I could see movement on the road about a half mile out. It wasn’t a car, but in my state my vision wouldn’t focus, so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. I decided I should make all haste and vacate the area and tried to stand. I was thinking it wasn’t so bad when the dizziness hit and I swooned and promptly passed out.
You would think that waking up to a living dead thing staggering toward me at top undead speed while only a mere thirty feet away would scare the ever loving crap out of me, but I was serene. As serene as I could be with what felt like a horde of demons hacking at my leg from the inside and a shirt covered in stinking, partially digested stuff.
Arms outstretched, the thing came straight at my mostly prone form, and I was still woozy. She was hungry. I could see in her dead eyes that I looked like one of those delicious cooked roadrunners that the coyote always fantasized about. She was drooling and foaming, and bloody and dead, but the most important thing to me at the time was her proximity.
At ten feet I snapped out of it, but that was when her undead-burst-of-hustle kicked in.
You’ve seen it. Hopefully not up close, but you’ve seen it. They stagger and lurch, sometimes they stumble, but they always get up. In a group or singly, they’re very slow until they get within arm’s reach, then they’re like cheetahs. It’s like they save all their speed for a last ditch, one second surge. True survivors, those of us that no longer fear but respect the abilities and shortcomings of the dead, have learned to wait for that surge before making a critical move. You do this because all the speed and balance that the dead have is aimed in one direction and that direction is at you.
‘Course it doesn’t help you at all if you’re on your ass in a puddle of puke.
She was a blur of death and teeth as she came at me, lunging. Most people will say that the dead fall to their knees when they are attacking something on the ground but that’s not really true. Their knees don’t hit first. Her mouth came at me as fast as it possibly could, and it was open. I put my forearm up to stop her, but that was a panic move. Seriously, lie down on the ground and have somebody fall on you. Make it a ten-year-old kid if you have one handy, and stick your forearm up to try to stop the impact.
Nope.
Little Billy or Sara or insert-kid’s-name-here is going to plow through your feeble barricade like a freight train.
This lady was no ten year old either. She was a lot of woman, and I don’t mean her personality.
Bitch fell right on me teeth first. I thought the puke stank, but this woman was ripe. The plague was new, so I don’t know how she could have smelled like a week old dead thing that had fermented in the sun, but she did. Actually, maybe that’s what she was. She bit me just below the collar bone and I yelled. She pulled her head back and I screamed, because her mouth was no longer empty.
Something else you probably already know, but hey this is for posterity: Once they lock their hands on you, they aren’t letting go. She slurped that nibble of my shoulder down with a bloody piece of prison purchased t-shirt as a garnish, but she multitasked, and latched her mitts on to my shirt and pants. She finished my shoulder, and leaned in for another morsel, but I was having none of that.
This lady outweighed me by fifty pounds, and I’m a big guy. She was not big boned. I rolled her sideways, and pushed for all my infected ass was worth, which was damn little at that point, but hey, it was my ass.
She wanted my nose next, and pulled as I pushed. It’s amazing what you remember and forget in certain circumstances. I can’t remember her hair color, or what she was wearing, or even what her dead face looked like, but I remember she was fat. Fat and strong.
We continued our tug of war with me as the prize for a few seconds until I heard shuffling footsteps over our struggle. I dared a furtive glance toward the new sound, and lo and behold, fat dead lady’s twin sister was coming for brunch. She wasn’t really her twin, but she was every bit as big.
The tide had definitely turned in favor of the dead folks, and I desperately needed a weapon. Like a gun or something. I wanted to smack myself in the head with my palm for forgetting the pistol, but I would have had to let her go, then the fat lady would get to sing.
Pinned lady started snapping. She chomped so hard that one of her teeth flew out and hit me in the cheek. The other dead lady was about fifteen feet away, so whatever needed to be done had to happen fast or I wouldn’t spend the next few hours dying in agony, but the next few minutes.
I seriously considered that. Should I just let the New Hampshire heifers finish the job now? I mean it would hurt. Like, agony on a level I don’t want to comprehend. But then again, not an hour previous I told that cop that I wanted every second. Although that was before I knew for sure I was infected. The puking and passing out, plus the look of the leg bite were both indicative of infection. Spot on. I mean I knew before, I just didn’t want to believe. So yeah, I was infected. And nobody gets better.
But being torn to pieces by a duo of tubbies? Seriously? I could always shoot myself if the pain got too bad later. If I started puking up important pieces of me instead of my breakfast, or if I saw a living person and pictured them wearing those little bootie thingies you put on a turkey’s drumsticks, I could always opt out then. Also, for some reason, the Scorpions Winds of Change just shoved its way into my thoughts. Didn’t even like that song.
So in the end, after all of those thoughts, which took, perhaps, point five seconds, I decided I wanted to end things my way. I gave a herculean shove and smashed my hefty hanger-on into the street. Her head banged off of the asphalt, and it must have stunned her because she blinked in rapid succession. Her grip didn’t slack, but she stopped snapping and pulling. I did it again, and this time I looked for the revolver, which was right next to her flabby right arm. I grabbed the gun and put it to the side of her head. She stopped blinking and looked into my eyes, almost pleadingly.
I can’t imagine how many people went out like that in the first couple of weeks. Not knowing or believing a loved one was one of them, and then just getting gnawed on by your kid or your grandma. This dead woman, who had already dined on a portion of me, however small, raised her eyebrows and frowned, jutting out her bottom lip slightly. She looked sad, and I blew her head off. I wasn’t going to be one of those dumb people I just mentioned. No gloomy-looking dead fat broad was going to get the better of me.
Except she already had. Bitch bit me.
The undead will let go if you disable their brain. Doesn’t make any sense to me either. All of their systems are shut down except their core nervous system. They don’t breathe, there’s no heartbeat, they don’t poop, and they feel no pain. They can hear and see, but I don’t buy that they can smell because they don’t breathe. Although they make audible sounds, so they must draw in air to push it past their decaying vocal cords. If that’s the case then maybe they can smell. OK, I’m on board with the smelling thing. As of now.
Now now, not then now.
So she let go of me and I rolled off of her and aimed at number two, who had gotten significantly closer during my hasty tussle with number one. I couldn’t focus for shit though, and missed my first two shots. Well, I mean, I hit her, just not in the head. She did the same face plant on me, but I blasted her on the way down. She hit me hard, but I was able to push her off before she chomped down.
I rolled left, or maybe it was right, it was a while ago. She was on her face, the back of her melon now spread out on fatty number one. It was gross. Them lying there with holes in them that I had put there. I would have tossed them again, but I was shit out of cookies.
I had never shot anyone before. No, I wasn’t that type of criminal.
I sat up, and I can remember looking at them lying there. They were pathetic. They had probably been eating pie (double portions) at a church lunch a couple of days before, and I had smoked both of them. I felt like I had just won a seal clubbing contest.
That was when that little dude who runs stuff in your body jerked the adrenalin
e shut-off valve extra hard. My leg and shoulder wounds decided to remind me of our acquaintance. That same little guy, who was probably giggling maniacally, next launched an all-out ballistic missile attack on my pain receptors.
And yet I stood. The sound of the last shot was still ringing in my ears when I started my trek north. My plan was to find someplace nice to swallow a bullet, because I did not fancy being eaten, and I didn’t want to be one of them. Either way, I would be part of the living impaired soon enough.
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America- The Eagle has Fallen Page 18