Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Scott Marmorstein
“This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
ONE WAY OUT
Copyright © 2020 Scott Marmorstein
Written by Scott Marmorstein
With the whole day ahead of me I went down to our finished basement, AKA ‘man-cave’, AKA Laundry room, put the second load of clothes in the washer, listening to the hum of the clothes in the dryer adjacent. Claire had gone off to the hospital for work and I might not see her again until tomorrow or the next day depending on her shift-changes.
The sun had not fully sauntered above the tree line in the east, the world still drenched in the twilight murk of pre-dawn. I hadn’t had my first cup of coffee yet and had barely looked at my phone, which was weighing down my right pajama bottom pocket tugging on the waistline and revealing the skin of my belly. As I absent mindfully hiked my flannels back up, the lights went out.
The click and scrape of a metal zipper slowing its frenzied pace was my only sense of orientation, coming from ahead and to my right a little. My heart up-ticked a few extra beats. I grabbed my phone, pulled it out and started tapping the screen looking for the flashlight but it too was dead.
Turning, I tried to visualize where the couches were in relation to where I now stood. My imagination went wild, inventing people and creatures down here with me that I knew weren’t.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!
My ears were struck by a high pitched whine that proceeded to drop lower in volume. An airplane was falling out of the sky, and where it might land was terrifying. There was another shriek in the air, glissading and heavy but further away.
“Fuck! What the fuck?” I was screaming but could barely hear myself over the cacophony in the air. Outside my house, people began shouting. Flashes of light through the shrub -shrouded angled windows gave me almost enough light to make a mental map of how to get to the stair landing.
My legs and arms felt like quivering jello as I lurched forward, striking my right shin on the wooden arm of the couch, leaving me lame enough to hop to the stairwell. Another flash of white. I became aware of loud car crashes outside my house and further away.
“Holy Shit” I cried out inarticulately with every hop up the steps to the dining room.
My world was turned off.
Cowardice, pure, simple, cowardice is what kept me indoors while people in the street yelled, loud explosions vibrated my walls shoving dust motes through the dull morning rays of sunlight drifting through the living room windows. Each explosion I felt in the marrow of my bones, and with every ungodly cry outside, I felt fear like a visceral knife shaving at my nerves until they quivered and unspooled inside me.
I found myself pacing between the kitchen and the pantry, feverishly opening cartons of cereal, packets of granola, and stuffing my mouth, giving it something to do other than shriek in fear. I ate until my stomach hurt, then I sat on the couch and stared at our blank TV screen until I saw the muddied and blurred reflection of myself in it. I got up and paced around the house all day until the sun went down and the noise outside began to grow quiet.
I didn’t want to know what all the screaming was about, I lacked the courage to open my door, or peep out the window to find out.
Just before the sun disappeared it occurred to me that my fears had to do with my mortality. In so many scenarios’ where the lights went out, people would turn to violence quickly for food, for childish abandonment of morals, to loot, pillage, and act in ways that under the bright lights of modernity they would never have the temerity to do. And here I sat, a man without a weapon, without so much as an honest to god self-defense class. I’m ashamed to admit that most of my life people have steered clear of me because of my height and skin color. I’ve never needed to be in a fight, not a real one, and now confronted with the real possibility of the lights not coming back on, with airplanes clearly falling from the sky, and people shouting and screaming in the street right beyond the confines of my home, I might need to learn something in a hurry, or find a way to protect myself.
And more than anything I kept expecting Claire to burst into the house, find me, throw her arms around me, and kiss me until I could finally breathe again. I wouldn’t even entertain the thought that she wouldn’t be home any minute now, somehow caught a ride on a bike, or maybe someone had a car that would be able to get through all the chaos, but here is where my imagination came to a halt, and where my real fears began to spike. I couldn’t imagine what she was dealing with at the hospital, but thirty miles was too long a distance to hope she would try coming back to me.
As night wore on I stayed on my couch, under covers which my childish brain insisted would keep me safe from whatever was happening outside. Outside my shuttered windows the world sounded like a war-zone. There are three windows that look out into our backyard, and none of them have drapes, but I knew that if I let myself look out the covered front windows, I would see things I could not unsee.
I kept my gaze on the shadows drawn by the flickering candles. At some point, I bravely walked through the house double checking all the windows were latched, crossing my eyes a little, allowing them to blur so I couldn’t really get a clear look. I didn’t have a way to barricade myself in our room to my satisfaction, and I wanted to be on the front lines in case people started trying to burst through my front door for some reason. My house was not on fire, and I was thus far safe. I told myself come morning I would feel bravery move through my body with the sunlight.
I fell into a thin sleep in which nightmares of fists knocking on my front door, and hands oozing out of the plaster walls of my living room, reaching and searching for me, abounded.
