by Kirk Withrow
Turning to glance up at the night sky, John was horrified to find himself nearly eye to eye with one of the infected. The morbific abomination made almost no sound as it approached John from his blind side. The ‘rain’ John felt on his arm was actually a dark, bloody fluid that slung from the thing’s decimated right arm as it reached for him. The mangled extremity flopped freely in all directions at the elbow that now functioned more like a ball and socket joint rather than the intended hinge joint. All of its fingers, save the thumb, were missing from its right hand. The remaining skin flapped wildly with each movement, slinging more foul fluid like dirty water off a mop head after cleaning the floors of a high school boy’s bathroom. The lack of groaning John realized was due to the thing’s lack of a larynx. Indeed, its entire head was supported only by its spinal column, giving the thing a striking resemblance to a stick figure drawing, albeit one drawn by a deeply troubled, sociopathic juvenile delinquent. Hollow, gurgling sounds like water flowing at the bottom of a deep well squelched out as the air and fluid within its lungs compressed with each step. Its scalp, almost completely avulsed, was flipped back where it hung from the rear of its skull like a grotesque flesh-mullet. There was a constant, rhythmic, clicking sound as its mandible worked furiously – incessantly gnashing at the air in hope of finding purchase on the meal now standing less than two feet before him.
Thoughts of the crippling uncertainty and his near demise at the hands of Mr. Hasker flashed briefly through John’s mind. Suddenly, he sidestepped and sprang into action. Pivoting, John swung the crowbar with such fury it nearly decapitated the thing as it struck its neck, slamming its jaw shut and pinning the creature against the wall. Before the momentum of the first blow had even dissipated, John was already bringing the claw hammer around from the opposite side for the quietus. With the curved end of the crowbar around the right side of the thing’s neck, the force of the hammer’s claw from the left side tore through the soft disk space of the spine as well as the spinal cord, decapitating the thing with the efficiency of a razor-sharp guillotine. Heaving under the strain of his sudden exertion, John gazed down upon the now acephalous corpse at his feet and was surprised at the paucity of emotion he felt. John marveled at the remarkable adaptability of the human brain that could allow a man whose life had been dedicated to healing, to viciously and callously behead one of his former brothers with little more than a second thought.
Meanwhile on the opposite side of the tarmac, Reams quietly and steadily crept toward the now depopulated segment of fence. Pausing briefly behind a fuel tank, he watched with surprise as he saw the deftness and ferocity with which John dispatched the thing outside of hangar four. He was relieved to see John open the hangar door and slip inside after setting off a couple road flares just outside the building.
Reams resumed his trek toward the truck, thankfully going unnoticed by the horde now focused entirely on hangar four. As he neared the fence, panic washed over him as he realized they had not considered how he was going to clear the seven-foot tall chain link fence without making noise and drawing unwanted attention. Though John had done an excellent job of capturing the attention of every infected in the vicinity with the noise and commotion he intentionally offered for that sole purpose, it was now woefully quiet on the grounds of the airport with John securely inside hangar four.
With growing alarm, he scanned the area desperately searching for a solution to his current plight. As if on cue, the previously still night air kicked up momentarily, and a moderate gale swept across the airport parking lot. Mercifully, the wind came from Reams’ left side and flowed toward the agitated mass of rot. Thankful that he was not assailed by their repugnant stench, Reams heard a faint creaking sound coming from his left, a short distance away. To his surprise, there was a previously unnoticed, partly ajar gate in the fence about fifty feet from his position. Smiling and thanking the heavens for his good fortune, Reams noticed that more than a few of the revs now amassed at the far end of the fence had turned toward him, noses held aloft as if sniffing the air. Great, it’s either I smell them or they smell me.
Advancing through the heaven-sent gate, Reams quickly sought refuge behind a black Honda Accord parked just inside the fence. With the frenzied feeling of a cornered animal, Reams again scanned his surroundings for a way out of the increasingly desperate situation. As he peered up and through the windows of the parked vehicle, he noticed several stickers plastered on the glass, partly obscuring his view. He rolled his eyes and suppressed a half-smirk as he read them. The first of the three stickers on the window depicted an obviously undead version of an otherwise cute little kitty with the words, ‘Hello Zombie,’ above it, while the second featured a cartoon zombie holding an ear of corn as it moaned, ‘Graaiiins!’ As if it wasn’t apparent, the words, ‘Vegan Zombies Love Grains,’ were written just below the picture. The last sticker was from a record label Reams had never heard of called, ‘Gravewax Records.’ A coffin and a cartoon skeleton appeared next to the name.
“You guys might just have the perfect soundtrack to this shit if anyone was still alive to buy it,” Reams mumbled softly as if talking to the sticker itself.
He still had to cross nearly the entire public lot, approximately two hundred yards. The layout of the airport, combined with the overall laziness that drove people to park as close to their intended destination as possible, meant that nearly all of the cars currently in the lot where parked on the far side of the lot, offering Reams very little cover between his current position and his destination. Though the collective groan of the infected was still a low drone in the distance, he knew their attention was shifting, and he knew the sound would steadily intensify as they lumbered toward the prospect of warm flesh—his flesh. With a sense of despair and hopelessness encroaching like darkness on the heels of the setting sun, Reams realized that in their haste the two had not made any contingency plans in the event that either of them was unable to complete their objectives. The big man thought of John stuck inside hangar four with no supplies waiting for him to drive up in the truck, unaware that he was being mercilessly devoured by throngs of revs just outside.
