Zombies and Werewolves, chapter 3 (Patreon)

Stella watched as the Scrappy family laid out long strips of meat on wires threaded between two poles. They were making jerky.

When Stella had first tried to make jerky, the rain had washed out all her efforts. She had a second attempt yield delicious meat, but her third and fourth attempts had been ruined by weather. Rain wasn’t rare.

But the rain seemed to avoid the Scrappy family’s jerky every time. Sometimes she wondered if there was a rational explanation. Maybe one of them was a meteorologist who had access to satellite weather data using a computer hooked to some jury-rigged system of solar panels and ham radio. Yep. That was totally rational.

The oldest man, a guy with gray at the temples that Stella thought of as the father, walked the perimeter as the others cut rabbit meat into thin strips to add to that already drying on the line. Even at his home base, he was prepared for an attack. It made her miss her father. He had survived longer than most people because he had been a paranoid survivalist. She hadn’t been. She’d focused on video games and friends and getting into the perfect college. She hadn’t been prepared for zombies at all. He had taught her everything from gutting a game animal to local plants with medicinal qualities.

If the zombie apocalypse hadn't shown up, she probably would've wandered off to college and sat in coffee shops or bars or wherever college students sat and laughed about her crazy father. And yet, for all his intelligence and paranoia and habit of collecting heavy armaments, in the end he had been as stupid as everyone else in her life. Of course, Stella was stupid too. She just had the misfortune of being stupid and lucky. She moved quickly through the trees, her footsteps as soft as possible so that she didn't alert any wanderers. The noonday sun always drove a few of them into the trees, and sometimes they got confused and didn't know how to wander back to town.

But she didn't run into any of the shuffling dead as she made her way back to her treehouse and then up to the weapons catch in what she thought of as her attic. Her treehouse was actually a series of platforms, each with a shingled roof and at least one side walled in. Her main sleeping platform had four sides and was large enough for the two twin mattresses her and her father had wrestled up to the treetops in addition to a box they had used as a table and a couple of crates for supplies.

She had repurposed the platform her father had designated for weapons practice. The survivors had whittled down the number of the dead, so she felt safe practicing on the ground where a bad throw didn’t sent her favorite knife sailing off through the foliage into oblivion. Besides, after her father died, she discovered that keeping her mind busy was more important than practicing knife throwing. Besides, when she wanted to practice with knives, she preferred to do that on the ground.

So now it was a library full of scavenged books and notebooks and art supplies. It had her maps of the local area, both the official ones she'd found in a dusty box under a desk in the back of the gas station and her hand-made maps showing where zombies congregated.

As she climbed up to her weapons attic, she carefully negotiated around the smaller branches rather than risk breaking them and making a clear climbing path. It was unlikely that a survivor would find her, but if they did, she didn’t want to put her most valuable resource at risk.

She had five rifles, but only three still had ammunition left, and she touched each box reverently. She had a number of books on primitive projectile weapons, and it might be time to start experimenting. She could take the platform her father had dedicated to an infirmary and turn it into a craft room. If she treated the deer hide, she might be able to get workable leather, and the books described turning sinew into string. That would require her to spend more time with the deer that usual, but it might be worth the risk.

And it wasn’t like she needed an infirmary. Her father had insisted that they set it up so that if someone were injured and in danger of turning, that person wouldn't be in the sleeping platform with them. Of course, if she started experimenting with primitive crossbows, she might end up needing that infirmary. The danger was real, and the only thing worse than the zombie apocalypse was the apocalypse with a gangrenous foot.

Putting that aside, she focused on deer hunting. She had to move a significant distance from not only her home but the paths she normally travelled. The sound of a gunshot could draw zombies this way, which was probably why the Scrappy family used snares and focused on rabbits. She just didn’t have that sort of patience. She would rather bag one deer and then have time for her reading.

The walk was peaceful. Birds chirped in the trees and she thought she heard a distant cry like a peacock. People used to keep them around here, so it was possible. She was almost to the stream when she spotted the wolf track in the soft ground that had been cleared of vegetation by the deer that would come through to reach water. She knelt down and touched the print, and the edge collapsed leaving only two toes still visible.

