In the Sound

The barn doors were slightly parted.

A horde of groaning and guttural cries were scattering out. Each of them limping, eyes goggling around like they’d never seen so much food before. Drool seeped from their snapping jaws, and with them was a stench so foul that I was a second away from vomiting my guts into the dirt.

They spilt out into the open fields, spreading out in different directions.

Some of their faces familiar. Some definitely not. I wondered how many of them I spoke to. What they thought of me. Surely they didn’t think much. My old high school teacher, Farmer Rue’s daughter, even that kid that worked at the fruit market. My stomach was turning in a foul motion, clogging up my airways and choking me. I blinked hard before slipping wiry fingers into my sweaty hair.

Gunshots were pattering around the sky, like fat raindrops on a tin roof. The closest ones were gone first, their heads jolting before they crumbled against the floor. Kit was creeping over their bodies and picking off the stray ones. Pouncing right onto their chest the way he play fought with me. Except this time his teeth sunk deep into their necks, until they didn’t have one anymore.

Beside me, Daryl emptied his gun over. Reloaded. Fired. Emptied it again. His bullets piercing the very middle of their foreheads. Splatters of thick, dark blood were spitting and sprinkling into different directions.

The field outside the barn was littered with lumps of still figures. It was like watching sick animals getting put down. The thundering rain began to lighten. Fewer and fewer gunshots with every second that passed.

When I turned my attention away from him, a dead woman’s hands were seconds away from my face. She was swiping out towards me, hair flipping around and swaying with the wind. She was scratching for my neck, ready to tear it apart.

Scrambling for the knife in my belt, she waddled over until I could smell her breath. Her arms went for around my neck, her teeth chomping for my skin. Tightening my grip on the knife, I beat her arms away and stabbed her in the throat. Liquid squirted on my face as she groaned.

But she still struggled. I rattled the knife that was wedged in her throat, trying to pull it out.

It didn’t budge.

Suddenly, she shook in my grasp. Her head lolling back, exposing the smoky hole on the side of her head, before she fell at my feet. Daryl clicked his gun and reloaded, turning back to the swarm.

Slowly, my glossy bulbs glazed back over onto the barn doors. A dead man’s chipped shoulders were banging roughly against the wooden blocks as he passed them. He wobbled as he walked, shoulders slanted to one side. Head tilted to the right, bright blue bulbs flickering across all of our faces. His face was severely battered, with chunks of his skin missing on his cheeks and eye lids. Strapped around his waist was a black, empty holster, drooping a little on the side that his leg was wonky.

For a moment I just watched him numbly. His head swinging wildly around, tripping lightly on the litter of dead bodies. Kit’s whine was suddenly echoing against my skull. He was creeping back, bowing his nose to the ground in stress.

I raised a brow in question before turning back to the man.

Another whine from Kit was all I needed.

All I needed to realise that the man was actually my Dad.

For a moment, a hush settled on the world. Not even the whistling trees or the sweet calls of the birds could be heard. Not the rainfall of pattering gun shots, or the throaty cries of the Greene family. Everything was back to normal. My dad was coming home from a trip he took for work, a bead of sweat lining his creased forehead.

Walking towards me slowly, his arms out. Calling me into a massive bear hug. His lips curling into a half smile the way they always did. His hair ruffled, button up shirt nice and pressed. The ends of his dark pants tucked messily into his combat boots.

I ambled to him, my shoes dragging against the dry grass.

“Hey kid, missed ya,” he grumbled. His tone was low and tired, maybe even a little breathy.

Rolling my eyes, my arms spread out like I was about to flap my wings. “I aint a kid anymore, old man.”

He scoffed, circling his arms around my back. I slipped my fingers underneath his arm pits, patting them over his shirt and flattening any creases.

“Nora!”

I wasn’t sure who screamed it. A woman. Maybe Carol? But it snapped me awake.

My Dad’s withered face was groaning, his mouth closing in around my shoulder. Sharpened teeth dripping with drool and dark blood. My heart hammering.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered softly. I wanted him to stop struggling against me, to look me in the eye and smile. To laugh and tell me there was nothing to be sorry about. But he didn’t. He never did.

Instead, he was pulled off of me. Kit was pouncing on his arm, ripping him to the ground. Dad fell to his back as Kit chewed on his neck.

I fell to my knees pathetically, not able to look any more. I could hear Kit’s soft whining, his little calls of sorrow. They pulled my heart strings until my chest hurt.

The gun shots slowed to a hush.

Barn doors creaking.

A little girl peeking through. I glanced at Daryl, wanting to bury myself in the dirt. Wanting to hide my face forever. To let him know that I wasn’t okay, and that I wanted to forget.

But he eyed the little girl, gun falling to his hip. And the look on his face. That look.

Like his heart had been ripped out.