by Thomas North
After grabbing his shotgun from the shed, he put it on the passenger seat next to him along with a box of ammo. A shotgun in a BMW. If he got pulled over, he'd just claim that he was a high class redneck.
He chuckled to himself and backed the BMW down his long driveway, still grinning. He eyed the gun as he pulled into the road. It was almost like he was going off to war again. His smile faded at that thought. He'd stopped going to war for a reason. He'd already dodged fate twice. Giving it a third chance to catch up with him was exactly what he didn't want to do.
He shook his head, disgusted. He was going to Allentown, not Basra. Mike had gotten him all worked up over what was probably a few people who had guzzled a bit too much hard liquor at the cookout. Chances were, he wasn't even going to have to take his ammo out of his box.
It was just Allentown. Fate would have to catch up with him some other time.
ANDY PUSHED THE van’s limits as hard as he could, taking curves so fast that it felt like the van was going to skid sideways off the road. After six or seven minutes, they passed a green sign that said “Allentown town limits” and “Population: 2,423” in small white lettering.
“Should be just a couple of minutes until we hit Main Street,” Andy said, receiving no response. They had been quiet since leaving the scene of the accident, everyone just watching the blur of scenery through the window, lost in their own thoughts.
The speed limit went from fifty-five to thirty as they approached the town itself, but Andy kept the van at a steady forty-five miles per hour. He figured if anyone stopped him, the mangled guy in the middle of the road a few miles back would be evidence enough to get him out of a ticket. He just hoped it wouldn’t lead to something more serious.
He was confident that he had a pretty good case. The man had just been standing in the road, around a sharp curve. Andy hadn’t even been speeding at the time, a rarity for him. He felt terrible for the guy, but shit – it wasn’t his fault. No way was it his fault. He just hoped that would matter in a town the size of Allentown, where everyone was probably everyone else’s brother or uncle, and the police may or may not be even halfway competent.
Coming into the town, they passed a few houses, though all they could see from the road were mailboxes and the beginnings of long dirt driveways that disappeared into the trees. They drove over a stone bridge that spanned a small brook, passed a small, unkempt cemetery, and emerged from Vermont’s ample forest into the modest downtown of Allentown.
Main Street was a small two lane road lined with oak trees and old-looking wooden buildings, most of which appeared to be houses. They passed a small white, one-story building that housed a hardware store, and a small convenience store which looked about the size of a bathroom stall, and was painted in an ugly rust-colored red. A sign on the outside of the store said “Sam’s Grocery.” At the end of the street was a small green with a white gazebo and a bronze statue of a Revolutionary War minuteman. The street circled around the town green, and split into a Y intersection, with a road running on both sides of a white church that stood at the head of the square. It was a postcard-perfect picture of small-town America.
Almost.
Andy drove slowly down Main Street. He noted at least ten people walking – staggering – around in a way that, on any other day, would have made him think that there was an early happy hour at a local bar.
“Jeez, are those ˗ ” Kyle began, and stopped abruptly, staring out the window.
“It’s the same as at the store,” Mary said in a barely audible voice, her mouth going dry.
Sarah opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by Andy slamming on the brakes for the second time that day, jolting her forward in her seatbelt. She looked out the windshield to the front of the van and lost her breath. Five bodies lay within a few feet of each other. Dark red stained the sidewalk near the heads of three of the corpses, accompanied with small red, rubbery globs.
Andy flashed back to a rough night of drinking a few months earlier that included cherry Jell-O shots. Jell-O shots that had come out the same way they’d come in. He remembered staring into the toilet bowl that had just been cradling his face, looking at the red globules, and thinking he might have actually thrown up part of his stomach.
He winced and looked at the other bodies.
The fifth corpse looked as if someone had used its head for batting practice.
Kyle strained to look out the windshield to see what Andy and Sarah were staring at. He stood up slightly in his seat, paused for a moment, and sat back down, gagging in disgust.
“Jesus…” he whispered.
“What? What is it?” Mary asked anxiously.
Andy and Sarah looked further down the road and saw a lump that resembled a slab of meat in a butcher’s shop. They realized what it was at the same time, and both groaned disgustedly.
“What is it?” Mary demanded loudly.
“Bodies,” Kyle said, grimacing. “At least four.”
“Six that I can see,” Andy corrected him, his voice shaking.
“We need to get out of here.” Sarah said somberly. “We need to go now.”
Before Andy could move, something thumped against the rear side window. Mary turned, her eyes went wide, and she screamed. A burley man in overalls, his face pale and missing one eye, stood next to the van, whipping his flabby arms against the glass, where now-terrified Mary was sitting.
“Andy, GO!” Kyle yelled.
There was another thump, this one on the other side of the van, and a third on the rear window. Andy glanced in the rear view mirror and saw a woman in a blue Northface Jacket and a ski hat behind the vehicle, her face pressed against the glass, her hands clawing and swiping at it.
Andy hit the accelerator hard and the vehicle lurched forward. As the van began moving, the man in the overalls took one last, hard swing at the window, leaving a long crack down the middle of it. Mary unbuckled her seatbelt and slid into the middle seat. She clutched Kyle’s arm, and he clutched her arm back.
