There was no more time to wait. He had to do something to save Chet before the dead consumed him.
Kyle pushed the magazine back into the Glock and turned. Sneaking up behind him was one of the Existing Dead.
Chapter Fourteen
The screams began to fade into the wilderness. Chet was not going to be able to hold on much longer. Kyle rushed into the dead body stumbling toward him, knocking the beast off balance. Forgetting about it for the moment, Kyle ran toward the dog pile. A large pool of blood surrounded it as Chet continued to thrash and claw his way back up. Kyle was surprised that Chet was still fighting the way he was. The pervert was tougher than he thought. He raised the pistol and pointed it at one of the monsters’ heads. The weapon discharged, sending a bullet through the air. At this range, there was no way Kyle was going to miss. The bullet entered the side of one monster’s head and exited the front, blowing out brain matter with it. Blood smeared across Chet’s downed body. Kyle pointed the gun toward another one and fired, sending a shockwave through the surrounding trees.
There were two left, not to mention the one behind him, and Kyle only had one more round. He glanced back and saw the Existing Dead rising to its feet. Running toward it, he used his free hand to push it back to the ground. The monster swiped for him, but caught nothing but air. Kyle turned, raised the gun toward a zombie still taking chunks out of Chet, and fired the remaining shot. The creature stopped moving and fell on top of Chet. Kyle quickly grabbed the lingering creature by its tattered clothes and yanked it off of Chet. He did the same with the other fallen bodies.
The Winchester lay still on the ground, covered in blood. There was no way it would fire in that condition. He picked up the weapon by the only clean spot and placed it in the truck’s bed. He searched around for any blunt object he could find. There were still two dead wandering around that he needed to take care of. He found a two-foot-long metal spike. The moans were upon him; he didn’t have time to be picky with his choice of weapon. He turned, bar in hand, ready to strike at the closest thing. With all his strength he swung the metal spike into the air, pounding into the skull of the approaching dead. The dead collapsed face-first to the ground. He stabbed the spike through the creature’s head, and it stopped moving instantly. He quickly turned to take care of the last Existing Dead. This one looked disoriented. It couldn’t get back up to its feet. The ground was slippery with blood. Kyle carefully walked toward it and swung the spike at its head again and again until the creature finally stopped moving.
Kyle panted. He stared at the mess of death around him. Nothing was moving except for Chet. The bastard was still alive. His mouth was over flowing with blood, causing his breaths to sound like guttural sobs. Chunks of flesh were missing from all over his body. His clothes were torn to shreds, and blood soaked every last bit of the area around him. Kyle walked toward him and stood over his pathetic body.
“You touched my boy,” Kyle said.
Chet’s eyes began to blink rapidly as tears ran down his bloodied face.
“You raped my boy!” Kyle yelled. He raised the spike into the air and impaled Chet’s shin. He pulled the spike up, pulling his leg up with it until his leg loosened and flopped to the ground. “You drugged me just so you could have your way with him!”
Chet howled in a muffled cry of pain and agony. There was no telling what was going on in Chet’s mind. Was he sorry for what he did? Was he sorry for not leaving town sooner? Did he even realize what was about to happen to him?
Kyle locked his jaw like a pitbull before saying, “No more, you piece of shit.” He raised the spike again and broke it down on Chet’s genitals. He did it again and again until he was sure there was nothing of his testicles and penis left.
When Kyle finally stopped, Chet just lay there with his eyes closed, a bloody pulp between his legs. There was no possible way Chet could still be conscious, or even alive. After what Kyle had just done to him, he had to be dead, and might return at any moment.
Kyle reached into the truck and retrieved some yellow nylon rope. It had been a while since he had last tied a noose, but once he got started, it all came back to him. He placed the noose over Chet’s head and tightened it. He tied the other end to the truck.
