George could only say “oomph!” as Jennifer aimed a knee at his groin. He dropped her and sunk to the ground. Jason ran past him and George weakly reach out to grab at his leg. He missed and fell over on his face. He crawled back to his hands and knees and tried to see what was happening. There was a sea of cars in front of him, blocking his vision. He saw Jennifer’s head moving and Jason was right behind her, looking as if he was trying to pull her away from something. George spared a glance to his left and saw several more of the undead closing on their position.
There’s no time left.
He winced as he got to his feet and stumbled over to the others. He rounded a car and leaned on the hood of another, and knew he was too late.
Al had finished off the old man, but his hand looked mangled and broken, at least one finger bone had pierced the skin on his right hand, although his hand was covered in so much blood that it was hard to tell how much damage there was. The old man’s head was nothing more than a pile of mush below him. Al was screaming in pain and Jennifer had her arms wrapped around him, her scream a sharp counterpoint to her husband’s. George realized that the hand was not the worst of it for Al when he saw his leg. A huge chunk of flesh and muscle had been torn away. The blood squirting from the wound was creating a river beneath him. Jason was screaming at Jennifer, close to crying. He was screaming for her to leave. The only one who wasn’t screaming was George.
Al was going into shock and vomiting on himself. He slumped down next to all the people he and George had killed—if that was what you called putting something that was already dead down again. Blood was everywhere. Al was shaking, staring straight ahead. He had stopped screaming. The woman and little girl in the car were forgotten and so was everything else. Jennifer was pounding on her husband’s chest, pleading with him to get up.
George felt dizzy and the buzzing noise was drowning out everything else. This plague of the undead would sweep them all away; it would take each and every one of them away from all of this.
Would that be so bad?
It would be easy. Let things just happen and they would be free of all the screams and all the fear.
No.
George grabbed Jason and pulled him away from Jennifer. The boy resisted at first but then settled as he saw the dead moving toward them. The buzzing, the cacophony of moans, was reaching a crescendo. They would be here soon. George reached back and touched Jennifer on the shoulder. She had quieted some and she had her arms wrapped around her husband, holding him as if he was a life preserver—the only thing left to her. She looked away from Al for a moment and stared up at George.
He saw only despair in her eyes.
He extended his hand to her and willed her to take it, to lift herself up and come with him and Jason. He had one of his arms wrapped protectively around Jason who was staring at Jennifer, tears blurring his vision. Suddenly, it seemed like the buzzing stopped and all he could hear was the words Jennifer said as she looked at the boy one last time.
“Go with George, Jason. He’ll take care of you.”
It was the last thing she ever said. She turned away from them and buried her face against Al’s cheek. She closed her eyes and held him close. Al never stopped staring directly ahead as she pulled him in tight and kissed him on the cheek.
George whispered her name once, pleading. She would not turn away from her husband though. He stared at the newlyweds for a moment longer and then glanced inside the car. The woman continued shaking her head back and forth, denying that any of this was happening. She and the little girl were intertwined, the child’s head resting on the woman’s shoulder. George was tempted to bang on the glass, but Al was dying because of his attempt to save those two lost souls...Al and Jennifer both.
The buzzing came back to George’s ears, louder than ever. The moving corpses were closing in and it would be only moments before they would lose even their miniscule chance at escape.
Jason did not struggle as George turned, dragging him away from the one person left on earth that he trusted. They didn’t look back as the dead closed in on their friends. George couldn’t bear to think of what was going to happen to them in just a few more moments.
As he and Jason turned the corner of the building they heard no screams, no cries for help from Al or Jennifer.
George and Jason
Part 3
George thumbed through a paperback romance novel he had commandeered from one of the preschool teachers’ desks. It was wretched, but it passed the time. He would not have been caught dead with such a book previously but now, with only Jason left to pass judgment, he could care less.
He thought about the boy and what was to become of him.
Jason would be a tall teen. He was gawky, scrawny perhaps, but he had the bone structure that indicated that he would easily break six feet as an adult. The boy was the whole reason they were holed up in this church instead of dead out on the road somewhere. George wanted nothing more than to take his chances and leave this place behind for good. He would take any risk that he could to return to his family. They needed him.
But so did Jason.
Jennifer had coaxed some other details out of the shy boy in the few days they were stuck at the high school. It was far more than George had been able to get out of Jason since then. His father lived up near Detroit and was not on speaking terms with his mother. She had made the decision a year ago to move to Ohio for a fresh start. She got a job as a nurse and promised Jason a house to live in, so they moved to Gallatin where they could afford a cottage in the little town.
The move was a shock to Jason’s system. He did well in school, but being uprooted and losing all his friends had been tough. His mother was happy here so he didn’t complain for her sake.
The boy had lost touch with his father long ago. He barely knew the man and hadn’t said much about him unless prodded. Jennifer guessed that even though Jason acted like none of it mattered, he still missed his father a great deal.
