Timothy Long - Beyond the Barriers

If he touched me with those teeth, I would be dead before I could curse him. Just a bite—that was all it took. I would have enough time to fall over before he was tearing into my flesh, and in the event I managed to fight him off, I would still have the wound to contend with.

Giving in to gravity, I fell back, landing on my ass in a heap. I rolled to the left as quickly as I could, dropping the axe in the process. Before his hands came up to grab me, I was back on my feet. I pushed his arms down then thrust him away. As he spun to the right, I planted my boot in the small of his back and kicked him back the way he had come.

I was panting hard from the rush of adrenaline, from the sudden exertion, and from the fear that was ripping at my brain like a bird of prey. I looked for the axe, but it was lying in the brush, and I was frightened of going for it. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him for even a second. I kicked him again, harder this time. He was driven into the tree, and, as he staggered away, he went down. He made no attempt to break his fall; he just flopped over like a rag doll.

Staring up at me, he cocked his head to the side and went for one leg. His teeth were bared in a rictus that looked plastered there. This thing wore one expression, and that was anger.

I lifted my boot and smashed his face before I could think about what I was doing. Oh Jesus, it crunched under my heel, nose compacting and blood spurting. I lifted my heel again, and this time thrust down so hard that I felt his face cave in under the blow. He still flopped his hands around and kicked at the ground like a struggling animal. The third kick cracked his skull like a giant egg, and soft brain matter flowed around my foot, so that I slipped and almost fell down for the second time that morning.

I staggered back and rubbed the bottom of my shoe on the soft vegetation, as if I could wipe away the guilt of what I had just done to the man. I wanted to throw up my breakfast. I wanted to run back to the cabin and hide in the bedroom for the rest of the day.

I backed away from the corpse. He didn’t move one bit, no final shake or shiver. Limbs didn’t twitch; he was just dead. Again.

Feeling sick, I turned away and went back to the hole I had dug and finished the job. Pushed dirt over the remains of the deer, stared at the ground for a few minutes, looked back at the place where I had crushed a man’s skull.

How in the hell had the guy found this place? Was there another cabin nearby? Were there more of them? I should have taken a moment to walk the area and check for them, but I needed a gun for that. I wasn’t eager to be faced with hand to hand combat again anytime soon.

I returned to the cabin, and Katherine was herself once more—composed, cool, and relaxed, except for the tightness around her eyes. When I kissed her, she hugged me tight, but it felt mechanical. How I wanted to ask her about the sadness that had come over her, about the pain that made her hold back, but I was too afraid of the answers to those questions. I wanted her to be mine. The selfish part of my brain wanted her to belong to me, and not to her family from before the event. I wanted her to love me, not the memory of the things she had lost.

Sighing, I went to collect a gun and some ammo. I told her what had happened in the wood, and she agreed that we should sweep the immediate area. I took one of the handguns, a .40-caliber pistol, and checked the load. The magazine was full, so I tucked it into my belt and loaded my shotgun with as many shells as I could shove in there. Then I tucked a few into my pockets.

She took a 9 mm to cover me, slinging the hunting rifle over her shoulder. I wished we had another shotgun, for up-close work if we needed to fight. The spread would be devastating with both of us shooting. She held the pistol at her side as we left the cabin. I wished I could lock it, but we had never found a key. It was silly. The thing that had attacked me in the woods was surely a lone incident, a lone man—zombie—lost in the woods, and I just happened to stumble upon him. Maybe he had lived somewhere nearby, another cabin or lodge, perhaps. Maybe he had some vague recollection of the area and was just lost. He was probably the same shape I had seen the night before.

We walked outside the cabin, establishing a perimeter a hundred feet in every direction. The day was cool, which suited me just fine. I was too amped up to deal with heat today.

We found—nothing, and I was more than a bit relieved. We went back to the cabin, both exhausted after stomping over the vegetation, through bushes, over piles of needles, around large copses. She kept a compass out and was good with the device, keeping us on the perimeter at all times. She would point back in the direction of the cabin with a grin every time I looked worried about how far we had gone.

We passed the car, looked it over, and then walked to the road as the last part of our reconnoiter. I hugged the bushes while Katherine stood back and covered me. Unmoving, I kept an eye on the entry for a few minutes. My focus roving around, I listened and watched, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. With a heavy sigh, I turned and smiled at her, so she joined me at the gate.

“I hope he was the only one.”

“Me too. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“You’ve killed them before. What’s the big deal?” Her voice was as dead as the thing in the woods I had smashed into the dirt. I regretted the killing, but she seemed blasé, as if taking a human life was the norm.

“I did, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.”

“You get used to it.”

She spun on her heel and walked up the road toward the cabin.

That night was much as the last, except we talked about where we should go next. They had put some gas in the Honda at the fort, but it wouldn’t last long enough to get us around the mountain from this side. We would probably have to head back to Vesper Lake and try to get through the city. I was hoping that if we could keep up enough speed, we would be able to just zip through the tiny town, and then get on the freeway and follow the caravan before a horde figured out where we were going. They should be in Portland now, enjoying the good life. I bet it was all smiles, flowing beer, and plates of hot food. Or at least something to eat, I thought as I chewed on a hunk of dried deer meat that had a strong smoke flavor and nothing else.

We lay in bed, side by side, my head near her ear. Her hair frizzed out, probably from not having any sort of conditioner. I tried to imagine what she had been like before the event, but I had trouble picturing her as a classic soccer mom with a minivan and kids in the back.

“When we reach a place with people, I’ll understand if you want to leave me and find someone else.” She spoke softly into her pillow, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else,” I assured her, tugging her naked body closer to me under the sheets. She was so soft and warm under the blanket that I wanted to stay this way for a week.

“I can’t have children,” she reminded me after a long, quiet moment.

“I don’t care. I don’t have any, and never put much thought into the idea of having them anyway.”

“But it would be irresponsible, Erik. How many people are dead out there? We need everyone to help repopulate the world. I don’t have a place in that world. I can’t contribute a child.”

“Katherine, you aren’t a breeding machine. No one is. Life will return no matter what and no matter who I want to be with. I don’t want to run around and bang rows of girls in the hopes of making one pregnant. There will be plenty of horn dogs up for that job.” I tried to make a joke of it, but she didn’t laugh.