Zombies' End: Aftermath

by Feren, Todd C.

  When the first zombie sightings started happened inside the city limits, I went to the store to try and get some supplies. When I got there, everything was already gone. The windows of the store had even been smashed in. I'm not sure when it happened, but the place was completely cleared out. Not even a can of fucking cat food.

  I tried to call my brother, but there was no answer at his place.

  He could have already left town.

  He was the smart brother. He went to college, found the most beautiful girl there, and started a family right away.

  I thought, he probably took off for Alaska when the story first broke.

  He was smart like that.

  Always planning ahead.

  Me? I just get on, by the skin of my dick!

  I went home to see exactly what I had in terms of a food supply. I buy Ramen noodles in bulk, so I should’ve had some of those.

  When I pulled up to my place, I saw my front door was wide open.

  I left in such a hurry—so stupid.

  I walked in, and saw Mr. Murrey, my landlord rummaging through my cupboards. Just throwing what little I did have into a bag.

  “What the fuck are you doing?" I said.

  He turned around with a gun in his hand and pointed it right at my face. He was nervous and sweating like he just ran a half marathon.

  He got all red in the face and started screaming, "This is my property! All of this shit is mine! If you try to take anything from me, I'll shoot your God damned black ass in the face."

  Now here's the thing—He was taking the food to survive—I get it.

  He had the gun because he was scared—I still get it.

  But saying he would "shoot my black ass in the face?”

  I don’t get that. Race didn't have shit to do with survival.

  Mr. Murrey always seemed like such a cool guy. He was always laid back and nice, but the minute things took a turn for the worse— his true colors showed through.

  I took my guitar and headed out the door.

  A little bit of salt brings out the real taste of racism.

  My brother’s house was about forty-five minutes away. He was in a nice neighborhood close to the beach. I took care of his dogs when he and his family went out of town on vacation, so I knew where the spare key was, and how to turn off the alarm.

  I got to his neighborhood, and it was all messed up. Not in a "holy shit, some crazy shit went down in here!" sort of way. But normally there were kids running around, or people washing hundred thousand dollar cars in their driveways. Some houses looked like whoever lived there boarded themselves up inside.

  You could see these fancy glass front doors boarded up with dining room tables, and any piece of furniture they could find.

  The thing that kinda struck me as funny was the nicest houses in the nicest neighborhoods had front doors of mostly glass. There were some homes that faced the ocean, and almost their entire fronts were made of gigantic windows.

  Go into a much less expensive part of town, into the poorer neighborhoods and guess what you’ll see— bars in the windows.

  Those rich folks spent a lot of money to hide in a home built out of glass.

  My brother's house was locked up, but no boards.

  He must have left town already— smart.

  I got the key from under the fake rock in the garden.

  I opened the door and the alarm went off immediately. Then, Bella, one of my brother's dogs came running from around the corner and took off right past me. I know my brother was probably leaving in a hurry, but I couldn’t imagine him leaving his dogs behind.

  Bella took off down the street and never looked back. They say that pets have a natural survival instinct. If you can't take care of them during a hurricane or some shit, just let them go. They can survive on their own.

  Bella was gone and out of my sight before I knew it.

  Shit. Even the dog had a plan. And here I was just winging it.

  I went to turn off the alarm, that sound was piercing. I got to the keypad, and my brain went blank. I couldn't remember the number.

  I called my brother's cellphone while I kept trying numbers. Then, I saw a picture of my nephew Ryan on the wall, and it hit me.

  0313.

  March thirteenth.

  I punched in my nephew’s birthdate and the alarm mercifully stopped.

  When the ringing in my ears from the alarm started to fade, I could still hear two noises—the ringing in the phone as I called my brother's cellphone, and the ringing of my brother's cellphone from another room in the house.

  I closed the door behind me just in case something was out there in the neighborhood.

  "Bryan!" I said. "You here?"

  I started to walk down the hall towards the kitchen. The call went to voicemail, and the ringing in the other room stopped.

  "Bryan!" I called out again.

  When I got to the kitchen, I looked around. There was blood on the kitchen floor. The first aid kit was open, and there was a shit load of bloody bandages on the floor in front of the fridge.

  Then I heard it behind me—That gargled raspy noise the zombies make. I spun around and swung my guitar case blindly.

  I heard a thunk, and an impact jolted up my arms. When I looked to see what I hit, I saw Diana, my brother’s wife, squirming on the floor.

  My brother's wife was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. On her wedding day, you could’ve put her up against any model on any magazine cover, and she would win most elegant by a mile.

  Now here she was on the floor— her eyes all sunken in and grey. Her mouth twisted in a constant snarl. Making uncoordinated movements trying to get back up.

  It looked like she got bit on the shoulder. She was all wrapped up like they were trying to treat her wound. My brother was trying to save her.

  Even I know that one bite means you're done. But he tried to save her.

  Not so smart, bro.

  The thing that used to be my sister-in-law tried to stand up, but it kept slipping on the bloody tile. I grabbed this nice big blender from off the counter.

