Feeding The Chickens

Her mother shook corn into a bucket with the familiar clinking sound that filled Maisy’s heart with dread. She sat at the table, biting her nails and looking anxiously out of the kitchen window.

“Now,” her mother walked over with the bucket and set it down on the table, “be very careful not to drop any this time.”

Maisy looked up, lower lip already quivering.

“I’m having none of that this morning, Maisy.” Her mother turned away to stir the porridge on the stove. “We don’t expect much of you and your dad works very hard to look after us. You know they’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

Maisy set her head down on the table with a clunk and looked at her reflection in the metal bucket. Wide, distorted brown eyes blinked unhappily back at her. She huffed out a breath and then drew a frowning face in the condensation.

“There’ll be nothing to eat before it’s done.” Her mother reminded her.

Maisy took a long time by the back door lacing up her shoes. She pulled each thread tight one at a time and tied and re-tied them until her mother fetched the bucket from the kitchen table and plonked it next to her with a warning look. Maisy took a deep breath, squaring her little shoulders in her blue gingham dress and picked up the bucket. 

It was time to feed the chickens.

The door squealed shut, leaving her standing alone in the morning air with the mist of her anxious breath and a hundred metre walk to the chicken coop. All through the shrubbery and up on the high slope that led up to the range, heads turned slowly to look at her. A landscape of hunched figures. Countless glassy eyes reflecting orange in the distant sunrise. Maisy’s feet were rooted to the spot. The hand holding the bucket trembling just a little. 

The zombie closest to her, crouched between the worn, red handles of her dad’s wheelbarrow, took a few tentative steps in her direction. There was no life in that face - milky eyes circled by grey sagging skin and a torn lower lip revealing gums the colour of sour cream. 

Maisy raised the metal spoon she held in her right hand and brought it down on the tin bucket with a clang that reverberated through the garden. The zombie cringed back in alarm and hastened back the way it had come, becoming momentarily entangled in the wheelbarrow before diving to safety beneath the leaves of the willow. All through the garden and up on the slope, the zombies were sensing one another’s alarm and turning to flee. Maisy kept hitting the bucket until there was no more movement in the garden. She took a slow steadying breath. The worst was not over yet. 

She set out on the path, wielding the spoon out in front of her and pointing it accusingly at the rose bushes as she passed. The path to the chicken coop ran through the garden and took a sharp right-hand turn around the back of the tool shed. It was then about a hundred steps through the narrow passage with the high garden wall on one side and the tool shed on the other before she would break out into the clearing with the chicken enclosure. That was the worst bit.

Maisy approached the shed with trepidation. She banged the bucket again and ducked behind the shed as a great commotion started up behind it. Several zombies came flying out from around the corner and off across the garden, scrambling and leaping over the bushes like startled rabbits. They made frightened grunting sounds with each step. Maisy pressed her back into the damp brick of the shed as she watched them go, her fingers clutching the spoon so tightly that it dug a groove into her palm. Just dumb beasts, she reminded herself. More scared of you. 

Once she was sure that any zombies behind the shed were gone, Maisy steeled herself and tiptoed gingerly around the corner to peer into the alleyway. She breathed a sigh of relief. A rectangle of daylight shone through from the other side. The coast was clear. She hastened into the passage, feeling vulnerable to attack from behind, her footsteps echoing in the narrow corridor. It wasn’t quite wide enough for her to put her arms straight out either side and the walls seemed to draw closer together as she passed. The prefect spot for an ambush.

She only let out her breath once she’d reached the other side safely. The high barbed wire fence of the chicken enclosure loomed before her. The end was in sight. Emboldened, she rattled the bucket and shouted to scare the few zombies that dawdled on the path ahead. They turned wide eyes on her and hastened off into the trees beyond. Just a few more steps took Maisy to the gate of the enclosure and she fumbled the latch open with numb fingers. 

Once inside she could breathe a sigh of relief. The chickens cooed expectantly at her feet and she tossed them handfuls of corn. At the sound of food being thrown, the zombies began to regather beyond the wire fence. A silent crowd watching from a safe distance. Maisy’s path back to the house was soon blocked. She’d had to adapt her routine to account for this problem.

She clambered up onto the roof of the coop, the bucket hooked over her elbow and the tin roof icy cold on her bare knees. Once safely up, she crossed to the far side and tossed a few handfuls of corn over the fence. The zombies were on it at once, rushing round the sides of the pen away from the gate to scrabble in the grass for the food.  Maisy’s father wouldn’t approve but she hadn’t been caught yet. He said you had to keep them hungry so they’d come to the feeders up on the range. Get them out in the open.  

The zombies scrapped amongst themselves, grabbing handfuls of corn and dirt and grass and stuffing the whole lot into their mouths.  Maisy could hear the kernels crack in the few broken, rotting teeth they had left. Ropes of saliva hung from their slack lips as they ground their jaws and swallowed the corn dry. 

Maisy turned to leave while the zombies were distracted, her thoughts already on the bowl of porridge waiting for her in the kitchen. She jumped back to the ground, shoes squelching a little in the mud and then stopped, empty bucket dangling from her fingertips. There was a zombie standing at the gate. It was a woman, still clothed in a faded pink cotton dress with a ripped, dirty hem. Its eyes were fixed on Maisy. 

“Get away.” Maisy said crossly and held up the empty bucket. “See, all gone. It’s over there, you stupid thing.”

She grabbed the spoon from her front pocket but hesitated for a moment. A zombie had never looked at her like this before. It seemed almost alert and completely uninterested in the food bucket. She let it fall to the ground with a rattle. The zombie’s gaze remained fixed on her. Maisy suddenly felt cold all down her spine. The zombie leaned forward and reached an emaciated hand through the gate toward her. There was something clutched in that outstretched hand. Maisy looked up uncertainly - the zombie’s dead face betrayed no emotion but there was something in those milky eyes that might have been kindness a lifetime ago. It grunted and gestured again with its outstretched hand. When Maisy made no move to accept the gift, the zombie dropped its offering at the girl’s feet. For a moment, Maisy could make no sense of the little heap of fabric but then the she saw a pair of eyes. It was a teddy bear.

A gunshot tore the air.

The zombie barrelled away, grunting in fright with each lurch forward and knocking into the sign that hung by the roadside, sending it spinning on its hinges. Maisy’s father was walking up from the range, a gun smoking in his hands. 

“Getting a bit cocky, aren’t they?” He smiled fondly down at his daughter. “Don’t worry, we’ll get that one later. You know they’re more scared of you than you are of them.”

He took her by the hand and led her back toward the house. Maisy dragged her feet a little and looked over her shoulder, but the zombie was nowhere to be seen. The teddy bear lay alone in the dust. A chicken had picked its way over to it and was pecking at its glass eyes. Down at the end of the drive, the sign swung slowly back to rest. The faded white paint just visible in the mottled shadows of the trees.

‘Shooting Range - $40/hour.

Pheasants, large game, zombies.

Prizes for top kills.

Ammo available.”