Nobody has even given an explanation about the plane crash at all.
I don't know what happened, and NOBODY knows what brought that plane down.
But, standing there on that plane, just seeing it, and knowing who I thought was on the inside—
In a crisis, no matter how big, you always know in the back of your mind that there is someone at the top working on a solution.
How about when that person’s plane just crashes into the middle of a zombie Golden Corral?
We were fucked. I ran up the top of the plane and slid down the nose.
I was outside again, and it was just starting to rain.
It wasn’t a hard rain, more of a drizzle, but I felt every drop as it hit my skin. I kept calling out for Ryan.
A few of those things came towards me, and I swung my brother’s bat.
“Swing for the fences,” he used to say.
I did. I took one swing on each zombie, and they dropped like wet meat. I ran through the parking lot screaming for my nephew.
Then I heard him.
There was a moving van, one of those big ass U-Haul trucks in the parking lot. Ryan was trying to climb to the top, but it looked like he slipped. He was hanging on by his fingertips while some of those things kept reaching up for him.
The first zombie I hit right in the back of his head. His head slammed into the side of the truck and he went down. I hit the next one and he just stumbled back, but that was enough time for me to put my hand under Ryan’s foot and push him up onto the roof.
The zombie that I just hit started making its way back towards me, and this time my swing connected solid.
I got it right in the temple and real hard.
Then I jumped and grabbed the edge of the box truck, and as I pulled myself up, I felt Ryan’s little hands gripping my arms and pulling.
Trying to help.
He was doing his part. I made it up there, and he hugged me hard. I checked him all over.
No bites.
He didn't let go of me all night long. We were pretty much stuck up there, and we could hear everybody’s screams all through the night.
Nobody else tried to climb onto the van. I called out to a few people who were making it out of the stadium on foot, but they just kept running.
The fire eventually died out on its own after about 8 hours. There were so many of those things now—Even more than before.
A lot of them tried reaching up for us, but they couldn't climb.
If they weren't on all sides of the van, they probably could have pushed us over. Less than twelve hours later, we woke up to the sound of tanks rolling in.
Lots of them.
And Hummers.
It was the fucking army. They started shooting into the crowd, and when enough were taken out, some soldiers ran over and helped us down.
Make no mistake, they didn't come for us.
They were there for the plane— well, they were there for the man they say wasn’t inside the plane.
That's okay. They took us to a base for the next few months. We didn't see any more zombies after that night, but Ryan still insisted on sleeping in my bed.
I made sure to never let him out of my sight. We're family. Family needs to look after each other. During a crisis, I wish we would all act like family, but we don't.
I got something to say to that reporter who called this “humanity's finest hour," fuck you.
Go tell little Jessica that was strangled and stuffed in a scoreboard control room that we all came together. She died by someone's hand who only cared about himself.
And, Emmy—she died for no reason while trying to get my nephew to safety.
These zombies opened our eyes to who we really are. Maybe we needed this to happen. Maybe we really needed that reminded of who we really are.
It just took a little salt to bring out our real flavor.
Bryan Thomas
Bryan Thomas came to the microphone next. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late twenties, and he walked with a cane. The dark circles under his eyes were reminiscent of almost everyone else I’d seen speak that day. I don’t know if society will ever get back to the point of anyone having a “good night’s sleep,” but Bryan looked like he might have needed one more than most.
Hey, everybody. I’m Bryan. Bryan Thomas.
Ok, um…everyone here in the world, right now survived this thing.
We’re all that’s left.
The last estimate said that there is roughly two point three billion people left in the world, and there were about eight billion people before the zombies.
That’s two thirds of the world dead.
The odds are that everyone here today lost somebody, or saw something horrific that you can never un-see.
I saw some really awful shit. And, like all of you, I wish I was able to un-see all of it.
Me and two of my friends were in the Walmart—before the fire, obviously.
Terrence and Jason. We went to high school together, and they were at my house when the shit really hit the fan. Jason worked at the Walmart, so he was the one that came up with the idea to go there.
We got there fast. I mean, there were only about twenty people when we got there.
An hour later, and the big roll down gates were closed, and people were fighting against the gates to get in. That’s when the zombies showed up.
We watched from the roof.
People were picked and pulled apart by those fuckin’ things. We couldn’t do anything, ya know? If we opened the gates to try and help, they would get in.
It was a slaughter.
Most of the people in the parking lot were unarmed too— there were a thousand people easy. Once the zombies started rolling in, there weren’t a lot of options for people.
Those roll down gates never opened. Someone jumped in a car and tried to ram his way into the store—Jesus—He must’ve killed fifteen or twenty people before the car gave out. He was only a couple of feet away from the gate. I guess cars aren’t designed to hit so many people.
I never thought about how many people you would have to hit before your radiator breaks.
And what if the car didn’t die?
Sure, he would have made it in, but then there would have been no way to stop the zombies from filing in after him.
