by Brad Knight
Mack ignored all the girl’s cursing and yelling as he opened the station wagon door and reached in. There was some hitting and scratching but he finally managed to get her out. Once on the street, she looked anything but imposing, gun or not. She looked like an innocent teen with tied back hair and a messy ponytail. On her torso she wore a loose black hoodie. Nothing about her was extraordinary. Except maybe the handgun she wielded.
“What the hell?” the girl asked as she shook off Mack’s hand.
“What’s your name?”
“Amber. You?” The girl shot two more times in Mack’s direction.
Am I going to have to take her down? Mack gave Amber a look of utter disbelief. He was seconds away from completely losing it before Amber pointed behind him. When he turned around he saw her parents-turned-meat-puppets falling towards the ground with holes in their heads.
There was no time for Mack to process what he just saw. More meat puppets were coming. There were way too many for even him to handle.
“I'm Mack, wish I could say it’s nice to meet you. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Wait.” Amber went back into the car then came out with a tire iron. She handed it to Mack.
Meat puppets didn’t give breaks. They lost the concept of a 'time out' when they lost their humanity. So Mack and Amber had to move. Another explosion not far away distracted them for a moment. Only for a moment.
Mack led the way, crossing the interstate. He swung away with his newly acquired weapon. It was much more efficient than his fists and feet. Meat puppets were getting brained left and right. Amber followed close behind shooting the ones that he missed or didn’t see.
After jumping the short concrete barrier that separated I-23 from the Motorside Inn parking lot, Mack and Amber started checking orphaned vehicles. The interstate may have been impassable but they hoped the side streets weren’t.
“Got one!” yelled Amber as she easily opened the door of a red pickup truck.
Good girl. Mack ran over to Amber who was getting into the driver’s seat. He had no intention of letting her drive. “Move over.”
“No, I wanna drive,” said Amber, defiant.
Mack gave the fourteen year old a stern look usually reserved for drunks looking to pick a fight. She promptly moved over to the passenger seat, pouting the whole way.
When Mack slammed the door, meat puppets from the interstate noticed them. Four of them staggered towards the Motorside Inn parking lot. He saw them coming and heard their screeches. Unfortunately the truck’s engine didn’t seem to want to start.
Great. My luck just keeps getting better. Mack tried to turn the truck’s engine. It sputtered. He tried again. Still it didn’t start.
One of the meat puppets slammed its body against the driver’s side door. Black blood oozed from its mouth as it pounded on the window, cracking it. C’mon, c’mon. Finally the truck’s engine ticked over. Just before Mack managed to shift gears to “R”, the meat puppet’s fist hammered through the window.
As glass peppered Mack, he stepped on the gas. The truck zoomed backwards into another parked car. Both he and Amber whipped back then forward. For a few seconds they sat there, dazed and vulnerable. The meat puppets converged on the red pickup. Other puppets joined the four that initially came after Mack and Amber. They climbed up onto the bed and the front hood. Like apes they pounded on the vehicle.
“No! Save your bullets,” ordered Mack as he saw Amber raise her gun. “Get your seatbelt on.” Both of them buckled in.
Mack shifted gears again. The truck sped forward at an angle as he turned the wheel, sharply. One of the front corners of the truck hit another parked car, breaking the headlight. Meat puppets flew off the top of the truck. Two of them hit the windshields of the nearby vehicles.
Once he had enough space, Mack drove the truck towards the back of the Motorside Inn. There was no exit that led out of the property without getting on the interstate. So he navigated the large vehicle towards a small curb that led out to some side streets.
“Shit!” yelled Amber as a pair of hands broke through the small window that separated the truck’s cabin from its bed. They grabbed at her hair. Another hand grabbed Mack’s shoulder.
“Hold on!” warned Mack. The freakish strength of the hand that had a hold of his shoulder completely took away any control he had of the wheel.
The truck swerved off the narrow side street behind the Motorside Inn. It crashed into and through the front of a convenience store. Even though the meat puppets that were in the truck bed became messy black Pollock paintings, more were coming.
