chapter 1 of my book Dead: The Ugly Beginning
The Ugly Beginnings
—1—
I ain’t no hero. I never thought of being one. When I was young, I didn’t dream about being a police or fireman. I never considered joining the military, even after 9-11 when so many others my age flocked to the recruiter’s office.
Hell, I was the guy who picked a desk in the middle of the classroom on the first day of school when all the Brains rushed for front row seats and the Jocks and Stoners roamed to the back. I didn’t play sports, at least not in any organized way. When sides were chosen (even if it was just a pick–up game with my buddies), I was pointed out someplace in the middle. Sometimes I would pull off a play in football, basketball, kickball…whatever, which was only amazing because it was me doing it.
I had my share of girlfriends. I lost my virginity my senior year. On prom night. To a girl who played flute in the high school marching band. Her name was Kerri or Kathy … or Kari or Cathy.
So you’re starting to get the point. Right?
I worked in an office complex after I graduated college … B minus GPA. Never married, but I was engaged a few times. My one bedroom apartment was small, but it suited me and my dog just fine. Well, that was until the horror movies jumped off the screen and landed right in the middle of an atypically unbelieving real world.
Some of the stuff about zombies proved to be true.
Some not.
Most of how humanity was predicted to act was drastically underestimated. The best. The worst. Sometimes I wonder how in the hell we’ve survived as a species.
That will likely be answered definitively sooner than I would like.
It may seem corny, but no one I’ve met since it began could give me a solid answer as to how it all rolled into motion. Sure, there are theories; Government Bio-weapon gone awry, Super-virus, alien particles from space, demons from hell, and global warming. Each gets equal billing when you hear the topic come up. Maybe it’s a mix of all of the above. Or, maybe God got tired of us messing up his toy. And if you don’t believe in God…well then you can refer back to the list and pick your favorite. Honestly, I don’t give a damn. I’m too tired from running. How I ended up leading a band of survivors in this Romero-Hell is my new reality. The time for blame has long passed.
Since things began, I’ve seen…we’ve all seen…things best forgotten. Yet, I, as well as anybody still alive, know that forgetting is impossible. The best you can hope for now is sleep without the nightmares coming back to refresh those images you desperately try to shove in a hard to reach spot in your mind. There are some things that the movies missed, or could not accurately convey. The biggest would be the smell, that, and the psychological toll of hearing a person scream as they are ripped apart and fed upon.
** ** ** **
“…seem to see no pattern in what is being called The Blue Plague, due to the discoloration common in the final stages where it is theorized that the body is starved for oxygen.”
Click.
“Sars. West Nile. Crap. What’s next?” I turned off the television and tossed the remote onto a stack of unread magazines on my coffee table.
Pluck, my Bassett hound, twitched a big, floppy ear and closed his eyes in disinterest. I scratched him behind one of those ears, which earned one of those contented doggie sounds.
I got off the couch and made one of those habitual trips to the fridge. I popped it open knowing deep down that I didn’t really want anything. A thud from the living room signaled that Pluck was on his way, just in case I might produce some tasty treat that would undoubtedly be shared. I’m pretty sure Pavlov’s dogs are hidden somewhere in Pluck’s family tree.
As is often the case when I’m about to make a major life choice, this one being left-over Chinese take-out, or last night’s pizza, the phone rang. I passed Pluck just as his paws smacked the linoleum with a scrabble of clicking claws that were in dire need of trimming. His exasperated huff caused his thick jowls to flutter.
“Yeah?” No need for formality since I could see Bill Wright, a friend of mine’s name, in the caller ID on my phone.
“Steve, are you watching this?” My friend Bill was naturally excitable, but something in his voice was off.
“Is this sports related?” I made no attempt to hide how totally not interested I was. “Unless it involves a female gymnast losing some or all of her outfit-“
“Turn to Channel Seven now!”
The near hysterical timbre in his voice had me grabbing my remote before I realized it. I punched the buttons with my thumb. The green volume bar inched across the bottom of my screen as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing.
“…of the local police force along with a detachment from the National Guard have set up around the town’s perimeter. No contact has been established with any of the residents up to this point. Reports from the air indicate that there is an unlikely chance that survivors exist.”
The buzzing in my ear reminded me that I was still on the phone with Bill. Also, my arm was still extended towards the television. My hand was empty because, at some point, I had dropped the remote.
“Another 9/11?” I felt my chest tighten.
“I don’t think so,” Bill said. I could hear his keyboard rattling in the background. “This shit is all over the place. And not just in our country. It’s global!”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Straight-up horror movie shit!”
“Uh-huh.” My enthusiasm and interest began to recede quick.
“Dude, I’m totally serious! Packs of crazed people are going on rampages and just tearing people apart. YouTube already has like a thousand postings under “Zombie Attack” that show some twisted stuff. At least it did until the site locked up and crashed.”
“So you’re telling me that zombies are out there going all George Romero on the unsuspecting citizens of the world?” I was still watching my now muted television while sitting on my coffee table rubbing Pluck’s head as it rested on my knee. It wasn’t showing me any zombies, just a talking head and a caption that read: “Possible Small Town Epidemic”.
“If you saw any of these clips, you’d be grabbin’ a gun and headin’ to the nearest shopping mall!”
No, I didn’t believe Bill in the slightest. That was mostly due to the hours he and I and others spent imagining just such a scenario. Usually after viewing any of the ‘Dead’ flicks. Take your pick…Night, Dawn, Day, Land. Original. Remake. We’d seen them all enough to recite lines like Rocky Horror fans. It always led to the ‘what if’ conversation.
One of the oldest, most overused sayings is, “Be careful what you ask for…” You know the rest. So, I did what anybody else would do if their friend called to say that the zombies were coming. I hung up.
** ** ** **
Sometimes you will see something in life that makes you sad or think, “That’s just like that movie….” Or, if you’re the literary type, it could be in a book instead. I can say that I’ve read or seen lots of ‘zombiesque’ stuff over the years. I always thought it would be so cool. Of course I’d never go into that “dark place” that so many fall prey to. Plus, those zombies move so slow…at least until the British influence brought on the sprinting zombie. Man, am I glad they got that wrong.
** ** ** **
I went to bed watching Talk Show with Spike Ferensten. Overall, a normal Saturday night for me. Ironically, it was the utter darkness that woke me.
My eyes opened to that total blackness that modern man had grown so unaccustomed to. The first moments were disorienting. Usually there is a blue glow that filters through my curtains from a car rental place that casts its light on my closet door. I live near the airport, so I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve lost power. Both times were due to terrible ice storms.
It was late April.
In the distance I heard sirens. That is nothing unusual near the airport at any time of day or night. So, I closed my eyes with the intention of going back to sleep. An unfamiliar growl signaled the change in my world…I just didn’t realize how drastic at that particular moment.
The growl changed register. Suddenly, my droopy-faced foot warmer of a dog began barking furiously. There was no mistaking the message.
Danger!
I climbed out of bed and tried to creep to my bedroom doorway. If there was a creaky board in the floor that I missed, I’d be shocked. I peeked down the hallway. My front door was in a direct line of sight, and on the right was my living room window with the curtains closed. Through an arch on the left would be my kitchen and a much smaller window. My apartment was on the second floor and in the corner of the small thirty unit complex. Usually, at night, the big lit sign from the luxury hotel across the street shone brightly in my living room; even through closed curtains.
Not tonight.
“Pluck!” I whispered.
I could see his dark shape, barely discernable against my front door in the blackness. The shape moved and was at my feet pushing against me with its bulky head. I reached down to scratch behind his ears and noticed that Pluck’s hackles were standing straight on end.
“What the hell?”
That was all I managed before something outside brushed up against my front door. In a flash my normally docile companion was lunging towards the door barking furiously. Not thinking, I ran after him yelling his name and that he quiet down.
A dull thud.
I moved my agitated dog aside with one leg and leaned over just enough to ease the curtains aside so that I could take a peek out my living room window. A man stood at my door. To be more precise, he was leaning against it with his back to me. That was the first time I got a hint of that smell.
I watched as one hand raised and brushed the doorknob. It fell listlessly back to his side. My first thought was that this guy had been hurt and was seeking help. He wore coveralls and a heavy utility jacket. I figured him to be from the power company.
There are moments in life that you never forget. Ones that never erase themselves from memory and end up in that permanent photo gallery your mind keeps. Some of those images blur over time. Others become glossier, as if they’ve received a bit of mental airbrushing. The first girl you kissed becomes a vision of pure beauty. That first car loses all the dents, dings, and rust spots.
Some memories do the opposite.
That body leaning against my door jerked like it was convulsing. The head snapped around so suddenly that I’m pretty sure I heard something pop…right before I screamed and fell backwards on my ass.
Something heavy struck my doorknob. That sound was like a slap on the face. I scrambled to my feet and did one of those stupid things I said I’d never do. You know what I am talking about. The person in the movie has to take that ‘one last look.’ “Of course that is usually when he or she gets their face eaten off.” So I pulled the curtain aside just enough to get that peek.
I know in my logical mind how dark it was that night. Over time, my mind has filled in the shadows. His name was Ed. I know that because it was embroidered on the left breast of his dark jacket with white thread. There was a milky film over his eyes that looked like a thin coat of Elmer’s wood glue. Black blood filled the vessels in his eyes which add a particularly nasty effect to that vacant soulless look that lets you know you’re dealing with a monster (oddly it is also a give away for somebody in the latter phases of infection.) The dark smears around his mouth are the bright red of arterial blood in my nightmares. Ed's mouth is open and his face is pressed against my living room window.
The apartments I called home for over a decade were not the greatest; leaky faucets, poor insulation, and cheesy carpet from an era that was long out of style way before I moved in. But back to the windows…they are thin enough that you can feel a cold breeze through them on a blustery fall or winter day. I knew seconds before it happened that the glass was not going to hold.
Crash!
And just that quick, everything I knew, loved, did for fun…gone. My world had been shaken violently, and the pieces would never settle into anything resembling normal ever again.
Ed’s stench hit me hard. The smell was so thick that I could taste it in the back of my throat. Two things happened almost instantaneously; Pluck lunged at the body that was halfway through my living room window, and I puked. To say “vomited” or “threw up” would diminish the true nature of that moment. It was as if my stomach heaved so violently that my intestines reversed flow and joined in the event. My mouth and nose burned from the bile laced mixture that spewed from deep inside my guts. I staggered back, unable to see for a moment. Over the ringing in my ears I heard Pluck snarl and bark as he threw himself at the unnatural thing that threatened his master. I probably owe my life to that stupid dog.
His sudden yelp brought me back.
My eyes cleared, and I could see Ed holding something in his hands. It took another second to overcome the shock of what I was seeing. It held Pluck by a hind leg and his collar as it buried its face into that soft, warm, scratchable belly. When its head snapped up, long strands of skin and viscera pulled away. My best friend howled loud enough to drown out my own cry. But for a moment anyway, Ed was occupied.
God help me.
I ran.
I scrambled for the door, fumbling with the lock for seconds which seemed eternal before I could yank it open, and I ran away. I ran away from my apartment. I ran away from all my stuff. I ran away from that smell of death, and blood, and puke. I ran away from Ed.
I ran away from Pluck!
At the bottom of the stairs was a small pink bicycle with training wheels. My mind held up a mental flash card of a tiny Mexican girl. She would ride that bike around the square inner courtyard of the complex. She always rang the little bell on her handlebars if she came up on somebody from behind. She would laugh.
So I ran.
I reached the parking lot and realized that I had never bothered to grab my keys. The stupid ones in the movies always go back. My mind flashed on that image of the Ed-thing taking a bite out of the middle of my dog. Every hero in the movies knows how to hotwire a car. I had no clue. I still wasn’t going back.
I stood there like an idiot for a moment then heard a low steady sound. The backside of my apartment complex’s parking lot is a steep tree-covered embankment. There is a wall made of river rock that forms about a five foot base before the earthen slope begins and rises up to the street above. That street is like a border between my apartments and a quiet residential neighborhood. Parked on the edge of that street, just through the trees that overhung most of the parking lot, was a big power company truck.
It was running!
