They’d shut up all the infected, living and dead, inside a large hut in a compound. Nobody had been out for seven days. That made the job a simple one of torching and watching it burn, slicing and incinerating the zombies who tried to escape. The only glitch came when a woman burst out of the burning hut, clutching a baby. We nearly hacked her before she screamed and the baby started howling.
Zombies don’t talk. They can make a weird sort of grunt, with air coming out through the vocal cords, but they can’t talk. Or scream.
We doused both woman and child with gin (my own way of dealing with the outbreak, so I always had some on me) to disinfect them as best we could. Then we pronounced mother and child “clean.” This practice didn’t usually thrill the local Muslims, but they were fine with the logic of cleaning off zombie virus as long as the booze didn’t make the person drunk. Judged living again by the nassara zombie-hunters, both survivors were taken away gently to be fed and given a real bath.
And that was the job. We’d insisted on the 40,000 CFA up front. That would have been not quite a hundred bucks American if the U.S. still existed. Normally, we’d have pocketed it and gone back to Maroua in high spirits.
But we weren’t here on business, or fun. We were here to check up on two of our own.
The sousprefet grabbed two gendarmes and led us there himself. He seemed to know what we were in for, but, our friends being nassaras, he’d probably been hesitant to go in.
“If you find anything, we’ll pay the usual rate,” he said. This seemed awfully generous until he took off down the road with the two gendarmes without paying us first. Figured we wouldn’t get any backup, though I could see the hold-off on payment. Roger and Cyndi might be okay. And if they weren’t, he might want the house after we burned it out. The cement walls wouldn’t be damaged, nor the tolle roof.
The compound was ominously silent as we let ourselves in through the gate with a little machete-prying. We went in machetes-first. Once we established that the coast was apparently clear, we brought in our bottles of kerosene. We laid them out along a line on the dirt path up to the cement porch, dropping small matchboxes as we went. We’d long since learned how to play zombie-hunting like a video game. You wanted to lay down ammunition coming in along the routes where you’d be most likely to come hell-for-leather back out, screaming and scrambling to avoid those clutching hands and snapping teeth. Zombies weren’t too fast and they weren’t too bright. They didn’t last all that long, either, maybe six months. But once they got fixated on you, they’d keep coming and they’d run you down if you didn’t burn them, pin them or find sanctuary.
The house was probably bigger than would be comfortable, or safe, for a single volunteer or even two. Peace Corps Admin had made some weird decisions in the past about security on that score, not that it mattered now. I’d learned fast during training to take care of my own safety as much as possible; in fact, Josie and I had bonded then over our cynicism about some Peace Corps policies. We’d been in Community Development before the outbreak, if you can believe it.
We busted into the house fast, machetes and matches out. We thought we were ready for what we’d find.
We weren’t.
The house had an open plan to allow for the February heat in the middle of the dry season. It had three bedrooms coming off a huge, airy living room that shaded off into a back porch with big clay pots, round and red.
In the middle of the living room, near a wooden couch that had been turned over and smashed, lay a zombie. It had been staked down with a metal spike through the ribs. Impressive. Whoever had done it must have used a sledgehammer. The zombie kept trying to get itself free, but couldn’t do so without ripping itself in half. Even so, it was still trying, scrabbling feebly at the cement floor.
It took me at least a minute to recognize Roger. His face had bloated up and slid sideways in the heat. His guts had burst out onto the floor. He had to have been dead for most of the past two weeks. The soiled t-shirt gave him away. We’d been in training together and he was still wearing the shirt our group had designed, along with the usual Peace Corps uniform of jeans and hiking boots that we were wearing for the job. A lot of volunteers eventually went native in their clothing styles, switching to cooler tailored cotton pajamas and flip-flops. Not Roger.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Josie said, recognizing him at the same moment. She looked ready to puke. I wasn’t surprised. She and Roger had dated for about a week in training before she found out he was an asshole. Training relationships usually burned fast and furious, then guttered out just as fast.
“That’s one way to put it.” I could see her having a few issues walking in on a zombified person she’d once fooled around with.
As our voices echoed, I realized that the house seemed awfully quiet, as if someone was hiding further in, holding his or her breath. If Cyndi had been zombified, why would she be hiding from us? Why not attack? Where the hell was she?
I sidled up to Josie. Sound really carried off gloss-painted walls and polished floors. I leaned close and whispered, “I think Cyndi’s still in here.”
She nodded and whispered back, “You think we should check before we clear the house and start burning?” Cyndi had never liked Josie, being a tad jealous about the training fling, but Josie was a pro. She wasn’t going to let that stop her from finishing the job.
“Well…yeah.” At the very least, we’d need to make sure we’d located every zombie in the place or we might not get paid. Somebody had staked Roger to the living room floor, somebody who seriously didn’t want to die or get zombified. It was probably Cyndi, but that didn’t mean she was still human.
We catfooted down the hallway toward the bedrooms, covering each other. Machetes can be pretty effective, especially considering how much practice we’d gotten in with them. But they were close-up weapons, which meant we could get infected by body fluids or a bite if we didn’t watch it. No way in hell did I want to get infected and end up like Roger. Or that gendarme on the road from Ngaounderé.
Josie came behind me, watching my back. One of the fun parts of being a guy was getting to be on point. As I snuck down the hallway, I thought I heard a noise. I stopped dead, Josie ramming into my back.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered. Josie was practically clinging to my shoulders. Then I heard it again. It was a whimper. It came from down the hall.
We edged into the room. The noise was coming from the closet. Somebody was hiding in there.
We eased up to either side, machetes raised high. Then, at a signal from Josie, I yanked open the door.
Good thing we didn’t stand right in front of it. Whoever it was came right out of the closet, flailing around with a big spear. We almost hacked her to pieces right there, even as I recognized Cyndi. But then she started screaming at us. Actual words, mostly curses.
“Hey!” I yelled, backing up fast from the spear. “Hey, Cyndi! Calm down! It’s Bruce and Josie!”
Cyndi didn’t seem to notice. Josie and I had to dodge and hop around the room until I managed to hack the spear in half with my machete. Josie clomped Cyndi over the head with the butt of hers. That dazed Cyndi long enough that we were able to get her down and tie her up. I guess she finally realized then that we weren’t zombies-they don’t tie you up, just eat you raw. She started to cry, so we stopped trying to tie her up. We chivvied her out of there, checking the backyard to make sure it was clear and burning everything flammable as we went. We managed to save a photo album and some letters, though we weren’t sure if they belonged to Cyndi or Roger.