Dead Last (Vol. 1): Dead Last

by Quaranta, Marc

  This was it. This was the opportunity for me to prove to everyone that I knew what I was doing. It was a simple plan. I wasn't going to over think it like Kurt would do. We were in spot A, the cars in spot B. We just had to get from A to B and we'd be fine.

  "There are a few cars down the road. We can hold a couple of them off with a few shots and then run. It doesn't look like they move too fast."

  "What's wrong with them?" Heather asked.

  We looked out the window. None of the people out there realized we were standing in the arena looking out at them. They were preoccupied by...nothing. They were just walking around, bumping into things. None of them talked to each other. They either had their eyes on the ground or up in the sky.

  "They're sick...from the air," Emily said.

  "Shouldn't that have killed them? The people we saw died within a few hours," I said.

  "I honestly don't know."

  "I'll take Haylea and Heather in the red car, you take the others," Kurt said. "You okay with that?"

  "Yeah. We'll go first and clear a hole. Everybody else come running out right after us. Travis, you gonna make it?"

  "Yea, I'll be fine," Travis responded as Jenny helped him to his feet. He looked to be getting weaker every minute but I wasn't going to leave him behind. I wasn't about to do that for the second time in my life.

  "Alright. Get in the car, lock the doors, and drive like a bat out of hell."

  "Here we go," I said.

  "Hey, the one upstairs didn't die until you shot him in the head," Kurt reminded me.

  "Shoot 'em in the head."

  Kurt and I put our hands on the doors and nodded at each other. The rest of the group stayed a couple of small steps behind us. We pushed the doors open and stepped outside. I was right. They didn't move fast at all. Kurt and I started firing our guns. I hit the first couple in the chest and shoulder. My aim wasn't too great, yet, but as I continued firing, I got a few more in the head.

  Kurt was a much better shot than I was. He was picking off stragglers left and right. Every time he fired his gun, another person fell to the ground.

  I looked back out of the corner of my eye and saw that the rest of the group was starting to follow us. There was a big enough hole to get through. Seven, maybe eight, people were shot and it gave us enough space to get by the rest and run down the street.

  We didn't look back. I headed straight to an SUV and Kurt and the two girls ran over to what looked like a red Honda Civic. Kurt must have beaten me to his car because I heard the smashing of a window. I turned my head away and swung my gun at the window and busted the glass. I unlocked the door and got down to start twisting the wires.

  I realized that Kurt didn't know how to hot wire a car. I sat up and shouted, "Hey," but I stopped when I heard his car start.

  Well, I'll be damned.

  I looked back and saw that the stragglers were starting to gain on us, but damn, they sure were slow. I got back to work and had the car purring in a matter of seconds. I opened the door and hopped in. I unlocked the rest of the doors.

  Emily jumped in the back seat, Travis had the passenger seat door open and Jenny was hopping in behind him. I was all but ready to shift into drive and take off, but I heard a scream.

  "Jenny!" Travis screamed.

  I turned around and Jenny was being pulled from the car. She never got her door closed. Three of the people pulled her from the car. They hadn't gained on us already from the arena. They must have come out of one of the closer buildings or alleys.

  I reached my hand out to help, but it was too late, the three of them were biting into her arms and neck. One of them took a bite out of the side of her face. Her entire cheek was ripped off and only the visible sight of muscle and blood could be seen.

  Travis jumped out of his car and I tried to stop him, "Travis, no get back!"

  He pushed one of the people off of Jenny, but it didn't take long for them to take him down to the ground. A couple of bites on the leg dropped Travis onto his back. I watched as these people, these sick, infected people started eating Jenny and Travis like they were soft meatloaf. Travis, screaming in pain, reached out his hand and grabbed Jenny's.

  We couldn't stay long. A straggler tried to get in through Travis' open door, but I had one bullet left. I put the to his head and pulled it. Blood and brains splattered onto the roof of the car, the glass, and even my face, but I didn't let it distract me. I shifted into drive and got the car moving before anyone else could jump in.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and watched as more and more of them continued to pile on top of Jenny and Travis. It was the last I'd seen of them. It was the last anyone was ever going to see of them.

  They were two worthless people. They never offered to help with anything and when they did, they could never get it right. They had no point in our group. They weren't good at anything. They brought nothing to the table, but they loved each other. They were always together and they were living to be together.

  And now they died holding hands.

  LX

  Kurt Elkins

  "G et inside and make sure everyone is around. We need to have a group meeting. Now!"

  Haylea and Heather got out of the car and sprinted up to the doors. I watched them go in and then waited for the next car to arrive. While Jack liked to run his mouth, I preferred to lead by example. He said he could hot wire a car, but I guess he didn't say how fast. I managed to get the Honda started right away and we were a couple of minutes ahead of them. I didn't wait to see if they made it, but I had confidence in Jack that he was going to get everybody back safely.

  I saw the car pulling up and was relieved. I was relieved until I noticed that the front window on the passenger side was covered with spots of red blood. I couldn't see much else except Jack and he was driving with a stone solid face. Emotionless. No fear.