Hoisting myself, and scrambling up the embankment I reached the road. Typical for this time of night (it was 3:42 am according to my watch) it was quiet. I sorta turned a slow circle to make sure all was clear. Farther down the road from me something may have moved in the darkness. I wasn’t about to wait and find out. Still, rushing to the truck without at least a little caution could be as fatal as a stroll down this road into the deep black shadows.
I moved out into the middle of the street so as to allow myself the greatest amount of open space, then crept towards the idling vehicle. A large dark smear marred the driver’s side door. I wondered briefly if it belonged to Ed…or worse…his co-worker. Just as I neared close enough to peer in the open window, a scream unlike anything I’d ever heard-before that night anyway–shattered the relative quiet. That piercing sound seemed to reach inside me and clamp down hard on my bladder.
Yeah. I wet my pants.
Now I realize that something like that never happens to action heroes. Well, I guaran-damn-tee that he or she never heard a scream like that before. Not for real anyways.
It sounded like a woman or a child.
I yanked open the truck door deciding it was time to move a little quicker. Thankfully, no surprises leapt out at me, and I slid into the cab. I took quick visual inventory; keys, big flashlight, clipboard, brown paper sack. Great.
I popped the column shifter into drive and stomped on the gas pedal while twisting the steering wheel hard left. Making a big U-turn, I raced to the corner, and did a bouncy power-slide left. Turning sharp left again, I dropped into the entry drive of my complex. I veered slightly left clipping a beat up Buick parked in the first tenant’s parking spot. The truck fishtailed the short length of the lot where an opening in the two-story building on my right indicated one of the entry breezeways. Slamming on the brakes, the truck screeched to a halt and banked right just enough to have the nose pointing into the void. I found the knob and pulled, turning on my headlights.
The scene in that dark tunnel-like breezeway threatened to cause another upheaval from my stomach. Ed, along with two more of those things were clawing at this short, pudgy, Mexican woman. One of them was tearing out a strand of intestine from a gaping hole in her abdomen. Another was jerking back with a chunk of left forearm between its teeth. Ed was on hands and knees chewing away at a thigh. Backing towards the steps was a little girl.
I struggled to remember the name I’d heard when her mom or dad had called for her. It was my little bicycle rider.
Thalia!
I leaned out the window and called her name. She spun, and I could see her clothing was splattered with blood.
Please don’t be a zombie.
The three things feasting on what I was pretty sure was her mom glanced up. Then went back to what they had been doing. Thalia, on the other hand, ran towards me.
Zombies don’t run. Right?
“Ayuda me, por favor! Ayuda mi mama, señior!”
“English, sweetie” I reached down and grabbed the tiny girl, yanking her rather unceremoniously though the window.
“Please to help my mama, Mister Steve!”
Her accent was kinda thick. “Mister” sounded like ‘meester’, but her family was the sort that worked hard at their English. Good thing, because my Spanish was limited to a poor Speedy Gonzalez impersonation.
She looked at me with large pleading eyes. I didn’t have time to explain. Besides, I felt that any help on behalf of her mama at this point would be useless. Mama was done. I shifted into reverse and backed out as quick, and still cautious, as I could. It would be really stupid to wreck now.
As the headlights drifted across that horrific scene, I took one more look. My mind was screaming that this could not possibly be happening the way I was seeing it. I slammed on the brakes causing Thalia to fly forward and hit her head on the dashboard. She started crying but I didn’t hear it. Creeping into the breezeway was a short squat shadowy figure.
Pluck.
I watched in painful fascination as my constant companion for so many years nosed into the body sprawled on the concrete. His head pulled back, and a flap of torn flesh hung from his mouth.
Slowly, I regained awareness of my surroundings. Tiny fists were pounding on my right shoulder. I glanced at Thalia in confusion as the sounds of her sobs poured into my consciousness. The blurred vision and burning sensation in my eyes made me realize that I was crying. But that wasn’t why the little girl was pummeling me.
A bloodless face stared at me through the closed window of the passenger side door. The mouth opened and pressed against the glass. My mind focused on the weirdest thing.
No fog.
The window didn’t fog up! This thing’s mouth was all over the glass, and it wasn’t fogging up even a teensy bit. Crazy.
An equally pale hand with a chunk missing, and what looked like just a stub for a thumb smacked against the increasingly slime smeared window. I heard a rattle of the door handle. This thing was trying to open the door, albeit clumsily. Time to go!
I made sure I was still in reverse and goosed the accelerator. Our friend came with us as he still had a grip on the door handle. I swung around and brought that side of the truck almost flush with that rock wall. A gout of blackish fluid made a macabre Rorschach pattern on the glass. Thalia screamed again and was practically in my lap. Her arms clutched around my neck so that I had to crane around her to see. My head turned just enough so that I could see a shape rising in the shadows of the breezeway.
I eased the little girl down to my side and wrapped one arm protectively around her. She buried her face in my side and for that I am grateful. She didn’t need to see what was staggering our way. The thing outside the passenger’s side was not letting up in its effort to try and get at us, so I gave another tap on the gas. Gripping Thalia I hit the brakes and shifted back in to drive.
Directly in front of me was Pluck. Without any further thought I floored it. The time was long past to be outta here. The big truck lurched just a bit as our tag-along fell free and ended up under the rear wheels. Then the front sorta bounced like we’d hit a speed bump.
That ‘speed bump’ was the end of my boon companion. My best friend. My foot warmer. I looked in the rearview mirror long enough to know I’d crushed his head like a jack-o-lantern in November. My dog, good old Pluck, lay still in the middle of the Villa la Puerta apartment complex parking lot. I think in a lot of ways I was relieved.
One sentiment that popped up in most of the zombie books and movies was the desire to ensure friends and companions didn’t “come back.” I get it now. Not just the fact that I didn’t want him wandering around as one of them, it was much more. Honestly that thing wasn’t Pluck. It is just so vile to see somebody you knew and loved become a part of the cause. To think that his body would still be moving after his…essence?...soul?...whatever the hell you want to call it, is long gone. It just ain’t natural.
I pulled out onto the street just as I saw Thalia’s mom appear in my rearview mirror. I’m really glad that sweet little girl never saw what I did at that moment. What she had seen moments before, as well as what she would see in the next hours, days, weeks, would provide enough nightmare fodder.
I turned right. Away from the airport and towards the freeway seemed the best choice. A few blocks ahead I could see that the power was on! That held some definite plusses and minuses.
Plus – I could see. I did a quick look-over of Thalia. Not that I’m heartless, but I had to make sure. Thankfully, there were no bites or scratches. I was really hoping there weren’t any that I couldn’t see. Her face was nestled right in my side. If she turned…
Minus-I could see. Here and there, singles, doubles, and mini herds of those things were on the move. Or worse–feeding. Again, really glad Thalia couldn’t see this. A couple times I had to swerve to avoid one of those things as they wondered out into the street after the few passing cars. I saw no reason to play Death Race with…
Zombies. That’s it. That’s what they are, and I can’t avoid it. After Pluck and Thalia’s mom, I have no doubts that the dead, are in fact, returning. For whatever reason...instinct, anger, hunger...they are attacking and feeding off the living.
As I hit the I-5 South on-ramp it dawned on me to switch on the radio. A monotone, obviously recorded message, was repeating on every station I scanned to:
“The Emergency Broadcasting System has been activated. Please stay tuned to this local station for information…”
The message was on a loop. I tried the two-way radio. It came alive with all sorts of frantic chatter.
“...advised, we have lost contact with units seven, nine, twelve, and seventeen.”
“…came out of no place and just grabbed Duran…”
“…where the hell is anybody!”
“…damn lady just bit me! I mean took a chunk out of my arm!”
As I drove down the interstate listening to the insanity unfold, I passed a couple of cars that were pulled only partially off the road. In the opposite lane a few cars whisked past heading north. There was no way I would even consider heading into downtown Seattle. Within hours, if not already, that place would be a chaotic death trap. I was considering my options when a snippet of conversation caught my attention.
“…of people grabbed Ed. I heard him scream as they dragged him into the bushes. I stayed up on the pole. God forgive me, but I was scared to death.”
“Then what? You said you lost the truck. So what the heck happened?”
“A few minutes later…five, maybe ten…one of them came out of the bushes and took off with the vehicle.”
I turned off the two-way. There was nothing I could say or do now that wouldn’t take forever to explain or clear up in any manner. There was little doubt that that was my ‘Ed’ they were discussing. The problem being, I was pretty sure my explanation would not be very welcome. Not yet. If things held true to form, nobody would acknowledge or believe what this was until too late.
I reached over and opened the glove box. Thalia didn’t make any attempt to move away not that I blamed her. I wasn’t sure what I was lookin for. I rummaged keeping one eye on the road as I felt around. Two wallets! That was the same moment I realized that I left mine. For somebody determined not to make stupid mistakes, I wasn’t doing so well.
I spotted an off-ramp that advertised FOOD-GAS-LODGING. Veering right, I decided it was time to get just a little proactive. I made the decision that I knew what was going on, and it was my responsibility to this child beside me to start taking steps to prepare for the worst eventuality.
A fully lit service station was perched at the top of the off ramp. You know the kind. The mini-mart disguised as a gas station with a garage added as an afterthought that was good for nothing beyond a tire change. A small car was parked in a dark corner across the expansive asphalt lot from where the entrance was. Probably the on-duty cashier’s.
I pulled up to the pump station closest to the doors. No surprise, I saw no sign of an attendant...or cashier...whatever. My head was on a swivel, searching for any movement. Inside or out. I pried Thalia loose, and took her tear-streaked face in my hands.
“I’m gonna take care of you. But I have to get out of the truck for a minute. I will lock the door. Don’t open it until I say. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“I will leave the engine running. So don’t touch anything. Okay?”
More nodding.
I looked around again. This was a bad time for any surprises. For now, the coast was clear. I climbed out, locking the door, closing it carefully, and checking it to be certain. So far, so good. I fast walked to the glass door and tugged.
Damn. Locked. Naturally.
Trying to watch everywhere at once, I scooted to another set of doors around the corner. Nothing was moving inside or out of the store. Yet. I could hear the occasional vehicle speed by on the nearby freeway. I think I heard gunshots from somewhere distant. I briefly wondered what I would do if another vehicle arrived with people having the same idea as me.
Also locked!
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Just a tiny bit desperate and a whole lot scared now. I looked everywhere for an idea. Turning my attention fully inside, I knocked on the glass. I don’t know if I wanted somebody to be there or not, but old habits die hard.
No answer.
I knocked again. Louder. Still no response from within, or thankfully, out. That left me with what I saw as my final option; the metal ashcan sitting next to the door. I picked it up, dumped the contents on the ground, backed up a few steps and hurled it as hard as I could at the glass door.
CRASH.
I had half-expected the thing to come bouncing back at me. Lucky me. The entire door exploded inwards. Fine cubes of glass glittered like fake diamonds under the white glare of the fluorescent lighting.
Now it was time to be quick. I glanced back at the truck. Thalia was staring wide-eyed but calmly back at me through the windshield. I noted that pump nine was closest. Peering over the counter to be assured of no nasty surprises, I quickly climbed over and found the panel allowing me to turn on my pump. In no time, I had the nozzle in place and put the lock on so that I could tend to other issues while the tank filled.
Back in the store, I stopped at a rack of those burlap carry bags imprinted with pictures of Mount Rainier, the Space Needle, and other local touristy things. Grabbing a few I literally ran up and down the aisles scooping stuff from the shelves. The medicine aisle was almost empty by the time I finished. Mostly basic things, like allergy pills and aspirin mixed in with the basic first aid stuff, filled six of those bags. I grabbed food second which made me sorta proud that I was thinking clearly. Food would be easier to grab than medicine or hygiene as this dragged on. At least that was my logic.
I decided that milk would likely become a luxury. It would do good to get some while I could. I paused at the wall of the glass doored refrigerators when I came to the milk section. My hand grasped the handle and I totally froze, my heart pounding in my throat. I had found the clerk. Plus one.
Inside the refrigerated stock area, behind the tilted display shelves, stood two zombies. They were staring at me from the shadows, behind the orderly rows of beer, orange juice, and various name-brand sports drinks. A quick look behind them at the main door to the chill box helped ease my heart rate back under triple-digits. The big metal door looked shut.