She talked to the air, the afternoon sun, her missing father. “They say that wolves are shy and will stay away from people. I really hope that's true because I do not want to shoot you,” she said. “I mean, you don’t deserve to live anymore than the rest of us, and the rest of us are definitely on the slow slide to oblivion, but I don’t want to be the one to pull the trigger.”

That was completely hypocritical given that she was hunting deer. But she had come to terms with her own moral failings. Besides, the end of the world was not vegan-friendly. So she climbed up into the trees and settled in to watch for the herd.

The herd had grown tremendously and eventually they would destroy so much of the underbrush that they would start starving. But for now, she liked that they had grown complacent. They didn’t have to fear zombies since four feet still trumped two, and that gave her the edge. The first time she’d hunted, she’d wasted far too much ammo and had drawn a couple of dozen zombies, meaning she hadn’t been able to get to the meat before the flies, so she had to be smarter than the deer. And complacent deer were stupid.

Well, all deer didn’t have an impressive mental capacity in any circumstance, but complacent ones were stupid even when it came to survival, which had not been true when she’d first started hunting.

By the time the deer wandered into the clearing, the sun was nearing the treetops and casting long shadows that crawled along the hills. She ignored the huge buck with his branching antlers and the does with half-grown fawns following. Instead she focused on a small deer on the edge of the herd. There was a limit to how much meat she could eat quickly or hang out to dry, so the small deer was best.

She waited until her chosen deer had reached to the river and lowered her head to drink and then Stella lined up her shot and slowly squeezed the trigger.

The deer jerked forward to the far bank of the small stream before she sank to her knees and then collapsed to the earth. Stella unwound the rope from around her shoulder where she was wearing it like a sash and hurried over. The deer wasn't even kicking when she reached it, but she quickly slit its throat to make sure it wasn't suffering and then tied the rope around the deer's back legs. It was the work of a second to find the nearest limb at the right height, and she threw the end of the rope over the limb so that she could start pulling the deer up.

Zombies wouldn't bother the meat even if they responded to the sound of the gunshots, but she needed to get clear. The deer might be dead, and therefore uninteresting, but the zombies would definitely go after her. She could come back in the morning to butcher the deer before taking as much meat as possible closer to home to lay out in the sun. Even though she had taken a smaller deer, it was still too heavy for her to hoist into the tree.

Time was running's short, so she quickly slit the deer's belly and let the internal organs fall to the ground. Her father would have lectured about the health benefits of the liver, but she didn't have time to fuss with fresh meat. The sun was sinking, and when zombies were motivated, they were perfectly capable of running. Hopefully, any drawn to her shot would decapitate themselves on low hanging branches, but she couldn't count on that.

With the viscera on the ground, that removed enough weight that she hoisted the deer into the air and tied off the rope to keep it there for the night. She turned and spotted two eyes staring at her from the shadow. The wolf watched as blood dripped from Stella’s hand and the knife she held. She had her rifle, but it was slung on her back. She couldn’t reach it without letting go of the knife. A knife was an inadequate weapon compared to a wolf's fangs and claws, but it was more protection than nothing.

“If you want that, you are welcome to it,” Stella said as she edged to the side. She kept her knife between her and the wolf, and the animal watched her.

“If you're going to eat it, though, you better move fast. The zombies might've heard my shot. And if there are any around, they're going to come for it. They may not want that deer meat, but they'll eat you.” Unsurprisingly, the wolf just watched her. Stella knew better than to run from a predator, so she edged toward a huge oak tree. She would rather go home to sleep. She'd rather be able to wash the blood off. However, at this point she was thinking safety was a priority over comfort. And getting high enough to get out of the reach of zombie or wolf was priority numero uno.

“Go on, eat your fill. But eat it quick,” she said as she reached the tree. The lowest branch was significantly over her head. There was another tree that she could climb and then swing over to this one, but it would take her to close to the wolf. The animal might be motionless now, but if it felt threatened or sensed weakness, it would attack. Wild animals were predictable that way.

