A Grave Departure

There are more of them now. They linger in the shadows, a sad, unavoidable consequence of the plague that has decimated our numbers. Misery draws them, and the sickly-sweet stench of dead beckons from the mass graves.

They barely look different from the corpses they feed upon- sallow skin, teeth rotten and black. Or so I’m told- I’ve only ever seen them from a distance. No one dares draw near, terrified of the pestilence they may carry.  

These ghouls are carrion vultures. 

They emerge when night cools the air of our desert town, residing in the dark shadows of evening as they feast. No one knows where they go when the sun rises. Once, we might have banded together to root them out and attempt to eradicate them. Now, it feels as though that moment has come and gone.

My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Morris, blows the smoke of her high-tar cigarette from her nostrils, her eyes narrowed against the sun. “They’ll regret doing that.” 

We watch as four large concrete mixers back up one by one and dump their loads over the fresh graves in the cemetery. Men yell to one another as they coordinate spreading the wet cement. 

Mrs. Morris scoffs at their efforts. “Mark my words- covering their food source won’t drive the ghouls away. It’ll only drive them to desperation.” She looks me up and down appraisingly, in a way that makes my skin crawl. “They’ll come for the children first, and the physically weak.” 

I stutter in response. “They’ve never eaten the living before.”

She drops her cigarette, watching it smolder on the sidewalk before crushing it beneath her heel like a bug. She spits, the phlegm dark and stringy, and shakes her head. “I didn’t say that. I said they’ll come for the living. There are many ways to make someone dead.”

I search for a retort but find none. Mrs. Morris chuckles, scuffling back up the short steps to her trailer, the flimsy door slamming behind her. I turn my attention back to the cement trucks, my tentative hope gone- just another thing Mrs. Morris has snuffed out beneath her heel.

She’s wrong, I tell myself, but the words feel hollow. I retreat to my own double-wide and bolt the door, but it does nothing to stop the fear from sliding up my spine like an unwelcome parasite. I close the blinds so that I can get some shut-eye- we’ve all become a bit nocturnal since the ghouls arrived. I cannot find sleep in my own bed, and so I slink down the hall to my parents’ bedroom- they were early victims to the plague, but I feel their spirits here still. I imagine the comforts my mother would whisper, and the security my father’s presence would provide, and I finally fall asleep.

That night, the ghouls fill the air with their frustrated screams. It lasts until dawn, when they disperse to hide from the light. We gather in small groups in the town square that morning, as though drawn out by some unspoken pull to congregate and assess.

“They’ll leave now, and head toward the larger cities north of here.”

“Maybe they’ll retreat back underground, and die. Or hibernate. I wish we knew if they hibernated.”

“Or,” offers the willowy man who ran the pharmacy, “if they don’t leave, we can wait for them to grow weak from hunger, and slaughter them.”

A hoarse laugh sounds behind me- Elijah Cole, his face freckled from the sun, shakes his head and sneers. Elijah was a few years above me in grade school, but even then, he seemed dangerous- “half-cocked” was how my father always described his family, poor farmers who eked out an existence with some sheep and cattle south of town. 

Now, he’s the only one of them left- just like me.

“They don’t get weaker,” Elijah says. “They won’t just go away. And there are too many to kill.”

“Speak for yourself,” says a rotund man with eyes that shift as he talks. “I’ve got an AK-15- that should do the trick.”

“Well, aren’t you a big boy,” Elijah says, his drawl laced with sarcasm. He turns to the rest of us, and I look away as his eyes catch mine. “You can’t kill them with bullets. I’ve tried.”

A ripple of concern carries through our group, as though there’s been an unspoken agreement until now- don’t do anything to provoke them. 

“What gave you the right-”

“Oh, shut up,” Elijah warns, his voice suddenly hostile. “My father tried to warn you all when it might have made a difference. But no one had the energy to care, because you’d all buried your heads in the sand with your own grief. Now, there’s only a quarter of us left, and they outnumber us.”

He looks at me again, his blue eyes piercing, and there’s a question in them, but I can’t tell what it is. 

“What do you suggest we do, then?” I ask.

He grins without humor. “Leave. Our best bet is to head west or east, either into the mountains or the desert, find some place that wasn’t populated before all this happened. No mass graves, no ghouls. At least, that’s my theory.”

A silence settles amongst us. Leave? My feet feel heavier at the thought. There’s so little left anywhere, but this is the only place I’ve ever known.

“Then why haven’t you left yet?” asks the bank teller.

“Soon.” Elijah reaches behind his back and pulls out a machete. “If they come for you, slice them clean through the neck,” he says, swiping it through the air in demonstration. “Taking off their head is the only thing that works. Trust me.”

