by Bonds, Javan
Kevin was able to make it inside and slammed the door. The three within were surely piling objects against the entrances, attempting to slow the nudist cannibals. The seemingly limitless number of undead crammed themselves into the confines of the small carport. Tendrils of black slime clung to the car and every other surface they climbed over.
Even without the heavy thudding of helicopter blades, I doubtfully would have been able to make much out over the animalistic howls, barks, and strange chittering of the peevies. Wood splintering was not audible, but clearly visible as chips of the door began flying above the zombies’ heads. Of course, the door was made of wood, though, metal wouldn’t have made much difference. Then it would be flying shards of metal; no thanks.
Fate was a twisted sumbitch.
The question must be asked. Why was the wood being chipped? How was the wood being chipped? Were they using tools? Thank God there was no electricity; they probably would’ve been using fucking power saws! Assuredly, they were using some simple bludgeoning devices. Still, that’s a huge evolutionary leap for animals that get erections over dill pickles.
Would it have been more entertaining for the humans to attempt to flee out of a window on the other side of the house, or did The Audience enjoy watching what unfolded inside? I absolutely fucking never wanted to find out what happened in the Ashley’ home. Just speculating makes my stomach turn. All I can tell you is that we returned to Guntersville completely empty-handed. When you add the six souls lost at the Albertville Airport today and the five survivors connected to the Lattiwood water tower, eleven members of the endangered species of Homo Sapiens were lost to the sadistic predators that day. At this rate, humanity will be extinct before the canned food runs out.
☠☠☠
Being the only male of the trio, Kevin felt it was his duty to stack everything that weighed more than a few pounds in front of the door. Having been boarded up, every window in the house and even the other exterior doors were secure. Nothing would be getting in through any other point besides this door; At least, without making a considerable racket. Only a few candles lit an eerily dark abode, casting long, strangely dancing shadows on the walls.
Entering from the only accessible exterior doorway, the one from the carport, the kitchen/dining room would be the first room accessed. Moving the refrigerator, table, chairs, and nearly everything else Kevin could lift in the immediate vicinity had exhausted the young man. He realized pushing living room furniture against the pile would be pointless. If they were able to get around the fridge, a coffee table and a couple of recliners wouldn’t stop them.
The three of them were standing in the now empty, poorly illuminated dining room. Pushing off from the bar separating the kitchen and dining room, he began making his way to the master bedroom. This room would be their final temporary barricade while frantically trying to pry the boards from the windows to make a run to the helicopter. They would need more than luck to survive this.
Kevin brushed Mary Ann’s elbow as he passed her, leaning against the wall. “Come on Mrs. Ashley. We gotta get out the window to the helicopter!”
Characteristically, the woman was foolishly stubborn. Mary Ann wasn’t willing to leave the place she’d called home for nearly 30 years to a bunch of shitting cannibals. She pulled away. “No! I ain’t leaving my house to those things.”
Having destroyed the door, the peevies were now pushing and banging against the refrigerator. It wouldn’t slow them for long. The humans inside had to act fast or they’d be acting blue.
Libby screamed at her mother. “What the hell, Mama? We’re leaving.” She gestured for her husband. “Get her and let’s go, babe.” The younger of the two women started walking to the back.
Kevin grabbed his unreasonable mother-in-law by the shoulder and began forcing her into the hallway. This was her home! She wasn’t willing to leave it to these monsters. This is my home, the only thing I have left! You bastards can’t have it.
A man putting his hands on her and forcing her to move panicked Mary Ann. Oprah had taught her everything she needed to know about feminism. The first rule was to always stand up for yourself, especially when being pushed around by a man. Her initial reaction was to make the misogynist back off.
Inconsiderate of repercussions, she brought her right hand around. Mary Ann hadn’t been one to carry firearms before May Day. Now, she always kept a pistol on her and had fired more than one magazine of rounds. Finger always stayed inside the trigger guard, ready to pop off some .25 caliber rounds at the drop of a hat. Kevin let go of her when there was a light flash and small pop.