  It was actually the one I got for them as their wedding gift. It was really nice. Expensive—well, expensive to me—Eighty-five bucks at bed bath and beyond.

  Anyway, I grabbed it because I needed something to use as a weapon. I wasn't going to fuck up my guitar puttin' this zombie down.

  I smashed that blender down on her head so hard—It just took the one swing and stopped moving. I found it easier not to think about it as a her.

  I called my brother's phone again so I could follow the sound. I could hear it ringing towards the back of the house, so I kept heading in that direction. As I walked by the fireplace in the living room, I saw my brother’s childhood baseball bat over the mantle. Our dad made it from scratch before he died, and Bryan won state championships with it.

  I grabbed it. Sentiment aside, I felt better with a baseball bat in my hands over a blender. Honestly, a gun would make me feel a hell of a lot better, but you work with what you have.

  I was getting closer to the sound of Bryan's cell phone ringing when I turned down the hall towards the master bedroom.

  There was Bryan— hunched over something—something bleeding.

  “Bryan!" I said... He looked up at me, and I could see what was on the floor.

  It was Lady, the other dog. He was eating her. Just past him—well, it now— I could see the bathroom door.

  It was all scratched to shit and bloody. The second that thing saw me, it started trying to make its way over to me.

  "God damn it, Bryan! Why didn't you go to Alaska?"

  As I swung that bat into his head, I couldn't help but think of our time growing up together. Every time I smashed that bat into his skull, a new memory flashed in my head.

  Wham! Waking up on Christmas morning and sneaking downstairs to get a sneak preview of what we got.

  Wham! Going to his college graduation.

  Wham! His wedding.

/>   Wham! At the hospital for the birth of his—

  Then that shit hit me. Where was Ryan?

  His son.

  My nephew.

  What used to be my brother finally stopped moving, but I didn’t have time to mourn him. I had to find Ryan. I gotta tell you, smashing a zombified version of my brother was tough, but I don’t know if I could handle bashing in the brains of my nephew.

  I called out for Ryan, and it took a second, but in the silence , I could hear crying from the bathroom.

  I knocked on the door and tried to be as calm as I could be.

  "Ryan, buddy, it's me. Uncle Jack... It's safe to come out now."

  The door slowly opened, and I saw Ryan. He was okay.

  Well, okay is a relative term. He was physically okay. He watched his mom and dad turn into zombies, and he locked himself in the bathroom for a week listening to his parents trying to chew through the door to get him. He survived by eating tooth paste and drinking from the sink.

  He was a little weak, but when he hugged me—that seven year old gave me everything he had.

  He passed out.

  My brother had a Hummer in the garage. It was a gas guzzler, but if I'm on the road, I feel a hell of a lot safer in something I can run those fuckers over in.

  My Honda Civic is nine years old, and it gets pretty good gas mileage, but if I hit some fat zombie bitch, that car was as dead as we would be.

  I loaded the hummer up with some dried foods, and water, then we took off. As I was about to get on the turnpike to get the fuck out of town, I heard the announcement about the stadium opening.

  They were very clear. "If you are stuck outside and need a place to go, get to the stadium as fast as you can. If you are inside your home do not attempt to make it to the stadium."

  They were talking about Marlins Park. I wasn’t really a baseball fan, but that stadium was huge, and we were close.

  That made sense to me.

  I looked over at Ryan and remembered seeing pictures on Facebook of him and my brother going to Marlins Stadium to see his first baseball game.

  Then, I took the exit for the stadium. We had nowhere else to go, and that sounded like a much safer place than being on the road. The stadium is a big building with a retractable roof. During one of the last hurricanes they used it as housing for people who were evacuated from their homes.

  There are high fences around the stadium and roll down gates on the inside.

  I didn’t think anything could get into one of those places once it's all locked down.

  We were there in less than five minutes, but people were already streaming inside. I was freaked out because there wasn’t anyone checking people as they flooded in.

  I was so scared that they were going to let some infected person in and we would all be fucked.

  Again, it wasn’t the zombies that were the real threat.

  It was always people.

  By the end of the day, there were almost twenty thousand scared people locked inside that stadium together.

  The first week was pretty scary.

  People found with bites were shot on the spot. It felt a little cold, but, it was survival—If you let some zombie fuckers run around with that many people locked inside, it would be the end of everybody.

  After a week, everyone was "infection free."

  I never let Ryan out of my sight. The baseball field was covered with tents and sleeping bags. People ripped out seats in the stands and build little shitty lean-tos, and makeshift tents.

  I took Ryan up to the nosebleeds, and we built our shitty little tent next to the emergency exit. I had roof access if those things managed to get in, and we could run down the stairs and get to the exit in under three minutes if a fire or some shit happened.

  For a few weeks, everything seemed pretty cool. They would open the roof during the day, so everybody got that "fresh air, we're not trapped inside" sort of feeling.

  Then, after a month, a little girl went missing.

  Jessica.

  Everyone searched for three days— we nearly tore that place apart. Then they found her in the scoreboard control room. She had been strangled.

