I walked around the spot and looked toward the cabin. I sighed, dumped the bag in the hole, and pushed dirt over it. Covered in sweat, I slipped my shirt off, just as I heard movement in the distance. I snapped my gaze up, and could have sworn I saw a man walking away from the site, a good fifty feet away. Goosebumps burst out all over my body, and I reached to the back of my pants for the gun.
Only I had left the gun at the cabin.
I should have gone back and grabbed a weapon, gotten Katherine, made sure it wasn’t her I had seen. I should have done a lot of things, but instead I picked up the axe and walked toward the place where I had seen the shape. I moved as quietly as I could for a man in size 12 iron-toed boots, which wasn’t very quietly at all. Branches and twigs crunched under me, as did pinecones and green needles left to rot.
A pair of birds shot out of the woods ahead. I gasped when they took flight, but kept my cool. If I had my shotgun, I might have dropped them and had roast bird tonight. They weren’t quail, but they looked very tasty after the stuff I had fed on for the last few days. Deer was tasty but gamey, with a slight musk that reminded me of lamb. The little birds, though, with some salt and pepper on the open fire would be quite a fine meal, even if I had to spit out buckshot.
There was a small clearing ahead, and I stopped to look around, turning in a full circle. I listened when I didn’t see anything, just stood in place with my eyes closed, but nothing … wait. Was that a keening sound?
It reminded me of a dog or something, maybe caught in a trap. As much as I had traipsed over this area, it was still possible that I missed a snare left by a hunter. If it was a raccoon, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I’d probably have to kill it rather than face getting bitten trying to set it free.
I moved toward the sound, which came from the direction of the sinking sun. The bright light blinded me, so I shaded my eyes with one hand as I crept up on the location.
I came upon a man who seemed to be stuck on a tree. A branch had snagged his jacket, and he wasn’t able to get loose. He was dressed in rags, like he had lived in the woods for a long time. His hair was disheveled and full of twigs and pine needles. How long had he been out here? His jacket was green, which explained why it had been so hard to see him. It wasn’t camouflage, but the color was just the sort of green to make a person’s eyes slip past it in the woods.
“You okay?” I asked in a low tone that was meant to make him aware of my presence. I was carrying an axe, after all, and having someone creep up and scare the shit out of me was a good excuse to turn around and attack first, then ask questions while cleaning up the wounds. He did turn around, but I wasn’t expecting the vacant look on his face that proclaimed him to be dead.
I backed up as the zombie turned. He moved slowly and moaned at me. His face was a nightmare of wounds, I guessed from walking through the woods and getting his face scratched. I supposed when you didn’t feel pain, you didn’t really care about twigs whipping against your face and body.
I shuddered at the thought, then I got a look at his mouth, which was dry and covered in old blood. This contrasted against the blue lips and jagged, yellow teeth. He continued to turn and shuffle at the same time. He keened in that tone I had heard earlier, taking it for an animal. The analytical part of my brain pondered how the thing could make noise like that when he clearly wasn’t breathing. His jacket was open, and his shirt was in shreds. He even had a gaping wound in his gut, and out of that horror fell a mass of maggots and things that would haunt my sleep that night. He tried to stagger forward but remained caught. I backed up and wanted to run. I wanted to go back to the cabin and forget about what I had seen. I wanted to run screaming, then come back with one of the assault rifles and blow this horror away.
Instead, I unlimbered the axe, as if suddenly remembering it was there. I held it in two hands and regarded my opponent. Though it offered no real fight, I had to kill the thing on principle alone. When I was back in Vesper Lake, I had been fighting for my life. Now I was just doing preventive maintenance. It had to be done for our safety; I would put a rabid dog down the same way.
I lifted the axe high above my head. The back of it was flat, and I hoped it would splatter less if I hit him on the temple, and then crushed his skull while he was on the ground. I lowered the haft in a horizontal plane to the ground, watching him raise one arm toward me like an automaton. Then he tugged forward, and with a rip, the man’s jacket tore as he staggered toward me.
I swung too late and hit him in the shoulder, which pushed him to the side. He spun nearly around with the impact, but turned again to come at me. I backed up, stepped on a fallen branch, and stumbled backward. Reaching out with one hand, I found nothing to catch me, so I had to take a few steps to recover. He came at me, eyes livid and teeth bared. He moaned, and the remains of his jagged teeth and torn lips were the only things I managed to focus on.
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.