Down the Road: The Fall of Austin

by Bowie Ibarra

  A blonde woman, driving the Maxima, rolled down her window. She screamed, “Asshole!”

  Gritting his teeth in a rush of anger and adrenaline, Mike yanked his pistol from its holster. He fired several bullets toward the rebel vehicles. Only two met their target, both lodging themselves in the tailgate of the Dodge. Mike fell on his ass and scooted away from the race.

  “Help us!” screamed the bound family on the side of the road. Mike looked up and watched as what was obviously an infected man was pursuing the family’s helpless children, snarling and groaning.

  Painfully, Mike took aim with his piece and fired a bullet that punched through the infected man at the base of his head, shooting its throat out onto the ground. The man crumpled to the ground like a doll. Paralyzed from the neck down, he stubbornly continued to chomp toward the now distant family in a futile attempt to consume them. With no control of his body below the neck, it simply bit and chomped in the general direction of the family, dreaming of taking chunks of their flesh and blood into his mouth.

  “I want to help you,” Mike said, almost in a groan. He walked to the family, straightening out his limp.

  “Help us? Yeah right,” the father said. “Prove it. Give me your fucking gun.”

  “What?”

  Rule change.

  It was a bad move. Mike knew it. But in an effort to gain their trust, Mike obliged. He tossed his piece to the still bound father. Mike then pulled out a modest pocket knife and released the family from their plastic bonds.

  After the family was standing and brushing themselves off, Mike gestured to the father to return the gun. But instead Mike found himself staring down the barrel of his own weapon.

  “Sorry about your luck, officer. But I’ve got to look after my family. Can’t trust anyone now. Even the cops. You’re proof of that.”

  “I’m not...”

  But Mike didn’t finish. He didn’t have the energy to try to justify himself. Injured and contrite, Mike simply nodded.

  The family traversed the deadly access road and climbed back into their vehicle. Before long, they joined the wave of automobiles heading out of Austin.

  Mike caught sight of Derek’s remains. By this point his body had been run over and squashed several times. Entrails had been ejected out of his mouth and stomach. His head had been squished into a chunky pulp. His entire carcass looked like the roadkill found on Texas highways across the state.

  Mike turned away. He was so appalled he could not even consider retrieving Derek’s sidearm from his remains.

  He had to leave. The city had dismissed the white knight.

  He looked where his cruiser once was. It was gone. The citizens were smart and opportunistic. The other cruiser was still there, but too far for Mike to take a chance with. Somebody would probably beat him to it at this rate.

  Rule change.

  Mike whimpered. The panic attack was punching him in the heart and mind. He was not necessarily crying over the massacre of his partner. His tears were flowing down his cheek from the realization of the cold, hard fact that he was alone. Mike was alone in a world that now had no qualms about running over a human being in an effort to be free, to survive. A new world was forming where ghouls were appearing and attacking people. It was a world he was going to have to manage with two severely injured ankles, pepper spray, a collapsible baton, and a tazer.

  Looking back up the road, he saw an apartment complex. It could be his only chance.

  Officer Mike Runyard, alone and injured, hobbled toward the building in immense pain. The cars, trucks, and various escape vehicles honked, swerved, and sideswiped each other in the background as he shuffled toward the apartment complex.

  After a short and painful walk and two near misses by vehicles, he entered the complex through a side gate. He was fortunate no one was really around, as he could have been taken advantage of very easily. Even the apartment complex seemed abandoned.

  He walked to an apartment door and twisted at the doorknob.

  Locked.

  Another door.

  Locked.

  He was going to walk across the building to another ground level room when he saw stairs. Grimacing through his pain, he wondered if the creatures could maneuver up the stairs. Would they even consider trying? Perhaps, he thought, if given the proper motivation. Being on the top floor could provide a tactical advantage, and his limited mobility might profit from being up there.

  He needed to get to the top floor. In spite of the chances of all four apartment doors on the top third floor being locked, he took the risk.

  Slowly, he began to climb. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, he thought. The man that came up with that expression never considered what it could be like taking that first step with two severely sprained ankles. The meaning was still the same, though. The stairs were tall and he had to find something else to concentrate on as he climbed to ignore the fiery pain burning in his ankles.

  Dead dogs.

  Dead Derek.

  Dairy Queen.

  Dialogue from The Big Lebowski.

  “Shut the fuck up, Donnie.”

  “Man, if my fuckin’ ex-wife asked me to take care of her fuckin’ dog while she and her boyfriend went to Honolulu I’d tell her to go fuck herself.”

  Mike began chuckling and took a moment to enjoy the laugh halfway up the stairs. A subtle shift of his weight put pressure on his sprained ankles and the bolt of pain shooting through his body stopped the laughter.

  In the distance, groans of pain painted the wind with woe. Gunshots scattered in the distance, complemented by screeching tires on the nearby highway. Taking a deep breath, Mike continued up the stairs. His torn and bloody arms left blood, flesh and fluid on the railing. All along the way, he assured himself he was going to survive.

