Dating : The Last Zombie

I believe, with all that was once my heart, once my soul, that I am the last. I am a rare thing.

I believe my head, yet fixed tenuously upon my neck, is the last of its kind. I’m sure this will be changed very soon.

I hear them down at the river. Their voices carry far. They shout to one another, “He’s over here! He’s over there!” I am not.

They bark, “Downstream! I think he’s downstream!” Why is it the living always chose downstream?

As of three nights ago, there were yet around thirty of us left. But our friends, their fear binding them, organized. Our friends armed themselves. They fought back. They soon discovered that even though we were grotesque we were not invincible. They realized that finishing us off was a simple matter of completely severing our heads from our necks, the hunger would be killed and we would know peace. As of two nights ago, less than twenty of us still had our heads. Our friends fought well. And now, as of last night, I believe I am the last. Andy led the assault against us.

Andy, he had this boat, this little skiff with an electric motor. We used to go fishing out on the reservoir. Tonight, he had a machete and he was hungry for a neck to sling it against. My neck was the last available. We both knew this.

Andy had been married to Jill for over twenty years. Night before last, I ate Jill’s face. Didn’t want to. It’s a fact I did. This hunger is not a willful thing. It’s a cursed infection, a morbid passion, not the sort of thing one would ask for. Andy hates me all the same. Jill wasn’t one of us for very long. A blessing. At the height of our frenzy, Blane, a friend of Andy’s, a friend of Jill’s, a friend of mine, hacked her head from her neck. It was right.

Old Marvin Walker brought dogs to the hunt but they wouldn’t get out of the truck. Dogs do fine with the living. They do well with the dead. The in-between scares the hell out of them. The dogs just wouldn’t get out of the truck.

It was last night when we fell upon the old grey house on the outskirts of town. I might have lived there before this. Difficult to recall such things.

We wouldn’t have known they were there except the old man coughed; my dad, I think. He had Dorothy, his daughter-in-law, and his grandchild, Melissa, hidden in a closet. He stood outside the closet door with an axe held hard to his chest. But he coughed. Otherwise, we might have moved right passed deeper into town.

My old man swung that axe with great love and a powerful passion. He accomplished several strikes but such wounds are nothing to us. The others, they ate his head. They ate Dorothy’s head too. A good thing; such a death is the only vaccine.

I wasn’t much moved when what was left of Tiny, the guy who once worked down at the store, ripped a leg from Melissa and tossed it to me. I ate some of her calf. But then a few of the others ate her head making the rest of her body sour to us. I tossed what was left. When Andy and his militia arrived they got most of us. I alone walked away. Hope Andy kills me soon.

Andy was pissed when he led his militia back upstream on Wolf Creek toward the highway. I had already crossed the highway once, moved east, towards town, was crossing back again. I was heading for the tracks that paralleled the highway, where I used to walk that dog. Can’t recall a name. One tie to the next. I saw them all, their flashlights and such. They didn’t see me. I wanted it to be quick. I wanted it to be nearer home. Maybe that grey house on the edge of town, somewhere vaguely familiar I think. I followed the tracks.

Was already past the gas station, the store and the tavern, all less than fifty yards away on the north side of the highway when I saw four of Andy’s guys, rifle barrels high, making their way eastward along the tracks ahead of me. They were scared. They moved slower than me. They barked, dropped to a knee, pointed their rifles at every rustling of the wind. I wasn’t even near them. They were way ahead of me. If they would have just stayed where they were I would have come up upon them. But they made their way through the brush back to the highway. Turned west again, towards the tavern. I carried on along the tracks, east. We passed within twenty yards of each other.

Didn’t want to, but I left the tracks and made my way through the brush back onto the highway. I did. I turned back west. Going after Andy’s guys I guess. Moon, it was full. I wasn’t far behind Andy’s men. Beside myself.

I saw, if the thing I perceived could be called seeing, one eye gone and the other dangling where it ought naught, the four men disappear through the tavern door. I started to follow. Didn’t want to.

About that time old Marvin Walker, a truck full of scared dogs, pulled into the gravel lot in front of the tavern and parked. He was easy. He didn’t look much different than he usually did before I ate a hunk of his side and part his left hand. Marvin was ninety-some. I and others, had always thought he looked sort of dead anyway but he always just kept plugging along. A funny thing, his ole heart exploded when my teeth tore a chunk from his side. Got his hand next but he died and turned sour before I could get far. Apples to oranges, he was practically unscathed before he passed and became inedible; became one like me. Head was still in place. Then, his face, that look. They all do it. First they close their eyes in anguish or peace and then pass, only to open them again, bewildered, as a cold, cold wave of rigor mortis swamps their bodies, just…not…quite…cold enough. I wasn’t alone anymore.

So ole Marvin gave me that look. He realized the hunger. He turned toward the tavern door. He could smell the life inside. A bit of Marvin’s side, a morsel of his hand, I needed nothing more. Marvin was new to the hunger. Was best he followed me but he didn’t. I understand. He didn’t want to go into the tavern, just had to. Daylight was not far off. I backed away and crossed the highway, through the brush, back onto the tracks, continued east toward the familiar, I think.

In the tavern, Andys’ boots were planted squarely and angrily on the felt of a pool table, a machete raised in one hand, a mug of beer in the other, he rallied his troops. Andy was not a man of great physical stature, but from atop that pool table, he towered like a Greek general on horseback, “We will not sleep until the last is gone……”

Marvin Walker opened the door and waddled into the tavern, looking as dead as he has most days for the past ten years or so.

