Genesis

Tan cornhusks stood tall, circling an overgrown yard of brownish grass, just in front of two dark eyes staring at a brick, two-story farmhouse, as a dark-skinned man crouched behind trees placed within a line of foliage that marked an end to the brutal forest that he and his twelve-year-old son and toddler daughter had narrowly escaped, after a nine-day excursion from their last safehouse. Though he could see his breath fogging in front of him, there was no smoke coming from the chimney standing beside the large house. He shifted his pupils from left to right, scanning the tree line, then tops of cornhusks again, before making sure nobody could be seen wandering around the house, nor any shadows lurking within. He took a deep breath then kept his knees bent and his shaved head down as he scurried to the back porch of the house, with only his maul in hand.

The backdoor’s knob refused to move when the man tried to turn it so he perched himself onto the porch’s rail so he could reach the kitchen window, framed just to the right of the door, then slid it up and slithered through. He tiptoed around the house, listening for any sound, feeling for any vibration through the air, smelling for any scent not from his unbathed body. He held the maul in his right hand, pulling a five-inch knife from a case on his left leg, looking for any shadow that might be shifting. Nobody was in the house; he knew that after searching every crevice of every room and closet in the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house. In the two months since his family and their ten-person community had been ravaged by skinheads searching for a meal, Jonathan had learned how to do things quickly and efficiently.

He peered through the kitchen window, then walked through the backdoor and crouched on the porch to scan the area again, before heading back through the same footprints that led him to the house earlier. Once the man was back in the forest, he walked about twenty yards in then took a right and kept marching until he found his children lying beneath the same leaves and twigs with which he had covered them. As quiet as possible, they walked to a mound of rocks hiding their backpacks filled with necessities, then headed back to the house they had just discovered so they could make camp for at least one night, though Jonathan was hoping this could become another safehouse until the weather broke. He didn’t know how much longer they would be able to last outside. It was hard enough surviving when the weather wasn’t numbing their fingers through their ragged gloves, plus his son’s ankle wasn’t yet fully healed.

“Give me your bag, James,” Jonathan said to his son, “we need to set things up before we get ready to sleep. It’s going to be dark soon.”

The boy gave his dad the backpack he had been carrying and Jonathan pulled out fishing line and bells, then booby-trapped rails of stairs leading to the second floor with them. He wrapped some line around the door handle of the first bedroom that was upstairs, then ran it across the hall to the other side of the staircase, tying it onto a bar running from the rail. If anyone came inside, the family would surely hear.

Jonathan guided his pupils along streaks of orange and red, as he looked through a window in the room the three were in. Trees formed shadows beneath as the sun fell behind their leafless branches, then he followed their trunks to the ground, seeing a man standing within cornhusks.

“Stay here. If anything happens go through this window with your sister. The porch’s awning is just below so you two can land on it then hop onto the ground. Follow the tree line until you get back to that pine tree with the three broken branches, then you can get back to the cave by the hills within a few hours. Don’t stop until you get there.”

James looked outside and saw the same man, walking through husks, toward the house. He saw nothing in the man’s hands, so he turned back to his dad and said, “don’t do it, dad. He’s alone and doesn’t have anything.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said, “we don’t know what he has in his bag, or if he’s alone, if there’s more people behind those trees. We don’t know if he can be trusted. You and your sister are my only concern, and we can’t take any chances. You saw what can happen without notice. Take your sister and hide in that closet. If you hear the bells ringing before you hear my voice, grab her and everything else you can, and go.”

James knew the day his father was referencing. The boy remembered a clan of men coming and killing everyone, including his mother, and how his dad was just barely able to grab him and his sister in time to run away from the chaos. He didn’t say anything back to his dad, just grabbed his sister- who hadn’t spoken a word since that day- and held her as his dad shut the closet door.

Jonathan opened the backdoor just as the man placed his foot onto the first step of the porch. The man’s eyes grew to golf balls when he saw Jonathan lift his maul before swinging it. The man jumped back and ran through the field, back through the cornhusks, to take his chances on what hid in wait within the forest from which he had just emerged. The sun was fading quickly, so Jonathan decided to let the man leave without chase. Mutts would get him before daybreak.

“He’s gone. Everything’s okay,” Jonathan yelled when he reached the bottom of the staircase that he had wrapped with fishing line earlier.