With that, he departs, his figure cutting a long shadow across the dirt. Whatever meager wind that had filled our sails seems to depart with him, and our groups disperse soon after. 

I drag my feet walking home, Elijah Cole’s words echoing around in my head. To drown them out, I find a hammer and some nails and spend the next hour boarding up the windows of the house with some old two by fours my father had stashed in the shed. Then I crawl back into my parents’ bed and cry myself to sleep. 

It’s becoming a pathetic habit- I intend to stop doing it very soon. 

The scratching at the door is barely audible when the ghouls emerge just after sunset. It’s sweltering inside the house with everything closed up, and I sweat as I sit in the corner, clutching a large butcher knife- the closest thing I have to Elijah’s machete. It keeps sliding through my slick palms, and I eventually set it down beside me, worried I might cut myself. 

The scratching continues- it sounds more like rodents than what I know it to be. Then the rattling begins, a gentle testing along the weathered siding. The efforts increase now, slow and persistent, and I can feel my heart fluttering against my ribs like a rabbit. A part of me wonders why I’m so afraid to die- what is it I have left now? What do any of us have to hold on to anymore?

But my heart is persistent, the rapid pattern like a mantra in my body- don’t-let-them-in, don’t-let-them-in, don’t-let-them-in. I tremble in the dark, refusing to turn on a light- I don’t want to give any sign that I’m here.

There are shuffling sounds, and I can see their sickly figures silhouetted through the slats on the windows, attempting to fit their fingers through the boards. A tug, and then another. I can hear a nail squeak in protest before it begins to give. 

I fight the moan that rises in my throat.

Another pull, with more strength now, and the board gives a bit more. I whimper, and then bite my lip to keep quiet. A metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. 

I wipe my palms on my jean shorts and then pick up the knife again. I force myself to take slow breaths, to steady myself for whatever comes next. I count two, maybe three of them, as their outlines skitter past. 

For the first time since this all began, I wish the plague had taken me too.

Then a shrill scream rends the air, and the ghouls pause in their work. They scuttle away, and I realize where the noise originated. I can hear Mrs. Morris yelling profanities, the thuds reverberating as furniture and belongings are scattered in her haste to escape from the invading monsters. Part of me wants to help, but my body denies the urge- I’m rooted like a tree to my spot on the floor.

Her door squeals on its hinges, and she’s outside now. “You rotten, yellow-bellied slimy bastards- GET OFF!” she screams. “If you even think-”

A loud cracking sound, and then silence. I can hear them shuffling away with their prize, and I slide my body to the floor and curl into a fetal position. 

I wait all night for them to return, but aside from the occasional gunshots echoing from a distance, I hear nothing.

In the inky silence, I make my decision.

The Cole family ran a small, rundown ranch outside of town, a few miles down highway ten. I fill my dad’s old pickup with the last can of gasoline, say a prayer, and turn the key in the ignition, pumping the clutch. It catches, and I ease the truck slowly onto the pavement. I stop, looking back at the only home I’ve ever known, now filled with ghosts, but I don’t allow any tears- that time is behind me.

I find the place easily enough, the fields brown from drought, and turn onto the dirt road that kicks up dust behind me like a muddy flag announcing my arrival. As I approach, a lanky figure detaches itself from the shadows of the one story house and walks toward a large Ford parked nearby. For a split second my blood turns to ice, my brain rushing to catch up- no, it can’t be. Ghouls don’t come out in the day. Get a grip.

Elijah looks up, and his eyes squint at me as he throws a bag into the bed of the truck. He cocks an eyebrow as I kill the engine and climb out. I step forward tentatively, and raise a hand in greeting.

“What do you want?” he asks.

I raise my chin a notch. “To come with you.”

He chuckles. “No.”

“Yes. You’re the one who made the grand speech in the square about getting out of town-”

“And that’s exactly what I’m doing. You can do it too, you know- just not with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, shrugging. “You’re a liability.”

I hold up a hand and tick off fingers. “I’m stronger than I look, and I’m smart. I’m resilient, and-” I glance at the truck behind him, hitched up to a large horse trailer. “I can drive stick shift. I’m guessing you want to head to the mountains. That’s a long drive. It’ll go faster if we take turns.”

His eyes flash, and he chews on his cheek as he sizes me up. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I’m Rachel Anderson. I was in the same grade as your brother, Andy.”

Elijah looks down at the mention of his brother, his face pinched with pain. When he looks up, his face is determined. “I still have to load up the animals. There’s a milk cow and three sows. You can put the rest of the feed bags in the truck bed, and siphon the gas from your truck into those cannisters. Be quick about it.”

We work in silence as the sun traces a tall arc into the sky. Finally, he tosses me the keys. “You drive first. I’ll navigate.”

