Tristan ran, head swinging left and right, searching the aisles. He reached the end of the store. They found Chuck. The boy, in tears, took a fleeting look at Tristan and Ally and ran off.
“You killed my mom and dad,” Chuck cried. He ran for the restroom door at the back corner of the market.
“Kid,” Tristan called. “You have to come with us!” He chased Chuck to the restroom. Chuck got in and closed the door. Tristan tried the knob, but it didn’t turn. He started to pound his fist on the door. “Open up, kid, we have to get you out of here.”
Ally couldn’t just stand around as Tristan tried to get the kid out of the locked restroom. She set her pipe spear down on the floor, grabbed her backpack, unzipped it, and walked quickly to the medicine aisle, where she started pulling items from the shelves. She caught sight of a mattress laid out near the wall, atop it was a pillow, a blanket, a large coat, and a grimy monkey mask. The same kind of mask worn by the apes. Briefly, she pondered on the two dead strangers out front, Curt and Donna, who had a possible connection to those gunmen outside of Meredith’s house. Ally ridded herself of the thoughts and refocused her efforts in stuffing painkillers, cough syrups, and ointment packs into her bag.
Tristan continued to pound his fist and ram his shoulder against the restroom door, calling for the kid to come out.
Ally had filled her backpack and was barely able to zip it shut. She went over and retrieved her spear where she had left it. She then looked to the front of the store, ran over to the window, and peered out.
She gasped.
Outside, there were close to twenty of the undead running toward the market.
“We have to go!” Ally shouted, hoping to be heard by Lawrence and Sonya. She raced to the back of the store, where Tristan still made attempts to break the restroom door open. “Lawrence! Sonya! They’re coming!”
“Open the door,” Tristan frantically pleaded to the kid. “Open it!”
Ally joined Tristan and started rapping on the door. “Chuck, please,” she also pleaded, “we have to go. We’ll all die here. You have to come with us. Please.”
“You killed my mom and dad,” Chuck said. Ally could hear him sobbing.
“Chuck, please come out.”
“They’re right outside.” Lawrence came, lugging the gym bag, which appeared full and cumbersome. “There’s a back door. We have to get out of here now.”
Sonya was behind him, her bag equally bulky. She went over to Tristan and offered her axe. “Break the door open with this. Hurry.”
Tristan hesitated. He backed away from the restroom door. “No, we won’t have time. The door is fucking hardwood or something—it’s solid as shit, but I saw a window in there. We can pull the kid out from the outside.”
“A window?” said Ally.
“I saw it, trust me.”
Ally heard glass shatter. A slobbery groan echoed through the store. Those things were inside.
“Let’s go!” Lawrence said.
The four ran to the opposite corner of the market. Lawrence and Sonya seemed to struggle with the loads they carried. Ally kept looking back. She had a quick view of the outside, where several of the dead were huddled over the bodies of Curt and Donna. The dead weren’t close behind, but the sounds of glass shattering continued. Ally glanced back again and caught sight of a few of them, pouring in at the front, climbing through the busted window and falling to the floor.
The group reached the back door and pushed it open. They exited to an alleyway. Lawrence closed the door once everyone was out. He set down his gym bag and walked over to the dumpster that was against the building’s wall.
“Help me push this,” Lawrence said, as he went to the dumpster’s side end.
Tristan joined him. Ally threw down her spear, while Sonya set down her axe and filled bag. The two girls added their strength to the push. The large dumpster was filled with trash bags and didn’t have wheels beneath to make the push easy. The dumpster scraped against cement. The group set it against the back door, blocking it. It would buy them time if the dead found the exit.
Tristan picked up the axe and ran to the buildings far corner. The rest of the group retrieved their belongings and followed.
The window of the market’s restroom was high up, small and narrow, but it appeared wide enough for a small boy to slide through. Tristan struck the glass with a series of axe swings. It didn’t take him long to make an opening. Glass shards spilled to the ground. He took the time to break the jutting shards from the window’s frame with the axe blade. He handed the axe to Sonya. Tristan took hold of the frame while Lawrence hoisted him by the legs. Tristan was now at the window reaching in, with Lawrence bent down slightly, holding his heels.