After finding enough old clothes and blankets to make a pallet for his children, Jonathan watched them fall asleep then rummaged through the house, searching for anything that would be useful. In the next room, on a dresser, he found a little back notebook with writing on every page. It was a journal from someone- probably whoever lived here when everything began- explaining how times were before the infection spread and everyone was either dead or cannibals or grey.

…they finally let us know they’ve lost all control, today. The vaccines are what mutated everyone’s DNA- that’s why so many people are either sterile or having greys. Greys, mutts as they’re calling them, outnumber human births now; they’re asexual. Females just eat male genitalia and are impregnated. They feed on raw meat, because of something called adrenochrome. It makes them live longer, and helps their stamina, apparently. Greys are much stronger and faster than us but have no endurance. But they’re learning about themselves and have started setting well-planned traps for animals and us. Cannibals are growing in numbers as animal populations are dying off. The vaccines aren’t working. More people are dying than becoming immune and with the way the virus is mutating we won’t make it through another generation. Times are coming to an end, it feels. Hopefully, we figure something out before it’s too late. Hopefully, God has mercy on us all.

Jonathan looked up from the notebook and noticed a trail of green rectangles leading into the closet. He followed them until he found a wooden box holding twenty thousand dollars-worth of old, fifty and hundred-dollar bills, wrapped in bands. He knew they could burn well so he decided to put them all in a black bag lying in the corner of the closet. Jonathan’s eyes could barely stay open, so he walked back to the room his kids were sleeping in, joining their dreams.

Rays of sun poked through the window the next morning, waking all three dreamers, early. Jonathan walked downstairs in search of food but found nothing, so he let his children sleep as he strapped up in layers of clothes and went to scavenge anything that he could find to fill their stomachs. With his maul in one hand and a buck knife strapped onto his left leg, the father carefully marched into the forest.

Eyes have a way of tickling hairs on the back of your neck when they watch you long enough. Jonathan was hiding behind a bush, looking for any shadow moving, listening for the slightest snap of a branch when goosebumps ran up his neck. His heart raced as he felt the touch of someone else’s eyes grabbing hold of him. He wasn’t alone.

His breaths grew heavier and sweat saturated his palms. His fingers tighten their clinch around the maul in his right hand, and he prepared himself for whatever predator may be closing in on its prey.

Leaves crinkled behind him as he turned and evaded someone’s hand, lunging and rolling over, flipping back to his feet and standing in front of two men wielding spiked bats, smiles crowning their chins, desperate hunger in their eyes.

One of the men- the one with a black mohawk and snow-colored skin- swung his bat, hoping to knock Jonathan’s head off, but the dark-skinned man ducked then smashed the white man’s left knee with his maul. The other man had long brown hair and a long beard, swinging his bat and missing his target, leaving the bat’s spikes in the skull of his friend. Jonathan speared the man with a tackle, and they rolled a few feet, until Jonathan was on top and spread his legs enough to not be turned over again. He grabbed the man’s hair and began smashing his head onto the rocks and stones beneath the men, until Jonathan could see blood puddling around brain matter. He grabbed his maul then ran back to the house as quickly as his feet would take him.

“Get up. We have to go,” Jonathan yelled as soon as he came through the farmhouse’s backdoor. People are around. We need to get out of here. Hurry up.” James and his sister were already putting on layers of clothes when their dad came through the bedroom door.

“I can’t, dad,” James said, “my ankle won’t move.” Jonathan looked down and saw that his son’s blue and black ankle and shin had grown three times their regular size.

“Okay. Okay,” Jonathan said, “we have to leave by tomorrow. There were two people in the woods just now. It won’t be long before more come. You have to be able to at least walk if we are going to make it, though. One last night then we have to go.” Jonathan grabbed the bag with all the money in it then brought it downstairs to the chimney and lit a fire with the papers, using a match from one of the packs he had.

Jonathan remembered that he had a jar of grub worms left in his bag, so he started back towards the stairs to give his children some sort of breakfast. As soon as his foot touched the first stair, the front door kicked open and hit him, knocking him to the ground. Five men with shaved heads barged through and the first one smashed Jonathan’s skull with an ax before the man could even yell for his children to leave. The other four walked throughout the first floor, searching for anyone else, or anything else.

One of the men cut fishing line wrapping rails of the staircase and another followed him upstairs while the others cut off limbs of the man they had just killed and placed them on the fire he had made just before they came through the door. Each man kicked in doors and searched everywhere, but all they found was a bag of clothes and one of useless bills, then a track of footprints leading into the forest they had been walking through for weeks.