He stumbled back against the opposite wall, sliding down to a sitting position. A dark red gushed between his fingers; his hand stopped over the small wound. Kevin’s mouth involuntarily filled with saliva. He drooled as he shakily spoke. “Mrs. Ashley?” The question came out as if he wasn’t sure it was her. Unbeknownst to the young man, those would be the last two words he ever spoke.
Of course, Kevin Dunlap didn’t know it, but he'd be dead in minutes. The tiny round flipped between two of his ribs, slicing through his left lung before coming to rest in the right. Organs originally meant to hold oxygen were now filling with blood. Wheezing, he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Bleeding, confused, panicked, and suffocating, Kevin wouldn’t have been able to speak now even if he wanted too.
Mary Ann was in a state of shock, not believing she had just shot someone. She held the small, black pistol up as if it were completely foreign to her. She gasped as it slipped out of her hand and clanked on the floor.
It was somehow obvious Kevin was not long for this world. Should I apologize to him? I just murdered my own son-in-law! And for what? So I can die in this stupid house?
Sergeant Peppers was sitting in his pet bed, chewing on a small, cloth bone. Libby was relieved to have found her companion and was even happier he was in the room where she'd be preparing to escape from. She could hear her mother and her husband speaking, surely about to enter. They would all be able to leave and go somewhere else. Making a mental catalogue, she planned to grab several of Sergeant Peppers’ chew toys.
Libby Ashley Dunlap came out of the bedroom where she had been prying boards from the window. A considerable amount of light was shining through the now clear glass. She stopped, nearly directly between her husband, who was sitting on the floor, and her guilty looking mother. Kevin looked up, barely coherent and grabbed at her hand. It slipped away, revealing a coating of crimson.
The young woman nearly screamed. “Kevin, are you bleeding?” She angrily spun around to face her mother and held up her blood covered hand. “Mama, did you do this?” The report from the firing must not have been loud enough for her to hear over her frenzied working and the screaming of the peevies.
Disbelieving she was capable of the act she committed, Mary Ann spoke dazedly. “So? We’re all dead anyway.” She glanced down to the pistol at her daughter’s feet.
Briefly following the older woman’s eyes, Libby looked again at her dying husband. She placed her arms over her midsection and insanely, mournfully wailed. “You just shot the father of my child!”
Taken aback, Mary Ann hadn’t realized. Kevin may not have even known without a sonogram. It may have only been a mother’s intuition, but Libby was confident. In her rage, she reached down for the small pistol. “Well, if we’re all going anyway, you’re next!” She squeezed the trigger until only a click could be heard. Several tiny black spots peppered her mother’s shirt, which blossomed, bleeding red all around them.
Mary Ann backed against the wall and sank to the floor, opposite Kevin. Knowing this was what she deserved, she looked up before consciously closing her eyes a final time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
No time for remorse, Libby turned from her willfully fading mother to her barely conscious husband. She reached out to take his blood-soaked hand in hers. “Come with me, baby.”
With all her strength, she nearly had to carry him into the bed
room. Slamming the door behind her, she locked it and pushed the chest of drawers in front of it. At least their last few minutes would be together and in the sunshine. Her mother’s body would be what the peevies took initial interest in, so the two of them would have peace, at least for as long as they needed.
Before climbing into the bed, she picked up Sergeant Peppers by the scruff of the neck to take him in. Libby could take some solace in the fact that they would all be together at the end. Going out as a family was all she could hope for in these dire times.
She laid down beside her dying husband and squeezed his slick hand. Facing one another, she leaned her head in for one last kiss. “I love you.” she sobbed. Kevin smiled weakly and closed his eyes. Looking up, she clenched her own wet eyes. Letting out a ragged breath, she tipped a lit candle off the nightstand, and onto the carpeted floor.
☠☠☠
No matter how many magazines were emptied into the horde, I couldn’t stop them. There were fucking blue bodies in piles around the car! Somehow they still broke down the door. Whatever barricade the humans inside the house placed against it only briefly slowed the yellow-eyed demons.
