Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

Digging.

For food.

The farmer uttered that same moan. It was a terrible sound of bottomless hunger. Of a need that could never be satisfied. An ugly, awful sound.

“I’m sorry,” said Sam again as he reached for his gun.

Which. Was. Not. There.

No gun. No knife.

The farmer lumbered to his feet and reached for him, moaning louder now. From deep inside the cornfield there were answering sounds. Other moans. Many, many more.

Sam Imura screamed.

Special operator. World-class sniper. DELTA gunslinger. Killer. He screamed because the world was not the world anymore. This was the world. It was all broken and in that moment, beneath the crowds of stars gathered to witness it, Sam realized that he, too, was broken.

So very badly broken. Splintered, fragmented. Torn loose from the things that fastened him to any understanding.

He screamed and the woods erupted with newer, louder moans. The green stalks shivered and shook as pale figures shambled toward him. Reaching and reaching. Farmers and cops, housewives and school kids. A man in a funeral suit. A naked woman with three bullet holes in her stomach. An old lady in a hospital gown. A nurse without eyes. A fireman with no hands. Coming for him.

Sam screamed and screamed, and then something in him broke. Snapped. Shattered.

He was running across the field with no awareness of leaving the cornfield. He was running and yelling. Figures came out of the shadows and he swung at them, chopped at them with the edges of his hands, kicked at them to break knees. They fell but did not die. The broken ones crawled after him. The others walked, lumbered, loped, staggered.

But he ran.

He blinked his eyes and he was in the plastic tree stand, up in the tree. His hands were cut and sore; he had scrapes on his shins. But the rifle was there. His gear bag with the four boxes of shells was there. His other handgun, a Glock 26, was there. Even his canvas bag of beer and food was there.

He was there.

The moon peered over the tops of the trees. More time was missing, but he thought he understood it now. He was going mad, or had gone mad, but some part of him was still on duty, still protecting him. That part of him did not allow Sam to see everything. Not the worst parts. It disallowed him to witness the process of his own collapse, and so it skipped forward, letting the body do what it needed to do and then allowing his consciousness to catch up.

Sure , he thought, that sounds reasonable .

And it was reasonable. Just not to the sane. Not to the unbroken.

Below the tree stand were them . At least forty. Maybe more. When the moon was all the way up he would be able to count better. He had four boxes of rifle ammunition, fifty cartridges to a box. And a hundred rounds of pistol bullets. Sam Imura, broken or not, didn’t need more than one round per target. Not at this range. Not with these slow, shambling targets.

He thought about it. About what the best play was here. He could fight, and maybe clear these things out of his fields—and they were his fields now. Or he could use that handy little Glock and go find his brother and his parents and his friends. After all, if the world was this badly broken, why not simply opt out?

Why not?

This wasn’t the war he trained for. This wasn’t the world he fought for.

Right?

He removed the Glock from the bag, ejected the magazine, held it to the light to make sure it was fully loaded and slapped it back into place. Made sure there was one in the pipe, too. Ready to rock and roll.

The moonlight painted the tops of the corn a lovely silver. He couldn’t see the graves he’d dug, but knew they were there. Two graves. One small, the other smaller. Digging those graves cost him more than he ever wanted to spend. It wasn’t fair that he had to pay that price. It wasn’t fair that those kids had to die like that.

He bent and picked up his radio and fiddled with the dial.

“ This is Billy Trout reporting live from the apocalypse,” said the voice. As if waiting for Sam to find him. Billy was still there. Sam listened to the reporter give updates on what was going on out there. About battles. About losses. About a convoy of school buses taking kids down south to North Carolina. To Asheville, where the military was making a big stand. Billy talked and talked, and there were tears in his hoarse voice.

Sam listened. The dead moaned.

“ If you can hear my voice,” said Billy, “ here’s what you can do.”

He ran down the ways to kill these living dead. Billy called them zombies, but the word didn’t work for Sam. Billy went on to list safe roads, and ones that were impassable. He listed shelters and rescue stations, and disputed the ones that were overrun. Billy talked and talked and talked as the moon rose.

Sam stood there with the Glock. Sometimes he pressed the barrel up under his chin. Sometimes he pointed it down at the white faces.

The two graves burned in his mind.

Billy was with the convoy of school buses. All those kids. Living kids.

That’s how it started for Sam. He and his team helped Billy and his girlfriend, a local cop named Dez Fox, get as many kids out of Stebbins as possible. Some adults, too. Heading south. Heading to Asheville.

Those kids.

Still alive.

The moon was up now and he could count. Fifty-six of them. And probably more out there. Maybe as much as a hundred more who might be drawn by the sound of gunshots. Maybe two hundred more.

Sam smiled. Okay, say two hundred and fifty of them between him and the house. And ten thousand rounds of ammunition split between the house and the truck.

Those kids.

The living ones.

He could not bear the thought of rows of little mounds of carefully sculpted dirt. Could not bear it. That hurt worse than trying to hold onto his sanity. It hurt worse than trying to stay alive.

All those kids. With a single cop, a few adults, and a stupid news reporter to keep them safe.

“This is crazy,” he told himself, saying it out loud, putting it on the wind.

The dead moaned. Dead people moaned.

So, yeah. Crazy.

But at least this was on the sanest side of crazy. Useful crazy. That’s how Sam saw it.

He raised the pistol and took aim. It was a target-rich environment. Any shot would hit. Only careful, precise shots, though, would kill.

He was very careful.

He was very precise.

He never missed. Not once.

And if he was crazy, then so what? Surely the world—the broken, hungry world—was crazier. So that balanced it all out. At least he was crazy with a purpose, a goal. A mission. Soldiers need a mission. Even insane ones.

Maybe especially insane ones.

That’s what Sam told himself. As he fired and fired and fired. “I’m coming,” he said to the night. To the wind. To all those children on the buses. “I’m coming.”

Sam did not really remember leaving the farm.

He had no idea where he got the UPS truck, or how he filled it with supplies from his crippled truck. So many things were blurry or simply gone.

Sam smiled. “I’m coming.”

The sign ahead said, Welcome to West Virginia .

The truck rolled on, heading south.

Author’s Note: This story is a sequel to my novels Dead of Night and Fall of Night , as well as the short story “Lone Gunman,” which appeared in the anthology, Nights of the Living Dead , which I co-edited with George A. Romero. That short story was written at George’s request, to officially connect my novels to his landmark movie. He said that those books were, as far as he was concerned, the official explanation for why the dead rose in his movies. Our anthology was the very last project George completed before he died, and was released just a week before his passing. This story continues the tale, and is dedicated with love to my friend, George, the king and godfather of the zombie apocalypse.