Running with the Horde

by Joseph K. Richard

  In between angry calls to him I tried calling almost everyone else I knew. The list was short, just my mother and stepdad in D.C. and my 9th grade girlfriend.

  If this seems like a strange list, it is because I didn’t know more than a handful of actual phone numbers and you never forget your first girlfriend’s phone number. Everything was on my contact list in my broken phone. The same broken phone currently residing in a trashcan at the hospital. I deeply regretted not taking my sim card out first.

  The call to my mom wouldn’t go through and my girlfriend’s number was answered by an ESL gentleman named Juan, he didn’t know her.

  I also placed a call to work and discovered the company had shut down until further notice. Most likely I’d been fired weeks ago anyway, that tends to happen when a person disappears without a trace.

  The phone was a dead end, I was going to have to drive to his apartment downtown. Too bad I didn’t know what happened to my car I thought as I made my way downstairs.

  My basement was mainly used for storage. I didn’t really have anything to store so my basement was mostly empty.

  Rather it used to be empty, three small crates now resided in the middle of the unfinished family room on wooden pallets. The first contained canned goods and other types of non-perishables. The second was filled with bottled water and the last had a handgun, several boxes of ammunition and some camping and survival gear.

  I sat on the floor to take it all in. I wished I hadn’t torn up that letter.

  From what I’d seen on the streets and at the hospital, it looked like I might need to use this stuff. My dad was a lot of terrible things. I had a hard time liking him. He had this ability to suck you in with corny sentiment and nostalgia but once he had you, once you bought his lies again and trusted him, you were screwed, like realizing suddenly you were locked alone in a room with a non-practicing serial killer.

  Sooner or later he was going to filet you with a gleaming scalpel.

  But as I looked at the supplies, as I considered the care he put into the packing and delivery, I supposed it was possible that somewhere in his heart he did, in fact, love me. That still didn’t explain or excuse him leaving me to fend for myself at the hospital or why I had to go in the first place.

  Chapter 5

  “Road Construction”

  The next morning I was working up the courage to ask my neighbor if I could borrow his car for a while to drive to my dad’s place. I was pacing back and forth in the kitchen when I noticed my car keys hanging on their usual peg. I hadn’t even looked in the garage.

  I snatched the keys, hustled to the garage and flipped the lights on. My car was there! My dad must have driven it home for me. Damn. He sucked me back in again but it didn’t matter, my baby was home.

  My fully restored 1975 Pontiac LeMans was a thing to behold. A creature of the night! A demon of the shadows! My one and only true love.

  She was not a practical car but damn, that sucker could fly. The engine was a beautiful chrome finished rebuilt 350 V8 with a manual transmission that had more than a little kick to it.

  With its sleek black finish and dual exhaust pipes, it looked and sounded like a dark motorized monster that was made for cruising lonesome highways under the moonlight.

  I had always liked muscle cars but this one was special.

  I’d had a thing for this make and model since my dad had one when I was a kid. He only let me ride in it on very special occasions.

  He knew I loved it and frequently used it as both a carrot and a stick to get little me to behave the way he wanted. He used to tell me it would be mine when I got older but he ended up selling it one year while I was away at summer camp.

  When I had the money, I purchased mine from a junk yard and paid a lot of money to make it better than new, better than my dad’s had been.

  I hopped in and just enjoyed the feel of the crushed velvet captain’s chair for a few minutes. Finally, I hit the button on the garage door opener and rolled out to meet the day.

  My spirits were immediately dampened as I turned out onto Rice Creek Road and headed toward the highway. Reality was the chaos from the day before. Traffic was a nasty, never ending, fire-breathing dragon as I weaved my way slowly down Central Avenue.

  The rioting from the gas station had spread like a plague overnight. Stores and restaurants were trashed, some were burning. There were people fighting everywhere.

  Many of the fighters were military troops entrenched in combat with civilians. The dead or badly wounded were just left to lie on the sidewalks or in parking lots. Police and fire fighters were out in force but there were just too many terrible things happening all at once for them to make a difference.

  It was a real life waking nightmare.

  When I made it to 49th, I noticed a strange sight. A major construction project was underway at a large condo complex. Armed men were keeping the masses out as it looked like they were turning the entire place into an armed fortress. They were certainly taking the whole barricading concept to a new level of seriousness.

  …

  The closer I got to the big city the more unlikely it appeared I was going to make it all the way downtown to my dad’s apartment. Traffic was becoming impossible, there were stalled vehicles and new accidents occurring by the minute and nobody to restore order or direct traffic.

  After several hours of creeping progress, I noticed that while traffic was still thick, it was behaving more normally. By then my nerves were frayed and I had to piss like a racehorse. I was close to turning around when I saw a road block up ahead on Broadway Avenue.

  It was heavily guarded by a large company of military personal. Nobody was being allowed through. Cars were being redirected down Broadway or returned back the way they’d come. A large digital sign indicated that downtown Minneapolis was closed. That was fucking weird; how do you close a city?

