This Dying World: The End Begins

by Dean James

  Her eyes were dead, sunken and milky white. Her ivory skin had paled and was riddled with disease. Her flesh began to peel and fall to the ground exposing gleaming white bone beneath. She lunged at me with arms reaching at me. I punched her, crushing her nose under my fist. She fell backwards, her skull splitting open and spilling black viscous ooze from the open wound. I screamed for help, but all I found were boney fingers scraping at my neck, trying to pull me down to the ground.

  I pumped my legs as hard as I could against the pressing horde of monsters, pushing my way towards the large green double doors on the side of the building. My nerve endings screamed as skinless fingers gouged deep into my skin. Flesh ripped away from my arm and was devoured before my eyes. I felt myself weakening as each creature tried to exact their pound of flesh. Finally, in one last burst of energy, I flung myself into the building before my vision darkened and I became lost in the sea of rotting corpses.

  Laughter surrounded me as my face hit the soft red carpeting. My body was intact, but the pain still lingered. My limbs agonized as I was helped to my feet by one of the few friends I count as a brother. Mark laughed at me when I stumbled, shoving a flask into my hands.

  “Little hair of the dog?” he laughed. “You know, Abby will kill us if she knew how much we made you drink last night.”

  “What?” I asked confused. “Where am I now?”

  “Look at this guy!” Matt slapped me on the shoulder. “Amnesia won’t get you out of your wedding day. I don’t put on this monkey suit for just anyone you know!”

  It was warm for April, and the tuxedo I wore did not make it any easier. I could deal with the heat though, as long as my groomsmen were there. We relaxed in the exceptionally warm spring day outside the church as we waited for Abby’s limo to arrive. We joked about how much Abby had pounded it into my head not to be late, and here she was already twenty minutes past due. We passed the flask around, each promising only one swig each.

  I took three. Hey, it was my wedding day! I needed it more than they did.

  My mother suddenly ushered me quickly into the church. Abby had arrived. I always seemed to be walking under a thunder cloud of bad luck, I didn’t need any more piled on me by seeing the bride before the ceremony. My mother talked a mile a minute, giving me advice on how to be a good husband. And more importantly a good father, which I thought was a tad premature. But mothers do what mothers do, and when their children are walking down the aisle, they immediately see strollers tied to our ankles.

  The music started, and everyone took their places. The groomsmen and bridesmaids walked arm in arm down the aisle, taking their places on opposite sides of each other. I followed, my mother and father walking on either side of me. I appreciated the fact that they signed a peace treaty before taking the stroll up the aisle. I also banked on the fact that they would probably not spill blood on holy ground.

  “Dead man walkin’!” Matt tried to say under his breath. Church acoustics being what they are, he might as well have used a bull horn. I thought it was funny, but for his antics he was the proud recipient of the laser guided death stare my soon to be mother-in-law fired off. Mark’s face turned red as he tried unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter.

  Abby was radiant when she walked through the door. Her white dress shone in the bright sunlight streaming through the chapel windows. Her face beamed happiness as her dad walked her down the aisle. Everyone stood, reaching out to touch my bride’s arms as she strode by. Her father, my soon to be father-in-law, took my hand in his. Shaking it vigorously, he welcomed me to the family by telling me that I had better take care of her.

  Great. Not even married yet and he was already laying down the law.

  As I turned toward the priest and the beginnings of my life of forever putting the toilet seat down and never winning another fight in my life again…ever…something strange caught my eye. Everyone still stood, caught up in the happiness of the ceremony, except for one little girl. She wore green flannel pajamas and sported a serious case of bed head. She hummed as she stroked the head of a large dirty teddy bear. Its fur was caked with a crusty layer of dried blood.

  “Little girl? You shouldn’t play with that. It’s icky,” I said. No one in the church seemed to take notice of me speaking with the strange child.

  “Why did you let me die Daddy?” She looked up at me as ice cold terror gripped my spine. Where her eyes should have been only dark sockets remained. Rivulets of blood tricked from the holes and across her bluish cheeks.

