Four birds sat on the power line and watched it take place. The sky was a dull metal gray, and the ground wet from rain. The sour smell of mud moved a little on the breeze, but the air was still thick. Louisiana summer heat didn’t fade with an afternoon storm. The Duke barked twice then went silent and still at his side. He sighted. The birds didn’t bother to move from the line when the rifle crack filled the air. Nobody wasted bullets on birds anymore.
The bullet entered her skull right beneath her hair line. Brain matter erupted out the back, painting the ground behind her and making wet plop sounds as it mixed with the mud. She fell to her knees and bent backward at an odd angle. Just dropped, a puppet with its strings cut.
The Duke stayed at his side sniffing as they went but stayed a step back when they came up on the body, like he had been taught. Steve slipped the rifle over his head and steadied the strap on his chest before bending to pull her legs out from under her. Her dress had a floral pattern on it. Red, purple, and blue flowers, he didn’t know what kind.
Never been good with flowers I guess, he thought.
It was torn over her stomach and showed the pale white skin of her belly. Dirt streaks covered her, and her hair was caked with mud. Her fingernails were all missing, the skin underneath torn, bloodless and blue.
Ripped out when she dug up, he thought, no other marks, she must have been sick, somebody buried her.
It wasn’t rare. Even with everything that had happened most people couldn’t bring themselves to put a bullet in their child’s head. He didn’t blame them. He was glad people had a problem with it. The alternative was too sickening to think about. Hell, they helped pay his rent too. He looked up at the birds on the wire staring down at him.
“We’ll call this one Amy, what do y’all think?”
They had no answer. The chocolate lab looked up at them and snorted.
He pulled off his pack and took out a black body bag rolled up inside. Tossed it on the ground next to her. With ease born of repetition he unrolled and started working her in. For a while he had timed himself, but he started to think it was silly. Even disrespectful if there was such a thing anymore. Once she was in and secured he swung the bag up and over his shoulder. The girl was tiny, couldn’t weigh more than eighty pounds.
Probably a communion dress. He tried not to think about it.
He had spotted her about fifty yards off the highway. It wasn’t worth trying to find a place to pull his truck in. He just parked on the side of the road and jumped the ditch. It wasn’t too much trouble. He figured it had been a rice field before, and the dirt was hard. The mud on top was only a thin layer and The Duke trotted along side him as he walked.
He threw her across the ditch when he reached it then tossed her on top of the other body bags in the pickup. She made a wet thump sound. The Duke put his front paws alongside the pickup, tapping the metal with his nails and barking at the bodies in the back while Steve leaned against the truck to catch his breath and lit a cigarette. The birds on the line above paid them no mind.
He stopped at the guard shack on his way into the dump, there was no line. In the beginning the lines had been twenty trucks deep sometimes, but everything slowed down eventually. The guard, Mrs. D, was a tiny old black lady who seemed to never leave, she waved him through without stopping him to look at his identification cards. She had seen them enough times already. A pot-bellied older man wearing a long-sleeved western shirt despite the heat came out of an orange and white trailer when he pulled up to it. He held a clipboard in one hand and a cigarette between his teeth. His brown, curly hair was a mop on his head and thick drops of sweat already rolled down his face from under it. Steve waved and The Duke’s tale thumped against the seat.
“Steve, how’s it going?” he asked, “Y’all busy today?”
“Not too bad Mr. Sallier, got eight,” he said.
He nodded and made a mark on his clipboard, not bothering to check.
“Any ID’s?”
“Just two, males,” he pulled their cards out of his cup holder and handed them over, then half the cash he’d taken out of their wallets before he tossed them.
The older man nodded wordlessly and shoved the bills and cards in his breast pocket behind a blue pack of cigarettes.
“The rest?”
“One male and five females.”
“Alright,” he finished jotting down the info, “go ahead cuz, bring it around to the back. Bobby’ll take care of you.”
Steve put his truck in gear and pulled down the road curving around the trailer. Junk cars stacked fifteen feet high lined the road around him. Everything had gone private eventually. Government contracts had come down the pipe, people got the insurance they needed and made sure they kept things to a standard. He had been given state stickers to put on the doors of his truck and a state identification badge to wear around his neck when he was hunting. The parishes didn’t want an exterminator’s family to sue them because their husband or wife got shot driving slow through a neighborhood. People understandably had itchy trigger fingers.
