Jonas woke with a start. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. It was mostly dark in the trailer but there was light, from inside the refrigerator; sometimes the door didn’t close correctly and would slowly creep open. But it was not the light or lack thereof that his eyes had to adjust to but… from the darkness that he had just ascended from. His head hurt like a bastard.
Jonas could see that the front door to his trailer was open.
Had someone been inside? There was… no one. And even if there was, how did they get into the compound?
It was noise from outside that woke him. He could still hear it and he rose from the couch to go investigate.
The standing made his head hurt even worse. A wave of vertigo washed over him and for a couple of seconds, he thought that he would vomit; had to steady himself briefly at the doorjamb. He could hear howling and growling and general pandemonium from beyond the precious wall protecting his compound. There certainly seemed to be another attack in progress; an effort to breach.
He grabbed Second A, the 9mm Beretta, a couple of extra magazines of ammo, and the 405 caliber Winchester lever-action rifle he kept just inside the front door. It was a hog gun, highly regarded for large and exotic game by Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, who nicknamed it “Big Medicine.” It held four rounds in its internal magazine and one round in the chamber.
Jonas flipped the light switch that popped up the perimeter spotlights, then reached up and snatched his bullet belt off the coat hook on the wall next to the door. Though he had never counted the number of rounds in the belt, he figured there to be around 70- hopefully more than enough to get the job done.
It sounded as if somebody or something was now using a battering ram to try and smash through the wall.
Jonas stumbled, as quickly as he could, down the steps at his front porch and almost fell. Something was wrong with his leg, below the knee where he had been snake bit: it was swollen, he could tell- bad.
He whipped out his hunting knife and split the pant leg to relieve the pressure, and then to his shock saw that his leg below the knee had inflated in diameter to about the size of a watermelon like he had elephantiasis or lymphatic filariasis or something. But that was not his only surprise; the large beheaded snake lay in the dirt just beyond the steps to his trailer. He could not remember tossing it there. The last he’d seen the Diamondback carcass, it was in the kitchen sink. The sight of it there made him wonder again if someone or something had been inside his trailer. But he didn’t have time to consider either just then. The battering and banging grew more intense by the second and there appeared in the wall to be a dent pushing inward.
Jonas ran… hobbled… hopped as fast as he could with his suddenly abnormally enormous, misshapen calf, to the ladder that was still standing upright to the top of the wall on his side of the wall. And, as if the pain that radiated from the puncture wound was not severe enough, smacking and smashing his unwieldy limb into hunks of junk made his effort even more excruciating… seemingly impossible.
“If only they knew…” Jonas said aloud as he finally got himself to his ladder. “All they have to do is stand their own ladder on the other side… here.” But he didn’t really suspect they were even human... thinking... beings- just some sort of mindless, uglier than sin puppets or clones or automatons or something. He hated to use the term zombies even in his mind, to even think it because he was fairly certain that there no longer existed political parties: at least he hoped.
The pounding continued. Jonas climbed the ladder to the very top, hindered by his tree stump of a calf, and the Big Medicine Winchester slung over one shoulder and the bullet belt over the other. Fortunately, his wall absorbed all the shock of the ferocious pounding from the assault by the ass clown blood-sucking, shrew-nosed creatures. And he was able to stand, although awkwardly, atop the small platform he’d built for lookout and defense and fire downward at his would-be assailants.
Jonas put one hollow point slug from Second A directly between what appeared to be either… eye holes or, assholes out of place, in the face of one hideously scarred or contorted, screaming countenance that oddly resembled- beneath the lack of humanity- the United States of America’s first chief executive from Hawaii. The hole in the front was small but the back of his head blew away: completely disintegrating like a politician’s promise.
Another scabrous and burnt-faced banshee, standing on the shoulders of several totem-poled smaller ones, appeared. Her tongue was split in several directions like the proboscis of a star-nosed mole. She oddly reminded Jonas of an old, ancient actually, California Senator he had known of, Francine Fibrosi: so through her chest he put the remainder of the slugs from Second A. But instead of a gush of blood spraying forth from the wound… a swarm of gnats emerged with stings like acid… and she didn’t fall- Francine. Jonas had to push her backward- the barrel of Second A to her rotting forehead- she'd gotten that close to the top standing on the shoulders of her smaller minions.
Where did they come from? Jonas questioned in his mind. Were they raised from the dead rotting flesh of actual human beings? Victims of the Visitors’ mass extermination? Or… Were they the Visitors themselves… as unlikely as that seemed?
They appeared to come or gather in groups… or… caucuses… perhaps…. in the large puddles of illumination cast by the compound’s front spotlights. Many of them, as hideously ugly and corrupted with viciousness as their features and forms were, reminded Jonas of figures from the history books… mostly recent but also some ancient. Many roughly resembled governmental leaders or activists or famous artists and actors and such, known for social commentary. They sort of wandered around and bumped into each other and uttered a sort of growling, fussy gibberish until… they seemed to somehow push themselves- the entire group in a singular direction.
Could this be the resurrection of the dead? Jonas had mused at one point. And the gore of their perfidiousness has been resurrected with them!
“Where is Hannah Arendt when you need her?” he said aloud, sarcastic, yet surreptitious.
