When The Light Goes Out

by Jack Thompson

  "I"

  "Didn't know? Of course you didn't, why would I tell you?" "Maybe so I don't make an idiot out of myself!"

  "You would have done it anyway. It's one of your skills." "Oh, go die somewhere!"

  "Only if you come with me." He looked angry again.

  Maybe pissing people off was one of my skills as well.

  As my head settled down I turned from the boys hold, not wanting to be around him. Around any of them. Surprisingly, he didn't try to hold on. He just let go of my arm, and crossed his own as I started walking. He was probably calling me an imbecile in his head, and I couldn't blame him if he was. We all knew what I was about to do. We all knew it was stupid. We all knew I'd die if I really did it.

  I started to walk away again.

  "Ian's out there somewhere, okay? I need to go find him, dead or alive. I, personally, plan on living." I looked over my shoulder at the group. "Malachi, mind telling me where you're going so maybe I can bring him there when I find him?"

  "Confident, are we?" "Very."

  "Southside clinic."

  "The little fixer upper outside of town?"

  "That's the one." "All right."

  "What are you"

  "If he's alive and healthy I'll bring him with me to the clinic." I started talking before one person or another finished their question. "If he's dead, I'll come back alone." "What if he's alive but infected?"

  I couldn't help the shiver that ran through my body. "I'll kill him."

  As I turned and started walking again, there was a scream from the back of the group. It was a blood curdling sort of scream that was a strange combination of shock, and pain. Needless to say my walking didn't last very long. On instinct I turned around, wanting to help with the problem.

  The problem as it turned out was that during my little scene the entire back of the group wound up surrounded by zombies. Every last one of them missing a limb or two, and looking hungry. Before I could a step toward the difficulty teeth were tearing through flesh. People were screaming in pain. Screaming in pure agony. Hands were shooting up toward torn throats, and bodies were falling.

  I felt a rock form in the pit of my stomach. I didn't have a weapon.

  At such times one begins to wonder why ones parents conceived them in the first place. I wasn't raised to be a complete and total failure. I was relatively certain my parents didn't plan such a fate for me before I was born either. But for the record, it was maybe a dozen to negative four, with me on the losing side. Something was always going wrong, and I could never do anything about it.

  So it was only natural that the one weapon available about the ground was some kid's old scooter.

  You know the kind; where you can unhook the handle bars with the two little buttons on either side of them, and pop the entire top piece off with one good pull. I did exactly that, and immediately move to go crush some heads. I swung down at the first dead guy who even considered approaching me, and swung sideways at the next.

  Gray matter spattered everywhere.

  Half coagulated blood smacked me dead on.

  The girls who had been bitten just moments before were already rising to their feet, eyes devoid completely of all life. Sclera totally red.

  Pupil's overcome by the irises.

  I didn't know that one could change so damned quickly.

  Regardless, I hit them as well; they were zombies, no different from the hungry mob.

  The closer I got to the back of the group, thwarting the zombies plans to surround us completely, the louder the pitiful moaning got. The louder the moaning got, the more I started to think. I thought about childish things really, but thought all the same.

  I remember, as a child, after watching zombie flicks my brother and I would always begin mimicking their noises. We'd walk down the street dragging our heels with our arms limply extended just moaning like we were the walking dead. In hindsight, we'd failed at recreating the noise. The moan of a zombie is simply not something a human can replicate. I was beginning to find my childhood antics rather foolish. If I'd only known what a zombie invasion was really like back then, maybe I would have been more prepared. Maybe I wouldn't be so freaked out.

  From far away, a human can make a very convincing zombie. It all depends on the gait and the tone. But in all honesty, being so close to it, hearing and seeing it as intimately as I

  was moving through the mob, there's no way it's possible. A human can't successfully act like zombie no matter how hard they try.

  I couldn't figure out why I was analyzing such a thing, other than to get my mind off of the foul smelling clotted blood smacking against me from all angles. That really was the only explanation as I swung without a thought of who the zombies used to be. What lives they'd been looking forward to leading.

  The screaming never seemed to stop. The group just kept getting smaller and smaller. It seemed, for every person we lost, the zombies gained. This was frightening. I'd seen the young girl at the school change. It had taken a rather extensive period of time if I took into account how long she must have been there before Ian and I found her. This was taking seconds.

  I shouldn't have thought of Ian. Dammit.

  Dammit.

  "The hell?"

  There was a frightening silence save two screaming voices. Calling, frantically for help. For the bastards to put them the hell down. Looking up, I saw two girls being carried off in much the same manner that Pixie had back at the warehouse.

  "What the hell?!"

  It wasn't a pleasant thought.