“Kid, come on,” Tristan said. “Grab my hands.”
Ally could hear the kid’s cries. “No,” said Chuck, “you killed them.”
Ally could also hear the banging inside, the monsters with their starved, relentless moans. Those things were at the restroom door already. They must’ve heard the kid bawling over his parents.
“Dear God, please,” Ally whispered. She prayed in her thoughts that Chuck would listen to Tristan. She could understand that the kid would be reluctant to join his parents’ killers.
“Chuck,” Tristan spoke in a consoling tone, “you have to come with us. We have to keep you safe. We’ll protect you, I promise. Let us get you out of here. Come on, Chuck, please.”
Ally heard a loud crack of wood inside the restroom. The starved moans of the monsters were louder.
“Chuck!” Tristan screamed. “Get over here now!”
The kid screamed.
Tristan reached into the window further. “I got you, Chuck—Oh, God, no! NO!”
The kid let out the most horrendous of screams—the sound of suffering. A sound Ally was already familiar with. Tristan screamed. Amidst the screams, Ally could hear flesh ripping and those things gorging.
Tristan fell back from the window, knocking Lawrence down with him. Tristan landed on his bottom. In his hands, a pair of small hands with severed arms attached. Torn flesh hung from them. Blood gushed from them.
Ally and Sonya screamed and cried.
In shock, Tristan stared blankly at Chuck’s arms. He dropped them. He stood from the ground still in a daze.
Ally hoped everything was just a nightmare. She could feel the tears on her cheeks, her body numb and weak, but her mind was elsewhere. She could almost feel herself in her bed, comfortable beneath her sheets. Wake up, she told herself. Wake up, Alison! Maybe she’d wake up, and her presence in the alleyway wasn’t reality, but a vivid dream. Maybe she was still in the house and Kyle was still alive. Maybe Richard, Therese, and Joni never came to the house. Maybe they never existed and they were all a dream, too.
Joni.
She thought of Joni. She didn’t want her little sister Joni to be a dream.
Ally stopped her crying, willed her slipping mind back to the alleyway and back to her nightmarish reality. She took in a slow breath and tried to compose herself. She looked at her friends. “We should go,” her tone was low and weak, but the others heard her.
Sonya sniffled and nodded. “Yeah.”
Lawrence was in tears, but still appeared calm. “We have a long way back.”
Ally came over to Tristan, who still stood stiff in his daze, not uttering a word. She put a hand on his arm. “Tristan,” she said, looking at his blank expression. “We have to go.”
Tristan looked at her, his expression unchanged. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay.”
They traveled down the alley, moving with fast steps. They couldn’t run with the load of their bags and packs. The two gym bags were heavy with what was mainly food cans and drink bottles. Ally helped to carry Lawrence’s bag, while Tristan helped with Sonya’s.
They made it out to the street, where they agreed to go the opposite direction in which they came. They didn’t want to risk coming across the horde that had amassed in the plaza. The group woul
d have to go around into the next neighborhood, for they were uncertain how many of the dead had come to Valley Market. It could’ve been dozens—maybe a hundred.
During their walk through another quiet, empty neighborhood, they heard a passing car again. It sounded close this time, on the next street.
“We need to hide,” said Sonya. “It might be more of those fucking apes. It could be those friends the couple mentioned.”
“Those people were with the apes,” said Ally. “I saw one of the mask inside the store.”
“Makes no difference now.” Sonya looked around at the surrounding houses. “Over there.” She pointed across the street. “We could go behind those bushes.”
“Wait, Sonya,” said Lawrence.
It was too late to hide. A silver Volvo station wagon appeared at the end of the street. It drove fast in the group’s direction. The four of them froze when the car sped up. They didn’t need to run.
The car then slowed and broke with a screech and a slight skid.
Miles was the driver and Kasey was at the passenger’s side.
