“You don’t know that,” I said. “Hey, I admit I was scared and I ran, but people have come out of comas before. Heck, I’ve heard of people waking up during an autopsy. It can happen. Holland might be like that.”
“Billy, use your head. Holland wasn’t in a coma or a high fever. His guts were completely ripped out. He was disemboweled. There is no getting around that. He was dragging his intestines around behind him. He was dead. And what about the others you said were chasing you?” asked Harley. “What about them?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“All right, I don’t have all the answers and I never said that I did, but maybe we can catch Holland in a net or something.”
Harley laughed out loud at that.
“And where are we going to get this net? The Acme Net Company? This isn’t a Road Runner cartoon. Whatever has happened to what used to be our friend makes him dangerous and we need help. I vote we go on into town and find someone with a badge.”
I had to admit that Harley made sense. Something wild was going on and although I was calm now I had been horror struck, running for my life twenty minutes ago. The wind kicked up and the trees surrounding the road swayed and the leaves rustled. You could hide an army in that cover. With a shiver I hit the back of Jude’s seat with my palm.
“All right, conductor, lets head for Purgatory.”
Jude slid the transmission into drive and pulled away from the side of the road.
There were no signs to give us distance to anything, but we chewed up the miles quickly and I spotted the city limits sign in the distance. As we came upon it, Jude slowed down. The sign had the name Purgatory written on it and underneath a population total. Someone had blacked out the total and put the word what, followed by a question mark in its place. We still had at least two hours of daylight left and we slowed to a crawl looking for signs of life.
There was no traffic, but we had seen no traffic yet anywhere, for that matter. Purgatory looked to be a small bedroom community with most of the houses in this section being older two story homes with the houses on the hillside the newer ranch styles. We were wandering aimlessly at a slow speed around the neighborhoods. We passed several traffic lights. They were not working, which meant the power was out here too. We could see some cars abandoned in the streets and some cars that had obviously been involved in accidents, but no drivers and no police tape or anything. Gradually we began to run into streets that were blocked by abandoned cars and trucks. We turned around several times, but finally Jude began driving up into yards and going around any blockages.
“Where do you suppose the sheriffs office is? Something has obviously gone wrong here,” said Steve glancing nervously around.”
“You know what, guys? I don’t remember this town having a sheriff’s office or a courthouse or anything,” I said. “It is probably under a county sheriff and that means we need to get to a big town.”
“Maybe so,” said Jude. “But we’re gonna need some gas and supplies pretty soon. We’ve got over half a tank of gas, but my belly is on empty. Maybe there’s a store or a gas station around that we can get some stuff. We can siphon gas if we have to.”
“I just want to get out of here,” replied Steve. “Whatever gets us there fastest is cool with me.”
I looked at Harley for his two cents.
“Well,” he drawled in his slow manner, “I ain’t scared of nothing when we’re packing. I think we can look around. Instead of finding help, maybe there’s some folks who need some help. A good deed might help one of you heathens get into Heaven.”
“Okay, its settled,” I said with finality. “We’ll canvas the town for some clues to what has happened and then we’ll decide where to head next.”
Jude and Harley nodded, but Steve had a postscript.
“Let’s decide right now that we do all this and get back on our way before nightfall. With all we’ve been through, I don’t want to be here after dark.”
Steve was staring out the window as he made his pronouncement, but his voice was filled with emotion. I shuddered at the thought of the coming night myself. No one said anything, but it was obvious that the suggestion was agreed to unanimously.
Jude had continued to slowly drive around the residential neighborhoods as we had talked. He was driving around abandoned cars and going through yards as needed. He had to drive over some shrubs occasionally, but with the four-wheel drive it was no problem. We turned down a cul-de-sac. Jude quickly realized it was a dead end and came to a stop. As he was about to reverse gears I noticed someone looking through the blinds of the house to the left of us. The blinds closed quickly, but I had spotted a woman observing us. I called for Jude to stop the truck.
The home was a white two story clapboard house with old fashioned shudders on the windows. In the old days I am sure they were functional, but now I was certain they were merely decoration. There was no fencing around the house, but both neighbors had white picket fencing that had the effect of defining the yard. There was a small porch with several steps leading up to a door that was gaily painted yellow. The mailbox was at the sidewalk next to the walk up to the home. I noticed the flag on the mailbox had been lifted to let the mail deliverer know there was a pick up. The name on the box was Perkins. For some reason Blue Suede Shoes popped into my head.
“”What is it?” asked Jude. “What do you see, Billy?”
“There was a woman watching us from behind the blinds of that house,” I said pointing up at the home. “As soon as I spotted her she jumped back, but she’s there.”
No one moved or acted like they were about to move.
“Guys,” I said, “we wanted to find someone and we have. Let’s go talk to her. C’mon.”
I got out of the SUV and came around to the driver’s side. Harley and Steve had exited the vehicle too. Jude began to get out when I stopped him.
“Jude, you stay here and keep the motor running. Harley, Steve, and I will check out the house.”
He started to protest but I stopped him with a raised hand.