That was a rough night. The screams lasted for hours.
We all thought we were safe after that. Well, you all know how that went down.
The big fire.
The zombies’ equivalent of a 4th of July barbecue.
So many people burned alive. I mean, that was the choice. Burn alive or get eaten and become one of those things…
Me, Jason, and Terrence made it out. We were survivors. After that, we basically went from place to place looking for something safe.
Trailer of a construction site—that didn’t last long.
Thomas Cole Elementary—we saw some fucked up shit there.
But we stuck together. The things we saw, the things we did— we did it all together.
Anyway, we were running along the edge of the road, ducking into alleys, and hiding behind dumpsters. Then, Terrence sees the gate of The Laurence Fletcher Museum. It’s perfect. Big metal gate and ten foot high walls surrounding the place. It was one of those places that used to be some rich old dude’s house, then he died, and gave the mansion to the city to be turned into a museum.
It was fuckin’ beautiful.
The gate was chained up, so we climbed over the wall.
It was kinda freaky. I mean, the building still looked beautiful, but the lawn, and the bushes. I wouldn’t think one year of no lawn service could make that much of a difference. The grass, or weeds, or whatever it was was about waist high.
We just looked at it. Jason said he didn’t want to walk through it because of snakes.
“Snakes?” I said. “How about fucking zombies crawling around in there?!”
You know, those half zombies. The ones with no legs, or us
eless legs because their spine got broke. I kept imagining one of those in there. Dragging itself towards us.
Terrence called us both pussies and jumped right into the shit. Literally.
He screamed “ah fuck!” I thought something had him. My heart about shot out of my ass!
Then he yelled, “Shit!”
It was shit. Dog shit. He stepped in a huge pile of it. Twice. I followed him, stepping where he bent the grass so I could see. Jason was behind me looking for snakes. I just kept thinking about some fucking zombie dragging himself through this shit to get to us.
But we made it to the front steps without a snake or zombie bite. Terrence kept trying to scrape dog shit off on each step while swearing up a storm about his shoes.
I kept thinking, “Are you serious? We are running from zombies! Literally, the living dead are walking the streets killing everyone they see, and we have survived for a little more than a year by the skin of our teeth, and you’re worried about your shoes?”
And to top it off, they were New Balance—
Right? It’s not like they were top of the line Nikes or anything.
New balance! He didn’t even pay for them! He got them at the Walmart the day before the fire.
They were already a piece of shit shoe, but now they were adorned with actual shit. I didn’t see the problem.
The front door was locked, and it was an old building with a big heavy ass door. I mean, maybe the three of us could have broken it down, but then we'd have a hole in our safe house.
We walked around the back to try to find another way in. Terrence kept dragging his shoes on the ground, trying to scrape all the shit off.
We made it to the back of the building, and the gods of good luck were smiling. The back of the house had glass French doors, and it looked like someone kicked the bottom few panes out so they could get in.
I didn’t understand kicking out the bottom ones, but I figured whoever did it didn’t want to break the whole door either. Terrence started to crawl in, and Jason said,
“What the fuck are you doing? Someone’s probably in there!”
And Terrence really seemed to like that idea. He said, “Good! Someone new to talk to.”
I gotta tell you, the idea of heading into this place knowing that another survivor was in there scared the shit outta me.
We’d been shot at by other survivors just for hiding in their back yards. People were afraid that zombies would notice us and we’d draw them to their house.
Real fuckin’ smart, right? You don’t want to draw attention to your house, so you fire a fuckin’ gun?
Assholes.
Terrence vanishes inside, and Jason and I just look at each other. Partially to see who would climb in next, and partly to stall in case we heard a gunshot from inside.
I could hear Terrence calling out to see if anyone was in there.
No answer.
So Jason and I crawled through the broken panes of glass and stood up next to Terrence.
The place was freaky.
When you think of a museum, you think of big open areas and high ceilings.
But this place—it used to be someone’s home, and it still looked like it. It had narrow hallways and furniture that looked a hundred years old. The only thing that made it look even remotely like a museum, were little white information signs next to the paintings on the walls.
The whole thing didn’t feel right. To top it off, everything stunk.
Jason looked at Terrence right in the eyes, and in the most serious tone I’ve ever heard him speak in, he said, “You still smell like shit.”
And it was true. It was wafting everywhere. It’s all we could smell. But, once you’ve smelled a hoard of zombies, the smell of dog shit somehow seems like fresh cut flowers.
The first thing you do when you find a safe house, is look for supplies—Food, bandages, anything that could be used as a weapon.
Terrence gave up on cleaning his shitty shoe, shoved past me and Jason, and said he was going to find the kitchen.
The place was a museum. I mean, yeah it was an old house at one point, but did he really think it still had a kitchen? If it did, did he think it would still have food?
Well, we found the kitchen. It had been converted to a gift shop.
