Timothy Long: Beyond the Barriers

“My wife’s friend owns a latte stand, and the customers were reporting what they saw when they ordered drinks. Isn’t that funny? Let me get a triple shot mocha. Hey, did you hear zombies were eating people at the store?”

He laughed out loud, then looked down at the patio. His eyes went unfocused for a minute, and I thought I knew what he was thinking, because I had been thinking the same thing all day. What if this was really it? The end of everything? What I saw today, up close, as well as on CNN, had rattled me.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Hole up and see what happens. Maybe it won’t get this far and we’ll be safe.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been watching the news all day, and it is crazy in some of the cities. But we’re so far from all that, you know? I think we’ll be safe here. Just wait it out, wait for the government to call out the army or national guard. All you have to do to survive is not get bit, right?”

“Look, Dev, I am out of here. I’m packing my shit and heading to the hills. If you have another place to go that’s far from civilization, I suggest you go there and stay put until the smoke clears.”

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad. It can’t be.” He talked until he had convinced himself. I bet he practiced the speech in his head before he came over. I couldn’t do anything to convince him otherwise, and I didn’t want to take the time.

“I have a place to hide up in the hills. Why don’t you and Lisa join me?” I cursed myself even as the words came out. I didn’t have enough supplies to feed three mouths, let alone one.

He shook his head. A strong refusal backed up by fear in his eyes.

I looked over and noticed that Edwards’s little import was running, and the door was cracked open. In my haste earlier to get the goods in my house and sorted, I didn’t notice my neighbor had left his car idling. In fact, when I looked at his place now, I realized that his front door was open a couple of inches. But I saw him in the back yard, so he had to be home. I had seen the top of his head and assumed he was standing back to look at his yard or something.

Maybe he was just … then the noise came.

I moved to the side of my patio, where the corner nearly butted up against his yard, and looked into the back of mine. Edwards had been working on his fence off and on for about three months now, and it was almost done, but the back near our green belt hadn’t even been started. I saw my neighbor come around the fence and walk toward me.

“Hey man, everything all right?” I asked.

He was Argentinian and had a slight accent, but just now, he didn’t answer. We were on friendly terms, but not as close as Devon and I were. Still, I considered him a friend—well, up until now. He didn’t look so good. He looked gray and tired. Devon stood on the doorstep and slipped his glasses off, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. He put them back on, and the gray man turned and stumbled toward us. His attention set on me, and he started moaning and snarling like a dog.

“Oh shit, what do we do?” Devon’s voice bordered on hysteria. He looked around at the empty porch as if searching for a weapon, but there was not even a scrap of furniture on it. Then he glanced over the yard.

I didn’t wait around to find a weapon. Edwards was moving slowly enough that I didn’t feel he represented much of a threat. Of course, I could have been fooling myself. After all, it had been a while since I was in the service, and all those fighting skills were a little rusty. I should have gone back and gotten the axe from my house, but I didn’t feel the same heat I did earlier when those monsters attacked the woman in the silver BMW. What I felt was oddly cool and collected, the same way I used to feel before we went into the action.

“Hey, you all right?” I had to be sure before I did anything. I was suddenly light on my feet; the old moves came back like I had practiced them just yesterday. I shifted to the right, so one side of my body was presented, while my left was at an angle, so I made less of a target. I’ve heard it called drifting forward, only I was about to become a whirlwind.

Edwards was covered in red, like he had spilled an entire bottle of wine down his shirt. He was missing one side of his neck, and the ear opposite hung by a flap of skin. He moaned at me like he was half asleep, and I saw a huge chunk of skin hanging out of his mouth. I wondered if he had bitten himself.

Then his wife, Cindy, came out the open door and stumbled forward. Half of her face was torn off. The portly woman always had an easy laugh, and told me dirty jokes when Edwards wasn’t around. She wouldn’t be telling jokes now. Not by a long shot.

“Devon, stay back,” I called, but didn’t look back for him, trusting he had the sense to stay in place.

Edwards shambled toward me, blood dripped from the wound on his head. It splattered down his face and onto his shirt. His wife didn’t look much better; her wounds were also horrific. I had a vision of him coming home, her greeting him at the door. Maybe he was freshly bitten and it hadn’t kicked in yet. But he died there while she dabbed at the blood and exclaimed that he needed to go to the doctor. He came back as his undead self and attacked his wife of over two decades. Now I would have to contend with them, and I didn’t feel anything but shame.

I lashed out with a side kick that swept my neighbor off his legs and onto his back. He was less than two feet away, and I just flowed into the move. Then I was past him, and I would have administered several punches to the face, but I was once again leery of the blood. What would happen if that stuff got in my mouth or into a wound? Would that be enough to kill and change me into one of them?

Landing like that would have taken the breath away from a normal man and made him think twice about getting up, but old Edwards must have been feeling lucky, because he rolled over to get up again. I kicked him hard under the chin, like his head was a soccer ball. He flopped over and didn’t move for a moment.

She was getting closer, and I didn’t want to hurt her. I dashed behind her, snatched the back of her shirt, and dragged her toward their house. She went under protest, trying to spin and snap at me the entire time. I shoved her inside so that she landed face first on the floor, and I slammed the door shut. I doubted she was smart enough to figure out how to get out. She seemed to have the motor skills of a toddler.

Edward was another problem altogether. He was getting back up again, and I didn’t think I could maneuver him inside the house while she was trying to get out.

I walked up to his form as it came up on all fours, threw my leg up high in the air, and then came down with the back of my shoe to his neck in a downward axe kick. I felt something snap beneath the blow, and then he fell to the ground, lifeless and still.

I panted for a moment, leaned over, and gasped for air. Then I turned from his body and threw up everything in my stomach.

That was two. Two people dead at my hand, and the day wasn’t even over yet. Devon stood on the patio and watched me come up on shaky legs. His eyes met mine, and I could only read a sort of horror that made me want to turn away in shame. I felt terrible that he had to watch it, almost as much as I felt bad about killing the two that day.

“That is why you need to get out of Dodge, my man,” I said and went inside to pack. “And my offer still stands. Just get Lisa, all the food in the house that is non-perishable, and meet me in front of your house in fifteen minutes.”

“I just can’t leave it all behind. I need to think, to think and to process,” he whispered, almost to himself, then turned and walked away.