by Steve Wands
He was convinced it was the major media outlets’ way of cashing in on the popularity of zombie movies in the last few months. It seemed like a new one hit movie screens once a month, and Scott didn’t see the appeal–they weren’t the slightest bit realistic. A dead body almost immediately begins to enter into rigor mortis, which would make walking, let alone running nearly impossible. He found the entire idea laughable, yet there it was in big bold capital letters which meant it had to be true.
He read past the title, just out of curiosity, looking at the images, and the links to video clips. After reading the article he came to the conclusion that he found it interesting, and very entertaining. He wanted more. Scott loved a good read. He had a whole room dedicated to reading–it was full of books. Many of them were instructional and pertaining to his craft, but many more were science fiction, fantasy, and even a few horror books. Though if you were to ask him if he read horror books he would tell you no.
Below the article were links to similar stories. He clicked on the next one. He could hear the coffee maker hissing to a finish, and turned just in time to see the green light go on. He fetched a cup from the cupboard, the cup read I like it hot. He filled it to the brim and drank it black and bitter, returning to his laptop. He read the next article, and then the next one after that. He visited other sites, and eventually turned on the television–the news of the dead not dying was everywhere. He fetched another cup of coffee and sipped it as he stared blankly at the television. He was almost convinced the dead really were upright and mobile again.
Judy stumbled downstairs, scratching just below the waistline of her silky black shorts with Mister Butters following just behind her. She filled up a cup of her own and walked around to Scott’s backside. She patted her wild hair down, trying to tame it and look appealing. She hoped that maybe they could get a quick morning screw in before the day swept them away and left them too tired to do anything but sleep when it was over. She leaned over and was about to kiss his neck when she noticed the television. She sat next to him with the same blank expression. The two skeptics sat there trying to decipher if the news was real or not. And if it’s on the television, it had to be real, but it couldn’t be.
They polished off the pot of coffee while they watched the presidential address from an undisclosed location. The president read his notes calmly, as if he’d been practicing for days but had a subtle expression of hidden horror, which could only ever be conveyed by the best of actors or the truest of reactions.
They stared at the television, as if in a trance, then a noise came from downstairs. They turned to each other, the trance broken, fearful yet disbelieving as they stood up. What was downstairs would surely be the deciding factor between fact and fiction.
Leaving their empty cups behind, they headed downstairs. They passed the two large visitation rooms and the formal office for bereaved customer consultations. They passed a closet where they kept the embalming chemicals, and then stood quietly at the next door. They listened for a moment. Hearing nothing Scott opened the door, turned on the light and led the way downstairs.
The area was bright and open, two stainless steel tables stood at the center of the room, surrounded by cabinetry full of chemicals and equipment used to prepare the bodies of the dead for their eternal rest. They didn’t have a crematorium on the premises but Scott was hopeful that in the next three years they’d be able to afford one and the accompanying expansion to house it. To the right of the tables was a walk in refrigerator where the bodies of the dead were stored. It was closed, and that’s exactly how they both remembered leaving it.
As they stepped closer they could hear a thumping noise. It was a gentle noise, but one that began to repeat itself. As they stepped closer it became more erratic and forceful.
Scott paused, looking back to the steps, but since Judy stepped forward he had to as well. They now stood at the door, ready to open it. Scott stood near the lip of the door with his heart beating wildly and his mind filling with childlike wonder. Judy held the handle and readied herself to open it. Scott gave her the nod to open it, and she did.
CHAPTER 2: Under the skies of doom
It was a warm night. Bugs flitted through the air and chirped in the tall grass surrounding the campsite. The trees lurched upward to the pinpricked backdrop of the evening sky, like rockets bound for space. And if they were capable of it they’d be foolish not to go. A ragtag group of individuals had only stopped to rest in the sanctuary of the woodland retreat for a few hours, come morning they would continue toward Titan City to find their families, friends, and other loved ones. The woods were filled with more than the usual creatures tonight. The unnatural sounds of the living dead haunted the earth, even in the most serene of locations.
