He reached to his body radio and quietly spoke into it, "Dispatch, this is Wilder, come in." A long moment of static, before a string of emergency tones filled the dead air. Ace could feel his stomach tighten. Within the bursts of emergency tones, he could hear his brothers and sisters screaming.
Begging for help.
Screaming for backup.
Their death cries.
He turned his body radio off.
Ace couldn’t stand listening to it anymore.
"Is anyone coming to help Officer Wilder?" Lyle asked from the couch, his voice heavy with tiredness.
The sheer desolation that filled him, made Ace want to cry. He had no help to take care of the boy, and he was one clip away from running dry. All they had left was a combat knife. And I sure as hell don't want to face these things with just a knife. Hopeless. Ace felt absolutely hopeless. What am I going to do? The fucking police department is still a good way away. He looked at the boy and saw the deep circles underneath his eyes.
"I…" Ace couldn't lie to the boy, lying would get them killed. "No. No one is coming to help up Lyle. It's just you and me." He went to the boy and placed his hand on top of his head.
"You rest, I'll go look in the kitchen to see if there's any food, okay? Are you hungry?"
Lyle had a smile spreading across his face, "Yes sir! I'm starving!"
Ace tried hard to give Lyle a warm smile, but it fell short and didn't reach his eyes. He left the boy in the living room, the kitchen was a short walk from the living area, and he pulled the curtains separating the rooms to the side.
There was a lingering smell in the air that made Ace crinkle his nose. He panned the flashlight over the kitchen and upon the top of the refrigerator was a bowl filled with rotten fruit. He relaxed his shoulders.
From the looks of the kitchen, it had been owned by a single person or a starter family. As he walked further into the kitchen, he saw a cat bowl on the floor with water in it. He went to the sink first and turned the tap on.
Fresh, clean water came from the spout. Immediately, he looked through the cupboards looking for cups, anything he could give to Lyle to drink out of. He found a few coffee cups, stained from use. He grabbed them and filled both of them with cold water.
He returned to Lyle who had brought his knees up to his chest and kept staring at the entertainment center in front of him. Ace held out the cup and he took it with shy fingers. "I'm still looking for food, but the water still works, so drink as much as you can while we're—"
"They had a kid."
Ace followed his eyes, and on the entertainment, center was a broken picture frame, with quiet steps he went to the picture and picked it up. It was a young boy, about Lyle’s age, a bright smile with braces, and eyes that could light up the darkest rooms.
"I'm going to die, aren't I?" Lyle asked, holding the cup. "I'm going to get sick and you're going to have to kill me."
Ace put the photo face down and turned to the child, "No. I won't let it happen to you. I promise. It's my job to make—"
Lyle brought his eyes to Ace and a chill went through his spine. "All those other people died though, and you tried to save them. You had to kill them."
He went to the boy and sat down next to him, "I had no choice. If I didn’t, they would hurt you, Lyle. They…they were already gone."
Lyle leaned to the side and laid his head on Ace's shoulder, his muscles relaxing. "I'm tired."
Ace leaned back and let the boy cuddled into his chest. He wrapped his arm around him and could feel his heart swell for the child. When we get out of here, I'm going to adopt him. I'll give him the home he deserves. He gently rubbed the boy’s back. I'll make sure no one will lay their hands on him again.
"I know, go ahead and sleep. I'll wake you when it's time to move. Get as much rest as you can Lyle." In the darkness, he could hear the roar of jets. I hope that’s the sound of us winning.
◆◆◆
She stared at herself in the mirror, it had been eight hours since her mother had bitten her. Nothing had changed. Her eyes stayed the same, she didn’t hunger for flesh. She felt ‘normal’ As normal as I can be, after shooting my mother dead. Mina had taken a shower, patched herself up, and changed into new clothes. Black jean shorts with tights, her converse, a fishnet undershirt with a tank top over that.
She had her gun holster around her thigh, knife on her hip. She was ready to move on. Her house was no longer safe, she had to find Naddie and her father. And mother said to go to the police department. Why? She said a mandatory evac…but…can the military really be trusted? She moved from the bathroom to her bedroom.
It was a mess of scattered clothes, and a few things she still needed to fence. But that was all gone now. There was no reason for money anymore. Shit…what am I going to do? Getting on her knees she reached underneath her twin bed. She pulled out a fanny pack, she clipped it on around her waist. She reached underneath and pulled out her daypack, something she normally used when she went on hikes.
I’ll put some rations in here before I leave. Who knows how long this is going to take? Mina got to her feet and ambled over to her closet, on the top shelf was a box, filled with extra magazines for her gun.
She pulled it down, opened her fanny pack, and began filling it with as much as she could carry. Who knows how many more of those…things I’m going to run into? She thought for a moment, putting the last three clips into her daypack. Better safe than sorry. She left her bedroom, saying her goodbyes.
She went down the stairs, looking at the wrecked living room. Mina put her mother on the couch and covered her with a white sheet. It was the best she could do for the time she had. She paused, her gut telling her to search her mother…I don’t know if I should…she swallowed hard, uneasy.
