RUN 3
Long Road Home
Rich Restucci
www.severedpress.com
Copyright 2017 by Rich Restucci
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
Norman Cousins
Post Street, San Francisco
Run. Sooner or later, he would have to run. They knew he was here someplace and there was no hiding from the dead. At least not for any length of time. Ducked down on his haunches behind an abandoned Toyota Prius, he peered into a bakery window to catch a reflection of the street behind him. There were many of them. Lots. Maybe he could skirt them and juke through, but one misstep, one successful grab and he was dead. Even if he made it past them, they would give a slow and plodding chase. They would never tire. They would never cease coming. No. No, he needed to be furtive. Sneak past them and gain altitude. Climb one of the dozens of fire escape ladders that had been left down by him and other survivors in San Francisco and get to a roof to wait them out.
He might not be able to hide, but if he could get up high, eventually something else; a rat, a bird, or one of the trucks driven by the human threat would grab their attention and he could climb down and get back to his family.
Leaving in the early morning, he had kissed his wife and thirteen-year-old daughter good-bye. They were perilously low on supplies and there was an untouched convenience store near the ruins of Crocker Plaza. The Plaza was thick with the things, but a diversion would bring them out, giving him enough time to get inside the store, loot it, lock it with his padlock, and make a hasty retreat.
He had descended the ladder affixed to the wall of his fortified apartment building, leaving the second-floor refuge they called home. He made his way down the alley quietly, as sound was the primary method which these things used to hunt. The passage had been clear, he and his wife having blocked it at its open-end months before to prevent access. He got down on his stomach, examining the perpendicular street on the opposite side of the cargo van which was the alleyway’s obstacle. The tires of the vehicle had long since been slashed, so nothing could crawl under it. Two feet shuffled across his narrow field of vision from left to right. One was adorned with a sneaker with a red swish on it, an emblem of a forgotten time. The other was barefoot, with two toes missing.
He checked his watch a bit later and tentatively stood, leaning forward to peek through the windows of the van on three sides. Clear.
Climbing over the metal rampart, he put both feet cautiously on the far side of the vehicle. Real fear began to edge its way into his already frightened psyche. Not being scared would be folly, as everything in this cursed city wanted him dead. Fear stalled him for a moment, but it was fear which also got him moving. A static position meant doom.
He reached his vantage point, down the street from the store, without incident. Plenty of the things were roaming around, but they hadn’t seen him. After a lengthy recon of the area around the store, he moved off to start his distraction. Two streets over, he removed a battery-operated alarm clock and two AA batteries from his pack. In short order, he was moving off back the way he had come, the clock set to explode into life fifteen minutes hence. He wondered briefly if the sound of an alarm clock in the morning was as annoying to them as it had been to him in a previous life.
Once again on his belly, he was trying to survey the inside of the shop when he heard the intense buzzing noise begin down the road. Wah! Wah! Wah! He smiled sadly, wishing the alarm meant he needed to shower and get to work. Part of that statement was true and he noticed that those in the street in front of him began to lumber off toward the sounds of his clock. It was time to get to work. The noise of the timepiece was preternaturally loud in the eerie quiet of the dead city.
When the area was clear, he removed a homemade tool from his pack: a pair of bolt cutters with a crowbar duct-taped to one of the handles. The tape mostly obscured the neon green of the crowbar and he had to ponder where he had come across this oddly colored tool. He dashed across the street to the shop, put his hand between his forehead and the protective steel mesh, and peered through the smoky door window. He rapped his knuckles against the steel shutter and waited an entire minute, glancing in all directions, before using the bolt cutters to cut the padlock. The sound of the mesh sliding to the left was akin to the decibel level of a rock concert in his fear-clouded mind. He quickly used the crowbar to snap the door open. Stepping inside, he panned his flashlight around what he could see of the inside of the store. There were no revealing signs of the dead; bloodstains, drag marks, shelves, or stands knocked over. The store looked as untouched as he had surmised. He slid the tube steel of his own padlock through the ring on the door, but didn’t click it home. This would give him valuable seconds should something attempt to gain access through this entrance.
He was efficient in padding his duffle full of sundries. He even got two packages of cookies for the girls. Just a few minutes later, he was peering back out the door window at the street. It was still clear and he could just barely hear the alarm he had tied to a street sign. He thought there must be a hundred of the things on top of the noise by now. In a half hour, the street would be clogged for half a mile in both directions. Opening the door, he stuck his head out then stepped onto the sidewalk. He closed the door, shut the shutter, and locked it with his lock.
He once more raced across the empty street, glancing both ways to make sure there was nothing stumbling toward him. There was, undoubtedly drawn to the sound of the clock, but they were far enough away that he would have no trouble escaping them. He made it all the way across the street before a scream from his left rent the air. Icy tendrils of terror shot down his spine. He knew what that terrible sound was. It was the shriek of a Runner. A former human, infected with whatever this plague was, but condemned to live instead of receiving blissful death. This thing was every bit as dangerous as a horde of undead. Where the dead were slow and shambling, this creature was agile and super-fast, all claws and teeth. Its scream also told every undead and infected Runner in the vicinity that something uninfected was on the menu. The upside of the living infected was that you could kill it. It was subject to the same laws of nature that would kill a human being. Stab it, shoot it, bash it on the head, and it will die. It would be back up in minutes though, as one of its shambling cousins. The downside was that this creature was equally as fast or faster than the average person. In addition, with its incredibly high tolerance to pain, it would never tire. It would sprint until its infected heart burst.
