Timothy Long - Beyond the Barriers

“The fuck?” Scott’s voice came from behind me. He stared at me with huge eyes that looked none too friendly. I looked between the girl and him, and I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter.

“You think this shit is funny?”

“The look on your face is. You should see it.”

Scott scowled and turned away, then he rolled over and sat up. He looked the way I felt—haggard and worn. The girl pressed herself to the edge of the cage and watched us from underneath a curtain of hair. She cried gently, mewing like a small animal. How long had she been in the cage? Yesterday she was barely coherent. Yesterday she was much as she appeared now. Small. Lost. Sad.

Another minute and she seemed to recognize me. Sleep probably dulled her mind. It had dulled mine, not to mention the affects of hunger and thirst. She gave me a half smile and slid across the ground to me. I held my hand out, and she shook it.

“Nice to meet choo,” she mumbled, and I nearly broke into tears.

“Just ‘cause we slept together don’t mean we are engaged,” Scott shot from behind me. I turned to regard him, and he had a big shit-eating grin on his face as well. For the first time since the attack, I felt like I was among friends. I felt like I was among the living.

An hour passed where we spoke in low whispers. The girl’s name was Haley, and she was seventeen. She told me a bit more about the area in which she had lived, and even spoke of her life before the coming of the zombies. She was not the typical teenager who was filled with angst and taken to brooding about being misunderstood. She participated in a drama class at school and even did some plays. Had been very close to her mother and father. Every time she mentioned them, she wept.

We sat together, the trio of us. Haley smiled every once in a while at one of Scott’s jokes. I smiled as well. It was a strange feeling to be happy in this cage where we should be huddling in misery, but it was like an unspoken bond had formed that would not let us succumb to despair.

Zombies walked past us, and sometimes one would stop and stare at us. A well-dressed man—except for the blood and missing ears, stopped in front of the cage and watched us for a long time. Scott tossed him one-liners: “What ju staring at, Pedro? What’s wrong? Zombie got your tongue?” He picked up clumps of the earth and tossed them at the cage. One flew through the bars and smacked the dead man in the face, but the corpse didn’t even acknowledge the blow.

For the last insult, Scott approached the bar, unzipped his pants, and peed all over the dead man. Haley had the good sense to look shocked. She turned her head and covered her eyes, but she was giggling.

Scott did a nice job of covering the man in urine, then he zipped up and took a seat with us once again. It was good to have some levity, but the gnawing hunger in my gut was getting to be a real problem. I was having pains that made me clench my hands and hold my stomach. Sometimes I shook uncontrollably, and sometimes I wanted to grab a chunk of dirt and stuff it in my mouth. Anything to fill that void.

I thought back to the gruel I had eaten with the survivors at the Walmart. I would pretty much kill for a bowl of that right now.

Inspecting the cage took Scott and me all of two minutes. It was tall, rounded on top, but covered in a plastic material to keep some rain out. I stuck my hand out the bars by the metal door, but I couldn’t tell what kind of lock held us. I stretched and cranked my wrist around. It was no use. Whatever held us in was out of reach, which made me stomp the ground in frustration.

“I tried that the first day. The lock must be in the center of the door. I couldn’t reach it,” the girl informed us, then went back to staring at nothing. I scowled at that.

Scott and I went over the entire cage again, but we could find no easy way out. Maybe if we had some kind of torch or a hacksaw. Sadly, all we had was some rancid human flesh.

Later in the day, we sat together but didn’t speak. Rain drizzled down, and the sky was dark gray. One of the ghouls walked to our cage and tossed a couple of chunks of meat inside. I eyed him—make that her—but refused to look at the meat.

She was tall and thin, with hands that hung like emaciated sticks. Her fingers were long, and some were missing fingernails. Her skin was the same mottled off-color of the other ghouls. Her eyes glowed green just as those of the other ghouls I had seen, and she was a nightmare. Her skin was sunken, her cheeks barely existent, for her cheekbones were so sharp they looked like they could be used for weapons.

She didn’t speak; just shook as if she were laughing, and then walked away. The zombie wore a faded t-shirt with Elton John’s face on it, which was a strange contrast to her nightmare visage. A pair of canvas-style pants hung around her bony waist.

“Come back with some Wendy’s next time,” Scott called out and flipped her the bird, but she didn’t acknowledge him.

I snickered at his comment.

“Goddamn that woman is butt ugly.” Haley giggled at Scott’s joke this time.

“She was probably a bouncer before the world changed.”

“Nah, man.” Scott shot back. “She was a porn star. I bet she used to shoot three or four movies a week.”

I laughed at the image of that ugly thing ever being attractive. Then I worried that we may have crossed a line by discussing porn in front of the girl, but she didn’t even blink.

“I think she used to be a barista. At a Starbucks or Tully’s,” Haley offered.

“She’d scare off the customers.” Scott scoffed, turned his head, and spit out of the cage. It sailed through the bars and smacked a passing zombie in the leg.

“You’re making an art out of it,” I told him, half expected him to start throwing feces at the zombies, which would be just about the ultimate in irony. Look at the humans in a cage throwing their shit at a bunch of undead.

“I might run out of spit soon. Hope it rains.”

“We’re going to die in here, aren’t we?” Haley whispered.

I went to her side and draped my arm over her shoulder, wanting to tell her that everything was going to be okay and that I had a plan. The problem was, I had nothing. Not only was I out of ideas, I was so hungry there was no way we would have the strength to fight the undead off if we did get free. All they had to do was wait outside for us to eat the rancid zombie meat or die of starvation.

“You’re a brave kid. I respect that you have survived this long, so I’m not gonna bullshit you.” I took a breath. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. They never open the cage, so there is no way we can attack or run. We don’t have any sort of tools to get through those bars.”

To make my point, I walked up to the bars and struck one with the meaty part of my hand. They rang hollow, which made the girl’s face drop. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but I truly saw no hope in our situation.

The bars were thick, at least an inch around. They must have originally housed some sort of small animals, maybe even monkeys.

“There has to be a way.” She sighed and stared out, up at the clouds. They had grown thicker, making the day even darker. Now a crackle sounded from far away, and a blast of lightning lit the sky. It was a full twelve seconds before we heard the thunder. I watched my two companions, and sure enough, they had both been counting.

The rain started coming down harder. Sticking my hand out, I let some run over my palm in an attempt to clean it. I rubbed it against the inside of one pant leg, then stuck it out again and caught enough to sip.

Haley and Scott joined me, and for the next hour, we drank our fill. After the negative turn our conversation had taken, all at my doing, it was pleasant to return to happier thoughts.