“Fuck you!” Big Vern screamed back at him, but soon received another gun shot through the foot. This shot, as was the case with the other two, was muffled by a silencer.
“No, seriously, do you no detect a pattern here that is directly associated with your cursing and shouting and my gun?” The shooter shook his head back and forth. Big Vern gave a muffled grunt back. His shouting had subsided into nothing more than a soft child-like sobbing.
“Good” said the stranger as he stood up from the chair. “Now, before your nose had an argument with my nut and lost. I asked you about the girl that was found dead a few days ago. Her throat was slit and there was an item of clothing missing. Now, you told the police that a black pimp-looking dude had picked her up. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t, I told them the truth!” He sobbed back, but before his sentence had finish a bullet penetrated his shoulder.
“Really, you must have two gallon of puss between your ears” The stranger said, obviously tiring of the big man’s stupidity.
“I didn’t curse!” he protested, feeling like there was no escape from the pain this man was inflicting upon him. He was suddenly sympathetic to all of his victims and a sense of regret swept over him. He was more than aware of how conversations like this ended, and hoped they would find his body before it rotted.
“But you lied, and please keep in mind I have another magazine in my pocket, ye ken?”
“Ok! Some bitch picked her up. A brunette, funny accent, but not like yours.” The stranger smiled knowing he was getting somewhere with this idiot now.
“What was she driving?” Suddenly he was interrupted by a blood curdling scream from the hallway closet followed by a thumping at the door. “What was that?”
“It’s one of the girls, I sample the product occasionally, she’s no one I promise” Big Vern protested, but the banging against the door was growing more intense.
The stranger was not looking directly at Big Vern any more, but was at a safe enough distance away that if the bigger man tried anything he would have ample time to put another bullet in him.
“The one who picked the girl up, what was she driving?” The Stranger repeated his question.
“A Jetta, a VW. Please, I think I am bleeding to death!” he whimpered. Big Vern was experiencing defeat for the first time, and was not taking it well.
“Don’t be silly, you don’t even have an artery where I shot you, man up!” spat the stranger as he walked towards the noises coming from inside the closet. He was passed the door and preparing to open it in a way that would leave the door between him and the hallway should there be a threat on the inside. As he drew closer he noticed a more violent shaking to the door in the frame. As he reached for the handle he was aware the door would obstruct his view of Big Vern and whoever was in the closet. Pointing the gun towards Big Vern, he took the pressure of the handle and began to turn it slowly, his plan was to step back as he opened the door and bring his weapon up into the shooting position should whoever was in the closet be a threat greater than that of a teenaged prostitute. He began to turn the handle further as he braced himself to step back. He was not ready for the force in which the occupant smashed him aside as the door catch suddenly gave way.
The stranger was thrown back and lost his footing. He now found himself tripping and stumbling backwards as he reached his free hand out to break his fall as he hit the ground hard.
“Hey! Trina!” Yelled Big Vern, the girl had smashed into the wall opposite the corridor of the trailer’s hallway. The former occupant of the closet groaned a deep guttural grunt as she left a smear of saliva on the wallpaper. The noise she made towards Big Vern was more of a growl. The stranger had no view of the girl herself, just the stain she had left on the wall.
She stank of urine, alcohol and vomit, all smells that anyone with this man’s history would recognize in an instant. She had the smell of nights out in those parts of the cities where he personally had spent so much time.
“Hey baby! Get out and call.” There was a pause as big Vern clipped his own sentence and replaced it with a new one. “What the fuck!’
The stranger recognized that the question had not come from that of whimpering man. Big Vern’s voice was suddenly filled with terror. The stranger recognized panic all too well. He kicked the door closed as he heard another scream, only this time it was Big Vern’s. The girl had run at him and was biting into his legs where the blood of his shot kneecaps covered his skin. As the door slammed back closed she looked up at the stranger and paid him little to no attention after that. With his free hand Big Vern was punching her wildly in the face head and back, but unable to use his knees he had no leverage to push away from the girl. Oblivious to the punches, she bit into the flesh of his thigh pulling her head back with a sharp yanking motion and grabbing the meat with both hands.
Vern was howling in real agony now. Even through the tried to drag himself away from the girl, it was impossible for him to hold in the panic of seeing the girl eating his own body. She grunted and dove on him again. Big Vern’s pain and panic got the better of him and he vomited onto the floor. The slippery surface, his wounds and now the added weight of the girl made his escape attempts little more than a man attempting to swim on dry land.
The stranger raised his gun and pointed it at the girl’s head.
He felt the pop-pop of the double tap, the technique he had learned lifetime ago. Or so it seemed. The spray of red mist that was a mix of blood and brain fluid splattered out like a fountain of crimson water and decorated the wall with an array of dots.
Two clean shots. He knew it was a good hit. Unfortunately, someone had forgotten to tell the girl. She bit down into the screaming man beneath her like she was enjoying a huge three hundred and twenty pound burger. Oblivious to the stranger’s marksmanship, she continued to feast.
