They came for our dead Read online

  “Yeah,” he said, hanging his head. “I kinda figured. I checked on our livestock this morning while you were eating. Not one of them’s alive. Our cows were gutted, ripped apart, and I saw the same with birds and rodents in the yard. Even the barn rats are gone.”

  I looked over at Dennis and saw various emotions playing across his wrinkled face: anger, sadness, and fear. He had worked that land and tended to those animals for years here, and it was all ripped out from under him in less than a day. We had all lost a lot, and he was not immune to it.

  “I have not told Isabella yet, ‘bout the animals. She’s real soft when it comes to her pets, and that’s gonna tear her up. I fibbed for her own good, told her I’d keep the cows inside today, let ‘em eat the straw I have stored there. She-She…”

  “I know, Dennis. I know. What do you think we should do? Do we stay or go? You know this area better than I do,” I said, doing my best to keep my mind off my father that we were about to cram in a hole, sans coffin.

  “First, we need to finish this,” he said, pointing down at the grave. “Maybe then we should head up to my deer blind out back. It’s some twenty feet, overlooks the fields, with clear sight of five or six miles. We’ll check on the neighbor’s house, see what we can see. They live ‘bout two miles away. If they’re still alive and kickin’, it might be good to get together with them, strength in numbers and all that. I figure we have enough food here for a week or two, if we eat light. I don’t wanna eat what’s left of them cows. Who knows what fungus those dead bastards brought in?”

  I stood, nodded, grabbed my shovel, and resumed digging. Dennis silently joined me, and we didn’t stop till the hole was fairly square and uniformly deep. We paused, bowed our heads, and each said something under our breath. We then lowered my father’s body, still wrapped in a homemade quilt. In minutes, we had him covered with the freshly dug dirt and filled in the hole as best we could. Then, while I silently stood over my father’s grave for a quiet moment, Dennis walked off to put the shovels away, leaving me alone as he faded from my view.

  I soon joined him as he headed away from the house and road. We went back to where unworked green fields, yet unaffected by the fall weather and still growing tall in spots. His deer blind rose from the earth, covered with strands of camouflage netting. Stairs led up to a boxy room. There were slits on three sides, but the fourth housed the door. Dennis climbed the stairs quickly and surely, and I followed, tightly clutching the shotgun.

  The box at the top of the stairs opened into a small room that offered protection from the elements. There were gun ports on three sides, and it was furnished with a small gas heater and benches.

  Dennis bent down and opened a small chest that was lying under a bench next to three gallons of water. From it, he pulled out a pair of hunting binoculars. “These’ll give us a good view of the fields,” he said. He raised the glasses to his eyes and peered through one of the slits on the right side. “I’m gonna go check on the Wards, my neighbors,” he said. Then, almost instantly, he gasped and stepped back, and his hand that held the binoculars fell slack against his leg. “Oh my God,” Dennis said.

  “What? What is it?” I cried. “Let me see!”

  He handed me the glasses turned and threw open the door to the deer blind, then took off down the steps, nearly running.

  I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and peered in the same direction, to the right. There, in the distant fields, running our way, I saw them. Not one or two dead but dozens of them were coming, tearing at all living things as they moved along. Dark, monstrous shapes, full of death and murder, chased the wildlife and livestock and destroyed the fields, on the prowl for more life to take.

  I ran down the stairs and quickly caught up with Dennis.

  “Pack up now, Isabella!” he shouted at his house before he ran inside. “We have to leave!” Then, as soon as he crossed the threshold, he flipped some keys back to me. “Go get the Lincoln Continental, in the old white shed,” he said.

