by M. E. Betts
Revenence: Dead Silence
PART I: THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Shari Crawford sat in a side booth, gazing out the window at the storm clouds. They were coming in from the south, and fast. Northbound, just like me. She finished the last of her grilled chicken salad, still chewing as she stood up with her tray. She took one last sip of iced tea and crossed the room to the garbage bin. Glancing at the TV in the corner, she slid the contents neatly into the receptable and placed the tray on top. The blonde pundit on the screen looked like a caricature as she hawkishly asserted, "I'm just saying, in light of all that's happened, I don't think people of Middle Eastern descent have any business in our country's politics, citizens or not. Somebody had to say it, so there, I said it!" Her eyes gleamed with unauthentic indignance, and her voice was many decibals louder than what it needed to be...she was, in fact, screeching. Shari rolled her eyes. Nearly every establishment she went into these days, whether it was the salon, the doctor's office, a restaurant...there was always some lunatic on the screen shouting at her. What ever happened to impartial, objective news? Equal and non-biased, my ass, she thought bitterly.
She escaped into the restroom, where she couldn't hear the bile spewing from the woman's mouth. She would empty her bladder, wash her hands, and get back on the road, hopefully beating the worst part of the coming storm. I might know what was going on with this storm, if they were playing a weather channel or something, and not that witch's hate speech, she thought as she finished drying her hands. She gazed into the mirror, ruffling her very curly black hair. She was a woman of twenty-seven, half Indian and half white...Anglo-Saxxon, to be exact. Her paternal ancestors were early colonial settlers, some of the first to venture westward into southern Illinois. Her name came from her mother's side. People were forever pronouncing her name "Sherry", much to her annoyance, rather than the proper pronounciation...Shari, which rhymed with "starry" or "safari". With her large, dark eyes and smooth, olive-toned skin, one might not guess she was half-white. The Indian in her shone through, and she looked very similar to what her mother did at her age. Her mother and father were both quintessential hippies back then. It was a time when a young, white man like her father wanted to date a young Hindu woman based on principle alone. Now they were more like quintessential yuppies, though not entirely sold-out. Her mom still taught art classes, and her father was a psychology professor at the local college. Shari had them to thank for her love of the arts and literature, and also her impeccable taste in music. While she liked some of the music of her own generation, her MP3 player (like a lot of her peers) was mostly filled with sixties and seventies classics. She felt there was no dismissing the quality of much of the music from back then, whether one agreed with that generation's actions and mentality or not. She suspected that countless successive generations would agree with her, and she wouldn't be surprised if a time traveler came and told her that five-hundred years from now, people were still listening to Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon.
As she left the restroom and headed for the exit, the blonde was saying, "...And I just don't understand why he won't release his birth certificate! Just release the frigggin' thing already!" as some of the corpulent diners stared mouth-breathing at the screen, nodding slowly in agreement. She suspected some people would believe anything a pundit tells them.
She glared at them in disgust on her way out. Zombies, she thought resentfully.
It was going on three o'clock when she slowed the black Nissan and pulled over onto the narrow gravel shoulder. She was still about an hour and a half from the cemetery, and about twenty minutes from the southern border of Illinois. Still, she conceded to pull over and wait until the water stopped pouring down her windshield in sheets, obscuring from her vision all that lay ahead. She turned off the ignition, and with it the air conditioning. She cracked the driver's side window to let in some fresh, cool air as the rain pummeled the passenger side. She sighed, feeling a little defeated. She was already running late, over an hour.
