by Gouge, W. B.
Somehow, he seemed unfazed by this and growled as he stepped forward, his arms reaching toward David. David stepped back with his club ready to strike again and was barely able to find the words, “Stay back Paul! I mean it!”
Paul completely ignored him and took another step. David didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wanted to be left alone. He took another step back and tried to reason with Paul again, “Please Paul…Stop right there…Please…please!” but Paul closed the distance between them now only inches away from David.
No matter what, he couldn’t bring himself to act, to kill a person he had known his whole life. There was a deafening pop in the room and Paul slumped to his knees. David opened his eyes as Paul fell forward, the contents of his skull splattered on the wall behind him. He landed at David’s feet, his massive body finally coming to rest as a mixture of grey and red and black slime poured from the open skull cavity onto the living room floor. David moved backward until he leaned against the wall and slid to the floor unable to take his eyes off the horrible thing in front of him. Greg hurried past David, the skinny woman was making her way over to the window. As she reached the opening of the window Greg stepped out from behind the wall in front of her, his pistol pointed at her face and fired before she even registered he was there. With the flash of the pistol her head snapped back, pieces of brain and bone scattered behind her and she collapsed onto the porch with a thump.
David still gripped his weapon and stared at Paul’s body. David had almost forgotten to breathe for a moment and he felt shaky and weak, he began to have tunnel vison. He snapped out of it when Greg kicked his shoe, “Help me throw him out the window…” Greg said holstering his pistol.
Owen stood in the doorway to the hall sand surveyed the scene, David pulled himself up and stood over Paul’s body. Greg grabbed Paul’s arms and looked over at the two boys, “Well, don’t just stand there, help me!” this time he made it an order.
Owen didn’t move. David stepped over Paul’s body and grabbed one of his arms. As they picked him up, more slimy matter dripped and oozed out of Paul’s skull, David winced at the awful smell. He recognized it from the puddle in the Country Store. It was a smell he would not soon forget. They dragged Paul to the window and wrestled his heavy corpse over the couch and out of the window. His body came to rest next to the skinny woman, both of their expressions blank and lifeless. David felt relieved that it was over and wondered why they had attacked him. He didn’t recognize the woman, but he had known Paul almost all his life. He was a jerk at times, but he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t some murdering maniac. He wasn’t the same today. He was just like David’s grandfather had been.
“What is wrong with everyone?” David said quietly as he looked down at the bodies.
Greg shook his head and stared out the window for a moment, “I don’t know kid…” he trailed off.
The three of them stood quietly for several moments, the only sound in the room was the TV. A reporter was reading a piece of paper he didn’t seem to understand very well. He said, “Police advise that citizens stay indoors and out of public areas. It has also been suggested that citizens avoid contact with anyone who is behaving abnormally or aggressive.”
Greg turned to look at the TV and smirked, “Yeah? Well no shit!”
David opened the door to the cellar and yelled down the stairs that everything was okay. He told them to stay down there for a few minutes while they “cleaned things up.” David, Owen and Greg secured the first floor of the house. They barricaded the doors with heavy furniture and pushed dressers and cabinets in front of several of the windows. All that was left was to deal with the bodies outside.
The western sky glowed orange as the sun dipped low near the horizon, the sky to the east was purple and clouds formed in the distance. David stopped to stare for a moment, under different circumstances it would have been a beautiful evening. They had started with Paul Simmons and the skinny woman in the flower dress. The group laid the bodies next to each other under the big hickory tree in the side yard, their mangled faces pointed upwards into the sky. Then they collected the bodies piled up by the entrance to the kitchen. They had found them lying on top of one another in a plie. There were two young women, two much older men, and a middle aged man. Nobody wanted to touch them at first, their bodies were covered with deep gashes and ragged wounds. He and Owen had grabbed one of the young women by the arms and lifted her out of the pile when David noticed a deep bite mark on her forearm. He examined the wound, and in fact, many of the wounds on the other bodies were bite marks. David also noticed that all the bodies had crusty, red blood dried around their mouths. “Oh god… were they chewing on themselves?” he wondered as an eerie feeling crept over him.
After they had dragged all the bodies over to the pile, David walked over to his grandfather’s body. The wind had blown the blanket off of his legs, so he pulled it back over Henry. There were so many things David wanted to say, so much that David wanted to tell his grandfather. I’m sorry…” he whispered, “I flunked out of school… I didn’t want to tell you because… I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
The only sound in the dusty yard was the breeze. David stood next to his grandfather for a long time and said nothing. After a few minutes Owen came over and stood next to David, “I’m sorry about your grandpa.”
“It’s not your fault Owen.” David whispered and wiped the tears from his face.
“Do you want to put him with the others? We don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Owen said.
David didn’t answer for a few seconds, instead he wondered what was going on. What had made this gentle, caring man go completely crazy like that. He let that thought go and tried to be optimistic. Hopefully the authorities could get a handle on things. Then at least, he and his grandmother would be able to properly bury his grandfather.
“Yeah, for now. Let’s just put him with the others.” David said.
