by Kirk Withrow
Without pause, the creature used the forward momentum to bring its bared teeth toward John’s entrapped leg. Seconds before it sank its shattered teeth into his leg, John became aware of the weight in his left hand. He swung the crowbar down toward the monster’s head, making contact with its jaw just inside its open mouth. There was a sickening crack as the force fractured its mandible right below the joint on each side. The half-man tried in vain to claim the meal it had worked so hard for, but it no longer possessed any control over its lower jaw. Disgusted, John watched as it tried to gnaw at his leg in much the same way an edentulous person would try in vain to eat a crisp apple. As its viscid tongue worked furiously to gain purchase on his leg, the feculent odor of its breath combined with the metallic smell of blood. The cumulative effect proved too much for John to handle, and he heaved the bile from his stomach. Wiping the bitter residue from his mouth, he turned painfully and, with his right hand, brought the claw hammer down onto the thing’s head with a resonant thump. He felt the grip around his ankle go slack as the groping tongue briefly stiffened against his leg before going limp. With that last sensation, John leaned forward and vomited once more.
* * *
Sliding the key into the ignition, Reams was relieved when the truck engine turned over and roared to life effortlessly. “I love Toyota,” he exclaimed as he shifted the truck into gear. With the power out, he intended to simply smash through the wooden arm of the parking lot gate. As he snaked through the small lot toward the gate he saw the pristine, red late model Mazda RX-7 that had been the pride and joy of Manuel, a guy who worked in the other maintenance shop at the airport. Reams thought of all the times Manuel boasted to him about the car, before his face darkened considerably with the images of the last time he saw Manuel. The vile images of a still recognizable Manuel pursuing and attacking the fleeing family on the opposite side of the airport caused Reams to shudder involuntarily. Though the man had ultimately been able to protect his family and dispatch the monster Manuel had become, he suffered several scratch and bite wounds in the process. What followed was unthinkable, and Reams shuddered again as he fought to avoid recounting those events.
With steady pressure on the truck’s accelerator, Reams picked up speed as he raced toward the gate at the mouth of the parking lot. A loud, splintering crash followed as the nearly 2-ton vehicle exploded through the gate, sending wood splinters flying in all directions. The tires screeched as Reams violently jerked the steering wheel to the left, barely missing a planter containing a moderate sized Bradford Pear tree. He slammed the brakes in an effort to regain control of the truck as it careened dangerously close to a taxicab waiting to collect arriving passengers who would never come. The taxi driver sat motionless in the driver’s seat, head back as if sleeping while he waited. Reams knew, however, that the man was not likely sleeping.
Recoiling off the steering wheel, Reams raised his head and noticed he had captured the complete attention of the small horde congregated just outside hangar four. The mass of infected shifted toward him for the second time, and he cursed yet another unanticipated turn of events. Some of them are probably close enough to intercept John coming out of the hangar! The sense of panic blossoming within him dissipated slightly when he caught sight of the shiny red RX-7 in his rearview mirror. Reams recalled Manuel’s giddy excitement as he described his most recent modification to his baby—an air horn procured from a locomotive that he hooked to his car alarm. Manuel mounted an air compressor and tank to power the thing, and he swore it could be heard for miles. At the time Reams could have cared less about the latest obsessive addition to the already excessive car, but now as he stared back at her sorrowfully, he thought it might just save his ass.
Glancing around partly to gauge the distance of the slow, shambling horde and partly to ensure Manuel wasn’t back from the truly dead to witness what he was about to do, he drew the pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round. Leaning out the window, he took aim at the impossibly clean windshield of the Mazda and, for the briefest moment before he pulled the trigger, he felt a tinge of guilt as if he were about to shoot Manuel’s family dog. The combined pop of the gun blast and the windshield shattering seemed almost silent compared to the unbelievably loud bleating of the train horn that immediately followed. Startled by the intensity of the sound, Reams threw the truck into drive and peeled off toward the rear of the hangar. He was relieved to see the trajectory of the horde shift toward the call of the injured sports car. They did not even seem to notice the departure of the truck that originally captured their attention. As Reams pulled up behind hangar four, the two short, staccato beeps of his woefully underpowered truck horn were lost beneath the ear-splitting bellowing of the train horn.
* * *
With no small amount of effort, John managed to use the crowbar as a fulcrum to shift the weight of the struggling fat man slightly. It proved to be just enough to allow him to move the table thereby freeing his legs. His bruised quadriceps protested every movement, and he nearly fell as he staggered away from the ungodly scene. As John neared the door, being mindful to avoid ensnarement by the tripwire maze of innards strewn across the floor, the fat man let out another guttural grunt that sounded nearly identical to a pig’s snort. Exhausted and hurting, John fell into the door jam and turned to cast another weary glance at the abomination on the floor. Its fat extremities wriggled and writhed amid the mound of flesh that effectively pinned them to the ground. For the briefest of moments, John thought he could see pleading in its eyes, not necessarily pleading for him, but rather pleading for his help. He wondered if the fat currently imprisoning the thing would eventually atrophy—withering away and affording the obese monster the luxury of bipedal locomotion once again. Or was it doomed to spend the rest of its days, however many that may be, pinned to the floor by its own bulk?
