When she was only a few yards away it suddenly straightened, its eyes widened, and the look on its face changed.
Amy stopped in her tracks. This was the same look she had just seen.
The zombie screamed then lunged at her, seeming more like the other two than the slow zombie it had been only seconds before. She fired into its face and stepped to the side just as it stumbled by and fell to ground. Dead again.
“What’s going on with these things?” she said as she stared down at it.
She stood still scanning the area for several minutes, watching and listening. After a few minutes she was satisfied the immediate danger had passed.
Calmly she turned and walked back to Tommy.
“We can’t trust the slow ones to stay that way,” she said to Tommy. “Something weird is going on. They can change.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Amy picked up the pistol at Tommy’s feet and dropped the clip. She reloaded it, put it back in place, chambered a round and handed it back to him.
“Are you ok,” he asked.
“Yeah, just still a little pissed off,” she said. “How about you? Are you ok.”
“I’m good,” he answered.
“Good,” she said smiling and patting him on the head. “Lets go get those pickles.”
They started across the street again and walked up to the front door of the deli. It was pretty much intact. There was no broken glass and it looked like it had just been closed for the night. The doors were closed but not locked.
“Alright, lets do it,” Amy said.
Amy stepped through the door first. There were a few things scattered on the floor but for the most part the place was still clean and orderly.
There was rancid meat and cheese in the glass case. Dried and molded bread sat on the counter.
Shotgun in hand Amy searched the Deli and the restrooms. Nothing. The place was empty.
They stacked cans of ham and turkey on the counter and filled several boxes with chips, soda and water. Tommy spotted a massive jar of pickles and set it with the rest of the food.
“Tommy I think we’ll skip the courthouse for now,” she said. “Lets load up everything we can find and go home. It’s too dangerous out here.”
“No argument from me,” Tommy said feeling relieved.
They were about to start loading things into the truck when Amy noticed the walk in cooler.
“Hey, maybe there are some goodies in there,” she said.
She clutched the handle and pulled. In an instant the door flew open knocking her back.
Two dead burst from the cooler and were on Tommy before he could react. They knocked him down. One of them leaped on top of him as soon as he hit the floor.
Before Amy could act, the zombie began ripping at Tommy’s throat. It turned toward Amy and growled as if it were a wild hyena protecting its kill. Blood ran down it’s chin. Flesh hung from its mouth.
She leveled the shotgun and pulled the trigger. The zombie jerked from the blast then fell over to the side. Its head mostly gone.
The other one turned to look at Amy as she pumped a shell into the chamber and fired again. It fell dead over Tommy’s body.
She kicked it off of him revealing the damage. His neck had been ripped apart. His jugulars laid open. A huge puddle of blood was spreading out on the white tile around his body.
His eyes were wide with terror and unblinking. He was gone. At least for the time being.
Amy knew what she had to do. She picked up the pistol, put the barrel to his forehead and pulled the trigger. A hole appeared between his eyes. The red puddle beneath him grew larger. He would not rise again.
Amy fell to her knees and began to weep. Something she had promised herself she wouldn’t do. After all they had been through Tommy was dead now. She was alone.
Suddenly there was something heavy on her back as she felt the pain and pressure of teeth sinking into her left shoulder.
My God, there’s another one, she thought.
The smell of its putrid, rotten breath entered her nostrils. She gagged and threw up in her mouth.
She had let her guard down and it had cost both of their lives.
There was another sharp pain and a tug as she felt a huge chunk of skin, tendon and muscle being ripped away from her shoulder.
She elbowed the zombie hard in the ribs then whirled around and raised the pistol to meet her attacker.
He lunged at her again just as she fired. The bullet entered its left eye. The back of its head flew apart. Blood and brains spilled out the gaping hole in the back of its head and dropped to the floor with a sickeningly wet thud.
His momentum sent him crashing into Amy’s legs causing her to slip on the bloody floor.
She stuck her elbow out to try to catch herself on the counter. As her arm hit, it bent back toward her body. The impact causing her to accidentally pull the trigger.
The force of the blast caused her to lose her grip on the gun and it fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. She knew instantly what had happened.
The bullet entered her stomach, ripped through her liver then blew up through the right lung severing the pulmonary artery before exited her back.
Her head came down hard on the counter top. She saw flashes of light then everything started to fade. She felt herself losing consciousness and knew she was dying as she hit the floor. The last sensation she felt was the cold tile against her cheek.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Minutes passed. Then consciousness began to flash in and out like an old neon sign. Amy’s vision began to clear. She saw Tommy’s body and the bodies of the two dead that had attacked them. Then she saw her own body, lying in a pool of blood, below her.
She felt confused but soon realized that she must be dead. She was amazed at how calmly she took it.
So this is what it’s like to die, she thought.
She hovered there for several minutes trying to make sense of what was happening. Trying to come to grips with what she saw laid out below her. Trying to understand. Trying desperately to understand.
