by Joe Schlegel
She opened the door only a few inches and jumped from the chair.
Seven barreled into the house. She knocked aside the dining chair and hurriedly closed the door. With a loud sigh of relief, she turned the knob lock.
“Good girl!” She winked at her daughter, “You did that perfectly!”
Rhea beamed proudly, and she flashed her pearly white baby teeth.
11.
An Unfortunate Gust
Within the large, round room, it shrieked and blabbered through its torn, flapping cheek. It fought against the restraints around its decayed ankles.
It stumbled and fell to the ground.
Desperate to reach a living human and to feed, it clawed at the dirty concrete— yet the shackles held it safely away from the other prisoners.
The other, fresher one with a wounded thigh screamed and wailed, incited by the commotion. It pulled against its shackles and stretched its fingers toward a cowering, living human.
Then the decayed one wrenched against the steel manacles.
And its rotted flesh split around its heel.
Its skin peeled. It shrieked louder.
The metal cuff slid from its foot. Its leg freed from the restraint.
It crawled a few more inches—
But it halted by the other manacle.
The prisoners cowered back against their walls. Their rattling chains only incited them more.
To pair the freedom of its other foot, the decayed one wrenched against the remaining shackle. Its flesh tore from up near its calf. It split down to expose rotted muscles.
It pulled free of its chains. Large flaps of dying flesh curdled around the steel.
The prisoners screamed. Terminal panic diffused through the large, round room until the nearly palpable dread excreted an acrid stench all its own.
It tried to rise to full height, but its mutilated feet refused to hold the weight.
Resigning itself to a troubled, revolting crawl, it scrambled to the nearest prisoner.
“Stay away from me!”
He kicked at it.
It absorbed the abuse, clutched his leg, and climbed frantically closer.
Then it bit his chest.
And then his shoulder. With blood-soaked jowls, it ripped flesh from the man’s ribcage.
Its gaping cheek oozed whatever gore that it didn’t imbibe down its throat.
He howled in his throes.
The rest of the prisoners wailed and wept from fright.
Excited, the fresher one shrieked.
The decayed one ripped more flesh from the shackled prisoner. He convulsed from shock, unable to fight the paralyzing terror that shut away his brain from the carnage.
Blood dribbled from its chin as it chewed and gulped the meat. Some slipped out through the gap in its cheek.
Then it looked sideways at another prisoner.
Greed smeared across its rotten features.
The man muttered fearfully, “No. Please, no!”
He quailed and pinned himself against the wall. Tears streaked down his dingy cheeks.
It crawled revoltingly on all fours toward its second course.
Then it lunged.
Its teeth sunk into the prisoner’s leg. He tried to push, shove, and fight back, but his flailing only incensed the fresher one still chained up beside him.
The decayed one bit his thigh. He screamed with a wretched break in his voice.
Skin stretched and muscles shredded from between its teeth. It chewed and swallowed the bloody meat, and it relished the food with primal delight.
It bent its head down and tore another piece from the man’s thigh.
The shrieks from the fresher one distracted the decayed one from its meal. Ultimately disinterested in the shackled one’s hunger, it peered around the large, round room.
And it noticed Oliver.
He bellowed, “You’re still in there somewhere, man, don’t do this! Don’t do this to me!”
It scrambled on its hands and knees.
“Oh, Jesus... Oh, Jesus...”
Then it lunged.
Oliver nimbly gripped the back of its head. He slammed its jaw to the ground.
He jumped on its back before it clambered up to all fours.
With both hands, he gripped its mangy hair.
Then he slammed its face into the dirty concrete.
Oliver bashed its head over and over until its face liquefied and oozed.
It stopped moving.
He retreated off of it. And he readied himself for another round.
But it remained still, sprawled out where its hunger had finally been thwarted. The fresher one shrieked and screamed, hungry for its own meal, desperate to eat.
Oliver scurried away from the rotted corpse, menacingly within the limited jurisdiction of his shackled restraints.
He appraised the other two prisoners.
One shook and trembled violently, his face fearfully ashen. The other sobbed. He moaned, tormented from his open wounds.
They both bled freely onto the dirty, concrete floor.
The fresher one struggled at the length of its chains, desperate for Oliver.
And soon, Oliver surmised, it would sacrifice its own feet for just one, last taste of human meat.
Anika peered out of an office window.
She scanned the open, fielded area beside the building. A stretch of woods nestled up along the other side, thick enough to ward them away as well.
Nothing moved.
Nothing ever moved on the hill, because nothing casually meandered up inclines without a hungry provocation.
Anika spun from the road-side view and strolled through the side room, along a brief hallway, and into a spacious truck bay. The cargo trucks themselves sat outside their bay doors, backed up solidly against the building to protect the engineering students’ work zone.
Dozens of folding tables cascaded around the cavernous parking area. And various security units lay around the rest of them in various stages of assembly. The finished models stood orderly on tables to the side, far removed the frequent circumambulations required to manufacture an army of devices from scratch and plundered parts.
Work crammed nearly every flat surface in the truck bay, from loose wiring, silent speaker boxes, nylon straps, and miscellaneous metal platings to switches, dials, tools, and unused flairs.