  I couldn't figure out what the zombies wanted with live bodies. Other than to eat them of course. But they'd just do that on the spot, as they had been doing moments before. Jesus. There were so many, many confusing scenarios, but there was only one important question to be asked as the zombies were literally running away from us.

  "Why the hell are they taking them away?!"

  I wasn't even the one who asked, it was a frightened looking boy who I recognized from the neighborhood but couldn't give a name. Maybe names weren't even important anymore, as our group suddenly ran to an extremely low number. I counted four, not including myself.

  Malachi.

  The boy speaking.

  A girl who couldn't be any more than fourteen. And Blaz.

  Of course the zombies couldn't take him.

  That would have been too goddamned convenient.

  "Why the hell are they taking people, and walking away?" The boy demanded, looking at each of us in turn. "Why?!" The look on his face was almost insulted. As if we knew the answer, but weren't telling him just to piss him off.

  Maybe it was true.

  Maybe one of us did know.

  My vote was on Malachi as he'd been missing the longest.

  But the girl was inching closer to the frantic boy, obviously just as confused, and just as scared. As the two embraced, I decided that I needed to find Ian at that moment, or risk never seeing him again; a risk I couldn't possibly take.

  I just cared too much.

  Sometimes I could almost hate having emotions; I really should have been caring about nothing but myself. "I I"

  "You need to find Ian." I looked over at Malachi who really did look tired, and much older than he did when I first met him, maybe two days before. One day. I didn't know. I was losing track of time. "I understand."

  "Thank you."

  I turned to walk away, deciding to do so before I chickened out, but a whistle caught my attention. I barely got my head twisted to look back before I had to pivot my entire body to catch the gun that had been thrown at me.

  "Be safe."

  Easier said than done.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I remember when climbing on top of the monkey bars was nearly the coolest thing a small school kid could possibly do. You'd have to climb to the highest rung, reach up, and pull all your body weight until finally you could get your legs up there. As it turned out the only thing cooler than climbing up was jumping off when the
adults yelled at you about how dangerous it was.

  I remember when children of the opposite gender had cooties, and touching them was like getting AIDS or some other equally terrible disease (given it was an extremely poor comparison, but being children, who could fault?) The only way to fend off the dreaded cooties was to cross your fingers and get your "cootie shots." Of course the only way to get them was to administer them yourself.

  Back then thumb wars were all the rage. If you were the thumb war champion everyone was your friend. Even if they were only your friends so they could learn your techniques and use them against you. I guess even children that young were backstabbers, really.

  Numbers was a pretty cool game too.

  You got points if you were a boy who could doubledutch. Things were so easy back then.

  I never expected that nearly a lifetime later I'd wind up traveling the deserted, if not zombie infested streets of town trying to find a missing friend. I never expected that my brother would be one of the first to go, and I wouldn't even want to follow immediately after him.

  I wouldn't have expected cootie shots to be completely useless in such a situation.

  But goddamn it there I was, walking down the deserted, and occasionally zombie infested streets, cautiously calling out for Ian, because I wasn't very sure whether zombies could hear or not. Even more, I didn't know if they'd follow the noises that they did hear, given they could. Part of me was positive that they could because I'd seen them sneaking around. I could see heads poking out of doors, or windows, or alleys when I spoke.

  I couldn't find Ian. I just couldn't.

  And I couldn't figure out where he could possibly be hiding.

  "Ian!" I called out as I got a tighter grip on the scooter handle I had, making sure that the gun was still safely in my pocket. I only had six bullets, given Malachi reloaded them for me.

  Scooter handle bars don't need reloading. I was saving the gun.

  "Ian! It's me! Come out! Please, it's not safe here!"

  I neglected to inform the boy that I didn't have any refills. If I used my six shots I was royally fuck (and that was the polite way to put it.) I didn't really want to get into details. I didn't want to sit there considering exactly how the walking dead would devour my convulsing, bleeding, still half living body. Really, who wants to think about how it would feel to get flesh torn from muscle, muscle torn from bone.

  I didn't.

  The sound of it was enough to make me sick, and I'd heard that sound more than enough since the entire damned invasion started. I'm not even sure how it could be called an invasion, since it was our own people. An invasion was when an outside force came in to cause damage. At the very least the disease would be considered the invader, not the zombies themselves.

  Another thing I probably shouldn't have dwelt on.

  Maybe if I'd been paying just a little more attention to the world around me I wouldn't have been tackled to the ground. I wouldn't have had my forehead pounded against the pavement repeatedly. I say that seriously too. Whatever it was that slammed into me from behind sat on my back, grabbed the hair on the back of my head and repeatedly slammed my face against the floor.

  It was painful.

