Zombies II: Inhuman

DeadTown

The scent of the corpses littering the ground stank to high heavens. The flaming summer sun baking their rotting flesh and us as we stood there didn’t help matters none. I can sympathize with Peter. He didn’t ask for this job like I did. He’s just the sheriff, not a professional killer.

I can tell from the slight glint of tears in his eyes he wants this all to be over with. That this massacre is all it will take to right the world once more. But it’s not. These poor bastards were just the beginning.

Others will smell the blood here or sense the life in Springtown in the valley below and they will come again.

Next time it likely won’t be a few dozen either. It never is after they find you. It will be hundreds, maybe thousands. I have been on the run from them for a while now since I saw the first ones walking around in Mexico. I move north from place to place always warning the folk of what’s coming in my wake and offering them my services. Never found a town that’s held against them yet even my guns added to theirs. But Hell, the money’s good and I ain’t dead yet.

I spit into the face of the closest corpse at my feet as Peter finally gets it together and starts barking orders. Dillon and his brother, Jack, are the only two others left alive in our little hunting party. Peter tells them gather up the bodies and burn them. I don’t bother to help. No one says a word to me about it. Those dead things are scary, but people like me are scarier. That’s why we’ll be the last to die.

Besides I know the whole thing is a waste of time, seen it done before. If Peter wants to try to clean up our tracks and lower the odds of more of the dead things coming down out of the hills, who am I to crush his hope. I think deep down Peter knows the truth too on some level though he would never admit it to the folk in his town or even to himself.

Peter watches the fire as the “brothers dim” get our horses and the sun falls from the sky then we’re all in the saddle on our way back to Springtown. Too bad for us, they have beaten us there. I can smell the dead before our horses crest the hills around the town and we see the fires burning. One glance at the mess below would be enough to tell any sane person to get the hell out of dodge and make dust in another direction, any direction but down there, only Peter ain’t sane when it comes to his town.

He’s got to try to save them. He kicks his horse’s sides, charging down the hill, so fast it surprises even me. The brothers follow him. I pause for a second, taking the time to light up a smoke, weighing my options. The town’s already paid up, no reason for me to go down there but I decide to play the good guy anyway and do them all a favor. I hear the sound of metal scraping leather as my revolver comes free of its holster. My first shot splatters Peter’s skull open before anyone so much as hears the shot.

The brothers are stunned, too confused by my actions to go for their on weapons on instinct. I take out Jack next because he’s the smarter and faster of the pair of idiots. I put a bullet in his face and watch him topple off his horse then I get sloppy. Don’t know why, bad luck, the glare of the stars, who knows? It takes me three rounds to drop Dillon for good. I feel a bit bad about the gut shot, never should have happened but the third one I put in his eye means he won’t be getting up later so it’s not like he’ll be upset about it.

I stare at Dillon’s body still telling myself I took the high road. Peter never had the chance to see his dead wife coming screaming at him with red smeared lips wailing for the taste of his flesh. And for the brothers, my sloppy work was at least cleaner than being ripped apart and eaten.

I turn my horse away from Springtown’s ruins to try to find somewhere else to breathe a while longer but I know even the last to die has to die sometime. Though I won’t see Hell tonight, other than the one on this earth now, I’m still just the walking dead myself. There’s a set of yellow teeth or a bullet out there somewhere waiting for me to find it. And somehow, with the way the world is dying, I think it will be sooner rather than later.