He drove back past the junk cars and buses to the incinerator. It was a hulking monster of burnt black metal that had been old when he was a boy, but it still burned hot and did its job. The air smelled like cooking meat. It always did. Bobby stood at the foot of it watching him drive up. A big black man in overalls with no shirt, he wore thick black gloves for the work. Steve spun his truck in front of the incinerator and backed it as close as he could before killing the engine and stepping out. The Duke followed him.
“Afternoon Bob,” he said.
Bobby nodded back. Steve had never heard him talk; he wasn’t sure if he ever did. He opened the tailgate and climbed up, grabbing Amy’s bag, and pulling her down to hand her to Bobby. Once they had got them all down they started pulling the corpses out of the bags.
The beer was cold in his mouth. He took a long swallow from his bottle, put it back down on the bar and pulled his cigarettes from his breast pocket. The Duke let out a loud breath from the ground at the foot of his stool. He took a couple of pretzels from the bowl and dropped them for him, lighting his cigarette as the crunching started. The smoke floated around and reflected the lights from the beer neons hanging on the walls. There were only four other patrons in the bar, two men and a couple. The men sat at the bar and stared at the evening news on the small television in the corner. The couple sat at a table by themselves and talked quietly. Jennifer put a fresh bottle of beer in front of him. He picked his old one up and drained the last of it before handing it to her.
“Rough one today?” she asked as she tossed it into the trash can behind her.
“Not really,” he said, “just a day like all the rest I guess.”
She sat on a stool behind the bar and pulled a long slim cigarette from a pink case and lit it. The newscaster talked softly about Canada still being completely quarantined from the US. She talked about more bombs being dropped in New York and Chicago, and how the rumors about bombing in Miami weren’t confirmed. They showed footage of the president in the new White House in Montana holding a press conference. There weren’t many questions asked, and he mainly reassured everyone that the “old America was on its way back,” and that they “were on the right track for the future.” Jennifer blew smoke at the screen and dug down in the box to grab a beer of her own.
“Bullshit,” she said, “we’re dropping bombs on our own fucking people. Right track my ass.”
He took another sip of his beer and gave The Duke another pretzel. He thought she was pretty, she had ten years on him at least, but she was still pretty. She had dark hair with streaks of gray here and there and her mouth twisted when she smiled. There were dark black smudges under her eyes, he had them too. He hadn’t seen anyone without them in years.
“Not much else to do probably,” he said, “too thick in there, people can’t get in an out. We send people in, and nobody would walk out. Not the same way at least.”
She stared at him for a moment, “You think so? You wouldn’t go in there?”
She asked him like he knew what he was talking about. Like he was an expert. He didn’t feel like an expert. He felt like a dumb country boy who was lucky enough to be a good shot.
“No, I wouldn’t, wouldn’t care how much it paid.”
She watched him from across the bar; it made him feel warm inside. Then she smiled, shrugged, and raised her bottle towards him.
“Well, I suppose it’s gonna be what its gonna be, here’s to being on the right track,” she said.
He lifted his bottle and tapped it to hers, “To the right track I guess.”
He woke up to the sound of his cell phone ringing and his alarm clock going off. The two mixed together and made his head hurt; he had drunk a lot of beer the night before. He always did. He slapped the top of the alarm and sat up, feeling on his nightstand for his phone. Jennifer rolled into the warm spot that his body left. He felt her burrow down into it and tighten the covers around her.
“Hello.”
“Hey, it’s Greg, we’ve got another one out here. Two of the landscaping guys spotted it on the golf course this morning. We need you to come out.”
He rubbed his hand over his face and through his hair.
I need a haircut soon, he thought.
“Ok,” he said, “give me an hour and a half, might be two.”
“Make it quick as you can man, you know how the big boys are. They’re shitting their goddamn pants,” Greg said.
“Yeah, quick as I can,” Steve hung up.
He looked back at the bed and saw Jennifer staring up at him, her head resting on the crook of her arm and her hair spread out over the pillows. She smiled at him; he smiled back.