An excited inhalation from the entire group could be heard as the way was cleared. Cannibals swarmed through the door, shitting with frenzied delight. I was hoping the living trio was at least in another room, attempting to get out of a window or something. Seeing them approaching with undeath would be a horrible sight to behold.
“Kevin!” Scooter roared in brotherly rage. “I’m coming!” He leapt from Skywalker, rushing to the carport.
All I could do was hang my head. There was no point in bothering to shout for him to stop. You could bet I sure as hell wasn’t going after him. Scooter was really trotting into a house overrun with peevies with no weapons. Thank god he was wearing a long sleeve shirt!
I knew I would never see Scooter again. The events that unfolded inside the Ashley’ home would forever remain a mystery. Thank God for small blessings.
☠☠☠
Scooter Dunlap bounded over dozens of fallen bodies. Slick, stinking blood covered the carport. If he didn’t brace himself several times, he definitely would’ve slipped. Kicking corpses from the steps, he made his way through the broken door and over the destroyed fridge.
Across the room, the zombies were focused on something. Swarming around a figure on the floor, he could make glimpses between shuffling arms and legs. A wet tearing of meat could be heard. The unwrapping of flesh from bone was a poignant sound. Blue nudists growled and scuffled to get closer, to what had to be a body.
“Kevin?” When Scooter spoke, several peevies spun to face him. They smiled, laying their sickly yellow eyes on new prey.
Those blunatics who were currently not down on all fours, chomping away at the juicy meal before them charged at the seemingly defenseless human. Planting his feet, he readied for the newcomers. A pair of crazies wrapped around each of his forearms.
The solid piece of muscle that was Scooter rotated each elbow to ninety degrees. Faster than the eye could blink, he brought his fists together, slamming the peevies into one another. The impact caused legs to nearly pretzel themselves as pelvic bones melded together. The minute genitalia of each monster pressed into the other so hard, they nearly became one unit. Lower bodies of the reanimants were destroyed as Scooter’s elbows met and pulled apart repeatedly. Blue bodies finally unwrapped from his forearms, still breathing but never to walk again.
He walked closer to the group slurping up every juicy morsel of the cadaver on the floor. Lifting a broken table leg leaning against the bar, Scooter decided to make every one of them pay for what he assumed was Kevin. Peevies rushed the young man that now had a weapon. Drawing the piece of wood back, he readied it like a baseball bat.
Three monsters went sprawling with one swipe. Ribs were broken, organs ruptured, and skin split as the jagged table leg slammed into the one on the left above its hip. The club stopped somewhere near the belly button.
A domino effect occurred, sending the first crashing into the second. Weak from malnourishment both hips and sets of ribs splintered when the middle contestant was forcefully sandwiched between its fellows. Animalistic screaming and whimpering came from the trio of immobile zombies bleeding on the floor.
Scooter pushed the splintered end of his makeshift bat into the clavicle area, just above the collarbone of the next creature. It stopped to wail in pain and was unable to lift its now pegged arm. Before it could do anything more than realize it was currently in a world of shit, the batter brought his tool to the left, slamming the pinned peevie into the cannibal beside it.
Shoulders of both monsters shattered on impact. Both arms dangled, only connected to the blue bodies by flesh and sinew. No longer restricted by shoulder sockets, the scraggy bicep bones dug into the armpit of the opposing blunatic. Protruding through the tender skin of inner arms, the jagged ivory lodged in the other body.
Little more than a stupefying pain could be understood by the nudists before they were violently pulled apart. Scooter again brought the pair together in a horrid union of pulverizing ribs. Cardiac muscle of the demon on the right ruptured, spraying quarts of blood from loosed arteries.
The second infected didn’t fare much better than the first, right lung collapsed under the onslaught of another reanimant being pounded into it. Both figures dropped into bleeding, dying heaps, unable to do anything but writhe in unimaginable torment. They were the last zombies coming at him. All the others were face first in a steaming mass of bloodied flesh.