As she pulled back from her bite, another piece of flesh hanging loosely from her mouth, the stranger was suddenly mesmerized by the look of satisfaction on her face. Had he been able to see her mouth, through the vile lump of human sinew hanging from her teeth, he would have sworn she was smiling.
He took the mercy shot and fired twice into Big Vern’s head. The screaming stopped and the air was filled with nothing more than the gnawing sound and grunts of the girl as she chewed on the flesh in her hands. Still she sat looking at him with the horrific look of pleasure on her face.
Swinging to his feet the Scotsman fired once more into the girl’s chest and this time she noticed. She scrambled backwards a little. Then two simultaneous realizations occurred to the stranger. Firstly, the girl was not dead and secondly the slide of his 9mm Browning was in the held-back position. The weapon was out of ammunition.
Spitting half eaten flesh from her mouth as she screamed as if it came from the very core of her soulless body. She shot up and ran at the stranger. She was almost upon him as he slammed his spare magazine into his browning and allowed the slide forward chambering a round. He fired three more times into her chest and as the bullets tore out her spine she dropped in a violent twitching mess. She was not dead but paralyzed. The threat was eliminated.
Placing his hands on the walls either side of the corridor, one still grasping at his pistol, he supported his weight and let out a long slow breath followed by a long hacking painful cough.
“Only in America” he whispered to himself as he stepped over the squirming girl and out into the living room and kitchen area. Looking down at the hulking mass, which had been Big Vern, the stranger fished out one of the last of his Benson and Hedges cigarettes. Big Vern‘s death brought with it the terrible truth. The trail was cold and someone else was going to die at the hands of the woman he was tracking.
What he did not know was that by the end of this day, the horror of mass death would make the woman’s murderous spree pale into insignificance.
He scurried around on the kitchen table looking for anything that many help him locate the next step on the trail of the woman he was
seeking. There was nothing.
Jilly
To think, four short hours ago she had been worried she was late. Four hours that seemed like an eternity in passing.
Always late, always lost in a daydream of something better than this life she lived. She was always thinking of how she could be the hero of her own story, a fierce self-assured confident woman who could take control of everything around her and find an outcome that she was yet to identify. She wanted so desperately to show the strength to be a Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior or Lexi Ambler, who possessed the strength to take control of their destinies. She also wanted to find the romance and happiness in her life that never seemed to be so easy to come by in every one of the Drew Barrymore movies she loved so much.
Until four hours ago her life was a constant search for one moment of bliss when she felt like she was the center of a story. She wanted to be in a plot that made up for all those terrible dates. She wanted to be like the hero in a novel of courage and self-control and not a word fumbling and socially clumsy character who blurted out things at ice breakers like her true self. How she longed for just one day in which she did not feel she needed to use a movie quote to validate the way she was feeling.
She no longer wanted to go through the series of one night stands that led to awkward mornings and embarrassing excuses of why her relationship attempts always seemed doomed to fail.
What she wanted was just one day when she could walk out on the dreariness of her meaningless little job sat in a reception desk in an office that no one visited. Just one day when she did not have to leave a dream and enter this boring life in which she seemed to be serving a life sentence of monotony.
Last night’s date did not even get off of the ground. She had sat and waited in an out of the way Italian restaurant stuck between old and new 202. Unlike most of all the other restaurants in Montgomeryville, it was the kind of place a married man could take a girl and not be noticed. It was here that she spent her evening waiting for a date that never showed.
To drown her sorrows and to do anything to get away from the embarrassing stares of the waiters, she had walked to the neighboring Wawa gas station and brought a pint of ice-cream and several Tastykakes and as much candy as she could fit in her hands. No romantic dinner tonight, just sweets and the bottle of wine she had brought in the hopes she would not go home alone.
She had sat and drank and eaten her hurt feelings away amidst tears and curses to the gods of online dating Apps. She had fallen asleep watching some lifetime movie and wondering if she would ever have an African American sassy cheerleader yelling encouragement to her when the man of her dreams swept her of her feet and into a life filled with hope and passion.
The previous evening’s disaster had left her a mess and she cursed it even more when her eyes had opened and she realized that there was no alarm clock playing the witty conversations of Preston and Steve on the radio. The realization that she had slept-in again jolted her to her feet and she ran through the collection of stuffed animals that decorated her bed during the day and landed on the floor during the night.
She reached the door and was reaching for her keys when she stopped. She was still in her clothes from the previous night. She was in no mood to hear another joke about a “Walk-of-Shame” and decided that since she was late, it was better to be hung for a sheep than a lamb.
It was seven minutes past nine when she left the apartment showered and changed and wearing possibly the worst outfit for work she had ever worn. The outfit was a dark sweater vest over a white blouse that would have people who missed the 1980’s complimenting her all day. The truth was that she did not have a white bra and the black lace of her latest treat from Victoria’s Secret was so clearly visible that the vest was little more than a disguise for her not having done laundry again.
She also wore a denim skirt that was a little too short to be considered professional, but she sat behind a desk where no one noticed her anyway. The realization was that she did not care anymore. She tried too hard and no one cared, so why should she.