With this thought, an intense resolve materialized deep within his soul. He would be there with the truck. He would not let John down. He would not let John end up like Cedric. Just as Reams was about to stand and begin his perilous dash toward the truck, he heard an intense, rhythmic banging sound coming from the direction of hangar four.
“I could almost kiss that man,” Reams muttered to himself as he watched the mass of revs turn back to explore this new and closer disturbance.
The rev nearest to Reams’ position was less than twenty feet away, and he noticed with sadness that the carious thing was Max – the night guard at the small airport. Though tattered, he still wore his blue uniform and as well as his hat. Reams could tell his left leg had suffered massive trauma and could see that his ability to ambulate was seriously impaired as a result. The brief sadness Reams felt when he thought of the Max he had known was eclipsed when he noticed the beautiful, black beavertail grip nestled securely in a holster on the right side of his service belt. An idea came to Reams, and almost before it completely materialized in his mind, he was up and taking action.
As the big man eased out from behind the woefully small vehicle, he slipped out of the thick canvas work coat he procured from the mechanic shop. With the grace of a ballet dancer executing a well-rehearsed pirouette, Reams sidled up behind the thing that had been Max, threw the thick coat over its dappled, bald head, and snapped its neck with such speed and brutality that the thing never had time to realize that food was so close. Lowering the now exanimate corpse to the ground, Reams popped the thumb break on the holster and slid the pistol out. He grabbed two spare magazines that looked to be full and stuffed them into his pocket as well. After checking the load on the magazine seated in the pistol, he tucked the weapon into his waistband. “Thanks, brother. I’m sorry this happened to you. You were a good man, Max, but I d
on’t think this plague gives a shit who you are,” Reams said in a low respectful tone.
* * *
Slipping quietly into the dark hangar, John quickly secured the door behind him. He felt like he had entered a mausoleum as the reverberations of sound within the hollow, expansive room bounced and echoed all around him, making the even the smallest noise seem immense and ear-splitting. As he turned his knee popped, sounding more like a gunshot than any noise of human origin. He realized with some relief that such amplification would not discriminate and felt some degree of comfort after not hearing any sounds of reply from deeper within the foreboding building.
Now all he had to do was wait; Reams would signal his approach with a single short blast of his horn when he neared the back of the building. Switching on his flashlight, John proceeded to inspect his surroundings, and to chart his course to the back of the building. As he scanned the room he noticed the monotonous droning that was the steady chorus of the infected seemed to be diminishing. Listening more intently he realized with alarm that the sound of the infected mass outside wasn’t fading per se, but rather changing direction. Knowing that persistence was a defining characteristic of the revs, his thoughts immediately shifted to Reams when he wondered what could have captured their attention in his absence.
Before realizing what he was doing, John ran to the heavy rollup door on the hangar and commenced banging on it unforgivingly with the crowbar. Inside the closed space the noise was deafening, effectively drowning out all other sound, and leaving John’s ears with the muted ringing one would experience for days after enduring a loud rock concert. The action had the desired effect, however, as the entire horde turned en bloc back toward the sound coming from within hangar four. After a minute or so, John paused to listen. As his hearing slowly returned, he was relieved to hear that the sound of the infected outside was again escalating. With a satisfied smile plastered across his face, he turned and started across the dark, cavernous room toward the back of the building.
* * *
Rounding the small car, Reams gathered up the supplies he liberated from the hangar and moved across the expanse of the parking lot toward his truck. The weight of the Springfield XD40 and two full spare magazines felt reassuring to the big man as he trudged along under his significant burden. Reams felt a sense of relief as he slipped around the wooden arm of the employee parking lot gate and approached the bed of his truck. After securely placing the water jug and duffel bag in the bed of his truck, he moved around to the driver’s side door. The jingling of his keys sounded like the crashing cymbals of a drum kit against the utter silence engulfing the night air.
A strident snarl followed by the horrific gnashing of teeth erupted from directly behind him. The surge of adrenaline that assaulted his body threatened to cause his heart to explode as he whirled around, simultaneously trying to liberate the pistol from his waistband. Less than two feet away from him was a former young lady with no obvious signs of injury. Her cloudy eyes, gnashing mandible, and the ferocious intensity of her wild, flailing movements left no doubt she was infected, and made her look more like a starving, feral animal than anything previously human. She snarled and snapped at him with brutal voracity, but much to the Reams’ relief, she remained securely belted into the driver’s seat of her eternally parked car. As the adrenaline surge coursing through his veins ebbed and receded, he felt a slight pity for the abomination before him, oblivious to the simple restraint so cruelly preventing her union with the meal right in front of her. Having seen no visible sign of bites or injuries, Reams wondered how the woman had become infected. The implications were far too frightening to consider.
