“She’s a cat. She’ll be fine. She’ll probably just hide out until they’re gone, and that’s if they manage to get inside,” Paul tried to soothe his wife’s concerns. “We locked our door when we left.”
“No,” Diana shook her head, tears in her eyes. “You heard Charla. The doors here aren’t that sturdy. And Buttons is a friendly cat. If they get into our condo, she’ll come out to say hello, and they’ll, they’ll…” she couldn’t go on, her emotions getting the better of her.
“I’ll go back and get her,” Paul volunteered bravely.
Diana looked at him and smiled through her tears. “Would you, sweetie?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Wendell said, his eyes about ready to pop out of his head. “You’re not actually considering going back out there for a cat, are you?”
“You don’t understand. Buttons is like family,” Paul explained. “Like a child.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Wendell shook his head incredulously. “Those, those…things are out there,” he pointed toward the door. “It’s no joke. You aren’t just watching this on the evening news. This isn’t some reality television show. This is real. They’re in the building. One of them was eating our downstairs neighbor…and she was still alive!”
Charla glanced at her husband, not having completely understood the severity of the situation he had encountered earlier.
“I’ll just be a minute. I’ll be in and out and back with Buttons in a minute…probably less,” Paul assured the group.
Charla took a deep breath, realizing that Paul and Diana were set on retrieving their pet.
“You shouldn’t do this alone. I’ll go with you,” Charla said.
“No,” Wendell stopped her. “I’ll go.” He couldn’t believe he was saying the words. It was as if he’d had to wrench them from somewhere deep inside. But there was no way he was going to let Charla go out there, not after what he’d seen.
A minute later, the group was hunched up around the condo’s front door.
“Now make sure you lock the door as soon as we’re gone,” Wendell instructed Charla. “But don’t go far. We’ll be back quick, and we might have biters right behind us, so be ready to let us in fast. Got it?”
“Got it,” nodded Charla and Diana.
Wendell looked out the peephole and then cracked the door open about an inch, then wider. He stuck his head out, scanned the hallway, and then closed the door. “They’re gone,” he whispered to the others. “Now is our chance. Let’s go,” he reopened the door, scanned the hall again, and then stepped out. Paul was right behind him.
They hurried several doors down to the Richardson’s unit where Paul quickly unlocked the door. They were inside with the door relocked behind them in just seconds.
“Buttons!” Paul whispered hoarsely. “Buttons!” he called again, slightly louder this time. “Here kitty-kitty! Come here girl!”
Wendell stood waiting impatiently by the door, looking back and forth between the door’s peephole and Paul searching for Buttons.
“I thought you said she was friendly,” Wendell hissed. “Where the hell is she?”
“Shhh! You’ll scare her!” Paul whispered back.
“Looks like she’s scared already…like the rest of us,” Wendell muttered under his breath as Paul moved into the unit’s bedrooms to continue the search for his precious pussycat.
A minute later, Wendell was still waiting. “Where is this stupid thing?” he muttered to himself, finally abandoning his post near the door to help Paul look.
He found Paul in the master bedroom, on hands and knees, head stuck beneath the bed. “Buttons! Buttons!” he kept whispering.
“Paul,” Wendell said. “We need to go.”
“Just hold on…I’ve almost…” he reached under the bed. “Ha! Got her!” he pulled back and straightened, resting his butt on his heels, the sweet calico Buttons cradled in his arms. “There, there, sweetie,” he soothed, petting the cat tenderly. “It’ll be all right,” he cooed in its ear.
Wendell rolled his eyes in disgust. “Okay…you got the cat…now let’s go,” he turned and headed for the door.
“Wait!” said Paul. “Let me get her favorite toy and her food. She hasn’t had dinner yet.”
Wendell sighed heavily, his shoulders sagging. He stood, shaking his head as he waited for Paul to grab a small bag of cat food from the kitchen and pick up a small yellow stuffed rat from the floor.