“I don’t want to abandon the car,” I said.
“I get that, Billy, but I don’t think we should split up either.”
“It’ll be okay, I promise, buddy. Keep your eyes and your ears open and we’ll be back. And, buddy, if you’re scared its okay. I’m scared too, but we’ll be all right”
“I still don’t want to split up, Billy, but you’re the man. You’re calling the play.”
I gave him a friendly slug on the shoulder. Harley and Steve were waiting for me on the walk. I joined them and then, somehow I ended up in the lead. I took a look at my companions and realized we looked like a pretty motley group. We were sweat stained, unshowered, unshaved, and heavily armed. I noticed that we were all, except for Steve, at least partially covered in Holland’s blood. We must have looked liked mercenaries from a movie. I was afraid whoever was in the house would bar the door to us, regardless of our good intentions.
We covered the walk up to the house and climbed the steps to the porch. The obligatory welcome mat was there of course. I noticed a sedan was sitting in the driveway. It was a convertible and the soft top was damaged and the windows were torn out of it. The front tires were muddy. I glanced at my companions and saw that they noted the damage to the sedan also. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
The knocks reverberated around the neighborhood. I didn’t think that I had knocked that loudly, but everything was so quiet that the sounds seemed to be magnified. I was certain that I could hear voices from inside, but there was no answer.
Steve started to say something and then stopped. I put my ear close to the door and I could definitely hear a man talking, or moaning, or both. A woman’s voice then became clearly audible.
“Henry, please. Henry, for Gods sake, please,” the voice said.
I knocked again, somewhat louder this time.
“Ma’am, I need to talk with you. Please open the door,” I said, in what I hoped was a forceful voice
. “I just want to talk. I promise I won’t hurt you and neither will my friends”
I heard footsteps coming across a wood floor and the door flew open. A female figure appeared. She was middle-aged in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. She was also carrying a shotgun.
“Hurt me?” she spat the words out with venom. “You’ve probably just killed us all.”
Chapter Eleven
I winced at her words.
“Ma’am, we’re in trouble and I think you’re in trouble, too. Please, we need to find out what is going on. Maybe we can help each other.”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?” she asked warily.
“We’ve been in the back country on a camping trip,” I said in explanation. “We just came down out of the hills this morning.”
She looked at our disheveled clothing and eyed our guns.
“You mean, you don’t know?” she asked in disbelief. “How could you go this long without knowing?”
I looked at Harley and Steve for some back up on our story and Steve chimed in.
“Ma’am, we were deep in the back country. We don’t know anything except we have already seen a friend murdered. Can you please give us some information about what has happened?”
The woman’s features softened as she listened to Steve. I had noticed many times that Steve had a soft spoken voice that seemed to calm people. I noticed he left out the second part of what happened to Holland, but maybe a little bit of our story at a time. At any rate, she seemed to be willing to listen to us.
She looked us up and down one more time and came to a decision.
“All right, get in here before you attract anymore attention than you already have.”
At that, she stepped back and let us enter the house. After we entered, she stuck her head out the door and looked in all directions fearfully, before softly closing the door again. The front door opened to a small foyer then to a large living room on the left, with a staircase to the right that went to the upstairs bedrooms. Directly ahead was a short hallway with an open door on each side. One door was a downstairs bathroom and the other was a large kitchen/dining room.
The living room that the woman led us to had a sofa and two reclining chairs. It was wallpapered a lively yellow and the only thing that seemed out of place was a hospital bed in the rear of the room. The bed held a man who might have been fifty or seventy. His hair was white, but he was in such a state of agitation that his age was difficult to gauge. His left leg was heavily bandaged and he was perspiring profusely. He was unshaven and the room smelled of urine, vomit, and ammonia. It reminded me of almost every sick room I had been in my life, except for one thing. The man was strapped down.
The man was muttering under his breath and had seemed to take no notice of us as we trooped into the room with our guns at the ready. The bed was next to a wall and on the wall someone had been making marks as if to count the days. I counted twenty marks in the traditional four marks with as slash through them.
The woman walked over to the man and brushed his hair off of his brow.
“This is my husband Henry,” she said tenderly. “He had a fall and broke his leg right after all this happened. I tried to set it, but an infection has set in and he’s been running a high fever for days. I have no antibiotics for the infection and I’ve run out of pain medication.”
The man had looked up at the mention of his name. He seemed to realize we were there for the first time. His eyes were burning with intensity.
“It’s a reckoning,” he shouted. “It’s a reckoning, I tell you. We caused this in our arrogance and denial of God. Only when the Lord is put in his rightful throne again will the world be put right and if every sinner in this wicked world must die, then so be it”
He was raving and his wife paled as he spoke. His voice was rising as he warmed to his subject.
“It’s in Revelations,” he continued. “It’s the Armageddon…the Apocalypse.”
“Henry, please, I’m begging you to be quiet,” she pleaded. “You’ll bring them down on us.”
Henry had exhausted himself with his short sermon and sank back down into his bed. Suddenly we were there no longer there as far as he was concerned. He closed his eyes and seemed to fall into a light sleep.
