This Dying World: The End Begins

by Dean James

  “Uh-huh,” they said in unison.

  “We’re stopping soon, one way or another,” I said, turning my attention back to Abby. The bright red low fuel warning light blared in my face like a beacon.

  “I know,” Abby stared off at nothing. Her face was awash with exhaustion, both physical and emotional. She was drained. We needed to get off the road, and more importantly, we needed to rest. Spending the day fleeing from people, living and dead, takes a toll on the human psyche that can never really be fully described.

  Ken’s Body Shop came into view as we came around a bend in the road. It was a small, single story green building with two large white garage doors facing the roadway. The path leading to the overhead doors was a mix of gravel and weeds. Old rusted out cars littered the area, slowly succumbing to time’s decay. Through the shaded front window, we could tell the interior was dark. A small “Sorry, We’re Closed” sign hung in the lower left part of the window.

  “Think Ken will mind if we stay the night?” I asked to no one in particular.

  “You think I care?” Abby answered.

  I made quick work of the padlock on the garage door using the bolt cutters from the squad car. We backed Abby’s Honda in as it sputtered and died with just enough clearance to close the door behind us. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the overhead door unlocked, but we were short of options. I wedged a screwdriver I had found in the garage into the door track. If someone was determined enough they could lift the door, but not without making a lot of noise.

  The place was like any other body shop you would expect to see. There was a small office area, complete with faded red vinyl covered chairs, torn down the middle with a strip of duct tape holding the cushion together. The garage itself was empty, except for our CRV that took up half of the space. The floor was dusty and dirty, old grease and oil caking the floor wherever we looked. Tools were laid haphazardly throughout the work area. Overall, it was a disorganized mess. Ken needed a housekeeper.

  Before long we were huddling around a small fire we had built inside an old metal trash can. Black smoke billowed from the oily rags and old magazines we used to fuel the flames. We listened to the outside for the mournful groan of the living dead. The body shop glowed with the orange flames, our shadows dancing on the walls behind us. The acrid smell of oil and grease hung heavy in the frigid air.

  The flames of our makeshift campfire had barely started to dance along the rim of the can when the sun finally made its decent below the horizon. Night came quickly, stifling the little light we gained through the dusty oval windows in the bay doors. No one spoke, either from the stresses of the most recent life threatening events, or from sheer exhaustion, I couldn’t be sure which. Even the road outside was eerily still.

  I stared into the fire, taking in the calming stillness of the room. Looking up, I saw Abby and Lexi sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding the kids in their arms and rocking them gently. Katie and Jane were as quiet as the rest of us, snuggling in as close to the women as they could. Neither cried, both wore the same blank stares on their faces as the women who held them.

  I was worried. Our group had been running on fear alone for too long, and the toll it was taking was written on all our faces. If I had to choose a word to describe our state at that moment, it would be defeated. We had a car full of supplies, but unless the vehicle could run on fresh air it would not be leaving that garage. We had all lost our homes, and for all we knew our families. We had been forced to fight for our lives at almost every turn. We were dangerously close to our breaking point. I sat trying to find a way to bring some semblance of hope to our little group.

  It was then we heard the first moan. It was deep and almost sorrowful, as if the thing was mourning the life it had lost, and what it had become. It was quickly followed by another distinctly feminine groan in the distance. A chorus of the dead soon followed, and we soon realized why the road was so quiet. I put my fingers to my lips to shush the group. Abby nodded and held the two youngest girls tight. Lexi drew her knees up and shivered, laying her head on Abby’s shoulder.

  I kept my head down and crept to one of the small windows. I am not ashamed to say if my bowels were full, they wouldn’t have been for long. From my vantage point, I could already see dozens of corpses making their way past our building. From around a bend in the road, an endless stream of the dead flowed. Men, women, and children of all ages shambled by in an undead parade. There were creatures that had been torn in half, pulling their bodies along, dragging their entrails behind them.