  Arriving on the second floor landing, Mike saw the two doors matching those from the floor below standing shut nearby. He looked at the flight of stairs to the third floor with misery and opted to give the doors a shot.

  First door: locked.

  Turning around to face the next door took effort, but he did it and moved toward it.

  Locked.

  “Damn.”

  Mike hobbled to the railing in intense pain and leaned on it. Peering over the rail, he saw on a sidewalk below a creature that appeared to have been a homeless guy that lay sprawled on the pavement. A large puddle of blood had formed around its head like the halo of some religious icon. Its head appeared to have been stomped in.

  His initial thought was correct: even this place was not safe.

  Mike trudged up the stairs again, not wanting to cross the landing toward the other two doors on the opposite end. Extremely anxious, he tried to figure out how he was going to manage to survive, even if he did find an open door. His ankles throbbed with pain, and he knew if he was to remove his boots, his ankles would be swollen.

  He tried to take his mind off his ankles again.

  “Do you like sex, Mr. Lebowski?”

  “You mean coitus?”

  One third of the way.

  Sex. His first girlfriend. His last sexual encounter.

  Two thirds.

  “’Nuther Caucasian, Gary.”

  “You got it, Dude.”

  He was now very close. The pain felt like his ankles had been put in a vice that was twisting and crushing them.

  “Nothing is fucked here, dude. Nothing is fucked. You’re acting very un-dude.”

  Mike leaned on the rail of the third floor landing, sweaty and panting like a dog.

  Two more doors. Two more chances. Two chances at salvation. Two chances at failure.

  He took a deep breath.

  Looking down from the third floor of the apartment building, he suddenly felt like jumping, diving head first to the pavement below. It would be an end to the pain, the fear. In a way, considering the situation, it was a rather practical thing to do. The injury was going to make him like a wounded gazelle on the African savanna
h. He could fall victim to looters or those beasts. He was lucky none had been around on his journey to the apartment in the first place. With just the tazer to arm him, he clearly would not have lasted long.

  He looked down again. If he fell head first, his death would most surely be quick.

  The prospect was becoming more and more viable. Perpetually single and with a family that was safe and protected in Three Rivers, would it be worth fighting through the uncertainty of a foggy future?

  He looked down again.

  He closed his eyes.

  He gripped the railing, feeling himself fall, his pain ending, but his eternal life beginning.

  Or would he just turn? Would he become one of the mysterious masses rising from death and going berserk?

  Would it matter?

  Slowly, he began to shift himself up to propel himself over the edge.

  His ankles throbbed in pain.

  He was going to jump.

  Seconds away from committing to the suicide solution, a stream of warm and chunky fluid fell on his face, nose, and lips. He fell from the railing back onto his feet, his ankles stabbed with pain. He stumbled on his ass just away from the stairs. It tasted like dirt, but smelled putrid. The only thing Mike could figure it could be was bird poop. Somewhere in the sky, some bird, totally oblivious to the moment and choice Mike was making, released its hot, chunky load in mid-air, dropping at the speed and angle of its release, plummeting earthward like a meteor on entry into the earth’s atmosphere. It had a million to one chance that it would actually connect, hitting a target it was by no means aiming for. It was a target that needed a sign—a man who was hopeless. Mike was a man needing help, help that came in the form of random excrement that was now being wiped off the face and lips of its unintended target: Officer Mike Runyard.

  Mike immediately gagged and leaned near the railing to expel some of his own inner juices.

  No birds were below to get his You Can’t Do That On Television slime treatment.

  He wanted to clean himself off. Two doors were yet to be opened. He knew they must be locked, but needed to try. He wanted a bath.

  Hobbling, he moved to a door.

  Locked.

  Mike exhaled in frustration and hobbled to the next door. Perhaps he would still jump if this door was locked.

  He reached the door and twisted the knob.

  Click.

  Unprepared for the unlocked door, Mike fell on the carpet of the living room as the door swung wide open. He crashed down on his scraped and scabby arms. He yelped in pain and rolled on his back.

  In spite of his pain and the possibly of locking himself up with a monster, he slid to the door, closed it, and locked it.

  He let out a quick and joyous victory yell, but quickly clasped both hands over his mouth.

  After a moment he said to the empty air, “Anyone home?”

  No answer.

  Of course nobody was home. People were evacuating, and not even bothering to lock their doors behind them. Rule change. Things were bad and were never going to be the same again, and people knew it.

  But Mike was safe.

  A wave of happiness overtook his senses.

  Looking at a rack of DVDs through the open bedroom door restored his faith in life. On the rack sat one of his favorite movies ever: The Big Lebowski.

  He hobbled over, plucked the DVD from its case, and slid it into the nearby player. As he fumbled for the remote to turn on the television, something began to swell in his heart and soul:

  Hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  9:26 AM

  Branton Junior High

  Koehl, Texas

  Just as she figured most other people did when there was little else to keep focused on and their minds would wander and give themselves over to philosophical meanderings, Keri Lawrence sometimes pondered what the end of the world would be like.