When I woke up, the power was still off.
Getting off the couch left me feeling like an old man with bad hips, wobbly knees, and cramped ankles. I hobbled over to the window and peeked past the curtain onto the front lawn. My candlelight showed me basically nothing. It’s amazing how much light-pollution we take for granted. Even if I had wanted to see what was outside my other windows I wouldn’t have been able to, and it made me whiffle.
I went for my phone but it was still turned off and didn’t respond to my holding down the power button for well over thirty seconds. Whatever had happened to the world, electronics were not working for me or anyone else around here. I needed a way to tell time but wasn’t sure I had a mechanical clock.
Claire never came home, but it didn’t stop me from wishing she would. I concocted scenarios in my mind, she comes home, her work-attire torn and battered, maybe a little blood on her forehead (not hers, she kicked the guy’s ass who tried to get in her way) and boy does she have a story to tell me I can’t even begin to guess. My heart hammers at just thinking about all this, even though I know it’s not true, won’t remotely come true, but a guy can dream, can’t he? She probably stayed at the hospital to help with the crise
s. A sickly vision of an airplane falling on the hospital and killing her and all its occupants arose in my mind, but I blotted it out of my mind. I had no way of knowing how far spread this disaster was, and hoped she was not affected. The competition for deranged stories about what she was doing, how she was coping, and more kept wending through my mind like hayfever dreams. The bottom line was this: I would probably need to venture out if she wasn’t back by tomorrow morning, and I knew she wouldn’t be, but with all the lights out, I couldn’t see to make my journey. I started to pack by candlelight. The screams from people earlier in the day haunted my mind’s ear like a bad song on an insufferable playlist. I would need to think more carefully about how I was hoping I wouldn’t need to protect myself going forward, especially with nothing but a useless cross-shaped tire iron available.
With my mind racing, I packed my work-backpack full of food, a change of clothes, and grabbed some canteens for water, put on my hoodie sweater and clipped my puffer jacket to a clip on the side of my pack in case the weather got much colder later on. This being November, it almost assuredly would.
I dozed in and out on the couch, propped up in case someone besides Claire decided to burst through the door. I did this mostly to be ready to take off at first light, or whenever I woke up.
I aimed and pulled the trigger. The recoil was minimal, but enough to move my arm, so I aimed again and pulled the trigger a second time. The CRACK-SCHWACK of gunfire mixed with the bizarre screams from the female creature was loud. Bones shattered, blood, and tufts of denim sprayed the air and landed in my hair and patterned my face. Immediate revulsion had me gagging, but I calmed myself fast enough.
The thing yelled in pain and seemed to faint. I hated what I was doing. Causing pain purposely to another living being was completely against my beliefs, and yet all that had changed in just days spurred by a fierce need to survive. I waited for her to raise her head--they always bounced back somehow. Her kneecaps were now out of commission, but that might not stop her for long. Blood ran in rivulets down her denim-covered shins. Even the fact that she was tied to a steel chair might not hold this she-thing in place for much longer- I learned this from Pat. He saw one rip a car door off its hinges and throw it partway down a residential street when it was enraged. At that moment, I thought I could hear the creak and moan of metal against metal beginning to stretch.
She looked human and was once a beautiful brunette in her thirties, maybe married with children, but likely single and on the dating scene. Her pretense at being unconscious was also human. Nonetheless, I remained vigilant, gun at the ready, un-fooled.
After mere moments she turned her blood-red gaze back at me. The soulless-ness of her eyes willing invisible daggers into me.
“Tell me where she is. My wife, Claire, I know you know,” I demanded.
She stared at me. No heaving breath, no look of pain, just rage behind what were once alluring eyes. I cocked the gun and aimed at its forehead and repeated my request.
She tilted her head and then smiled, ghastly in this dim gray light. There was a rending snap-twang of metal, and I saw movement where her hands were tied, subtle but noticeable. My heart lurched, but I kept a poker face.
"Fine, you give me no choice," I said. I cocked the gun and waited, and just then her hands were free, and she was lurching towards me.
Without time to think, I pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet caught her in the throat, and the second bullet tore what was left of her head off. Reflexively, I shielded my face from any additional flying blood and other choice fragments.
Pretty zombies are the worst. They have me question my sanity. What if I were the zombie? If only these things looked like they do in the movies, dirty, disgusting, rotten teeth, peeling skin, but there's none of that. They look like ordinary people. Until they unleash their terrifying unearthly screams and display superhuman strength...and move to kill you as quickly as possible.
When she no longer moved, I heaved a sigh, hangs shaking, and found myself crying for what I had done, what I felt forced to become and whatever she might once have been.
If there’s anything like a Higher Power listening, let me find my wife!