  I felt the skin break.

  I actually felt the skin tear. Jesus it hurt.

  I felt the blood begin to seep, and started panicking as the world started to go black around the edges. I couldn't help but think that I'd be completely shocked if I had any brain cells left after the assault. I would have been shocked if I was capable of any form of coherent thought.

  "G" My voice cracked along with my forehead. "Get ofoff." I said it as if the damned thing would listen to me. Which, of course, it didn't, instead it upped the intensity with which it slammed my head. With it came a pain that I wasn't entirely used to, and didn't think I could survive.

  Must've been what a concussion feels like.

  It took everything in me to reinforce my grip on the metal piece, and raise my arm, quite awkwardly to smack the creature. It took a good couple of smacks, each stealing a large bit of energy, before the creature finally let go of me. Well, it didn't really let go of me, it was more like its grip loosened and it tipped a bit to the side.

  Thankfully that was more than enough for me to be able to twist my body, and knock it off of me all together.

  Everything had a double as I turned my head to the side, looking at the horrid creature that had just been on me. Even to my questionable vision it looked as though it used to be a girl. Wearing a relatively short skirt, and a bra. The shirt was missing except for one chunk hanging over her shoulder. But, maybe that was just a flap of skin.

  I couldn't be sure.

  I did know however, that a large section of muscle was missing from her inner thigh, and her shoulder. I could see right down to the bone in both places, and felt the bile rising in my throat. Even more when she started moving, and the muscles surrounding the open wounds shifted.

  I reached for the gun.

  I couldn't beat her brains in with my head not so firmly placed on my shoulders.

  I suppose I was lucky that her movements were faulty and slow. It gave me time to steady my hand, cock the gun, and steady my hand some more. I suppose I was very lucky that the bullet hit the real zombie instead of the ghost my eyes saw, and the lady went down. But my head was still aching, and my vision was still wavering.

  I was barely able to crawl to the nearest solid surface, but after a few moments I did manage. Everything ached, and I could only hope that Ian heard the gun shot, and came running. Pray that no more zombies showed up.

  I wasn't ready to die.

  "Jesus Excel, how many times are you going to say that?" Isn't talking to yourself one of the first signs of insanity? Guess I was really getting there.

  Losing it little by little. With every brain cell.

  Regardless, I wasn't ready to die. "Okay."

  I leaned my head back against the solid surface I'd found (not entirely sure what it was, mind.) I knew I needed to gather myself. My thoughts. I needed to calm down, really calm down. The only problem was figuring out how to.

  "Okay."

  I didn't know how to. I didn't. I only wished that I had some semblance of an idea in the fucked up head on my shoulders. I only wished that I hadn't decided to run off half cocked. Wished that someone would save me.

  "Okay."

  Maybe it was a childhood issue. The idea that someone was always going to come and help, it happened in all the movies. There was always the hero who came, and pulled the struggling victim out of the fire, storm, nuclear explosion, or whatever other disaster they'd gotten themselves involved in. The people always survived.

  Just another way that Hollywood lied to me, I suppose. "Okay, I can do this."

  Even though I most definitely couldn't. "I can do this."

  Like The Little Engine That Could.

  But stupider.

  "I know I can do this."

  But I only knew it in my head.

  My heart was a completely different story.

  My heart was telling me that I couldn't even see straight. That leaving the safest position I had would be like signing my will. It would jinx me. It told me that I wasn't ready to die. That I just wasn't. It told me all that, even though the logic part of life was my brains job.

  Turns out, my brain was stubborn. "Stupid brain."

  And I didn't mean it in a nice way either. On any normal occasion I would have thumped my head a few times, this time I was sure it would knock me out – and that was a chance I

  couldn't take. There were far too many chances that I couldn't take so long as rabid dead people were running around the city.

  I stood, a shaky movement at best but my feet were flat on the floor, and my back was straight against the wall. Gate. It was a gate. I could hook my fingers in the wire quite easily, and was only slightly grateful for the handhold. I was most definitely on my feet, but I couldn't swear to how long it would last.

>   My walking was jerky and halting, but I wasn't shamed by it. Everything had a twin or two and I could feel the liquid swishing in my eyes. I could barely stand up straight, let alone walk normally. My body had the sensation of spinning around in circles on a swing set over and over again until stomach contents and floor got a rapid introduction.

  Yes, that is speaking from experience.

  It had been years since I'd even been close enough to look at a swing set, let alone spin on it, but the feeling was so real. So there. Before I could make heads or tails of the situation bile was rising in my throat and I barely got a tight enough grip to keep me from going face first into sticky stomach acid, and chunks of half digested food I simply didn't recall eating.