One shot left, Manny thought.
He glanced back over his shoulder and noticed the crayon smudges of dark smoke rising from the fires in the city. “Where the hell were we going to go, anyway,” he muttered. He looked back at the Liz-zombie and dropped to the floor, propping his back against the foot of the bed. It staggered toward him, trailing the limp arm.
He thought of his brother and the rest of the family. All dead.
Liz. They were going to get married, someday.
His hand shook as he pushed the pistol into his mouth, and tears trickled out of his eyes as he forced them shut. With a quick squeeze of the trigger, a little pop sounded, spraying blood across the framed painting above the bed. Manny’s body sat upright for a moment before slumping to the floor. The Liz-zombie paused for a moment, a flicker of recognition almost burning in its empty eyes, and then it fell on the body, joined by other ghouls as they shambled through the open door.
Sea of Green, Sea of Gold
“Pile the bodies high...
Shovel them under and let me work -
I am the grass; I cover all.”
Carl Sandburg, “The Grass”
A hawk pulled Ben’s focus from the trail, or something dark and swift likea hawk flying through the clear sky. As he looked up, his left foot snagged on the trail, and his ankle crumpled, sending him to the dirt. A grunt slipped out of his mouth when he struck. There had been a tiny pop as he went down.
“Ben?” Barry pulled the straps tighter on his hiking pack and jogged forward, already sweating under the Kansas sun. He stumbled to a stop next to Ben, slipped out of the pack, and dropped it to the ground with a dull thud. “Damn man…you alright?”
Ben’s face twisted. He glowered at Barry. “Do I look alright?”
“Sorry.” Barry dropped to his haunches.
“Sprained…I think.” Ben pulled off the boot, his long face red with the effort, and then delicately rolled back the grey-brown sock. His ankle had already puffed to twice its normal size, red and bulging. Pain shot over his knee, across his back, and to the base of his skull with each throb of his heart. “Must’ve tripped on a rock,” Ben said, but his mouth hung open as he searched for the offender. “I had to have tripped on…”
Barry mopped his fat, round face with a handkerchief, and then allowed his eyes to wander away. Surrounding them on every side, the Flint Hills. Limestone formations cut into deep valleys and folds in the earth by glaciers 10,000 years before encroached in every direction. Tall strands of razor thin Switch Grass and the fat-headed Bluestem, both native to the prairie in the Konza Preserve, covered the hills, some as taller than a grown man’s waist. It was a golden-green blanket covering crumpled stone, but alive—holding the hills together. The rocky nature of those hills had protected the Konza from pioneers and farmers, and now the government guaranteed protection by making it a national preserve, a piece of land lost in time. It was land which remembered a time before roads and houses and the interference of humans.
“God…it’s like we could drown in the grass.” Barry flipped open his phone. “No trees.”
Ben squinted at Barry. “What?”
“No trees nearby…you know, for a splint. No trees means no limbs. No sticks. Nothing but grass. Not even cell phone reception. Shit.”
“I can use your hiking pole.”
Barry looked at the aluminum rod in his hands with an expression of surprise. “My…pole?”
“Like a crutch. I don’t need a splint. Here,” Ben said. He tore a section of his pants on the right leg, starting at the cuff and ripping until he removed a strip. Taking the strip of torn cloth, Ben began to wrap it around his swollen ankle.
“What are you doing?”
Ben winced as he tightened the makeshift wrap. “Trying to keep the swelling down, at least until we get back to the car.” They’d been friends for a long time, ever since Ben’s parents moved next to Barry’s. Since that day in third grade, when Barry’s sister, Lane, had joked that his butt was made of donuts. Ben’d laughed, and Barry had chased him with a pocketknife for five blocks, only to slip on a garden hose and collapse face down with a mouthful of grass. The pocket knife had rattled into the street where Ben had picked it up. It’d been open to a nail file.
Ben smiled with the memory. “I expected you to be the one to sprain—”
A shadow cut across the sky again, and Ben glanced up from his ankle. He expected to see Barry standing between him and the sun, but he wasn’t.
“Those birds.” Barry pointed to the sky. “What are those birds?”
“Dunno. Vultures?”
“Grandpa called them turkey-buzzards. Scavengers.” Barry shivered. A breeze cut across the rolling hills, and the grass bowed, its hushed voice praying in a strange whisper. “Let’s get you back to the car.”
After Barry helped Ben to his feet and picked up his own pack, the two men turned and staggered the way they’d come, straining up an incline. Ben struggled with his lame ankle and the makeshift crutch. Barry crested the hill in front, stopped, and waved to his friend.
“Can you see the car?”
Barry shook his head. “No. No that’s not it. It’s those god-damned birds, man.”
The air filled with the scratch-clunk of Ben’s awkward gait until he joined his friend and leaned panting on the walking pole. “Where’s the car? We…should be able to see the car…from here. The road at least.” He sheltered his eyes with one hand and squinted. “Nothing.”
“Ben.” Barry patted his friend’s shoulder. “Ben—that’s a dude down there.”
Below them, at the bottom of the fold between two hills, a black shape twisted in the grass. He—it looked like a man—was only a few feet from the trail, on his back, waving his hands in the air. From a distance, he could have been a black beetle, legs kicking the sky in death throes.
“It’s like he’s wrestling something.” Barry brushed his arm against the sweat on his face. “Looks like he’s trying to get to his feet.”
“Barry…those birds are right over that guy.” Ben gave his friend a shove. “We should help.” The bigger man lurched and began an awkward, teeter-tottering jog down the hill. Ben followed as quickly as he could, almost hopping exclusively on his good leg. His head wobbled uncomfortably as he tumbled down the last few yards of incline. Ahead on the path, Barry stopped short and held out his hand a few yards from the stranger.
When Ben caught up to him, he understood why. The man’s clothes hung about him in jagged tatters and loose strips, filthy with mud and spatters of something darker, likely dried blood. Tiny cuts criss-crossed his face, making a network of red lines like the burnt image of a net. He wore at least a week’s worth of beard, short and patchy, with plenty of smudges on his exposed skin. As he struggled, he let out a few raw grunts.
“Don’t just stand there—” His wild eyes circled to Barry and Ben. “I need some help, Goddamnit—”
Barry didn’t move. Ben took another step forward. The man’s mouth clenched in a half-grimace, half-smile as his arms seemed to be stuck below the surface of the prairie.
“Huh…” The man’s arms flopped to one side then dropped on the packed dirt of the trail. His eyes rolled into his head and closed.
Ben and Barry exchanged a look.
“Hey, buddy…are you okay?” Ben leaned forward, resting his left knee on the ground with the injured ankle behind him. From that distance, Ben received a face full of the stranger’s body odor, an ammonia stench which indicated he hadn’t washed in days.