It was one thing to search dead police officers for ammunition. But this was her mother. She took a deep breath in, I’m sorry mom. She reached out and pulled the cover off her mother, and only took one look at her broken face. It had already turned a deep grey; she had closed her eyes after she laid her on the couch.
Her mother was still in her lab coat. Mina patted down her mother, she felt the insides of her lab coat, finding a singular vial of something. Pulling it out, it had a long scientific name on it, and with her sister’s name underneath that, with the dosage. She looked at it for a minute longer before shoving it into her daypack.
Mina ran her hands over her mother’s body again, sticking them into her outside pockets. In her left pocket, she pulled out a keycard. It was silver in color with ‘admin’ written on the front, and a photo of her mother, nonsmiling. She slipped it into her back pocket. After a few more minutes of searching, Mina found nothing else of interest.
She covered her mother back up, saying her last goodbyes.
Going into the kitchen, she ignored the blood on the floor. She first went to the cabinet underneath the sink. She pulled out the emergency medical kit, tossing the contents into the bag. She went to the next cabinet where all the bottled water was. She stuffed as many as she could in. Standing she went to the tall pantry. She pulled as many canned goods as she could. The worst-case scenario she would raid a store or something.
With her bag filled, she tossed it over her shoulder. Leaving the house, the way it was hurt, but she had no choice. It was stay and let her sister and father die or go out and save them. Not much choice there. I’m coming Nadine. I’ll take you out of this city and I’ll make sure we will get out of here safe.
She opened the front door, casting another look over her shoulder to her mother. “I’ll make sure they’re safe mom. I promise…I’ll right all this wrong.” She closed the door behind her, the skies dark and filled with smoke.
She placed her hand over the wound on her arm, when she cleaned it up it was puffy and swollen. No pus, no inflammation. It looked like a regular bite. The police station was a good way away, she knew all about it. She was constantly in and out of their little jail down in the basement for getting caught,
that was when she wanted to get caught.
It wasn’t fair to the policemen if she never got caught. Her father would be so pissed going down there to bail her out. Her father was a very well-known man. A very feared man. He had too much money and too much power. The police chief was frightened of his status in the business.
She never had to go to court. If father always had so much money, why the fuck was I stuck with the bills? Going down the sidewalk, looking at every shadow and noise. She stayed away from the darkest parts of the neighborhood.
It took her a minute or so for her to realize how quiet the area had gotten. She didn’t even walk to the end of the street, she paused. Where’s the gunfire? Where’s the police sirens I heard from earlier? Are they all dead? She bit her bottom lip gently, Where’s the military? In every movie, I’ve seen and every book I’ve read the military always comes sweeping in and gets munched. She shivered from the dark silence.
She pushed forward exiting her neighborhood. All around her the streets were filled with bodies, she couldn’t even tell the sex of some of them. Most were riddled with bullet holes others were just torn apart.
The houses turned into towering apartment complexes, is it safer inside a building or out in the street? Keeping as quiet as she could, Mina could see a few more shambling monsters, trying to weave around the emptied cars.
Most were on fire.
The smell of cooked flesh was what she imagined it to be. Disgusting. I can’t let this town win…I will find Nadine, and I will get out of here with her. Her uncle took her out shooting as often as he could, and she learned quick. It came with the trade. She never fired a gun at someone when she was taking what she wanted.
What happened earlier, was the first. The world went to shit. Why am I not surprised? The bite on her upper arm throbbed, she ignored it. Keeping her gun down and her attention high, Mina followed the sidewalk.
It was a several-mile walk to the station, and she tried staying as quiet as she could. It was difficult with all the debris around her. Her shoes kept crunching under glass, or some sort of trash. The city was never really clean but as people got sicker with each passing day, the streets kept getting worse.
She couldn’t stop remembering when she used to take Nadine out on small walks—when she was able to sneak her out—she could hear her laughter, as she held her hand and walked to the small city park. Nadine was always covered with bruises of some kind, and she had to take frequent breaks, but it never bothered Mina. Just spending time with her sister was more than enough.
The further down the street she went, the more she could smell that something was rotten. It reminded her of when she was a kid and went to the beach. When she and her parents got there—it was shortly before Naddie was born—the sand was covered in dead fish, rotting in the summer sun. It made her so violently ill, that she vomited everything she had on her stomach. The cooked flesh smell clung to her hair and skin. She crinkled her nose feeling her stomach want to heave.
The very memory left a bad taste in her mouth, her parents wanted her to pursue a career in the biology field. But that just wasn’t her thing. She wanted to go to the military, to be a marine, just like her uncle. To think, I was making my uncle proud and not my parents. All because I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps. As soon as I graduated, my father begged and begged for me to work in his lab as an apprentice. Mina graduated with the highest honors, and basically had a free ride through college.
She didn’t take it.
It was when she graduated high school when Nadine was born. She never had the chance to actually see her little sister till she was four years old. She stayed in her parents’ lab most of the time. She was sick with something, and they never told me what. I wanted to see her, I wanted to hold her like a normal family. But no…she had to make her way around another crashed car, it was flipped over on its side, and she could see fire engulfing it.