Mack slowly regained consciousness. Through blurry vision he could see a lot of movement. He heard gunshots and screeches. They weren’t from a handgun. A small hand started shaking him.
“Wake up!” Amber shook Mack back into the waking world. Blood streamed down from the top of Mack’s forehead. He wiped it away and observed the scene before him.
The truck was totaled. Its front hood was crumpled like an empty beer can. Smoke slowly floated up out of the wrecked engine.
Inside the convenience store, the clerk was shooting his shotgun at the meat puppets trying to get inside the big hole Mack and Amber made. Clearly the poor clerk wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long. It was only a matter of time before he had to reload and the creatures overwhelmed him. Amber had no intention of being there when that went down.
Mack stumbled out of the wrecked truck with the help of Amber. The clerk kept blasting away, hardly even noticing them. Amber pointed towards a door at the back of the store.
“I think that’s the way out.” Amber led Mack towards the door.
When they reached the back of the convenience store, they heard a scream. It was the clerk. Predictably he was overrun as soon as he ran out of ammo. The meat puppets tore him to pieces with their bare hands. Describing it as gruesome would have been an understatement.
“It’s locked,” said Amber as she tried the door knob.
“Move,” said Mack as he gently pushed her aside. Things were still a bit hazy but he was able to clear enough cobwebs to know what he had to do. With his shoulder and body weight he managed to break the frame and open the door.
Here they come. Mack let Amber through first, then he looked back before following. For the first time, under fluorescent light, he saw the meat puppets clearly. Their skin was pale and he could see black veins underneath. A gray film covered their eyes. Thick black blood oozed out of every open orifice.
Mack slammed the door shut. With a broken frame, it couldn’t lock. He looked around. They were in a stock room. A hallway led to a backdoor out of the building.
“Go, go, go!” yelled Mack. Amber did exactly that.
On his way towards the back door, Mack spotted a fire ax inside a glass case on the wall. Having lost his tire iron in the crash, he took the new melee weapon.
There was less than a mile to Mack’s apartment. If he and Amber reached it, they would be safe. All they had to do was get there.
***
“Where are we going?” asked Amber. Along with Mack she was plastered against the brick outside wall of a chicken joint. Her Viking escort was looking around the corner.
So close. All we have to do is cross the street. Crossing the street was more daunting then one might have imagined. That was due to the fact that it was covered by roaming meat puppets. Behind them was the Hunters Grove apartment building.
Like most of the buildings in Dallas that night, Hunters Grove was besieged by undead creatures. Some climbed up the sides. The unsuccessful ones fell several stories down to the hard parking lot. Fires bellowed out of randomly distributed windows. Screams of panic and terror, gunshots and puppet screeches provided a soundtrack for the surrounding anarchy and horror.
“My place,” answered Mack knowing that it was a near impossibility.
Amber joined Mack at the corner and looked around it. “You’re kidding right?”
Mack pushed Amber b
ack next to him with one powerful arm. “I have to.”
“Why’s that?”
Mack sighed. “I need my heart meds.”
“What street is this?” asked Amber as she visually examined her surroundings.
“Fowler, why?”
“My dad’s pharmacy is only a couple of blocks away. Let’s go there instead of trying to get to your apartment.”
She’s right. Dammit. There’s no way we make it through that. Mack took one more long look at his home.
“Okay, lead the way.”
Mack followed as Amber jogged towards her family’s pharmacy. They stuck to back alleys in order to avoid the meat puppets. Still they had to deal with some. In order to conserve the small amount of bullets left in Amber’s handgun, he took them out with a fire ax that never ran out of ammo.
That took longer than I thought it would. Halfway to the pharmacy the power to the city went out. Way to go Dallas Power and Gas. Mack saw that as a good thing. Even though it would be a little harder to spot the meat puppets, that disadvantage worked both ways. Or at least he thought it did. For all he knew, puppets could’ve used scent or sound to track down their victims.
