by Will Lemen
Now with our domestic excitement and noise abated, we could hear the pandemonium that was ravaging our neighborhood, and it sent chills down our spines.
Jacob was the only one of us that had actually heard any of the warnings that were being broadcasted on the television, so I asked him.
"Jacob, did the news say what's causing this?"
Jacob tilted his head to the side.
"I don't think so. But I came to tell you how they said it might be spreading, so I didn't hear everything they said."
Leaving our neighbor Jon in somewhat of a pile, still perched on the broken glass of the patio door, we rushed into the living room to see if we could obtain any new information from the news bulletins.
What we eventually gleaned from the constant flow of news flashes was that the police, military, and political structure was breaking down extremely fast, and that hospitals and urgent care facilities were immediately overwhelmed.
They weren't of any help anyway, there wasn't a cure. Once you were infected, you didn't go to an emergency room; you attacked people and tried to eat them.
Therefore, the only people that were going to the hospitals were people that had not yet become infected, and were just hoping to get some kind of vaccination, or a pill, or something that would keep them from getting the parasitic virus if they were to come in contact with someone or something that was carrying it.
Live newscasts from some of the medical centers, showed some of the doctors and nurses, had already contracted the disease, and were attacking these people as they entered the facilities.
The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, had isolated a zoonotic virus found in the feral dog population that they thought was the culprit, and with their numbers having had exploded in the United States in recent years, the disease had spread ridiculously fast. But even the CDC wasn't completely sure.
They put out several possible scenarios. One of which was the Typhoid Mary scenario. This stated that the feral dogs were immune from the disease that they were carrying, and had spread the virus months beforehand. It lay dormant for an undetermined incubation period, and then when something of an unknown nature triggered it, it became active in some people.
That is why initially, such a great number of cases were so prevalent, with some estimates ranging as high as eighty-five percent of the population. It was almost as if someone turned on a light switch, only in this case a zombie switch.
Apparently, death was the trigger that activated the dormant virus in people that seemingly, had not yet been affected, and their ultimate demise awakened the quiescent sickness. Whether it was chemical activity in the brain, or lack thereof, death by any means other than forced trauma to the head, meant that you would return to the living, undead, with a voracious appetite for consuming flesh. Therefore, within the short span of several hours, there was total anarchy across the globe.
A "Zombie Apocalypse" had begun!
As we somberly walked back into the kitchen again, to focus on how we were going to cope with the predicament that was facing us.
Billy looked puzzled.
"What's that buzzing sound?" he asked.
"It's coming from the kitchen." Jacob said, with the same puzzled look on his face.
The gruesome sight of our former neighbor Jon who we all were expecting, yet dreading to see, had grown even more macabre. During the time we had watched the news unfold in our living room, the smell of the contents of Jon's carved up entrails had attracted a multitude of flies who's constant buzzing had impaired our hearing to the point that we were unable to hear the real danger that awaited us in the next room.
Later as we learned more about the menacing creatures that were roaming our world, we would find that the smell of the rotting flesh of the zombies would usually be the reason that flies were attracted to them, but in this case, Jon had not been a member of the undead long enough for his body to start to putrefy. Therefore, the feces leaking from his ripped and torn intestines was the culprit in this instance.
When we reentered the kitchen, we found that the immense rabble of flies was not the only thing that was hovering over our former neighbor Jon, Julie his wife had made her way to our patio doorway and was making a meal of what was left of Jon's now cadaverous corpse.
Now seeing her, and hearing her over the hideous buzzing of the massive amount of flies, we watched in horror as our new visitor snarled and spit, all the while biting and tearing away the flesh from her now dead husband's bones, partially chewing it, then gulping it down, reminiscent of a wild dog wolfing down its prey.
It was clear Julie too was infected; extremely dangerous, and bound to attack us as soon as she realized we were in her presents.
Without uttering a word, I turned and ran as fast as I could to my bedroom closet, where my gun safe was located.
I thought to myself.
"Hurry Jack, faster!"
I fiddled with the safes combination for only a few seconds before I was able to swing the door open, but that few seconds seemed like hours.
My first choice was my Glock 19 which was fully loaded and hanging from a gun hook right in front of me.
Even though many of the experts will tell you to unload your gun and store the ammunition in another area, however, I was taught a long time ago, that if your gun isn't loaded when you need it, you might as well not have it.
Trying to locate your ammunition and load your weapon (probably in the dark) while the bad guys are bearing down on you, is not only illogical, but also unadvisable. That is if you wish to stay alive.
That advice served me well during those first hours of the apocalypse, and still does to this very day. An unloaded gun is just another blunt force object like a club; you might as well be carrying a stick or a rock.
But enough for now on gun safety and tactics.
In a split second, I had a gun in my hand and I was rushing back to the kitchen hoping that Julie was still preoccupied with her husband, and hadn’t noticed my family standing mere feet away.