He ran. Sprinting down the street, he dodged past a grasping hand that snaked out of a vehicle window. He heard the slapping of shod feet on the asphalt behind him and knew the swift creature was almost on him. Spinning, he brought the bolt cutter-crowbar assembly around in a wide sweep. He missed and was hit by 120 pounds of infected demon. It was a tackle that would have made a footballer proud, man and former man tumbling down and leaving skin behind on the road. The creature wound up atop him and immediately began to slash with its nails. He pushed the bolt cutters straight up, catching the Runner below the jaw, stunning it. Scrambling away from the thing’s grasp, he brought the heavy tool up for a killing blow when the thing whipped its head up and glared at him with bloody eyes. It was a teenage girl. It reminded him of his own child and the plague-ridden creature used that instant of indecision to leap at him. He crushed her skull with a sideswipe of the apparatus, killing her instantly. She wouldn’t rise and for that, he was at least partially grateful.
He was not grateful for the chorus of moans that echoed from down the road. He turned slowly to look at the source. Dozens of the shamblers were plodding toward him. He moved down the street at
a good clip, rounding the corner and almost slamming into a post box. Dropping behind a small car, he avoided the gaze of the twenty or so things that were still here, but moving toward the sound of the alarm clock. The ones behind him trudged into the street, seeing their brothers, but not him. He had but moments to make a decision that would either unite him with his family or result in his brief but agonizing death. Either way, he couldn’t stay here.
He would have to run.
Sutter Street, San Francisco
San Francisco seemed to waken as the din of an alarm clock echoed through the empty streets. Figures staggered out of every conceivable crevice, ambling toward the ruckus, but the clamor ceased after a few minutes. The figures didn’t seem to care and most of them continued their shuffle in the direction the sound last came from. A man had ducked quietly into a doorway when he heard the clock, knowing that the empty roads would soon fill.
The shop he had entered was not as empty as he had initially assumed, a lone character traipsing within. He tried to speak to it, but it no longer possessed the capacity to understand him.
“I just… I don’t think…darn it. You’re just not getting me. He was a bunny, is all. A bunny. I mean, no matter how you dress him up or if he flies a plane or outwits Fudd, or sings a song, he’s still a bunny. Bunnies are cute. Kids love bunnies. I mean, the original was a mouse, but he was all old and stuff. Like from the forties or something. Outdated. Bugs was new and sarcastic and didn’t have that stupid high-pitched laugh that the mouse had. The stuff that rabbit came out with!”
The thing reached for him again, but stopped when he ceased talking and tried to meander off.
The man put a hand on its shoulder and spun it to face him. It almost went over, but staggered and stood erect. Well, as erect as it could with one foot missing.
“Oh, am I boring you? Would you rather discuss making lemonade out of lemons? The ramifications of the undead on the stock market?”
A scream of pain and terror ripped through the day. It was the sound of someone caught by something and it was close. The man briefly wondered if he could help, but he had heard that scream before. It meant death. The screaming rose to a high pitch, then abruptly ceased, the only sound remaining; a brief echo throughout the abandoned city streets.
The creature looked past him, searching for the source of the sound and again tried to lurch away.
“Rude.”
The man looked at the creature as it shuffled by him. The thing moved slower than the others because of its missing appendage. The nub of bone protruding from the bottom of its right leg made a scraping sound as it moved across the black and white floor of the abandoned pizza joint the two were in. Having only one foot, the thing had a pronounced starboard list.
A wicked smile crossed the face of the young man, then he began to chuckle. “Eileen!” he shouted, “I’m gonna call you Eileen!” Proud of himself, the man beamed and nodded. He stuck his hand out. “Eileen, my name is Billy.”
The dead woman turned again and came at him with her gray arms reaching. He sighed and let her pass by, moving deeper into the small restaurant. Others had heard him shout and were pawing at the smashed front window, lacerating their arms. Dark fluids rained from the cuts and ran down the shards of broken plate glass as they climbed through.
Billy removed a bolo machete from a sheath on his hip. He gripped the worn polypropylene handle with one hand, the other balled into a fist inside a canvas work glove with brass knuckles wired to it. He had a revolver on each hip as well and a pistol-grip pump shotgun slung on his back.
The door to the shop had a broken lock and a few creatures staggered through the open portal, searching for the source of the sound. They had just entered a restaurant looking for a bite to eat, which a year ago would have been the model of normalcy. Now, the scenario had a more sinister implication. The bites would be taken from a living human being if the creatures had their way of things, although said food was becoming scarce.