  They moved slowly, bumping into each other occasionally as they moved in the same direction. They seemed to have no purpose other than to keep moving, following the road beneath their feet. Somewhere in the woods across the road from where we hid, something crashed through the trees. My blood turned to ice water when all at once, every one of the creatures stood completely still, facing the direction of the sound. They were silent, not a single groan or hiss amongst them as they scanned the tree line.

  They were hunting.

  This was a new development to me. I had always figured zombies, if they were real, were mindless in their search for a meal. They stumbled around until they happened upon a warm fleshy thing that screamed. They would eat until the screaming stopped, and would move on looking for something else warm and fleshy.

  This was different. As it turns out, zombies are real. The real ones were using the most basic of hunting skills. Don’t scare away your prey with noise. There was either some tiny bit of logic floating around in those rotting brain cells, or they were using simple hunting instinct. Either way, it scared the shit out of me.

  I stood there for what seemed an eternity before the first of the creatures began to move again. Somewhere ahead of the group, another soulful moan broke the silence, and the macabre parade began anew. They shambled along the road as their moaning and hissing rose anew. I ducked down, realizing how shallow I had been breathing. My head spun slightly as I made my way back over to the group, taking a seat as close to Abby as I could without being on her lap. I would have preferred her lap.

  “How many?” Abby whispered.

  “Can’t count that high. Chicago Public School system and all,” I said with a forced smile. Abby glared at me.

  “Do you have to make a joke about everything?”

  “It’s either that or shit myself. I just got these pants, so bad humor it is,” I replied.

  “Daddy, you said a bad word again,” Katie whispered to me. I looked at her face, and I saw the one thing in my life I know beyond a doubt I did right. She was the vision of innocence, a kid who always smiled and laughed. She was smarter than I could have ever dreamed to be at her age. She was already reading and doing math at an age that I was still eating crayons and trying to figure out how to glue my brother to his bed sheets. She was polite; ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ were as natural to her as farting and burping were to boys. I would sacrifice everything to ensure she would never be hurt.

  “You’re right, daddy said another bad word,” I whispered in her ear. “Are you scared?”

  She gave me the slightest of nods as she pressed her head into her mother’s chest.

  “Daddy’s scared too. But you know what? Even if daddy is scared he has to be brave so people around him feel brave too. I bet Jane is really scared. You think so?”

  Katie looked at Jane, and they both looked at me nodding.

  “Well, I bet if you stay brave, Jane will feel brave too. I bet even Mommy and Daddy will feel more brave. Can you do that for us?” I asked in a hushed voice. She sniffled, rubbing a tear away from her eye, and nodded yes.

  “That’s my girl, I knew you could do it. Jane, can you help Katie be brave too? I bet if you do, your big sister will feel better. Are you a big enough girl to be brave for everyone?” I asked with a smile.

  “Yes!” Jane blurted. Lexi’s eyes grew big as saucers as she covered Jane’s mouth. We all held our collective breaths as we listened, hoping t
he marching corpses outside were louder than the outburst of a little girl. The shuffling continued outside, allowing us to slightly relax.

  “Can you be brave AND quiet?” I asked just slightly above a whisper.

  “Yes,” they said much quieter this time.

  “Good,” I said as we settled down to wait out the deadly parade.

  We huddled together, trying to keep each other warm in the falling temperatures. I had long since covered the fire, afraid the light would attract unwanted attention. The darkness consumed the shop. I held my pistol tight, waiting out the longest hour of my life as death marched on into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It took a while after the night had grown quiet before I built up the nerve to look outside once more. I rose, trying to work out the stiffness as I made my way over to the window. I could say with certainty my body was not happy with me. I had spent the last day or so beating it up, and my joints were in revolt. My knee felt as if all the fluid had been replaced with Pop Rocks as it crackled at my movements.