Kasey stuck her head out the window and beckoned to the group. “Y’all get in here,” she said. “Come on!”
It’s in the Past Now
Tristan
I was eight years old, alone in the schoolyard again. The other kids didn’t like me…
They’d all ignore me, so I’d sit on a bench by myself and doodle in my notebook. It made me so depressed every day, being the kid no one liked, being alone, always having to sit by myself. It really sucked. I cried about it some nights. What a baby I was.
One day, a girl from my class named Inga, came over to talk to me while I was again sitting alone on my bench, doodling. She was foreign, had the goofiest accent and the goofiest smile, as if she was always happy. I’d sometimes see her in the yard by herself, skipping and humming, dancing around like a ballerina. The other kids thought she was strange. They’d ignore her, too.
In her thick accent, Inga said to me, “You drawing a beautiful picture? It’s very good.”
Without looking her in the eye, my response was, “Get lost.” At the time, I felt if anyone saw me associating with this strange, foreign girl they’d like me even less. I also wanted her to feel as bad as I felt about being alone. I was jealous of her cheerfulness and the fact that she didn’t need the other kids to have fun or to smile. I wanted to ruin her day.
Still with a smile, she simply replied, “Okay, I will look at your beautiful picture tomorrow. See you later, alligator.” She skipped off.
Secretly, I wished she stayed with me. I wanted her to talk about my drawings some more. I wanted to know what made her happy all the time. I hated myself for telling her to go away. Not long after, a white butterfly landed on my lap. Out of frustration, out of anger at what kind of person I was, I grabbed the butterfly and tore off its wings. I threw the pieces of that suffering, diminutive lifeform on the ground.
Another kid from my class, Nathan, who everyone in my third-grade class seemed to like, saw what I did.
Nathan came up to me and said, “That was so cool, dude.”
The following weeks, Nathan would find me in the schoolyard. He’d bring along two of his friends, other boys from my class—I forgot their names. “Do it again, Tristan,” Nathan would say. “Slaughter the butterfly.”
I’d do what he’d ask. I’d chase the butterflies around the schoolyard like an idiot. Twice I fell on my ass doing so, but when I did catch one…
I’d hold it by its wings and tear it like a piece of paper. Then, I would stomp on the remains. Seeing Nathan and his friends smile with amusement, saying, “Wow, awesome,” made me feel like I mattered, made me feel accepted.
During those butterfly slaughtering weeks, Inga would occasionally come up to me during lunch or as I sat on my bench. She would ask, “You drawing more beautiful pictures? Your drawings are very great. Who teach you to draw?”
I’d say, “None of your business. Go away.” It felt good to make her feel bad. I didn’t need her anymore. But, she never seemed to feel bad. She’d just skip away, smiling.
On yet another day where Nathan told me to slaughter a butterfly, I again ran around the yard chasing butterflies. I caught one and ripped its wings off. Nathan and his two ass-kissing friends never seemed to grow bored of it. But on that day, Inga happened to be skipping by. She saw what I did.
Her smile was gone. She looked so sad and repulsed. “You kill the beautiful butterfly,” she said. “Why’d you kill the beautiful butterfly?”
I didn’t know what to say. Her words made me sick to my stomach.
“You’re weird and gay,” Nathan said to Inga, “and you sound stupid when you talk.” Nathan pushed her.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted.
Inga ran off, crying.
“Why are you defending her?” Nathan asked me. “You must be gay, too. I’m gonna tell everyone how gay you are.”
The weeks after that incident, I was back to sitting on my bench alone, doodling in my notebook. Inga didn’t come by anymore to see my beautiful pictures.
One day, another kid named Lawrence, a third-grader from class 3A, came to sit next to me. “Is Nathan giving you a hard time?” Lawrence asked me. He always wore ugly turtleneck sweaters and pants that appeared way too big for him. “I heard him telling everyone that you’re gay.”
“I don’t care what he says,” I replied. At the time, I thought this kid Lawrence was gay. He had eyes that were too pretty, and he’d sit extremely close to me, like he didn’t understand the concept of personal space. But, I thought he was cool—didn’t matter if he were gay.