Billy didn’t tense even slightly as seven more former humans entered the building. He swung his weapon in a vicious sideways arc, taking the top of the head off of the gray-skinned debutante that tried to walk by him. He dispatched five others in a likewise manner, but the last was wearing a motorcycle helmet, complete with face plate. The man rolled his eyes. “Now how are you going to bite anybody with that on? Duh.” He rolled his left sleeve up, careful not to get any of the infected fluids which coated his machete on him. “Go for it there, genius, take a nibble.” He thrust his bare arm out, but the dead biker shuffled past him like all the others.
“Son of a…” The young man shook his head. “Let me help you with that.” He snagged the dead man by its tattered shirt, the fabric giving slightly as the thing tried to continue on its way. The living man pulled the helmet off the dead one, scalp, skin, and an ear coming with it.
Scrunching up his face, Billy looked disgusted. “Ick.” He swung the machete overhand and it went neck-deep through the cranium of the dead man. He put his boot on the back of the thing and pushed, extricating his weapon. The re-killed biker fell forward. “Eight hundred eighty-eight.”
Turning, he noticed the crippled creature staring at him. “Eileen! Tell me, kiddo, when there’s a swarm of you dead folks, vying to get some vittles, do you always lose the race by a foot?” He looked dejected, putting his palms up. “Nothing? Really? Okay, Eileen, whatever. Be that way.” He decapitated her with the blade, her head rolling next to his boot.
Getting down on his haunches, he looked into her dead, red eyes. She looked back.
“Pelé style,” he said, standing. He kicked the head into the base of the large pizza oven. The eyes rolled back into the skull. “Eight hundred eighty-nine.” He wiped his weapon on Eileen’s filthy jeans.
The man strode from the pizza shop with a can of Diet Dr. Pepper and a Slim Jim. He put the can on the ground, the beef treat in his mouth, bent over, and righted an overturned bench. He sat on the bench and began to people watch.
He snapped a bite off the Slim Jim and pointed at a dead man in a blue smock. “Walmart.” He pointed at another, this one hand in handcuffs. “Criminal.” A third man in a tattered leather vest staggered by. “Hell’s Angel,” he continued. “Fireman, postal worker, butcher, executive…” He shook his head sadly and stood up, drawing the machete. Leaving his Dr. Pepper on the bench, he strode forward and used the weapon to destroy another of the nameless, dressed in pink. “Pre-schooler.” He wiped his right eye and sat back down. “Eight ninety.”
Younger than Sam, he thought. I wonder how she’s doing. Should I have stayed? No, that would have been awful, especially for her. They probably would have locked me up, or killed me. I couldn’t let her see that. Did they tell her who I was? I hope not.
Sam was his friend. He hadn’t met her until the plague had arrived, but he still thought of her as a little sister. She was safe on Alcatraz with her dad and some good people he had met. A little girl was easier for him to associate with than the adults of both the collapsed society and the new one springing up around him.
Billy often stared at the island in the middle of San Francisco Bay with nostalgia, longing to go talk to Sam. He thought of sneaking over to see her, but if he got caught, it would go badly for him. He sent her messages through the people he had gotten out of the city, both verbal and written. His immunity to whatever made the dead want to eat people allowed him certain liberties and he had decided to be the good guy. In the time since he fled from Alcatraz, he had personally gotten more than sixty people on boats to go toward the island refuge. All of whom were more than willing to transport a little toy he had found here and there, or a written message.
Billy had also noticed a huge, black cylinder floating off to the north of the island. Originally, he thought it was an alien spaceship, which could be the cause of the plague, but then he realized it was a submarine. A big one. Not that he would know the difference between a big one and a small one, but it looked pretty big to him
He had dispatched more than eight hundred of the things that stumbled around looking for human flesh. Not a monumental achievement considering the population of San Francisco, but he was sure nobody had taken out more of them than he had. Especially using primarily melee weapons. He was industrious and the things he used to take the creatures out varied from day to day, although his weapon of choice was the machete. Thin, strong, and deadly, the blade would easily go through even the most stubborn of craniums. He had used it on one live person too, a really bad person.
Nineteen living humans had also been killed by this man in his post-plague wanderings. While certainly not a saint, he had never killed anyone that didn’t need killing… He looked up into the face (well, most of the face) of another of the creatures. This one had stopped and thrown a shadow over him as he sat there pondering. The thing looked atrocious and it stank. A filthy, matted beard with bits of stuff attached here and there, protruded from the creature’s face, which was mostly obscured by the whiskers. A red baseball cap adorned the thing’s head, but was barely on because it had so much hair. The cap rested on the hair instead of the skull. The thing pointed at the beef treat. He held it out and the creature took it from him, biting off a sizable portion and then handing it back. It sat down on the bench next to him.
“Hi,” it said.
“Hi yourself.”
“Got anything more than a Slim Jim? I’m starved.”
“There’s a whole pizza joint right there,” Billy jerked a thumb over his right shoulder, “full of snack stuff and there were some jars too. Probably pickles and stuff like that. They might still be good.”
“I like pickles.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Them.” The new person pointed at the things staggering around.
He nodded in affirmation. “Where’s your shopping cart?”
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