Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody

  Brae is out of the truck and on top of the hood as soon as he feels the impact. Rifle poised, he fires into a small crowd of the undead. With a loud crack, the bullet hits home. The creature stops mid-stride, thrown to the ground in a heap. Its head hits the pavement like a silent prayer in the middle of a battle field. Levelling the rifle again, Brae puts a bead on another pus bag. As he exhales, he pulls the trigger. What used to be a nurse is now but a fragmented face, falling prone to the asphalt, tripping one of the other meat sacks behind her. Like a chain reaction, the other brainless wonders fall suit until all five are on the ground, wallowing in the remains of the first two.

  "We’re good," Brae yells before Mitch even has a chance to get the door of the rig open.

  "Damn, boy. You sure can shoot!" Mitch yells, heading to the door, right behind Ed.

  Brae falls to his ass and scoots off the hood, landing firmly on his feet. Like a madman, he sprints to the door, cut off by a pus bag, dressed in a dishevelled suit and tie. Before he can raise his rifle the creature’s head explodes, sending a torrent of brain and bone across the pavement next to it.

  As the body falls, it reveals a bent moustache smiling back at him.

  "We're all going to die in the end, I guess it's just not your time, kid," Mitch states, lowering the smoking revolver to his side.

  Brae shakes off the shock, high-tailing it into the warehouse, followed by Mitch who pulls the door closed, locking it with a pin attached to the bottom, firmly kicking it into place.

  A series of slams hit the outside of the door like hail on a tin roof. Brae recoils as he lifts his rifle to eye level, panicked by the sudden sound.

  "Unless they learn how to pull, they're not getting in," patting Brae on the shoulder as he walks by, Mitch heads over to the rest of the group.

  A week’s worth of beard growth moves as Mark's jaw drops, saying, "Looks like we've hit the mother load." He stares at the stacks of pallets positioned floor to ceiling in nearly 10,000 square feet of warehouse. "OK, Jesse, you and Ed go grab one of those pallet jacks and start loading the trucks. Mitch, come with me, we're going to find out if this place has a pharmacy."

  Brae, still somewhat in shock, "Boss, what should I do?"

  "Well, I suppose you can keep staring at the door, or help load the trucks." Mark nods his head before turning, passing through the far door, vanishing into the sales floor beyond.

  Tossing his rifle over his shoulder, Brae walks over to Ed, who is inspecting one of the pallets.

  "Canned meat. Thank God I lost my taste buds months ago," Ed states shaking his head.

  Jesse walks over to the far end of the warehouse in search of a pallet jack while Brae and Ed sort through the rows of boxes. A crash breaks their concentration and they run off after Jesse who is on the ground, struggling with one of the undead who has tackled him to the floor, pinning him to the spot.

  Ed is the first to react, pulling his pistol, as a large piece of flesh is pulled free from Jesse's neck. His scream is terrible, only drowned out by the report of the gun. The creature’s head snaps back so it's looking straight up like it's asking for a final reprieve from some higher power. Its body falls limp to the side, head bouncing off the cement floor like a deflated ball.

  Brae pushes the creature’s legs off Jesse to get a better look at the wound. Muscle tissue is exposed beyond a small scrap of skin, torn and twisted with teeth marks around the edges. Ed rips a piece from his shirt and applies pressure to the wound as Mark and Mitch run up from behind.

  "Christ, wasn't anyone watching his back?" Mark exclaims, kneeling down beside Jesse who has a blood bubble gurgling up at the edge of his mouth.

  Jesse tries to talk, but only air escapes as his eyes roll to the back of his head, prompting Mark to pull his side arm and shoot him between the eyes.

  "Damn it, you have to watch out for each other! No more fuck ups. Brae, watch Ed's ass and go get the damn pallet jack. Let's get this shit done and get the fuck out of here," he yells, clearly unnerved.

  "Boss, I'm sorry about your …" Mitch is cut off before he can continue.

  "Let's just get the supplies and go."

