My friends dropped from the treehouse, one by one, and started toward town. The man paused, turning toward the noise. I cried, “Hey, you,” and threw a handful of leaves at him. He returned his attention to me. I felt cocky, and ran toward him. He raised his arms as if to hug me. I dodged around him at the last second, and before he could turn, I kicked the tendons behind his bad knee. I heard his cartilage tear. The man’s leg folded, and he fell as if boneless, floundering like a turtle. I joined my friends.
Clarence patted my back. “Good job.”
“You attacked that guy,” Gordon said.
“What do you think is wrong with him?” Art asked.
Clarence shrugged.
“He’s dead,” said Lester.
Clarence rolled his eyes. “He’s not dead.”
“But he wasn’t breathing.”
“Of course he was, we just couldn’t see it.”
I started to feel guilty about what I had done. At that time, none of us believed in the undead. We knew nothing about livor mortis, the bruise-like discolorations created when blood settled to the lowest parts of a cadaver.
“We’ll call the police about him from my place,” I said.
“And I’ll tell them what you did,” warned Gordon.
I thought of Doris, and shivered.
We came out of the woods at the end of our street. At that hour on a warm Saturday morning, I expected to find husbands mowing their lawns, wives hanging out their laundry, and to hear the jangle of cartoons through open windows. Instead, we found closed windows, and drawn curtains. I thought that I glimpsed a face in one window, but it was gone when I looked directly.
Clarence whispered, “Where have all the people gone?”
“There’s someone,” said Gordon, and pointed.
A nude figure stalked across the end of the street, its back toward us. Gordon opened his mouth to call out, but then hesitated. We watched in silence while the figure disappeared around the corner.
Then we continued to my house.
Our front door hung open, creaking in an infinitesimal breeze. We halted on the sidewalk, clustering as we studied the interior. Each unsettling event of the previous hours ticked through my brain like a clock of doom.
“We’d better go in,” said Clarence.
“No way,” said Art, his voice edged with fright.
I felt closer to hysteria, but I rushed up the walk, and through the doorway. The living room seemed dark after the morning sunshine, so I reached out, and flipped the switch beside the door. Nothing happened. As my vision adapted to the gloom, I saw that the room stood in disarray.
The others followed me inside.
I called out, “Mom, Dad?”
A thump came from somewhere inside the house.
“Maybe they slept in,” said Art.
I felt my stomach dropping within me. “Let’s go upstairs.” My voice came out as thick as mud.
A bloody skeleton, hung with torn muscle fibers, and laced with veins and nerves, lay across Mom and Dad’s bed. I felt a stunned curiosity, my mind disassociating the grisly thing from my family. Then, I stepped close, and saw Mom’s eyes rolling in the thing’s naked sockets. I screamed, grabbed the big, wooden lamp from the night-table, and clubbed the skull. The bone cracked. I swung again. The skull flew apart, and brains splattered across the bed. The eyes ceased rolling. I dropped my weapon, and backed away from the bed, a keening sound escaping from my lips.
“Quiet,” Clarence hissed. “Something’s coming!”
Thumping footsteps climbed the stairs.
My brain went cold. Driven by rage and fear, I hurried to my bedroom, and found my twenty-two caliber rifle in the messy closet. I grabbed my fifty-count box of long cartridges, loading one into the rifle’s single-shot breech. I ran back to face the landing. The others gathered behind me.
A ghoulish creature appeared. It wore only boxer shorts, and its belly gaped open. Pieces of intestine dangled from its gut. The creature staggered up the last step, then advanced with its hands clutching out. I aimed for its heart and fired. The ghoul kept coming. Trembling with panic, I levered the empty cartridge out, fumbled in my pocket for another, and aimed at the creature’s forehead. The shot cracked, echoing from the close walls, at point-blank range. The ghoul collapsed at my feet.
“Is that your father?” Art asked.
I cried, “Shut up!”
Gordon stared with shocked eyes, tears streaming down his face. “You killed him!”
“It was already dead, like my moth—” I choked. “Like the guy in the woods! When the alarms went off, and the air turned electric, the dead came to life.”
Gordon said, “You’re a crazy murderer!”
He made as if to lunge at me. I shifted, thinking only to duck his attack. He looked at my rifle, then cringed back as if I had aimed it at him.
Clarence regarded the motionless ghoul.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But we need to get the police.”
I tried the telephone, but it was dead.
Gordon snatched the receiver from my hand to listen for himself. He pushed the hang-up buttons seven or eight times, then slammed the receiver back down.
Clarence said, “We’ll go to my house. My dad’s a Marine, and he’ll have things under control.”
We ate before we left. That may sound weird, but we had not eaten since the previous night, and that was all junk food. We also used the bathroom. While I peed, I heard Gordon and Clarence whispering outside the door.
“We have to get that gun away from him. He’ll shoot us all next!”
“Gordon, something weird is going on.”
“Are you crazy, too?”
I clutched my rifle tightly.
***
Clarence and Lester’s front door also hung ajar.
“I’m not going in,” Clarence said. “Let’s try your house, Gordon.”
Gordon turned pale, and would not answer.
