflect on this time and consider what a douche idiot I was but that night I was a ninja.

  Many of things from the list I was able to find right that same day. I outfitted my bedroom and living room with two antique oil-wick lamps I found in the house across the street. The owners had been kind enough to leave a full gallon of oil in their broom closet.

  There would be light to party by tonight! By party I mean read from the box of harlequin romance novels I’d found in a closet. I had never been much of a reader but I had acquired a taste for it of late for some reason.

  My good neighbors also yielded three generators to me. There were all out of gas and I needed to save what I had for my car which eventually I would need to drive if I wanted to try and find a warm place to try and survive the winter. So power would have to wait until I acquired more gas.

  It was chilly out, especially at night but so far it had been livable.

  From each house I entered I also took a picture from a wall or a frame on a table. I tried to pick a family photo each time.

  There was usually an abundance of mail lying around, from that I jotted down names and addresses onto the backs of the photos. It irritated me when there were kids in the pictures and I couldn’t find names for them. In those cases I felt obligated to name them but I always put a question mark after the name when I had to do that.

  The photos went into a big album I found. I titled it: Friends! I would page through it on occasion when I was bored and didn’t feel like reading. I only note it here because I wonder, was I this weird before the end of the world or did this just happen to me because of the end of the world?

  I still don’t really know.

  Another surprise for me was how many of my neighbors had some form of recreational drugs in their houses. I found two good sized bags of marijuana and a baggie of what I believed to be cocaine. I took all three and also any type of medicine I could find. I began using the pot on occasion but was too scared to try the white powder. I made a section for all of it somewhere in my house.

  All precisely inventoried and organized.

  The trouble with having all that stuff was the prospect of losing it or having it taken from me by bad guys. I needed to reinforce the doors and windows with sturdier wood. I thought I could ins
tall bars for the doors in the front and back but still I wanted to do something to discourage looters if there were any.

  There almost had to be looters out there still. Hell, I was a looter. It only stood to reason there were others like me just waiting to hit the mother lode in my house.

  From a can of red paint, I painted a big red X on all the houses I’d cleared including my own, hoping if the looters came they would think all the houses were picked clean of anything useful and move on without looking. They would probably look anyway but maybe I would get lucky.

  I was in and out throughout the day but aside from the zombies I’d found trapped in houses, I didn’t see any others wandering around.

  Again, I wondered if they were dying off for real somewhere but had no real desire to go looking for the answer. I was going to take it slow.

  I had my fire that night and burned a lot of shit, enjoying the peace and warmth of the blaze for hours until it burned out and I went inside to sleep.

  The next morning I decided it was time to take care of those bodies. I knew they weren’t going to bury themselves.

  But to my exasperated surprise they were all gone just like the first time. The only body on my block was mine. It wasn’t the first time since this started that I wondered if I wasn’t losing my mind.

  I decided to put a pin in it and just get drunk that day.

  That day turned into a three day bender after which I realized how important it was to have some kind of manageable restroom situation. Drinking like that leads to unpleasant things.

  It took another two days to clean my house. This was five continuous days with no new zombie sightings and no explanation for who had taken those bodies.

  It was time to branch out.

  Plus I was super lonely, the romance novels were just making things worse.

  Chapter 13

  “The Evil and the Undead”

  For some absurd reason I decided to wait until dark that night before going out for my first post-apocalyptic drive.

  As dusk drew near, I once again dressed in my dark marauder outfit and made for the garage to check on my car. Seeing it now reminded me of me of my dad. I wondered for the millionth time what happened to me that night. More specifically, what he did to me.