  The road looked clear. Well, clear of walking sacks of rotting meat anyway. Through the scant moonlight the cloudy night allowed, I could just make out some of what the horde had left behind. Torn clothing blew in the breeze, caught up by the leafless branches of the forest. What bothered me most, however, was the large teddy bear lying on its side. Its glassy black eyes seemed to be staring back at me. I knew it had to be a trick of the light, but I could swear it wore a look of sorrow upon its face.

  I turned away from the window and grabbed some old newspapers from the main office. Before long the fire was brought back to life, the flames dancing again. I gathered cardboard, bits of broken wood from old pallets, cloth, pretty much anything I could find to keep the small blaze going. I sat back by the fire as soon as I was satisfied with my collection, thawing my frozen fingers over the flames.

  “I think we’re relatively safe here for a bit. Who’s hungry?” I asked, smiling at the kids. “I think I have some Spaghetti-O’s in the car. Maybe some chicken noodle soup? Oh, I know. I bet you would like a nice big can of peas,” I said slyly.

  “Eww! Peas are icky!” Jane said, her nose crinkling up as she spoke.

  “Okay, you want beans then,” I teased

  “No!” the kids both said.

  “Toasted lizard brains?” I teased again.

  “Eww! Daddy! I want soup, not icky stuff,” Katie laughed.

  “I want soup too!” Jane agreed.

  “Fine, more beans for me. Abby? Lexi? Does anything on the menu look good to you?” I asked as I stood.

  “Soup sounds good to me,” Abby looked up at me and smiled.

  “I think I want those Spaghetti-O’s, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to take your food though, I’ll be fine if there’s not enough,” Lexi said.

  “You stop that nonsense right now!” Abby scolded. “You’re one of us now, and you are welcome to anything you like.”

  “Thank you Mrs.-err Abby. But how will we cook everything? There’s no pots or anything,” Lexi said.

  “Oh mon ami,” I said with a flourish. “You have never dined at Che’ Foster. Ze food, she is cooked in ze natural habitat. Le can. Using specially crafted utensils only found in the confines of Le Shop de Body.”

  “Your French is atrocious,” Abby laughed, almost in tears.

  “She thinks my French is awful, ladies and germs, wait till she gets a load of my cooking,” I said winking at Lexi. That did it, the pressure valve had opened, and the room was filled with laughter. I wiped tears away as I retrieved cans of food from the trunk of the car. Using some pliers and an old metal grate I found around the shop, we were soon heating cans over the fire.

  We ate, happy and as comfortable as we could possibly be. Lexi brought on a new round of laughter as she tried unsuccessfully to drink her Spaghetti-O’s. Her face was suddenly covered with red sauce and pasta. She looked up, shrugged, and went right back at it, even taking the time to eat the pasta sticking to her chin.

  “Bet you wish you went with the beans,” I said to Lexi, smiling as I tipped my can up to my mouth. And as fate would have it, I dumped beans down the front of my coat too.

  Abby lost it. She fell backwards, slapping the cold concrete floor as she laughed. The kids squealed louder than I would have liked, but I wasn’t about to stop them. After the horror we had lived through so far, this was a slice of heaven. Even if this particular slice was on the dirty floor of an old garage and smelled like axle grease.

  We finally got a chance to know each other better as we talked around the fire. Lexi was a fifteen year old high school cheerleader. She told us about her farm where she grew up. They grew corn and soybeans, as many Midwestern farmers did. She talked about her dog, two cats, and the chickens that ran all over their land. What was noticeably absent was any mention of her parents. I can’t say that I blame her much for that.

  Jane looked like a small copy of Lexi, with a rounder face and freckles. They shared the same dimples when they smiled. Jane loved SpongeBob SquarePants, much to Katie’s delight. One would start singing the theme music, and the other would instantly pick up the tune. They went on with that until they moved on to more important topics, like who could eat their soup the fastest.