  Without another word, I ran to the shed and unbolted the doors. The car I found there was at least a decade old, parked under an ancient, rose-colored horse blanket. I pulled off the cover and eased inside. The interior was immaculate, large and roomy and well preserved. I put the key in the ignition and gave it a hopeful turn, relieved when the engine roared to life. A look at the console told me we had a full tank of gas, and the odometer only showed less than 4,000 miles. It was then that I realized Dennis had a proclivity for Fords, as I saw a few behind this one. I backed the Lincoln out carefully and turned it around, feeling it out. It was a bit loud and sluggish at first, but the farther I went, the better it sounded and moved. I drove to the house as fast as I could, then left the engine running and popped the trunk.

  Brian was the first to climb in, in the back behind the passenger seat. He did bother to offer any help as we loaded bottles of water, ammunition, canned food, or blankets. Instead, he just sat in the car, barking orders for us to hurry and telling us which things we couldn’t afford to forget.

  Dennis ran down the steps looking like a madman, brandishing a rifle, the shotgun I’d been carrying, and his pistol. “You drive. You’re younger, and I’m sure you got better eyes and reflexes than me. I’ll ride shotgun.”

  “Literally, huh?” I said, nodding toward his arsenal.

  “You got it, son. Just drive, and I’ll keep ‘em off us.”

  As we finished loading as many supplies as we could cram into the trunk and every square inch of space in the Continental, I kept looking nervously around us. It really only took minutes, but it felt like a bitter eternity, and I expected to see one of those things breaking through the fields and charging at us at any moment.

  Finally, it was time for me to climb behind the wheel. “Keep a lookout back there,” I told Brian over my shoulder.

  Isabella was the last one out of the house, and she left the front door open. She clutched a box against her chest in the crook of her arm, full of photographs and small mementos of her life. She was dressed in a heavy coat and came down the steps slowly, one at a time, using the handrails, with a grave look of pain in her eyes that intensified with every bend of her stiff knees.

  Getting old is not for the weak, I thought, reminded of my poor father once again

  “Hey, what about the dogs?” Brian asked out of nowhere, and I couldn’t blame him, as I was an animal lover myself and had taken quite a liking to one of the dogs in particular.

  “I put down a week’s worth of food and water for them,” Isabella said after her husband helped her pack her keepsakes in the trunk. “I tried to coax ‘em out, but they won’t leave the house. I left every door open for them, so they can escape if one of those things gets inside.”

  My heart broke at the thought of leaving the animals behind, but once we were all seated in the car, I put it in drive and began to pull away. Dennis and Isabella looked longingly at their house, and a tear glinted in Dennis’s eye when the two golden labs cautiously stepped out and sniffed the air. They had ridden with their owners many times before, but now, something stopped them, some vile odor our noses were not sensitive enough to catch. They turned their heads to the right, looking out over an empty field of dead, brown grass, to a place where something was moving. In an instant, and with a chorus of whimpers and growls, the labs backed into the house, gone from our sight.

  Seconds later, one of the dead broke through, moving with an unnatural gait. It dropped down to all fours and began flailing its limbs, digging into the soil to gain more traction. Its black body came at us, and I wheeled the car around the circular driveway, honking the horn to get its attention so it would leave the house and the dogs alone.

  I led the thing along, kicking up gravel behind us as we approached the road. It never strayed and stayed behind us the whole time, never tiring, never deviating from its mission for mile after mile.

  Once we were very far from the house and safely away, Dennis turned his rifle on it and tried to study it wi
th the scope as we moved. Rarely, just once or twice every few minutes, its body and face seemed human, and its black, chalky skin regained its normal color. Its talons reverted to familiar hands, and the dark, contorted, expressionless face appeared to be normal, with hair, teeth, and skin. In those moments, the body stood upright, but that only lasted for seconds at a time before it once again became the dark menace it was. All I could do was follow the twisting, turning dirt road, making my way through the labyrinth of corn, with that thing ever on our tail.

  Blam!

  As soon as Dennis had a clear shot at the thing, he took it, and the sound echoed through the morning air. “Direct hit!” he exclaimed, then added, “Nothing. I hit it square in the head, and all it did was knock some black dust off it.”

