Free Tamberlin's Account by Jaime Munt

definitely moving faster than it looked.
    I shrugged on the strap of my bag and held it on my shoulder with the hand that unconsciously took up the hammer.
    Mr. Ages looked up at me anxiously and I pet him.
    I felt the handle of the screwdriver tap my wrist when my hand settled at my side.
    Rising from the bottom of the hill nearest to me came something like a man whose entire flesh was the off color of a bad bruise. More than blood, a pus-like fluid quivered like cold fat on the mouth of every wound. The flies were so dense I could see them in the dark. I could hear them where I couldn’t see them.
    Half a dozen more were coming over the next hill. They were coming out of the woods. A head, neck, shoulder, and arm were all that was left of a woman coming up along the ditch. Her organs and entrails made crude tentacles behind her, like some kind of sea witch. This other one, maybe it was a man before, but it was only a creature of protruding and splintered bones and shredded flesh now.
    None terrified me as this closest rotting thing. I felt like I was facing down the Horseman of Pestilence. I almost fainted and that scared me so bad I became alert like God had slapped me.
    There was no way to win this.
    Shit.
    This one. This horrible One. Something told me I couldn’t—maybe nothing could stop him.
    I wound my arm and hand into Mr. Ages’ leash so he’d have to break it off before I’d lose him. I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid they were already too aware of me. That one I know saw me. The damn thing looked right in my eyes.
    Can the dead see?
    I led Mr. Ages off the road and started running. The tall wet grass quickly soaked me. It was cold. I was shaking, but it had nothing to do with that. To my left I could hear them crunching through the woods. I heard the disgusting sounds they make. I smelled them everywhere.
    Mr. Ages started making high pitched yips. Without thinking, scared shitless, I snapped at him to shut up—and not quietly.
    My shoulder bounced off something soft. It made a guttural sound.
    I heard hooved things running.
    It was so fucking dark in the woods.
    I felt like I was running forever.
    The forest puked me out in a field. There was a farm and beyond it another road.
    There were several buildings on the property, we ran to what was probably the old farmhouse, an abandoned building that sat amongst a heap of junk.
    I had to break out a small window to get in. I hoisted Mr. Ages through it. Nothing but pigeons and spiders had been anywhere near this place in years.
    There was a small loft with a ladder. I drug the poor yipping mutt up there and brought the ladder up behind us. I took the leash’s end and wrapped it around his mug and then crushed him with my body to keep him still.
    It might not have been the first to reach the farm, but the first busy body I knew of eventually found the window. I saw its silhouette block out the moonlight. It stuck its head through and stuffed its head, on what looked like a too-long neck, through the space.
    We lay in the thick smell of mildew and listened to the dead passing us by. The one at the window didn’t move. It just made this “Awwwwww” sound all night on what could have been one breath, if they breathe.
    I “killed” it this morning.
    When we finally went out, all that was left was a somewhat trampled field.
    We walked toward the next road.
    On the fringe of the woods opposite us, beyond another small field, there was a zombie. Even from this distance and without my contacts in or glasses on, I knew which one it was.
    I hate to even write it.
    Like bringing him up will conjure him. It makes me sick to even thinking about him out there. Like a huge spider in your house that you’ve tried to kill, but it manages to drag itself into a vent or something and you don’t know if it’s hurt enough that you don’t have to worry about it coming back. Wondering where it is and what it’s doing and when or if you’ll see it again.
    Never