Returning to the kitchen, I found Jacob and Billy standing in front of Gin, Billy with a kitchen chair held over his head, ready to club Julie senseless, and Jacob with an iron skillet poised to do the same if the diseased man-eater were to bolt in his direction.
Julie had yet to notice any of us standing there, but I knew it was just a matter of time until she did. We all knew that one of us was going to have to put Julie out of her misery before she threatened us, and being the one with the gun, I knew that I was the most likely candidate for the distasteful (no pun intended) yet necessary job.
I stood there for a moment hesitating, watching the repugnant pantomime, waiting for Julie to make a move toward us, so I could justify in my mind, the heinous act that I was about to commit.
"What are you waiting for?" Gin asked anxiously, and in my opinion a bit too loud.
"We can't just kill her! Jon's already dead, so we won't be saving him, and she hasn't done anything to us yet," I said naively, as I reluctantly raised my pistol, not yet fully realizing the scope of the cataclysm before us.
Jacob now repeated the warning the emergency broadcast had reported.
"Don't let them bite you, or scratch you, or get any of their blood in your eyes, nose, or mouth."
"Right! Shoot her, shoot her now!" Gin said.
Again, in my humble and meager opinion, she said it a bit too loud.
Because at that moment Julie looked up, and noticed the four of us standing nearby watching her scarf down her husband.
Gin, seeming less afraid now, yelled.
"She's seen us!"
Julie quickly lost all interest in the post-marriage meal before her, and concentrated her full attention on the seemingly fresher live meat in her midst.
She leaned forward putting her left hand on the remains of Jon's right leg, digging her fingers deep into the gashes she herself had caused, and reaching up over Jon's head with her right hand in an attempt to pull herself to her feet; she
grabbed the razor sharp edge of the broken glass that had sawed Jon in half.
Julie put most of her weight on the glass with her hand, which was covered with Jon's blood, and between her slippery blood-soaked fingers and the angle of the glass, there was little friction to aid her grip.
Unable to maintain her grasp, her hand quickly broke free and slid down the glass, instantly her fingers were cleanly severed off between her knuckles and the first finger joints, causing her to fall face first into Jon's hollowed out torso where the glass neatly sliced her head from her neck.
Her head fell to the floor leaving a trail of blood behind it as it awkwardly rolled under our kitchen table; her body went limp except for a slight twitching of her fingers (the ones that were still attached) and dropped on top of Jon's half eaten corpse.
Her severed fingers quivered on the floor beside Jon's dead body for a few moments, and then slowly began to exhibit signs of stiffening before they too became lifeless nubs on our kitchen floor.
That is when we knew the true horror of this disease. Although Julie's head was now detached from her body, her head was still alive.
The eyes in Julie's decapitated head rolled back and forth, and up and down as they had when her head was still connected to her body.
Although she still moved her jaw in an attempt to bite us, and I'm sure she would have if an opportunity would have presented itself, she was not able to spit or spew blood or saliva now that her lungs were several feet away, still enclosed in her detached body.
Earlier we had wondered why Jon was still alive after his body had been cut in two. Even when the shard of glass fell and finally put him out of his misery, we didn't make the connection that the diseased brain would have to be destroyed before the infected ones would ultimately find peace.
The official broadcasts had not mentioned anything about how to kill the people that had been infected, the warnings were more generic, like stay inside, lock your doors, don't get bit, that kind of thing.
Gin turned away from Julie’s grossly animated head.
"I think I'm going to puke."
"Me too!" Jacob said, his face turning a little green.
Boom! Boom!
I watched a fist size chunk of the back of Julie's skull careen off one of the kitchen table legs as my Glock 19 sang out, sending its 9mm bullet through Julie's left eyeball and smashing into the interior of her cranium, and finally putting an end to our neighbor's torment, and her furious menacing stare.
The only sounds now were the ringing in our ears from the gunshots, and the sickening buzz of the hundreds of flies in the room, along with the constant crackle of gunfire in the distance.
Our neighbors had now ceased all movement, and for the moment, I felt safe as I slid the pistol into the back of my waistband.
We stood there for a while, pondering what to do next. Gin still had her back to the atrocious scene.
“I’m going to call the police!” she said.
“I tried calling you several times on my way home, but couldn’t get through, everybody is calling 911. But go ahead and try, maybe you’ll get through.” I said, doubtful that she would get any results.
Gin dialed the emergency number again and again to no avail.
"You're right the phone is still useless, I can't get through to the police," Gin said, as she tossed her cell phone onto the kitchen counter just barely missing the sink.
"We can't stay here, it’s not safe," I said.
Billy waved his hands around in front of his face, as he shooed away the flies.
"Well I'm not going to stay here with all these flies," he exclaimed!
"The cops aren't coming, the ambulance isn't coming, nobody is coming, I think we're on our own," Jacob scowled.
"He's probably right, after what I saw on my way home, what the television said, and now this, there might not even be a police force now, or army, or anything," I said, as I shooed away some flies that were now tormenting me as well.