Scooter walked to the closest ghoul, ass up and pointing at him. Ruining its day, he pushed the pitted end of his blood-drenched table leg directly into the fleshy-fun-strip between the sagging anus and drooping balls. No matter which direction the jagged piece of wood went, the peevie would undoubtedly wish for true death.
As a seemingly random choice, the survivor straightened his arm, pushing the end featuring his hand down, stretching the sac to the limit. Simultaneously, the jagged hardwood sliced into the rectum. Thankfully this means Shit would no longer hit the fan; at least, not from this revenant.
Before the scourge could spin around, he ferociously jerked his club from its new cavity, bringing a torrent of crimson with it. In less than a heartbeat, he lifted his improvised killing device in both hands and brought the broken end down in the middle of the lower back. Spinal cord was immediately severed along with most of the digestive organs. Reanimated corpse dropped limply into a clueless, twitching pile.
The neighbor zombie on the left stopped chewing, raised its head, and took a look to its side. Seeing that its companion’s only movement was twitching as it lay face first in the juicy meal before it; it made a confused noise. No movement or sound would ever be willfully made again by the beast as Scooter’s homemade club was swung down at the base of its skull. Lack of proper nutrition due to starvation, a result of overpopulation by carnivorous apes with insatiable hunger. This had weakened the bone structure of some monsters. Especially of those that were not necessarily the fastest or strongest.
This was one of those unfortunate creatures. Brittle brain casing splintered as cerebral cortex ruptured. Connection between grey matter and the rest of the body was permanently disrupted when the carved oak mashed uvula and tongue it found through crevices between the chipped and rotting teeth. Bloody mucus drained out severed sinuses and mixed with spinal fluid as the stinking substance gushed over destroyed lower jaw.
On the other side of the first fallen blunatic was one of the rare female hunters. It could've been too old to bear children, or had possibly been surgically deprived of the ability to render offspring into this new savage world. Regardless of the reason, it was here rather than back at the nest, being protected by males.
Why it was here, ultimately made no difference to Scooter. Honestly, he hadn’t realized the thing was female. Private parts, especially those of animals, were something he didn’t pay much attention to. That is until he slammed
his stick into the side of the creature and it rolled over with a painful screech. Deflated, blue mammaries stared up at the innocent young man. Trying not to look at what he'd have at one time found embarrassingly exciting, he raised his eyes up to focus on the bedroom door with smoke leaking out from around it.
Not wanting to get in trouble for looking at bad, bad things, he blindly hammered the table leg into the body of the zombie repeatedly. Eventually, the whimpering and any noise from it subsided. Glancing down now, he saw that everything above the rib cage had been beaten into a pulpy mush. Grayish blue skin was coated in a bloodied slime, writhing and twitching as infected crimson blood poured from a heart that had ceased pumping to a brain that was no longer there. He refused to lower his gaze any further. There would only be really bad things down there to offend his eyes! Mom always said.
The zombies on the opposite side of the torn open human were aware he was there; they were just unable to pry themselves from the delicious treat before them. Perhaps they were just hoping he'd leave them alone if they made no hostile move. It may have been stupid, but they were starving.
When one of the peevies raised its head, bloodied, stringy meat dangled from a stuffed mouth. It looked straight at Scooter, making a confused or terrified noise. The jagged end of the table leg thrust into the right eyeball. At least 3 inches in, Scooter twisted the stick until he heard a satisfying yet sickening crunch. Reanimated corpse went limp, truly dead.
The undead duo on either side of the first now twitching, shitting form looked up. Faces were dripping dark red, specks of gelatinous, grisly fat clung to their cheeks. The chewing, crunching, smacking, and overall mastication of a person was a stomach-turning distinction. Every one of the peevies refused to turn tail, even though they had that look in their eyes of animals ready to flee. Starvation made them steadfast.
Compare it to starving hyenas feeding on a dead wildebeest while a hungry lion fed on the same carcass. Even though the lion had slaughtered several hyenas in the past few moments, the others would keep eating on the carcass hoping the lion would ignore them. Food was more important than anything to a starving animal.