DEAD: Snapshot (Book 3): Liberty, South Carolina

by TW Brown

  “As soon as young Miss Burns threw open those doors, they all seemed to re-orientate on this location.”

  Stephen backed up and craned his neck so that he could see better. Sure enough, he watched as a few of the stragglers were altering their course just a bit to bring them towards the mayor’s house. The only problem that that would present for several of the undead was that many would run into the cyclone fence. On the plus side, many were now being split away by a long wooden fence that sectioned off the back yard of the corner house one block over on Jackson Street.

  He turned back to look inside the shed and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “What the hell?” was all he could manage to say as he counted a dozen machetes hanging on one wall, two large splitting mauls, three hand axes, five picks of varying sizes, a short-handled and long-handled sledge hammer; and a bundle of what appeared to be fiberglass replacement handles for the mauls, picks, and the long-handled sledge.

  “I was storing these for the scout troop. They were going to help clear some of the grounds on the far side of the football field next month,” Jamie said as she cut the twine that held together the bundle of spare handles.

  Stephen grabbed one of the heavier machetes as well as one of the spare handles. He hefted it and was happy with the way it felt in his hands. He stepped aside as Chief Gilstrap moved in and selected the short-handled sledge.

  The two men turned to start for the oncoming group of undead. Mayor Burns caught up brandishing her long, yellow fiberglass handle.

  “Umm…” Stephen began, but the look the mayor shot him made it clear that there was not going to be a discussion.

  The three of them spread out and Stephen was the first to reach one of the zombies. This one had been a very skinny man in his fifties or sixties. His gray hair had been pulled back in a long ponytail that was coming undone. It looked like whatever had attacked him had grabbed him by his long hair; a large flap of scalp hung down the left side of the man’s face and a dark stain ran down that side. Stephen had to swallow a bit of rising bile as he realized that he could actually see a bit of the man’s skull. He quickly recovered and chose that area as his target.

  He swung the large handle-turned-bludgeon and felt a horrendous stinging in his hands. It was so bad that he lost his grip on the handle. To add to his misery, the skull had not shattered or appeared to have even cracked from that first heavy blow. The old man had tumbled, but that was a shallow victory as two more of the things were closing in.

  Drawing the machete, Stephen hacked down hard, cutting into the man’s temple. He had to step down on the now lifeless corpse to jerk the weapon free and did so just in time to spin and swing wildly at the first and closest of the pair of walking dead. He took a hand off just above the wrist and stumbled back a few steps to get some room between himself and these zombies that were suddenly a lot scarier now that he wasn’t holding his shotgun.

  He thought he heard somebody yell something and risked a look either way. Both of his companions had paused as well and the mayor actually looked as if she might cut out and run back to her house, but then another zombie stumbled up to her and she returned to the grim task at hand. Chief Gilstrap barely seemed to break stride and was right back to dealing with the situation in front of them.

  Stephen turned his attention back as well and drove the tip of his machete into the eye socket of the one-handed zombie, jerked back much easier this time, and repeated the move on the other one. With three down, he scanned the scene and made certain that neither the mayor nor the chief was in trouble. He felt a bit embarrassed to see that it looked as if they were having no problems whatsoever. Returning his mind to the task at hand, he stepped in and dropped two more with almost no effort. He was feeling a little better until he turned to face the owner of the long shadow that was coming at him from the left.

  Stephen Deese froze and staggered back a step. The little girl was perhaps no older than four or five. Her blond hair was hanging down past her shoulders and he imagined her to have once had blue eyes; but now, only those glazed over, tracer riddled orbs stared back. Her left leg dragged behind her and he could see that she’d had a nasty chunk torn from it as well as a hideous bite on her left hip where her shirt was shredded and stiff from the dried blood.

  “No way,” he gasped, not noticing that his machete had slipped from his grasp and fallen point down to stick into the ground.

  ***

  Sophie drained the cup of instant coffee and grimaced. She watched Jamie follow that Deese fellow down the stairs of the porch and vanish around the corner of the house. She recognized the man, but hadn’t ever really gotten to know him. She laughed sometimes when she would speak to a friend or relative from one of the larger cities like Greenville or Charleston. They assumed that everybody in a small town knew each other. They had this idea that with only three thousand or so residents, the entire population of Liberty was on a first name basis with everyone else.

  She might have seen him in the hospital. She did know that he had been in the Marines. She also was pretty sure that he was a member of the volunteer fire department.

  She went to the porch to see what they might be doing when a sound from the kitchen made her spin on her heel and rush through the house. The kitchen door was wide open and her son was gone.

  She hurried out onto the back stoop and saw her son sprinting across the yard. She thought she saw something emerging from some of the trees and hedges. Like Jamie’s house, the one that bordered the back yard had a fence. However, it was obvious that a section had been knocked down.

  Then she saw them.

  They were mostly obscured by the greenery, but she thought she could see at least two people kneeling on the ground. Coming off the porch, she moved so that she could better see. Her son had stopped at the fence and was now gripping it, his head dropping. Even from here, she could see his body shudder. Her son was crying. Whatever he was witnessing, it had to be terrible to make a fifteen-year-old boy actually cry.