  “My baby!” Abby screamed as she ran to the girl. Her brilliant white dress had dulled, years of dust falling off in clouds as she moved. The church darkened, as if dusk had settled in a matter of seconds. Those in the church still looked on, their sinister smiles dripping with malice as their black eyes started intently at me.

  “Why didn’t you take care of her!” My father-in-law screamed. “Why didn’t you protect her?”

  I backed away from the horror playing out in front of me, stumbling over the remains of my neighbor’s body splayed across the floor. I was chilled to the bone, but my body was hot. Sweat dripped off me as waves of nausea took me to the floor. Everything began to ache as I fled my enraged in-law.

  “How could you let this happen!” he demanded. “I trusted you!”

  “What the hell is this?”

  “This is what you deserve, murderer!” He lifted a chrome revolver with a broken handle. He pulled the trigger, and it felt like my chest wanted to explode. My vision blurred, and I suddenly felt empty. I could no longer hear my heart beat, and my lungs took in no air.

  I heard crying in the distance as I faded away.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chris stared at the two story home from the front seat of his pickup. Joe sat next to him shaking his head. Lexi was in the backseat looking over her rifle and refusing to look at another monument of the dead’s insatiable hunger. Even in the darkness, with only the stars and sliver of moonlight in the cloudless skies to illuminate the area, the evidence of yet another desperate struggle was plainly visible.

  Another home, another last stand.

  The front door had been ripped from its hinges, coming to rest on the stairs leading to the wrap around porch. A torso’s skeletal remains lay face down across the door. Its skull was shattered like an egg shell. Every ounce of meat that once covered or filled its body had been stripped away, leaving nothing but dried, bloody stains where this person had died. The dead had broken the limbs free to feed, evidenced by the splintered bones jutting out from sockets.

  Fully dead corpses of those killed for a second time littered the area. A body splayed across the steps, its leg caught in the railings held it upside down. The distorted grime covered face of a man in a business suit stared back at them, a cleaver buried deep into its head.

  A pile of still smoldering bodies lay below a large open window. Next to the mound of burnt dead lay a bright red fire extinguisher. Scorch marks rose along the aluminum siding towards the open window. The charred remains of a woman had been pulled through, its bottom half still inside the house. Her skull had been burnt black, most of her upper body devoured. Entrails hung like morbid birthday ribbons, stretching down to the earth below from her corpse.

  The scene told the story. She attracted a group of the dead and set them ablaze, but panicked when the creatures got too close. Their proximity threatened to burn the whole house down so she tried to extinguish the flames. But she wasn’t high enough from the ground. She was pulled halfway outside the window and devoured while the ghouls burned themselves, and their meal, to death.

  This was the fifth stop on their scavenging trip, and every place told the same grisly tale. Defenses smashed, fortifications overwhelmed, followed by the inevitable last stand. It all ended the same way, the living succumbing to the numerous dead.

  “You think it was the same mob that hit us?” Joe broke the silence.

  “Probably,” Chris replied. “This is the direction they were heading.�
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  “How are we even alive?” Lexi mumbled.

  “We knew it was coming, thanks to you guys.” Chris looked at her through the rear view mirror. “We hid before they got to us. The zeds didn’t know we were there.”

  “These people didn’t have any warning,” Joe said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “What happens when we don’t have any warning?”

  “Then we fight.” Chris shot Joe a hard look. “What choice do we have?”

  “I don’t want to be left in the car,” Lexi quickly changed the subject. “I’m going inside this time.”

  “You sure you want to do this?” Chris turned to look at her.

  “Yeah. I need to,” she said as she finally surveyed the grisly scene less than twenty feet in front of them.

  “Alright. Dan’s going to kill me for this when he wakes up, but you’re with me. Joe, same as before. We clear the first floor, then the second. Lexi and I will handle the kitchen, you get anything useful upstairs. Focus on medical supplies first, everything else is secondary.”

