“You have to argue with him?” Linda demanded. “You see he’s hurt, right?”
“School teacher, huh?” Michelle asked Michael, trying to steer the conversation elsewhere. “I was thinking about going back to school, become a teacher.”
“Oh yeah, what do you do? Are you a city employee?” he referred to her uniform.
“Meter reader. Not a glamorous job. As a matter of fact, a lot of people hate us.”
“Hey, you know,” Michael asked her as they walked. They were in the lead, right in front of me. “I always wondered. If a meter is broken or has a paper bag over it, can I park there?”
“Down! Down!” Mark called, already hugging the asphalt behind the shot out hulk of a car. I saw Jeff push Linda and Michelle to the street behind some overturned garbage cans.
A military vehicle rumbled through the intersection ahead. It was huge and armored and three heads poked out of its hatches.
“Hey!” Michael had not gotten down. He stood in the street and walked towards the troop carrier. Michelle cast him a terrified glance from where she lay. A look of relief washed over Michael’s face as the turret and the soldiers in it swung to face him. “Hey, we’re—”
The rest of his sentence and his existence were cut off when a chain-fed auto-cannon in the turret opened up on him.
I screamed, but my cry was drowned out by the chain gun and Chris’ hand over my mouth. A mist of red that had been Michael showered down on us where we hid behind a pile of bricks from a collapsed storefront.
The armored vehicle never stopped. It rolled right through the intersection, its turret gunners firing the cannon and machineguns down our street into the advancing zombie horde. The front ranks of the undead were knocked off their feet, limbs dropping from torsos, heads bursting, a few zombies blown clean in half. The vehicle passed and disappeared down the next block.
I was sitting up, clutching my own legs, looking at where Michael had been. All that was left of him were two legs cut off at the knee. One stood upright, a stump still in its shoe. The other lay next to the first. A spray of his blood stained the street for twenty feet behind where he had stood.
I wondered what subject he had taught.
“Oh Jesus—” Regaining her feet, Michelle vomited. She was covered in Michael’s remains.
Jeff was bent over, hands on knees, retching.
“Jeff, come on,” Mark said. “We gotta—”
“It’s not th—it’s not this,” Jeff shook his head. “I’m hurt, that’s all…”
“You’re bit, aren’t you, you son-of-a-bitch?” Chris demanded, raising the pistol.
I found Michael’s watch resting in the blood. The band had been shot off, but holding it to my ear, I heard the firm ticking.
“I’m—I’m not bit,” Jeff stammered.
“Bullshit,” Chris snarled, but Mark and Linda had put themselves between him and Jeff.
“Come on.” Linda tried to get Jeff’s arm over her shoulder.
“No, I can do this,” Jeff said, catching his breath.
“What time is it?” Michelle’s voice sounded strained.
“Michael had the watch,” Linda nodded to the red smear streaked down the street.
“It’s eleven forty-two,” I answered, pocketing the time piece.
The chain gun and machinegun on the army vehicle sounded from several blocks away.
“It’s time to get moving again,” Mark said, pulling Jeff forward with him. “This way.”
***
After a block or two, Jeff shrugged off Mark’s hand and said, “I got it. I can make it.” Mark obviously didn’t believe him and Jeff immediately started to fall behind, but Mark let him walk on his own. Linda fell back and walked beside Jeff, talking to him.
“Jeff don’t look good,” Mark said to Chris. I was close enough to hear them.
“Fuck him. Let’s leave him.”
“Like we left Angie?” Mark went from worried to livid in under a second. “Fuck him? Fuck you!”
Whatever Chris was going to say in reply was cut short when a pick-up truck with a bed full of boisterous men turned the corner ahead of us and abruptly stopped. The men looked like a bunch of rednecks and were hooting and yelling like frat boys. Some wore bright orange hunting vests and chewed toothpicks. None of them looked like they had shaved in the last week, and all carried hunting rifles and shotguns.
I noticed that Chris dropped his pistol and kicked it away into a pile of overturned trash cans. I wondered if the men in the truck had seen it.