Gin leaned toward me, her face now beginning to turn the same shade of green that Jacob's had earlier and muttered.
"This is disgusting, how are we going to clean up this mess?"
I tried not to think of just how disgusting what we had to do was really going to be, and I said.
"I've got an idea. You boys go get the snow shovels, and that old paint drop cloth that’s out in the garage. Hurry up! Bring some duct tape too!"
"And some insect spray if you can find any," Gin added loudly.
When the boys returned with the paraphernalia I'd sent them to retrieve, we began to shovel our repugnant former neighbors piles of guts and dismembered body parts, along with Julie's severed head outside onto the patio.
We didn't get very far before hearing the heaving sound of Gin vomiting from the sight of the disjointed corpses and the smell of fecal matter from Jon's shredded bowls.
The odor had already permeated the room, and was spreading quickly throughout the rest of the house. Now with the vomit added to the mix, the reeking stench in the room was almost too much for any of us to bear.
Jacob's tint was greener still, as he covered his mouth.
"I think I'm going to throw up too," he complained.
"Try to hold it down," I said. "Leave the room if you have too."
Jacob turned his head away from the pile of intestines he was pushing out the door and dropped his shovel to the floor.
"I'm going to the garage, it doesn't smell out there," he said before covering his mouth with his hand once more.
"Go with him honey, you don't look so good either," I said to Gin, hoping Billy could tolerate the smell long enough to help me finish the distasteful (again, no pun intended) job at hand.
"How are you doing Billy? Are you going to make it?" I asked.
Looking up at me with a scowl on his face, he answered.
"I'm okay, but let's hurry, this really stinks."
Trying not to slop blood on each other, or ourselves, we worked as swiftly as we could, shoving the almost unrecognizable human remains out the doorway, which had the effect of drawing most of the flies outside with them.
We sealed off the broken glass door with the paint tarp and the duct tape to keep the flies out, sprayed the kitchen with insect spray killing most of the flies and masking the reeking stench of Jon's feces a little, then swatted the few remaining flies with a couple of folded newspapers.
As we finished the morbid cleaning chore, Billy looked out a back window and spotted another disease-infested neighbor none of us recognized wandering around our backyard.
"There's another one dad, looks like he's headed next door to Don's house."
"Don will just have to take care of himself, we have our own problems," I answered. "Hell, for all I know Don's already one of them."
"You go see if there's anything new on the television, I'll go get your mother and Jacob," I said, as I turned and walked toward the garage.
Opening the door to the garage, I was glad to see that the normal color had returned to my spouse and son's faces.
I looked at Gin and repeated my previous statement.
"We need to leave; it's not safe here anymore."
"Where can we go?"
"I don't know!" I answered shaking my head. "But I know that we can't stay here much longer."
I motioned for her and Jacob to come back into the house.
"Come back in here, the smell isn't as bad now, smells more like bug spray," I said, hoping they wouldn’t get sick again.
"Let's grab a few things, and then we've got to go!"
"Hey, everybody, come in here, there's a disease update on the television," Billy yelled from the living room.
While we entered the living room and converged on the television, we all hoped the new information that Billy had summoned us to hear was good news, but it wasn't.
"They say that the diseased people are dead!"
Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, I pointed it toward the television, and pressing
the plus on the volume button I shouted.
"Quiet, I can't hear what they're saying."
The faceless voice behind the emergency warning screen, repeated the announcement over and over, as we stood there dazed, listening in disbelief.
We now learned that the disease first kills you, and within seconds, you reanimate with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. If you die first, say you're hit by a car and killed, then the disease takes you over immediately and you get up and attack the first person that you see.
It was clear now why Jon and Julie didn't die immediately after their horrendous mutilating fates, they were already dead.
Now the broadcasts were no longer focusing on how to save the living, they seemed more intent on spreading information on how to kill the living dead. Five or six minutes passed while we stood in front of the television, all of us in an almost trance like state. Then without warning, the television went dark, snapping us back to the cruel reality that confronted us.
"Great, now the electricity is out," Gin said angrily.
Then trying to comfort herself, by convincing herself that everything would be all right, she mumbled. "Maybe it's a rolling blackout, and it'll come back on in awhile."
"I hope you're right," I said, also trying to comfort her. "But we can't wait here to find out. If we're still here when it gets dark, and the lights are still off, it could get really ugly.”
“Uglier than what happened in the kitchen?” Jacob asked sarcastically.
Smiling sarcastically back at him, I replied. “Well I for one don't want to go to sleep with this lingering smell in the house, and dead stark raving flesh eating homicidal maniacs walking around outside the house with only a canvas tarp and duct tape between us. So like I said before, let's grab a few things and get the hell out of here."
A sheepish grin creped over Jacob's face and he replied.
"Indeed!"
It wasn’t long before the electricity in our house did come back on. In the beginning, there were rolling blackouts, but each time the electric went off, it stayed off longer and more areas were affected, until ultimately total blackouts came, and the power grid never did come back up. Ever again!