“You want some coffee?”
“Please,” she said.
An hour later he was showered and dressed back at Jennifer’s car behind Sam’s Lounge. She leaned over the seat and kissed him when he put his truck in park. When she pulled back she stared at him for a moment.
“Be careful out there today, you hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” he grinned, suddenly self conscious.
She smiled back at him and gave his leg a squeeze before hopping out. The Duke had already leapt out of the pickup and was waiting to get into the cab. She held the door for him, and he hopped up, back feet scuttling for purchase for a moment before he plopped his butt down and got comfortable. They both watched her walk to her car, Steve watching the sway of her hips, The Duke watching for reasons all his own. Once they had made sure she got in safe they pulled out and back onto the highway.
The air had a breeze to it and the promise of another rainy day was up in the gray clouds. They rode with the windows open, The Duke with his head out and his tongue flying, Steve flicking his cigarette out the window between sips from his coffee cup. They passed a few other cars on their way into the city but most of those who had holed up outside of the city limits when it started stayed where they were. Most of those who worked in the city lived there as well. Apartments had gotten remarkably cheaper with the population cut in half.
They jumped on the freeway and looped around the city to their exit, traffic picking up more the further in he got. The exit he took led straight to the casino, Lucky Winnings Complex the giant sign outside read. Steve had been lucky, as far as that kind of luck goes. He had managed to get contracted by the casino when they reopened. He spent three days walking the halls pulling out bodies and exterminating anything left inside before they sent their cleaning crews in to fix the place back up. Once they had their grand reopening, they kept him on contract to come in and take care of any of the random cases that turned up on the grounds.
He took a side road once on the grounds that led to the warehouse and employee parking, passed the parking area, and pulled around to the warehouse. He saw Greg waiting for him on the dock puffing smoke out of the sides of his mouth from around a skinny cigar. He kept the windows rolled down and told The Duke to stay; the dog sneezed at him but stayed where he was. Greg came down to meet him, shaking his hand with both of his, as he always did.
“Good to see you man, good to see you,” he said, the cigar smoke shooting out of his mouth and nostrils, “Mr. Logan wants to see you before you go out there, you know how it is.”
“He wants to see me every time I come up here Greg,” he said.
Greg shrugged, “Makes him feel like he’s controlling the situation, he figures if he talks to you before the job, he’s got some kind of handle on what’s being done.”
He tossed the half-smoked cigar out into a puddle on the ground and turned, leading the way past the trash compactor into the white halls that made up the employee corridors. It was the same as employee areas in any business anywhere. People in matching uniforms designating their areas laughed and joked and flirted. They did all the normal things with each other that the gamblers were doing in the casino, real people living lives as close to normal as they could under the circumstances. They let it all out as soon as the Employees Only doors closed behind them and put their work faces back on as soon as they headed back out.
Greg led him through several twists and turns before they walked out of the employee halls and into the casino area. Lights flashed and bells and whistles exploded filling the high ceilings to the top with anything to keep your attention off how much you were shoveling in. The money class laughed and pulled out more rolls of cash or credit cards with nonexistent limits and drank free drinks and lived the life that everyone else dreamed of.
Steve took it all in as he followed Greg through the noise and the smoke and the cursing and bets and prayers. He could remember when the working class had played the machines too, not that it was a better thing to watch, but he remembered. Dock and plant workers at the end of the week spending one night throwing their money on the table with men and women who's worth they couldn’t understand. It had been ugly and sad when he had seen it before, but it was something to remember that it had existed. If anything the turmoil and violence of the last five years had made the line between the rich and those who just survived a fence lined with razor wire. You did not cross unless someone opened the gate and if you couldn’t pay the toll already chances were that you never would.
Steve wore a 9mm in a holster on the back of his pants that was kept out of sight of the public by his shirt hanging over it. His rifle sat on a rack against the back glass of his pickup, and a shotgun was in reaching distance of his bed, just in case. These people lived in gated communities with security guards round the clock with high powered scope rifles making sure that nothing that wasn’t supposed to come in made it even close.