Worried that he might make too much noise and attract more of the Existing Dead, Kyle quickly began to load everything he could into the truck. Chet had stolen everything from Kyle and Victor. If Kyle hadn’t found him, there was no way he and Victor would have survived. Chet didn’t have much; just a few scraps of food, a Swiss army knife, and an assortment of rounds that didn’t fit any of the guns they had.
A faint rustling in the woods startled him. He quickly ran into the truck and took out rounds for the Glock. He loaded the magazine quickly but carefully. He couldn’t afford to get a pistol jam right now. Existing Dead began to emerge from the woods. There had to have been at least a dozen of them, in all different shapes and sizes. He reached for the ignition and noticed that the keys were missing. He hung his head down in defeat and sighed.
Kyle opened the door and ran toward Chet. His eyes were beginning to open. He bent down and started patting around the pockets of his coat. The blood everywhere was the least of his worries right now. Quickly glancing behind him, he saw that the dead were growing both in distance and numbers. The keys were not in Chet’s coat. Kyle started feeling around Chet’s pants pockets and finally felt the keys. Reaching for them, Chet tried to sit up and began gnashing at Kyle. Kyle held him down by the forehead as he fumbled for the keys. It would have been a lot easier if he wasn’t in a panic. He retrieved the keys and punched Chet in the side of the head.
The other dead were mere feet away. Kyle hopped into the truck and started it. The engine roared as he put it in drive and accelerated. The dead bounced out of the way like bowling pins. He tried not to hit them, as that would cause unnecessary damage to the truck. There was an opening up ahead, but then he realized that he was heading in the wrong direction.
“Will I ever catch a fucking break?” he said as he began to make a U-turn. Chet’s zombified body dragged behind the truck as it maneuvered. Kyle stared into the collection of Existing Dead, trying to find the best place to try and push through them. And just as if his prayers were answered, all of the creatures in front of him collapsed. The eeriness of the synchronized fall startled him. Not even the best choreographers in the world would manage such a synced fall. All of the dead now lay motionless on the ground. He stared at the scene, not sure what to make of it. He opened the door and stepped outside.
Chet’s body was motionless as well. It lay perfectly still like a statue, like a rock. Kyle peered into the bucket that housed the half-head. Its eyes were no longer following Kyle. Could it be true? Had all of them somehow died?
Chapter Fifteen
Kyle stepped back into the truck and turned on the radio receiver. He scrolled through the channels, hoping to find something, anything. He turned it to AM and flipped through channels. Every station on AM was coming in as clear as day. The only strange thing was that it was all the same thing.
“I am broadcasting on every AM frequency possible from a radius of thirty miles. This is Doctor Theodore Greenly, lead researcher … only researcher left alive.”
Kyle eyes widened. What were the odds that something strange had happened to the dead and Doctor Greenly was back on the radio? He had been intrigued the last time he’d heard Doctor Greenly on air, mostly because Greenly’s was the only program that had given him any form of information. He listened in while Doctor Greenly continued.
“This is no conference call. I am in my lab and have about twenty minutes of generator power left. I will say what I have to say, then place this recording on an endless loop. We all know the devastation this phenomenon has caused. We know that the world is at its breaking point. The dead have come back to life with absolutely no explanation as to why or how. Since this plague began I have been working with my colleagues to figure out a cause. As of this recor
ding I can honestly say that there is no cause. There’s nothing that we can see microscopically. Every time we tried, we saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing at all. Except for today. The Existing Dead have stopped moving. All over town, perhaps the nation, I have been seeing them collapse. I dragged one of them into my lab for research. What I have discovered is astonishing. The Existing Dead have begun to evolve … I am broadcasting on every AM frequency possible from a radius of thirty miles. This is Doctor Theodore Greenly, lead researcher … only researcher left alive.”
Kyle stared at the radio, dumbfounded. The recording was starting to loop. What the hell did Doctor Greenly mean by them evolving? He scrolled through the stations again and continued getting the same message. He listened to the entire thing again as it looped for a second time after the word ‘evolve.’