I backed down the aisle a few steps away from the milk towards the soda. Sure enough, my ‘friends’ followed. I tapped the glass like you would an aquarium. They both lunged forward, tangling themselves in the shelving and each other. I bolted, popped the door where the milk was, grabbed a couple of cartons and headed to the exit.
I ducked out into the open lot to hear Thalia pounding on the glass of the driver’s side window. A quick glance confirmed that a small pack of zombies were crossing the asphalt towards us. They still had some ground to cover, and I transferred our haul to the truck pronto. That finished, I pulled out the nozzle and hung it up as I replaced the gas cap. I dashed around the front of the truck and Thalia opened my door.
“Please let us go now!”
“I totally agree, sweetie!” Climbing into the cab, I gave the approaching zombies another look. It was like the introduction to a dirty joke. An Asian, a naked lady, and two policemen walk into a gas station parking lot…
Hmmm.
I revved the engine.
“Put on your seatbelt, señorita.”
Without a word, Thalia did exactly what she was told. I heard the ‘click’ and fastened my own. I pulled away from the pumps and made a wide u-turn. A glance in the rearview… then side view mirrors… along with a slight turn of the steering wheel to get things right. I shifted into reverse and stomped the gas.
Zombie Bowling.
I felt the impact and the ensuing bounces as I rolled over the bodies. Three of the four lay twitching on the ground. The fourth, Naked Lady, still stood. She turned towards me, arms outstretched, mouth open. Back into drive, and again I put the pedal to the floor. I swerved just enough to catch her with the driver’s side corner of the bumper. A satisfying thud and crunch rewarded the effort coupled with the body flying several feet. Down, but not…dead? I briefly pondered the idea.
Twice-dead?
Fitting.
Thalia exclaimed her surprise when I slammed on the brakes and flung open the door. All of the zombies were in varied stages of struggling to their feet. On their backs they are a lot like turtles.
I approached the first downed policeman and was disappointed. No gun. The second was my payoff though. His wide, black leather belt held several toys for me to examine later once I had more time. I grabbed a window squeegee as I closed in on my target. With one swing I brought it down as hard as I could. My blow found an eye socket which exploded in thick jelly-like fluid. This thing began thrashing, arms flailing, hands grasping. A second swing… and another… and another as the face shattered and the eye-socket hole expanded. Finally the brass and hard plastic squeegee broke through to something softer. The thing at my feet quit struggling. Instantly. It’s like hitting an off switch.
I worked the belt off the twice-dead while watching the others. The other policeman and the Asian were back on their feet, headed my way. Naked Lady was bent almost entirely backwards. She was trying to pull her unnaturally vee-shaped self along the asphalt. Yuck. Prize in hand, I made it back to the truck with relative ease.
Dropping the gun belt on the seat, I closed the door and headed for the exit. A car zoomed past, heading for the interstate presumably. A screech of tires sounded as it slammed on the brakes, then sped back to us in reverse.
The car, a sporty foreign model by the looks…what can I say, I’m not much into cars…halted directly in front of us. I considered our chances of ramming the little car without taking too much damage ourselves, but decided to wait a second and see what this person wanted. He or she could be just like Thalia and me. Still, no sense in being stupid. I pulled the gun from the holster and glanced to see if it was loaded. Check. Safety off. Check. I’m savvy enough to know it is a 9mm. I glanced in the rearview. The zombies were still a far distance away. Problem was that now there were seven. I had enough time to at least give this person in the car a moment. I wouldn’t waste time, but I also was not about to let my guard slip.
“Get down, Thalia.”
She obeyed without protest. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she slid to the floor on the passenger’s side, pulled her knees in tight, she wrapped her arms around them. Sort of like a tiny ball.
The door to the sports car opened. A tall, very attractive in an out-of-my-league sort of way, brunette emerged. My mind sped through several scenarios. All of which ended up with me as the hero and her falling into my arms. She proceeds to show her gratitude and admiration for my heroism...
“Thank god!” she screamed and ran to my truck.
I rolled down the window, seeing no reason to open the door. I mean seriously, there are a bunch of walking dead shambling this way. Sure they’re still a ways off and moving slow, but my mind is still trying to process what is happening.
“Ummm…you probably shouldn’t be out of your car.”
I am so smooth.
“Please help me! What the hell is going on?”
“You really shouldn’t be out of your car.” I glanced again at the group of undead closing the distance slowly and steadily. One of them was out distancing the others and had his arms outstretched.
“My neighbor did this!” the pretty brunette held up her left arm. Blood dripped from a shallow but jagged rip below the elbow.
My look must’ve given away something because she hastily covered up. Her expression was a crazy mix of fear, embarrassment, and confusion. Without warning, she lunged at my door, pulling wildly on the handle. I went for the lock, but a shade too late as the door opened and I tumbled gracelessly to the ground.
Thalia screamed.
Scrambling up as quick as I could with the wind only partially knocked out of me, I had no idea what to do. Was this lady one of them? Maybe the newly turned are different. Perhaps the brain died slowly, and they kept certain functions for a while. I really had no clue where the movie stuff was right or wrong. Hell, maybe it was all wrong. All of that jumbled around in my mind like rocks in a dryer as I came to my feet.
She was apologizing over and over. Maybe she was sorry she had to eat me now. All I truly knew at that exact moment was that she was beside me with a viselike grip on my arm. There were several of those things about twenty feet or so away, and I was not ready to die.
I shoved her as hard as I could, sending my closest threat stumbling back towards the street. I snatched the gun from the cab where it had fallen to the floorboard in all this insanity. My finger curled around the trigger as I spun and fired.
She was in the process of climbing back to her feet. With an expression of astonishment, she looked down as a bloom of red spread across her blouse. Her eyes returned to mine in shock.
“Why?” she staggered sideways a step and fell…hard.
I still heard screaming. While I was shaking my head rapidly to clear it, something grabbed my shoulder. I whirled around face-to-face with the speed-walker of the bunch. It was a woman. Or had been. Her dark hair clung to her face, glued in place by dried blood. Most of the left cheek had been ripped away from her face. Grayish gums and blood smeared teeth greeted me in what looked like an exaggeratedly evil grin. I raised the pistol and fired. The bullet tore through its throat, jolting the upper body backwards. I felt the grip upon my shoulder tighten, and the head snapped back toward me with mouth open wide.
It’s strange, the little things that capture our attention in a crisis. I noticed that the flat, lifeless, black-blood veined eyes never changed expression. No anger, hunger, victory, desire, pain...just empty. Truly empty.
I jammed the barrel of the gun into the now gaping maw and fired again. The creature simply dropped. Again, it was as if the plug were suddenly pulled, like on a radio.
Without waiting for more bad things to happen. I jumped into the truck. Slamming the door, locking it, and rolling up the window seemingly all at once. I shifted in drive, and launched the big truck into the street, clipping the sports car enough to turn it a little sideways. My hard right turn aimed us back towards the interstate.
I’ve risked my life a whole bunch of times since that night. But at no time was I as stupid and out-of-control as I was in the way I left that gas station parking lot. Six more inches to the right, and I catch enough of that sports car to probably end our ride.
Looking in my rearview mirror, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The zombies had fallen on the brunette. That could only mean one thing. Since they ignored, and even stepped over the zombie that I had just blown the back of its skull off, the brunette was not, at the time just before I shot her at least, dead.
Adding one plus one, I had just killed someone. My mind began to argue vigorously the varying points.
She was bitten.
It was only a matter of time.
You saved her much misery.
All the way to the interstate, and for the next several miles, my mind continued. It tried to offer me the solace no other living, breathing human being would if they’d seen what I’d done.
Eventually, Thalia fell into a fitful sleep. If things were as I suspected, and if they had just started… this was a bad beginning.
It would get worse.
—1—
I ain’t no hero. I never thought of being one. When I was young, I didn’t dream about being a police or fireman. I never considered joining the military, even after 9-11 when so many others my age flocked to the recruiter’s office.
Hell, I was the guy who picked a desk in the middle of the classroom on the first day of school when all the Brains rushed for front row seats and the Jocks and Stoners roamed to the back. I didn’t play sports, at least not in any organized way. When sides were chosen (even if it was just a pick–up game with my buddies), I was pointed out someplace in the middle. Sometimes I would pull off a play in football, basketball, kickball…whatever, which was only amazing because it was me doing it.
I had my share of girlfriends. I lost my virginity my senior year. On prom night. To a girl who played flute in the high school marching band. Her name was Kerri or Kathy … or Kari or Cathy.
So you’re starting to get the point. Right?
I worked in an office complex after I graduated college … B minus GPA. Never married, but I was engaged a few times. My one bedroom apartment was small, but it suited me and my dog just fine. Well, that was until the horror movies jumped off the screen and landed right in the middle of an atypically unbelieving real world.
Some of the stuff about zombies proved to be true.
Some not.
Most of how humanity was predicted to act was drastically underestimated. The best. The worst. Sometimes I wonder how in the hell we’ve survived as a species.
That will likely be answered definitively sooner than I would like.
It may seem corny, but no one I’ve met since it began could give me a solid answer as to how it all rolled into motion. Sure, there are theories; Government Bio-weapon gone awry, Super-virus, alien particles from space, demons from hell, and global warming. Each gets equal billing when you hear the topic come up. Maybe it’s a mix of all of the above. Or, maybe God got tired of us messing up his toy. And if you don’t believe in God…well then you can refer back to the list and pick your favorite. Honestly, I don’t give a damn. I’m too tired from running. How I ended up leading a band of survivors in this Romero-Hell is my new reality. The time for blame has long passed.
Since things began, I’ve seen…we’ve all seen…things best forgotten. Yet, I, as well as anybody still alive, know that forgetting is impossible. The best you can hope for now is sleep without the nightmares coming back to refresh those images you desperately try to shove in a hard to reach spot in your mind. There are some things that the movies missed, or could not accurately convey. The biggest would be the smell, that, and the psychological toll of hearing a person scream as they are ripped apart and fed upon.
** ** ** **
“…seem to see no pattern in what is being called The Blue Plague, due to the discoloration common in the final stages where it is theorized that the body is starved for oxygen.”
Click.
“Sars. West Nile. Crap. What’s next?” I turned off the television and tossed the remote onto a stack of unread magazines on my coffee table.
Pluck, my Bassett hound, twitched a big, floppy ear and closed his eyes in disinterest. I scratched him behind one of those ears, which earned one of those contented doggie sounds.
I got off the couch and made one of those habitual trips to the fridge. I popped it open knowing deep down that I didn’t really want anything. A thud from the living room signaled that Pluck was on his way, just in case I might produce some tasty treat that would undoubtedly be shared. I’m pretty sure Pavlov’s dogs are hidden somewhere in Pluck’s family tree.
As is often the case when I’m about to make a major life choice, this one being left-over Chinese take-out, or last night’s pizza, the phone rang. I passed Pluck just as his paws smacked the linoleum with a scrabble of clicking claws that were in dire need of trimming. His exasperated huff caused his thick jowls to flutter.
“Yeah?” No need for formality since I could see Bill Wright, a friend of mine’s name, in the caller ID on my phone.
“Steve, are you watching this?” My friend Bill was naturally excitable, but something in his voice was off.
“Is this sports related?” I made no attempt to hide how totally not interested I was. “Unless it involves a female gymnast losing some or all of her outfit-“
“Turn to Channel Seven now!”
The near hysterical timbre in his voice had me grabbing my remote before I realized it. I punched the buttons with my thumb. The green volume bar inched across the bottom of my screen as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing.
“…of the local police force along with a detachment from the National Guard have set up around the town’s perimeter. No contact has been established with any of the residents up to this point. Reports from the air indicate that there is an unlikely chance that survivors exist.”
The buzzing in my ear reminded me that I was still on the phone with Bill. Also, my arm was still extended towards the television. My hand was empty because, at some point, I had dropped the remote.
“Another 9/11?” I felt my chest tighten.
“I don’t think so,” Bill said. I could hear his keyboard rattling in the background. “This shit is all over the place. And not just in our country. It’s global!”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Straight-up horror movie shit!”
“Uh-huh.” My enthusiasm and interest began to recede quick.