He’d spent a lot of time perusing the internet, investigating a myriad of topics when there was yet internet to peruse. Consuming information that way: off the webs, was kind of like the euphoric inspiration for the Oracles of Delphi produced by the narcotic effect of ethylene gas that rose from the fissure below Mount Parnassus. And there was no prophecy for the Oracle and future to be had for the ancient Greeks when the fissure was closed.
WTF?!
He had Big Medicine out now, propped up on top of the wall to steady his aim as he picked them off methodically, one by one. They would explode, practically vaporize when struck dead center mass: i.e., in their heart parts. Their guts and body bits would fly and be strewn in every direction, pieces of spine and chunks of liver and dollops of brains and strands of bowels in the grass and dirt for some 25 yards or so in front of the wall. The smell was horrific and inevitably would draw the hellish hounds out from the security of the shadows to feast.
One gremlin of a girl child or something, displaying an abstract leaf or something on her head halted toward him like she was wearing metal leg braces, squealing, bawling like a daemon or a poltergeist or troll or something so he raised his lever gun and blew her to Hell.
Little thumb-sized morsels of rattlesnake sizzled and spit and popped in the garlic-spiced grease in the pan on the fire on top of the stove. Jonas poked a fork down to the floating meat, stabbed one of the chunks, then raised it to his lips to blow and cool before popping it into his mouth.
“Hot... hot... hot!” he said with the hunk of cooked flesh on his tongue. “Good rattlesnake…” he said appreciatively. “Good snake!”
He knew he must travel to town to search for food soon, the next day. “Needs must as the devil drives!” …as the old saying goes. He was out of food and other supplies so he had no choice if he was yet alive then. His lower right leg was still swollen and purple and blue and black. He had punctured or cut it or both on some piece of junk or other, outside fighting… creatures. There was bloody, greenish pus dripping from one wound and oozing from another. And he was still sweating and running a fever and hurting. So he drank more whiskey and swallowed more pills that he’d liberated from the hospital. His intent was deliberate: to render himself oblivious to the pain… and the reality.
In the moonlit woods, just beyond the tree line where the scary, starving mongrel dogs lurked, were a number of human-sized mounds of earth scattered about. They were of rich, freshly turned dirt not covered with living vegetation or dead, and lined out parallel to one another in rows like cabbages would grow in… or like a cemetery. The earth of one mound began to move... and then another… and another.
It was early still. Jonas sat in front of the CB radio once used in the salvage yard for dispatch. He cupped the microphone in his hand.
“Come back... anybody... somebody.” He said. “There’s gotta be somebody else out there.”
Some miles away, on a desk in the local police station, his voice could be heard coming out the earphone of the dispatch headset… except, there was no one there to hear it.
And, from the earphone of a headset in an ambulance it came; and out from the speaker of an old CB radio in the home of an amateur ham radio operator; and even out the speaker of a radio in a local radio station Jonas could’ve been heard- had there been any ears to listen.
“I can’t be the only one, Goddmanit! The Lord can’t have wiped out all you Sodomites and Democrats in one fell swoop!”
He paused, in hopes of a return retort.
“Okay…” he said. “Just kiddin’. I know God ain’t that pissed at the Sodomites…” he paused again. “He wouldn’t have hatched so many of you and gave you such nice places to live like San Francisco... and Portland…” he said again in hope of a retort… of any kind to crackle back… but again, none came.
“Tough room…” he quipped. “Come on people... somebody... anybody. Come back and tell me I’m a prick at least… or a homophobe or that I hate puppies… I don’t, you know… hate puppies… one would be great right now... between two slices of bread.” He paused again and dropped his head.
“I’ve been doing this every day… awhile now and nothing. I can’t be all… that’s left. God’s got a screwed-up sense of humor if I am... Come back... please.” He stopped talking to listen again. But then, again, only static answered him from the radio’s speaker.
“I’m running out of food.” He said. “I got rattlesnake bit and my calf is swole up to the size of an elephant’s… and sort of what it looks like too. I’m sweating…” he said, “and I’m freezing and I mostly done ate the snake that bit me… all the food I’ve got left…” he stopped.
A half-empty bottle of whiskey sat on the table next to the radio. It was a different bottle from the previous evening. Although he didn’t have any food left, he had a lot of booze: beer and whiskey, wine, and tequila. It was not that he drank a lot, he didn’t. He had just… salvaged it on his trips into town… and he had it on hand. And he probably shouldn’t be drinking it but he was. He had finished off the first bottle. He raised and tilted the new bottle.
“They took my girlfriend,” he said, “whoever they are. I don’t even have a dog…”
Suddenly, in an instant, the lights on the panel of the CB radio went out.
Jonas rose from the chair he’d been sitting in and went to the light switch and flipped it.
The power was out. It was something he’d feared, anticipated, and prepared for. He had portable generators scattered strategically about the compound to provide power if and when the time came. They were powered by gasoline. And apparently, the time had come.
He limp/hobbled around to the back of the trailer to one of the generators and cranked it up and threw the lever that got the lights back on in his living quarters. The spotlights, however, that lit up the compound and immediate area outside the wall, were integrated into a second generator stashed closer to the wall and not needed at the moment. And although Jonas had a supply of gasoline that he’d scavenged in the town nearby, he would need more, and soon because he had used much of his supply for other purposes in the compound.
So… no food... short on petrol... swole up pus oozing leg or not, Jonas had to go to town.
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