BY DR. AGONSON
I once saw a man who had had enough.
It was the eighth day, a week and a day . . .
We could see them the whole time, hear them, their groaning. About fifty, and we were holed up in a little thing like a shed. The dumb things just kept pounding and pounding against the walls, day and night, pounding our little box like a drum. We had lost our guns, stolen. I settled that debt latter.
He had had enough. I could see it in his eyes. Have you ever? . . . I guess not. He just kept looking at the door. You could see them best through the door, their pale, lifeless eyes, their hanging jaws, the pallid skin drooping from their bones. They wanted in, and he had had enough.
I couldn’t stop him. He just went for it. When it happened, I wasn’t surprised. I had been watching him. He hadn’t spoken for four days. He just kept staring at them.
See, those same fellows who had taken our guns, well, they enjoyed a little sport. They had built our hideaway. They built it for us, people like us, unfortunates who’d stumbled into their territory. The walls were strong, would hold up against the onslaught, but not solid per se. They were built with holes, holes big enough for the zombies to see through. Our benefactors made sure we had an audience before they left us.
Well, I saw the work it did to people. When I came back . . . that’s almost what happened to us.
He had had enough, and he just ran. He was a big guy. I don’t know, probably could have been a football star back in the day. That door fell before him like it was made of paper, and the five or so zombies pressing against it were thrown backwards as if he were a living explosion.
I was right behind him. I just started running. I didn’t realize what had happened. He could not be broken like the others. When I came again, I found the others who had been put in our box. They were slaves. Their eyes were glazed, and they could no longer speak. They just did whatever they were told. There’s something . . . men break, but my friend, he didn’t break, at least not like they did.
He didn’t run, you see. I only noticed later. I was already too far away. I thought he was leading the charge. I realized he wasn’t there. I turned around.
He had pieces of the door in both hands, and he swung them around bashing zombie after zombie. He was screaming. When he lost one of his clubs, he simply grabbed one zombie by the throat. He held it like a shield against the others, and he just kept swinging the whole time.
Have you ever seen a man who has had enough? A man who won’t be broken?
As I came running back to him, his wrath was already complete. The zombie he had made into a shield was now being trampled under his boot, and the thing’s skull had split open—the brains were oozing out like jelly.
I called his name, and for a moment he didn’t know me. He stared at me with wild eyes, and I thought at that moment he might, in his madness, kill me. Then his lip began to tremble, and he knew me, and he wept.
Yes, he had been bitten many times over, and as he awoke to himself, he knew it. I killed him. There was a river. That’s where he wanted to die. When it was over, I pushed him into the water.
So believe me when I tell you that I have had enough.
Tale Told 