The two boys carefully picked Henry up and carried him over to the oak tree. They laid him down in a grassy spot and put the blanket over him again. They both stood there for a while in silence, Greg stood on the front porch watching quietly. Then David and Owen walked back to the house.
David opened the door to the cellar and called down to the others that it was safe to come out now. A few moments later Liz and the young woman emerged from the darkened doorway with Edna behind them. She looked pale and sweaty, with dark circles around her eyes. “Are you okay grandma?” David asked.
“Oh, I’m okay. Just feeling a bit tired. Can I sit for a while?” Edna said exhausted.
She seemed distant, like she had recently awoken from a deep sleep and wasn’t quite awake yet. David and Liz helped her into the living room and sat her on the couch. Then he went to the kitchen and brought her a glass of water from the tap. She sipped it and clutched the glass tightly as everyone looked on. “Oh, that’s much better. Thank you, David.” Edna tried to sound cheerful but everyone could see that she was not well.
“Can I take a look at your arm ma’am?” the young woman asked, “It’s okay, I’m a medical assistant. My name is Sarah”
Sarah sat down next to Edna and slowly unwrapped the bloody towel. Edna winced a few times until the young woman removed it. The wound looked terrible. Ragged flesh surrounded a deeply red wound that oozed blood and dripped onto the towel the young woman held underneath. “It needs stitches for sure. What caused this?” Sarah asked.
“I was… bitten.” Edna said weakly.
“By one of those people?” Sarah shook her head, “What is going on out there?”
Greg sat in the chair in the corner quietly until now, “Some kind of sickness I think. Everyone everywhere is getting sick, and everywhere there are sick people,” he pointed to the wound, “They act like this for some reason.”
“But what kind of sickness causes people to bite each other professor? Rabies?” Owen asked in a mocking tone.
“You don’t have to agree, but you saw t
he news, didn’t you?” Greg sat back in his seat starring at Owen.
“Whatever dude, these people aren’t sick, they’re crazy. Sick people sit around being sick, and crazy people… ya know, do crazy shit like this.” Owen walked away shaking his head.
David wondered if his grandfather had been sick, he didn’t remember anything unusual when he had picked him up at the bus station. But they had stopped by the pharmacy for… “why did they stop by the pharmacy?” David had never actually seen what it was his grandfather picked up from the pharmacy, and he didn’t remember talking to him about it either after they had left there. David wanted to ask his grandmother, but he didn’t want to bring his grandfather at a time like this.
David turned to Liz, “Liz, what did my grandpa get at the pharmacy yesterday?” David whispered so Edna wouldn’t hear him.
“I’m not sure, he comes in every few days and picks up medicine from the back with my boss. I’ve never had to ring him up for anything off the pharmacy floor before.” Liz said.
“David,” Edna said, “Your grandpa stops at the pharmacy every week to get his medicine. He didn’t want to tell you and he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell you either. But your grandfather had cancer.”
David couldn’t believe it. His grandfather had always been so strong. “Cancer? Why didn’t he tell me?” David thought. But he already knew why, his grandfather hadn’t told him about the cancer for the same reason he hadn’t told his grandfather about getting kicked out of school. Henry didn’t want him to be upset. His eyes filled with tears as he realized again how much they cared for him, and how much he cared for them.
Everyone was quiet for a few moments, “I should get this cleaned up and bandaged. Do you have a first aid kit, any Iodine or anything like that?” Sarah asked as she inspected the wound.
David nodded and headed for the bathroom. He cleaned out the medicine cabinet and brought all the supplies they had to Sarah, though most of it was older stuff nobody had used for a while. She was very thorough when she worked, she was gentle with Edna’s wound and talked to her while she wrapped it up to keep her mind off the pain. The new bandage looked much better than the bloody towel Edna had before. Afterward she had Edna take a few aspirin and David and Sarah helped her to her bed. David closed the door behind him as they left the bedroom, “Thank you, for everything you did for her.” He said to Sarah.
“Don’t mention it, it’s my job to help people when they’re hurt or sick, and you did kind of save my life by letting me come in here.” Sarah said as she smiled.
David liked her right away, she was kind and genuine. “So how did you end up here?” David asked as they sat down in the living room with the rest of the group.
“I was on my way to work. My dad had called me and said that people were going crazy at the hospital back in Atlanta, he asked if I had to go into work today. I was supposed to be off today but they had called me in anyway with everything going on,” she explained.
“I ran into some traffic, there was a car blocking the road up ahead of me. I thought maybe there had been a crash or something, so I stopped to see if I could help. Some lady had already gotten out to help I guess, and before I could reach the car a man jumped out of the back seat and attacked her. I would have gotten back in my car and left or called the police, but another car smashed into mine on the shoulder. I’m not sure where the rest of them came from… but suddenly they were everywhere.” Sarah looked scared suddenly.
“They attacked some of the other people who had stopped and got out of their cars. I didn’t know what to do so I ran. A few other people ran with me, we covered a mile or so when we had to get off the road, there were too many of them. I ran through the corn, not sure where I was going when I came across route 50. Then I found your house.”
