by TW Brown
In a flash, Marshawn was up beside me. Neil was busy shutting the doors on the car when I turned to see where he was and why he had still not joined us.
“What the hell?” Marshawn called to the man who was acting like he had all the time in the world despite the fact that the leading edge of the zombie mob was now maybe sixty or so yards away.
“I had to close the doors. You guys left everything open,” he shouted back.
“Who cares about if the doors are open or closed?” I snapped, starting to regret my efforts to break him out of his daze.
“That’s all good until a zombie gets inside the car and ends up hitting the switches that shut off the siren. We came out here with a purpose, remember?” Neil glanced over at the oncoming zombies and slammed his door before jogging to the wall.
He started to struggle as he tried to get himself up, and both Marshawn and I leaned down, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him up to us. He gave a nod and mumbled something that might’ve been thanks.
“How we gonna get over that barbed wire without cutting ourselves to crap?” he asked now that he was between Marshawn and me.
Marshawn stripped off his jacket and threw it up and over the three strands of rusty barbed wire and started climbing the fence. I followed suit and scrambled up. I still felt the barbs poking me through the material, but it was better than ripping myself open on it and coming down with some sort of infection. It would really suck if that ended up killing me considering we didn’t have any kind of antibiotics or any other sort of medication for that matter. That thought made me make a note to address that once we got back to the group.
Now that we were up and over, I took a look around. We were on a street that ran parallel to the interstate. It was running along the backside of what looked to be just another neighborhood.
“We need to get out of sight first,” Marshawn yelled as Neil just decided he was going to start jogging along this road back towards the compound.
He pulled up and turned back, a sheepish expression on his face. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something very…off about Neil. It was as if he’d just turned into the world’s biggest idiot.
I started for the thick growth that had once probably acted as a noise barrier for the people living so close to the interstate. I pushed through to the other side and stopped so suddenly that Marshawn bumped into me.
“What the hell?” he snarled, and then shut his mouth so quick that I heard his teeth click.
“We aren’t catching any breaks,” I whispered.
What I’d mistook for a neighborhood was actually a sprawling apartment complex. The undead were all over the place. In singles and small groups they wandered about, doing whatever it is that zombies do when they aren’t massing up into armies or ripping people apart.
In the mix were a handful of dogs varying from those annoying little balls of fur that yip at everything that moves to a German Shepherd that had its face buried in something furry. It could’ve been another dog or perhaps a cat, but its body was doing me the favor of blocking the view.
“Yo quiero braaiiins,” Marshawn hissed in my ear as he pointed to a Chihuahua that was dragging most of its insides along behind it from the nasty rip in its belly.
I turned and saw a big, stupid grin on his face. For whatever reason…maybe it was all the piled-on stress, or perhaps I was about to join Neil in the mental checkout lane. Whatever the reason, I had to cover my mouth with my hands as a snorting laugh burst from me.
I turned back to the apartment complex so fast I felt something pop in my neck. Sure enough, a lone zombie that had been trudging along towards who-knows-where had stopped and was now turning slowly to orient on our general direction.
“It isn’t like we have a lot of choices,” I said with a shrug as I pulled my machete free.
“With them spread out like this, I think we can get to the other side of this place.” Marshawn drew a blade as well.
Neil didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking at the two of us like we’d both sprouted a second head. I was done babysitting him. Whatever was going on in his mind was officially his problem. I’d done all I could…or would.
I pushed through the hedge and came at the zombie with a sidearm swing. My blade dug into the temple and made it about a quarter of the way through the skull. I might’ve been able to actually cleave all the way through if I was using my good arm, but I’d done enough, and the zombie dropped to the ground as I yanked back to pull my weapon free.
Looking around, there didn’t seem to be any of the other zombies taking notice. I scurried to the first of the several vehicles still occupying parking spots in a long, covered section of the parking lot. We’d actually come out in almost the perfect location by the looks of things. We were on the edge of the complex and had a straight shot to a street at the end of this long drive.
I started towards the next car, doing my best to be quiet as possible. When I reached it, I glanced back to see Marshawn right on my heels. What I didn’t see was Neil. I pushed that out of my mind and returned to concentrating on what was important: getting the hell out of here.
I was finally at the end of the first bank of apartments. From the looks of the scene, there were at least two more buildings before we would be free of this place. I could see movement in the windows and on some of the balconies, but nothing to indicate there were any survivors here.
I was halfway between an old beater of a car and what I always considered a penile-compensation truck. The wheels on the thing were just a shade smaller than what you would find on a monster truck and it had fairly impressive lift kit installed. There was no way a person got into that beast without a stepladder.
The sound of a baby’s cry froze me in my tracks. It wasn’t the sound as much as it was the proximity. It was coming from the general area of the pickup truck.