No refrigerator, but we had an unlimited supply of coffee mugs that said, “the Laurence Fletcher Museum.”
They had t-shirts, cheap pencils, engraved letter openers, an ash tray, and beach towels.
Really? Beach towels? I kept thinking, Museum Beach Towels— The gift for every grandfather who hates his grandchildren.
It looked like there used to be a shelf of snacks, candy, and chips, but the shelf was on the floor in about fifty pieces, and potato chip bags were shredded like confetti.
I remember thinking whoever got here before us had a junk food feast, then possibly the biggest, greasiest shit ever. But I probably only thought the last part because I could still smell the shit on the bottom of Terrence’s shoe.
I really can’t stress enough, how that smell kept following us around in there.
Jason grabbed a souvenir tee shirt then went into the next room to check it out. Not even a second later, he came running back into the gift shop screaming.
He never actually said anything. He just screamed and pointed into the other room.
Terrence and I slowly opened up the door to see what was in there. We needed to see what scared Jason so bad.
Bones.
A lot of them—human bones.
It wasn’t like what you normally see from what the zombies do to people, and it wasn’t like a group of zombies got together and just rotted away to bones.
These looked like skeletons you would find in a classroom.
They were pure white. Some were whole skeletons, and others were missing legs, or arms…some were just a pile of bones.
If I had to make a guess, it was probably about four or five people’s skeletons.
But they were completely clean.
Zombies don’t eat like that.
“Look, we should probably get out of here.” I said. Jason and Terrence didn’t say anything. They just started heading to the hallway with me.
Then we could smell the shit again—It wasn’t from Terrence’s shitty shoe either.
There was a big parlor room to our right—right across from the room with all the bones. The floor was covered with shit—not just shit, but shit and piss.
Oh, God, the piss!
My eyes started to burn from the ammonia smell. It was overwhelming. We turned down the hallway to leave and standing between us and the door we crawled in through was a dog.
A Corgi.
I don’t know if you know what a corgi is. It’s like a short dog with thick fur. It’s got a kinda long body and short legs.
The queen of England used to have them.
Basically, it’s like a hairy 30 pound sausage with big ears and an up curled tail.
I stopped for only a second, but when I started again, I saw her fur start to stand up on end. her lips pulled back, showing us her teeth, and she started a soft low guttural growl.
She intentionally positioned herself to be between us and the only exit.
I looked back into the room of bones, and thought, seriously? Did this little fuzzy sausage eat these people? Then, my head started racing, and I suddenly saw the whole thing.
The people who ran the museum were old people. Frail. They ran out of food and died leaving this little bitch behind. She ran out of food, and probably waited a week before deciding to pick their bones clean over the next few months. It made total sense.
Now look, we were three grown men in pretty decent shape. We probably killed a hundred zombies between us, we really shouldn’t have a problem with a fucking corgi.
Then we heard a noise from upstairs. Something moving. Followed by the sound uncut claws make on old wooden steps. We couldn’t see the whole thing at first because only a part of the steps were v
isible.
First we saw the paws. Then a massive chest—then we saw it in its entirety.
A fucking pit bull.
He came up alongside the corgi, like they were fucking besties. I looked past the two dogs and saw the door we came in—the one we thought someone kicked in the bottom of.
It hadn’t been kicked in. Now I could see scratches, chew marks, and splintered wood—it was a doggie door they made themselves. It looked like the neighborhood dogs took turns chewing and clawing their way through.
From what I could tell, it was our only way out, and these two dogs both had their asses up in the air and were showing their teeth like they were daring us to try for it.
I turned to Terrence and Jason and asked if either remembered seeing another door anywhere behind us. Before either could answer, two more dogs came squeezing in through the doggie door. One was a black lab and the other was some sort of retriever mix. Both came in and immediately joined into the ranks of the first two.
The lab had a giant scab over one of his ears. Some of the other dogs had nicks and scratches. The corgi had a patch of red fur under her throat. I didn’t know if it was from being attacked by another dog, or if it was the equivalent of marinara sauce on someone’s chest after an overly sloppy manicotti.
Then I came to the conclusion that in this situation, I was the manicotti.
Jesus Christ! They didn’t stop coming. A thin black and white whippet crawled in through the door, and two more came from upstairs. Mutts. Probably labs, mostly. They were big. About sixty-five or seventy-five pounds.
It was a fucking pack!
I had no idea how long it would’ve taken for all the domesticated animals in the world to turn wild. But there we were.
Then, another Pit came from upstairs. He didn’t come running like the rest. He walked with the swagger of a general to the front lines.
He was the alpha— without a doubt.
He was grey, with a big splash of white on his chest. The other dogs parted a bit to allow their leader to the front of the line. When he got there, he looked us over like he was either sizing up the threat, or deciding who to eat first.
Zombies' End: Aftermath Page 8