He places his machete on the floor beneath his seat and directs me to a nearby country road, instructing me to drive no faster than 40 miles an hour. “I don’t want to stress the animals more than necessary,” he says by way of explanation.

I look out at the mountains looming in the distance like a mirage. “Where are we heading?”

“A small farm in the foothills, northwest of here. It’s sixty miles from any town or city. Should be safe.” He pulls maps from the glove compartment and smooths one out on his legs, and I can see a spindly route he’s traced with red pen. “It has a well and plenty of land for farming. Was owned by a friend of my dad’s. I’m not sure if anyone is still there, but if they are, I’m hoping to use the animals to bargain my way in.”

“Our way in,” I correct him.

“We’ll see,” he says, but it sounds like bluster. “We can’t take the highways, and we need to avoid any populated areas.”

Am I missing something? “If we do all that, we won’t make it there before dark.”

He cuts me a look. “It’ll take a few days.”

I nearly run off the road. “What the hell are we gonna do when night comes?”

A shrug. “Drive out to a field in the middle of nowhere and park. We’ll sleep in the cab. With any luck, we won’t be close to one of their hives.”

“Hives?”

“You don’t want to know.”

I consider what he’s just told me. “You know a lot about them.”

“Yeah, well. Like I said the other day, my family tried to stop them. So I learned something, but at a cost.” He clears his throat, and it’s obvious that the conversation is over.

I drive until I can’t keep my eyes open, and then Elijah takes over while I sleep, my head wedged against the window. When I wake, it’s dusk, and we’ve turned off onto a bumpy back road, driving through tall fields of wheat. 

“This will have to do,” Elijah grunts. “I’ll let out the cow-she needs to graze. And you can feed the pigs.”

I wake up at some point during the night. Moonlight floods the cab, illuminating everything in soft monochrome. Elijah is gone, the door left ajar. 

I hadn’t heard him leave, and nothing looks disturbed. Still, something woke me. And the hairs on the back of my neck have begun to stand up.

I sit upright and listen, straining against the sounds of crickets and tree frogs. A moment later, and I hear it- a grunt, a yell.

Elijah.

Again, I am frozen, seemingly destined to be a witness to the horrors around me. I swallow hard, and glance again to the driver’s side. The keys sit on the dash. How easy it would be to reach out and take them. To run away.

I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. No. No. I won’t. 

The machete still sits at my feet, where Elijah had left it. If I’m going to act, it has to be now. I reach down and grab it, surprised by its weight, and exit the cab, ignoring the bile that rises in my throat as I jog toward the sounds of struggle.

The path is easy to follow, the grasses flattened before me. 

I don’t allow myself to think, or to second guess. I just keep moving.

I see figures now, and can make out Elijah on the ground, kicking at a ghoul. Three of them surround him in the dark, their skin eerily shimmery against the night. 

As I move, I filter my emotions. Ignore the fear, Rachel, but hold tight to the fury.

The first one loses its head with one quick movement, and I force myself to look away from the horror of the image left. The others have spotted me, and my next slice is not so clean. I aim for the neck but meet shoulder, the machete stuck there. The ghoul grabs my hand and screams at me, its eyes pitch black, its breath like something I could only dream from a nightmare. My hand keeps a firm grasp on the handle, and I manage to wrench it free. 

The other ghoul has disappeared from my periphery, and I realize that Elijah has tackled it. The ghoul before me has pulled back on its haunches, springing to attack.  I hold steady, and will my hand to stop shaking. When it jumps, I meet it with a swing, and somehow, somehow, the machete finds its target, the ghoul’s head detaching from its body in one sickening crunch. 

I push forward to where Elijah still struggles. I kick the ghoul off of him and hold out the machete. Elijah’s eyes meet mine, blazing in the dark, and he pulls it from me and tackles the ghoul. 

It’s over as quickly as it started. 

I allow myself a discrete moment to throw up, and then accept Elijah’s hand up. He’s breathing heavily, and we walk slowly back to the truck, leaning slightly against each other.

It’s only when we’re safely inside the confines of the cab that he turns to me and speaks. “I’m sorry for what I said… about you being a liability. I was wrong.”

I swallow hard. “You made a snap judgment. I did the same to you, and your family, once,” I admit, my voice tinged with shame. “And you might have been right, a day or two ago. But last night, I made a decision. It was a long time coming, and I have you to thank for it.”

He leans his cheek against the headrest as he studies me. “What decision was that, then?”

I pull in a breath, and savor the feel of it, the feel of my blood still pulsing through my veins. It’s only when I speak that I feel the weight of the words, and the truth to them.

I smile at him. 

“I decided to live.”