  Many ideas came to mind: Nuclear annihilation, all-encompassing global conflict, a cosmic rapture by a spiritual deity or some other climax predicted in some grand scripture, theoretical concoction or ancient belief system. The one common thread between all these speculations, she noticed, was the predicted swiftness of it all, the ultimate finality. The bomb explodes, everyone dies. An asteroid impacts the earth, everyone dies. A god arrives and provides the people a pass to heavenly glory. The end.

  But what was going on in the world now—this plague or whatever it was, this frightful blight on humanity—maybe it wasn’t the end. It certainly wasn’t final or fast or even in the traditional vein of apocalypses.

  No.

  This one—this “zombie apocalypse”—was slow. This one was not absolute, like the coordinated explosion of a nuclear weapon on positions of densely-populated areas. That was the epitome of final. Within the range of the explosion is absolute extermination. No second chances, no hope, no way out.

  This one, if it is truly to be humankind’s end, (and she had no qualms about being so pessimistic, judging by the chaos she was witnessing,) was excruciatingly slow.

  This one, this zombie apocalypse, was not providing absolute extermination. This living dead armageddon was allowing for the unwilling participants to have a chance, to have hope, to have a way out. And most importantly, since this was an apocalypse that wasn’t wiping everyone out all at once, people could deny it wasn’t happening. They could refuse to see it. They could attempt to distract themselves from it.

  That was what Keri Lawrence was doing, even before she realized she was doing it. She had gone to work—the only one to show up, in fact—and went about grading papers in her empty classroom. It was a symptom of Terror Management Theory, as taught in her college Psych 101.

  Despite the growing numbers of flesh-eaters multiplying at an exponential rate across Texas, the nation, and the globe, she was denying the severity of it. Like another psychological phenomenon, “the bystander effect,” Keri didn’t want to risk committing an overemotional faux pas by running straight to her family and friends and blowing everything out of proportion.

  Keri Lawrence had family and many friends, and she had always considered herself the rare type of human being that would never take any of them for granted.

  A co-worker, George Zaragosa, was one.

  He was a single man, though he had made the jump towards lifelong commitment several months earlier, before his soon-to-be betrothed was murdered. It had left a hole in George’s heart that could never be filled, like a puzzle with a piece lost on the floor and swept away, never to be complete again. George also had a family. A mother living widowed in San Uvalde. It was his quick detour on his journey home to his mother that brought him back to his work, where he found Keri under attack by two walking cadavers that Keri had—until that very moment—tried to deny was real. The corpses had somehow found their way into the empty school and to her classroom as she mechanically entered students’ grades into her computer.

  Keri and George had resonated harmoniously for years at their workplace, Branton Junior High School. And it was not until he rescued her from the fevered hands of the two zombies that all preconditioned notions of respect and social mores were thrown aside and their energies melded in a triumphant release of lust.

  It was proof for Keri that she was still alive, and it allowed her to parallel physically her mental exhilaration. But more important than that, it confirmed with overwhelming evidence that she had indeed been taking people for granted.

  Within the growing imperfection of the world, two humans, alone and scared, found perfection together. By the encounter with George, Keri found contentment in a land of sadness and death. Together their souls rose into the spiritual realms, spinning and swirling, touching perfection one last time as the early Texas spring morning dawned. Their ecstatic cries sang in a harmonious chorus of joy and humanity.

  As the world slowly crept to its fate in the zombie apocalypse, two friends found solace in the most needed resource in a world literally consumed by fear, that one vibrational
beacon that is the heart of salvation: Love. It was the one and only stable principle amidst chaos. It was the only worthwhile distraction. There was no excuse in any of her old Psychology courses to justify anything other than freely displaying real human emotion.

  Keri Lawrence understood now.

  * * *

  Like two young high school lovers anxious at the prospect of leaving each other’s arms before the tardy bell rings to start their class, Keri and George held each other tight near the large front doors of Branton Junior High, casting glances into the dangerous world outside.

  They finalized their plan as they continued to embrace.

  “Just stay behind me and everything will be fine,” George said.

  Keri couldn’t help but feel vulnerable in her summer dress and boots. She had not even prepared herself for the potential that she might have to fight for own survival. She said, “I’m just so scared.”

  “Don’t be. Really. They’re all spread out right now and very slow. As long as they don’t get a grip on you, you’ll be fine. Your car is just right there.”

  True: the parking lot was only about twenty yards away, and her blue ’95 Mustang was parked where it always was, in the space reserved for her with her name on it, despite every other parking space being empty.

  However, though each zombie was at least fifty yards away from any other, as George had pointed out, they could be seen absolutely everywhere as far as her naked eye could see, even past the horizon.

  “This is bad,” she whispered.

  “Then come with me,” George said.

  Keri sighed. “I can’t. I…” she paused. “I just want to go home.”

  “To Austin?”

  “No. To Houston. To my family. But I’ll need to go to Austin to get my stuff before I go.”

  None of it made sense to George. But neither did driving to his work to pick up his deceased love’s locket. But like him, Keri was following her heart despite the dangers that awaited her in Austin and her anticipated journey down the road to Houston.