“Dude, I’m totally serious! Packs of crazed people are going on rampages and just tearing people apart. YouTube already has like a thousand postings under “Zombie Attack” that show some twisted stuff. At least it did until the site locked up and crashed.”
“So you’re telling me that zombies are out there going all George Romero on the unsuspecting citizens of the world?” I was still watching my now muted television while sitting on my coffee table rubbing Pluck’s head as it rested on my knee. It wasn’t showing me any zombies, just a talking head and a caption that read: “Possible Small Town Epidemic”.
“If you saw any of these clips, you’d be grabbin’ a gun and headin’ to the nearest shopping mall!”
No, I didn’t believe Bill in the slightest. That was mostly due to the hours he and I and others spent imagining just such a scenario. Usually after viewing any of the ‘Dead’ flicks. Take your pick…Night, Dawn, Day, Land. Original. Remake. We’d seen them all enough to recite lines like Rocky Horror fans. It always led to the ‘what if’ conversation.
One of the oldest, most overused sayings is, “Be careful what you ask for…” You know the rest. So, I did what anybody else would do if their friend called to say that the zombies were coming. I hung up.
** ** ** **
Sometimes you will see something in life that makes you sad or think, “That’s just like that movie….” Or, if you’re the literary type, it could be in a book instead. I can say that I’ve read or seen lots of ‘zombiesque’ stuff over the years. I always thought it would be so cool. Of course I’d never go into that “dark place” that so many fall prey to. Plus, those zombies move so slow…at least until the British influence brought on the sprinting zombie. Man, am I glad they got that wrong.
** ** ** **
I went to bed watching Talk Show with Spike Ferensten. Overall, a normal Saturday night for me. Ironically, it was the utter darkness that woke me.
My eyes opened to that total blackness that modern man had grown so unaccustomed to. The first moments were disorienting. Usually there is a blue glow that filters through my curtains from a car rental place that casts its light on my closet door. I live near the airport, so I can count on two fingers the number of times I’ve lost power. Both times were due to terrible ice storms.
It was late April.
In the distance I heard sirens. That is nothing unusual near the airport at any time of day or night. So, I closed my eyes with the intention of going back to sleep. An unfamiliar growl signaled the change in my world…I just didn’t realize how drastic at that particular moment.
The growl changed register. Suddenly, my droopy-faced foot warmer of a dog began barking furiously. There was no mistaking the message.
Danger!
I climbed out of bed and tried to creep to my bedroom doorway. If there was a creaky board in the floor that I missed, I’d be shocked. I peeked down the hallway. My front door was in a direct line of sight, and on the right was my living room window with the curtains closed. Through an arch on the left would be my kitchen and a much smaller window. My apartment was on the second floor and in the corner of the small thirty unit complex. Usually, at night, the big lit sign from the luxury hotel across the street shone brightly in my living room; even through closed curtains.
Not tonight.
“Pluck!” I whispered.
I could see his dark shape, barely discernable against my front door in the blackness. The shape moved and was at my feet pushing against me with its bulky head. I reached down to scratch behind his ears and noticed that Pluck’s hackles were standing straight on end.
“What the hell?”
That was all I managed before something outside brushed up against my front door. In a flash my normally docile companion was lunging towards the door barking furiously. Not thinking, I ran after him yelling his name and that he quiet down.
A dull thud.
I moved my agitated dog aside with one leg and leaned over just enough to ease the curtains aside so that I could take a peek out my living room window. A man stood at my door. To be more precise, he was leaning against it with his back to me. That was the first time I got a hint of that smell.
I watched as one hand raised and brushed the doorknob. It fell listlessly back to his side. My first thought was that this guy had been hurt and was seeking help. He wore coveralls and a heavy utility jacket. I figured him to be from the power company.
There are moments in life that you never forget. Ones that never erase themselves from memory and end up in that permanent photo gallery your mind keeps. Some of those images blur over time. Others become glossier, as if they’ve received a bit of mental airbrushing. The first girl you kissed becomes a vision of pure beauty. That first car loses all the dents, dings, and rust spots.
Some memories do the opposite.
That body leaning against my door jerked like it was convulsing. The head snapped around so suddenly that I’m pretty sure I heard something pop…right before I screamed and fell backwards on my ass.
Something heavy struck my doorknob. That sound was like a slap on the face. I scrambled to my feet and did one of those stupid things I said I’d never do. You know what I am talking about. The person in the movie has to take that ‘one last look.’ “Of course that is usually when he or she gets their face eaten off.” So I pulled the curtain aside just enough to get that peek.
I know in my logical mind how dark it was that night. Over time, my mind has filled in the shadows. His name was Ed. I know that because it was embroidered on the left breast of his dark jacket with white thread. There was a milky film over his eyes that looked like a thin coat of Elmer’s wood glue. Black blood filled the vessels in his eyes which add a particularly nasty effect to that vacant soulless look that lets you know you’re dealing with a monster (oddly it is also a give away for somebody in the latter phases of infection.) The dark smears around his mouth are the bright red of arterial blood in my nightmares. Ed's mouth is open and his face is pressed against my living room window.
The apartments I called home for over a decade were not the greatest; leaky faucets, poor insulation, and cheesy carpet from an era that was long out of style way before I moved in. But back to the windows…they are thin enough that you can feel a cold breeze through them on a blustery fall or winter day. I knew seconds before it happened that the glass was not going to hold.
Crash!
And just that quick, everything I knew, loved, did for fun…gone. My world had been shaken violently, and the pieces would never settle into anything resembling normal ever again.
Ed’s stench hit me hard. The smell was so thick that I could taste it in the back of my throat. Two things happened almost instantaneously; Pluck lunged at the body that was halfway through my living room window, and I puked. To say “vomited” or “threw up” would diminish the true nature of that moment. It was as if my stomach heaved so violently that my intestines reversed flow and joined in the event. My mouth and nose burned from the bile laced mixture that spewed from deep inside my guts. I staggered back, unable to see for a moment. Over the ringing in my ears I heard Pluck snarl and bark as he threw himself at the unnatural thing that threatened his master. I probably owe my life to that stupid dog.
His sudden yelp brought me back.
My eyes cleared, and I could see Ed holding something in his hands. It took another second to overcome the shock of what I was seeing. It held Pluck by a hind leg and his collar as it buried its face into that soft, warm, scratchable belly. When its head snapped up, long strands of skin and viscera pulled away. My best friend howled loud enough to drown out my own cry. But for a moment anyway, Ed was occupied.
God help me.
I ran.
I scrambled for the door, fumbling with the lock for seconds which seemed eternal before I could yank it open, and I ran away. I ran away from my apartment. I ran away from all my stuff. I ran away from that smell of death, and blood, and puke. I ran away from Ed.
I ran away from Pluck!
At the bottom of the stairs was a small pink bicycle with training wheels. My mind held up a mental flash card of a tiny Mexican girl. She would ride that bike around the square inner courtyard of the complex. She always rang the little bell on her handlebars if she came up on somebody from behind. She would laugh.
So I ran.
I reached the parking lot and realized that I had never bothered to grab my keys. The stupid ones in the movies always go back. My mind flashed on that image of the Ed-thing taking a bite out of the middle of my dog. Every hero in the movies knows how to hotwire a car. I had no clue. I still wasn’t going back.
I stood there like an idiot for a moment then heard a low steady sound. The backside of my apartment complex’s parking lot is a steep tree-covered embankment. There is a wall made of river rock that forms about a five foot base before the earthen slope begins and rises up to the street above. That street is like a border between my apartments and a quiet residential neighborhood. Parked on the edge of that street, just through the trees that overhung most of the parking lot, was a big power company truck.
It was running!
Hoisting myself, and scrambling up the embankment I reached the road. Typical for this time of night (it was 3:42 am according to my watch) it was quiet. I sorta turned a slow circle to make sure all was clear. Farther down the road from me something may have moved in the darkness. I wasn’t about to wait and find out. Still, rushing to the truck without at least a little caution could be as fatal as a stroll down this road into the deep black shadows.
I moved out into the middle of the street so as to allow myself the greatest amount of open space, then crept towards the idling vehicle. A large dark smear marred the driver’s side door. I wondered briefly if it belonged to Ed…or worse…his co-worker. Just as I neared close enough to peer in the open window, a scream unlike anything I’d ever heard-before that night anyway–shattered the relative quiet. That piercing sound seemed to reach inside me and clamp down hard on my bladder.
Yeah. I wet my pants.
Now I realize that something like that never happens to action heroes. Well, I guaran-damn-tee that he or she never heard a scream like that before. Not for real anyways.
It sounded like a woman or a child.
I yanked open the truck door deciding it was time to move a little quicker. Thankfully, no surprises leapt out at me, and I slid into the cab. I took quick visual inventory; keys, big flashlight, clipboard, brown paper sack. Great.
I popped the column shifter into drive and stomped on the gas pedal while twisting the steering wheel hard left. Making a big U-turn, I raced to the corner, and did a bouncy power-slide left. Turning sharp left again, I dropped into the entry drive of my complex. I veered slightly left clipping a beat up Buick parked in the first tenant’s parking spot. The truck fishtailed the short length of the lot where an opening in the two-story building on my right indicated one of the entry breezeways. Slamming on the brakes, the truck screeched to a halt and banked right just enough to have the nose pointing into the void. I found the knob and pulled, turning on my headlights.
The scene in that dark tunnel-like breezeway threatened to cause another upheaval from my stomach. Ed, along with two more of those things were clawing at this short, pudgy, Mexican woman. One of them was tearing out a strand of intestine from a gaping hole in her abdomen. Another was jerking back with a chunk of left forearm between its teeth. Ed was on hands and knees chewing away at a thigh. Backing towards the steps was a little girl.
I struggled to remember the name I’d heard when her mom or dad had called for her. It was my little bicycle rider.
Thalia!
I leaned out the window and called her name. She spun, and I could see her clothing was splattered with blood.
Please don’t be a zombie.
The three things feasting on what I was pretty sure was her mom glanced up. Then went back to what they had been doing. Thalia, on the other hand, ran towards me.
Zombies don’t run. Right?
“Ayuda me, por favor! Ayuda mi mama, señior!”
“English, sweetie” I reached down and grabbed the tiny girl, yanking her rather unceremoniously though the window.
“Please to help my mama, Mister Steve!”
Her accent was kinda thick. “Mister” sounded like ‘meester’, but her family was the sort that worked hard at their English. Good thing, because my Spanish was limited to a poor Speedy Gonzalez impersonation.
She looked at me with large pleading eyes. I didn’t have time to explain. Besides, I felt that any help on behalf of her mama at this point would be useless. Mama was done. I shifted into reverse and backed out as quick, and still cautious, as I could. It would be really stupid to wreck now.
As the headlights drifted across that horrific scene, I took one more look. My mind was screaming that this could not possibly be happening the way I was seeing it. I slammed on the brakes causing Thalia to fly forward and hit her head on the dashboard. She started crying but I didn’t hear it. Creeping into the breezeway was a short squat shadowy figure.
Pluck.
I watched in painful fascination as my constant companion for so many years nosed into the body sprawled on the concrete. His head pulled back, and a flap of torn flesh hung from his mouth.
Slowly, I regained awareness of my surroundings. Tiny fists were pounding on my right shoulder. I glanced at Thalia in confusion as the sounds of her sobs poured into my consciousness. The blurred vision and burning sensation in my eyes made me realize that I was crying. But that wasn’t why the little girl was pummeling me.
A bloodless face stared at me through the closed window of the passenger side door. The mouth opened and pressed against the glass. My mind focused on the weirdest thing.
No fog.
The window didn’t fog up! This thing’s mouth was all over the glass, and it wasn’t fogging up even a teensy bit. Crazy.
An equally pale hand with a chunk missing, and what looked like just a stub for a thumb smacked against the increasingly slime smeared window. I heard a rattle of the door handle. This thing was trying to open the door, albeit clumsily. Time to go!
I made sure I was still in reverse and goosed the accelerator. Our friend came with us as he still had a grip on the door handle. I swung around and brought that side of the truck almost flush with that rock wall. A gout of blackish fluid made a macabre Rorschach pattern on the glass. Thalia screamed again and was practically in my lap. Her arms clutched around my neck so that I had to crane around her to see. My head turned just enough so that I could see a shape rising in the shadows of the breezeway.