“Oh Jesus…” Mark’s voice trailed off. The pick-up truck had the upper torso of a female zombie chained to the grill. The thing’s breasts were cut off and a piece of her spine was wedged into the grill to keep her in place. The zombie was thrashing back and forth, clacking its teeth, its eyes intent on those in front of it. On us.
“Sue—weeeeeeeeeeeeee—” one of the men who hopped off the back of the truck yelled at the top of his lungs “—eeeet!”
“Hey, thank goodness,” Mark said, but he didn’t sound reassured. “Can we get a ride, guys?”
“Look, Manny! Zombies!” another man yelled. Two or three of them raced forward a few yards, braced their legs, raised rifles to their shoulders, and commenced to firing on the hundreds of zombies that were lurching and swaying towards all of us.
“We ain’t got no room.” One of the men moved forward. “Except for the women and the children.”
“Fuck the children,” a heavy set Hispanic man whispered none too quietly.
“Just the women, then” the first amended.
“No, I meant—Hey you! Where the hell…”
Michelle must have seen what was coming because she bolted forward and ran off down the street alone. Her dreadlocks trailed behind her.
“Awww, shit, now why’d she have to go and do that?” One of the men shook his head and spit a mouthful of tobacco onto the street. “This city ain’t safe for woman or beast.”
“This woman’s with us,” Jeff spoke up weakly in Linda’s defense.
“This city’s not gonna be here in fifteen minutes, soldier boy. Or haven’t you heard the news?”
“Frank, she’s getting away. She gonna get killed out here.”
“She sure is, Jorge. Lady, come with us. You got my word, we ain’t gonna mistreat you.”
Linda looked from Jeff and Mark and me, to the man who had spoken, to the truck, and to the men firing on the advancing zombies at our backs.
“Let’s get got!” A man in the passenger seat slapped his hand on the side of the truck. There was a woman with a bad, blonde perm wedged on the seat between him and the driver. The woman whooped, held up a beer, and drank from it.
“Linda, wait—” Jeff called out weakly.
“No, Jeff, go,” Linda tried to assure him, walking towards the truck. Her air was confident, but I had seen her eyes and her eyes were scared.
“Alright! Come on up here, missus. Boys make room!” Frank demanded.
“That black girl is a pretty one, though, ain’t she?” one of the men from the firing squad joined Frank and Jorge and was talking about me. I noticed that Mark had stepped in front of me.
“That girl,” Frank sounded disgusted, “is a girl. Let’s go. Good luck to the rest of you. You’re gonna need it.”
The men from the truck piled back in; the truck bed crowded with the addition of Linda.
“Yeah, good luck!” one of them laughed as the truck reversed abruptly and the driver put it through a three-point turn, the rear wheels popping up onto the sidewalk. The woman in the cab squealed in fright and glee while the whooping started up in the truck bed as the driver dropped it into gear and left rubber smoking on the street.
Chris started looking through the scattered debris for his pistol.
“You motherfucker!” Mark yelled at him. “You could have helped them!”
“With what?” Chris demanded. “This?” He held the gun up in his hand.
“Yes! Wit
h that! You could have helped them!”
“They’re better off than we are, believe me,” Chris shouted back at him.
Those men were dangerous, I knew. But the one named Frank…maybe he wouldn’t let anyone hurt Linda.
“You don’t know what those guys are going to do!” Mark looked like he was getting ready to charge Chris.
“Guys—” the men ignored me. There was a screech as the pick-up took a turn too fast and disappeared around a corner a few blocks ahead.
“You know what you’re about to do?” Chris invited. These guys were going to kill each other right here in front of me and Jeff.
“M—Mark,” Jeff spoke up weakly. “He’s right. There were too many of them…”
“Now you’re defending him?” Mark slapped his own forehead. “This is fucked.”
“He—he might have got one of them, and…and they would have killed all of us.”
Mark looked from Jeff resting on me, to Chris and the gun in Chris’ hand.
“It ain’t right,” the pharmacist sighed.