Jason lost his mother not too long before he had arrived at the shelter. It did not take much to figure that out since he had come to the place alone. He would not talk about it and all Jennifer could gather was that the National Guard had picked him up, perhaps in his house, or off the street, and dumped him in the shelter.
So Jason had lost his mother and then the one person he had latched onto when things had gone from bad to worse. George guessed that Jason felt Jennifer had betrayed him when she had chosen to stay with her dying husband rather than escape with him from the parking lot.
It was a harsh assessment and George could not blame Jennifer for giving up when her husband, who was her high school sweetheart, was lying beside her with his lifeblood pouring out onto the asphalt. All she could do for the boy was to tell him to run away with George. That she could not see past her own grief and agony was nothing George could blame her for, but he knew Jason didn’t see it that way.
* * *
After George and Jason fled the parking lot of the high school, they kept moving around the building. As they got further away from Al and Jennifer, Jason managed to start walking on his own instead of forcing George to drag the boy along behind him.
Jason’s reaction to Jennifer’s abrupt farewell was worrisome to George, but his concern for the pre-teen’s mental well-being had to take a back seat to bigger priorities.
They gradually made their way to a corner of the high school where they could spy what was going on out on the street. It took forever as George kept them sliding along the cold bricks of the building. The wall was not straight and it forced them to spend time creeping around corners, pausing to make sure they were not coming up on anything they couldn’t deal with. They reached several bushes that hugged the corner of the building and dove behind them, hoping they could hide there for a few moments. It was then that George realized how truly screwed they were.
The undead were scattered, spread out after moving in from north of the school onto the street between the high
school and the grade schools across the street. They had pushed survivors they came across before them, herding them like cattle to the slaughter. By the time the horde had reached the schools, its numbers were in the hundreds, if not thousands. Both soldiers and citizens alike had been defeated at every turn and it appeared that this was where the final battle between the undead and what remained of humanity in this region would take place.
The ghouls were in thick clusters surrounding islands of soldiers and the sound of automatic weapons fire were small disruptions to the deafening roars of the creatures. They were in the street, on the grass, everywhere, attacking everything living thing they could get their hands and teeth on.
Before that night, George had seen only bleak hints and whispers of what was happening outside the high school he’d called home for the past few days. It had been nothing worse than an uncomfortable itch at the base of his spine. That itch hinted at the truth of things, but nothing up until now had grabbed him by the throat and throttled him with the revelation that the world had come to an end.
George’s eyes zeroed in on a particular soldier on top of a pickup truck out on the street. It looked like he was dancing on the narrow roof as he dodged the grasping hands of the undead surrounding the truck. For an instant George was reminded of a group of concertgoers trying to touch the leg of a lead guitarist as he jammed out on stage. The M16 in the soldier’s arms looked somewhat like a guitar, even as he fired into the crowd erratically, frantically trying to clear a path for a quick escape. Despite his efforts, the crowd wouldn’t part and the clot of ghouls around the truck kept growing thicker by the second. The dead clumsily attempted to climb the truck to get at him, but instead fell underneath the press of other bodies pushing on them from behind. Those that were crushed underneath served as step stools for the other stiffs who were able to get higher and closer to the soldier.
The young private continued to fire his weapon and bellowed resistance as he did. He hit the mark with the occasional shot and a head would disappear below the mass of contorting bodies, but mostly his attacks did little to influence the crowd, except perhaps to make it grow even more excited by his presence.
The ghouls dragged themselves onto the hood and into the bed of the truck behind the soldier, who was able to dodge their hands for a short while. The first few that snagged his camouflaged clad legs were easily shaken off. George was hunched down the bushes at the corner of the high school with Jason held closely in front of him, watching helplessly as the terrible scene unfolded no more than fifty yards from where they hid. George could feel Jason shaking uncontrollably and tried to squeeze his shoulders tighter just to let the boy know he was safe, but it was useless. The middle-aged man would later recall whispering something like ‘everything will be okay’ in the boy’s ear, but wasn’t sure if it had been more to reassure Jason or himself.
George silently rooted for the soldier, who ran out of bullets and started swinging his M16 around like a bat, not with much hope of connecting with anyone, but more in an effort to deter those closest from reaching out to grab him. The young man’s screams increased in volume as he sidestepped several grasping claws and backed into another group of avaricious hands that latched on to his legs at the ankles. He attempted to turn and face these new attackers, his rifle still held out in front of him, but lost his balance and slammed down hard on the metal truck roof. George heard a hollow clunk as the soldier crashed and was pulled over the side of the truck.
Because they were at ground level, George couldn’t see what happened next, but he was cursed with a vivid imagination. He knew the man was being pulled apart, the angry ghouls snapping at one another as they fought over the tastiest morsels. The only consolation for the soldier was that there were enough of the undead that it was unlikely there would be enough of him left to reanimate.