  Mitch and Mark head back into the sales floor to retrieve supplies and as much first aid as they can fit in a couple of packs that they heist from a display on their way through the store.

  Brae and Ed load up as much food as they can pack into the trailers, leaving the doors open to escape through the small hatches at the top while waiting for the others to return.

  "I should have been watching out for Jesse," Brae exclaims, holding his head in his hands as he sits on the floor, cross legged.

  Ed stares down at him. "We both fucked up, you can't blame yourself for a mistake that it took two of us to make," he shakes his head. "You can't take back what has already happened."

  Mark and Mitch return with several packs, loaded to bursting, and throw them into the trailer.

  Turning back to Brae, Mark can see the torment in his face. "Listen, kid, it could have happened to any one of us, you're not the only one to blame. We're all in this together, and hell, I could have probably been watching out too."

  "I'm sorry, Mark," Brae adds, rising to his feet and taking a deep breath.

  "It's OK, kid. Let's get his body and get the fuck out of here."

  They wrap Jesse's body in a plastic tarp and place it in the trailer, at the very back, away from the supplies.

  Looking through the hole left by the shotgun blast, Mark peers through the door, "Fuck, there's too many of them out there, I'm not going to be able to get to the plough." Looking back at Ed, he continues, "I guess I'll be catching a ride with you."

  From inside the trailers, each group of men, stationed at the opposing trucks, close the doors, leaving the warehouse bays open to the elements.

  Escaping through the roof hatch, using the crates as a ladder, Brae peers out at the sea of the undead that have gathered around the trucks. There are hundreds of them, shoulder to shoulder, packed in tightly against the vehicles, leaving little room for escape.

  "Shit," Mitch's voice is shaky, "I left the driver’s side window open, you'll have to go first."

  "Fuck you! You go first!" He yells back at Mitch.

  "I'll take the rifle and cover you. It'll be alright, trust me," Mitch reassures him.

  Brae blows out a breath of panic from his lungs, trying to calm himself. It looks like he is testing the temperature of a pool as he reluctantly steps down onto the mirror frame, sliding his other foot onto the edge of the door.

  He hears screaming, followed by a series of shots, just above his head. Sliding into the cab backwards, he can see Mitch firing towards the other truck as he feels something tug at his hair. He pulls hard, and one of his dreads is yanked free, clutched tightly in the hand of one of the creatures. Its nudity takes Brae back a bit as he scans the waste between its legs, realizing the thing had once been a man, but now resembles a butchers experiment gone wrong. He steadies himself, sliding fully into the cab, and looks past the monstrosity to see Ed slip from the roof of the other truck, landing, back first into the crowd of hungry hands.

  Mark fires madly into the crowd. Emptying the shotgun, he pulls his side arm, levelling it at the newly formed horde that fills in the space where the others had stood.

  Brae can't see what’s happening on the other side of the truck where Ed landed, but the screams are more than enough to assault his imagination. What he does see is Mark empty his pistol and jump into the crowd after Ed, madness overtaking him.

  He sees Mitch’s leg on the door, followed by the other, gracefully sliding into the cab like he's done it a million times before.

  The big rig roars to life as Mitch hits the ignition and slips it into gear. Releasing the clutch, he floats it into second gear, making the rig gain speed.

  "Wait, what about Mark?" Brae's alarm is obvious.

  Mitch points toward the other truck as they pass the gore, saying nothing. Brae opens his window, throwing up along
the truck, spewing bile and chunks out against a few of the straggling undead.

  "God, why did he do it?" Brae asks, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

  "Kid, not everyone is cut out to accept fate. He just lost it."

  Solemn, Brae eases back into his seat, staring at the ceiling of the cab with his hand over his mouth. He had befriended Mark the first day he waded through the spent bodies of the dead and made his way into the compound. It was hard to think of him as gone, hard to face the fact that he would never see him again.