“Okay,” Paul came around the corner from the kitchen, kitty cradled in one arm, kitty supplies in the other. “I’m ready.”
“Good,” Wendell nodded, leading the way to the door. “I’m glad we didn’t send your wife over,” he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. “We might have been here all…”
His words were cut short as he was flung to the ground.
Paul was hit as well as he followed Wendell into the hallway, Buttons flying out of his arms and scampering off down the hall.
Two biters were atop the men, grappling with them, mouths smeared with blood, fangs thrust outward in hideous grimaces as they snapped viciously.
Wendell, still wearing the leather coat he’d put on to go out on the balcony, pushed a forearm up to keep the biter’s teeth away. But the biter attacked with ferocity, lunging forward, mouth agape, sinking its fangs into Wendell’s arm. Its teeth sliced into the leather of Wendell’s coat, but then their invasive drive toward his skin slowed and stopped just before striking tender flesh. Between the leather and the thick knit sweater that Wendell wore beneath it, the combination of heavy materials was enough to stop the penetration of the biter’s teeth.
Paul wasn’t so lucky. Because he had been holding Buttons and the cat supplies, he wasn’t able to get his arms up in time to block his biter’s attack. Instead, the biter’s sharpened fangs sank deep into the fleshy side of his neck where they clamped down and then ripped a huge chunk of flesh away. The bite severed Paul’s jugular vein and left a gaping hole in his neck.
But Wendell was too busy with his own biter to notice his neighbor’s dilemma. Wendell’s biter now seemed confused, its mouth firmly affixed to Wendell’s arm were its teeth had become ensnared in the mixture of coat and sweater material. The biter frantically began jerking its head back, trying to tear away from Wendell’s arm.
The biter had just torn free when something heavy and solid collided with its head from behind. Wendell watched as the biter’s eyes rolled back into its head and it half slid, half rolled from its position atop him. It was then that he found himself staring up at his neighbor, Chris. Chris stood over Wendell, baseball bat in hand.
“Come on! Get up!” Chris urged. He turned and landed the bat with a crack against the head of the biter currently feasting on Paul who now lay motionless on the floor beside Wendell. The biter slumped atop Paul and fell still, its mouth still full of flesh.
Wendell scrambled to his feet, unable to avert his eyes from his fallen neighbor. Paul’s blood had saturated the hallway carpet around where he lay, turning it from bright beige to a dark maroon.
“You okay?” Chris asked.
“Uh…yeah,” Wendell nodded, open-mouthed and in shock from what had just happened.
“Come on, let’s go,” Chris grabbed Wendell by the arm and guided him back to where Charla and Diana were waiting for them inside the condo.
“Where’s Paul?” Diana shrieked her greeting to the two men. A look of tension-filled horror was smeared across her face upon seeing Chris and Wendell return without her husband.
Wendell just shook his head, breathing heavily.
“Didn’t make it,” Chris said as he hauled Wendell over to the living room sofa and plopped him down.
“Didn’t make it?” Diana breathed aloud, a look of confused consternation coming over her.
“Make sure that door gets locked!” Chris called to Charla. “Biters are out there. I used the bat on them, but I don’t think they’re dead,” he inspected his hardwood bat now sm
eared with patches of blood.
Charla clicked the multiple locks on their front door and then hustled over to where Diana had collapsed on the floor. She was sobbing and shaking her head. “No…no…no,” she kept saying over again through her tears.
Diana was completely distraught. In one five-minute period, she had not only lost her husband of twenty-five years, but her precious Buttons as well. And as Charla did her best to console her friend and neighbor, Chris urged Wendell to give him a hand.
After having made a quick inspection of their condo, Chris found what he was looking for.
“Help me get this desk over in front of the door,” he called to Wendell from the condo’s converted second bedroom that served as Wendell’s office.
Wendell moved slowly, almost mechanically to help. He was in utter shock.
“I think that if we place it right, it’ll wedge in tight against the front door,” Chris explained. “That’ll help block access should the biters try to make their way inside.”