A young man sat by the wheel well of his car scribbling notes, and thoughts into a warped notepad. His eyes looked tiny, dry, and bloodshot. His stubble was transforming into a beard and when he couldn’t think of something to write he scratched at his stubble with the eraser side of the pencil.
“Look at this fucking guy,” says Frankie. “Snap out of it! You’re not turning into a zombie on me are you?”
“Huh? Heh, no, not yet you bearded bastard. I hope you got another one of those Bud’s for me,” said Eddie, closing his notebook, the pencil holding the page.
“For you? Hell’s no, not on me at least, there’s a cooler behind the passenger seat. We’ll have to make a run later and pick up some more,” Frankie almost looked happy about it.
“Shit, there’s never gonna be enough. I’m sure we’re minutes away from the last cold beer on earth, but…fuck it, it’s not like we’ve never had warm, skunky beer before,” Eddie said.
“Well, now we don’t have to worry about the cops breaking it up and pissing on the fire,” Frankie replied, even though they were both of age now.
They both turned to look at the growing pile of burning bodies, it seemed like they would always have fire. Whether they were in the woods, or on the road the dead had a way of finding them. Luckily, they had gotten good at protecting themselves and dispatching of the dead things that sought their flesh. Not everybody was keen on burning the bodies. They all had reasons, and some of them good, but in the end majority rules and majority ruled that the dead sons and daughter of bitches and bastards would burn as bright as the stars in the sky, and that was that.
On their way back to Frankie’s truck neither one of them could help from staring at the blank face’s of the people with which they now traveled. They were all travelers on the road to nowhere. Some of the early survivors figured out how to put the dead things down for good, and eventually the news media picked up on it and shared the information before going off the air. Destroy the brain, remove the head, or otherwise incapacitate them; burning had become a surefire bet. One bullet was usually incapable of dispatching the creatures. A shotgun was feasible, or something like a high caliber hunting rifle could do the trick if used properly. Most of the survivors used baseball bats, crowbars and the like when it came to one-on-one combat with the dead. It allowed them to conserve ammunition and create less noise. It was also easier to brain the creatures than it was to make several headshots, though most of the time when it came to this sort of combat it was to escape death rather than deal it–so, of course the damage wasn’t sufficient to keep them down. The dead had made a habit of coming back.
Once seated on the back of Frankie’s black, beat-to-hell Dodge Ram Eddie managed to take only one swig of his not-quite-cold brew before old man Ricky Rickerbocker came by to fill the comfortable silence with his brand of nervous noise. Too bad Ricker never drank, maybe it would calm his ass out, they’d thought.
“Anybody making a run tonight?” He asked, biting on his dirty fingernails.
Almost afraid to answer, Frankie said, “not sure, nobody’s been talking much today.”
“That blows, I sure could use some more smokes…” as if nobody knew what he wanted when he came over in the first place, grubby b
astard. “Any of you boys got,” he continued.
“C’mon Ricker, you know neither of us smoke just like we know you don’t drink…yet.” Eddie chimed in. He was halfway done with his Budweiser, trying to savor it but not really being able to.
“Ricker, you old leech, I got a few!” shouted Dawn. Dawn was a chain-smoking waitress with a mouth like all the other chain-smoking waitresses that worked at Pete’s Pit Stop Diner on Route 9.
Ricker made his way over to her with one hand out and the other fishing for a light in his pocket, but there wasn’t one in there. He was convinced his fingers were lying and that one of them would eventually come clean. As if she knew he didn’t have a light on him, she used the lit end from the smoke she had hanging off her pinkish-orange lips and lit it for him. She gave it to him and it had her colors around the end of it. Either not looking or not caring, he put it into his mouth and puffed away. He nodded his head in thanks, looking her over as he did; she wasn’t bad looking…so long as she didn’t talk much. Ricker hated any woman who talked too much. Eddie cracked open another, his pace just behind Frankie’s, making sure he didn’t jump ahead on his pal’s stash.