I eased the little girl down to my side and wrapped one arm protectively around her. She buried her face in my side and for that I am grateful. She didn’t need to see what was staggering our way. The thing outside the passenger’s side was not letting up in its effort to try and get at us, so I gave another tap on the gas. Gripping Thalia I hit the brakes and shifted back in to drive.
Directly in front of me was Pluck. Without any further thought I floored it. The time was long past to be outta here. The big truck lurched just a bit as our tag-along fell free and ended up under the rear wheels. Then the front sorta bounced like we’d hit a speed bump.
That ‘speed bump’ was the end of my boon companion. My best friend. My foot warmer. I looked in the rearview mirror long enough to know I’d crushed his head like a jack-o-lantern in November. My dog, good old Pluck, lay still in the middle of the Villa la Puerta apartment complex parking lot. I think in a lot of ways I was relieved.
One sentiment that popped up in most of the zombie books and movies was the desire to ensure friends and companions didn’t “come back.” I get it now. Not just the fact that I didn’t want him wandering around as one of them, it was much more. Honestly that thing wasn’t Pluck. It is just so vile to see somebody you knew and loved become a part of the cause. To think that his body would still be moving after his…essence?...soul?...whatever the hell you want to call it, is long gone. It just ain’t natural.
I pulled out onto the street just as I saw Thalia’s mom appear in my rearview mirror. I’m really glad that sweet little girl never saw what I did at that moment. What she had seen moments before, as well as what she would see in the next hours, days, weeks, would provide enough nightmare fodder.
I turned right. Away from the airport and towards the freeway seemed the best choice. A few blocks ahead I could see that the power was on! That held some definite plusses and minuses.
Plus – I could see. I did a quick look-over of Thalia. Not that I’m heartless, but I had to make sure. Thankfully, there were no bites or scratches. I was really hoping there weren’t any that I couldn’t see. Her face was nestled right in my side. If she turned…
Minus-I could see. Here and there, singles, doubles, and mini herds of those things were on the move. Or worse–feeding. Again, really glad Thalia couldn’t see this. A couple times I had to swerve to avoid one of those things as they wondered out into the street after the few passing cars. I saw no reason to play Death Race with…
Zombies. That’s it. That’s what they are, and I can’t avoid it. After Pluck and Thalia’s mom, I have no doubts that the dead, are in fact, returning. For whatever reason...instinct, anger, hunger...they are attacking and feeding off the living.
As I hit the I-5 South on-ramp it dawned on me to switch on the radio. A monotone, obviously recorded message, was repeating on every station I scanned to:
“The Emergency Broadcasting System has been activated. Please stay tuned to this local station for information…”
The message was on a loop. I tried the two-way radio. It came alive with all sorts of frantic chatter.
“...advised, we have lost contact with units seven, nine, twelve, and seventeen.”
“…came out of no place and just grabbed Duran…”
“…where the hell is anybody!”
“…damn lady just bit me! I mean took a chunk out of my arm!”
As I drove down the interstate listening to the insanity unfold, I passed a couple of cars that were pulled only partially off the road. In the opposite lane a few cars whisked past heading north. There was no way I would even consider heading into downtown Seattle. Within hours, if not already, that place would be a chaotic death trap. I was considering my options when a snippet of conversation caught my attention.
“…of people grabbed Ed. I heard him scream as they dragged him into the bushes. I stayed up on the pole. God forgive me, but I was scared to death.”
“Then what? You said you lost the truck. So what the heck happened?”
“A few minutes later…five, maybe ten…one of them came out of the bushes and took off with the vehicle.”
I turned off the two-way. There was nothing I could say or do now that wouldn’t take forever to explain or clear up in any manner. There was little doubt that that was my ‘Ed’ they were discussing. The problem being, I was pretty sure my explanation would not be very welcome. Not yet. If things held true to form, nobody would acknowledge or believe what this was until too late.
I reached over and opened the glove box. Thalia didn’t make any attempt to move away not that I blamed her. I wasn’t sure what I was lookin for. I rummaged keeping one eye on the road as I felt around. Two wallets! That was the same moment I realized that I left mine. For somebody determined not to make stupid mistakes, I wasn’t doing so well.
I spotted an off-ramp that advertised FOOD-GAS-LODGING. Veering right, I decided it was time to get just a little proactive. I made the decision that I knew what was going on, and it was my responsibility to this child beside me to start taking steps to prepare for the worst eventuality.
A fully lit service station was perched at the top of the off ramp. You know the kind. The mini-mart disguised as a gas station with a garage added as an afterthought that was good for nothing beyond a tire change. A small car was parked in a dark corner across the expansive asphalt lot from where the entrance was. Probably the on-duty cashier’s.
I pulled up to the pump station closest to the doors. No surprise, I saw no sign of an attendant...or cashier...whatever. My head was on a swivel, searching for any movement. Inside or out. I pried Thalia loose, and took her tear-streaked face in my hands.
“I’m gonna take care of you. But I have to get out of the truck for a minute. I will lock the door. Don’t open it until I say. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“I will leave the engine running. So don’t touch anything. Okay?”
More nodding.
I looked around again. This was a bad time for any surprises. For now, the coast was clear. I climbed out, locking the door, closing it carefully, and checking it to be certain. So far, so good. I fast walked to the glass door and tugged.
Damn. Locked. Naturally.
Trying to watch everywhere at once, I scooted to another set of doors around the corner. Nothing was moving inside or out of the store. Yet. I could hear the occasional vehicle speed by on the nearby freeway. I think I heard gunshots from somewhere distant. I briefly wondered what I would do if another vehicle arrived with people having the same idea as me.
Also locked!
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Just a tiny bit desperate and a whole lot scared now. I looked everywhere for an idea. Turning my attention fully inside, I knocked on the glass. I don’t know if I wanted somebody to be there or not, but old habits die hard.
No answer.
I knocked again. Louder. Still no response from within, or thankfully, out. That left me with what I saw as my final option; the metal ashcan sitting next to the door. I picked it up, dumped the contents on the ground, backed up a few steps and hurled it as hard as I could at the glass door.
CRASH.
I had half-expected the thing to come bouncing back at me. Lucky me. The entire door exploded inwards. Fine cubes of glass glittered like fake diamonds under the white glare of the fluorescent lighting.
Now it was time to be quick. I glanced back at the truck. Thalia was staring wide-eyed but calmly back at me through the windshield. I noted that pump nine was closest. Peering over the counter to be assured of no nasty surprises, I quickly climbed over and found the panel allowing me to turn on my pump. In no time, I had the nozzle in place and put the lock on so that I could tend to other issues while the tank filled.
Back in the store, I stopped at a rack of those burlap carry bags imprinted with pictures of Mount Rainier, the Space Needle, and other local touristy things. Grabbing a few I literally ran up and down the aisles scooping stuff from the shelves. The medicine aisle was almost empty by the time I finished. Mostly basic things, like allergy pills and aspirin mixed in with the basic first aid stuff, filled six of those bags. I grabbed food second which made me sorta proud that I was thinking clearly. Food would be easier to grab than medicine or hygiene as this dragged on. At least that was my logic.
I decided that milk would likely become a luxury. It would do good to get some while I could. I paused at the wall of the glass doored refrigerators when I came to the milk section. My hand grasped the handle and I totally froze, my heart pounding in my throat. I had found the clerk. Plus one.
Inside the refrigerated stock area, behind the tilted display shelves, stood two zombies. They were staring at me from the shadows, behind the orderly rows of beer, orange juice, and various name-brand sports drinks. A quick look behind them at the main door to the chill box helped ease my heart rate back under triple-digits. The big metal door looked shut.
I backed down the aisle a few steps away from the milk towards the soda. Sure enough, my ‘friends’ followed. I tapped the glass like you would an aquarium. They both lunged forward, tangling themselves in the shelving and each other. I bolted, popped the door where the milk was, grabbed a couple of cartons and headed to the exit.
I ducked out into the open lot to hear Thalia pounding on the glass of the driver’s side window. A quick glance confirmed that a small pack of zombies were crossing the asphalt towards us. They still had some ground to cover, and I transferred our haul to the truck pronto. That finished, I pulled out the nozzle and hung it up as I replaced the gas cap. I dashed around the front of the truck and Thalia opened my door.
“Please let us go now!”
“I totally agree, sweetie!” Climbing into the cab, I gave the approaching zombies another look. It was like the introduction to a dirty joke. An Asian, a naked lady, and two policemen walk into a gas station parking lot…
Hmmm.
I revved the engine.
“Put on your seatbelt, señorita.”
Without a word, Thalia did exactly what she was told. I heard the ‘click’ and fastened my own. I pulled away from the pumps and made a wide u-turn. A glance in the rearview… then side view mirrors… along with a slight turn of the steering wheel to get things right. I shifted into reverse and stomped the gas.
Zombie Bowling.
I felt the impact and the ensuing bounces as I rolled over the bodies. Three of the four lay twitching on the ground. The fourth, Naked Lady, still stood. She turned towards me, arms outstretched, mouth open. Back into drive, and again I put the pedal to the floor. I swerved just enough to catch her with the driver’s side corner of the bumper. A satisfying thud and crunch rewarded the effort coupled with the body flying several feet. Down, but not…dead? I briefly pondered the idea.
Twice-dead?
Fitting.
Thalia exclaimed her surprise when I slammed on the brakes and flung open the door. All of the zombies were in varied stages of struggling to their feet. On their backs they are a lot like turtles.
I approached the first downed policeman and was disappointed. No gun. The second was my payoff though. His wide, black leather belt held several toys for me to examine later once I had more time. I grabbed a window squeegee as I closed in on my target. With one swing I brought it down as hard as I could. My blow found an eye socket which exploded in thick jelly-like fluid. This thing began thrashing, arms flailing, hands grasping. A second swing… and another… and another as the face shattered and the eye-socket hole expanded. Finally the brass and hard plastic squeegee broke through to something softer. The thing at my feet quit struggling. Instantly. It’s like hitting an off switch.
I worked the belt off the twice-dead while watching the others. The other policeman and the Asian were back on their feet, headed my way. Naked Lady was bent almost entirely backwards. She was trying to pull her unnaturally vee-shaped self along the asphalt. Yuck. Prize in hand, I made it back to the truck with relative ease.
Dropping the gun belt on the seat, I closed the door and headed for the exit. A car zoomed past, heading for the interstate presumably. A screech of tires sounded as it slammed on the brakes, then sped back to us in reverse.
The car, a sporty foreign model by the looks…what can I say, I’m not much into cars…halted directly in front of us. I considered our chances of ramming the little car without taking too much damage ourselves, but decided to wait a second and see what this person wanted. He or she could be just like Thalia and me. Still, no sense in being stupid. I pulled the gun from the holster and glanced to see if it was loaded. Check. Safety off. Check. I’m savvy enough to know it is a 9mm. I glanced in the rearview. The zombies were still a far distance away. Problem was that now there were seven. I had enough time to at least give this person in the car a moment. I wouldn’t waste time, but I also was not about to let my guard slip.
“Get down, Thalia.”
She obeyed without protest. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she slid to the floor on the passenger’s side, pulled her knees in tight, she wrapped her arms around them. Sort of like a tiny ball.
The door to the sports car opened. A tall, very attractive in an out-of-my-league sort of way, brunette emerged. My mind sped through several scenarios. All of which ended up with me as the hero and her falling into my arms. She proceeds to show her gratitude and admiration for my heroism...
“Thank god!” she screamed and ran to my truck.
I rolled down the window, seeing no reason to open the door. I mean seriously, there are a bunch of walking dead shambling this way. Sure they’re still a ways off and moving slow, but my mind is still trying to process what is happening.
“Ummm…you probably shouldn’t be out of your car.”
I am so smooth.
“Please help me! What the hell is going on?”
“You really shouldn’t be out of your car.” I glanced again at the group of undead closing the distance slowly and steadily. One of them was out distancing the others and had his arms outstretched.
“My neighbor did this!” the pretty brunette held up her left arm. Blood dripped from a shallow but jagged rip below the elbow.