A moment later, what was left of a woman crawled out from under the white truck. Her face was smeared with fresh blood that dripped from her chin in thick, red droplets that I swear I could hear hitting the pavement. She was wearing the remnants of a blue tank top, the tattered meat of her left breast clearly visible. Her jeans had numerous rips and tears, most of them highlighted by the dark stains of dried blood. She had long, dark hair that hung down to mask much of her face, but some of it was clumped to her cheeks from the blood of what had to be a recent kill.
She opened her mouth as her eyes locked on me and I cringed as that awful sound carved its way into my ears. I was just about to commit to hurrying over and finishing it before it could get to its feet, or, God forbid, make that sound again.
I had come up from a full crouch to just slightly bent at the waist and broke into a fast jog when another head popped out from behind the rear driver’s side wheel. What I saw caused me to trip, fall, and land hard on my stomach. That fall also caused me to lose my grip of my machete which went clattering away…and right under the truck where it came to a stop.
It looked like one of those cute little Australian Shepherds. The only problem with this cute little pup was that it had been bitten into. One of its little ears was literally dangling on the ground by a strip of gore-soaked flesh and fur. Its lips were curled back as it regarded me with glazed over eyes shot full of those giveaway dark tracers.
I wasn’t sure what I’d eaten last, but I felt it rise up to the back of my throat. The slightest bit of the bile-laced mixture coated my esophagus with its molten slurry and I forced the rest down before I spewed all over myself.
A dark figure shot past me and there was a solid ‘THUNK’ as a heavy blade cleaved the woman’s skull almost into two perfect halves. The figure made a slight adjustment and then stabbed the point of the blade into the open mouth of the little pup that was just starting to make a horridly low moan that was very out of place for such a tiny thing.
“C’mon, Evan, we gotta move.”
I looked up, my brain still expecting Marshawn. Only, it was Neil who stared down at
me with wide eyes. I got up just as Marshawn reached me and saw that a handful of the undead had obviously taken notice of our presence.
We jogged now, no longer trying to go for stealth. Once we reached the street, we paused to take a breath and look around. I knew the general direction we needed to go, and there didn’t seem to be anything stumbling around in that area.
“You okay, Neil?” Marshawn asked, sounding more than a tad bit skeptical.
“Nope. Not at all,” he said. And with that very simple and to-the-point answer, he started up the street.
I looked at Marshawn and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow that once again reminded me of The Rock. After a few seconds, we both shrugged and jogged to catch up.
I didn’t know about Marshawn, but I just couldn’t let that answer go without some sort of follow-up question. “Are you going to trip offline on us again?”
“I don’t know,” Neil answered with a shrug as he continued walking without glancing at either of us as we came up on both sides of him.
“What made you move your butt the last time?” I pressed.
“Don’t know.”
Our pace was actually pretty quick as we made like Olympic speed-walkers down the middle of an empty street that the sign we passed proclaimed as Southeast Stevens Road. We reached the first intersection and I skidded to a halt. Marshawn glanced back at me, then followed my gaze.
Mt. Scott Elementary School sat just across the intersection and to our left. From the looks, a group of people had obviously tried to seek refuge here. There were a cluster of cars in the parking lot; none of them parked as much as simply abandoned.
The windows I could see had all been busted and there were dark smears on the exterior brick walls all around the busted windows. While this place might be an elementary school, that didn’t necessarily mean that there would be children here. Right?
Neil had not slowed down one iota, and was already across the intersection and still moving fast along Stevens Road. Nothing came pouring out of the school, and so Marshawn and I broke into a jog to catch up.
As we hurried along, I actually saw more movement in a few of the houses on our right than I did from the school which, as we passed by, had obviously been the scene of something horrific. The main entrance looked to have been absolutely destroyed. There was not a single door or pane of glass still intact, and even in the shadows of the awning, I could see dark stains everywhere.
One of the houses to our right had caught fire and most of it was now just blackened ruins, but there was one window that looked completely untouched by the fire. The outer façade around it was free of any of the dark smudges of the fire. Standing in that one window was what looked like an elderly woman.
As that block faded behind us, I had to convince myself that the woman had to have been a zombie. I didn’t know why she was just standing there, but I didn’t have the mental energy to give her much more thought.
We were now plunging into the heart of a residential neighborhood. I didn’t like it, but as we walk/jogged through the next intersection, I could see that we were a little above the interstate in elevation. I wanted to cry at what I saw. From all indications, it looked like our plan had worked. From what I could see, the zombies were still moving away from our people and the little oasis we were currently calling home. It hadn’t all been for nothing.
On the bad side, I could still hear the low thrum of a multitude of moans even from a few blocks away. It chilled me to the core. So many zombies; that could only mean that many people had perished.
“How far?” Marshawn asked as we plunged into a residential area that seemed to be plucked from the very bowels of hell.
“We got a ways to go,” I huffed.
Suddenly, Neil stopped. He was about a half a block in front of us and just about to vanish around the bend in the road. At this point I could not even hazard a guess as to why he’d stopped. For all I knew, his brain simply shut down again and he’d stopped moving like a car that ran out of gas.
