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Ezekiel

Cicadas buzzed in syncopated harmony as Ezekiel’s horse clomped down the aisle.

The husk of Perryman’s hardware store smelled of mildew and vegetation. The roof had fallen through a year before. A year of rain had turned the warehouse superstore halfway into a forest.

Ezekiel led his horse through the maze of commercial detritus. He wore black slacks, black suspenders, and a white button-down shirt. Now and again Ezekiel ran the back of his left hand across his well-trimmed beard.

Two years ago, almost to the day, the Event hit the reset button on human civilization. Those with implants lost their minds. The few without fared little better. More often than not the former often took the lives of the latter.

In their isolation Ezekiel – his family and his neighbors – did not even know something had gone wrong for two weeks. It was only when the ice delivery failed to arrive that they began asking questions.

Shortly thereafter the first of the Mindless arrived on the farm. They were only ever encountered one at a time, the Mindless, for they could not even abide one another.

It was a Sunday – God’s day – when Ezekiel and his community were introduced to the new state of the world. A gut-wrenching scream interrupted service.

When the chapel emptied into the short grass by the entrance, there Eli was. His face was a mask of gore. It was being torn apart, piece by wet piece, by a lunatic man. The beast rent and raked its fingers through Eli’s skin. Its fingernails dug underneath and ripped upwards – as a chef might separate the skin from the flesh of a duck.

The women screamed and the men recoiled. Ezekiel picked up a shovel leaning against the wall of the church. He took one hard swing, impacting the sharp metal edge onto the creature’s neck, at the nape. The monster collapsed onto Eli’s motionless body. Both corpses lay there as though artfully arranged – a gruesome tableau for the new world.

It was months before Ezekiel understood society’s precious implants had gone haywire. Months more before the global scale of the event became clear. Over time old newspapers and stray, non-implanted survivors told the story.

But all that was ancient history. Time had a way of dilating in proportion to life’s difficulties. Suffice it to say, the past two years had felt exceptionally long.

Eyes scanning beneath the brim of his wide black hat, Ezekiel progressed with purpose. In the loose grip of his right hand, he held the reins, in his left a Smith and Wesson revolver. Resting on a strap against his back was the reassuring weight of his rifle.

As he moved deeper into the store it grew darker. The horse hesitated a step, but Ezekiel cooed to it and gave it a gentle touch behind the right ear.

“Courage now,” Ezekiel said, pistol ready, “courage.”

Man and horse moved down the dilapidated concrete with methodical steps. Finally, they arrived at what Ezekiel sought. Ezekiel dismounted and stepped up to a shelf where two large plastic bags lay on top of each other. The word “Fertilizer” was prominent on the front of each.

Ezekiel gave one more look in either direction down the aisle. Then he holstered his pistol and set to work. He lifted one bag onto his right shoulder heaved it onto the back of the horse and went back for the second.

When the human race was still alive and well Ezekiel never needed to buy fertilizer. But last year’s harvest had been unimpressive. Ezekiel was determined to make this year’s better.

As Ezekiel lifted the second bag onto his shoulder there was a loud clatter of metal far down the aisle. The sound echoed across the warehouse, deep into the shadowy places. Ezekiel froze and the horse shuffled a couple of steps backward, startled.

With immense care, Ezekiel began to place the bag of fertilizer back on the shelf. He was about to drop it onto the metal when the horse panicked and neighed. It spun around and began racing down the aisle back the way they’d come.

“No!” Ezekiel said as he flung the fertilizer onto the shelf. The bag impacted with another loud clang as Ezekiel began running after the horse.

At the same time, a frenzied figure appeared at the other end of the aisle, farther into the store. It came around the corner and paused for only a second, framed by the shelves – a twitching shadow. A heartbeat and it began racing after Ezekiel, its steps broad, its arms jerking and flailing in the air as it moved.

It was one of the Half-Minded. They were the only implanted survivors who still lived. The Half-Minds had enough processing power to seek out their most basic needs – food and water. Water was easy to come by if you were willing to drink the toxic rivers and lakes. Food for the Half-Minded was growing scarce – after all, almost everyone else was dead.

The horse began a dangerous gallop, Ezekiel sprinted behind it, and the Half-Mind, crazed with hunger, sped after them both. The three figures would have looked implausible to the extreme in the old world. Here they simply played out the circle of life, one of countless such daily dramas across the globe.

The horse made it outside the store. Ezekiel watched it slow to a stop in the hot sunlight, hooves imprinting on the grassy asphalt.

As he ran Ezekiel began to unholster his pistol. He had it halfway out when he tripped on a spilled box of long carpentry nails. He fell to the floor and felt a sharp pain in his chest. The impact knocked the wind out of him and sent the pistol sliding across the concrete several feet away.

It took Ezekiel a long second to shake the specks of light from his eyes. The speeding, disjointed footfalls of the Half-Mind approached from behind him. They grew louder and louder with each step.

Ezekiel forced himself to get to one knee. He still could not take a breath and the world blackened around the edges. He struggled, red-faced, to maintain consciousness. His chest ached something terrible.

The footfalls were very loud now. Even in half-consciousness, Ezekiel could hear the Half-Mind’s methodical breathing. Those emotionless speedy inhalations. The sound of a mindless human body exerting itself, unfeeling, like some horrible machine.

Ezekiel spied the glint of the pistol and used his last bit of energy to push out with his legs, diving for it. Pain raked his chest as he slammed into the floor again, but his right hand found its mark. He grasped the pistol, spun onto his back, took quick aim and fired.

In the expansive warehouse, the shot was cacophonous. It echoed across the shelves and came back to Ezekiel’s ears as if a host of guns had gone off.

Laying there Ezekiel was finally able to take a breath. It had been no longer than three seconds, but he coughed like mad, first dry hacking and then coughing up some blood.

In front of him, the Half-Mind lay flat on the floor, the back if its skull an exploded hole. The bullet had caught it square in the mouth, mid-leap. Luckily, the bullet passed right through the brain stem, stopping the Half-Mind cold. A bullet through other parts of the brain was not always an assured kill.

Ezekiel let his head rest on the floor for a moment as he caught his breath. He opened his white shirt and saw that it was covered in blood. He gently touched a quarter inch of carpenter nail and cringed. The thin metal spike was implanted into his right breast, beneath the nipple. Ezekiel looked back at the nails that had fallen on the floor and saw that they were each two inches long.

“God help me,” Ezekiel said to himself, “help me, God.”

Slowly, Ezekiel began to work his way to his feet. He left the nail in his chest rather than pull it out and exacerbate the bleeding. Step by careful step he walked out of the store and retrieved his waiting horse.

“God help me to do your work,” Ezekiel continued as he led the horse back down the aisle. Together they walked past the dead Half-Mind, over the spilled nails.

“Be my Shephard as I walk through the valley.” Ezekiel bent down and struggled to pick up the dropped bag of fertilizer, then laid it on the horse’s back.

“Guide my hand as a shepherd guides his flock.” Ezekiel made it to the shelf again. He picked up the last bag of fertilizer and lashed it to the back of the horse with the first. He was racked by coughs which sent spasms of pain arcing across his chest.

With a titanic struggle, Ezekiel mounted the horse. The creature assisted by instinct, bending low. At last Ezekiel was in the saddle once again.

“Bestow upon me, oh Lord, your will and your mercy.” Ezekiel continued to pray under his breath as he led the horse back out of the store, holding his pistol in one hand and the reins in the other. “So your servant might go forth and do good works upon the world.”

Ezekiel and the horse stepped back out into the sunlight and started the long ride home.

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