  When it was my turn at the head of the pack I was instructed by hand signals to go left down Broadway. When I didn’t move, a group of soldiers approached my car with their rifles pointed at me. My heart was pounding very fast but I hadn’t seen them shoot anybody yet and I was going to try and talk my way in.

  I kept both hands visible on the steering wheel as one of the soldiers approached my window. His scalp glistened through his buzz cut in the hot sun. The others fanned out around my car. The long line of vehicles behind me remained orderly, not even honking, soldiers and guns tend to have that effect on people.

  The man tapped on my window with the barrel of his weapon. I slowly cranked it down as he peered in at me.

  “You got a fucking death wish, sir?” he asked with a frown. A giant hairy mole on his cheek kept calling my name.

  “No, I most definitely do not,” I chuckled as I tried not to stare at the mole.

  I gave him my most disarming smile like he was a school girl I could charm into a quick game of kissy face.

  “My father lives downtown. He is elderly with a medical condition and I haven’t been able to reach him by phone.”

  The man flexed his jaw tightly several times like I’d just told him I’d been making out with his mother in the back seat.

  “Do you see all these men here?” he asked and I nodded once. “Downtown is under Martial Law, and all these men, the ones with the guns, we are the marshals, no one is getting in.”

  “Oh…Okay.”

  “You understand I don’t give a shit about your father?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Take a left down this road here and drive back to wherever you came from or we’ll pull you out of your stupid car and shoot you in your fucking face in front of all these people.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will do that…the first thing I mean. I will do the left,” I stuttered.

  “Good boy, I’d hate to ruin your ride,” he smiled. “If I ever see it again I’m gonna shoot it with an RPG, understand?”

  “Definitely and thank you for your service,” I said as I nodded seriously. I knew I sounded
like an idiot. I’m not sure why I even said the last thing, it wasn’t the appropriate time for an expression of civic gratitude but I was nervous.

  They backed away from my car to let me turn which I did very carefully so as not to spook anyone into shooting at me.

  With that, all the will to see my father was gone. I just wanted to go home and go to bed. It was a long ride back.

  Chapter 6

  “Darkness”

  It was well after two o’clock in the morning when I finally made it back home. While the cities and towns I drove through were still manically awake, my street was blissfully dark and quiet. I pulled into my driveway under the light of the moon and activated my garage door opener.

  Nothing happened.

  I obstinately pushed the button a few more times but it still wouldn’t open. The implications of this were very troubling to me. If the garage door opener was broken, there’s no way I‘d ever be able to repair it on my own.

  The car door creaked open as I got out and looked around. The quiet stillness I’d noted when I drove in now seemed eerie. It was too dark.

  I fumbled around on the porch until I let myself into a living room as black as King Tut’s tomb. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude it wasn’t a malfunctioning garage door opener.

  By some miracle I located a flashlight and went about manually opening the garage door to bring my car in.

  Back on the porch, I sipped a glass of straight whiskey and choked down a stale cigarette from a pack I kept around when times got stressful enough for me to deal with them chemically.

  The sounds of madness intruded onto Serendipity Lane from neighboring streets and houses, invading the stillness like a pub crawl passing by a church.

  My guts were queasy as I strained to identify the potpourri of noises I was hearing. I didn’t know if the power outage was permanent but I knew things just went from extremely terrible to unbearably terrible.

  Was the enigmatic Sickness to blame for all this? With no power, it was possible I may remain in the dark on that front forever.

  I decided right then if I was ever going to lapse into a coma again for an extended period of time I would try not to do it right before a global pandemic. It just didn’t seem like a sensible thing to do.

  I sat on the porch until one of my neighbors fired up a generator, drowning out everything. I shuffled off to bed awash in a sea troubling thoughts, wondering where all this was leading.

  Chapter 7

  “Roland’s Last Stand”

  The first time I was confronted with the reality of the zombie apocalypse I was busy feeling sorry for myself on the front porch watching my stupid neighbors argue. They were bickering over their neighborhood response plan. Those that had decided to stick around and ride out the storm of power outages, rioting and the ever present Sickness had formed a cabal to protect our street.

  I wasn’t included in their plans. I was largely being ignored as the neighborhood nut bag since I’d wandered home from the hospital a few days prior.

  Some folks occasionally spared enough time from their busy days to shoot me a dirty look or give me the finger. I didn’t give a shit. I spent most of my time on the porch in a drunken stupor and I never did cut my grass like I said I would.

  When I wasn’t drinking I nailed a few boards up on the windows just to fit in with everyone. When in Rome and all that shit. I didn’t think it would keep looters out but with no power and no one to talk to, I had a lot of time on my hands and had to do something with it.

  The committee was formed to address the scary rumors that were being circulated by passersby and one old man’s ham radio. Everyone was afraid to leave our street but they wanted to feel like they were taking some type of preventative measures against whatever was coming.

  The scuttlebutt was that the authorities had lost control and things were in complete anarchy not only in our neighborhood but in most other places. Without some sort of law and order presence, it wouldn’t be long until the chaos reached our street. The good folks of Serendipity Lane wanted to be prepared when that happened.