  Hours passed before we finally decided it was time for the kids to sleep. Their exhaustion was easy to see, but as kids tend to do, they still protested against the tyranny of enforced bed times. Bribery is a great tool when you need it, though. We exchanged the last of the apple pies for their orderly and quiet egress to their bed chambers, the car’s back seat. They agreed to our terms, and that night’s bedtime war was won without incident. Lexi followed suit, snuggling with the two kids until the smaller kids were snoring. If Lexi went to sleep, I will never know. I couldn’t fault her for putting off her nightmares for as long as she could.

  “Thank you Dan,” Abby whispered as she leaned into me.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For bringing a little hope into tonight. I honestly don’t know how much more of that I could have taken. We all needed a laugh, and you gave it to us.” She leaned in and kissed my cheek.

  “I was afraid everyone was on the verge of giving up. I don’t know if I would have the strength to go on without my family. If you guys gave up, I don’t know what would have happened.” I set more wood on the fire, until the small flame jumped back to life. I stared at my mismatched shoes as stinging moisture coated my eyes. “I’d die without you guys.”

  “Don’t talk like that Dan,” Abby said gently as she caressed my hands. “Katie is the reason to keep going, no matter what happens. If something happened to me…”

  “Don’t!” I said more forcefully than I meant to. “Katie needs her mom! I need my wife! Don’t you dare let anything happen!” I ordered.

  “Dan,” she started. “We don’t know how this will all turn out. It could be over tomorrow, or this could be our new lives. The fact is, we don’t know what will happen from now on. Promise me, if something happens, you will go on. For Katie. For Lexi and Jane. For me. Just promise me that you will live.” Now it was her turn to turn away. But not before I caught her bottom lip quiver.

  “I promise. As long as you promise to try not to become zombie kibble,” I said squeezing her hand.

  “I don’t plan on it,” she said, stifling a laugh. “But you have to admit, if you were a zombie, you’d want a bite of this.” She turned her head towards me seductively, giving me a little wink.

  “Why do I need to be a zombie to want a bite of that?” I asked as I playfully bit at her neck.

  “Back off Danny boy, the kids are in the car. Besides, you smell like beans,” Abby said. “Have you given any thought about how we will get on the road again tomorrow?”

  “Some,” I said. “Turning down this road did help with time. I don’t think it will take long to get to the farm if we keep up our pace. Worst case, I’ll see if Chris can make it here. Otherwise, I’ll go out in the mo
rning and look for a car to siphon. I saw a gas can and some tubing in the back.”

  Fear crept back into Abby’s eyes. We both knew the dangers outside, and wandering out alone could end up being a fatal decision. As much as I hated the idea, there was little choice in the matter if we wanted to get moving again.

  “I wouldn’t mind cuddling a little while longer,” she said after a long span of silence.

  “Me neither,” I said as I pulled her close. We took comfort in each other for another half hour before weariness finally got the better of us. With one last kiss, Abby stood and went to the front seat of the car, curling under her jacket. Her head barely hit the cushioned headrest before her rhythmic breathing told me she had joined the choir of the unconscious.

  I opened my cell phone. Only one bar of signal, but it was something. There was a chance that I would be able to reach Chris in the morning. I hoped the cavalry would bring coffee. I was starting to go through caffeine withdrawal. I don’t know why as I was ransacking the general store, I did not have the foresight to pick up a can of grounds. Hell, even instant sounded wonderful.

  I leaned against our bumper, listening to the pop and crackle of the slowly dying fire. I decided to stay where I was. The soft cushions would have been far more preferable to the cold and dusty concrete floor. However the car muffled outside noise, and if someone or something decided to pay us a visit, I didn’t want to be caught playing poker with the sandman. After checking the Glock’s magazine one last time, I drew my jacket over my shoulders and allowed sleep to wash over me.

  My intent was to try and only fall into a light sleep. I hoped the cold and uncomfortable floor would allow me to wake up if I needed too. This proved to be a major miscalculation on my part, as I awoke to a face with the bushiest mutton chops I had ever seen standing over me. I didn’t have enough time to blink before his rifle butt met my forehead. For some reason, I smelled bread.

  Then, nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Three