Without turning his back on the monster, Reams opened the driver’s side door and eased into the truck.
* * *
John heard the sickening wet thud of a corpulent, bloody hand contacting the glass pane in front of him. His eyes concurrently registered the fact that the huge, bloated hand was attached to an abdominous thing that had once been a man weighing at least three hundred pounds. Its shirt was torn open and now managed to cling to its precarious position by a lone button at the neck, making it look like a cape on some obese superhero. Waves of skin flowing upon rivers of adipose combined with the unfaltering effect of gravity, giving the appearance of a flesh waterfall cascading down off the mountain of a man. John briefly wondered if the thing before him suffered the same pained, lumbering waddle the former man undoubtedly possessed in life, and if there was even any noticeable difference in his gait, pre- and post-mortem.
Upon recognizing the live prey on the other side of the glass, the obese monster pulled back its plump, mangled lips revealing broken, discolored teeth that reminded John of those of a meth addict. The repulsed look filling John’s eyes intensified as he watched dark, viscous drivel stretch lazily from the thing’s gaping maw to the decaying wattle dangling just below its innumerable chins. The languid sound emanating from the monster’s fetid mouth came out as a strained, guttural groan, as though all the air from its last dying breath was being mercilessly compressed – forced out by the heft of its chest wall like the bellows of a concertina in the gargantuan hands of a giant.
John stood frozen with indecision and disgust as he gazed at the morbidly obese atrocity. Having heard no noise and seen no movement inside the hangar, he was not prepared for such an encounter. Quickly scanning the area, he realized the only way out the back of the hangar was a door located about ten feet behind the fat man-mountain. Steeling his nerves, John quietly muttered, “You either deal with him or he’ll deal with you – it’s that simple.”
John shined his light around the small room that was largely obscured by the imposing fat man. He was relieved when he saw no other danger lurking in the room but also concerned by the suboptimal view he was afforded. He stood eye-to-eye with the thing, separated only by a plate of reinforced glass. The door leading into the room was about six feet to his left. John could see a nearly full water cooler, a long folding table, and a couple small metal chairs between the thing and the door. At that moment, John heard a crack that he swore was gunfire followed by what sounded like a train horn, though the pulses from the horn seemed stationary and far too short and rhythmic to be actually coming from a train.
With no time to dwell on the new noise, John backed away from the window, keeping his eyes locked on those of the monster to ensure it didn’t lose interest. The massive creature stood with its frosted eyes fixed on the spot where John disappeared into the darkness. Remaining obscured in the shadows, he slowly crept to the left toward the door, careful to avoid drawing the thing’s attention. When he was immediately opposite the door he crouched down and inched forward out of the shadows. The adipose thing on the other side of the glass did not notice John’s slow, deliberate movements as he reached for the doorknob. With sweat beading on his brow, he cautiously turned the knob until it made the telltale click indicating the deadlatch had disengaged. Echoing through the immense structure, the noise was like a firecracker in John’s ears. On the other side of the door John heard the unmistakable sound of chair legs sliding on the floor. Assuming the monstrosity had shifted his attention toward the sound of the doorknob, John stood from his half-crouched position and pummeled through the door like a battering ram.
The fat thing let out a stertorous gurgle as it lumbered forward. John – being both uninfected and about half of his pursuer’s weight – was already halfway around the folding table. Seeing this, the huge man made an awkward attempt to redirect his movement toward John’s new position. Even before the infection this would have likely proven an impossible feat for the morbidly obese man, and combined with the unavoidable effects of gravity, his hulking body listed dangerously to the right. He teetered in a futile effort to maintain balance before crashing down hard onto the table. The impact caused the table legs on one side to buckle, forcing the folding table into the wall and pinning John’s thighs in the process. The searing pain John felt in his legs was almost unbearabl
e, and he was certain his femurs were shattered. He doubted he would be able gain enough leverage to extricate his legs from behind the table with the monster’s full weight pressed against it. As he watched the fat thing’s hopeless efforts to get back to his feet, he didn’t see how it would be possible for the creature to get upright again. Even amid the pain taunting him with threats of unconsciousness, he could not help but picture Jabba the Hut lying there on the ground. De wanna wanga? Nay Jabba no babba.
John struggled feverishly against the table, trying desperately to free his legs as he felt the unmistakable sensation of someone grabbing his ankle. He wondered how Reams had known he needed help. He was supposed to stay in the truck and wait for me. Looking down, his confusion was instantly erased as he stared into the single dead eye of a creature even more horrific than the fat bastard. Its ensanguined face snarled and contorted as it pulled its upper body along the floor toward him. The intestines that spilled from the severed thing were swollen to the size of liverwurst, leaving a colubrine trail that led back to its lower body about ten feet away. The previously unnoticed cupric odor of the blood coating the floor – combined with that of the engorged, desiccating viscera – assaulted John’s senses, adding nearly uncontrollable nausea to the milieu of unpleasant sensations he was struggling to control. As the half-man inched closer, it managed to improve its grasp on John’s ankle with its right hand. Startled by the strength of its grip, he watched in stunned horror as the thing pulled itself forward with more speed than John thought possible.