Straddling the bike, he secured the axe to the frame and rode quietly westward down the alley past his former neighbor’s back fence. Two blocks into the ride he noticed the sickly sweet smell of death. Cade dismounted his bike to seek out the source. Cautiously glancing around the corner, he saw them. One was a balding black man, ashy and gray with sunken jaundiced eyes. Above his collar was a bruised and bloody gaping neck wound with dangling streamers of flesh that left muscle, veins, sinew and white vertebrae exposed. The only thing appearing to hold his head on was a blood soaked necktie. Blackish dried blood fully coated the front of the ghoul’s three-piece suit.
Next to him was a small black woman with no visible wounds. She was undead also. Her formerly pastel yellow bathrobe was now thoroughly congealed with drying blood. Dirt, twigs, hair and all manner of refuse clung to the fabric.
Both of the undead were circling around the base of a large oak tree, hands in the air, reaching, mouths working like two macabre marionettes.
Cade assessed the situation from a distance. Upon further scrutiny he noticed a milled lumber platform about twelve feet off the ground, with a coiled up rope ladder attached. It was a tree house partially hidden by the lower boughs and leaves of the old oak.
There was some movement in the middle branches of the tree.
The two undead noticed it as well and started to moan. Barely audible over the chilling sound, a voice yelled, “Help, up here!”
The undead were oblivious to Cade’s presence. Their attention was fully focused on the tree and the meat in it.
Taking advantage of the diversion, he crept up on the male cadaver from behind and to the right, being careful to stay shielded from Bathrobe’s view. Three feet away from the undead businessman, he raised the sharpened ice axe in his right hand shoulder high and swung it in a wide horizontal arc at the creature’s head. Brackish black liquid and putrid gray matter exploded from the baseball-sized hole in its temple. The dead executive collapsed instantly and the ice axe slipped from his head.
The heavy thud of the body colliding with the ground alerted the other ghoul to Cade’s presence. Hissing and biting, she turned and lurched towards him.
In one fluid movement Cade sidestepped her lunge, drew his Gerber left handed and buried the dagger handle deep into the thing’s eye socket. Her flailing arms were unable to get a purchase on him as she slumped towards the base of the tree.
After a quick wipe off on the grass, he put the dagger back in its sheath.
Cade felt something soft and wet squish under his boots. Looking down, he was sickened to see a mound of human-looking remains. Ribs, a spinal column, and scraps of skin, tendon, and flesh and blood lay in a greasy pile on the grass.
Cade was examining the remnants when a high-pitched voice from above shouted a warning, “Watch out behind you!”
Faster than an Old West gunslinger, the Glock was out of the Bianchi shoulder holster and in Cade’s left hand. The pistol barked twice in rapid succession. The lethal double tap removed the frontal lobe and most of the elderly man’s forehead and skullcap. As he fell towards the other two undead bodies, the remaining contents of his cranium painted the ground. The walker was wearing bloody night clothes and clutched a newspaper in its hand. Numerous bite wounds were evident on its arms, face and neck.
“Shooooot. It’s old man Bandon. He was one of them too?” said the faceless voice in the tree house.
Gunfire was guaranteed to attract the dead. As if on cue their eerie moaning started to reverberate from blocks around.
“Get down here,” Cade said, pausing to scan the surroundings. After a lack of response from above, he barked, “If you want to live let’s go... now.”
Two frightened faces peered down from the tree house. The ladder rapidly unfurled and they nearly clambered over each other trying to reach the ground.
At the first sight of the gory pile of remains, the younger of the two blurted out, “Missy’s dead.” He started crying, snot running down his upper lip.
Thinking the worst, Cade asked the boys if Missy was their sister.
The older boy tearfully choked out, “No... Missy was our cocker spaniel.”
Glancing down, Cade was at the same time relieved and momentarily at a loss for words. Then he barked instructions at the two. “Follow me, be quick, but be quiet.”
The older boy grabbed the younger one around the neck and hustled him by the three corpses at the base of the tree, all the while struggling to shield him from the scene using his hands. He wasn’t successful in keeping his younger brother from seeing the bodies of the undead. Tearing away from the older boy, the younger one dropped to his knees and gave forth a guttural wail. “Mom... Dad…”
Cade knelt down and placed his arm around the young boy’s shoulder.
The boy fought off the embrace, landing a fist on the stranger’s temple. “You killed them!” the younger boy screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.
Cade grabbed the boy in a bear hug. He was hoping to calm him down enough to talk the kid’s mind around what he had just witnessed. But also he was seeing stars from the sneak attack and needed a brief respite. The shot he took to the temple was perfectly aimed and had rung his bell.
The boy finally stopped struggling after some quiet, calming words from his brother.
Cade kept his grip firm and whispered into the young boy’s ear. “I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did. You need to understand something though. I am truly sorry for what I did, but as hard as it is to believe, they were already dead.” He paused for a moment to think before finishing out loud. “Why don’t you guys help me understand what happened this morning.” Cade released the boy.
The skinny, younger boy spoke first. “When Mom came home from graveyard shift at the hospital she started fighting with Daddy. They fight a lot but this was the worst ever. We usually just get out of their way until they chill.”
“I hustled Ike up into the tree house. We thought we’d wait until they calmed down,” the older of the two added. “Things got real quiet for a while and then we decided to go back into the house. I opened the screen door and it squeaked like it always does. The next thing I see is those,” he said while pointing at his dead parents.
Cade told the two boys what he had learned, “It’s all over the news. A virus or something is making people die and then come back to life or un-death, or whatever; they only want to eat. You, me, your dog... anything living... they don’t discriminate. They don’t even recognize family.”
“We were wondering why they kept circling the tree and wouldn’t answer us. I was tripping because Dad was all bloody,” the older boy said, wincing as he again looked at the dead bodies. The brothers, eyes tearing, embraced each other and cried.
Cade gave them a moment, then got their attention to add one last important detail. “The people on the news are saying the only way to stop the infected if they attack you is by destroying their brain. Hit ‘em anywhere else and they just keep coming.”
The whole exchange took just moments. Now undead were moaning all around them and it sounded as if they were drawing nearer.
Cade holstered his pistol, secured the ice axe to the bike’s utility rack and quietly whispered to the two boys, “Follow me if you want to live.”
The nerve wracking sounds coming from the large group of walkers, about a hundred yards away, were more than enough to convince the brothers to follow the stranger on the bike.