  If he could count how many people he had lost along the way, he would probably curl up in a tight little ball on his bed at the compound and never move again. He does his best to push those memories out of his head, to never think of the shitty hand life had dealt him. It was always better to forget. It was always better to repress those memories and get on with the fight for survival, but it didn't make it any less painful.

  With a deep exhale, Brae looks out at the road ahead, watching the random undead as they pass by. It's hard to believe those things were ever human. That they, just like him, had lost loved ones, had endured the sorrow of the fallen.

  "Look at them," Mitch points out at a random corpse, walking in circles at the edge of the street.

  "What about them?"

  "They’re so fucking pointless. That's how it ends, no matter who you are, that's how we all end up. But you can never think for a moment that they are people, you hear me?"

  "Mitch, they are people . . . or were, at least."

  "Who they were doesn't matter, it's what they are now, and what they are now would sooner chew off your face than let you pass by."

  The truck tilts dangerously as Mitch makes the next turn, holding tightly to the wheel, he pulls the vehicle through, glancing off of a wrecked passenger car that is half way out into the street.

  "Alright, we don't have the plough, so it's going to get bumpy when we start getting close," Mitch breaks the silence. Pointing out the inevitable, "You might want to hold on."

  With that, the rig begins to bounce, losing traction on the gore, and sending up chunks of pulp once the tires grab asphalt. Brae gains flight several times as the air ride seat overcompensates against the unnatural road conditions, jogging him back and forth along the cushion.

  Terror falls over Brae's eyes as he sees the compound coming into view, "What the fuck?"

  "Son of a bitch!" Mitch exclaims as he peers through the partially open gate. The undead are flooding in and out through the opening with scraps of fat and flesh hanging out of their wretched maws.

  He slams the brakes, nearly jack-knifing the rig and suddenly begins tapping them repeatedly to slow the truck down rather than twist it up into a heap. He slows the truck considerably, and begins to inch it forward through the pulpy mess from earlier in the day. The tires slip ever so slightly upon the remains, tendon and bone letting loose against the mud flaps. As his jaw drops wide from the scene laid out before him, "They’re gone . . . every one of them."

  "It was a massacre," Brae exclaims, putting his hand over his mouth like someone trying to keep their soul from escaping.

  Bodies crawl over one another, tripping and sliding through the spilled entrails, all trying to work their way into the compound. A triumphant moan escapes from a corpse that has become androgynous through decay, indescribable in its putrification.

  "What do we do?" asks Brae, at the edge of a full on break down.

  "We get the fuck out of here!" Mitch replies, turning the rig down the next street, the eight wheels of the tractor slipping slightly on the soup beneath them.

  "But what about everyone?" Brae cries, looking at what is left of the compound as the truck passes.

  "Listen, kid. Everyone is gone. No one could survive that, no one."

  "But Mitch, we can't just leave them there. There has to be somebody alive!" he pleads.

  "God damn it, kid! There's nothing we can do. There are only the two of us. I don't know about you, but I'm down to only a few rounds. You need to get a grip, it's fucking hopeless."

  Silence falls over them. Mitch knows that there might be a slim possibility that someone could still be trapped in there, but common sense, the very thing that has kept him alive for so long, says to keep moving.

  Brae, still in shock, leans into his hands, weeping, "Fuck Mitch, everyone?"

  "You saw as clearly as I did. If anyone did survive, chances are that they're smart enough to get out of there," Mitch squints his eyes, and then opens them wide like he suddenly remembered something. "We'll head to the compound in Chicago like everyone planned if something went wrong. If anyone survived, that's where they'll go."

  Mitch's response did little to reassure Brae, he had seen this happen before and the outcome was never positive. He couldn't even believe there would be anything left of Chicago either. It was hard to find hope in a world controlled by the undead.

  All he could do was stare out the window, watching the abandoned cars go by, caught up in the sorrow he felt for everyone who was lost that day.

  This was truly Independence Day, independent from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For where the undead roam free, you have a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing tomorrow.

  Mitch pulls the big rig off the two lane highway, slowly cruising the lot before engaging the brakes, parking in the front of an abandoned gas station.