The ongoing carnage out on the street was almost hypnotic. There were numerous small groups of living humans trying to hold the line, but all of those groups were being infiltrated by the walking dead. So many of the infected were in army fatigues it was hard to tell who was alive and who was undead. George remembered how fast the old man that had bitten Al had changed and knew that those dying right now would be up and helping the other ghouls within minutes. It made the battle that much quicker: the living soldiers often had no idea who was alive and who had reanimated, because both the living and the dead were saturated with blood and viscera.
Of all the crowding, surging undead, the largest concentration George could see was moving toward the entrance of the high school. Some of the guardsmen were falling back, around the bushes where George and Jason hid. George retained a firm hold on the boy as he watched the soldiers run by. He felt like he was clutching a rabbit: he couldn’t squeeze Jason too tightly, but if he relinquished his hold the kid would more than likely skitter away. But at that moment at least, Jason seemed sedate, not squirmy or making any noises that would draw any attention.
One of the entrances to the high school was behind where George and Jason hid, and it was apparently the fall back position for many of the National Guardsmen. They were trying to delay the inevitable onslaught by seeking sanctuary inside the high school with the rest of the soldiers and refugees inside.
George wondered if the riot inside the high school had been quelled and how much innocent blood had been spilled in the process. After seeing the massacre outside, he suspected that anyone who had been killed in the clash between refugees and soldiers was probably better off than anyone still alive.
He scanned the front of the building, but his vision was blocked by part of the high school that jutted out onto the expansive lawn in front of the school. He couldn’t see the opposite end of the building, but did see the advancing horde moving in his direction. The ghouls were methodically following the retreat of anyone left alive on the street...and those survivors were leading the dead straight to the high school.
George saw several vehicles moving erratically back and forth on the road and in the parking lot across the street, where even more soldiers were falling back through the doors of the elementary schools. Looking around, he dismissed the idea of trying to find a vehicle. There were far too many bodies already jammed underneath the wheels of several military vehicles and even a semi that had been commandeered by the National Guard. There was no possibility of driving out of the area.
George held his stomach in check at the sight of more bodies being crushed under the heavy equipment and pulped beyond recognition. The few vehicles still in motion were barely moving as more ghouls mindlessly crashed against them in an attempt to reach the drivers. Bodies and appendages were dragged under wheels and bogged the machines down. Corpses ruptured and became wedged into wheel wells, forcing the vehicles to a standstill.
George forced himself to continue looking out on the street, which was starting to resemble the ninth circle of hell. There had to be something out there...something that would give them some spark of hope.
There has to be someplace for us to hide.
The screams echoed all around them. More of the dead filed past their hiding space, not sensing the two easy targets as they followed groups of soldiers streaming past. The sound of shattering glass and panicked shouts behind them told George that the people still alive inside the high school were starting to realize what they were up against.
Jason had grown still, only barely shivering. George looked out on the street, forgetting about the boy for a moment. It appeared as if the dead were all clumping up out there, attacking the established positions of the soldiers, while others surrounded the entrances of the two schools across the street. He watched as countless numbers of the wretched creatures crawled through shattered windows of classrooms that looked dark and vacant. Jagged shards of glass sticking out of the window frames were ignored as they sliced into the rotting bodies of the ghouls. Chunks of their flesh fell to the ground, bloodless and inert.
Then he saw the one place in this nightmarish realm that the
y might make it to alive.
There was nothing surrounding the church. No soldiers and no stiffs. Gallatin United Methodist Church was posted on the sign out front. Flashes of light from weapons fire and spotlights being used lit up the building as George scanned it for damage or indications of someone hiding inside.
It looked like a simple church with a modest steeple that had been built onto it. Another structure, attached by an extended hall, stretched north of the main structure. There was a set of double doors at the front of the church, but no other entrances facing the road. No visible shattered glass, no boarded up windows. It was next to the elementary schools, just north of them on the other side of the street. It would be a straight shot across from where they were hidden.
More of the undead had shuffled past where George and Jason were crouched behind the bushes. The battle raged on behind them and on the street in front of them. They had to move soon.
George closed his eyes and tried to ignore the tumult of unnatural moans, human screams, and ear shattering explosions. He found it to be nearly impossible as he mumbled a short prayer.
Yea, though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.
He brain locked up, blanking on the rest of the Psalm. George promised himself and God that if he ever saw another bible he would memorize all of it.
He opened his eyes and grabbed Jason by the shoulders. The look on the boy’s face made George pause. Jason was still breathing, still conscious, but there was something in his eyes that sent a chill down the man’s spine. Jason looked dead inside.
George shook the boy, rattling the teeth inside his skull.
“Jason!” he screamed in a stage whisper. “We have to go! We have to go NOW!” He continued shaking the boy, almost as much for his own benefit as for the kid’s. It was activity, it was movement. It would keep him distracted enough that he might not freeze or go mad with fear.
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