by William Bebb
After another few minutes of work on the barricade, he retrieved his crowbar and went over to the man tangled in the debris of the collapsed roof. He never imagined it possible to feel pity for a zombie. But as he stared down at the sightless man yelping and pulling fruitlessly at his bleeding leg, which was entangled in the rafters scattered on the floor, he couldn't help himself. He heard the men outside mostly grunting. Others continued to scream as they pounded at the barricade while he looked down at the closest one and studied him. Josey couldn't help being reminded of the rabbit he'd killed earlier. He continued to try and get loose of the boards while yelping almost like a pitiful animal caught in a trap. There was a thought itching at the back of his mind as he stared down, yet he couldn't make it clearer no matter how hard he thought. He sneaked over to the yelping zombie and raised the crowbar prepared to crush his head. Josey's shadow fell on his horribly mangled bleeding face and the man looked up at him unseeing, but staring nonetheless. The thought clarified as the crowbar smashed his head and blood flowed.
He wasn't a zombie, he was alive! He saw the tears that had been leaking from his ruined eye sockets down his cheeks as he pulled the crowbar out with a crackling of bones. He wiped the blood off on the dead man’s shirt and felt his stomach rumbling and his throat tightening. “I will not throw up.” he whispered.
Looking up at the flawless blue sky, he took several deep breaths then picked up his toolbox and sat down on a washing machine. From his toolbox he pulled out a small first aid kit and found the antibiotic cream and bandages. Having dealt with all kinds of septic tank related jobs, over the last three years, Josey knew well the importance of having a good first aid kit when in the field. Carefully removing his glove, he tried to ignore the sounds of the men scratching, grunting, screaming, and pushing on the barricade. After popping another piece of nicotine gum in his mouth, he bandaged his hand while trying to figure out what was going on. He remembered seeing a few of the men outside missing arms or huge strips of flesh from their bodies, yet they hadn't been bleeding. Are they alive? Are they dead? Are they somewhere in between? His mind swirled, but no matter what explanation he came up with he realized the why was far less important than the how. How was he going get out of here?
After wrapping the bandage tight, he leaned his head back against the wall and tried to think. He pulled his cell phone out of his khaki coverall's pocket and flipped it open. The little screen displayed the words No Signal. He flipped it shut and looked over the top of the walls of the ruined building, at the high hills on all sides of the valley, and wondered what now?
CHAPTER 2
“Grandpa! Come look, there's a truck over there!” Shouted, a little boy. The old man opened his eyes instantly. Half awake, he climbed out of his recliner and used his cane to shuffle as fast as he could, over to the window. He stood behind the boy, patting him on the shoulder and ruffling his hair.
“So we've been rescued, have we?” He asked, reaching for his binoculars. Peering in the direction the boy pointed, he saw a large truck parked by the old laundry building. It was surrounded by a substantial crowd of undead. Most of them were beating and pressing on the entrance which seemed to be blocked by something. Whoever was in the truck must now be in the building or dead, the old man realized.
The living room of his trailer was mostly lit by sunlight shining through the windows and a few fruit and flower scented candles, his wife had bought years before. The aroma was bitter sweet as it reminded him of his lifelong love who had passed away fifteen years earlier. The candles always made him miss her when they were lit. Nonetheless, considering the foul stench that drifted through the open windows, he felt a few melancholy memories were worth the price of reducing or at least partially covering the foul stench of his putrescent neighbors.
In the murky light, the little boy's blue eyes looked sunken and exhausted as he watched his grandfather stare across the trailer park. The boy had been going to the kitchen to get another glass of water and to continue his, so far, fruitless search for the animal crackers his grandfather had hidden when he spotted the big truck that hadn't been there earlier. He looked at the old man leaning on his cane, shrunken by age until he was just barely a foot taller than him. He was the world’s greatest Grandpa in his slightly biased opinion. It wasn't often his mom would drive all the way from Las Cruces to let him stay with him for a few days sometimes even for a whole week.
Whenever she asked if he wanted to visit, he was always happy about the prospect. Sometimes his grandfather would tell him, cool gory stories about World War II and how people he actually knew died in a fascinating variety of ways. Like the time his Sergeant, 'a real limp noodle', whatever that meant, had been run over by a Nazi tank from the feet up. It had been sort of like watching toothpaste when you squeeze the tube, except it was the man’s mouth that first blood then internal organs squirted out of. Billy always remembered that description when he was about to brush his teeth. As he squeezed the toothpaste tube, he would make quiet screaming sounds and would always laugh when his mom asked him what was so funny about toothpaste. He loved the stories, but knew if she ever found out about them he'd probably never get to visit again. His mom was just weird that way.
“Does this mean we're going to get out of here now?” The boy asked looking up, his eyes filled with hope for the first time in three long days.
“I told you we would, didn't I, Billy Boy.” he said. Coughing softly, the old man lowered the binoculars and patted the boy’s hair with his bony warm fingers that smelled of some kind of muscle ache cream. The old man sat down, deep in thought, on one the kitchen chairs staring at the distant truck.
“Can we go get ice cream and cake for my birthday now? It's tomorrow you know. I'll be ten years old and mom will be coming back to get me, right grandpa?”