The sun shone down on the elm-tree lined street. This was suburban Anywhere America. Except it wasn’t, I’d driven through here with my wife hundreds upon hundreds of times down this very road, looking at homes we idly dreamed about owning and living in someday, when our bank accounts allowed it. This was Hatboro, Pennsylvania, home of Produce Junction, Luhv Burgers, and good people. Claire explained to me that the reason it was called ‘Hatboro’ was because of a guy named John Dawson whose house was built sometime in 1700 and something. I remember looking it up much later, and discovered it was 1705. He was a hat-maker, top-hats actually, and as I walked through this town, my eyes peeled for zombies and whatever else might be trying to kill me, I couldn’t help but notice the flags on the old fashioned light posts with images of top-hats. A man long since dead no longer needs to worry over the present situation as I do, and never could have imagined even in his worst nightmares, the state of his beloved town.
The homes still looked inviting, friendly, and charming. Their sight added to my foreboding. There were no children in the yards playing, no squeals of delight as little children ran in mock fright of people chasing them in a game of tag, or young people getting excited by something they saw in the mailbox and announcing their excitement out loud. There were no older kids flying drones, or people coming from work or going out to eat. Birds had either gone silent or were gone altogether. The eerie silence was only interrupted by my footfalls and breathing.
I’m only alive because of dumb luck and sheer will. Little else would have prepared me for the scenario I find myself in.
My wife is the only all-important factor left for me to go on. Without her, I may as well be like everyone else I've met so far. The few I have seen who have also lived are like me, immune. Unlike me, they're either dead or off on their own mission.
I waited around for Pat only a few hours, but he never came back to his yard, which served as a camp ground. That's when I split. Either he got in trouble with the zombies, or he ditched me. Either way, I didn't feel a deep sense of loyalty. He was a bit spooky if I'm honest. That's when the half-zombie found me, or instead, I found it stumbling around in the yard. It charged me, but I was able to knock it unconscious with the butt of my gun--also dumb luck. I figured I could pry some information from it so I dragged the body and tied it to that steel chair I found in Pat’s open garage. I figured wrong. I'll have to find her myself. And hope she's as immune as I am.
Two things happened when this bizarre zombie-apocalypse occurred. All the lights and batteries went dead (I'm figuring some mass EMP wiped everything out to slow the viral-hosts), and the infected made themselves known. All at once. Like a big wave in the ocean knocking you down when your back is turned.
Never turn your back to the ocean. That’s what I was told as a kid.
The street I’m on says KINSLEY and bisecting it is KIPLING. I guess I’m in the K’s now. Funny how I never paid any attention to street names before. I never needed to with GPS. But now that I’m on foot, I have to stumble and trundle and remember my way thirty miles to the King of Prussia area where my wife worked at a hospital. Well, not the entire way. We agreed that if there was ever a disaster on a national or world-scale, we would meet at Dan's Flying Diner halfway to the King of Prussia Mall. I shuddered at the thought I might not even make it that far. She was closer, but we never said anything about meeting there under circumstances like these.
I knew it would take much longer to walk the distance than if I could take the most direct route, but I had to stop constantly to avoid trouble.
The reason I thought that half-zombie might know something about my wife is because I suspect they somehow all communicate with each other. A couple of days ago, as I set out, and before I met Pat, I saw a pack of them running together. Then four of the zombies in the gro
up stopped, split, ran separately from a group. I had stopped at this point, my heart pounding, no gun or ammo or any protection in hand, and watched them.
The other group of three tilted their heads simultaneously. Their behavior reminded me of wolves. The noise they produced was a bleating sound like birds. Then they made a run for it. After a few minutes, they returned to their spot on the road with a dead person. It was like they heard something, or had communicated somehow with each other. It put ice water in my veins to watch it. I had to backtrack and go the other way.
Pat changed my life by giving me a gun and a bunch of ammo. He was an avid Appalachian Trail junkie with a gun fetish. Pat said I could keep the gun and ammo, no exchange required. I fear a little less until night comes. That's when shit gets real. It’s not that the zombies have tried attacking me during that time, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that night is lonesome, long, tiresome and cold, I’m vigilant even in my thin sleep.
Now, with the daylight increasing, I know I'm too tired to keep moving forward. I'm going to die someday, but it won't be today. Claire, my wife, she's what keeps my feet moving. I was riding my bike when Pat stopped me initially. When I woke up, and he was gone, my bike was gone with him. This contributed to my lack of loyalty to him. Sure, I've been searching the random garages I could open, but it's surprising how many people don’t own bikes in these neighborhoods. I found a few bikes that were padlocked to light posts. I also saw bikes that were locked down on the backs of cars, but without a bolt-cutter, I've been SOL.
One Way Out: A Zombie Apocalypse Novella Page 1