Yet, he couldn’t have seen what he saw. Seeing was not believing.
The woman had blinked at him when he said it, and while she had been leaning towards him, giving up on the seat belt now that they were momentarily stopped, she now leaned back against the passenger door.
Jason didn’t really think too much about it as he reached for the door locks, locking them in. He had seen too many zombie and other horror films to take for granted that something couldn’t come along and pull open the doors.
“I need to get back to the bar. My aunt is there, and I’m, well… She needs my help right now. If you want, I can take you back to the Rowplex. Maybe someone else will come along, or maybe you can drive one of the other cars there, but I need to go back to the bar. I should also let the people there know what’s going on. They should try and get out of town, too.”
He hadn’t thought about what they were going to do. He didn’t know what he was thinking until he was already saying it, but it was a plan, or a partial one, and finally saying it helped him justify to himself that it was the right plan. The woman was right. They did need to get out of town, but he wasn’t going to just run away and leave everyone else. He wasn’t a hero, he wasn’t going to fight for some great cause, but he wasn’t going to abandon everyone, either.
Jason took a brief look around, making sure to check and see that the light was still red. Even though they were on one of the main streets in town, it was still a side street to the main highway that ran through town, so coming from the Rowplex always meant you had to sit at this particular light for what felt like an eternity.
He looked back at the woman who had picked up on his nervous look around and was now doing the same. However, she seemed to take more time. He figured she must have been lost in thought. She was probably wondering, since there was no traffic and all the police back there were probably dead, why in the hell was he stopped at a stoplight? He wondered that himself, but habits and paranoia of being pulled over again were hard to break.
Then he thought about it. There were no other cars. There were some parked at some of the businesses, but the town was quieter than he had ever seen.
“Where the hell is everyone?” he asked, thinking out loud.
“Yeah. I know there was the game at the school, the exhibition with Roanoke middle school, so there had been a lot of people there, and they had the summer festival scheduled behind the school for after the game.” She didn’t go on to say that she had never seen the town so dead, even while all that was going on, but she didn’t have to. He had lived in the town long enough to know how much of a big deal the summer festival was to the town and when it was going on, much of the town did seem to die. It had never been like this, though.
“The light’s green.”
He looked up. When he started forward, he heard a distant humming. It was quickly growing louder, changing into a whining sound. Jason was halfway into the intersection when he turned and saw that a thin, black shape was coming at them fast.
He stopped the car and watched, knowing that there was no way the person on the bike could slow down enough to stop or do anything but go around them. He figured that not knowing which way the guy chose to go could cause a collision. By staying still, even though he was in the middle of the intersection, maybe the guy could adjust. Yeah, that’s why he did it. It didn’t have anything to do with the sudden shock that had taken his foot of the pedal and slammed it on the brake.
The bike roared past them, swerving around in front of them, just missing the front bumper of his car. Then it was gone.
Jason suddenly had the feeling that he needed to find a bathroom. His pants seemed a little moist.
CHAPTER 9
They crowded around him, their skin ablaze, the stench of their burning flesh suffocating him. The putrid fumes overwhelmed him and he had to fight down the nausea. He could taste the vile flavor in the back of his throat, and the biscuits and gravy from the morning weren’t tasting as good as they wanted to come back up.
Everything was spinning, everything was moving faster and faster. He was losing control, lights flashing. The bodies rubbed up against him, and he could feel the heat. It was burning away at him, tearing away at his soul. Tears stung the edge of his eyes, and he felt their momentary wetness on his cheeks.
He heard the screaming, the cries of the dying. He knew the flames were tearing at them, scorching away their flesh, and he could feel their howls of agony as it worked its way deep down inside of him, stabbing at his heart. Screams he knew he could not save. They were the dying, the ones he had to watch die. The ones that no matter how many different ways he tried to save them, he never could. He would always have to stand there and watch them burn alive.
He watched them every night. Every time he closed his eyes, they were there, waiting. They were the ones he hadn’t saved, the ones who had burned to death the last night he served as a Chicago police officer. Those were the ones who had been killed in that drug lab because he hadn’t been able to get in there to save them. He had barely been able to save himself and hadn’t been conscious. He knew they were there beyond the door. He hadn’t seen them. He hadn’t died with them, but they were with him every time he tried to sleep. He was right there beside them as they all died.
In the hot summer day, he heard the screaming and he was right back there, caught in that room. His sweat was boiling on him. The terror was threatening to overwhelm him. He didn’t know if he was ready to handle this again.
“You okay?”
He looked up to see Bruce staring at him. Rob hadn’t realized he was leaning against the shuffleboard table. He had fallen into it, barely able to maneuver to keep himself from passing out on the floor. The waking nightmare had pulled him in so quickly, he had nearly lost himself completely and could have slammed down onto the floor. As it was, he had been able to reach out in time and had caught the side of the table to keep from collapsing.