Then the arms and legs of her body began to move.
She was witnessing the process of a lifeless body becoming one of the living dead. And this zombie was her own.
She was thankful she was no longer in there.
Then the eyes opened wide as her zombie moaned. Then it struggled to its hands and knees, raised its head and began to scream.
Amy had risen from the dead.
At that instant she began to spin around the room as if in a whirlpool. She tried to scream but nothing came out. She tried to grab something but had no physical body with which to do so.
She was spiraling lower and lower and faster and faster. Suddenly the scream ceased and was replaced with the sound of rushing air. Then she was sucked into her body and there was a stunned silence. She was back. Trapped. That wonderful peaceful feeling gone.
She felt a sudden sense of anguish, sadness and anger. She had not wanted to return.
She could see clearly through her zombie’s eyes. The sound was muffled but she could also hear. She had no control over her zombie’s movements whatsoever and had no sense of touch. There was no connection with the rest of the body. She had to observe whatever the zombie was observing. She could not look where she wanted to.
Her zombie struggled to its feet, stepped over the bodies and walked around to the front of the counter.
She was grateful that the hunger for fresh meat hadn’t set in yet. She wouldn’t have been able to take it if her zombie had stopped to dine on Tommy.
They stood by the front door all afternoon. Unmoving.
This gave Amy time to ponder her own existence. She soon came to realize that most of the dead that she had dispatched in the past few weeks were actually vessels for the person they once had been. Like herself they were stowaways on a ghost ship. Unable to affect the outcome in anyway. Just along for the ride. It was a sobering thou
ght.
How terrifying would it be to be part of a roving pack of the dead. Chasing down and devouring prey. Being an unwilling participant to mass murder.
She wondered what it was like at the moment of final death. What is it like when the dead die? How terrifying is it to meet your fate for a second time?
How can I be dead and alive at the same time? She thought.
What was the next level of existence? If any. Would she continue on or just blink out like a light. Or, as she hoped, would her soul survive and be free to emerge from its cocoon to continue its journey.
A Richard Bach quote kept repeating in her mind. “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
She came to the conclusion that she was her consciousness. Her soul. Existing separately from the physical brain that had been hijacked by the zombie.
Amy’s zombie began to get restless late in the afternoon. Then, just before sunset, it stepped out of the deli and onto the street.
Amy was calm even though she had no control. The sense of detachment was strange. She tried to will this thing to move and act as she wanted but it was no use. Her zombie obviously wasn’t even aware that she was there.
She wondered again about the dead from earlier that morning. And the old lady, the mailman and the zombie in the front yard. She thought someway, somehow, the consciousness or souls of these people were somehow influencing the actions of their dead. Why was she different?
She wished she had become one of them. But she wasn’t. She could tell by the way her zombie walked and acted. Sadly she was just a garden variety zombie.
At least I’m not one of the demon dead, she thought. At least not yet.
At last they set out heading North. Amy’s zombie scanned the streets from side to side occasionally but mostly kept its gaze straight ahead as they plodded along. They headed down the Street and continued until they reached US-180. Then marched steadily on through night and early morning.
They stopped for the day around 11:00 a.m. Amy wasn’t quite sure why, but the zombie sought shade and stood almost as if asleep for five hours. Then they resumed their pointless quest when the sun was no longer high in the sky.
Amy in some strange morbid way wished she could feel what her zombie felt. Was it tired? Did it have a head ache? Could it feel pain? Did it have any thought process at all or did it act purely on instinct like an insect?
She calmly excepted her fate and settled in for the rest of the journey.
They continued on. Always stopping for about five hours during mid day and continuing on around four.
They saw no survivors the first three days. Then one day just after sunrise, as they were making their way through Tusayan Arizona, she noticed a lone zombie standing on the roof of the Holiday Inn. He stood silently on the edge, three stories up, following their progress as they made their way along the street. He was missing his right arm and was dressed in some type of work uniform.
A maintenance man possibly. Amy thought.
Amy’s zombie stepped over to the side of the road near the hotel and stopped. After a few grunts of apparent greeting, they stood there staring at each other for several minutes.
Finally it looked down at the concrete then back at Amy’s zombie. Then it leaned over the edge and fell head first into the pavement below. The zombie disintegrated on impact. His torso split open and his limbs detached and flew out in all directions. Blood, pus, bones and internal organs spread out in a huge stain. It reminded Amy of a bug splattering a windshield.
Her zombie groaned. It gave her the feeling that it thought it was all alone now. The last one.
Amy’s zombie grunted once more then turned and took up the steady gate of a zombie on a mission. What that mission was she had no idea.
They were soon out of town. Still heading North. Judging by the mile markers, Amy thought they were making about one mile an hour.
Pretty much top speed for a zombie, she thought.
One of the disadvantages of being one of the slow ones.
If only my zombie was like the mailman we could make three times that, she thought.
By her best guess they were only about a days walk from the canyon.
