The Wind Through the Fence by Jonathan Maberry

Author:Jonathan Maberry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: +AA, Horror, Short Stories, +IPAD, +UNCHECKED
Publisher: Jonathan Maberry
Published: 2011-11-09T06:48:38+00:00

I wondered where my cars were. The Mercedes-Benz CLS I used to drive back and forth to the train and the gas-sucking Escalade that I used as a deliberate fuck-you to the oil shortage.

The guy on the soup line grunted at me and I held out my plastic jug and watched dispassionately as the gray meat was sloshed in. "Bread or crackers?"

"Bread," I said. "Got any butter? Any jelly?"

"You making a fucking joke?"

I shrugged. "Hey, there's always hope."

The guy chewed his toothpick for a second. He gave me a funny look and handed over a bread roll that looked like a dog turd and smelled faintly of kerosene. "Get the fuck out of here before I beat the shit out of you."

I sighed.

As I moved on he said, loud enough for people to hear, "You find any hope out here brother, you come let me know."

A bunch of the guys laughed. Most pretended not to hear. It was too true to be funny, too sad to have to keep in your head while you ate.

I thanked him and moved on. You always thank the food guys because they'll do stuff to your food if you don't. Even the shit they serve out can actually get worse.

Ruiz followed me and we found a spot in the shade of a billboard where we could see the valley. On this side of the fence everything was either picked clean or torn town. Every house behind him had been searched and marked with codes like they used after Katrina and Ike. X for checked and a number for how many bodies. Black letters for dead and decaying. Red letters for dead and walking around. Not that we needed to be told. We were in the lines right behind the clean-up teams. We'd hear the shots, we'd see them carrying out the bodies. Anything that came out wrapped in plastic with yellow police tape around it was infected. We'd been seeing this house by house since we started building the fence, and the sound of earthmovers and front-end loaders digging burial pits was 24/7.

I thought about that and wondered if it was true.

"Dude," I said, nudging Ruiz with my elbow.

He was poking at a lump of meat. "Yeah?" he said without looking up.

"When's the last time you heard quiet?"

"What d'you mean? Like no one screaming?"

"No, I mean quiet. No guns, no heavy equipment, no noise at all. Just quiet."

I didn't mention the moans, but he knew what I meant. No one ever had to say it; everybody knew.

Ruiz flicked a glance at me like the question disturbed him. He ate the meat, winced at the taste, forced it down. "I don't know, man. Why worry about that shit? It's cool. We're cool."

"It's not cool. Once we're done with the fence, then what? We sit behind the wall and do what? There won't be any work, and without work why would they feed us?"

"America's a big place," he said. "Fence is a long way from done."

"We're not going to fence the whole place," I said.

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