  At last she had moved enough so that she could see, and her hand came to her mouth to stifle a gasp. There were, in fact, five people on the ground. They were all clustered around a furry figure. She saw the rear legs still twitching and thought she might have heard a small whimper. She recognized the tail as belonging to what she was almost certain had to be a Golden Retriever.

  Suddenly, Lawrence vaulted the fence and landed in the back yard. He sprinted past the cluster of people that were busy ripping out chunks of something and stuffing it into their blood-stained mouths. A few heads looked up, but then returned to their grisly task.

  Sophie took off after her son and stopped when she reached the back fence. Her son was now on the porch and kneeling at an open sliding glass door. When he turned, she saw that he was holding a small child in his arms. The child was crying and this now had more than just the casual attention of the group that had been gorging themselves on the body of the dog.

  The group all began to get to their feet and turn in the direction of her son. Sophie ignored the fear coursing through her body and vaulted the cyclone fence in a graceful bound. She hit the ground running and was almost to her son when she saw a figure staggering out of the open back door of the house where her son had snatched the child.

  “Mom, go!” Lawrence yelled as he slowed down just enough to shove aside a woman who was covered in blood and had a tuft of crimson fur hanging from the corner of her mouth.

  Sophie was not about to abandon her son. She stood her ground until he arrived and then snatched the baby from him. “Get over the fence and I’ll hand her to you.”

  Lawrence went over fast and spun to his mother with his arms outstretched. She thrust the bundled child back to her son and then went over in a hurry, this time just a little less gracefully as her pants leg caught and she flopped forward, dangling upside-down. From her current and awkward position, she could see an inverted view of the group of nightmares staggering and shambling her way.

  Sh
e felt something tug at the leg that was hung up and then heard a rip. Falling, she was able to catch herself and roll to avoid any serious damage. By the time she managed to get to her feet, five horrifying caricatures of what had once been human beings were at the fence; all of them had their arms outstretched as they strained to get at the living beings just a few feet away.

  Sophie took a moment to really inspect the assorted injuries on these people. It did not take her long to assess and determine that none of these individuals should be up and walking. One of them, a man who was completely naked, had a rip in his abdomen and strands of intestine were dangling from the wound. It was clear that they had been ripped in several places and were dripping the last of their vile contents in clumps and smears down the man’s bare legs.

  She also realized that she did not recognize a single one of these individuals. However, she did recognize the woman who had emerged from the house and was now making her way to join the rest of these abominations. She spun on her son and pushed him back towards Jamie’s house.

  “What on earth were you thinking, Lawrence Fredrick Martin!” Sophie continued to prod her son’s chest with every syllable.

  “Mom, I couldn’t sit there and do nothing.”

  Sophie cocked her head and demanded an explanation. Her son explained that he had been simply watching out the back door when he spied the neighbor exit the house with the dog. Obviously she was taking the dog outside to do its business. She must not have had a clue what was going on. The dog started barking and Lawrence saw a group of individuals move up the side of the woman’s house. The gate must not have been secure because they got in just as the woman rushed over to see what the dog was carrying on about.

  “It happened so fast, Mom,” Lawrence sobbed. “Two of them had her before she knew what happened. The dog lunged and tried to protect her but then the rest of the pack fell on the dog.” He shuddered and wiped at his eyes before continuing. “The woman managed to get away, but she was all torn up and holding her side as she limped up onto the porch. She made it inside the house and shut the door, leaving the dog to be finished off.”

  The boy was quiet for a moment and then glanced down at the little girl in his arms that had miraculously fallen asleep after all the chaos. He went to the living room and laid the toddler on the couch and adjusted the blanket she’d been gripping so tightly through the whole ordeal.

  “I heard a baby cry and I just couldn’t stand here and do nothing,” Lawrence finished. “I was afraid that…” Sophie saw her son’s face change. He seemed hesitant to finish what he’d been about to say.

  Putting an arm around his shoulders, Sophie hugged Lawrence and kissed him on the temple, leaving her face against the side of his. “I know, baby. I’ve seen them too.”

  ***

  Jonathan pulled into the driveway of the Senior Center. He hated the fact that his mother had decided to move into this place. It wasn’t like her little house on Clay was that big.

  As he got out of the car he paused again and looked at the bottoms of his shoes. Nothing. Getting down on his hands and knees, he looked underneath his car. Maybe he’d hit something, or perhaps a critter had crawled up inside his engine area and gotten itself killed. Now it was rotting. Satisfied there was nothing dangling from the underside of his car, he went around and popped the hood, yanking the little kickstand thing that kept it up so that he could get a closer look.

  Still seeing nothing, he leaned down and gave a good sniff. He wasn’t a mechanic, but it pretty much smelled like an engine should smell. He pulled the thin metal rod free and wedged it into its place and then let the hood drop with a loud clang.

  A low moan from behind him caused Jonathan to spin around, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck already standing on end. He’d heard that sound before in Fumio’s videos.