My look must’ve given away something because she hastily covered up. Her expression was a crazy mix of fear, embarrassment, and confusion. Without warning, she lunged at my door, pulling wildly on the handle. I went for the lock, but a shade too late as the door opened and I tumbled gracelessly to the ground.
Thalia screamed.
Scrambling up as quick as I could with the wind only partially knocked out of me, I had no idea what to do. Was this lady one of them? Maybe the newly turned are different. Perhaps the brain died slowly, and they kept certain functions for a while. I really had no clue where the movie stuff was right or wrong. Hell, maybe it was all wrong. All of that jumbled around in my mind like rocks in a dryer as I came to my feet.
She was apologizing over and over. Maybe she was sorry she had to eat me now. All I truly knew at that exact moment was that she was beside me with a viselike grip on my arm. There were several of those things about twenty feet or so away, and I was not ready to die.
I shoved her as hard as I could, sending my closest threat stumbling back towards the street. I snatched the gun from the cab where it had fallen to the floorboard in all this insanity. My finger curled around the trigger as I spun and fired.
She was in the process of climbing back to her feet. With an expression of astonishment, she looked down as a bloom of red spread across her blouse. Her eyes returned to mine in shock.
“Why?” she staggered sideways a step and fell…hard.
I still heard screaming. While I was shaking my head rapidly to clear it, something grabbed my shoulder. I whirled around face-to-face with the speed-walker of the bunch. It was a woman. Or had been. Her dark hair clung to her face, glued in place by dried blood. Most of the left cheek had been ripped away from her face. Grayish gums and blood smeared teeth greeted me in what looked like an exaggeratedly evil grin. I raised the pistol and fired. The bullet tore through its throat, jolting the upper body backwards. I felt the grip upon my shoulder tighten, and the head snapped back toward me with mouth open wide.
It’s strange, the little things that capture our attention in a crisis. I noticed that the flat, lifeless, black-blood veined eyes never changed expression. No anger, hunger, victory, desire, pain...just empty. Truly empty.
I jammed the barrel of the gun into the now gaping maw and fired again. The creature simply dropped. Again, it was as if the plug were suddenly pulled, like on a radio.
Without waiting for more bad things to happen. I jumped into the truck. Slamming the door, locking it, and rolling up the window seemingly all at once. I shifted in drive, and launched the big truck into the street, clipping the sports car enough to turn it a little sideways. My hard right turn aimed us back towards the interstate.
I’ve risked my life a whole bunch of times since that night. But at no time was I as stupid and out-of-control as I was in the way I left that gas station parking lot. Six more inches to the right, and I catch enough of that sports car to probably end our ride.
Looking in my rearview mirror, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The zombies had fallen on the brunette. That could only mean one thing. Since they ignored, and even stepped over the zombie that I had just blown the back of its skull off, the brunette was not, at the time just before I shot her at least, dead.
Adding one plus one, I had just killed someone. My mind began to argue vigorously the varying points.
She was bitten.
It was only a matter of time.
You saved her much misery.
All the way to the interstate, and for the next several miles, my mind continued. It tried to offer me the solace no other living, breathing human being would if they’d seen what I’d done.
Eventually, Thalia fell into a fitful sleep. If things were as I suspected, and if they had just started… this was a bad beginning.
It would get worse.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lemuria_Valentine on -
Excellent. You are good at modern Zombie writing. Are you actually going to get your work published or something? I wouldnt mind having a read through it ^^
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Permalink Reply by Todd Brown on -
check out my zomblog at www.myzomblog.blogspot.com
you can also go to my profile and see my maydecemberpublications blog that has a couple chapters of Dead (first book in a series) and my book Dakota (civil war/time travel - not zombie)
I would love to get it published. There will be about 6-8 books in this series alone.
I'm glad you liked it :)
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Permalink Reply by Lemuria_Valentine on
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Thanks will do. ^^
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Permalink Reply by Todd Brown on -
Vignettes 1
—2—
Portland, Oregon-Lukas pushed the mop back and forth, paying no real attention to what he was doing. His earbuds blasted the newest Avenged Sevenfold cut, effectively blocking out the rest of the world. The music allowed him to endure what was just another in a string of crappy jobs. This one, in its third week, was fast approaching record-breaking status. Three more days and yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’d have a new record.
Dunking the mop in the long-overdue-to-be-refreshed water that half-filled his wheeled yellow bucket, Lukas plunged it up and down a few times, slopped it into the wringer, slammed down on the handle, pressing just under half of the liquid out of the gray-black strands, then jerked it out, sending the fetid fluid in a splattering arc across the cold concrete floor. He resumed sloshing the mop back and forth, occasionally blurting out a few off key, nasally lyrics.
Finishing up, he carried the bucket over to the deep sink and emptied the filthy water down the drain. He gave the bucket a cursory rinsing, then hung the still dripping, unrinsed mop on the wall, and slid the bucket under the sink.
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he came out with his baggie, some papers, and a lighter. One bad thing about looking for a job was the three or four weeks he had to go without smoking weed. Never knew if a UA was gonna be requested. He quickly rolled a joint and lit up. This was probably why this job had lasted so long. Working for this contracted cleaning company, Lukas always volunteered for the warehouses. He had no problem finding a nice spot away from everybody where he could take the edge off the workday. If any of the folks on his crew noticed, nobody said anything. Hell, most of his co-workers where fresh out of jail or prison. Didn’t those types have some code against being a snitch?
That total feeling of relaxation was seeping through his body when the creepiest scream he ever heard managed to break through the guitars blazing in Lukas’ ears. His thumb found the volume wheel as the scream seemed about to die, only to explode again with renewed intensity.
Climbing to his feet, he made his way to a door that opened out onto the loading platform of the warehouse. Plucking both buds out, he could better hear the screaming fade to some other sound that came through the steel door in muffled fits.
“Yo, man, you alright?” Lukas pushed the bar opening the door.
A smell so thick it seemed to fill his mouth with a greasy film met him in place of the normal cool night air. Two people were crouched on the ramp leading up to one side of the concrete platform. A yellowish light flickered just above them from a thin metal pole. A third person, it looked like Jimmy Jenkins, was sprawled on the ground. The weak whimper, rising and falling in pitch, was coming from him. One of the crouching figures turned its head at the sound of the door.
The scene before Lukas was unimaginable. It made no sense to the twentyish man who gazed upon it. Aaron Malburn was staring up from Jimmy’s body. His face was smeared with a dark wetness that dripped from his chin in pencil-thick ropes. Something large and jellylike dropped from Aaron’s open mouth, landing with an audible ‘splat’ on the concrete.
“What the-,” was all Lukas could manage around the bile rising in his throat.
Aaron pulled himself to his feet like an old wino. He was staggering slightly, one leg seemingly on the verge of collapse. One step forward, fully into the light, revealed the reason. His coveralls had been torn open from hip to knee on the right leg. Strips of meat hung over the torn khaki, which was itself stained a dark blackish color, obviously from all the blood. For just a second, Lukas thought he caught a glimpse of what could have been bone from the depths of the wound.
“Holy shit!” Lukas reached behind himself for the door.
His hand found the handle, and he pushed the lever with his palm. The door opened out towards him causing Lukas to turn his back slightly to step around and into the relative safety of the warehouse. A hand curled around the door before he could pull it shut. The dull thud was accompanied by a series of crunching noises, obviously from the breaking of fingers between door and jamb. The fingers still continued to clutch the door, now attempting to pull it back open. Another set of fingers joined the first adding to the force being applied to open the metal door.
Lukas wasn’t even considering the option of waiting around or checking anybody out to see if they were okay. His mind was struggling with the idea of what exactly was happening. There was definitely something wrong. That was really the only thing he was certain of. Running through the warehouse to the front exit, he dodged a few odd stacks of aluminum, giving dark spaces a wide berth. He heard the clang of the door; once, twice, a third time. Reaching the front exit, Lukas turned the knob and bolted through the doorway…right into a hulking figure that could only be Travis Reynolds.
Of all the crew, Travis was the only one you could look at and know he’d done prison time. His upper body was gigantic. He had muscle packed onto his six plus foot frame from the waist up. His gut was equally huge, but solid as a rock. Both arms were ‘tatted’ with designs that related to naked women and ‘white power’. His head was shaved and sat on a neck that you could not find without close inspection. Travis sported a long goatee that he kept braided into a distinct fork. What finished off the look were his legs that, if Travis wore shorts, looked like a pair of toothpicks sticking out of a potato.
Lukas careened off the body of Travis Reynolds and flipped over the metal railing that ran across the front of the raised entrance. He hit the asphalt of the parking lot, and the air left his lungs in a sudden and painful rush. Try as he might, Lukas could not get himself to inhale. He lay sprawled, making weak croaking noises.
“What the fuckin’ hell is goin’ on, Lukas?” Travis looked down over the railing with his usual scowl of disdain.
More croaking. Having never experienced the wind being knocked from him Lukas was quite scared. He reached up, trying but failing to form any words. Tears streamed down his cheeks, a combination of fear and pain.
“Man up, you pussy!”
Travis walked along the landing to the steps, alternately scolding Lukas for being so weak, and demanding to know where the rest of the crew had gone.
“Can’t find fuckin’anybody. That jig Aaron must be hiding from work as always. You smell like a two-bit bag a weed, and Jimmy-fuckin-Jenkins is likely getting his knob polished by that meth-whore, Wendy.”
Reaching down with a ham-sized fist, Travis yanked Lukas onto his feet by the collar. As soon as he let go, Lukas slid back down on his ass, still struggling to get even the tiniest amount of oxygen into his lungs.
“Walk it off, man.”
The main door to the warehouse rattled, and then, slowly began to open. Out onto the landing stumbled Aaron Milburn, Jimmy-fuckin-Jenkins, and a third man neither Lukas nor Travis recognized.
“What the…,” Travis’ voice trailed off, choked by a gag as the stench from the three zombies caught him full force. He staggered back a couple of steps, and all three heads snapped his direction like a bird that had just spotted a juicy worm.
In the bluish-white fluorescent glow of the walkway and parking lot lighting, it was much easier to see the horrific figures that were now staggering his way. All three bodies were missing chunks, literal chunks of meat. The corpse of Jimmy Jenkins had the added horrific effect of strands of intestine hanging in bunches from a gaping hole just below the bottom of the rib cage.
Travis glanced at Lukas, then at the abominations making slow but steady progress in his direction. He continued to back slowly away.
“You best get to your feet.”
Lukas reached out, his eyes pleading for help. Setting his back against the cool, smooth concrete, he pushed with his legs, trying to wedge his body up. His progress was slow, coming inch after agonizing inch. He tried again desperately to suck air in, and once more managed only a feeble squeak. But…it was a little better. Some air actually found its way!
“Travis,” he could barely manage.
In unison all three heads snapped in Lukas’s direction, seemingly forgetting all about Travis who continued to back slowly towards the parking lot. Reaching the bottom of the gently inclined ramp that had been put in for handicapped access; the trio turned and made for the closer prey.
Lukas willed himself forward. He was hunched over as if he’d been punched in the gut. In fits and starts, he tried to follow Travis. A hand clutched his collar much as the large man had done seconds before when hauling Lukas to his feet. Only this time, it didn’t jerk or snatch, it simply pulled back. Lukas fell back as hands clutched him on wrists, shoulders, and even hair. He tumbled, bringing two of the three with him. He found himself staring up into dead faces with open mouths. One of those mouths came down on his nose and bit hard, crushing cartilage and ripping away not only the nose but a strip of flesh under the right eye.
Travis continued to watch as he backed away. He saw the bodies tumble to the ground in a heap. Then two of those things climbed on top of that Lukas kid. He must’ve gotten his wind back, because as Travis turned to run he heard a scream of pure agony.
* * * *
Juan Hoya pulled his coat up over his face. The dull thud sounded again. If there was anything that he hated more than being woke up… he couldn’t think of it.
Thud.
There it was again! It was probably some damn wino from the Park Blocks come up to the University area, looking for better pickings. Well, he would just have to set whoever it was straight. This was his street, and if somebody was gonna bang on his car, then he’d damn sure give ‘em some attention.