Wendell just nodded and cleared a few of his more cherished possessions from the desktop before helping Chris heft it into place before the front door. Before blocking the door completely, Chris made one more quick check of the hall. The biters were still there.
With the condo secure, all attention turned to trying to get Diana calm. After she realized that Paul was out in the hallway with the biters, she had become hysterical. Chris tried to explain to her that there was no hope, that Paul was dead. The number of biters in the hall had now swelled to at least half a dozen. And trying to retrieve Paul’s body would only further endanger the others. It seemed that with a ready-made meal in the hallway, the scent of fresh meat seemed to draw biters like flies.
The group of neighbors taking shelter together feared that Diana’s continual cries might entice the biters to attempt a break-in of the condo. Therefore, they had eventually escorted the now grieving widow out onto the balcony. There, they hoped that the combination of fresh air and the chilly December temperatures would help calm her. And somewhat to their surprise, the change of environment worked. Diana calmed noticeably after a few minutes outside. The sub-freezing temperatures seemed to extract some of the energy she was putting toward mourning her dead husband.
After they’d soothed Diana to what they felt was an acceptable level, Wendell and Chris went back inside. They left Charla to attempt some “woman talk” as Chris put it to Wendell once out of earshot of Diana.
The two men worked to further bolster their bulwarks at the front door. They added several small but heavy bookshelves (filled to near bursting with some of Wendell’s library of historical tomes), to help solidify the desk’s position before the door.
“Thanks for what you did out there,” Wendell said to Chris somewhat sullenly.
“No problem. I’m sure you would have done the same for me,” Chris shrugged, nonchalantly. “So you guys went out there to rescue a cat?” he squinted at Wendell with a disbelieving look.
“Yeah,” Wendell nodded. “Buttons…Paul and Diana’s cat.”
Chris took a deep breath and shook his head, “People and their pets. I’m not a big animal guy personally. Wouldn’t mind having a dog, but I wouldn’t want to leave it alone all day while I’m at work. Just doesn’t seem right.”
“Yeah…I guess not,” Wendell nodded, not really paying much attention to what Chris was saying. His thoughts were elsewhere, split between an array of far more important matters. He kept having flashbacks to the attack in the hallway, to the woman being eaten downstairs, to Paul being eaten…still being eaten in the hallway just outside. His thoughts were also on their current predicament and how long they’d have to wait for authorities to clear the building of biters. The longer they had to wait, the longer Chris might stick around. And the longer Chris stuck around, the longer Wendell had to worry about him getting cozy with Charla.
As they positioned another bookshelf, Wendell looked at the beefcake across from him and wondered how he could get him to go out into the hallway with the biters. It didn’t matter. The door was secured and it would be too much work. He was going to have to ride this thing out with super-hunk strutting around, flexing his muscles, giving orders, and saving the day whenever he got the chance. At least Diana was here. She worked to distract from what could be an extremely uncomfortable situation otherwise. The thought of being the only thing standing between Chris and Charla gave Wendell pangs of nervous concern. One good whack from Chris with that bat would be all it took to steal Charla from him. And in the apocalyptic world that seemed to be unfolding around them, such a blow would be easy enough to explain away.
“Well…I thought he was a biter. He came at me and I just reacted,” Wendell could see Chris explaining to the police with his 1000-watt smile.
“Sure, we get it,” the responding officer would nod. “Easy to make a mistake like that. If you’d just sign this affidavit that it was indeed an accident, we’ll be happy to haul off the remains and get on to more important matters.”
Wendell shook his head and frowned. He could just see it. Then Wendell would be out of the picture and Chris would have Charla all to himself. But Diana would keep Charla busy until the police got things under control. Then Chris could strut back to his condo, and things would get back to normal.
Suddenly there was the sound of shouting from outside on the balcony. Wendell and Chris both turned to see Charla waving her arms and then trying to pull Diana back from where she had climbed over the railing.
A second later and it was all over. Diana’s outline disappeared from view and Charla was left staring at an empty void where her friend and neighbor had stood just moments earlier.