  We continued on, racing along the road, heading back to the highway. I had no idea which way to go; I just reacted, going this way and that, trying to put miles between us and the danger. None of my traveling companions said anything, but all eyes were wide and staring out the windows, looking out for more of the dead.

  “Oh my,” Isabella said as we passed a spot in the fields where something had been slain, so torn apart that we couldn’t even tell what it was. It was now just a mass of blood, flesh, and bone, and whatever had killed it had return to the fields.

  I drove on, for I knew nothing to say to comfort her.

  “Peter, what do you do?” Isabella asked from the back seat, wanting to change the subject.

  I loosened my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel a bit and immediately felt an ache in my hands. My whole body was on edge, my muscles tight, in a state of constant fear and readiness, quickly wearing myself out. When Isabella asked me the normal, everyday question, I eased back in the seat and relaxed a bit, then took a sip of the water from a plastic bottle someone handed me. “Nothing too exciting,” I said, realizing that it was Monday, and I was supposed to be at work on the day after visiting my father. “I lay bricks, and I’m a low-level supervisor for a construction company. We’re usually laid off in the winter months, unless some big job comes along that can be worked in cooler temperatures. We’ve had quite a bit of that since the economy has improved. I do some home stuff, too, but I like the big jobs, except they’ve got me on the road a lot. One year, I had work down in Louisiana for a few months. Sue, my wife, sure didn’t like me being away that long, so I’ve been doing my best to stay close by recently.”

  I stopped the car and looked around, noticing that we’d finally made it to the freeway, the point of decision. I had to either head back to Grand Rapids, where I had come from, or drive east and possibly make Lansing, closer to my home.

  “Not sure ‘bout that way,” Dennis said when he spotted a dead thing loping on the way to Grand Rapids.

  The thing had to be almost miles away, but it still sent chills up my back. I wanted to go anywhere where those creatures didn’t exist, but I thought a city would be our best option. Several cars littered the highway, their bodies crumpled, and their tires torn, their drivers and passengers lying on the pavement. In all directions, something was burning just out of our view, evidenced by the dark, roiling smoke in the sky.

  Since it was after lunchtime, Isabella passed out some food. I ate it without any regard of what it was, the washed it down with the rest of my water. I was rather certain we could loot anything we needed from any abandoned house or grocery store we came across, so I didn’t think rationing was necessary, at least not yet. I was also sure the dead now outnumbered the living by a large factor. In fact, during our drive, I had seen nothing living, not human or animal. It was as if the whole of Planet Earth was a tomb, devoid of life.

  “Lansing,” I finally said, then turned the car to the east.

  I drove no faster than thirty miles an hour. That gave me plenty of time to react if we came upon anything that required redirection. The dead that noticed us, busy with their morbid business or just off in the fields around the highway, instantly gave chase, and a dark swarm formed behind us, ambling closer. Within just a half-hour, there were dozens behind us, fanning out on either side of the highway, insistent in their following.

  I felt as if it was over for us, as if all our effort was in vain. At the snail speed I was driving, it would take us an hour or so to get to Lansing, and more and more dead followed. Every acre of land behind us erupted in dark movement, dark death. We had been driving for nearly an hour, swerving by stopped and deserted cars, buses, and trucks. Sometimes we had to leave the asphalt and drive on the grassy median to avoid piles of large wreckage. Most of the vehicles we passed were empty, but through the open doors and torn metal of a few, we saw dead, mutilated bodies, whole families, strewn about the seats and floors. Each time I slowed, we all craned our heads and silently, horrified, looked at each one. Behind us, the dead pushed, and many began to flank us on the sides of the road when they saw their foul cohorts giving chase. I was terrified to keep going, but I knew I could not turn back.

  It didn’t happen often, but when I saw the occasional clump of dark residue, I took great satisfaction in it. I was sure a larger vehicle, maybe a Greyhound or an eighteen-wheeler, had caused one of those things to meet its well-deserved demise, sending it back to where it belonged. The only sad thing about it was that such sightings were far too rare.