Well, whatever, she thought, glaring resentfully at the weather. Grandma's not going anywhere. Every year on April 22nd she made the two-hour trip from Kentucky to southern Illinois to leave a bouquet of spring flowers on the grave of Beatrice Crawford, her paternal grandmother. Since grandma's birthday fell on a Saturday this year, the Saturday before Easter Sunday, she figured she'd spend the night at her parents' house after she got done at the cemetery. They lived nearby, and she would be spending the holiday with them anyway. The flowers came out of her own yard...irises, daffodils, and some lilac. Her grandma had taught her how to tend a garden, how to propagate and care for the bulbs and shrubs. Now, as a grown woman, she made the trip every year to share with her dearly departed grandma the fruits of all she had learned. She looked at the bouquet in the backseat, a rainbow of yellows, whites, purples, and reds. All the colors gleamed vividly in contrast to the overcast sky and landscape. They were thrown together haphazardly and bound with a piece of red ribbon, and now they sat lovingly nestled between a stack of books from work and the duffel bag full of various odds and ends she'd need for the weekend she would be spending at her parents' house.
She took out her phone, dialing her mom to break the news that she might not make it in time for dinner. Her mother picked up on the third ring.
"Hey mom, it's me," Shari said, looking out the passenger side window as the rain beat down on it, coming down at an angle. "There's a storm out here, I had to pull over. I'll probably be a little late."
"Where are you?" came her mother's voice on the other end.
"Still in Kentucky, about 15 miles or so from the border."
"You're still in Kentucky? I thought you'd have been here already." She sounded reproachful.
"Yeah, well, I was running late," Shari said, trying not to speak through gritted teeth. Mom, you're so predictable, she thought. I knew you'd give me grief. "I didn't leave the house as early as I should've."
"Well, if you had, you'd have missed that storm altogether."
"I know, mother."
"Did you sleep in again?"
"Not really," Shari said, a defensive note creeping into her voice. "I woke up around eight-thirty, showered, drank a cup of coffee, and got on the road."
"Oh. Well, dinner's on the table, you know."
"I'm sorry. Don't bother waiting for me."
"No, no, it's fine. I'm sure the weather won't hold you up too much longer. Besides, your dad's not here yet, either. I was expecting him over an hour ago, and he's not answering his cell."
"You know how dad is. He probably turned his phone off before class and forgot to turn it back on."
"Yeah, maybe. Still doesn't explain him being so late, though." She sighed irritably.
Man, if mom and dad are having marital problems again, Shari thought, then I don't even want to know. "I don't know, mom. Maybe he had errands to run."
"I just don't like it when he worries me, that's all. At least you called. After I was expecting you, granted, but you called."
Beep-beep. Shari's phone was about to die.
"And on that note, I'll talk to you la--"
"Hey!" her mother interrupted on cue. She was always evading Shari's attempts to get off the phone with her. "Did you see the news?"
"No, they had some pundit on at the rest stop earlier, but I wouldn't call it news. And you know I only listen to music in the car, not news. But mom, I should let you go. My phone's--"
"There was something going on in Chicago. I was watching channel 9, and they were saying--" Beep, beep, beeeep.
"Phone's dead," Shari said quietly to herself. "Talk to you later, mom."
She twisted around to reach into the backseat and retriev
e a book from the stack of library discards. She figured she might as well read to pass the time, since the storm was showing no sign of letting up yet. Psychology & the East, the title read. She settled back in her seat and cracked open the book, smelling the sweet aroma of glue and mustiness that came from decades of sitting neglected for the most part on a remote shelf in the library. The pages were still so straight and crisp, not dog-eared like a library book that old can be, like it would be if it were a romance novel, or a gardening or cookbook. She guessed rural Kentuckians didn't often get around to reading about an old Swiss psycologists' views on Eastern philosophy.