He had just swallowed his first swig when the dead things crept up on the group. There weren’t many of them, but it’s never good to be caught off guard by a dead thing that wants to eat your skin, no matter how many. It looked as if most of them were kids, scouts by the look of their uniforms. Out for a retreat at the campgrounds, one from which they never returned home.
From behind them charged Gerty, short for Gertrude, brandishing a very used Louisville Slugger baseball bat. She had no remorse as she bashed in the first child’s head. A brute of a human, let alone a woman. Frankie jumped to his feet pulling his shotgun from behind the passenger’s seat. Eddie grabbed a bat from the bed of the truck. The three of them took care of the small group of scouts. Their scout leader staggered out from the same patch of woods alongside another gentleman, clearly older, and another youngster. Gerty turned to swing, knocking the older of them off to the side, where Frankie blasted his face clear off, getting gristle and chunks of grey matter all over his shirt and arms as the noise of the blast echoed through the woods. Gerty kept swinging. Eddie was batting clean up with a splintered bat that had gore dripping from it. The three of them had the same look of intensity in their eyes. The same look of thirst, blood thirst. Eddie knocked the last youngster’s jaw into oblivion, screaming like some wild savage. He continued bashing the freckle-faced Cub Scout into the dirt, grinding his face into a puddle of dark red mush. The savagery pulled noises from the child’s body that contradicted the thudding of the wooden fury. The sounds made those who watched gag, and as inevitable as it was, someone puked.
Someone always does.
This time it was Eddie’s slightly younger brother, Joseph, who, hours earlier, was doing the same thing to a man old enough to be his father. It hadn’t been easy for any of them to kill. They did it because they had to. The smart ones lost themselves into the necessity of the action and were able to pull themselves out when it was over.
The viciousness ran its course and everyone walked away, except Scott and Judy, who went to drag the bodies to the burn pile. They both used what looked like ice picks of some sort, hooking the bodies just under the ribs. They did it as if they had always done it. The killing three walked back to where they had been before the violent scene, in an odd state of utter disgust and acceptance at what they had just been capable of doing. None of them cared to wipe the blood or gore off, though they probably should have. It was as if they temporarily shut down.
Joseph went up to his brother putting his hand firmly on his shoulder. He turned to look at him with an exhausted stare. They looked at each other, and it never felt so strange to him as it did now. It felt like he was looking behind a plate of streaked glass.
The night carried on, it was quiet and the stars were bright. There were no electrical hums, no cars beeping, no stupid cell phone jingles—only the crackling and blistering of dead flesh. It smelled horrendous, but everyone seemed to be getting relatively used to it, especially Scott and Judy, who were roasting marshmallows. Most of the group thought them to be sick in the head. Almost everyone had heard the Cliff Notes version of their story; husband and wife, ran a funeral home in North Amber and had bodies year round in the home they slept in. Scott supposedly ate, off of a plate of course, sitting on the chest of his cadavers if they so happened to be delivered during, and interrupting, his mealtime. If you were to ask him about it he’d have a different take on the story every time.
Some of the group started falling asleep, mostly the younger kids who were exhausted and scared out of their minds. Not that everyone else was taking the new world order in stride. Everyone was scared to hell, but you couldn’t survive like that; some people had to step up and the lead the way, while others simply followed. Luckily for this group, many of the folks had stepped up. They had a few good people helping to get everyone safely to their destination. Boone, who was practically running the show, Gerty, Eddie, Frankie, Alexis, Jon-Jon, and Big Cups were all doing a lot to get them to Titan City so they could be with their families and close friends. They did more than they could handle. And that was how they handled the new world, by keeping busy and finding something to do and someone to help.
Titan City seemed like a world away. It was everything they needed it to be. It was a destination, it was hope, it was the green grass on the other side of hell that surely had to be better than the grass they were standing on now. They were almost out of Middlesex County, near rural towns like Sheffield, Perch, and New Haven.