  She was like nine, man! I don't know what all happened to her, but it just goes to show you how people are assholes. Just on the other side of those walls, are thousands of fucking zombies wanting to kill us, but here where we should be safe, people fucking "rise to the occasion".

  You know why there are looters after a hurricane? Because the hurricane is over in a few hours. If the hurricane lasted for a few months, you would see looters in the storm.

  People don't wait for the disaster to be over before they turn selfish, they are pricks and assholes even in the heart of a disaster.

  I kept hoping that the government would swoop in and start evacuating us. I couldn't stand being there anymore. Fights became a nightly occurrence, some people tried to start their own police force, but that didn't do shit. It was like neighborhood watch on steroids.

  More time passed, and everyone got used to people being shitty. But some good things happened too.

  I met a girl there. Her name was Emmy and she was HOT!

  In any other circumstance, I would have locked that down.

  But I wasn't there for pussy—no matter how fine.

  I was there to keep the only remaining family I had left safe. Ryan kept pretty quiet. He seemed to like Emmy too. She would watch him sometimes at night so I could go out on top of the roof and take a few minutes for myself.

  It was freaky up there sometimes. Up there, so high up, you could see fires, and hear sirens, but it all seemed so far away. I would sometimes walk to the edge and look down into the parking lot to see how many zombies there were.

  It was always a lot. It was like they knew we were in there, but they just couldn't find a way in. But, man— there was a shitload.

  One night, I was up on the roof just playin’ my guitar all by myself. Emmy agreed to watch Ryan for a bit. It was real late and almost everyone was sleeping. While I was up there, I saw this plane off in the distance. It was real far away, but I saw that shit.

  There hadn't been any flights aside from the monthly air drops, but those were during the day. This one was different, and it was heading our direction.

  Maybe this was the evacuation, or maybe this was some plane that was going to drop some real army guys in with real fucking weapons to come save us.

  They could get us out, right?

  Then, as it got closer, I could see how low it was flying. It was a big plane too, it looked commercial.

  then I saw the flames. Fire was coming out from one whole side of the plane.

  It was flying too low— no, it wasn’t flying too low— it was crashing.

  Not only was it crashing, but it was heading right towards the stadium.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could. You could hear the sound of the engines getting closer. You could hear the sound of the wings cutting through the air around us. I didn’t see it hit the building, but I felt the aluminum roof shake when that plane hit.

  I looked over my shoulder as I ran, and I could see the plane pealing the roof off like a fucking can of sardines. I kept running— I couldn’t stop. The plane dropped through the roof right behind me and hit the field right around second base, but it didn't stop there.

  It did a belly slide and crashed through the stands, and finally stopped right as it crashed through the outside walls.

  I looked down through the ripped up part of the roof— I have no idea how many died in their sleep, but, they were the lucky ones. Because the opening in the exterior wall that the plane made let those zombie fucks from outside start pouring in like water.

  I could hear people screaming. All of them were.

  A few people had guns, they started shooting.

  It's dark inside the stadium at night, but the plane was on fire, and that flickering helped the visibility some.

  Some of the zombies that were coming in were catchin
g fire as they brushed past the burning wreckage.

  Can you imagine waking up to an explosion, disoriented, scared, and when you look up you see a flaming zombie coming at you?

  Not only would its bite take you down, but it's on fucking fire!

  I looked at the opening, and if you could jump on the back of the plane, and run along the non-burning side, you might be able to make it outside. I wasn't sure how much better outside would be, but the zombies were all just pouring inside.

  I ran back to get Ryan and Emmy, but they were gone. The emergency exit door was opened, and they must’ve taken off already.

  Emmy had to’ve thought I died on the roof, and she took Ryan to try and keep him safe.

  She didn't have any weapons.

  All I had was my brother's baseball bat that I ended up killing him with. I grabbed the bat and ran down the emergency exit stairs. I kept screaming for Ryan, but there were thousands of people screaming inside that stadium. When I ran out through the ground floor doors, it was a fuckin' mad house.

  When I say, it was crazy, you have to imagine, there were twenty thousand people living inside, and the ones that survived the crash were trying to find their way out while about three thousand zombies were trying to make their way in.

  People were shooting and stabbing anything that moved in front of them. I saw two non-zombie guys shoot each other. I'm pretty sure the first guy shot the other just because he was shooting at anything that was moving, but the other guy hit the ground and shot back just for revenge.

  Both guys ended up getting eaten while they laid on the floor bleeding out.

  Ryan and Emmy must have gone out this way. But there were too many people running around for me to see.

  I made my way onto the field and towards the back of the plane, and that’s when I saw Emmy.

  Dead.

  She wasn't bitten— at least not as far as I could see.

  She had a big wound in her chest. I couldn't tell if it was a gunshot, stabbing, or what, but zombies don't use weapons.

  I didn't see Ryan, and I started to think the worst.

  I mean, you all know about the plane crash now, but when I climbed up the back of the plane, and saw the presidential seal, I didn’t know what was happening.

  We know now that the official government story is that the president wasn’t on that plane, but they still won’t say where the president is, or what happened to him.