That night, the one when the drug bust had gone wrong, he hadn’t been the officer in charge. It was when he was still a Chicago beat cop. He had been the lone survivor in the building. All the other officers, the dealers, and the slaves they used to cook their stuff had all died.
They called it “survivor’s guilt”, or so he was told. He had only gone long enough to the therapist to get discharged, allowed to wear a badge again. Maybe he should have gone longer. Maybe then he wouldn’t be plagued with the nightmares. Every night, he was still with them, trapped with those people.
“Hey, buddy?”
Bruce was rising, and Rob first thought he was coming to check on him. When another scream came from outside, the large man turned away. Rob felt the tendrils of his memory pull back as he snapped back to the present. He pushed himself up, using the shuffleboard table to get his bearings, then he was following the trucker, surprised at how fast he moved. He still felt the pain of the images rattling around in his mind.
Bruce beat Rob to the door, causing him to have to reach in front of him to keep the screen door from slamming into his face. Then he nearly ran into the larger man when Bruce stopped midway down the steps.
Rob saw why, but he wasn’t sure what it was he was seeing.
The mechanic had come into the street, probably to see if the man was playing or seriously screwed up. Whatever the reason was, it hadn’t mattered. When he had gotten close enough, the thing had grabbed the mechanic. They were now both on the ground, blood flooding the street around them.
Rob didn’t know what he was seeing, but that didn’t matter. He still reacted. Quickly moving into action, he leapt over the side railing, instantly regretting it when he felt the jolt from landing on the ground. Pain shot up his bad side, but he ignored it as he rushed to get around the larger man. Then he was running.
He wasn’t sure how fast his feet would carry him, his legs working to betray him as the old injury from his Chicago PD days tried to slow him down. He already knew he wasn’t going to be able to get there in time to save the
man’s life. With how much blood he saw, he wasn’t sure how he was still screaming. That thing-
Thing. Rob wasn’t even sure if he wanted to think about what the thing was. Was it an undead corpse, reanimated like out of a horror film to devour the brains of unsuspecting people? Was it a zombie hell-bent on devouring the flesh of civilization? More than likely, he figured that thing was a deranged man, caught up on some drug that was a passing fad, dressed up in some elaborate costume. He didn’t give a shit what that thing was, it was killing a man and needed to be put down.
Strangely, Rob knew he would rather it be either one of the first two options than having to deal with the third. He could shoot down and kill the undead zombies of the world, but what do you do to a living person, unarmed, who is out of their mind on some drug. With his training, he knew some self-defense moves he could use to fight the man.
More violence. More of the reason he moved away from Chicago.
His stomach was in knots.
Behind him, he heard Bruce calling back into the bar to call for 911. It made sense. Call local police and the hospital to send out its ambulance, but were the phones back up?
The phone lines were out, and something was devouring a living person. Something about that nagged at him, biting at him in the back of his mind, trying to gnaw his way into his active thoughts.
Think about it later, officer! commanded a voice in his head. It was his commanding officer’s voice from back when he was still a Chicago beat cop, and it was right. He had to focus.
Rob was reaching down to his sidearm when he heard Bruce calling out from behind him. “Rob, stop! Look!”
He stopped and saw what Bruce must have been looking at. There wasn’t just one of them. There was the one with the mechanic, but now Rob could see there were twenty to thirty of them coming down the street. They were still a little more than a block away. From where Bruce was, they were just barely in view. He probably couldn’t even see all of them, but Rob could.
What the hell were they? Was that kid behind the bar right? Was this all just an elaborate event? Some Zombie Walk where people were all dressed up and this was their idea of a good time? Was the mechanic in on it and it was all some kind of an elaborate set-up for some movie? Were there cameras hidden somewhere and he was rushing into the middle of a movie set?
He looked back at the mechanic, who was falling harshly to the asphalt. His head hit the ground with an audible smack, and Rob didn’t have to look closely at him to know the man was dead, his throat torn out and large amounts of blood still spreading in streams away from him. The thing that had been biting into him was now standing there, looking at Rob.
Rob quickly reached for his revolver. He knew in his mind, as he had already reached for it once to snap the little restraining strap, the gun wasn’t there. However, he still reached for it on reflex.
He was supposed to have been at the courthouse all day. He was a witness, and hadn’t worn it that morning. Some courthouses wanted officers in full uniform, some preferred them to dress in civilian clothes, but Judge Whitmore had already instructed him that she preferred partial uniform and didn’t like guns in the hands of anyone, except security.
The thing in front of him took a stumbling, hard step forward towards Rob. It was still just over a hundred feet away, close enough now that Rob could see the gore of the things neck where it had been torn out. Its eyes were a dull grey, bloody cuts and gashes ran up and down its arms. The thing had been wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The shirt was now covered in blood and, in several places, was ripped like claws had been trying to tear through it.
This was not a man in makeup. Rob was sure there was some pretty elaborate make-up out there that could do some amazing things to people and make them look dead, but he doubted any of them could have faked that large hole in the side of the its neck.
The thing took another step forward and, this time, Rob could feel himself react, taking a step back.