Colonel William Lester, retired, only nodded and smiled at his grandson as he considered the situation. We've got three bullets, a pack and a half of cigarettes, and almost no food left. Can we wait until someone notices the missing truck driver? Can we wait until Cheryl comes to get Billy? Dare we let her drive into this mess? Of course, if it hadn't been for her irrational and infuriating hatred of guns, he thought bitterly, I could have taken care of this nightmare myself before it had come to this point.
She had laid an ultimatum on him when Billy had been outside playing with his poodle Gretchen. His whole frail body shook in barely contained rage as he remembered her, hands on hips, looking down, lecturing him- her own father.
“Guns kill people! It’s bad enough you gave him that damn BB rifle last summer, but get this straight. I will not let him stay here unless you put your guns in the trunk of my car. Get your shotgun and the rifle then you two can have a nice visit, and I won't be constantly worried about him while I'm back home. You know how curious he is about guns, and you know it’s irresponsible to have him in a house full of dangerous weapons. How would you feel if he blew off his foot or God forbid, killed himself while playing? It's bad enough you have the guns at all dad, but I will not stand for you needlessly endangering my son. Now march in there and bring them out, all of them!”
What else could he do? He had marched in, cane in hand, and surrendered. He had fought three long grueling years, in the deserts of North Africa, The Beaches of Normandy, even survived The Battle of the Bulge, yet who finally made him surrender and give up his guns? His own bleeding heart, well meaning, idiot of a daughter.
He would do anything to protect Billy, but had he not remembered his old Colt .45 service pistol, buried in a steamer trunk in his closet, he knew they'd probably already be dead or undead by now. He shuddered and shook his head feeling exhausted and sleepy, but he didn't want to sleep anymore. His dreams had been nothing except nightmares since last Friday. They were always the same general scenario, with slight variations. Unlike his usual dreams, which he usually forgot before he got up to brush his teeth, these nightmares seem to have been branded in his waking thoughts. The nightmares were so re
al, vivid, horrible, and plausible that he could rarely spend an hour without the images replaying like daydreams- only they were more like day nightmares. He'd be thinking about nothing in particular when they would sneak in and hijack his conscious mind.
Billy would be playing and accidentally make a noise too loud, and they'd burst into his trailer. They'd push him aside and rip and tear at his young grandson. He'd be screaming, as they tore and bit him. And when they were done, Billy would be dead and yet not. He would come to his grandfather smiling. Then the boy, he loved more than anyone else in the world, would bite and tear his old body to shreds.
“Grandpa, I'm hungry. Can I have some breakfast?” Billy asked, having lost interest in staring at the truck glittering in the early morning sun.
He nodded, and went about getting them some oatmeal and a can of juice, while he continued thinking. Could it really have only been four days ago when all this started?
He remembered the memorial the neighbors had late Thursday night for Juan who had been killed while working at Beaumont Bio-Chemical Industries in town. From what little he learned from Maria, Juan died after being overcome by fumes and passing out inside one of the giant metal vats he was cleaning. Some technician apparently thought it was ready for use again and switched on the chemical mixing storage tanks that fed into the vat Juan was in.
No one was told what chemicals or other things he came into contact with, only that they should leave his body in the large black plastic trash bag. The company's security agents who responded had ordered all employees at the accident site to leave while they dealt with the 'situation'. The factory supervisor, a guy named Keck, paid the other illegal immigrant workers who also lived in the trailer park a thousand dollars to keep it quiet and get rid of the body without calling the cops. At least, that’s what Maria had told him.
He looked up toward Mrs. Remlap's house on the small hill about a mile and a half away, and hoped that she made it there safely. While young enough to have been his own granddaughter, he was still a man and like all men appreciated a beautiful girl when he saw one.
Maria was born in Texas and moved here with her younger brother Miguel. Blessed with the face of an angel, she had sparkling green eyes and long silky dark brown hair. She never told him her age, but he guessed she might be twenty one at most. Being a man, he'd thought about her many times yet never in a serious way. The fantasies were just an occasional pointless pleasant daydream.
She left last night an hour after nightfall. He remembered watching her run toward the distant house as their neighbors grunted, growled, and prowled in the darkness. She made him feel old and worthless when she left, yet he knew something had to be done and he couldn't do it. He bent over coughing, as the water boiled on the propane powered stove, and cursed himself for being so ancient and nearly helpless.
Watching the pan of water boil, he poured the dry oatmeal out of little paper packets into two plastic bowls. He slipped on the oven mitt that had a smiling cartoon devil imprinted with the words Hot enough for ya? Before pouring the water into the bowls. He stirred the oatmeal for a few seconds and remembered how terrified Maria had been when she came over, early last Friday morning, half dragging Miguel who was dazed and confused.
It took several minutes to get her to stop crying and speaking rapidly in Spanish. He knew enough to know something really bad had happened, but that was all. Eventually she calmed enough to try and explain, in English, what was going on.