Jerking away the coat he slept under in the backseat of the Oldsmobile Cutlass he had called home for the past eight months, Juan sat up. His hand reached for the aluminum baseball bat he kept close-by for emergencies. A face stared in, pressed against the glass of the backseat passenger window.
“Get the fuck outa here!” Juan yelled, making a threatening lunge.
Whoever it was didn’t seem phased. Instead, a meaty hand slapped against the window. The face pressed closer, smearing a film of something on the glass.
Juan reached behind himself and unlocked the door. Whoever this was, they were about to get mopped. Scooting backwards and hoisting his legs around, his feet hit the cold asphalt. Rising to his six foot two frame, Juan shivered slightly from the chill. Now he was even angrier. He hated being cold, almost as much as he hated being woken up. It would take forever to warm his feet up again.
The sudden impact of the smell that filled his nostrils caused him to gag and lose just a bit of steam. He felt last night’s forty-ouncer surge up from his stomach and reach the back of his mouth. He swallowed hard as he spun to face this lame-o who had messed up a good nights sleep.
“You need to drag your drunk ass down to the river and clean up.”
The wino was staggering around the back of the car, reaching out for him with outstretched hands. If he was looking for money or help, this drunk had come to the wrong place. A quick glance around confirmed there was nobody near. One good crack in the head and this guy could sleep it off in a dumpster a few blocks away.
“Another step and I’m gonna crack that dome of yours.” Juan tightened his grip and drew back, prepared to swing big if this guy didn’t beat feet in another direction.
The smell grew stronger as this thing drew nearer with each labored step. Things had gone far enough for Juan Hoya. He swung the bat, connecting solid with the cheek of this staggering bag of stench. Its head rocked back and to the right. Yet…it staggered only slightly more than it had been already. Juan blinked in disbelief as this guy took another step towards him, now clearing the rear of his car… and the shadows.
For the first time, he got a good look at the person who had not only woke him up, but took one of his best shots, only to be apparently unphased. What he saw seemed impossible. This guy’s throat was torn out. Not just a little gash. No, it was ripped open so far that you could see inside. Blood was all down the front of this guy. His eyes were sorta milky and bloodshot…but not. It was like this guy’s blood was black or something.
“That’s tight,” Juan breathed. Of course it was creepy, but it was also the coolest thing he had ever seen. The ripped open neck however was not ‘tight’.
The thing continued to come at him. Juan swung again connecting with the temple. Again it staggered…stumbled. He brought the bat down on the back of its skull. A satisfying crunch that he could feel as well as hear was the result. Still, this thing tried to come up from its hands and knees! With everything he had, a series of three more swings brought the thing down to stay. Its skull had finally burst open, spilling its contents in a wide splattered arc across the asphalt.
“Now that’s tight like a tigah,” he snorted, admiring his handiwork.
A sound up the street by the pizza place jerked his attention away from the body at his feet. His heart began racing at the possibility of a witness to his crime. He sighed in relief as he made out one of the whores that worked the area, Latricia. The stagger was oddly similar to the guy laying in the gutter with his brains spilled everyplace. He had walked that same jerky, unnatural way. More like a bird than a person, Juan decided.
Two more figures came around the same corner. But it was weird. They would take a few steps past the building on the corner, then just freeze. Their heads would snap his way and then the bodies would slowly come around in the direction the heads pointed. Then, in that strange jerky walk, they began moving towards him.
As the trio made their way closer, they entered a large circle of light cast by the regularly placed street lamps that alternated sides in both directions. All three were covered in what had to be blood. One of them looked like it was missing half an arm.
Juan considered what he was seeing for a moment. This was like one of those movies. Something about ‘Dead’. Zombies? But that couldn’t be…could it? He watched those things get even closer. There was the first hint of that gagging smell. So, if he was right, and these things were zombies…
Hefting the bat, Juan rushed the whore. She was a good twenty feet ahead of the other two. As he circled around, her head followed in jerky, birdlike fits. Teasingly, he dangled his hand towards the open mouth of whatever the hell this thing was. A lunge and the click of teeth sounded as he jerked back.
“This could be tight.”
He went to work with his bat. Taking out a leg, connecting with the left knee so hard that the leg folded back, still it came. A whirling overhead spin connected with the other leg, shattering the shin. Still it came, dragging itself with outstretched arms. Never once did it scream. By darting in and out, pretty soon all three had been denied the use of their legs. Like nightmarish paraplegics, they dragged themselves after Juan. The only sounds were moans that ranged from a squeaky sound to the low guttural sort.
This could mean all kinds of stuff.
If it was like the movies…
He walked back to his car and grabbed his knapsack. With a nudge, he closed the door. He had to take a look around and see if this was everywhere. If it was, he’d find a new car. Preferably one that actually started and ran.
A few minutes later Juan Hoya was headed for the heart of downtown. Four bodies lay sprawled out-unmoving-heads reduced to a mass of gore on the street. Fifteen minutes later, he stood on the sixth floor of a parking garage. In every direction he saw them. Some alone. Some in groups.
Across the street was a department store. Never in his life had he been able to consider shopping in that place. He wouldn’t even shoplift there. As soon as he walked in, he knew damned good and well that security would be watching every step he took.
Leaning against the bumper of the Corvette he had hotwired, Juan rested his aluminum bat on one shoulder. A whole bunch of cop cars had sped by with lights flashing and sirens blaring just a couple of minutes ago. Most likely, they would be real busy for quite some time. They wouldn’t be able to come check out a little store alarm for a while. Now would be the perfect time to burst in, grab some stuff, and then get the hell away from the city before sunrise.
“Tight,” Juan whispered as he opened the door to his ‘new’ Corvette. He revved the engine, feeling the power surge vibrating the entire car.
“Tight like a tigah.”
* * * *
San Diego, CA-Melissa grabbed her gym bag. On her way past the mirrors she stopped for one last look. At least forty pounds! Damn, she was starting to look good! A couple more months and she would come to the gym during normal hours.
Walking out of the women’s locker room, she noticed Phil, the graveyard shift front desk guy, and a couple of others gawking up at the television. She couldn’t see the picture but she imagined it was probably the ‘Girls Gone Wild!’ infomercial.
For the first seven months that she had been coming to this gym at two a.m. sharp, nobody had so much as mumbled an incoherent word her direction. That had started changing about three weeks ago. One night she had come back in because, like a ditz, she had left the lights on in her car. The battery was stone-cold dead. She had cables, but she needed a jump. When she walked in, Phil and a couple of the late night regulars were having quite a laugh.
“…an ass the size of a really big sumo wrestler,” one of the guys, Ritchie she thought was his name, was howling.
“Yeah, and did you ever catch a whiff before she headed to the showers?” Phil made gagging noises.
“Like rotten armpit and Limburger cheese,” another laughed. She hadn’t known his name yet.
“Yeah” Phil was still waving his hand in front of his face, “can you imagine the funk from that cootchie?”
“Ain’t probably seen action in twenty years,” Ritchie crowed
Yes, they were all having a great laugh. And Melissa knew at whose expense. She wanted to turn around and run out the door. She would walk home. The warmth in her face let her know that she was blushing deeply. But it was the next sentence that caused that warmth to spread throughout her body. And it came from Phil.
“But, damn! That girl has busted ass every single night. I even started checking the register on my off days. She hasn’t missed a night in over eight months!”
“A few more months and I might tap that,” Ritchie added.
Melissa hadn’t heard another word. That was the closest thing to a compliment she had had directed her way since before the miscarriage. Since before she had managed to pack two hundred pounds on her five foot frame. One day, she had looked in the mirror and not recognized the face staring back. That had been it. She had gone on a rampage, lugging garbage bags of junk from cupboards and the refrigerator to the dumpster. She went in and joined the gym up the street at the strip-mall that also housed an ice-cream shop and hot tub outlet. After a week, the stares and snickers became too much. Thankfully, the gym was a twenty-four hour place. She started coming at two a.m..
That night, Ritchie had come out and jumped her car for her. Then in the backseat, he had ‘tapped that’. She had driven home that night with the unfamiliar sensation of semen trickling down her thighs.
The next night, she found out that the guys wanted to help her. All of a sudden, she had five personal trainers. Not being stupid, she knew why. For the next few weeks, she also had an escort to the parking lot. That had come to an end when it was ‘suggested’ that perhaps two guys should walk her out. Melissa refused. No amount of persuasion could sway her.
Truthfully, she had grown bored with them. She was almost ready for bigger game. There was this really cute, single guy in her apartment complex. His name was Jaime. He had been nice to her even when she was huge. Not in any sort of way that indicated interest. Yet, lately, his gaze lingered longer. There was a look in his eyes that Melissa had never seen before; not directed at her anyways.
Desire.
She had the meatheads at the gym to thank for that. She had quickly figured out who was ‘walking her to the car’ each night by the way they looked at her.
There was a difference in how Jaime looked at her, versus how the guys in the gym did. There was a softness in his eyes and a genuine smile. None of the guys in the gym ever smiled. And not once, in the backseat, had she been face-to-face with her paramour-du-jour. She just new it would be different with Jaime.
She opened the glass door. A cool night breeze washed over her still warm-from-the-shower skin, causing goose bumps to well up and down both arms. Something else came on the wind.
A smell.
Melissa stepped out on the walkway and turned towards the parking lot. A row of hedges had walled off the gym ever since the women’s aerobic class had complained about the gawkers. That was four years before Melissa joined.
She stepped around the hedge, that smell poured over her like rancid oil. Seemingly clinging to her skin, filling her mouth and nose, burning her eyes. Standing right in front of her was Jaime! Only…something was fundamentally wrong. His eyes, once bright and full of a good natured warmth, were now milky, empty, and laced with a darkness. Even in the false light that shone bluish-white from above Melissa could see that he was empty of any of that inner-light that made Jaime who and what she knew.
His hand rose to her shoulder, the fingers closed with vice-like tightness. She looked at the arm, to where a large chunk was missing in the middle of the forearm. Dark blood had dried all the way to the wrist. Something inside her wanted to scream, but she had forgotten how to all of a sudden. A war raged in her mind.
Run!
He came for me!
Scream!
Jaime is here!
His other hand found her other shoulder. He moved close, his mouth open. As their bodies came together, Melissa felt something wet and thick against her bare knees. She knew that if she looked down the spell would pop like a soap bubble. There was something wrong about the wet, rope-thick coils that smeared against the day old stubble on her legs.
His mouth was almost to hers now. That smell could not be coming from him. Not Jaime. He was here to finally reward her hard work and sacrifice. Their mouths came together. In her mind, Melissa had pictured this very moment countless times.
The sudden agony was like a bucket of cold water. She jerked back and forth, trying desperately to free herself of the source of such pain. She felt her tongue rip and tear away. Blood filling her mouth and throat, causing her to cough and choke. She struggled against the hands on her shoulders and fell back onto her butt. Fingernail marks scored her shoulders and the tee-shirt hung in two pieces around her waist.
She saw Jaime for what he really was, or what he had become. Two thick intestinal strands hung to his thighs from a rip across his abdomen. Bite size pieces were missing from both arms, and his shirt was torn, not only at his stomach but the left side of his chest as well where another chunk had been taken.
Melissa wanted to scream, but only choked. Using her hands, she tried to scoot back away from the horror that stood above her. Jaime’s body lunged at her awkwardly and landed with his face burying itself in one still large breast. She felt his mouth open wide, teeth brushing her skin, then…more pain. His mouth closed and tore, bringing away a wad of cotton sports-bra, as well as flesh. The pain was brutal, but Melissa was drowning. Drowning on the blood she kept sucking into her lungs with every attempt to scream. Another bite into her flesh, and blood erupted from her open mouth in a red, hot, sticky, geyser. She felt hands tearing at the loose soft skin of her stomach.
Her scream finally came in the form of a weak, mewling gurgle. The remnants of her tongue and lower lip flapped and blood splattered her face. The light seemed to dim and Melissa knew that she was dying. The pain slowly changed to a dull warmth.
Darkness came.
** ** ** **
“You sure this isn’t some sort of joke?” Ritchie stared at the television over Phil’s shoulder.
“Ain’t seeming to be,” Phil watched the grainy footage that kept running on a loop while the commentator announced the grim news.