Lawrence smiled at my reply. “Yeah,” he said. “Kyle Berardi from class three C thinks Nathan and his friends actually are gay and probably lick each other’s balls and tug each other’s wieners.” I didn’t think much about this guy Lawrence, or why he was sitting down talking to me. “But, you shouldn’t hurt butterflies or any other small creatures, because my mom said that’s how serial killers and child molesters start out. So, I stopped hitting pigeons with my baseball bat. Yeah, so…Wanna see something cool?” He pulled out a small Ziploc bag with tiny brown and green flakes inside.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I collect my boogers.”
“That’s really…neat.”
Lawrence and I were inseparable ever since.
I still think about Inga. I think about her till this day. I never meant to scare her or take away her smile. If only I could thank her for those moments when she made me feel like I mattered. I wish I told her that I envied her happiness, that her smile and her cheerfulness made her a beautiful person. I wish I could’ve redeemed myself in her eyes, let her know—prove to her—that I wasn’t a monster.
God, how do I redeem myself?
I know it’s too late now.
I’ll never get a chance to.
15
An Octopus Came Out of Where?
Kasey
“We’ve been driving around for the last thirty minutes,” Miles said. He drove a moderate speed through the streets, constantly checking his rear and side mirrors for pursuers. “I didn’t even have a plan or anything when I decided to leave out. I thought it was a stupid idea to go outside, and so did everyone else in the house, but Kasey wanted to come along, though.”
Lawrence, Tristan, Ally, and Sonya sat crammed in the Volvo’s back seat, so crammed that Ally had to sit on Sonya’s lap. Their equipped armor and the bulkiness of their bags added to their limitation of movement. The four didn’t seem to care, for none of them complained about the lack of space. They all looked weary and miserable, but Kasey knew the group was relieved to be off the street and in a moving vehicle.
“No,” said Kasey, “we didn’t know what the hell we were doing out here, or why we even came out. I guess we were just worried sick and decided to look for y’all. We passed your car, Sonya, and we saw it was empty and one of the tires were out. So, it was a good thing
we were stupid enough to come out here, looking for y’all.”
In Kasey’s right hand was her weapon, an axe with the head bloodied, and in her left she held Miles’s makeshift axe, a baseball bat with a buzz saw blade fitted and screwed into the blunt end. When Kasey and Miles had earlier stepped out of the house, they fought their way to the station wagon, each killing two of the undead. They managed to evade and outrun the rest of the horde scattered around the neighborhood to get to the car.
“How’d you manage to find us?” Lawrence asked. “Did you really drive around searching every street in this area?”
“That’s what we started off doing,” said Miles. “But then we heard the gunshots, and assuming it was you guys, we drove to the source of it and it led us to the plaza. We figured you had to be around the nearby streets. We also figured you four were smart enough to get out of the market, which was overrun when we passed it.”
“Some man with a beard was on the ground getting torn up,” Kasey added. “Did you know him?”
“We have a lot to tell you when we get back,” said Sonya.
Kasey looked back at the group. They looked dirty. And they stank like shit. “I’m so glad my babies are safe.”
Ally smiled. “Well, its thanks to you two.”
“We’re not safe yet,” Miles looked in the rearview and sped up. “But we’re almost home.”
Kasey looked out the rear window and saw six off the dead things chasing the car. Miles floored the gas to fifty miles per hour, leaving the runners behind.
They made a sharp, screeching turn onto Revel Street. Miles began to slow the vehicle. Once he reached the house, he drove up the sidewalk and onto the front lawn, rolling over the carcasses of those they had slain earlier in the day, making the Volvo passengers rock and bounce in their seats. Miles moved as close as he could to the front door and parked the car.
“Okay, hurry in everyone.” Miles turned off the ignition. He took his buzz saw baseball bat from Kasey and opened his door.
Flesh Ravenous : A Zombie Horror Series -Book 2 Page 8