Nearly everyone had gotten very drunk, Thursday evening. Juan's body was removed from the heavy black plastic bag as the men began to drink. They laid him outside on a picnic table which had been covered with a white sheet. She'd placed several votive candles burning all his body. A shallow grave had been started, earlier in the evening, but as more men started drinking it remained unfinished. She had prayed and talked with Juan's little brother, Chico for awhile, then sent him to bed early because the men began to get drunk and into fights. One of them had stopped at a liquor store on the way back and bought two cases of Tequila, “to send off Juan properly”, he had said smiling foolishly. She had gone to bed just after Chico, and stayed up late saying prayers for Juan's soul, before eventually falling asleep.
She awoke early Friday morning, to the sounds of screams and gunshots. After making sure her bedroom door was locked, she quickly dressed and peeked out of a window. Blood covered the white sheet on the empty picnic table, and her friends and neighbors were running in all directions. A few men used guns and knives on their neighbors. She saw an old man screaming and hacking at people with an old rusty blood stained machete. Next door, Chico came out of his trailer. He looked around bewildered as the men wrestled, fought, bit, ran, and screamed all around him. A small knot of men bit and clawed at each other like a pack of wild rabid dogs in a way Maria had once seen in the small town she used to live in when she was a young girl.
Chico's expression was first fear, when he saw the bloody chaos, but it changed to a look of pure wonder, as he ran through the groups of men who seemed to have all gone insane. She looked to where he was running and screamed. It was not possible, but Juan was longer resting on the table as any respectable corpse should do. Instead he was walking unsteadily, arms outstretched toward his little brother. She heard a shotgun blast and some pellets struck the window yet she could not look away as the brothers moved, through the madness, toward each other.
Juan was alive and yet, not really. She saw his eyes were vacant and his clothes were covered in blood. As he walked past her window she saw huge, ragged, bloody holes on his back where his shirt had been shredded by bullets exposing bits of bone and torn meat underneath.
“Oh God,” she had said between sobs, “Juan was dead, but he was still moving.”
Chico ran and embraced his big brother, hugging him tight, as he cried for joy. She stayed at window, unable to look away, as Juan bit into his little brother's neck and tore away a large strip of flesh. Chico screamed and pulled away as Juan chewed and swallowed his brother's flesh. Running for the old van, Chico weaved his way through several other men who were fighting, as blood began to soak his shirt. He got in, holding his bleeding neck with one hand, and managed to get it started. The tires spun in the dust as he drove erratically toward the exit.
Hoping she might catch him and get a ride out of the madness that had overtaken her neighbors, she ran to the back door. She heard the brakes squeal and several loud crashes of metal. The van sideswiped a car that was coming in from town and swerved into a wooden utility pole that ran alongside the road. The pole snapped and fell on the roof of the van, shattering the windshield and crushing part of it's roof.
Maria ran out the back door opposite where Juan or what was once Juan was, just as the electricity blinked out. Running toward the wrecked cars, she saw Juan and several others also heading in that direction. She saw they were all bloody, some just grunting and moving slowly, but several were running very fast- screaming or making loud snarling noises as they hurried toward the wreck. With a burst of speed, she ran and got there first.
Maria saw her brother Miguel in the car's backseat and tried to shake him awake, while shouting to the other men to hurry and get out before they got there. One of the older men in the backseat got out and told her to go phone for help. She looked over her shoulder watching the older man walk toward Juan and the others, asking what had happened to them.
Gustav had come to America from El Salvador, more than twenty years earlier, and not since his time spent with the Communist Guerillas had he seen so much blood. He had helped plan and execute dozens of attacks against the government for the sake of the revolution. The badly wounded and dazed men walking and running toward him did not frighten him. They were his friends and neighbors. Who did this? He wondered.
His friend Loco Perro, aka Crazy Dog, was running toward him screaming. His amigo was always there when he needed someone to talk with and Gustav held out his arms to his old friend. He could hear the girl behind him yelling
at the men to run, but he knew women always overreacted when things get rough in life. It wasn't till Loco Perro leapt and tackled him that he realized she hadn't been over reacting at all.
While Maria pulled the barely conscious Miguel out of the car, Gustav began to scream behind her. Not looking back, she yelled at the men to get out and run. She half carried, half dragged, Miguel to the silver trailer with the American flag outside as more screams and growls echoed behind her. She knew Colonel Lester would help.
With shaking hands, the old man set the steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of Billy and looked back at the truck in the distance thinking. It was already warming up, so he made sure all the windows were open hoping for an elusive breeze and glanced at the thermometer hanging on the wall of the kitchen. It was eighty two degrees and it wasn't even 9 o'clock. There was a slight breeze coming from the west. It was hot, but better than nothing. He couldn't decide which he missed more- his guns or the electricity. Living in Albuquerque, New Mexico in July with no air-conditioning could be every bit as deadly as the creatures wandering around his neighborhood.
He thought about all the people he'd known who died, from heat waves, since he and his wife settled here back in 1966. He guessed the number was somewhere near a hundred. Looking across the dusty street, he remembered when they found Kim Mendez's little girl back in the Summer of 1982. She had been the sweetest eight year old girl, who would always sell cookies in the Spring and set up a lemonade stand in front of her trailer during the Summer.