I reached him just ahead of Marshawn and instantly knew why he’d stopped.
“Fuck me,” Marshawn whispered.
3
Liar
Neil continued to keep walking. Marshawn and I both had the same idea, but chose different routes. Basically, I broke right, and he went left. I dove into the hedges that lined the front of an average looking home and stayed as low as I could as I made a beeline for the far side of the house.
There was a tall wooden fence separating the front and back yards. I was really hoping there were no nasty surprises waiting on the other side, but I would take zombies—dog or human versions—versus a school bus with a machine gun mounted on top.
That meant that Don Evans was close, if not on that very bus that prowled down the street up ahead and coming our way. I’d hoped that Don and his people had gone farther away. To be honest, I hadn’t thought for a moment that I had the chance of running into him on this little foray.
As I lifted the latch and slipped through the gate, I realized that Neil had not made any attempt to hide. He hadn’t gone left or right. He’d kept walking straight into the jaws of the lion. I hunched in on myself and waited for the chatter of the machine gun that would signal him being ripped to shreds.
“Jesus…took you long enough!” a familiar voice shouted. “You were supposed to show up as soon as I activated the siren. I thought we had that all worked out.”
I felt my stomach turn, and it had nothing to do with the stench of the undead—which, fortunately, this yard was blessedly clear of. I could not be hearing what I thought I was hearing. There was no way.
“Yeah, well you were supposed to take them north,” the haunting baritone of Don Evans shouted back. “You cut us off and I had to circle way the fuck around. As it was, there was no way to get to you. Did you see the size of that other herd?”
“Did my flare help at all?” Neil called back.
“I found you, didn’t I?” Don snorted.
“Yeah, well I had both of them following me, but they obviously saw you. I thought you were going to park someplace and wait for us to pass by.”
“I was just about to do that. I didn’t realize you were so close.”
“Yeah, well the nigger took off to the right. That piece of shit Evan went left…so they are both on their own.”
I heard the sound of squealing brakes from way too close. I’d been sitting here listening the whole time when I should’ve been running for my life. It was time to remedy that. I just had to hope that Marshawn was already moving.
So much for us being able to stay at that house. Once again, it wasn’t zombies that proved to be the problem. It was the living.
Part of me was really mad at myself for not having seen this guy for what he was. Another part of me was laughing at the stereotypical “zombie fiction bad guy” that had been waving a flag in front of me these past few days.
“I’ll go after Evan,” Neil snorted. “I know how bad you want to deal with that other guy.”
“You said he went to the right?” Don shouted over the sound of the bus revving up.
I heard a big commotion and had to imagine that he was probably driving through somebody’s yard. It hadn’t been long enough, and spring was not yet in full swing, so most of the yards were just reaching that point where everybody would be waiting for that first sunny weekend to go out and mow, plant those first flowers in their yard, and spruce things up outside.
This was one of those neighborhoods that I imagined had dutiful husbands pushing their mowers and waving to each other as the wives were using tiny hand shovels to dig holes where the fresh flowers would go, and everybody had a compost tumbler. Kids probably rode bikes up and down the street and played basketball in the driveway.
I knew I had to get moving, but part of me just wanted to quit running. It seemed that I was falling from one dire situation to the next. I was tired. Tired of running. Tired of seeing the dregs of humanity run roughshod over the
clinging remnants of civilization. Just plain tired.
But I was not about to go out this way at the hands of some piece of crap like Neil Pearson. I forced myself to trudge across the yard and was almost to the fence that separated this yard from the one behind it when I heard the meaty slap of a hand on glass.
I already knew what I would see before my head instinctively craned around to see the zombie I’d been certain would be standing at the sliding glass back door of this house. I was only partially correct.
Staring out at me were three zombie children that I guessed had to be between the ages of maybe three and twelve. There were two boys and a little girl.
That one glimpse practically seared itself into my head. Once again, I found myself struck weak at the horror of what might’ve played out here.
The little girl, and youngest of the trio, had my heart ripping in half as that single glimpse of her made itself the new star of my nightmares. She was a teeny little blonde-haired thing. Both of her arms were gone as if maybe she’d been part of some hellish tug-o-war. Her sides were both blackened from all the blood I am sure gushed from where her tiny arms had been literally ripped from the sockets. My only hope was that it had happened in death, because the alternative would be too horrific to consider.
The two boys, both older, had dark stains around their mouths. That was the other detail that stood out. Only the little girl’s face was free of any signs that she’d fed. One of the boys, the oldest of the pair based on just looking at them, had his belly torn open and large spools of his insides dangling. They had dried somewhat over time and now looked more like black cords than anything else.
The smaller of the two boys had most of his throat ripped out. I was wondering where the parents might be and if perhaps they’d been the ones to attack their children and turn them.
All of that raced through my head in a matter of just a couple of seconds as I reached the back fence. There was a swing set close enough that I was able to climb up on it and make it over the top of the wooden fence. My feet touched down in the neighboring yard when I heard a soft moan just to my left.