In an instant, they were moving. The van bounced, jostling its passengers like an amusement park ride, throwing them forward and then back into their seats again.
Andy gunned it, and the van flew down the street, zipping past Packard’s Jewelry store, rolling over the rack of ribs formerly known as Mrs. Dara Anders, and crushing the tiny body of Mrs. Samuels. Two people, a forty-something soccer-mom and what was probably her middle school-aged daughter, were walking diagonally down Main Street, as if on an afternoon stroll to the store. The mother had a gaping hole in her abdomen, and a long strand of bloody entrails dangled down her thigh, bouncing as she stumbled down the street. The young girl staggered just a few steps behind, a steak knife protruding from her ribs like a giant on/off switch, a bloody stump where her left arm used to be.
Andy instinctively swerved to avoid the two women, and in doing so, ran head on into a fat man wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. The van jumped and shuddered as if it had hit a massive pot hole. Andy struggled to keep the vehicle under control and took his foot off the accelerator.
The van jumped a curb and rolled halfway onto the sidewalk. Andy cut hard right, and saw the town square directly in front of them. Seeing the open grass, he hit the accelerator again, sending the van over the brick perimeter of the green. He deftly maneuvered in between the statue and the gazebo, still leaning on the gas. The van chewed up the carefully manicured lawn and then exploded off the square, back onto the pavement, heading for the road running to the right of the church. Andy let off as he took the corner around the church, and saw open road ahead of him.
Much to the surprise of everyone else in the van, for the third time that day, he slammed on the brakes. Metal grated on metal, and Andy spun the wheel hard to right and the side of the van, striking a nearby vehicle. They came to a stop, and Andy put the gear shift to park. His friends looked around, confused. He looked out the window at the car beside them, noting that he would have to redo his parking job if h
e wanted to open his door.
“What’s going on Andy?” Sarah asked, a hint of anger in her voice. “I thought we were getting out of here.”
Andy pointed out the front of the van at the large sign posted over the door of the red brick building in front of them. ‘Allentown Police Department.’
“It’s why we came here in the first place, right?” he said. “Maybe at least we can get some goddamn help, you know? Find someone to tell us what the hell is going on.”
“Things have changed now,” came a reply from behind him. Kyle paused, and then started again. “Whatever all those… people have, I don’t want to catch it. The best thing we can do right now is go back and get Jack and Kate, stay in the van, and stay the hell away from those… people.”
“It can’t hurt to ask…” Andy began, but was cut off when Kyle began speaking again.
“We don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what they have. For all we know, they breathe in our direction and we’re screwed.”
“He’s right Andy. We need to go,” Sarah told him, her voice taking on a much softer tone than Kyle’s. “Jack and Kate are out there with one of them. We need to get them and get out of here.”Andy sighed, frustrated.
“I just want to run and check. It will only take a second.”
He unlocked the door, pulled the handle and pushed. The door only moved a quarter of an inch before banging against the car next to them. Sarah chuckled despite the situation. Andy turned around, embarrassed.
“Alright then,” he said dejectedly.
He put his hand on the gear shift and threw it into reverse.
Without saying a word, he shifted it back to park, took his hands off the shifter and steering wheel, and raised them in the air beside his head. He and Sarah looked at each other worriedly before turning their attention back to the police station, and the shotgun that was pointed at their heads.
5
JACK LOOKED DOWN at the twisted figure twitching in the street. He and Kate would have to stay on their toes to warn any oncoming traffic, so the poor guy didn’t get run over a second time. Cars coming around the bend wouldn’t have much time to slow down.
“Do you think we ought to do something?” Kate asked, joining Jack at the side of the injured man.
“Something like what?”
“I don’t know. First Aid or something,” Kate said. “I don’t know much… I took a First Aid class a couple of years ago. You’re supposed to take their pulse and check for fractures and burns and things like that,” she said.
Jack raised his eyebrows, looked down at the man writhing on the ground, looked back up at her, and gave her a condescending look.
“I’m pretty sure the guy has a pulse, Kate.”
She looked down, embarrassed.
“And we pretty well know what’s wrong with him as well,” Jack continued. “He got run over by a van.”
“Okay, I get it,” Kate replied, a hint of anger in her voice. “I just hate standing here and not helping or anything.”
Jack gave her a slight smile and nodded.
“I know how you feel,” Jack said, though Kate wasn’t sure that he did.
“As long as he’s moving around like that, he’s conscious and breathing. We should probably leave him alone. If he stops and loses consciousness, then we probably need to do something.”
Kate nodded.
“Hopefully they’ll be back soon,” Kate said, looking down the road where their friends had gone.
The sound of an approaching vehicle caught their attention. A black Ford Explorer blasted around the curve, headed straight at them. Jack and Kate began yelling and waving frantically, hoping to get the attention of the driver.
Instead, the SUV sped forward with no sign of slowing down. Kate looked nervously at Jack, and down at the man lying in the road.
“Shit. Quick, grab him by the legs and pull him to the side of the road!” Jack yelled, grabbing the man at the calf. Kate looked down at the man’s left leg, bent ninety degrees at the knee, and hesitated.