“None of this,” I gestured to the street with its burned out cars and the zombies that were closing on us, “is right. We have to keep moving.”
The zombie in the scuba suit was in the lead, its fins slapping on the street.
“Don’t point that gun at me,” Mark told Chris.
“I thought you were going to attack me,” Chris said, but he pointed the muzzle downwards.
“Key…keep moving,” Jeff muttered. He took a step forward and collapsed. I knelt down beside him and looked up at Mark plaintively.
Jeff lay on the macadam of the street amid the trash and spent shell casings. He must have known there were hundreds upon hundreds of zombies that would eat him alive working their way down the street, that bombs would start falling soon. Yet he looked oddly contented. I knelt over him and he looked past me to the clear blue sky.
“An angel…” he whispered. His eyes settled on me, but they were looking through me. “An angel…” Jeff’s eyes closed.
***
“There’s the river,” Mark said some time later.
“I don’t see anyone on the other side,” I offered. Jeff’s head was resting in my lap. I felt it move. He was conscious and had craned his neck to look at the river directly ahead. Mark and I had carried him this far.
“I can’t swim,” Chris said.
“Neither can I,” Mark said.
“We have to stick together,” I pled.
“He’s awake,” Chris didn’t sound pleased.
“Jeff?” Mark squatted next to me and the soldier and looked down into Jeff’s face. “Jeff, can you hear me?”
“Yeah.” Jeff sat up, then somehow managed to stand, wobbling. Mark and I steadied him, but he stood on his own and looked out across the river.
“Jeff don’t look good,” Mark said to me and Chris like the soldier wasn’t standing right there.
“Jeff got bit,” spat Chris. “Jeff’s a lying motherfucker.”
“Hey—”
“Hey, yourself,” Chris cut me off. “You know what’s going to happen to Jeff here?” As he spoke I could see his attention was elsewhere. I followed his gaze and he was looking at a manhole cover out of place up the block. “He’s going to die. He’s going to come back, and he’s going to eat you and the pharmacist here.”
I knew what Chris was thinking. If I was Chris I’d be thinking it. The manhole. The sewer system. Had to be miles of tunnels under this city. Some of them would have to lead across the river, right?
“It’s as simple as that,” he announced to Mark and me, completely ignoring the soldier. But I could tell his mind wasn’t really on us either.
“You don’t know that,” I protested. “We have to get him some help.”
“Only one kind of help for him,” Chris noted, but his mind remained elsewhere.
Mark blurted out, “Don’t even think—”
“Why? What are you going to do? Hey, you know what? Fuck you people. I wasn’t going to waste a bullet on that fuck anyway.”
“Where are you going?” Mark demanded.
“I told you,” Chris called over his shoulder as he walked away from us up the street. “I can’t swim.”
“We have to get across the river.”
“Yeah, well, good fucking luck. Me? I’ll try mine in the sewer system.”
“But we have to stick together!” I cried.
“Let him go, kiddo,” Mark shook his head. He looked over to where Chris had reached the manhole cover. Then he looked behind us. The first of the zombies that were in pursuit had come into view.
“It’s wearing a wet suit,” he sighed and shook his head again. “Fucking Jacques Cousteau…”
There would be thousands coming this way.
“Kelsey, what time is it?”
Up the block the manhole cover scraped as Chris shifted it aside.
“Five to twelve.”
Jeff mumbled something unintelligible.
“What’s that, Jeff?” I looked at him. I thought Chris might be right. Jeff might have been bitten. His eyes were feverish and wild.
“Sewers no good…” Jeff stated clearly at the same time that Chris let out a terrified screech.
Mark and I looked up in time to see hands reaching up from the street to latch onto Chris. He was screaming, but I couldn’t tell if it was for help or out of fear, terror, or even anger at the zombies under the street. Chris had braced himself on his knees, a hand on either side of the opening in the ground. He looked down into the hole in the earth, four or five hands fastened to his torso, and as Mark and I watched, Chris was yanked shrieking into the hole in the earth.