  Everyone nodded and silently exited the truck. The crisp wind did little to mask the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. The second Joe’s feet hit the ground, so did his dinner. He doubled over as he expelled the remains of his spam and eggs. Chris and Lexi waited on the other side of the truck for him to finish.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” Joe finally said, wiping sticky drool from his lips.

  “You good?” Chris said in a hushed voice. He was tense, his pistol raised as his eyes darted from shadow to shadow.

  “Yeah. Let’s get this over with,” he whispered back.

  “Alright. Lexi, you okay with that rifle? It might have a little more kick than a .22. Not to sound cliché, but that ain’t your daddy’s shotgun.” He cringed as soon as the word ‘daddy’ left his mouth.

  He turned to apologize, and found Lexi slamming the rifle bolt home. In under a second, she raised the rifle and fired. Thunder erupted a few feet in front of him as the bullet sizzled past Chris’ cheek. Instinctively, he dropped to his knee and locked his pistol sights on the girl.

  “Drop it!” Chris’ finger inched towards the trigger. The girl didn’t move, instead she looked back at him with a cold stare.

  “Chris...buddy,” Joe said calmly.

  “I said drop it!” Chris stayed locked on Lexi. Calmly, she took her hand away from the trigger, and slipped her arm into the shoulder strap. She clearly was not going to release her weapon, but it posed no immediate threat slung across her back.

  “Chris!” Joe said more forcefully than before.

  “What!” Chris shot back, chancing a quick glance over to his friend. He saw Joe with a flashlight pointed towards the house.

  “Look,” Joe replied. “On the other side of the house. Before you turned off the headlights, I looked down that hallway. It was clear.”

  Chris stood, moving behind the teen before he felt safe enough to take his eyes off her. She didn’t move or protest, other than to cross her arms and sigh. Once behind her, he dropped his pistol slightly, and looked into the house.

  The open doorway appeared to lead into a hallway that spanned the length of the house. At the other end of the hall, he could make out another door that he assumed led to the back yard. In the middle of the hall, Chris saw two feet pointed towards the ceiling, as if the person had just lay on his back and died in the middle of the hallway.

  “You’re right,” Lexi spoke up finally. “This isn’t a .22. This is a Ruger Hawkeye Compact .308. We owned the full sized model. And my daddy doesn’t own a shotgun anymore, because my daddy is dead!” She turned and looked at Chris. “Any more questions?”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right, that was a stupid thing to say,” he said lowering his pistol. “But that was reckless of you. I could have killed you. I need to know I can trust you with that gun, and right now I don’t know. For now, you keep it slung unless you need it. Understand?” Lexi nodded.

  “Alright then. Let’s move. We’ve made too much noise already, so in and out.”

  Chris took the lead, carefully stepping over the remains of the permanently dead. Lexi stayed a few feet behind him, with Joe taking the rear. He held his Desert Eagle in his right hand, and panned his large Maglite around with his left. The intense light showcased the carnage in a detail that none of them wanted to see, so if it didn’t move when the light hit it, they ignored it.

  They moved into the house, stepping over the feeding frenzy remnants on the porch steps. The smell outside did not compare to the gut churning reek inside. The main dining room was to their right as they entered, and the relatively untouched kitchen to the left. They found the back half of the human barbecue as they moved into the dining room. Everything from the waist down was still intact, with only a few scorch marks around the waist of her dress. Decay had just started to set in, the freezing temperatures slowing the process dramatically.

  They moved deeper into the house until they stood in the living room. There they found the very last stand. Sofas and chairs were moved into what could only be described as a child’s fort. Much like a child’s fort, it offered no protection. Skeletal remains were scattered in all corners of the room. Blood smears stained every wall. No part of the room had been spared the gore from the slaughter.

  “That’s all they had to defend themselves?” Joe whispered when he cast his light on the floor. A detached hand still wrapped its gnarled fingers around a nickel plated revolver. A short distance away lay a single load shotgun.