  Even worse, there were word of mouth reports of rampant cannibalism. I found this one hard to believe. Things were bad out there, I’d seen that with my own eyes but surely there was still enough actual food around. There was no need for people to resort to such extremes. I told as much to Don or Dave, the one neighbor who spared a moment to keep me in the loop now and then. He just shrugged and walked away.

  Guns were pooled and plans were made to fend off looters should they come. The bizarre warzone sounds from the neighborhood at large the last two days made me think that they would indeed come. When they did, there would be no one to help us. The neighborhood response plan was looking like a pretty good idea. I was coming to regret my decision not be more involved.

  I did take the time to load up the gun my dad left me. That took me a while to figure out. I had never even fired a gun before so I felt silly carrying it around but it did make me feel a little better.

  The morning it happened was a slow build of pregnant insanity. Primal screams and gunfire woke me from restless slumber very early on in the day.

  I took my usual place on the front porch before sunrise, nursing a hangover with a hair of the dog remedy that wasn’t working.

  My neighbors were up as well getting ready just in case. Explosions rocked the foundations of our homes like little earthquakes painting the morning in a haze of grimy smoke residue from fires unknown.

  Behind it all, a sound like thunder, growing ever louder. A sound I could feel in the fillings of my teeth. A sound to wake the survival beast that lives within all of us and send him scurrying under the bed.

  My street was about to meet the things that go bump in the night.

  I was nervously smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of cherry flavored malt liquor. My sweaty palm clutching my gun as I waited to see the source of the avalanche of noise headed our way.

  The glowing ember curled smoke into my eyes and made them water. I dimly remember my drink slipping from my grasp and landing on the wood with a plunk as the first wave of people maniacally charged across Rice Creek Road from the east.

  The tidal wave of crazed humanity was so loud, it felt like they were screaming inside my head. I had never seen that many people so densely packed together, running as if they were one giant organism.

  They chugged by like a giant human locomotive filling the road, the shoulders and the yards on both sides of the street. Then alarmingly, some began to peel off and run up our street. First a handful and then a bunch like a river that’s found a small tributary.

  Some of my neighbors who weren’t already outside, appeared at their windows or on their porches, many of them holding deer rifles, handguns or brandishing some type of weapon.

  The look on their faces is cemented in my memory. A stupid, mouth agape realization of one’s own impending doom.

  For most of them, plans to defend our tiny community were instantly forgotten at the sight of the onrushing crowd. People dashed indoors, some even dropping their weapons in the process.

  A few stalwart men and women foolishly hunkered down on their porches or front lawns while their loved ones screamed at them from inside their homes. One fellow, I think his name was Roland, walked slowly to the center of our street and waited with a big automatic rifle perched casually in his right arm. I sat glued to my chair nervously watching things unfold while my cigarette burned forgotten in my fingers.

  Roland stood there gallantly as the horde drew closer. It was clear he thought they would see his gun, lose heart and turn back. Of course, he didn’t know he was no longer dealing with human beings.

  The leader of the pack was a rail-thin young man. His pale stick legs pumped furiously as he made a beeline for Roland at a dead sprint. His mouth was open in a rictus snarl. When he closed within twenty five yards Roland raised his gun and let loose at his feet with three quick warning shots.

  The boy n
ever hesitated at the gunfire, if anything he seemed to sprint faster with the crowd swelling behind him.

  At ten yards and closing fast, the boy took three rounds to the chest. He slowed briefly as if stunned, his pumpkin-pie haircut wavering in the wake of his own breeze but he charged on nevertheless.

  After seeing that, Roland screamed and turned to flee but it was too late for him. The crowd behind the boy surged past and caught Roland just as he hit the steps of his house.

  It was like a massive gang tackle in football but instead of unpiling at the whistle, these people just kept piling on, desperately and viciously fighting each other to get at the man-shaped prize at the bottom. It was a snarling dog-pile of rage and violence all painted in Roland Red.

  While I was transfixed by this horrific spectacle, many other things were happening all around me. I vaguely recall the sound of gunfire as my neighbors tried, in vain, to protect themselves from the advancing throng.

  My eyes flashed to a very big lady in a floral-print house coat who extracted herself from the Roland pile with a bloody human foot in her mouth. She delivered an impressive forearm shiver to a blood-covered man who was wearing only stained underpants and black socks.

  She then took her prize to a less occupied corner of Roland’s yard and began working on that foot like it was the Colonel’s finest. From my vantage point, the amber colored stain on the front of her dress could have been barbeque sauce. Only I knew it wasn’t so I vomited cherry beer into my rose bushes.

  A massive block party had broken out on my street as I witnessed Roland’s last stand. At least that is what it could have been if you squinted just right and were deaf to the terrified screams of the dying, the roar of the horrible crowd and gunfire. It was all too much for me to process. I took a second to be surprised I hadn’t been spotted yet and noted that my yard was filling up very quickly.

  It was time to get my dumbass inside the house.

  I scuttled inside like a crab hiding at a seafood buffet, slamming the front door so hard it sounded like a shotgun blast. I put my back to the comforting solid oak and slid down to my haunches shaking like a leaf. I stayed that way so long I eventually fell asleep.