“We’re only a couple of minutes away,” encouraged Amber as she led Mack from shadow to shadow in the back alleys. He was lagging behind. Since crashing the pickup truck into the convenience store half an hour earlier, he had trouble. She didn’t know it, but he suffered a concussion when his head hit the top of the steering wheel.
The whole city appeared to be floating on top a turbulent sea through Mack’s eyes. His head injury made walking straight a chore. It took an inhuman amount of willpower for him not to throw up. Only the prospect of being ripped apart alive like the convenience store clerk kept him moving.
Suddenly the street underneath Mack lit up. Then the dumpsters and buildings that flanked him on either side lit up as well. He turned around and saw fast approaching headlights.
Amber saw the oncoming vehicle early and hid behind a foul smelling dumpster. Mack wasn’t as quick to hide. The headlights, which belonged to a work van, barreled towards him. With only seconds left, he dropped his ax and managed to jump out of the way.
From face down on the street, Mack watched the van go by. Inside were what looked like drunk or blood crazed people somehow enjoying all the chaos in Dallas. Behind the van they dragged what was left of someone’s body by a rope.
That was a little too close.
“You okay?” asked Amber as she walked up to Mack.
Mack was on his hands and knees. After shaking his head he stood up. Amber was ready to catch him as he was a little wobbly upon rising. She didn’t consider the fact that if he did fall on her, he’d probably squash her. Before moving on he retrieved his ax.
Once he regained his bearings, Mack looked down the alley. Like a light at the end of a tunnel he saw neon lights reading “43rd Street Pharmacy”. Other than the day Margret Jensen blew him in the back of his dad’s Cadillac, it was the happiest moment of his life.
Luckily the section of 43rd street that Mack and Amber emerged into was empty. It was the first bit of good fortune they had all night. Amber got the privilege of breaking the front glass doors.
“We need to hurry,” said Mack as a loud alarm followed the broken glass.
“The name?” asked Amber, moments before hopping the pharmacy counter.
“Digoxin.”
“Di…what?”
“Digoxin!”
“Got it, Dic-ox-kin. Shit, I can’t see a thing.” Amber had to take out her smart phone. With a flashlight app, she managed to generate enough light to read the labels of the shelves full of medicine in front of her.
Mack could see the erratic movement of puppet shadows approaching. The cloudiness in his head started clearing up. His grip on the cold red metal of the fire ax tightened. He was ready for them.
Amber’s eyes darted left to right as she scanned the medicine labels. With smart phone in hand she moved the light to align with her vision. She grabbed some additional medications, oxycotine, zolpidem tartrate, Vicodin and all the inhalers they had in stock. Then she found it. On one of the top shelves was a large white bottle with “Digoxin” printed above a bunch of medical mumbo jumbo.
“You good?” asked Mack. His palms were starting to get sweaty as the puppets got closer. More joined the few that first reacted to the pharmacy alarm.
“In a minute,” Amber ran her hands across a shelf beneath the pharmacy register. They hit metal and wood. It was the double barrel shotgun that her father kept in case another junkie tried to rob the place. Little did he know that his daughter would be doing the robbing and his deterrent would end up in her hands.
Next Amber had to get something to put all the medicine and other supplies she scavenged from the pharmacy. In the aisle that had school supplies, she found a backpack. She stuffed the medicine, box of shotgun shells, some water, chips and candy inside. Then she heard screeching over the blaring alarm.
“We’re out of time, kid!” yelled Mack, right before he almost chopped a meat puppet’s head off. With the pick part of the ax he downed another one. But it wouldn’t be long before he was overrun.
“Here!” Amber tossed Mack the double barreled shotgun.
“Where’d you get…?” before Mack could finish his question, more meat puppets surrounded him. He had no choice but to back up into the pharmacy. When the creatures tried to follow he blasted them with the shotgun. Its muzzle flash lit up the store in an extremely brief but bright orange light.