  The car came to a stop and I went over to the side. I opened the passenger door and looked inside. The blood was fresh. I looked into the back seat and Emily had her hands covering her face. I could hear her crying.

  Jack's hands fell from the wheel and he didn't move. His face stared through the glass and the next twenty miles beyond the tree line. He wasn't looking at anything.

  "Jack. Jack!" I only slightly gained his attention. "What the fuck happened?"

  He didn't answer me. Emily opened her door and slammed it shut after she got out. She ran into the building. I made sure she got in and then turned back to Jack who still hadn't moved. He was almost perfectly still like a statue.

  "Jack, what happened?" I asked again.

  "They," he spoke softly with long pauses between words, "They came out from the alley. Grabbed Jenny. Travis. I had one bullet."

  I had never seen this side of Jack. He was genuinely hurt by this. To think that he was a murderer that took three lives so quickly without a second thought, but now he was so affected by Jenny and Travis being killed.

  He turned his head towards me, slowly, but it was good to see him make some movement. He stared through me now, though, "They ate them...ate them."

  Ate them? What?

  I realized that Jack wasn't affected as much by the two of them dying as he was with how they had died. If Jack was telling the truth, that Jenny and Travis were eaten alive, then I had no doubt that was why Jack was in that state of mind. He was horrified with what he had seen.

  "Come on, we've got to get inside."

  I managed to pull Jack into the building and was happy to see that Heather and Haylea had already gathered the entire group. Everyone except Elyse and Emily who I guessed were with Sam.

  I was happier, and surprised, to see one more friendly face; Nick. There in the middle of the group being greeted by everyone, hugging my fiancé was an old friend of mine. Nick was left to die on one of the first days after the outbreak, but here he was.

  "Hey, bud," he said to me. It almost didn't feel real until he actually spoke.

  I left Jack leaning on a wall and went an
d hugged my friend. I held him by the shoulders before I pulled him into my body. I patted him on the back a few times out of joy and relief that he made it.

  "It's good to see you," I said to him.

  "I thought I was too late. Did everyone make it back?" Nick asked.

  "Where's Travis and Jenny?" Dan asked me.

  "Guys...Travis and Jenny didn't make it," I announced to the group.

  "They're dead!?"

  After a moment, "Yes."

  "Oh my God," Dan started panicking and Haylea went over to comfort him.

  "What the hell happened?" Scott asked.

  "We came across a large group of people. They must have been sick or infected by the air, or something, because they started attacking us for no reason."

  "They ate them," Jack said.

  I put my hand up to him because I didn't want him to tell the group that and cause panic.

  "What did he say?" Heather asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Those people ate Travis and Jenny."

  "People?" Nick sounded surprised.

  "Yea."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "No, what's the problem?"

  "You don't know, do you?"

  "Nick, know what?" Haylea asked.

  The entire group came a little bit closer to Nick, maybe not actually physically, but it felt like the room closed in.

  "Those weren't people. Those were zombies."

  "That's enough. You're going to scare people," Haylea said.

  "You think I'm kidding? Those were real life zombies. I don't know why or how, but the air infected these people and it turned...they're zombies."

  "Zombies?" Dan said confused.

  "Zombies. Walking dead, live on the flesh of humans. Zombies."

  "That's not possible."

  "Really? Because it looked really fucking possible to me," Jack shouted from behind me. He had slipped onto the ground and was sitting with the same blank look on his face, although, this time he showed more anger.

  "It's true," Nick said.

  "Look, there has to be a logical explanation for all of this," Heather said.

  "I thought you knew."

  Frank's voice wasn't one that we usually heard in the group meetings. He was only concerned with keeping his son, Reggie, out of trouble. I hadn't noticed that he was standing there until he spoke. Maybe he wasn't. I looked around and didn't see Reggie so I'm guessing Frank had just walked up when he overheard all the commotion.

  "What do you mean you thought we knew?" I asked him.

  "The stragglers. You said you called them stragglers."

  "Yes. Stragglers."

  "Zombies."

  "No, people that were outside trying to take stuff we had. Thieves."

  "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

  "Frank, what are you talking about?"

  "This whole time I thought you knew," Frank pulled out a chair and I think he was laughing a little bit at the situation. "The whole time you spoke about stragglers you meant thieves and I meant zombies."

  "It's not possible," I said.

  "You really think that thieves wouldn't be able break open a locked door?" Jack asked. I turned to him because I was confused. "The people that they locked on the third floor in the hospital weren't stragglers, they were zombies. Zombies broke out and killed everyone in the hospital. That girl that was dead in the hallway wasn't dead. She got up and walked away."

  I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to logically argue this until they would cut it out, but I couldn't. Everything was making perfect sense. Dead people were all of a sudden gone. Vanished. Nobody took them. They walked away. I looked at Haylea and I think I could feel both of our hearts skip a beat.

  "The whole time...you didn't know," Frank started laughing again. I think we were all in a state of shock and Frank's caused him to laugh.

  "What the hell happened?" I asked Nick.

  "When Jack left me at the gas station, I stayed there for a bit to patch up my arm. It wasn't long after that I heard an explosion. A pop. I looked outside and saw that fireworks were falling from the sky. I didn't think much of it until a couple of days later."