Leaving with no expectation of returning, John realized his rhetorical question was one that would remain unanswered. Without another thought, he turned, opened the door, and limped out into the night air.
The two wayward survivors pulled away from the hell they had endured at the airport, both collectively and individually, and headed north on U.S. 19 toward John’s house. Their course would take them near the bridge where Reams’ brother Cedric was when they last spoke. John and Reams briefly recapped the events of their respective experiences during the escape before falling silent. Both men glossed over many of the details, neither willing to relive the horrible events themselves nor to force the other man to do so.
In general, the passing landscape did not bear the same telltale scars of destruction they witnessed at the airport. Aside from a couple of abandoned vehicles along the road, the stretch of rural intrastate just outside the airport seemed otherwise unmarred by the nightmarish plague.
Quietly hopeful, Reams wondered whether this might mean that the authorities experienced some measure of success in their efforts to contain the plague.
John, on the other hand, was silently thankful that this stretch of intrastate ran through a fairly rural, unpopulated area, knowing this likely meant less chance of encountering large numbers of infected. He was, however, simultaneously fearful about what they might find in a few short miles when they entered the city.
For the time being, within the relative safety of the truck cab, the two survivors did not speak. Instead, both men were content to reflect on their own divergent thoughts as they traversed the dark, still pavement – devoid of all traces of life and death. The combined stress, as well as the impossibility of what they had weathered at the airport, left them both mentally and physically exhausted and, unfortunately, oblivious to the maelstrom into which they were about plunge headlong.
What neither of them knew was that when the police barricade was set up near the bridge a couple of miles away in a futile attempt to curtail travel and quarantine possible infected, a makeshift containment center was also erected nearby. The ‘center,’ which was actually little more than a haphazardly constru
cted enclosure comprised of portable sections of chain link fence with a few tents and awnings inside, had been hurriedly constructed well before the local authorities had any real idea of the severity of the tempest of death swirling down upon them. As ordered, the deputies manning the barricade separated those individuals showing any signs of attack or injury and redirected them to the center. The medical personnel within, who looked over-prepared to head into the next African hot zone to investigate an Ebola outbreak, dutifully tended to their injuries as they listened to what they were certain were the psychotic ramblings of individuals affected by some sort of chemical exposure. Amongst themselves, they decided that the violent tales of vicious attacks and even cannibalism could be explained no other way.
Within hours the small makeshift structure was well over its intended capacity, with over two hundred ‘injured’ travelers already diverted to the enclosure. The overcrowding, mixed with the overall feeling of panicked chaos flowing through the enclosure like an electric current, made the ensuing attacks within even more difficult to detect and, thus, to avoid. By the time Cedric spoke to his brother from the bridge via cellphone, nearly every occupant of the ill-fated center was already infected and shambling about like morbific vectors of the plague of Hell itself.
As the numbers of infected swelled within the confines of the containment center, the proximity of so many uninfected travelers incited a veritable feeding frenzy. The hastily constructed and woefully inadequate chain link walls readily buckled under the pressure of those hungrily trying to reach the buffet parading past them. Carnage beset carnage as the malefic plague multiplied exponentially in mere minutes. When no more uninfected remained, the horde – now over three hundred strong – continued to mill about with the apparent randomness of leaves blowing down the sidewalk under the force of a gentle breeze. It was not until a terrific high-pitched sound punctuated the night sky, shattering the fragile silence and garnering the attention of all of the infected for miles, that the mass began to move with renewed purpose. With a level of synchronization that seemed almost rehearsed, the mass turned in unison and began to trudge toward the sound they all would have recognized as a train horn before the infection erased such memories from their diseased brains.
Now, as the early morning sun climbed slowly above the distant horizon and the first rays of pre-dawn light peeked through the darkness like a nosy neighbor peering through the blinds, the tenebrific storm ahead of them continued to build steam. It fed on all in its path, and at present was on a collision course with the fleeing truck of the unaware men.
Chapter 14
October 3, 2015
Reams drove cautiously, keeping his speed below thirty miles per hour, both to minimize vehicle noise and to allow ample time for surveillance of the environment around them. They would continue on this road for approximately thirteen miles at which time they would turn west and drive an additional four miles into the town. For now, the predominately rural landscape remained mercifully quiet as the two survivors drove in silence. A few miles before the bridge where the police barricade had been established was the interstate junction that would take them toward the city.
“It would probably be best to pass the interstate and take the back roads running parallel between it and the Tombigbee River. If what your brother said was true, then larger roads like the interstate are likely to be impassable snarls of traffic,” said John.
Though Reams desperately wanted to know what happened to Cedric, he nodded his head in agreement.