The hazed over eyes continued to stare at him. They looked dead, but there was something about them that seemed to stare straight into him. Those dead eyes looked at him with such a hunger, but if the thing was hungry, why did it stop on the mechanic? Why didn’t it just continue to eat him?
It took another step forward, Rob took another step back.
The mob of things behind it was spreading out. They seemed disorientated, but were still working their way towards him. Rob watched as one man came out of his house to see what was going on. The closest one to the man caught him on his stairs as he had been coming down to them.
Rob heard the man’s screams as he took another step backward.
The thing in front of him made a noise. It sounded like it tried to say something, but it came out as more of a wet, gurgling moan.
“And the Lord striketh down and burned away the flesh, the evil of the world. For once he washed away the evil and sin with rain, now he brings plague. The dead rise, and only the righteous shall be saved. The sinful will be left. The rapture it is upon us,” came a booming voice.
Rob looked over his shoulder and saw a priest walking past the bar. The man looked old and ragged, but was hurrying towards him.
“You have to get away! Get inside!” Rob yelled and started towards the priest. They had to get away from the things while they still could.
He was getting closer to the bar. It didn’t seem like the safest place but, right now, it was better than any other option he could think of. Bruce was still standing at the door. Two others stood in the darkness beyond. He couldn’t quite tell who it was, but someone inside was standing there, watching them. At least someone was smart enough to stay where it was safe.
Down the rest of the street, the town seemed dead. No cars were driving around, and no one was out dealing with yard work on such a hot day. As long as the people stayed in their houses, he reckoned they would stay safe until some kind of help showed up.
This wasn’t his town, this wasn’t his job. But he still felt like there was something he should be doing to help.
Like what? Get eaten? That really didn’t seem like too good an option. Right now, the only option he could see was to get back to the bar. There was nothing more that he could do for the mechanic.
“These men are cursed, but even the cursed can be saved. I have seen the demon. He has come to me. Has shown me the fires that are coming, but the Lord has kept me safe. I am saved, and I must save others. I must save the wicked,” the old man said. Rob grabbed him by the shoulders and held him, turning him so that he was forced to look at the off-duty cop.
“We have to get you to safety. Come on.” Rob was already moving past the man, trying to force him to walk with him. The man turned and saw him and he stopped, his eyes widening.
“You! I see you!” the old man said, his voice full of wonder. “Have you been touched, or are you an angel?”
“I’m no angel. We need to get out of here.”
“But you are blessed. I see the light surrounding you. You must know. They have to be saved. We have to save them.” The man broke away from Rob’s grip. “They must be saved.” Rob tried to catch him again, but the old man had turned and was now running towards the things.
“You can’t!” Rob yelled as he ran after the old man. He was amazed at how fast the priest was able to move and, once again, cursed his bum leg. It wasn’t the first time the leg slowed him down, and now he cursed even harder at it, watching as the man moved farther and farther away.
The priest didn’t look back. He moved towards the things, raising his hands. Rob could see the bible the man carried. “Dear Lord, save these men and bring back the souls that have been taken out of their bodies. Redeem them, save them, give them back the life that the demon claims, and show them the lighted path to heaven.”
Rob stopped. There was no way he was going to be able to catch him. “Don’t. You have to come with me. You can’t save them!”
The priest didn’t look back.
Rob turned away, hurryin
g to the bar as quickly as he could. It didn’t take long before he heard the first of the priest’s screams, but Rob didn’t look back. He cringed as he heard the agonized cries, but he continued on. There was nothing he could do for him anyway. He should have kept hold of the man, forced him to come back to the bar with him. He should have-
But it was too late. He started to wonder just what was going on. What in the hell were they going to do next? Just down the street, he saw a car rounding the corner and coming towards him, racing down the street way too fast.
CHAPTER 10
Wade could hear the yelling outside his tent. It wasn’t the first one of the day, but they were getting worse. More people were trying to get out of town, not knowing what was going on. He didn’t know, either, but he couldn’t tell them that. They were trapped, and there was nothing to do but keep sending them back. Send them back and just keep praying that none of them would push back. If they didn’t go back… Lord, he hoped no one would put him in that position. If it was pushed too hard, he had his orders. He had to follow them.
The order had come directly from the colonel, so there was no room for argument. This area was to be treated like a hostile zone, unless new orders came in. They had no idea what they were up against, but they were told to fear the worst.
Hostile zone? Yeah, this wasn’t some hostile zone. It was a town.
Sergeant Wade looked out the flap of his tent and towards the family that was now parked at the inner barrier of the blockade. The father was standing at the edge of the sawhorses, looking like he was going to cross over to walk the ten feet to the outer border and another set of sawhorses. The mother was standing behind her passenger door. And Wade could see a little girl sitting in the back seat. There were a couple of cars sitting behind them, but none of the people in those cars were getting out to cause trouble. It was either because they were just going to wait their turn, or because they figured there was no need to add to the guy who was already causing a scene.
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