  Three figures were coming his direction. He knew exactly what he was seeing, but that did not lessen the degree of fear that grabbed his bladder and gave it a good squeeze. The coppery taste of adrenaline soon followed and he reached in the open rear window of his car and grabbed the L-shaped lug wrench.

  “No way,” was all he could manage as the first of the trio actually stepped into a long beam of the rising sun and came into full and gruesome detail.

  The woman was wearing the remnants of a nightgown that did little to cover her massive frame. She still had rollers in her hair and one foot was clad in a fuzzy slipper that looked like it might be glued in place by all the blood that had poured down her body from where her throat and right shoulder had been savaged. She had dingy brown hair and the bits that had come free of the curlers hung halfway down her back. Her face showed no emotion as she approached, but her hands were reaching and clutching at the air while her mouth opened and closed almost with hungry anticipation, causing her teeth to click together, but it was the eyes that had Jonathan transfixed.

  He’d seen something in the eyes of the video that Fumio had sent, but it was something else altogether to see them in person. They were covered in a pus-yellow coating and the capillaries were shot with black that really stood out against the film.

  “Hey,” Jonathan called. The way they all stopped and then twitched and jerked around a bit to re-orient on him was a more than a little creepy.

  Then the full force of the smell hit him. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Of course, he’d never been near a dead body except for his dad. And that had been at the funeral. That was the day he decided that he wanted to be cremated. It had been so odd looking inside the casket and seeing that body with all the makeup to try and make him not seem dead. He knew that his dad would have hated it. Even more, he would have told everybody to “quit their bellyaching and fussing and get back to doing something productive.”

  The woman staggered closer and the two men behind her sort of bumped against each other as they started towards where Jonathan stood beside his car with his tire iron in hand.

  Suddenly he felt like an idiot. If this was really the start of a zombie apocalypse, how was he going to survive with nothing more than a little piece of metal? What he needed was a gun.

  Suddenly, his nerve left him and he began to work his way around his car so that it was between him and the approaching…

  “Zombies.”

  He almost felt stupid when he heard that word. He even looked around to see if perhaps it had come from somebody else. It just couldn’t be possible. Zombies were not medically or scientifically able to exist. He and his friends had beaten that dead horse into the ground anytime they got together and saw one of the movies or played one of the video games.

  Zombies simply could not be.

  Yet…here they were. The woman staggering up the gentle slope of the entry drive to the Liberty Senior Center could not be living. Glancing at the two men; neither could they. One of them had a strange looking piece of himself jutting from a hole in his side. His clothes were torn up and he was even bloodier than the woman, and the other man was missing his nose, for crying out loud.

  “Johnny Cakes?” a voice called from behind him.

  Jonathan spun to see his mother standing in the doorway to the senior center in her purple and pink jogging suit that he’d bought her just this past Christmas. She was alone, and for that he was actually a bit thankful.

  “Hurry up and come get in the car,” he barked, his voice sounding harsher than he’d intended.

  “Don’t you use a tone with me, young man,” Mildred Patterson shot back. “You might be grown up, but you will not speak to your mother in that manner. Do you understand?”

  Jonathan spun on his mother and pointed to the car. “Get. In. Now.”

  As soon as she stepped off the porch of the senior center, it was clear that she could see the trio of approaching zombies. Only, it was not clear if she actually could see them for what they were.

  “Jonathan…those people…” her face was screwed up with a look of total confusion and horror.

  Now he knew that
his mother was upset; she never called him Jonathan unless he was in trouble or she was very troubled. In fact, the last time that she had called him Jonathan was when she had called him to tell him that his father had died of a heart attack.

  Giving the terrible trio an appraising glance, he guessed the time he had to be very little. It would be close. He dashed to his mother and scooped her wispy body up into his arms. He was briefly thankful that she was not the size of that female zombie that was now just a few steps away from the rear bumper of his car.

  He reached his Toyota and gave the rear passenger side door a jerk. He hissed as he yanked hard on the handle only to have nothing happen. He almost never used the back seat, so the doors were almost always locked; which, considering how he almost always left the windows open, was sort of ridiculous.

  He reached in and unlocked the door, pulled it open, and did his best to stuff his mom inside without hurting her. Ignoring her stammers, protests, and attempts at questions, he hurried around the front of his car and arrived at his door just a step ahead of the female zombie.

  The lug wrench in his hand was basically forgotten. Instead, he lashed out with one foot and kicked the woman hard in her ample middle. She barely even staggered back a step. He was surprised, thinking that, as unsteady as she seemed on her feet, she should topple over easily enough.

  Her hands reached for him and two fingers snagged the sleeve of his shirt. He brought one arm up defensively and batted the hand away and then jabbed outward, catching her in the shoulder. Once again his blow had basically no effect.

  Jonathan pulled his door open and he now found himself forced to actually take a step closer to this foul monster in order to get inside his car. His right arm came up, and later, when he would replay this moment in his mind, it seemed as if the tire iron weighed about a hundred pounds.

  He swung down hard, his blow connecting at the base of the woman’s neck. She had not made a sound. Her hands were still reaching for him and now one of them had purchase on his sleeve down near his left wrist.