  As I raced the Lincoln ahead, more dead noticed our rapid movement, envied our lives, and came our way. As the highway dipped and turned, they began to clog the road behind us, a horde of dozens, if not hundreds. I glanced at the fuel gauge and was relieved that the tank was still almost full.

  “She gets good mileage, don’t she?” Dennis asked.

  “Yeah…thank God,” I said as I pressed the accelerator closer to the floor. “If we’re gonna get out of this thing alive, I think we better get off the highway,” I explained. “Those things seem to be following the pavement, and that makes it easy for them to find towns and villages. We need to find a less congested area, perhaps an island, something remote.”

  “Headin’ north then?” Isabella asked.

  “Yeah. There are several islands in Upper Peninsula Michigan, or we could even go into Canada. I doubt those things can swim, and I don’t think the aliens will care about sparse areas.”

  We crested a hill, going much faster than the dead could run, but I had to worry about hitting ones closest to us. They lunged at the car, trying to grab any part of it they could, scratching at the headlights and bumpers and scraping their claws down the side mirrors. I knew if we hit one, it could damage the car and slow us down, leaving us vulnerable to the other. If that happens, it’ll only be a matter of minutes before we’re ripped to shreds, I thought, carefully maneuvering Dennis’s vehicle through the fray.

  I wondered why there were so many there, but then I saw why: An alien saucer was moving our way, perhaps a half-mile or so away, floating effortlessly through the air hundreds of feet above ground. A rift moved in tandem with the craft, another dark, open crack in the atmosphere just beneath it. The vessel glowed in the falling light of day, and the dead gushed out of all sides of the rift, but those creatures looked different somehow. The few quick glimpses I dared revealed that they were smaller, and they moved with more fluidity. One moment, they were in a certain spot under the ship, but in the next, they were already fifty or sixty feet away. I blinked, certain I was hallucinating, another side effect of all the trauma we’d already been through.

  The black figures were everywhere, and I had to carefully weave through them. Once in a while, I banged into them, but as difficult as it was to progress forward, the area we’d left behind looked far worse and impassable.

  “We are done,” I heard Isabella hiss, barely loud enough to be heard over the noise.

  Dennis checked his shotgun, opened the breach and made sure the shells were chambered, then closed the gun and stuck the barrel out the window. “If that’s the case, honey, I intend to take a few of those things with me!” he said to his wife.

  I had to slo
w the car to a crawl, due to the thick crowd of dead around us. The ones behind us started to catch up, and the creatures on the sides started to close in. I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew if I stopped, I could use one of Dennis’s guns and take a few. If I floored it, I could take out a few more, but such a collision would tear up the Continental, and we would be left without transportation. I looked at my scared passengers, and I began to panic myself. Tears formed in my eyes, stinging me with the reality that we really had lost everything. Our planet was in flames, my father and wife and children and siblings were lost, and now the dead aimed to destroy us.

  “Look!” Dennis yelled. “Over there!” he said, pointing his free hand to my left.

  On the right side of the saucer, moving quickly on the ground, something different appeared. It was tall, about nine feet, but I couldn’t make out its features from where we were.

  “What is it?” Isabella asked.

  Dennis glanced through his scope. “I think it’s one of them spacemen,” he said.

  Without another word, I floored the gas pedal, hoping to take out at least one of the aliens as I rapidly closed the half-mile distance between us. It would not save our lives, but it would be a small victory for mankind after they had caused so much destruction and agony.

  The car lurched forward, and several of the dead things were knocked back. I prayed the damage was only cosmetic, that no tire was punctured and no serious damage was done to the engine. I thrilled as I raced down a grassy embankment, charging at the alien.

  Dennis grabbed the rifle from Isabella and handed her the shotgun.

  “Our Father, which art in heaven…” she began, before her Lord’s Prayer faded into whispers.