Her stomach tightened, as she leveled her gun to the car. Inside, she saw two dead bodies, their mouths hanging open in a silent scream as the flames cooked their flesh. She lowered her weapon and continued around the vehicle.
After four years they brought her home. I hated her at first. Always getting their attention, their love…until she couldn’t sleep because of nightmares. Nightmares that she described to me. Men in blue uniforms, coming at her with large needles, injecting her with white serum. Sometimes it was yellow. She cried and cried until I let her sleep with me. She was always cold, even to the touch. She pressed on, watching the streetlights flicker above her head.
The road around her was littered with trash, shell casings. She paused, as she noticed a single body out on the street, five of those things were kneeling over it, munching. Mina tried not to make a sound, instead, she walked on the balls of her feet, feeling her stomach tighten and knot. The urge to puke was touching the back of her tongue. Still, she breathed through her mouth and kept pressing on.
I took care of her for eight years after that. Who else was going to look after her little sister? Her parents were always working, and she was stuck at home playing the role of mom. Working with things that could cause a pandemic was not on the top of my job listings…following the sidewalk, she took a turn.
She paused, all around her was chaos. Cars were crunched against one another; fire had overtaken most of the cars. She was on Brimm Street—known for its high traffic and quick access to the highway—had become flooded with cars and something that smelt like… “Gasoline?”
She heard it long before she even saw it, and it didn’t take long for it to come down her way.
A large tanker came barreling down from the highway entrance, Mina’s hackles rose in fear. She could see from where she was standing that the person had lost complete control over the vehicle. And had slumped over the wheel.
Zombies shuffled from in between cars, turning at the sound of the large truck. Their arms rising, mouths opening in a large gape—
The truck crashed into the first car, it did nothing to stop the rampaging metal. Mina, went to her left, scaling the fence as quick as she could. As she put her left leg over, the gas truck ran right into the bookstore, tipping over.
She could see the fumes of gas reach up to the sky, fire was already spreading. Her eyes went wide—
She felt the thump before she even heard the explosion. Mina was lifted up and tossed to the hard ground below her. She fell to the back ally way behind the pet store.
◆◆◆
The distant rumbling underneath his feet brought Ace right up from the deep slumber he had fallen into. His arm was on his lap, and his coat was wrapped around his chest. It took a minute for his brain to catch up, that Lyle was missing.
Ace jumped up on his feet, instant worry went right through him. Panic settling deep in his chest. "Lyle?!" He called from the living room, his coat falling on the ground at his feet.
He went to the furthest part of the home; the doors were still barred. Running to the kitchen, he pulled the curtain open. Lyle wasn't there. Ace's heart jumped as his worry went right to terror. He went to the coffee table and saw the knife that he had given him, was laying there. Snatching it up he put it back on his belt.
The front door…!
He was at it in three running steps—
It was unlocked.
"Shit!" He pulled it open, at the moment he saw a new plume of smoke rising up to the night sky. "Lyle!" Ace bellowed to the night, only to be greeted with the sounds of the undead.
◆◆◆
She landed hard on her injured arm, blood soaked through the bandage, leaving a deep throbbing ache. Her ears rang, and her skin felt tight and flushed from the explosion.
Sitting up, she watched as hundreds of undead came out from buildings. Shuffling their feet and swarming the main street. As she got to her feet, everything around her throbbed in the bright light, she looked out through the chain link fence. The street was almost empty not even a minute earlier, now…
“It’s
filled with them.” Fresh blood trickled down her bicep. She fixed the bag on her back and turned away. “Guess I can take the back way to the station. It might take a little longer…” The original plan was to find a car she could hotwire and drive the rest of the way.
That was out when she saw the main street, now…as she looked at the back alley, this way didn’t seem much safer. Blood splattered against the brick, old and fresh. Something stunk like week old meat, left out in the summer sun. And there was trash scattered all over the place. Overfilled trash cans, and some bullet casings.
She kicked at one, it was spent and completely empty. My Uncle lived on the main drag. Maybe his gun shop is still safe. Wouldn’t hurt to check. She reached down into her shorts pocket and found the key ring. She had the spare to Vinnies Gun shop when she worked there over the summers. Let’s hope he didn’t change the lock. Another hand on my side, and some extra ammo? Not a bad idea. Maybe he has some not so legal items I could use. She felt better now that she had a direction of where to go.
Heading straight to the police department, without any backup, or extra ammo? Not too smart. Mina took a deep breath and continued down the alley. Her head still ached, and her ears still rang. She could hear them behind her, grabbing at the chain link fence, pulling.
Shaking…groaning. Hungry for her meat. Zombies were just going to be one obstacle in her way if she didn’t have enough ammo…or food…she groaned. “Shit’s going to get really testy, real fast.”
◆◆◆
Using her shoulder, she shoved a man in a business suit back. Mina grunted in exertion; she could feel his intestine hanging out of his business shirt. It made a disgusting squishing noise as she brought her foot up and kicked him further away from her. Once he fell another came back in his place.
The ally way wasn’t much safer than the main road. The bite wound was throbbing, the stitches threatening to come undone. She grunted watching the undead bodies come piling in. Mina was willing to shoot them…but…
Myrna Page 3