  He is worried about Brae. The kid hadn't said a word for nearly eighty miles, and it was beginning to become unnerving. He had never known the kid to be so quiet. Brae was never much of a talker, but he would occasionally drop a joke or two for good measure.

  "Brae, what I meant when I said that everyone dies in the end is that no one gets out alive, no matter what you do, everyone eventually fades away into whatever oblivion it is that exists on the other side of life.

  You'll never know when it's going to happen, and there's no way to prepare for it. People die. That's the end goal. It's what you do up to that point that really matters.

  You just have to take it on the chin and do your best to keep on fighting. We live in a world full of nightmares, and until that nightmare is over, we have no other choice than to fight. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "Yeah, Mitch. I understand," Brae replies.

  Mitch grabs Brae by the arm, forcing him to look into his eyes, "Damn it, Brae. There was nothing we could do!"

  "I know Mitch," Brae's voice is detached and distant.

  "OK, kid. I need to get some sleep. We'll leave first thing in the morning. Chicago is only a hundred and twenty miles away, so we should be able to make it by tomorrow night," Mitch says, moving the clipboard from between the seats, and negotiating over the rope and supplies that are laying in the way of the sleeper.

  "I'll pull out the bottom bunk for you. You should probably get some sleep too," Mitch states, situating himself.

  "Yeah, I will. I'm just going to stay up for a little while longer," Brae replies, still staring out the window.

  Mitch settles down into the sleeper, wrestling with himself to go to sleep. In his mind, all he sees is death. Wave after wave of images, warped and twisted; faces of those who were lost, transforming into the undead, frame by frame.

  He wakes up in the middle of the night, checking on Brae who is passed out in the passenger seat. He turns over bunching the pillow up beneath his head, surrendering to a few more hours of unconsciousness.

  Brae nestles his rifle closely, hardly finding sleep between moments of sorrow and uncertainty. The day plays over and over in his mind. He sees Jesse, Mark's younger brother laying on the cold concrete, blood seeping through his shirt, puddling up below him. He recalls Ed slipping from the cab of the other truck, the look on his face as he goes down. He can see Mark jumping in to save him. The snarl of an animal spreads across his face, the sorrow of losing someone close, battering him deep inside.

  "I'm sorry, Mark. I'm sorry, Mark. I'm sorry …"

  Startled, Mitch awakens, sitt
ing up fully in the sleeper. He can’t see Brae and immediately senses that something is wrong. It wasn't like him to just up and leave.

  He crosses over into the driver’s seat and stretches out his arm to open the door when something catches his eye. The clipboard that he had been left between the seats last night, now laying on the passenger seat.

  Across the driver’s log sheet, left by the previous owner, a note is scribbled in dark black ink …

  He flies out of the truck running with everything he has. There, swinging from the canopy, just above the gas pumps, hangs Brae's undead body, his neck red where the rope burnt his skin from the friction of his movements.

  Brae's arms reach out in a futile attempts to reach Mitch, kicking at the air, trying to get closer, bent on the promise of warm flesh.

  "Ah hell, kid …" he says, pulling the revolver from his side, turning back and forth in frustration.

  Using the barrel of the gun, he tilts back his baseball cap, shaking his head in disbelief. He pulls back the hammer of the pistol, taking careful aim, lining up the sight, dead centre on Brae's forehead.

  "God damn it, kid. It didn't have to be this way," he says to himself, pulling the trigger, landing one clean shot between Brae's eyes.

  Firing once more, the rope snaps, dropping the body to the ground in a heap. Mitch ties the rope to Brae's feet, dragging him away, towards the rig.

  After a few minutes of sorting through the sleeper, he comes out holding a small, military shovel and begins to dig. Sweat beads up on his face, he wipes it away with his shirt sleeve, glancing back at Brae's body.

  He drops Brae into the earth and covers him with a blanket he retrieved from the truck. Checking over his shoulder every few minutes to make sure he's still alone, he fills the hole, losing the boy with every scoop he adds.