Art finally explained. “Our folks attended a funeral service last night.”
Clarence said, “Then we’ll have to walk to the police station.”
We followed Utica Street toward the river. The streets were deserted. Many of the homes that we passed seemed intact, but many more had broken doors and smashed windows. Some houses had been boarded up from the inside.
A commotion grew before us. I heard no voices, but otherwise the sound was like a milling crowd. We crept up to the corner of a house, and peered around. The house on the diagonal corner was boarded up, and surrounded by a crowd of ghouls. Nearly all of the creatures were damaged, most of them with teeth marks. They pressed shoulder to shoulder, all trying to reach the barricaded walls, and the house groaned under their weight.
“They really are undead,” Clarence whispered in awe.
“Idiot!” Gordon said.
“Look at all of them,” I said. “How could there be that many dead people around?”
“They rose from their graves,” whispered Lester.
“Maybe,” said Clarence. “But most of these look like fresh meat. People would have tried to help the first ghouls, thinking that they were sick, or injured, and the ghouls would have attacked them. I’ll bet their bite is infectious, like just like vampires. When the police got involved, and the shooting started, well, the ghouls only die if you shoot them in the head, and head shots are difficult. In the Marines, they taught my father to aim for the body. I’ll bet that the police get the same training. When you shoot a ghoul to the body, it just keeps coming.”
Like my father. “Don’t remind me.”
Then the besieged front door cracked open. The ghouls poured in. Women and children screamed.
Suddenly, my distress transformed into purposeful clarity. I stepped around the corner, aimed, and fired. A ghoul fell.
Clarence dragged me back. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping those people!”
Clarence pushed me against the wall.<
br />
“You’re an idiot! How many bullets do we have?”
“Um, forty-seven, now.”
“Well,” said Clarence. “We have more than forty-seven ghouls to deal with, so we can’t waste ammunition.”
The victims shrieked in horrible agony.
I broke away from Clarence, but he pushed me back, then yanked the rifle from my hands.
I cried, “Give it back!”
“No, we can’t save them!”
Gordon grabbed my collar, and punched me on the jaw. “Not so tough unarmed, are you?”
He drew his fist back for another blow, but Clarence grabbed him.
“Stop it, they’ll hear you.”
“You stop humoring him!”
Gordon relented anyway, and sulked off, sucking his knuckles.
Clarence returned to me.
“Hand over the bullets.”
“No.”
He tried to stare me into submission, but I just stared back. Finally, he sighed, and slung my rifle’s strap across his shoulder.
“You’ll have to hand them over when we need them.”
He walked off, and the others followed. I hesitated, then went with them.
The screams faded behind me.
Approaching the center of town, we found hundreds of abandoned vehicles clogging Utica Street and its sidewalks. Many of the vehicles’ doors hung open, and refugee goods lay scattered about. Pools of blood stained the pavement, interconnected with trails of crimson footprints. We passed in silence.
A multiple-vehicle pileup had stopped the exodus at the bridge. Some of the wrecks’ headlights glowed dimly. We found a narrow path around the tangled heap of metal and glass. The bridge’s span remained clear, except for a lone shopping cart.
“What’s that doing there?” Art asked.
Clarence explained, “Drunk college boys play with them.”
We procrastinated, hiding in the stalled traffic, afraid to expose ourselves on the bridge. Clarence finally goaded us into motion.
“There’s nothing around, let’s just go!”
We ran across the river, and headed toward the police station.
We heard the gunfire first, then the rustling of massed ghouls. They had surrounded the station. The sight reminded me of the Peace Riots that I had seen on television, except that these creatures actually seemed peaceful. Snipers worked methodically from the station’s roof, and the dead fell steadily. We hid behind a corner to watch.
“Do you think they’ll have enough ammo?” Art asked.
Clarence scoffed, “Of course!”
Gordon began sobbing. “Everyone is crazy! Why are they shooting?” He stepped into the open, shouting and waving. “Stop shooting the people!”
A sniper shot him.
Gordon staggered back a step, slapping his hand against his shoulder. He then regarded his bloodied palm, and fell to his knees.
Clarence and I rushed out, and dragged him back.
Clarence said, “I told you head shots were difficult.”
“Why did they shoot?” Art asked in outrage. “They could tell that he wasn’t dead!”
“Maybe they don’t believe yet,” I said. “Maybe they think it’s a revolution.”
Lester peered around the corner. “The ghouls are coming!”
Gordon got up, took two strides, and then fell.
“He’s in shock!”
We hoisted Gordon, Clarence and I taking his arms, and Art and Lester each pulling a leg, but Gordon slipped out of our grasp.
“How did he get so heavy?” I asked.
“He’s just dead weight,” said Clarence.
Art yelled, “Hey!”
“Well, he is! We’ll have to leave him.”
“We’re not leaving him!”
Art grabbed Gordon’s arm, and started pulling. I took the other arm, and we dragged him across the sidewalk. We had reached the next block when the first ghoul appeared behind us.
“We’ll never make it,” said Clarence.
He dropped Gordon’s feet, and ran for the bridge. Lester hesitated, then followed his brother.