She was about twelve pages in, reading about how the modern western psyche was both advanced, and yet primitive in its own special way. It reminded her of something she read earlier in an online comments board while she drank her coffee. I_eat_libtards_for_breakfast from Green Bay was making the assertion that "only us white eurapeon americans no how to run there country and econemy", and proud2be_a_kinook from Manitoba made the astute observation that there were still plenty of cavemen living in modern, white eurocentric culture, and that the racists deserved to live in caves throwing their feces at eachother. Although it made her chuckle, she rarely wanted to actually interact with any of them, fearing they all, both right and left, generally missed the point. Still, she often lingered, voyeur-like, in those comment boards, witnessing the perpetuallly heated debate over politics, social issues, celebrity bullshit, science, and a host of topics that most people had no real knowledge of, yet felt compelled and, indeed, entitled to offer their wisdom on. These comment boards and chat rooms and forums reminded her of what some people said hell would be like...a sea of people trying at all times to yell at the top of their lungs, not for discussion's sake, but simply for the sake of being heard... infantile, never pondering whether or not they truly had anything of importance to say. They think they're on their own island and must shout ever more loudly to be heard by somebody on the next island...yet they never realize they're not on an island at all, but rather submerged in a sea of other people, each one yelling just as hopelessly as the next. The tragic part is they're so involved in their internal world that they'll never realize all those fellow human beings are right beside them the whole time, a sea of blind and deaf people so dense, they're pressed and crowded together, but still convinced they're all alone. These thoughts of despair made her feel helpless and drowsy. She closed her eyes and before she knew it, she was dozing and dreaming. Odd dreams, something about man-eating fish...
She was jerked rudely out of her dream by the sickening sound of metal grazing metal, and it was only an instant before the recollection of the dream was lost, vanished back into the dark sea of unconsciousness from whence it came. The rain had stopped, and she looked, confounded, out her driver's side window to see a red Lincoln Navigator coasting past her. As she gazed into the other vehicle, she couldn't help but think she must still be asleep. The woman driving was being viciously attacked by a passenger. He was an adolescent boy who was, from what she could tell, sprawled across the wide center console and trying with some degree of success to tear the panic-stricken woman's throat out. The boy had a large, gaping wound on his own throat, crudely covered with a piece of cloth and held on by a handkerchief. Judging by the solid crimson hue of the material, it wasn't helping much at this point. The blood was gushing like she had never seen before outside of the movies. Shari gazed, stunned and mouth-breathing, out her windshield as the SUV passed and proceeded down the road about another eighty feet before veering across the oncoming lane and coming to rest in a six-foot ditch, nose down and tail-end up. She reached across to the passenger seat to grab her purse, fumbling in its cluttered depths. She really wished she could convince herself she was still sleeping, but the bizarre incident had wrenched her fully out of any semblance of a dream state. Her hand finally emerged, clutching her cell phone, and she started to dial 911, which was no easy task in her combination of drowsiness, confusion, and panic. As she brought up the dialing screen, she looked out her windshield again. What she saw made her stop dead with a feeling she had never before experienced...it was as if a ghost had punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. The boy was crawling out the open passenger side window, and before she knew it he was racing across the narrow two-lane highway, headed for her Nissan. Running so fast, his legs were going like windmills, torso leaned back so far she wondered if he would topple backward onto the asphalt. Eyes wide, mouth more agape than ever, she turned the key in the ignition and gunned it, tires screeching, mind racing, and narrowly avoided hitting the little psychopath. As she passed him, she saw the animal look in his eyes, heard the sickening nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of his hands as they clawed at the drivers side of her car while she sped past. She drove faster, although she doubted he would actually catch up to her, no matter how fast she had seen him running. It was more a fruitless, unconscious effort to escape the reality of what she had seen than to avoid the boy himself. As she looked in her rearview mirror, what she saw made her feel as if the phantom bully sitting beside her had socked her another one in the abdomen, and a good one this time. The mother was crawling out the same window her son had just escaped through, and began running in vain after Shari, who was now a hundred and fifty yards down the road.
She could feel her heartbeat thumping in her throat, beating with such an intensity she could feel it vibrate through her body, the blood agitating in her veins. So much for making it to mom and dad's...a voice from somewhere in her mind, her own and yet not her own...ringing up oddly, as if emanating from underwater. The voice, and the words it transmitted, scared her...and so she did what anybody would do in response to such a voice, which is to ignore it.