Greg turned him down another hall and up a small flight of stairs; Mr. Logan’s office was a giant room filled with monitors and a one-way mirror that stared down at the main casino floor. He sat behind a behemoth desk that only held a small computer and two framed pictures on the top. Facing away from them he watched the crowd mill around the machines and card tables through his mirror. Steve could see his black comb over poking over the top of his leather chair.
“Mr. Logan,” Greg said.
The man turned to stair at both of them, an old scar ran red and ugly across his double chin. He smiled, a fake smile he could pull out and throw over his face in an instant. Steve had seen it every time he had dealt with him, since their first meeting, he didn’t hold it against him. He thought that it was probably a fairly useful talent for a man to have.
“Steve, please have a seat,” he motioned to one of the two chairs sitting across his desk from him, “give us a second Greg, I just need a minute with Steve here and then you two can get to work.”
“Yes sir,” Greg said and slid out of the door with his dismissal.
Mr. Logan clasped his hands together over his chest like he was praying and gave Steve a suitably fatherly look from a man twenty years his senior.
“So, son, how have things been going for you lately?” he asked.
“Everything’s been fine Mr. Logan, staying busy as usual.”
He nodded with a look of deep understanding at this, his eyes somber and his lips pursed together like he was waiting for a kiss.
“Of course, there’s high demand for a man with your talent, that’s why we’re so appreciative to have you working here with us as often as you do.”
“Thank you, Mr. Logan.” The conversation was the same as it always was when he came to Logan’s office before work.
“We had one spotted out on the golf course this morning Steve, we can’t have that, too many important people staying with us this week. Lots of very important people here for conventions and the like, and quite a few of them are looking to work on their game in the little off time they have, you understand?”
“Yes sir, I’ll take care of it, nothing to worry about.”
“I know you will son, I’ve got complete faith in your talents in your field, that’s why we deal with you exclusively. Alright then, I’ve kept you long enough, I’ll let you get to work; Greg has been instructed to pinpoint the spotting for you on one of our maps. Good luck out there son, keep yourself safe,” he stood up and offered his hand.
Steve took it; Logans skin was soft, but his grip seemed to press down on Steve’s bones.
His truck rolled over the artificially green grass. It had rained lightly while he was in the casino, so he made sure he went slow. Nobody liked him taking his truck over the grounds and he tried not to make any ruts. There were a few players out braving the weather, but they pretended that he wasn’t there. The state ID sticker on his truck gave him away as an exterminator and these people did not like to acknowledge his existence. He was a reminder. The world wasn’t safe no matter who you were. No matter how many fences you put up or how many guards you had there was still a chance that some rotting thing could crawl up and take a bite out of your ass. He kept on driving; he was in the area the sighting had been reported from.
Another two hundred yards he saw an empty cart sitting in the middle of a green. He parked his truck next to it, got out and pulled his rifle off the rack. Made sure a round was chambered before giving The Duke a nod and the big dog leapt out of the cab and started sniffing the ground around his feet.
“Go get it son,” he said, and the dog took off over the next hill to the east.
He followed up the hill, the dog sat on the down slope and waited for him, staring further out. He looked in the same direction, but it took a second for what he was seeing to register. He slung the rifle across his back then started down the hill to inspect the scene taking place fifty yards off.
“Walk with me dog.”
The Duke kept pace with him at his side. He didn’t rush, just kept a steady pace, trying to piece together exactly he was seeing. It seemed like he was watching it through a tunnel. A burning sensation started in his guts and his arms were starting to twitch.
Not good for your arms to twitch boss, he thought, makes for a bad shot.
The boys hadn’t even noticed him yet; they were too busy with the task at hand. The dead girl was recent. She hadn’t taken on the green cast they got after a few months of wandering under the sun. She had worn a white dress at her funeral, it was shredded around her. Her skin was dark brown, and her hair had been done in tight braids that were now unraveling with time and neglect. She lay on her belly.
One of them, a pimply boy with blonde hair, straddled her head backwards. One knee on each side of her neck holding down the golf club they’d placed there, pinning her head to the ground. The other, a red headed fat boy covered in freckles, his face bright red from exertion, knelt behind her with his pants around his knees raping her. He held her up by the hips, his belly fat swayed under his shirt with every thrust. The girl’s head was turned sideways, the blondes weight on the club clearly crushing her neck. Steve could see her mouth working endlessly and hear the snapping of her teeth over the laughter and the red heads grunting. Her arms and legs spasmed into unnatural angles around them. The red head’s face was screwed up in pleasure, his eyes half lidded.