That explained how so many people had come out of nowhere. Greg had been listening intently the whole time form the arm chair in front of the TV, “Who were those people you were running with?” he motioned towards the end of the driveway.
Sarah’s eyes unfocused for a moment, “I don’t know who they were, I guess they had the same idea I had, but some of those people chased us and…” she trailed off, everyone already knew how the story ended.
Owen was leaning in the doorway to the hall, “And what about you mister? How did you end up here?”
Greg didn’t answer right away, instead he stared at Owen. Then he said calmly, “I worked for a university near St. Louis. We had a medical center there and I worked with security. I was coming in to
work when I ran into a mob in the street. It was pretty bad, people fighting and shooting, those crazies tearing people up,” his voice was robotic, like he was repeating his story for the hundredth time.
“My boss, who was a kind old man was there. His face was mangled and bloody, his skin was pale and spotted with dark purple bruises, he was ripping a mouthful of flesh from a woman’s neck when I last saw him,” Greg looked disgusted as he spoke and the rest of them didn’t say a word.
“You see, he was a good man. He and his wife had been foster parents, he certainly would never have done anything like that before,” Greg pointed at the TV as video rolled of people fighting with police and soldiers, “But there is some kind of sickness going around that causes this, and somehow he got it.”
None of them wanted to believe that, it didn’t make any sense. But it also didn’t make sense to David that his grandfather had attacked him, or his grandmother for that matter.
“That doesn’t explain how you ended up here?” Owen said.
Greg’s attitude changed, he looked very sad now, “I was on my way to Pittsburgh to see my family…” Greg trailed off.
They hadn’t known him for very long, but now they saw a man in Greg that they hadn’t seen before. On the TV the reporters named the cities where the violence was widespread. New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington D.C. Atlanta, Pittsburgh. A knot formed in Owen’s stomach, he felt sorry for how he had treated Greg until now. He wanted to say he was sorry for how he had behaved but instead he just stood quietly.
David turned to Sarah, “Will she be okay now?”
“She should be fine as long as it doesn’t get infected.” Sarah said.
Owen headed for the kitchen, “Got anything to eat?”
“Everyone help yourself.” David said and sat back in the couch, it was going to be a long night.
Six
The hours crawled by as they watched the news reports, each one of them scanning the information for something they had missed as the same reporters read the same reports over and over. Each report began with the breaking news image even though the only things they changed each time were the addition of a new area of unrest, a new hospital overrun, or another police department overwhelmed by the rioters. However, the story remained the same, hospitals across the nation were full of sick people demanding care, and everywhere there were sick people there was an outbreak of violence and rioting. It seemed as though Greg was on to something with his theory, though he never pointed that out. Instead, he simply sat there watching the reports hour by hour.
The small group kept a watch out the windows as day became evening and evening became night. The first bright stars began to shine, a warm breeze lifted the curtains hanging in the large living room window. Every hour on the hour Sarah would go and check on Edna, David would follow and stand in the doorway. Edna slept most of the time, and the rest of the time she seemed to fade in and out of consciousness.
Owen had eaten a full diner, then he sat in front of the T.V. snacking and drinking soda while Liz had sat on the couch watching the news beside David. At some point David nodded off on the couch from exhaustion. For some time, he had drifted in darkness until he found himself standing on the dark, empty road from his previous dream. He quickly spun around, looking for the creatures from before and was relieved when he found himself alone. He was so tired he slumped down to his knees in the road to sit for a while. He was sure he was dream
ing this time, though he wasn’t sure how to explain how he felt tired in his dream. He began to feel relaxed and at ease when he heard a noise that startled him. David turned to see his grandfather standing in the road, a shadow of the monster that chased him out into his yard. His grandfather stood quietly and still but David wasn’t going to wait around to find out what would happen if he stayed there. He jumped to his feet and turned to run and was surprised by yet another freakish monster. His heart began to pound as he looked it over. This beast was tall and thin and wore a white night gown to cover its impossibly long arms and legs. Its white hair was a tangled mess that covered its face all except for its gaping mouth that was full of jagged, brown teeth. David recoiled from the monster as its head snapped forward comping at him with its grotesque mouth and revealing its face. David recognized the creature, this time the monster in his nightmare was his grandmother.
David awoke on the couch panting and startled Owen on the other end of the couch. Greg just looked over at the two and then went back to watching the TV. Owen went back to eating, David rose from the couch and stretched, he had been asleep for a few hours. Sarah was slumped over the arm of the love seat with her feet tucked under a pillow, Owen was laid back on the far end of the couch and Liz was absent from the small living room. David was hungry and thirsty, so he headed into the kitchen where he found Liz sitting at the table drinking a glass of water, “Anything new on the news?” she asked cheerfully.
David liked that about her, she was always positive and upbeat. David grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the tap, “Nope, same old crap.”
He chugged the whole glass of water in just a few gulps, poured a new one and sat across from her. David looked down at his glass for a few seconds. He could feel her staring at him. He looked up and caught her gaze just before she turned away. She turned back and met his stare with a concerned look on her face. “I’m sorry about your grandpa.”