He turned the radio off and gazed out of the windshield. The Existing Dead were still scattered all over the ground. He put the truck in drive and slowly moved forward. He felt the truck lurch as it dragged Chet’s body behind it. The drive became bumpy once he started riding over bodies. There was nothing else he could do. He needed to head in that direction.
Clearing the mountain of death, Kyle glanced into his rearview mirror. He still wondered why the dead had just collapsed the way they had, but he needed to get back to Victor. He had the medicine they had taken from the gas station in the truck. Hopefully there was something in there that would take the edge off for him. Kyle couldn’t possibly imagine what being raped would feel like.
The drive back to the post office was quick. At least it felt that way, since Kyle wasn’t running like a man on fire. He pulled up next to the sign where he’d parked the truck before and stepped outside. He grabbed some supplies and a few rags then picked up the shotgun from the bed. He held it barrel down to drain as much blood out of it as possible. Before he could fire the gun again, it needed to be cleaned. Kyle didn’t have any oil, but he had to make do with what he had.
The door to the post office was wide open. He fumbled with the items in his hands and reached for the Glock holstered at his waist. Pointing it forward, Kyle slowly walked toward the door. In his rage, he couldn’t remember if he had left it open.
“Victor?” Kyle said as he walked into the post office.
The fire in the metal trashcan had almost completely extinguished. It threw the last remaining embers into the sky before Kyle threw another cardboard box into the fire in hopes that it’ll catch again. He searched the room for any movement. “Victor,” he said calling to the boy for any form of contact. He raised the Glock forward and crept to the post office sales counter.
“Victor,” he whispered.
He peered over the counter and Victor’s legs were still motionless on the floor. Kyle jumped over the counter and headed toward the boy. He removed the curtains that gave him a little bit of decency. The blood around the boy had dried and begun to turn brown.
He nudged Victor’s body in an attempt to wake him. “Victor,” he said, shaking him a bit harder. “It’s time to get up, bud. I got a surprise for you.”
The boy did not move, and Kyle began to panic. “Victor!” he yelled shaking him violently. “Wake up, come on …” His heart raced and his belly began to grumble as if telling him that it was time to empty out its contents.
He removed the curtain completely and checked if he was still breathing. Tears welled up in his face. All the rotten actions he’d done the past day flashed in his head. Leaving Mary and Eddie, sawing the head off the poor soul that happened to wander in his direction, Susie, Angel, the crazed man in the street … Chet. “Come on, Victor. I can’t lose you.” He rolled him onto his back. Victor’s red and purple puffy face stared back at him.
Victor began to blink as Kyle pumped the center of his chest. He bent down to blow into his mouth. At that second, Victor’s eyes completely opened and all he saw was Kyle coming down to him with his mouth wide open. Victor began to punch and kick.
“No!” he yelled through his puffy and swollen face, “get the hell away from me.”
Kyle jumped back for a second. Victor continued to punch the air.
“Victor, calm down. It’s just me, Kyle,” he said moving forward to help comfort the boy.
A sudden calmness befell Victor as soon as he acknowledged Kyle. He stopped moving and opened his eyes again to see the dirty stained face of Kyle. There was a silence for a moment. It only lasted a few seconds at the most, but to the two friends it felt like an eternity.
“How are you?” Kyle asked knowing that it was a stupid question, but in a situation like this, any question would be stupid.
Victor’s eyes filled with tears. “He … Chet … raped me. How do you think I feel?”
Kyle knew that response was coming. “Come on, let’s get you up and dressed.” Kyle rose to his feet and bent down to slowly help Victor up. The curtain wrapped around Victor’s lower half fell to the ground, exposing him to the dead world. Kyle picked it back up and draped it over him. They walked back to the front counter, Kyle hugged Victor by the shoulder to help him move. Victor limped, but nothing seemed wrong with his ankles.
They reached the counter and Kyle jumped over first. He then turned to help Victor over. They continued on their way to the makeshift bonfire. Kyle dug around through his things to find some pain medicine. He knew Victor needed as much as his body would allow him to take. He gave him some pills and searched around the ground for a bottle of water. There was one half empty.