Steve and The Duke made it up within ten yards of them and stopped before they realized anyone was there. Steve touched the dog’s head, and The Duke sat silently. He swallowed down the bile trying to climb up his throat. The blonde looked up, still laughing like he expected to see one of their buddies walking along to join the fun. The fat one paid him no mind, his grunting getting louder and his thrust faster. The blonde’s laughter broke off and he stared at him for a moment before grinning.
“Shit man, you’re here to work,” he said, riding the bucking girl’s neck as he talked, “just give us a minute bud, Perry’s almost done, look at him, he’s not gonna last another minute.”
The red head was pumping like his life depended on it, his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth between his teeth. The blonde boy gave Steve a conspiratorial wink. Neither of them could have been more than seventeen.
“Perry’s never had any black pussy before man, we couldn’t pass up the chance,” he said, “you know my Pawpaw used to call them glossy’s. You ever heard that?”
Pop
One from the 9mm took the boy in the stomach, he fell backwards on his ass, his eyes wide with shock. The instant the weight came off the dead girls neck she was crawling up his body. Her head hung slightly to the side, but she didn’t let it stop her. She wobbled her way up his body with jerky movements. When they were face to face he opened his mouth to scream but it was muffled when her mouth closed over his nose and upper lip and started to tear.
Steve watched for a couple seconds then turned to Perry as he started to scramble back. His erection slick with red slime and pointing toward the sky, now starting to wilt. His belly fat jiggled as he crab walked backward. Steve noticed he wore a condom.
“Well at least you fuckers were playing safe I guess.”
The boy’s mouth was wide open as he started to try to scramble to his feet, jerking his pants up as he went. Steve put two into his guts before he could make it up. He dropped to the ground limp, screaming. The blonde was screaming now too.
She was tearing into the wound in the blonde boy’s stomach. His nose was torn off and half his top lip was gone. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he screamed his throat raw. Her face was buried in his stomach and jerking as she tried to tear something out. Steve looked back in the direction where he had last seen the golfers, there was no one in sight. He figured someone would hear the screaming. He wondered if anyone would be curious enough to look. He walked over to the red head and grabbed his legs, then started pulling him over to his friend.
“Please no, please stop ok, please stop,” the fat boy repeated, a blood bubble popped on the side of his mouth, he held his stomach as he was dragged, “please mister, please stop, I can’t move my legs, I can’t move my legs ok…”
“Well, ain’t that a goddamn shame.”
Once he pulled him right next to his buddy he dropped his legs, leaned over and spit in the boy’s face while he begged. Then he walked behind the girl and nudged her back with his boot until she fell over the blonde and into Perry’s lap. She tore into his scrotum; the screams reached a higher octave than he would have thought possible.
Steve walked back to where The Duke still sat and watched. He sat next to him on the wet grass, lit a cigarette and ran his hand up and down the dog’s back. The dead girl tore into intestine and organs while the boy died. He screamed for a little while longer, but by the time Steve was halfway through with his cigarette he was silent. He smoked it down to the filter before he stood up. No one ever came.
He put a round through her head, and she went still. Next, he blew the top off Perry’s skull. He walked up to the blonde and leaned over him. The boy was still alive, there was a pool of blood in his mouth, and he was choking on it. His throat made clicking sounds as he tried to breathe.
Glick…glick…glick
Three so far today, he thought, that’s not bad.
He looked into the boy’s eyes; they were unfocused. He tapped him on the forehead until they cleared. Until he knew the boy could see him.
“Yea I heard it before, my Daddy used to say that shit too.”
Pop
He turned and headed back up the hill, “C’mon son, let’s get the truck.”
The Duke trotted up and walked to his side, snuffling the ground as they went.
“We’ll call this one Mary,” he looked at the dog as he said it and the dog looked at him.
He nodded; The Duke sneezed.
That's a bloody good (no pun :) ) zombie story. I wasn't expecting the ending. Nicely done.