She leaned down quickily to pick up her phone from the passenger side floor, where it had been hastily thrown when she saw that boy crawl out of the vehicle. What the fuck? It can't be zombies, can it? God, please don't let it be zombies...it's just some weird isolated incident, right? Maybe this upper-middle class mom and her adolescent son both did some bath salts together?...but as she dialed 911 and put the phone to her ear, it dawned on her that God most likely would not oblige her rationalized pleas. There was no dispatcher to answer her call, no trusty voice on the other end to composedly assure her, "This is 911, please state your emergency." Instead, she got a busy signal. Well, I mean, that probably happens from time to time. Sometimes all their lines are being used at once...I mean, it shouldn't happen under normal circumstances, but that doesn't mean it's the fucking zombie apocalypse, does it?
She didn't know what to do at this point except continue to drive. This part of the stretch was entirely rural. She knew from making the trip so many times in the past that it would be about fifteen minutes before she even reached a small town with any type of population, and there were stretches where the farms were about five minutes apart.
She was still mulling over the fact, trying to decide if she should continue down this same road or not, when the sight ahead swiftly made up her mind for her. About two-hundred yards away, she saw wreckage of an accident that involved at least three cars, taking up the entirety of both lanes. Going around the accident was not an option. This whole stretch of road featured ditches at least six feet deep, and the road and shoulders appeared to be blocked solid up ahead with wrecked cars. She saw vague figures darting around and heard the anguished, horrified shrieks that only helped to solidify the conclusion she was so desperately trying to avoid...that This is, indeed, the fucking zombie apocalypse, princess. The voice was floating up from the suppressed judgment that she wouldn't admit to herself she'd already made. She determined that she didn't want to know what was going on down the road. She screeched to a halt and threw the car into reverse, backing up about a hundred feet to where she had seen an even more rural country road. Although this one quickly turned to gravel, she concluded that it was a better option than trying to get past the wreckage up ahead, and most likely joining them in their unintentional d
emolition derby and, undoubtedly, their human flesh feast. She figured she'd detour and most likely make her way back to the highway. She realized now more than ever that she needed to make it to her parents' house, needed to make sure they were okay and all hole up together until this bizarre predicament was under control. She made a right and hoped it was the right decision.
She was about five miles in on the gravel road and had not yet some across a single driveable crossroad to continue her detour back to the highway. There had been one to her right, but as she began to turn onto it, she saw a large sign. BRIDGE OUT, 2 MILES AHEAD. Damn it. Full steam ahead, I guess. No other choice. She drove on. She was about five miles in when she rounded a curve and spotted what she presumed to be more wreckage about a 1/2 mile ahead. She could see the flames and smoke spewing into the air, and didn't need to get any closer to guess what was going on. As she looked ahead, she saw in the distance some figures running in the direction of her car, and she knew now that she had no choice but to get off of the road. She was approaching a driveway up ahead on her left, a thick, dense treeline obscuring the view of what lay beyond. She didn't know whom or what to expect beyond that treeline, but she didn't suppose she had much to lose. She already knew there were people waiting to eat her up ahead on the road, and she still saw no crossroads whatsoever as she scanned the road ahead of her. It was either pull off the road and maybe encounter something terrifying at that farmhouse, or continue on down the road and have it as a certainty.
She slowed only as much as she had to to avoid losing control of the car and drove along the 1/4 mile-long dirt driveway. At the end, a large, two-story house sat on the left side, and a handful of outbuildings, including a barn with a corral and a few horses, on the right. There was a large wind turbine turning out behind the house. She opened up her glove compartment and took out her assault baton before venturing outside of the car. Even though it wasn't legal for her to own, it had come in handy before. An ex-boyfriend had given her some pointers on how to use the baton, and she hoped now that it was still fresh in her memory. Although she'd feel safer with a gun, she was glad to have something to defend herself with. Still, she was praying it didn't come to that. She didn't really feel prepared to go head-to-head with a zombie, baton or no baton.