Wendell and Chris both rushed outside and joined Charla who was looking over the balcony railing. Six stories beneath their condo balcony, they could see Diana lying limp and lifeless on the pavement below.
Chapter 3
The half-block portion of Brookfield, Illinois, where the citizens had formed a neighborhood social club known as the Block Enders or “Blenders” for short, was abuzz with activity. There was a flurry of organized chaos as the seven households – comprised of 13 adults and 9 children – rushed to ready their vehicles for departure.
The Blenders were preparing to abandon the safety of their cozy homes to attempt an exodus from Chicago. An increasingly bleak situation was wreaking havoc on the city. The Carchar Syndrome continued to spread unfettered, exponentially increasing its reach across not only Chicago, but nationally and worldwide with each passing week.
The syndrome, the exact cause of which remained a mystery, and for which there was still no cure, slowly turned its hosts into non-communicative, meat-craving creatures. These beasts cultivated hideously long, razor-sharp teeth that assisted them in fulfilling their ravenous desires for which they seemed to have an insatiable appetite. These Carchar carriers – which most people were now referring to as “biters” – roamed with little purpose other than to feed or to further spread the syndrome, continually adding to their ranks when they weren’t ingesting the flesh of potential new hosts for caloric needs.
Sixty-six-year-old, Michael Trove, de facto head of the Blender group and symbolic patriarch of this extended family, had a friend who owned a secluded plot of land containing a small cabin in the southwest part of Illinois. The spot was nearly four hours from Chicago. But as the situation in the Chicagoland area continued to deteriorate, the Blenders had unanimously, although not without reservation, voted to vacate their homes in an effort to reach this western outpost. They hoped that they could hold out in this isolated spot until the government got the situation in Chicago under control or finally found a cure for the Carchar Syndrome.
It was approaching 11:30 on the night of the Blender’s planned departure. And with only 15 minutes until their appointed time to reconvene in the Trove basement for final instructions, the Blenders were making last-minute adjustments to the vehicles they’d packed full of supplies. People were cramming stuff in
to backpacks, coolers, suitcases, and in some instances, garbage bags. They were stuffing these bags into already jammed vehicle trunks and cargo areas, squeezing them in around other supplies, and mashing them into place with no room to spare. Others were cinching tight the supplies they’d loaded atop luggage racks or strapped to vehicle rooftops. The convoy of vehicles was so loaded down, there was hardly room left for occupants.
The group was straddled with this bounty of goods due largely in part to a neighborhood program, led by Michael Trove and Ms. Mary (a grandmotherly type who loved gardening and growing her own food). During one of the many Blender happy-hour conversations at Manny and Margaret Simpson’s home (the designated Blender “clubhouse”), ideas for ways to cut costs had been bounced around. It was during this discussion that the idea for a communal food pantry had come up. The idea had grown into an investment club of sorts, except rather than stocks and bonds, it was decided that food, water, and other supplies would be the chosen areas of investment. All the Blender families put in a set amount of money each week. Then, whenever a great deal on longer-lasting or freezable supplies – whether it was toilet paper and toothpaste or pork and pasta – was discovered, the group loaded up on goods using money from the available slush fund. The purchased food was stored on shelves or in several freezers located in Ms. Mary’s garage since she was already using the space for her homegrown canned and dried goods.
But this evening, even without these additional supplies, the amount of goods gathered from Blender homes, and that included food, water, toiletries, medicine, clothing, tools, fuel, and other accoutrements, was sizeable in itself.
As Michael Trove pulled his large SUV away from the front of Ms. Mary’s garage, where he and his adult son Patrick had been packing it with supplies, it was apparent that the Blenders weren’t the only ones active at that time of night. The pat-pat-pat of automatic gunfire was occasionally audible and co-mingled with the regular thumping sound of choppers thundering overhead or jet fighters ripping across the nighttime sky. These were often followed by what sounded like the far off rumble of explosions.
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