“Come on,” she said to her reflection in the mirror “Time to take your real first-world white girl problems and pay the rent.” With a sigh, she left the apartment and headed into what she thought would be another awful day. If she had only known, she thought to herself later.
The drive to work was hellish, cars where bumper to bumper as she drove from her apartment on Bethlehem Pike, she was glad she would have an excuse. She had never seen so much traffic on the pike heading towards the Fort Washington Interchange. Traffic headed north was no better, and as Bethlehem merged with route 309 she decided that this would not be an option for her this morning.
At first she thought it must be a Holiday that she had forgotten about, but then she remembered Easter was still a few days away. So why were there so many cars that seemed to be either filled with suitcases, or pulling trailers. By the time she made the turn towards her office, she was already over 2 hours late. She knew she could blame traffic, but her tardiness was getting ridiculous now and she feared she would get written up at least; or fired at the worst.
The offices all along this area of Horsham town-ship were set on business campuses. All seemed to flow into one, yet today the parking lots seemed empty. She had thought for a brief moment that a lot of people must be stuck in the unusually heavy traffic. But today really did feel more like a weekend that a weekday. It was a stark contrast from the traffic less than two miles away on Route 309. She was lost in this thought as she turned into the parking lot of her own office.
Snapped from her thoughts like a child waking from a nightmare she screamed and, as she slammed her feet to clutch and brake pedals, the man, whom she had almost hit, was suddenly banging on the hood of her car and screaming for something. Yet all she could manage was a weak reply of “sorry!”
Yet he continued screaming and banging. He was now at her driver side-window. She was to terrified at first to realize what he was saying but it came to her when she heard a single word “Help!”
His screaming stopped and he was now pleading with a tone like sobbing. His mouth and eyes were glazed with fear and defeat.
“Help me, please” he said again, his eyes looked terrified to the point of panic and his skin was ashen beneath a glistening sheen of sweat.
She turned down her window enough to speak and said “Are you Ok?”
“No!” he yelled, “they are killing people! Let me in please!” Although every instinct told her not to, and for reasons unknown, she opened the locks and nodded her head backwards as if to indicate the back seat was where he should go.
A sense of calm drifted over her. It was a feeling that she remembered from a long time ago, when her friend Julia had fallen from the jungle gym in third grade. She had calmly knelt with her and told her to stop crying. She would bring Miss Wendy to her. She was no longer clumsy Jilly, she was simply calm Jilly. The Jilly that knew instinctively that panic helped no one when everyone was scared.
She also remembered her calmness when, as a 9 year old at elementary school, they had been on lock-down. She had never understood why it was that other people’s panicking had calmed her, but it had. It was probably because she was always threatened by other people’s confidence. But when terror was around, she was able to be the strong one. Later she would cry buckets of tears and shake violently, but at the time, she was always level headed.
“Thank you, Thank God! Please, we need to go, they are right behind me.” He pleaded, gasping for air, and clutching at his chest. Please, my office is over here, I need my pills!” He was neither pleading nor yelling now, simply wheezing like he could not get his breath.
She turned to face him and spoke with a calmness that surprised her.
“Sir,” she said softly, “I am going to take you to my office and we can get you help from there ok?” She looked at him as he seemed to calm for a second. But suddenly his eyes grew wider as terror crept onto his face and he screamed a high pitched
scream that could only be achieved when nothing but fear fills the mind.
She was about to ask if he was in pain when the first of them slammed into her passenger door with a loud thump. She turned her head sharply and saw a face dripping with blood and mucus from the mouth, nose, ears and eyes. His mouth opened as if to bite at the closed window and several teeth shattered and fell from the mouth of the horrific creature before her. A vile red streak of filth came from its mouth and smeared across the glass, partially covering the grotesque features of the once human face.
The face seemed to be biting at the glass and she saw a slime trail of spit, blood and mucus smear across the window. Another thump and a woman she almost recognized clawed across the hood of her car. Growling but not speaking. Thump! A third Thump! A forth and then the thumping sounded like a roll of thunder as more hit her car. She pulled the gear shift into reverse and pulled out of the lot as quickly as she could. She did not need to look to know that bodies where under her wheels. She felt sick and bile burned in the back of her throat as she pushed the car into first, spinning the wheels on what she thought could only be flesh and bones.
After what was only a few seconds she felt traction and her car lurched forwards. She had missed first gear and started in third. Two other bodies were under her wheels. And then a third as the lady she thought she recognized went slipping forward and the car shuddered once more as she barreled over her.
The man in the back was sobbing softly and Jilly suddenly realized that there was a foul smell in the vehicle. The man had lost control of his bowels and bladder as more creatures slammed into the car.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled between sobs and made no effort to move, he simply sobbed.
Putting the car into reverse she backed away from the growing crowd, of what she could only describe as a disgusting mass, and pulled away sharply. Yet the creatures came with her and she changed gear again, this time into first gear. She pushed some aside, but the car was slow and a creature had fallen beneath her wheels.
Zombie Outbreak Z1O5 (Book 2): Zed Dawn Page 7