They walked on for three more hours before stopping in the shade for the day and then continuing around five in the afternoon.
The next morning when the sun rose she noticed that her zombie’s left arm had fallen off during the night. Evidently more damaged in the encounter with the zombie at the deli than she had thought.
The legs however still seemed strong and their pace had not slowed.
A little further on they passed a sign that read “Grand Canyon National Park South Rim Visitors Center - 6 Miles.” A six hour walk. They were getting close.
What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
The quote flashed through her mind again and again. Giving her some strange sense of comfort.
She knew that at some point it would be over. She just hoped the end wouldn’t be violent. She had had enough violence. And even though she was ready for this nightmare to end and to finally be released from the prison her physical body had become, she hoped that her zombie would continue on for at least another day or so.
After all, she thought. I always did want to see the Grand Canyon.
Arthur M Wyatt is An ex U.S. Navy Seabee, Writer, Musician and Painter. He lives in upstate South Carolina with his daughter, black lab, one miniature schnauzer, six guitars featuring an American Fender Stratocaster, 1000 book personal library, vast collection of Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, Jazz, Blues and Big Band music, two Fantasy Football Superbowl Trophies and a 1994 Ford F-150 with over 300,000 miles. He flies the American flag year round.
He Communicates Directly at:
[email protected] [email protected]
An excerpt from “The demon dead”
“The Demon Dead” is a 294 page full length novel. There is no connection to “Soul Survivor”. Both are independent stories that take place in The Demon Dead Universe. Soul Survivor is where the concept of the three types of zombies originated. “The Demon Dead” takes the concept and expands on it.
Chapter one from “The Demon Dead”
By: Arthur M Wyatt
Copyright© 2011
ONE
Day One: Crash Test Zombies
The tires squealed as the car spun out of control. Helplessly, John held onto the steering wheel with all his strength. The overturned bus had seemed to leap out of the darkness and fill the windshield just as he rounded the curve. The car barely missed it as he swerved to avoid a collision. The road was filled with those…things. Each one stopping to look up when the headlights fell upon them. Their eyes reflecting the light. Some had entrails and flesh hanging from their mouths. All were covered in blood. For some strange reason they reminded John of crash test dummies. The thought left his mind just as quickly as it had come.
The bus was overturned half in and half out of the road. The victims were strung out along side it. Each one besieged by these monsters... these walking corpses. Each body was in a different state of being consumed. Some now nothing more than bloody skeletons with meat clinging to bones here and there. Intestines and other body parts littered the road. There must have been a hundred of the creatures. Many were crushed by the car as it careened wildly. The stench that blew into the car was overwhelming. John felt his stomach begin to churn.
The bus driver, partially decapitated, hung out of the broken front window. His body being devoured as if by vultures on road kill. Except these weren’t vultures and they were no longer human. They were grotesque, bloody, evil caricatures.
As the car slid sideways it left the roadway and slid into the dirt on the shoulder. The tires dug into the soft ground as dirt flew in the window and into John’s mouth, nose and eyes. He felt the car leave the ground as it started to barrel roll, first once then two more times. The air bag smacked him in
the face first, and then the overnight bag with his belongings hit him as it flew out the window.
Stopping on its side, the car sat there for a second then slammed back down, upright on its tires. Steam escaped from under the hood as blood from a gash on his forehead began to fill his eyes. Frantically he clawed at the seat belt trying to free himself.
Once free, he searched the car for his bag. He had to have it. It contained everything he needed to survive.
Still dazed he looked up the road toward the bus lying no more than seventy yards away. Smelling fresh blood the creatures turned and started toward the mangled car. John crawled out the window and flopped to the ground. He checked himself for injuries. Other than the gash on his forehead, a massive headache and bruised ribs, he seemed to have suffered no other damage. His head throbbed with every heartbeat.
The bag was lying in the road half way between the car and the bus. Regaining his feet, John shook the cobwebs from his head, ran around the car and took off. Ahead he saw two of them heading for him at a much faster pace than the others and with more purpose.
“Ah hell,” he said out loud, “not them again.”
These two, or demons as John had come to refer to this different type of walking corpse, were faster and more intelligent than the others. He didn’t have time to ponder the reasons why they were different, but had made note of the different way they moved and carried themselves. They were pretty easy to spot if you knew what you were looking for. And here they were again.
Frantically he raced for the bag, reaching it mere seconds ahead of the fastest one. John unzipped it and grabbed the 9mm. Flipping the safety off he raised the weapon and fired three rounds into the first attacker as it closed in. The first and second round hit it in the chest but didn’t seem to slow him down. The third round entered his forehead spewing blood and gray matter out the back of its skull in a crimson spray. It dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap.
The second one was only three yards away and coming fast. John fired three more times in quick succession into its face. The demon’s head disappeared in an explosion of blood, brains and bone.
Soul Survivor: A gripping tale of the living, the dead, and the struggle to survive in an apocalyptic world. Page 5