  “Looks that way. Poor assholes,” Chris said shaking his head. “Let’s get what we came for and let the dead rest in peace.”

  Slowly they crept out of the living room and back into the hallway, emerging close to the back door. Chris stopped, running his finger across a pinky sized hole in the door that he guessed had come from Lexi’s rifle.

  “God damn!” Joe said behind him. “Buddy, you gotta see this.”

  He turned and walked over to Joe, who was standing over the body in the hallway. A greenish sludge surrounded its head like a halo. The sizzle that Chris was growing accustomed to had stopped. He kneeled down to examine the neat hole that ringed the dead center of its forehead.

  “How ‘bout that?” Joe chuckled. “Right between its eyes!”

  “How the hell did you see that?” Chris looked up at Lexi.

  “The crescent window in the back door had some light coming through,” she answered. “I saw a shadow and took the shot.”

  “Okay then,” he stood, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You’re a good shot, I’ll give you that. Just don’t prove it that close to my face again. Deal?”

  “Deal!” She smiled back.

  “Joe, you think you can handle the upstairs?” Chris nodded towards the steps next to the front door. “I’m not comfortable with how long we’ve been here with the noise we made.”

  “No problem,” Joe smiled, pushing his wire framed glasses up with his middle finger. “I’ll be back down before you know it.” He turned and made his way upstairs, his heavy boots shaking the walls as he climbed.

  “Can you believe that is him being quiet?” Chris rolled his eyes and smiled at Lexi. She laughed as they made their way back to the kitchen.

  Chris produced a smaller version of Joe’s flashlight from one of his many coat pockets, shining it into the inky dark kitchen. It was a typical kitchen, hung cabinets wrapping around the room, an electric range, refrigerator, and sink. Against the outside wall and underneath a boarded up window sat a small chest freezer.

  “You start on the cabinets, I’ll try the fridge,” he said, handing her a plastic grocery bag from another of his pockets.

  She nodded and went to work, opening and searching the first of several small cabinets. Chris opened the refrigerator, immediately closing it again. His face scrunched up, he waved the air away from his face as if he was swatting a horde of mosquitoes away from his nose.

  “Smell bad?” Lexi giggled.

&n
bsp; “Want to check for yourself?” he asked, blowing his nose on a bit of paper towel left on the butcher-block countertop.

  “Nahh, I’m good,” she replied. “Hey, Chris. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot,” he said. “No, wait! No more shooting. I mean, yes, go ahead.”

  “You sure?” She shot him a mischievous look from behind a cabinet door.

  “Positive.” Chris leaned back against the counter. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Why does Dan always rub the scar on his hand? I see him do it sometimes. How did he get hurt?”

  Chris’ eyes fell to the floor, as if the answer to her question would pop up from the blood stained tiles. He pursed his lips, letting out a deep sigh before looking back at Lexi. He crossed his arms, listening to the thumping and shuffling of Joe on the floor above.

  “Look,” he started after some time. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, and really it’s something you should ask him yourself. It took be a long night of heavy drinking before he told me, so if you say anything to him I’ll deny it. Did he ever tell you he was an EMT?”

  “I don’t even know what that is,” Lexi replied. She was still shifting items around inside the cabinets, but Chris could tell her heart was only half in her work.

  “Emergency Medical Technician. He used to work on an ambulance.”

  “He never told me that.” Lexi now turned completely away from her search and leaned against the cabinets much like Chris.

  “I’m not surprised. He was doing what is called a ‘ride along’ with the Chicago Fire Department one night when they drove up on a car crash. He told me that a drunk driver had driven his van into the side of a compact car and had flipped it onto its roof. He climbed into the car to take care of the driver, who happened to be a teenage girl.”

  Chris turned and opened one of the cabinets above the countertops. He was rewarded with a half a box of fruit loops and an unopened container of oatmeal. He stuffed them both into his bag and continued to search as he talked.