“Should we sleep before the last is gone….only God knows how many of us will be of them by morning!”

Behind the bar, Ed popped open bottles of ‘Lone Star’ and ‘Budweiser’ as fast as his hands would move. He and his husband, Bob, owned the Tavern. He was worried as he scanned the crowd searching for Bob. Bob wasn’t there.

Andy raised his beer and his machete. “We must stay together! We must hunt and fight as one…”

“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” like a tribe of angry chimpanzees.

“…each protecting and protected by those next to him!”

“Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” like drunk, scared chimpanzees.

More beer swilled.

Marvin Walker reached and grabbed Steve King by the back of the neck and pulled his face into his teeth and bit off a chunk of his cheek and some of his nose. Steve King screamed like a little girl before his face, well, his eyes, took on that ‘look’ and he became hungry. A mere moment later, King had little Erica Baker’s neck in his teeth while her feet dangled and thrashed the air. Now, Erica’s head was for the most part bit clean off, yet connected by a strip of skin. It’s the spine bones that make a difference. But it weren’t no ‘peaceful’ look before she passed. A fortunate soul.

There was a moment of shock and hesitation, a fatal sort of thing, a small slither of forever before at least some of the tribe understood what was happening in their midst. They lifted their machetes, their axes, their blunt instruments. Marvin lost his head, as did Steve King. Little Erica Baker was thoroughly verified as passed and was now unrecognizable. Blood everywhere. A great deal of it splattered onto Henry Gibson and his young son Henry. They were both still frozen in fear. Hadn’t even lifted their machetes. Even though neither was bit, being covered in blood and all, they sure looked bit. So right away they both lost their heads at the hands of their neighbors. I was alone once again.

Other than a gasp now and again, some heavy breathing, everything became still…quiet”

“We must not sleep!” Andy whispered.

Bob kicked the door open with his boot and stumbled into the tavern. Had his arms full. Flashlights, food and batteries. Forty-some-odd men, women and children, all neighbors, all with raised machetes and axes, blood everywhere, squared off facing Bob. Bob, completely surrounded, arms burdened with bags, “What?”

Children whimpering in the corners of the tavern. Henry Gibson’s wife sobbing. Andy up-righted a chair and sat, the point of his machete in the tavern floor, his chin and hands resting on the butt.

Andy surveyed the tavern. All who were left living were here, in this one room with this one door. It was about two hours before daybreak. Andy stood and placed his hand on Blane’s shoulder, “Let’s do this a bit differently, my brother.”

Andy up-righted two more chairs, placed them facing the door about eight feet from it. He placed three more chairs behind the first row of two and another row of three more behind that row. He called to Stewart Clay and Jose’ Hernandez, both seniors in high school. He told them to sit in the outside two chairs of the third row. He called over Jake Carpenter and posted him in the third row between Stewart and Jose’. Jake was a farmer, a huge man, a gentle man who Andy knew would have difficulty raising his machete even to the neck of something already dead. But Jake was a calm sort of man, a quite courage about him. Andy thought Jake’s nearness would calm the two boys on either side of him who were so wide eyed and trembling, their fist, white knuckled around the butt of a machete.

Andy called to three young men whose names he didn’t know but they were young, strapping and serious. Andy posted them and their machetes in the middle row of three. Andy and Blane took the first two chairs. Andy leaned forward, the point of his machete stabbed into the floor, his chin and hands resting upon the butt once again, he spoke out, “Everyone behind these chairs….go to sleep if you can. If you’re up here in one of these chairs, in front of this door….don’t you dare! It’s almost daylight.”

Andy listened to the breathing, the snoring of those sprawled under tables, on tables, on the bar, in the chairs about him. Daylight was glowing under the threshold of the door. He shook Blane awake. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

Blane nodded. The tavern momentarily filled with brilliance when Andy opened the door and went out. Some woke up.

Andy winced into the sunlight. He walked slow, eyes down, tip of his machete dragging in the dirt. He wasn’t on guard. He knew where he was going. No hurry.

Like a stone rolled away from the entrance of a tomb, the man door on the side of Andy’s barn was off its hinges. A Vantablackness beyond the threshold.

Andy walked around to the front of the barn and punched a code into a keypad. A sound like chains in a dryer as the big door rolled up. Standing in the doorway, Andy, machete at the ready, silhouetted in the brilliance of the morning sun.

His skiff, on a trailer and covered with a tarp, a quivering lump inside the boat beneath the tarp. Andy knew the light would hurt, sear, but he wasn’t gentle. After all, I ate Jill’s face.

I can’t say I was in anyway aware of Andy’s presence. Not in any way that would make sense. Can’t say I was aware of the light searing me or the convulsing and quivering of my corpse. Can’t say I was aware that Andy had walked over to his little fridge and grabbed two beers. He opened both with the dull side of his machete. Can’t really say I was aware….least not in any way I could explain…that he had set one beer in the hull of the boat next to me. Can’t say I was in anyway aware of the streaking machete.

Andy kicked open the tavern door, mumbled. He let his machete fall to the floor. He sat.

A woman called out the thing everyone wanted to know, “Are we safe?”

Andy didn’t look up. He was tired. “I believe with all my heart, with all my soul, he was the last.”

The End