Art shouted after them, “Assholes!”
Art and I continued to lug Gordon.
Clarence and Lester returned, with the shopping cart. We dragged Gordon onto the cart’s bottom shelf, then raced onto the bridge.
Three female ghouls had wandered onto the other end. We halted.
“I need the bullets,” said Clarence.
“If we stop,” I replied. “The others will overrun us. We can make it through.”
I started pushing the cart. Clarence swore, but helped.
The girl ghouls clustered in our path, their hands reaching. Two of them wore only cutoff shorts, and their upper parts, their breasts, had been horribly devoured. The third girl, her flesh still whole, wore cut-offs, and a tie-dyed T-shirt. A knife protruded from between her breasts.
They were Doris Morris and her sorority sisters.
The shock of recognition stunned me, but we could not stop. I ran harder, nearly pushing the shopping cart out of Clarence’s grip. We rammed the ghouls. The collision flung them aside. Doris fell on her back in the boneless manner of the undead. Her skull went crack on the pavement.
The impact brought the cart to a stop. Clarence and I slammed up against the cart’s push-bar. We both grunted, losing our wind. I doubled over the pain in my gut. Meanwhile, Gordon slid off his shelf.
Doris turned her head, and I swear that she grinned at me.
The crowd of ghouls from the police station reached the bridge, filling the span from rail to rail, their rushing footsteps the only sound. The street trembled.
Terror galvanized me, overcoming my pain and weakness. I bent down, and heaved Gordon back onto the cart’s lower shelf. He seemed to weigh nothing. We pushed Gordon to the end of the bridge, then the cart got stuck in the gap between the concrete guard rail and the roof of a toppled car.
Lester screamed.
I heaved myself against the cart’s push bar. Art and Lester helped, piling in behind Clarence and me. Our burden gave way, squealing, and scraping paint from the wrecked car. Then we broke free, and hurtled back up Utica Street.
The ghouls hit the gap right behind us, and they jammed in, all of them trying to pass through at once. They fought with each other, ripping out handfuls of hair, and gouging each other’s flesh. The creatures from the back started to climb over.
I cried, “Don’t stop!”
We turned off of Utica Street at the first intersection, then wove a maze-like path through the residential streets.
Clarence suddenly let go of the cart, and dropped prone. I skidded to a halt, dragged by the cart’s momentum, unable to continue on my own. My muscles trembled like jelly.
“We can’t stop,” I said, gasping.
“I,” Clarence panted. “I can’t.”
We lay there, our energy spent, helpless if the ghouls overtook us.
They passed nearby, just one or two streets over, their combined footsteps resembling the sound of a gale.
Gordon raised his head groggily. “What’s that?”
Clarence clamped his hand over Gordon’s mouth.
The deadly storm missed us.
***
Gordon had recovered some of his strength by the time we reached my house. He remained in emotional shock, however, and stared into the distance while Clarence dressed his wound.
“What now?” Lester asked.
“We’ll go back to the treehouse,” said Clarence.
“Are you crazy?” I asked. “We should wait here for help.”
“I don’t think there’ll be any help, I think this is worldwide, like some kind of invasion. Look at how many ghouls there are already, and everyone who dies makes another! We’d never survive in town,. The woods are our best chance.”
I peeked out the window. A ghoul wandered up to the house on the end of the street. It banged on the door with both fists. Two more creatures joined it.
I said, “Okay, we’ll try the woods.”
In my garage, we quietly gathered supplies. We took matches, two first-aid kits, and antibiotics from the medicine cabinet, also cookware, utensils, and a propane-fired camp stove, with two extra cylinders of fuel, a cigarette lighter, a couple rolls of duct tape, and spare clothing. Lastly, we packed an assortment of tools, and all the food that we could find. We sneaked out through the back door, and made the slow, sad journey to our new home.
The limping ghoul awaited us.
“I need the bullets,” said Clarence.
I gave him a single shell.
He rolled his eyes. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t shoot him here, we don’t want him rotting under our noses.”
We left our baggage on the trail, and led the ghoul to the river. The bank dropped, steep and slick, into a strong current. Clarence shot the creature in the forehead. The ghoul flopped down the bank, but caught on an exposed root at the water’s edge.
“Stan, go nudge him in.”
I stepped down. My foot skidded on the mud, and I fell. I caught myself on the edge of the bank, and scrambled back up.
“I can’t do it,” I said, my heart thumping. “I’ll fall in, and I can’t swim.”
“I can,” said Art.
He skipped down the bank, and kicked the Shuffler off the root. The current sucked the ghoul under.
I shivered.
***
Rain fell that night. The treehouse’s roof leaked, but not badly. The wind became strong, and the house groaned as the tree’s four main branches flexed. We had decided to post guards throughout the night. Clarence took the first watch, sitting at the doorway with my rifle in his lap.
He said, “I hear something, give me a bullet.”
Instead, I used the flashlight. Mist and rain dimmed the beam.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Something’s there.”
“We can’t waste bullets on noises.”
Apoc Series (Vol. 1): Whispers of the Apoc [Tales From The Zombie Apocalypse] Page 12