I didn’t know how to feel about that. Back in the alley he’d pulled me along. But I’d told him not to go, that we needed to stay together…
“Kelsey, we have to cross this river,” Mark was saying to me. “Listen, I can’t swim. You have to keep ahold of Jeff, okay? I’ll help as far as I can, but I’m going to have a hard enough time keeping myself afloat after awhile.”
“Isn’t there anything? A boat or something?” I looked around, but the only thing to see were all those zombies staggering down the street towards us. Another zombie clawed its way to the street from the sewer entrance and stood, its mouth drooling fresh blood. Hands scraped at the hole in the ground behind it as other zombies sought to follow.
“The river,” Mark got Jeff under one arm and walked him down to the shoreline. I followed, looking behind us once. There were so many of them. In the sky there was a distant hum.
We steadied Jeff, each of us under one of the soldier’s arms as the cold water rose from our ankles…to our knees …to our thighs. My God, it was so cold.
“Current is strong,” Mark noted. “We can’t let it pull us that way. Soldiers see us, they’ll kill us.”
It was the last thing he said to me. Water washed over my head and I sputtered. I forced my eyes open and the pharmacist was gone. Jeff’s weight threatened to pull me under the water as I struggled to pull him through the current. Soon, my feet no longer touched the bottom. I got an arm around Jeff’s head and shoulders and pulled him along, swimming as best as I could with one hand.
It seemed to take forever, and I didn’t think I’d make it. But I half-swam and half-sank, my legs flailing, until my feet finally felt sand beneath them. I pulled myself and the soldier forward, the water dropping from our necks to our chests and waists. I got behind Jeff and took him under his arms, pulling him, then dragging him up onto shore to the tree line. When we reached it, I was panting and shivering from the water and the effort. Jeff was unresponsive and looked more than half dead.
There were thousands of zombies massed on the shore across from us, but none of them looked too keen on getting their feet wet, not even the one in the wet suit.
“Go…” Jeff whispered.
“Jeff, we’ve got to—”
“No, lis—listen to me…Chris was…Chris was right. I got bit.�
�
I recoiled and looked down at his arm. The bandage had gotten soaked and come off. The wound looked raw and fresh, but it was so nasty and ragged I couldn’t tell it for a bite wound or a bullet wound.
I made myself hunker down closer to the soldier. “Jeff, I don’t know—”
“You…run,” he could barely speak. “Tree…” he requested, his eyes rolling up into his head, and I realized he was asking for something.
I bent down and got him under the arms again, pulling him the last couple of feet to a sturdy looking trunk. I propped him in a seated position against the tree. Jeff looked with half-lidded eyes at the mass of zombies on the opposite shore and the jets in the sky above.
I looked down at him and didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I walked quickly away into the trees, water squishing in my shoes. I stopped when the jets streaked by across the river.
The zombies on the other shore were enveloped in fire, incinerated in flame. I watched them burn and I looked at Jeff. He was watching them burn, too.
Bombs exploded in the city and the ground beneath me shook. I had my hand on a tree next to me, feeling the tree move. I shuddered from the cold of my soaked clothing.
When I looked at Jeff again, his head had slumped and his hands had fallen open at his sides.
I wondered why there were no soldiers on this side of the river. They probably would have killed me if there had been. The burning zombies across from me didn’t even look like people or zombies any longer. They were shapeless lumps, blazing.
I took Michael’s watch out of my pocket. It had stopped ticking. I shook it, but it was water logged. I wondered if Momma was waiting for me. I threw Michael’s watch away.
As I stood there with my hand resting on the trunk watching the city burn, the thing in camouflage pants clenched its hands into fists, righted its head, and stood. Jets streaked by overhead. The zombie looked up into the sky and growled a challenge at the plumes the planes left behind. Turning, it staggered off into the trees.
I hid behind the trunk and watched until it disappeared.
Born in White Plains, NY, currently living in Binghamton, NY and just graduated college. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, usually in the horror genre, though this is my first foray into the wide, rotting world of the walking dead. I’m a horror junkie in all aspects, it dominates most of my art and the horror punk band I’m in.
Eye Witness: Zombie Page 12