The woman stood with her head bowed in prayer.
“We’ll be in His arms soon if the Lord needs to call us home,” she said softly while stroking her husband’s hair. She then turned to face us.
“You really are new to this, aren’t you? I can tell.” She paused as if in thought. “You say that you’ve already lost people?”
“That’s right, “ said Harley. “One of our best friends. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my life. I’m still not sure it really happened”
The woman was nodding as Harley spoke.
“I’ll bet I can tell you what happened. You were attacked by a group of crazy people.”
“Not exactly,” I said shaking my head. “We stopped in at a bait shop down the highway a few miles and came across this guy eating bait. He attacked our friend and killed him. This guy literally tore poor Holland’s guts out. It was horrible. We finally had to kill the guy.”
Her eyes lit up at the last part.
“How did you kill him? How do you know he was dead?” she demanded.
Harley took a step forward.
“I killed him, and you can bet he was dead. I smashed his skull in and spread his brains all over that part of the county.”
She nodded her head up and down.
“Good, good. You did real good for not knowing anything.”
I was watching her closely and she was almost giddy at how we had killed the man.
“It wasn’t that good, ma’am. He killed our friend first,” I said.
“Tell her the rest,” said Harley. “If she’s gonna help us, she needs the whole story from soup to nuts.”
The woman looked at me expectantly and I took a deep breath.
“Okay, here it is and I know it sounds crazy, but five minutes after Holland was killed, he came back to life and tried to attack us. He ended up coming after me and I outran him and made it back to our group. In the meantime, while I was running, I came across another group of these lunatics, or whatever, and they tried to attack me, too. Anyway, I outran all of them, hooked up with my friends again, and made it here. Now you know everything we know, so talk.”
I had actually skipped over a lot of what we had seen that day, but none of it seemed important after the bait shop. I was hoping and praying that this woman could fill in some blanks for us.
She gave me a look somewhere between concern and pity. Turning towards the others she said: “Sit down, boys. You ain’t gonna like what I know.”
We all sat next to each other on the sofa. It faced towards the street and even though the blinds were drawn, I felt safer looking that direction. I was certain that Harley and Steve felt likewise.
“Maybe, we should get our other friend in here,” I said, and started to rise.
“No,” she said firmly. “The next time that door opens, you are all going out and it’s not opening again.”
She began to pace up and down in front of us. She seemed to be trying to collect her thoughts. I was just about to say something when she stopped. Her eyes had a faraway look to them and she began. Her voice had a dreamy quality to it.
“It was twenty days ago. Yeah, that’s right. Twenty days. We sat down to watch the six o’clock news that evening and had no idea anything was wrong, but right at the top of the news they said a huge solar flare was heading towards us. Earth, I mean, not here. I didn’t even know what a solar flare was. Anyway, they said it was bigger than anything ever seen, recorded, or thought possible. The scientists said it was going to hit the planet that night around midnight give or take. The way I understood it, the talk was that the flares caused solar wind or something and that they carried x-rays or some such. Anyway, they said it would likely cause power outages and trouble with
communication satellites and a bunch of other stuff Henry and I didn’t understand.”
Henry’s eyes popped open at the mention of his name and he stiffened noticeably. It was like he was testing the strength of the restraints. The woman looked over and then continued.
“Anyway, the power grid was what they focused on and they said there might be widespread outages that could last for days. Well, we’re used to that and Henry’s brother lives right outside of town and we knew we could borrow a generator from him. We did last winter during the ice storm. There was a news special that interrupted regular programming at nine, but they were just saying the same things over and over. It was powerful and unprecedented. We got tired of listening and we turned in.
“When we woke up the next morning we didn’t have any electricity, so we weren’t shocked. It was ditto for the phones too. Even the cells were dead. We thought it was a good idea to load up on supplies. We figured the stores were gonna be packed so we got started just before dawn. We got into Henry’s car and pulled out of the driveway for the trip to the Wal-Mart over in Jordan.”
She stopped her narrative. A blank expression came over her face.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” I asked.
She nodded her head and took a drink out of a mug from the coffee table. I could see that her eyes we’re welled up with tears. She cleared her voice and went on.
“We hadn’t gone more than five or six blocks, when we saw a whole crowd of monsters ripping apart two young girls who were still screaming. Henry wanted to help, but before we could decide what to do, they attacked the car. It was horrible. I was screaming and Henry was yelling as they swarmed over us. They were tearing at the windows and the fabric of the roof. I screamed for Henry to go and he hit the gas. At first we moved slowly as we crushed bodies under our car. They were tearing through the windows by this time and hands came through the opening, grasping at me. I thought I was going to be dragged from the car. I saw awful faces with dead eyes and snapping jaws. The car finally broke free and we careened down the street and almost crashed into a parked car. Henry stopped for a moment to see if I was all right. I could see the mob of things running after the car and Henry had to jump on the accelerator again.
Zombie Civilization: Genesis (Zombie Civilization Saga) Page 6