Victor took the pills without hesitation.
“Your clothes are dry now. We can leave the ones you were wearing where they are. I don’t want them back.”
“That makes two of us.”
Victor slowly dressed. For some reason, Victor didn’t seem so ashamed exposing himself to Kyle. Kyle examined the boy’s body for any other marks. Besides the swollen face, Victor’s body was fine.
The boy was fully dressed and suddenly asked, “Where is he? Gone?”
Kyle couldn’t help but grin. “No, he’s not gone. Almost did. After I saw what he did to you, I …” He stopped himself for a moment. If Victor couldn’t remember that it was him who knocked him unconscious, he didn’t want to tell him. “You passed out; I saw what he did and ran out of here like a demon out of hell. I found him up the road transferring shit from our truck to his car.”
“Is he dead? Did you kill him?”
“Well …” Kyle glanced to his right and wrinkled his face in a childish maneuver. “Dead … ish.”
“Is he a zombie now?”
Hearing the word zombie instantly made Kyle remember the entire ordeal he had witnessed. The Existing Dead falling simultaneously, the head in the back of the truck no longer moving its eyes, just a deadlock stare.
“Something is happening.”
“What does that mean?”
“It mean’s something is happening to the dead.”
“What does that have to do with Chet?”
“He is one of them now, well … was,” Kyle answered walking to the blood stained Winchester. He put his hand around the barrel and lifted it. He examined it for a second. He knew that blood had found its way into the barrel. Without the proper cleaning materials and lubricate, there was no telling how long he could continue firing the weapon. “Get your things.” He turned to stare at Victor. His puffy blue and purple face focused back at him. He wanted so desperately to have some ice to help with the swelling. “I think it’s time we took you home.”
Chapter Sixteen
Kyle walked into the post office lobby with the Glock in his hands. He was on a mission and needed to find something. Something that would hopefully make Victor and him happy.
Jumping over the counter, he looked at the lifeless post office worker. The body that was once alive, then dead, then alive again and finally brought down for the last time by a slug from Kyle’s shotgun. He reveled in the surreal paradox of life. The greatest fear in life is death, but when death is replaced by a new life o
f unwillingness and endless hunger, it’s a paradox that you wished you could escape.
The air was cool in the darker side of the post office warehouse. It was dark, but there were a few windows overhead that let some ominous light inside. He used that to his advantage, searching the room for any movement and slowly walking forward.
On the far right wall, he found a dolly stacked to the top with packages that would never see their final destinations. He began to search through the boxes, opening those that weren’t packaged properly. There was nothing useful.
Thinking that this mission was a waste of time, Kyle began walking to the front counter. He paused for a moment when he saw a long box propped up against a wall through the corner of his eye. It was a long shot that it was what he wanted, but he had to check it out.
The brown box was three inches wide and about three feet tall. Perfect size. He holstered the gun at the small of his back and tore off the top of the box. He looked inside and saw a massive amount of bubble wrap. He flipped the box to drop its contents onto the floor. A silver aluminum baseball bat with a rubber grip fell out. The echo of hollow aluminum hitting tile bounced off the warehouse walls until the bat settled, then began rolling away from Kyle.
Not exactly what I wanted, but it’ll do, he thought.
Still holding the box, he walked toward the bat and lifted it off the ground. He shoved it back into the box and wanted to mentally thank both the sender and receiver of the package, so he turned it over to see the shipping label.
Kyle felt a cold breeze pass through his body as he stared at the names. The recipient of the package was for his now dead son, Eddie. And sender was Mary’s mother. The odds of something like that happening at that very moment were next to none. But somehow, some way, it did.
He began walking back to the front counter in awe. His eyes filled with liquid and he knew his eyes were as red as the evening sunset. A tear fell and raced down his cheek. Not only was the bat intended for his real son Eddie, but he was now about to give it to his new son, his pretend son, Victor.
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