Out of bullets, Mack threw the shogun back to his young companion and started swinging his ax. The next few minutes consisted of an intense battle between him and eight meat puppets. He cut down everything that climbed through the broken front doors. Each swing was harder than the one before. But in the end he won.
Amber watched in amazement as Mack decimated the puppets. She was both impressed and in awe of his raw power. At that moment she decided that she absolutely needed him if she was going to make it out of Dallas alive.
“My dad kept a minivan out back. He was too cheap to pay for deliveries. Instead he used it to pick up whatever the pharmacy needed. It’s out back. We can use it to get out of here.”
“Let’s go,” said Mack as he breathed heavily, covered in splatters of black goo. “Only way we live is if we get the hell out of this city.”
Not again. Mack could feel his heart pumping. If he didn’t get his meds, he’d be in a bad way and no help to Amber or himself.
“Did you get the Digoxin?” asked Mack as he and Amber left the pharmacy and headed towards the alley behind it. He had to brace himself with one arm against the side of the building.
“What’s wrong? The van is just back there. We need to…”
“The meds!”
For the first time since meeting him, Amber was truly fearful of Mack. All that power and fury he used to save her could’ve easily been turned against her. She thought it best not to antagonize him.
“Here,” said Amber as she retrieved the big white bottle and tossed it to Mack. He struggled with the top. Once he managed to open it, he took out a handful and shoved them in his mouth. Then he closed it and gave it back to Amber to put in her bag.
The minivan was just where Amber said it would be. All the doors were unlocked. She smiled and got in the passenger seat, Mack in the driver’s.
So how am I supposed to start this…Amber opened the glove box. Inside were the keys which she handed over. Both of them prayed when he put them in the ignition. They prayed that the car would start. When it did they both gave sighs of relief. Thank God.
Chapter 2: Wydell
Amber dreamed of I-23. Actually it was more of a memory than a dream. Her family was on their way out of town. Mr. Long, her father, saw the stories about Greenbelt on the news. He immediately demanded that his wife and daughter quickly pack their things. After stopping at the pharmacy and emptying the safe, they made the mistake of getting on the i
nterstate.
Mister and missus Long were arguing in the front seat. To Amber, they always seemed to be arguing. And often their arguments were over nothing. She’d have to sit in the backseat and endure their nonsense.
A barrier made of earbuds and music off her phone usually kept Amber out of her parents’ quarrels. So she’d fully absorb herself in boom bap and 80s hair metal. It worked…most of the time.
With her forehead against it, Amber looked out the window. Some Def Leppard poured into her ears. She stared at the same car for fifteen minutes. It nor any other vehicle budged.
Amber heard her mother’s grating voice through the loud rock. At first she tried to ignore it. But Mrs. Long didn’t give up. Eventually she had to take out her earbuds and hear what the woman had to say.
Mrs. Long reprimanded Amber about something her daughter did. The fourteen year old teen didn’t really listen. Instead she rolled her eyes and half pretended to listen. That didn’t stop her mom. Only her father interrupting stopped the self-righteous chastising.
An explosion shut the Longs up. Both of them looked around to see what happened. Amber’s father got out of their station wagon.
Within a minute after the loud explosion, people started running past Amber’s window. They looked terrified. The whole scene reminded her of the old monster movies she’d watch with her friends. Except the people fleeing weren’t actors. Genuine terror spurred them.
Amber noticed that her father didn’t retrieve the Beretta his dead brother gave to him. Being essentially trapped in the station wagon, she decided to get the gun. She wasn’t going to leave her safety in her parents’ inept hands.
The one good thing that Mr. Long taught his daughter was how to properly handle a firearm. It was a risky move really. If she ever had a hankering to use a firearm on another human being, he’d be first on her list.
***
“You up?” Amber slowly woke up to Mack’s voice. First thing that she noticed was the chill in the car.
“Wha…where…?” Amber was groggy and crumpled up in the corner of the backseat.