About five miles north of the airport, they encountered the first hard sign that hinted at how the outside world was faring. An abandoned minivan with all four doors ajar sat motionless with various items strewn across the surrounding pavement as though it had been disemboweled. Its occupants were nowhere in sight, and both men had an uneasy feeling about the implications of that fact. The outside of the silver Dodge Caravan was smeared with blood along the driver’s side, and the windows were so caked with the blood and dirt of hundreds of ghoulish handprints that you could not see inside the van without the doors open. After a brief survey of the scene from the safety of the truck cab, the two agreed there was no compelling reason to investigate the vehicle any further. Had John happened upon such a scene just twenty-four hours ago, he would have been out of the vehicle in an instant, trying desperately to help anyone injured, and frantically calling for the assistance of emergency services. Today, he did little more than glance around the scene before straightening in his seat without another thought on the matter. With this realization, a tear nearly broke free as he considered how quickly he had changed. Indeed, the world changed, and he hoped it was not a sign of things to come.
Along the next few miles of rural road beyond the doomed minivan, they encountered several more vehicles in similar states—broken and abandoned. They saw no people, living or otherwise, with any of the vehicles that were now the sole, unspeaking witnesses to the horrors that occurred in their midst. The lack of conversation, and the sense of safety and security afforded by the truck, caused John’s thoughts to shift from his immediate survival to his family and their survival. The last conversation he had with his wife and daughter replayed verbatim in his mind as he tried think past it to focus on better times. Abruptly, he shifted to reach into his back pocket, and retrieved his wallet containing a single small, crinkled, and dog-eared photograph amidst the other contents. John couldn’t help but smile as he recalled how his wife had chided him about the photograph, saying, “What, are we still in the ’90s? Who carries photos in their wallet?” as she pointed to her iPhone with its seemingly endless photo capacity.
The tear that had been threatening to come finally did—first pooling along the margin of his lower eyelid, then overflowing and sliding down his eyelashes, where it perched precariously for the briefest of moments before finally breaking free. It tumbled peacefully through the void across which John stared longingly at the ratty photograph before violently crashing and shattering upon impact with the picture. John wiped the tear from the photograph as he took note of every detail of the two beautiful females in the picture. They were locked in an embrace that looked strong enough to withstand even the ravages of this brutal plague. Both women faced the camera, and John was again amazed by how much his daughter, Ava, resembled his wife. At age eleven, she stood a mere six inches shorter than Rebecca. They shared the same curly natural blonde hair, though his wife rarely wore hers curly anymore. Their high cheek-boned faces carried a subtle but fierce intensity that was only slightly softened by their alluring smiles. Her smile was one of the primary features that drew John to Rebecca when he first saw her all those years ago. Seeing the same smile on his little girl’s face caused him more than one sleepless night, as he pondered the implications it would carry as his little girl grew into a beautiful young woman. While Rebecca’s eyes were a brilliant steel blue color, his daughter’s eyes were emerald green and seemed to sparkle as if they contained traces of the precious gem itself. He wondered if there would have come a time when he would have been unable to tell the two apart or if the ever-advancing hands of time would have always kept his wife one step ahead of his daughter.
Reams took notice of John, who seemed lost in thought as he ran his finger lightly over the two individuals in the worn photograph. “Hey buddy, you all right?” asked Reams.
He was pleased to see a smile crease John’s face as he tapped the picture thoughtfully before turning toward him, and saying, “My wife and kid.”
“May I see?” asked Reams, feeling a little sheepish about prying into his new friend’s personal life.
“Sure,” replied John as he handed the photo to Reams.
Reams studied it thoughtfully, immediately noticing just how much the two looked alike as well.
“They’re beautiful, John. They could almost be twin sisters,” said Reams with a sincere smile as he handed the precious photograph back to John.
John returned the photograph to its proper place, a
nd said, “You know it all just seems so impossible—that anything could destroy so much of humanity in such a brief period of time. It’s simply beyond comprehension. I keep thinking that any moment I’ll wake up and…”
John’s words were interrupted as a sudden bang erupted from the front of the vehicle, followed by a fierce shudder that caused the big man to jerk the wheel involuntarily to the right, as his eyes snapped back to the center. The two men caught a momentary glimpse of the source of the sound, as a dark, bloody wraith of a man wearing a construction hardhat was violently sucked under the truck’s tires. The ensuing loss of traction coupled with Reams’ startled overcompensation had the undesirable effect of sending the truck skidding dangerously toward the left shoulder of the old two-lane road.
Up until that instant they had not seen another human, pre- or post-obitum, since they embarked on their wayward journey away from the airport. In addition to the thing that disappeared beneath the truck, John now thought he saw at least three others that exhibited the unmistakably awkward incoordination of the infected. John doubted Reams noticed them, as he was busy trying to reassert some degree of control over the large truck. Before he was able to ask, John experienced the unpleasant sensation of being viciously slammed into the seatbelt as it locked hard against his sudden forward momentum.
Steam hissed and rose in rivulets from beneath the crumpled hood before disappearing into the veil of fog hovering in the cool morning air. The tree was so embedded in the front of the truck that it appeared as though the hood had been manufactured around its trunk.
“John! John, get up buddy we have to go!” Reams pleaded as he smacked John’s face, desperately trying to rouse him.