“…as of yet the White House has made no comment other than to deny that this crisis is terrorist related. Word of savage outbreaks like those reported earlier are now coming in from all around the globe. There has been no word from the CDC that confirms internet rumors of the dead reanimating. Instead, they were quick to discount what they deemed an “overactive cluster of horror movie fanatics creating a story to satisfy an adolescent fantasy.” Doctor Linda Sing had this to say at the latest CDC press briefing.”
A middle aged woman with short dark hair appeared on screen with her name and title just above the news ticker. Her pale skin looked even more washed out under the lights. This was exaggerated further by the fact that she wore absolutely no make-up.
“Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”
“You believe this?” Said Gerry, another of the regulars, and the one who the others had blamed for their free piece of ass cutting them off. He’d been the first to suggest that Melissa ‘accommodate’ two of them at one time.
“This is like some War of the Worlds shit,” Phil laughed unconvincingly.
The electronic pulse tone sounded, announcing somebody entering or exiting the gym. Gerry, Phil, and Ritchie looked at one another with hopeful smiles. Simultaneously they all called out in a lusty sing-song.
“Me-lis-sa.”
Shoving Phil into Ritchie, Gerry got the jump. He had been in a real dry spell with the exception of those walks out to the car with Melissa. Since the night she’d announced it was over, he had been forced ‘to go solo’, and he always struggled with that Catholic induced shame afterwards. Running around the corner into the big entry foyer, Gerry noticed a stench unlike anything in his life. It made his protein farts smell like fresh mountain air.
“Holy…,” he was unable to finish the next word as his latest power drink exploded from his mouth and nose in a bile-mixed spray of watery vomit.
The smell was bad, but is was the apparition standing just about ten feet away that turned his guts to searing jelly. As the vomit sprayed from seemingly every orifice in his head, both his bladder and bowels let go. All this took place in a matter of seconds.
What remained of Melissa stood in the middle of the lobby. Another figure was just behind her. And he, Gerry was pretty sure it was a he, seemed to be stuck in the door. Or at least what had to be his intestines were. The guy was trying to pull free, but only managed to have more of the gray-pink coils spooling out from the hole in his guts.
Melissa looked little better. She was covered in blood. Her entire abdomen was hollowed out into a crimson cavern of raw dangling meat. Enough of her rib cage showed to reveal that a couple of bones had been snapped off. Remnants of her over-large breasts hung in tatters. But her face was what broke Gerry’s mind. The lower jaw remained awkwardly attached. All of the left cheek and most of the right had vanished. The mouth hung open to reveal a blackish stump that had to have been her tongue at one point. The eyes were coated in some sickly film and bloodshot in black.
“Fuck!” Phil and Ritchie breathed almost in unison.
They arrived in time to see two equally terrifying events happen at practically the same time. Melissa lunged forward, catching Gerry’s hand in her mouth, biting off three fingers, and the man in the door jerked forward suddenly, ripping away from his own insides that now hung from the door and lay in a pile on the rubber mat that people had wiped their feet on when entering. The smell in the air was so bad that neither man who stood right behind Gerry ever knew the other had soiled his pants.
Nobody heard the screams. The begging. The crying. Phil had the worst of the three. When he and Ritchie had turned to run, he stumbled over a flat bench and hit his head hard enough to lose consciousness. He awoke to four zombies feasting on him. He died screaming as he watched his own insides being pulled from his body.
** ** ** **
Somewhere in the Central Interior of Australia–The Old Man sat cross-legged, facing the slowly setting sun. The cataracts over both eyes had stolen his vision more than forty years ago. Not that The Old Man knew how long an actual calendar year was.
Many that came to see The Old Man guessed him to be comfortably over a hundred years old. They came with questions. As had their parents. As had their grand-parents. The Old Man would listen to the question. Then, he would draw in the dirt with a stick. He always continued to ‘look’ straight ahead. And as he drew, he would smile. His smile was little more than a dark crease in his weathered, wrinkled, tree bark textured skin. People would look at the picture, and somehow it would answer their question or give a solution to a dilemma.
The Old Man never asked for money. People simply gave food. Sometimes, tribal groups would come and repair The Old Man’s hut and stock him with supplies. Once, long ago, a commune showed up in a bunch of beat-up vans and set up around The Old Man. They planted gardens and installed a water pump. They never asked any questions, they only wanted to be near his ‘aura’. One day, they just left.
The Old Man never spoke. He drew. Sometimes he hummed songs that nobody knew. His face never changed expression except to smile when he drew.
That was until two days ago.
The images that came so easily and often suddenly stopped. Now, there was only one overwhelming image. The sun, with a jagged black tumor visible in its center facing a bloody moon with a bite out of it. The feeling he got from this vision was cold.
Death.
The Old Man realized that in his vision he was in the heavens, between the sun and moon. When he looked down, he knew he would see Earth. But he could not look down. The Old Man was afraid. He knew what he would see.
Death.
Slowly, The Old Man rose to his feet. He gathered a stick for walking, a leather bag for water, and a pouch of dried berries. He had to leave. He must go deeper into the nothingness of the desolate country where man did not tread.
Mankind was dying. He had to get as far away from Mankind as possible. His time was running out and none of the machines or big buildings could help now. Earth, Gaia, Nature, whatever you call it, it was resetting itself.
The Old Man suddenly saw visions in his mind coming so fast that they all bled together. The planet had been scarred and ravaged by Mankind, who was brushing everything away. Wars raged and Mankind sought to dominate itself. Mankind could not realize that it could no more dominate itself than one toe on one foot can control the other toes.
The Old Man smiled at his realization. The planet would use the only thing Mankind understood to bring it down.
Death.
** ** ** **
Eastern Ridge Prison, Idaho-Dillon Clay lay on his bunk. The light from the three-inch-wide by two-foot-long horizontal window bathed his ten-by-eight cell with cool, soft, bluish light. The intercom had called “lockdown” about an hour ago. Still, no CO had come by to count him. Dillon didn’t like things he did not understand. There was always a count at lockdown.
Something must really be popping off in one of the blocks. The rest of Tier A seemed just as anxious. There was a lot of yelling going on up and down the block. That was also out of the ordinary. Usually the CO on the tier would come down on people for making a racket during lockdown.
Yep, something was not right.
“Clay!” a voice hissed.
It was the kid across the hall, Ian Lotherman. He had moved in about five months ago. Real sad story, nothing any real man couldn’t understand. The kid had come home early one night to find his new wife of just three months with her mouth full of another man’s pole. Now they were both dead, and Ian was doing Life Without.
“What?”
“How come we haven’t been counted?”
“Prob’ly had some block go off the hook.”
That seemed to satisfy the kid, because he was quiet again. Dillon, however, was not convinced by his own words. He’d seen some real crazy shit in his twenty-three years down. The CO’s were just as particular about routine as he was. Anytime there was a lockdown, there was a headcount. That was just the way things were.
Lights.
The sudden illumination caused an uproar. Men up and down the tier cursed. Sounds of boots rushing down the concrete floored tier came even as the main door was still opening with its mechanical whine. Another sound carried on the wind.
Gunfire.
Several of the prison’s correctional officers rushed by wearing full riot gear. None of them even glanced in Dillon’s cell as they passed. The two bringing up the rear had pistol-grip shotguns and were pointing back the way they had come.
Now guys were really yelling. At the head of the tier, where the door leading out to the common room had locked open with a loud metallic clang, there was a sudden change in the timbre of the voices. It was no longer the gruff harassing sound of boisterous convicts.
Terror.
Fear.
Absolute horror.
“What the hell is going on, Clay?” there was definite fear in Ian’s voice. The kid had his tall lean frame pressed against his cell door. His eyes were wide and had a white knuckled grip on the round bars.
“Get away from your door, kid.”
“Something is happening up the tier,” his face was turned now as he strained to look up the long, five foot wide concrete tunnel.
“Get away from the door!”
Dillon Clay knew the smell of death. On the streets he had stumbled across the occasional wino who had spent a few days rotting unnoticed in an alley or under a bridge. He’d killed a few rival dealers. Once or twice, one of his girls would turn up dead in a hotel room where some John had gotten rough, or decided not to pay. Yes, Dillon Clay was familiar with the smell of death.
Death was on the tier. Something was wrong though. This smell had something more. Whatever it was had grown, street-hardened-convicts screaming. Begging. One scream was coming through above all the others. It was a scream of pure pain.
Boom!
The explosion of a shotgun echoed up and down the tier. The acrid smoke filled Dillon’s nostrils, but it did not hide that stench of death.
Twice more shotguns blasted, drowning the screams. Drowning the sound of the door at the rear of Tier A opening, but not the vibration. The rear door only opened in case of emergency, or since there had never actually been one, more correctly, during a fire drill.
“Get away from the door, Ian.”
Dillon’s voiced had not changed. It had not raised or lowered. Yet, Ian heard the message clearly. He let go of the bars as if they had suddenly been charged with electricity. He stepped back, stumbling slightly as his legs contacted the stainless steel toilet and sink unit that jutted out of one wall.
The smell grew stronger. Men were gagging, retching, and spewing the contents from their stomachs. A silence far more deafening than the screams or shotgun blasts was washing down the tier like a tsunami.
A body came into view in front of Dillon’s cell. It was a CO, but he wasn’t in riot gear. He was wearing what was left of the standard uniform; gray button-up shirt, black khaki pants, and dull unpolished boots. Blood was everywhere, turning the gray to black in places. The head was tilted at an awkward angle, exposing a long jagged rip down the left side of the neck.
“What the …,” Ian gasped.
With a jerk of its head the creature in the tier turned towards the sound. Thick blood oozed from the rip and trickled along the collar of its shirt. A pregnant drop hung for a second before falling with a splat on the buffer-polished concrete. It lunged forward, colliding hard with the bars. Two more figures stepped into view and followed the first. Dillon couldn’t see their faces to attempt and identify just exactly who these things once were, but he had a sick feeling he knew what they were.
“Stay in the back of your cell!”
“What the hell is going on?”
Dillon could hear the edge of hysteria in the young man’s voice. Like a contagion, that hysteria seemed to suddenly spread through the tier. Screams for somebody to open the doors or to simply ‘Help!’ began in earnest.
Grabbing a shirt from his open locker, Dillon had a plan. He yelled, gaining the attention of what he knew had to be a zombie. Sure enough, it came to his bars, hands outstretched. Both its arms reached into his cell. The zombie’s face pressed against the bars, teeth gnashing.
Pulling his belt out of the jeans he was wearing, Dillon took stock of just how this thing moved as he fashioned a noose. Like a snake he struck, catching both arms at the wrist with the belt and cinching tight. Pulling down, he brought the arms across one of the crossbars with a loud crack. Both arms bent unnaturally at the elbows as he quickly came down with all his weight to sit on the floor. He secured the belt to a lower bar, then grabbed the tee shirt. This part would be a bit tricky.
Stepping up to the door, fighting down the bile in the back of his throat, Dillon took a wrap around one hand with the tee shirt and swung the dangling portion of the shirt, catching it as it dropped behind the head of what he now recognized as CO Johnson. Again he yanked with both arms, falling back and bringing the shirt back through the bars. It was secure against the back of the neck of the abomination. Quickly, he tied the loose ends of the shirt together, securing the head against the bars.
Dillon stepped back to admire his work. The thing was helpless for the most part. It was struggling, trying to pull away while its mouth snapped fiercely. A low moaning snarl came from the zombie that had once been CO Johnson.
Picking up his combo lock, Dillon dropped it in a sock and wound up. He swung, bringing his makeshift bludgeon down on the head of the creature. Again and again he swung. Sometimes deflecting off the bars, but eventually, he accomplished his goal, breaking open the skull of this thing.
He looked across the tier. At some point Ian had figured out what Dillon had done. A second beast was splayed against the kid’s cell door bars, hanging limply.
The third zombie had wandered off. With both doors to the tier open, distant sounds of gunfire and screaming could be heard.
Dillon hit the button on his sink and began to wash up. In his mind, he was taking an inventory of the food in his locker. He had gone to canteen the morning before and bought a hundred rack. He wondered if things would get as bad as they always did in the movies.
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