“Where should I grab?” Kate asked frantically.
“Anywhere! Just grab and pull!”
Kate grabbed the man’s leg and started pulling, the man’s knee crackling like dry fall leaves under a parade. The SUV blew by them just as they reached the shoulder, swerving only slightly before disappearing around another curve.
“What an asshole!” Jack said angrily. “We should’ve gotten his license plate number.”
Kate nodded, still staring down the road.
“The good news,” Jack began again, gesturing at the man on the ground, “Is that he still seems okay. At least, he doesn’t seem any worse than he was.”
Kate looked at the man for a few moments and then looked up. He was still thrashing around, occasionally snarling at them. Looking at him made her want to throw up, and she turned her back to him.
“I’m going to try 9-11 again,” she said.
She took her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. After dialing the number and listening for a few seconds, she pushed the “end” button and put it back in her pocket.
“Still nothing?”
“I barely got a signal, but it’s busy again,” Kate replied.
“Weird,” Jack said. “So weird…”
A chilly breeze swept over them, rustling the orange and yellow trees. Jack breathed in deeply, taking a lungful of crisp fall air. On any other day, the breeze would have been a near-poetic autumn moment, the colorful foliage swaying, the sun shining almost horizontally through the trees, illuminating the bright colors of the season.
They stood in silence for several minutes, Jack alternately staring down the road and occasionally glancing at the injured man to make sure he was still conscious. Kate purposely looked down the road, at the trees, at the sky – anywhere but at the mangled, insane man lying a few feet away.
The time ticked by as they waited anxiously for their friends to return. Jack continued watching the road, hoping to see the green van – or a police car or some other rescue vehicle– come around the corner. He looked at his watch. It was almost five-thirty. His friends had been gone for twenty minutes. He wasn’t sure exactly how far they were from Allentown, and twenty minutes wasn’t an unreasonably long time for a two-way trip, but he felt himself getting more anxious and worried – more than he let on to Kate. He looked at her briefly, and she looked back and smiled. She had her arms crossed, and shuffled from foot to foot every few seconds. She was looking down the road toward town as well, and he could tell she was as anxious as he was.
He opened his mouth to say something, when Kate pointed down the road, in the direction of the town. A man was coming around the curve towards them. He looked about average height and was dressed in a pair of dark gray slacks, a white button-up shirt, and a red tie. From a distance, he looked like an unremarkable businessman or office worker.
“What do you think that guy’s doing?” Kate asked.
Jack didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes fixed on the man.
“I don’t know,” he replied finally. “Something’s not right, though. What’s he doing walking out here in the middle of nowhere dressed like that?”
“Maybe he—“ Kate began, but stopped mid-sentence.
Something about the way the man walked was familiar. His movements were jerky and unnatural, like a marionette being yanked on by an unskilled puppet master.
“Can’t be…” Jack mouthed, his mind spinning.
Their nervousness grew as the man approached. His head was cocked to the side, his mouth hanging open. A long, thick string of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth, over his chin, and down to the collar of his shirt. His dark brown hair was greasy and disheveled, and his arms hung limply at his sides.
“You think it’s one of those guys from the store?” Kate asked.
“No,” Jack replied flatly. “He’s coming from the wrong direction. And they couldn’t have made it this far that fast. But he definitely
looks like he has the same…” He paused, searching for the right words. “…problem… that they had.”
“What should we do?”
“Let’s just step out of his way and let him pass. But we definitely need to keep an eye on him until he gets far enough away.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Kate wondered out loud. “You seriously think that all those people are just drug addicts?”
“I honestly have no idea,” Jack said, his eyes still fixated on the approaching man. “At the store I might have bought that. But with this guy too… drugs seem pretty unlikely.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of disease or something…”
Jack shrugged. “Could be. We have no way of knowing anything at this point.”
Jack and Kate stepped further off the road, out of the path of the man. They warily monitored him, watching him stagger and stumble down the road, his head remaining cocked to the side in the same position, his eyes seemingly looking straight ahead, completely oblivious to everything else around him.
A few dozen feet away from Jack and Kate, he stopped. They were standing just on the edge of the tree line, several feet from the side of the road, but in plain view. They hadn’t thought to hide. But then, they hadn’t expected the man to stop.
Kate opened her mouth to say something, but Jack put his hand up, signaling her to keep quiet. She closed her mouth and waited, wondering what he was up to. The man slowly turned in their direction. Kate’s heart began to race. When he turned completely around, she let out a weak gasp. She looked at Jack, who was staring intently, not taking his eyes off of the man. He was now close enough that they could make out his features clearly. His skin was unnaturally pale, as if all blood had been drained from his face, and his head hung limply to the side, an odd, rubbery look to his neck that reminded Kate of the little Gumby figure she used to play with as a child.
The man grunted loudly and stepped off the road. He sped up, staggering towards Jack and Kate who backed towards the forest. The man stumbled in the rougher terrain, tripped over a grapefruit-sized rock, and fell face-first into the dirt, where he continued to writhe and moan.