They had wanted to be out of Middlesex County yesterday and find a place to get some solid walls around them and rest. They needed rest something fierce. Good rest, not the sleeping on the road kind of rest that they had been getting. The campgrounds were a step in the right direction but it had still been hell on them. The woods had been both a blessing and curse, not being seen was great but not being able to see what lurked in the darkness of the brush was not.
Everyone of a decent age took turns keeping watch while others slept. It was only fair to share the responsibilities of keeping the group safe. Along with traveling they had raided strip malls, convenience stores, and gas stations to get what they needed and be on their way to where they needed to be. They did their best to stay off the main streets and highways, which, for the most part, were lethal and impassable, but every road held a hidden danger.
Jon-Jon groggily climbed out of his van. It was an old blue Chevrolet Astro Van with rust spreading out from its wheel wells. It had dents and dings on all sides. The front grill was spattered with blood and chunks of skin. Jon-Jon wore a trucker cap, maroon with piss-yellow letters that spelled out Milf Hunter. It was the kind of hat that nobody else could have gotten away with wearing, but he did. He also sported a brown vest over a two-day old flannel, he snatched on the last raid, though it could’ve just as easily been something hanging in his closet.
“Does anyone have any fuckin’ toilet paper,” he yelled more than asked. He waited a moment, took off his hat and scratched his forehead, put it back on and closed his eyes. “None of you fuckers got—”
Before he could finish his next few words Gerty rifled a four pack of Angel Soft at the back of his head. “Quit yer yelling faggot! Pop-a-squat and let’s raid that Mal-Mart we passed on the way here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, picking up the bucket on the side of his truck. “If you hear me screaming I may need help wiping my ass, so hurry over.”
“If that’s the case, your fucked, don’t be too long. I’ll round up some of these other faggots,” she shouted, then continued to tie up her shit kickers and put on her finest insulated flannel which was a hell of a lot older than two days.
By the time Jon-Jon got back with his empty bucket and upset expression, the group had been rounded: Eddie, Joseph, Frankie, Dawn, Big Cups and of course Gerty. No one in the group was put off by the thought of
going out on a raid. To them it had become fun, dangerous–certainly, but an adventurous necessity to cling to their old way of living and their new way of survival. What they had experienced fleeing their homes were the things of nightmares. Running into a few lurkers while on a raid was expected and worth the risk for the things they needed (even though most of the stuff they had been taking wasn’t out of need). It was out of habit, desire, and plainly because they could.
Big Cups was on walkie-talkie duty for the group, and it was Joseph’s turn to scout for batteries, bandages, and aspirins. Frankie had been given the pleasure of looking out for new wheels. Dawn had to get a new outfit because her diner uniform just wasn’t cutting it anymore: it was torn up and stunk to high hell, and everyone could certainly agree on that. The rest were just along for the ride.
They all hopped into the back of Frankie’s truck. He drove and Joseph rode shotgun, ironic now because there actually was a shotgun behind the seat. They had their guns, bats, knives, and gloves. They noticed nothing on their trek, not so much as an abandoned car. The streetlights were still on; Joseph wondered if there was a group of diehard JPG Electric & Company employees keeping it running. Frankie’s truck was running low on fuel. They had slightly more than an eighth of a tank. Someone would be getting the honorable duty of siphoning out an abandoned luxury SUV, or, if luck should have, a larger vehicle.
Finally, they reached their destination. The truck, barely at a snail’s pace, rounded the outer rim of the parking lot. They scouted for lurkers, survivors, anything that could complicate things before committing to the raid. It was clear except for a few cars, some shopping carts, and two bodies that were not getting back up. They drove around the building, getting in closer with each sweep, like a vulture circling its prey. Around back were a few shipping trucks. The docks were locked except for one truck backed in to a loading bay. The garbage containers were waiting for a garbage truck that would never show up. There were pallet stacks and a lonely little power jack next to a wall full of milk crates. They took one final lap and ended up right in front of the main doors.