  "I was sleeping in a car just waiting...waiting for the infection to take over and kill me but it never came. Then I heard another firework. I looked up and saw that it was coming from downtown. I got into my car and drove down there. Closer and closer. I could see it was coming from the arena so I headed in the direction.

  Everybody was focused on Nick's story. We all stared heavy holes into Nick's lips as he talked, except a few of us. Frank continued to shake his head from our misunderstanding. He was in a deep case of disbelief. Jack also didn't look at Nick. He continued to stare outside.

  "When I got downtown, it was like a war had started between the living and the dead. People were fighting them off with brooms, guns, knives, bats. Anything they could find. People were trying to run them over with cars, but they...the living probably killed more of us than they did the dead. It was a blood bath. No living person walked out of it alive."

  "How did you?" Dan asked.

  "I was far enough away from it all. I put my car in reverse and started driving away. If I had shown up a few minutes earlier, I'd be one of them."

  "One of them?"

  "Anything they bite comes back as one of them."

  "Wait, you're saying--"

  "You get bit you're a zombie."

  I had to sit down because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I've read stories and seen movies about zombies a hundred times, too many times. The whole zombie genre was getting run through the mill too many times. It was getting old and people were sick of it, but here it is. In real life. We were actually dealing with a zombie infestation.

  "What took you so long?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "We've been here for a couple of weeks now. What took you so long to get back here?"

  "Well, I wasn't going to. I intended to head north and just see if I could find anyone, but the longer I drove the quieter everything got. I didn't find any people. I didn't find anything. I knew you guys were here and took a chance that you were alive...and here you are...you guys got a good leader here."

  I didn't look away from Nick. While the others were getting fed up with my leadership, it was nice to hear an outside voice give me credit. I didn't look around to see if anyone was looking at me or nodding along with what Nick said, I just took comfort in what he said. It gave me inner peace.

  Not entirely, though, because there was one person I needed to see. I needed to make sure that Jack heard what he said, it probably wouldn't matter, though, because Jack was so out of it I'm sure he hadn't heard a single word that was said. He probably wasn't going to remember any of this.

  I turned slowly and for the first time since we got back to WTIX, Jack's eyes looked sane. Most of the color returned in his face and he wasn't moving so much like a... well, zombie.

  He was looking right at me with, what I guess to be was, a look of acceptance. All he did was nod to me and I nodded back.

  We didn't get along at times, we didn't like each other, and we handled things very differently, but we both stood by our guns. We were both good leaders and because of that we were surviving.

  LXI

  Jack Scoville

  I sat on the ground and listened to Nick's story. There were zombies in the world. I didn't believe in too many things. I was a lawyer. It was my job to argue with reason and reality so, with that said, I didn't have the biggest imagination in the world, but when the thought of zombies came up, I didn't doubt it for a second.

  I saw what those things did to Jenny and Travis. Those weren't people. Those weren't human beings. No human being can tear apart flesh like that. They ripped into them like a lion does to a zebra. I had never seen anything in my life quite like that and I never wanted to see it again, but I don't think that I would ever forget that vision. It was in my head and wasn't getting out.

  I heard Nick
say something about leadership and I had to acknowledge Kurt. I didn't agree with his decisions. He got Joe, Travis, and Jenny killed, but I still believed that I needed him here. I wasn't the leader type. I realize that now more than ever. I will always be a shoot first guy. I didn't care about what was right and wrong. I only cared about fixing the problem at hand. By any means necessary I was going to take care of business.

  Elyse came out of the bathroom, slowly, and started walking towards Sam's office. I didn't see her face, but the way she was walking she looked to be sad or in pain. Her arms were into her stomach and her hand covering her face. She walked with her back hunched and was moving slowly.

  When she got around the corner, I got up from my spot on the ground and followed her.

  "Elyse," I said.

  She didn't turn around. It didn't take me long to catch up to her, though. I turned her around and was horrified when I saw a couple of bruises on her face. Rough, red bruises right to the side of her eye.

  "What happened? Elyse, what happened to you?"

  She had been crying for a while. Her eyes were puffy and her whole face was damp and red. She kept her arms close to her body like she was scared to move them, like it would have opened her up to being more vulnerable.

  "Elyse."

  She fell to the ground, but luckily, I was there to catch her.

  "Emily!" I shouted.

  Emily came out of Sam's office and looked around until she saw us on the ground. She ran over and came to my side.

  "What did you do?" she accused me.

  "I didn't do anything. She came out of the bathroom like this."

  "Elyse...Elyse, sweetie, can you hear me?" Emily tapped on her daughter's cheek. I sat by holding Elyse's arm.

  "I..." Elyse tried to speak, but she was startled.

  "Elyse...what happened, baby?"

  "Scott...Scott," she slightly pulled down the waistline of her pants and there were bruises and scratches on her pelvis.

  I looked up and saw a look on Emily's face that I never dreamed of seeing. It was a look that no mother should ever have on her face. Instantly she was filled with horror, anger, rage, sadness, and every other negative emotion in her body. Her lip started to quiver and she bit down to hide it.