The wolf continued to watch. Stella shoved the knife into its holster and jumped almost at the same time. She caught the branch by one hand and swung her legs to get enough momentum to swing to safety. And still, the wolf watched.

Stella climbed several branches so that she was high enough into the trees that she wouldn't catch the zombies’ attention. “Go on. If you're going to eat, now's the time to do it,” she told the wolf. She only had a small section of rope left over from hanging the deer, and she fashioned a rough sling to keep her in the tree even if she fell asleep. It was going to be a rough night. She pulled a pair of binoculars off her belt and started studying the surroundings. “I'll keep an eye out as long as we still have light, but when darkness comes, the zombies are going to have an advantage over both you and me. And you can't climb.”

The wolf inched into the clearing and sniffed at the organs she had dumped on the ground. There was a lot of nutrition in the liver and heart, and the wolf definitely needed it. Even in the low light she could see how mangy the animal was. Wolves usually ran in packs, but this must be a loner. It had scars along one side and the animal slunk so low that its belly was almost on the ground. The wolf grabbed a couple of bites of the liver and then looked up at Stella. The gaze made Stella oddly uncomfortable, so she returned to studying the surroundings through her binoculars. A flight of birds took off from a tree on the ridge, and she focused her attention that direction.

“I think we have something coming in from the north. Even if it's at full run and doesn't manage to decapitate itself, it's still going to take about 10 minutes to get here. I do prefer when they decapitate themselves. Having to get rid of them feels like murder, ya know?” she asked. The wolf didn’t seem to mind her voice because it had started gulping down chunks of meat, one paw on the pile of viscera so it could tear off bites. “I know it’s not,” Stella said. “The people died a long time ago. The government kept promising to find a cure, but if all the world’s scientists couldn’t find a cure, I’m pretty sure there isn’t one. So, cutting off their heads is a mercy. It’s like letting their bodies rest. Still. I kinda hate doing it,” she admitted.

The wolf was kind enough to not call her stupid. “Do me a favor and get clear before the zombies come, okay?” It was stupid to talk to a wolf, but it wasn't like she had anyone else. She had tried to wave at the Scrappy family from across the field. It hadn't ended well. Guns had been pointed and the kids had scattered as if Stella was Freddie Kruger coming at them with that stupid mask of his.

Foliage moving, the tips of young trees waving gently. It was a deceptive motion because it took quite a bit of force to get us a tree to move, even a small one. That was probably a zombie running full tilt into the tree.

“Something’s coming from the north. You have maybe five minutes left. It's probably time to start thinking about running.” The wolf looked up at her before gulping down something that might have been part of the heart. Stella felt trapped within the gaze, within the sorrow and pain and aching loneliness she imagined there. Those were her emotions. She understood that. But for one second, she thought she shared them with the sad creature scavenging from her kill.

“Come on. The zombies are almost here, or at least one is. I really need you to run away so that you will survive another day. Run. Go.” It continued to eat. She broke off a branch and threw it so it bounced off the wolf’s butt. It showed it’s fangs, and for one second it looked as though the wolf was trying to pull itself into two parts.

The physical wolf stood still, but a gray mist rose as though there were a second Wolf trying to wrench itself free. The ghost image existed for the span of a heartbeat and then the mist snapped back into place and there was only one wolf.

With one more snarl, the wolf darted off into the trees, escaping just before a zombie raced into the clearing, its arms windmilling as though trying to keep balance. The zombie didn't recognize the deer hanging from the tree as the source of the hunter’s weapon. It saw no living being, so it continued on its way, crashing through the brush in search of the sound that had attracted it. Sometimes Stella wondered if those runners ever stopped. Maybe they were zombies that were eternally racing from one end of the country to the other in search of a sound. Like they were perpetual motion machines somebody had wound up and then turned loose. But as long as the zombie didn't double back, the wolf was safe. Stella wasn't sure why that mattered, but it did.