A foot shorter than Mohammad, Iggy lacked also the muscle tone of his fellow student. His scrawny frame yielded a near constant supply of energy and focus, which he once employed to achieve straight A’s and garner scholarships. Central State classrooms felt more distant in his memory than just a few months.
He and Mohammad carefully wrapped the finished units in several layers of towels. They lowered them heedfully, like sleeping infants in their modified bassinettes, nestled into the modified child carts. Upgraded suspensions and larger tires allowed for a smoother, more cautious ride.
“What if I don’t want to haul the batteries?”
Iggy swaddled another security unit with a faded towel. He flashed Anika a jestingly contemptuous grin, “Then you should have thrown rock and not paper. Thank ahead next time. Ramshambo is life.”
“I’m going on strike,” she protested. Humor infused her bland words.
“While you’re on strike,” Mohammad chimed in, “you’ll have plenty of time to go ahead and load up your batteries. If you wanted me to do it, you should have survived the first round by throwing paper instead of scissors.”
“These are ridiculous working conditions. I feel outnumbered and harassed.”
Iggy derided playfully, “I’m about to move your work station outside.”
He and Mohammad loaded their precious wares, yet left the unfinished assemblies on the tables.
With their rifles slung from their shoulders, they escorted their bikes and affixed carts out of the spacious parking area and into the brief hallway.
Iggy gradually opened the metal door at the far end. It revealed the
side parking lot, the grass beyond it, and the lot on the other side.
He peaked out and checked around, alert for any sign of movement. But they rarely trekked anywhere near their base of operations.
Shouldering the door open further, Iggy pushed his mountain bike out into the morning. The child carrier followed, and the wheel rubbed against the metal door as it passed.
Anika’s hand held it out wide as she slipped her maroon and gold Sunspeed through the doorway.
And Mohammad followed.
The door closed behind them.
They mounted their bikes and pedaled through the front parking lot.
In the middle of the road, they hauled their precious wares down the hill. They turned right at the dead end.
Habitually, they charged in a single-file line to the front bridge of the old orphanage.
Their tires found the sidewalk beside the long, winding, uphill driveway, and they followed it up through the center of the massive terrain. They abided by the narrow, cement path that led into the cluster of grand buildings.
They passed in front of Collier Chapel.
And they rode past the auditorium and elementary school and deeper, past the tiny radio station.
Ahead of them, the property bottlenecked into a single, open gate. They coasted through it.
The shady acreage of the old orphanage’s grounds dwelled behind them, and they abruptly entered a massive plot of overgrown, open land, once used for soccer fields, baseball diamonds, and a football gridiron.
They wound their way closer to the main roadway at the other side, and they slowed near a small parking lot.
Dismounting their bikes, they approached a light pole.
And they went swiftly to work.
Iggy removed a unit from his cart.
He unwrapped it cautiously.
Anika scanned the open area intently, watchful.
Iggy lifted the unit and strapped it to the pole’s mast. Mohammad joined him and held the device in place, then Iggy tightened the horizontal, nylon straps around the light pole.
They both gingerly removed their hands.
As the straps held, they smiled appreciatively, relieved.
Anika reached into her cart as Mohammad scanned the area, watchful. She removed several C-sized batteries and checked their charge with a handheld gauge.
She handed each one to Iggy.
He delicately loaded them into the battery cradle underneath the homemade device.
The unit’s blue, stand-by LED flickered to life.
Iggy stepped backward, and a second, green light brightened.
“Motion sensor works,” he announced.
He stepped sideways several feet to remain in motion – and he winced with preparation.
The green light flashed three times.
Then the unit emitted a deafeningly shrill shriek from its speaker box. It rippled out over the area.
Anika and Mohammad pulled the rifles from off their backs and surveyed the sports park’s hills and valleys, the former baseball diamonds, and rolling mounds of grass.
Iggy stood absolutely still despite the obnoxious, blaring noise.
After a few moments without motion, the unit quieted itself.
He reached out for the security unit.
The green light flickered on again.
After pressing a button on the front, the green light faded back to darkness. Only the blue LED faintly glowed in the bright afternoon sunlight.
Mohammad nodded his clean-shaven head, “Yeah, that’ll definitely scare the shit out of a deer or a coyote. Ain’t no concern about the wildlife messing with these.”
Iggy removed the batteries from the cradle.
Anika shouldered her rifle and checked their charge. “It’s all good so far,” she reported. “There isn’t any flash drain, so the second phase should have sufficient power to engage.”
He resupplied the pole-strapped device with its batteries, and the blue and green lights greeted him. Iggy pushed the delay button again.
They saddled their bikes, pedaled back to the concrete path, and continued toward the main road. Within a few hundred feet from where the path spilled out in front of Prugh Avenue, they halted.
Mohammad dismounted first and retrieved another unit from his own cart. And, as per rotation, Iggy surveyed the world around them, intently watchful. Detroit Street curved slightly upward in either direction and limited his view of the rest of the neighborhood.
Anika retrieved more C batteries.
She checked them and handed them off, then Mohammad loaded them into the cradle—
Several screams barely passed through the thick trees beside them, carried solely by the wind’s gustful grace.
The students perked up, concerned and alert.
“The hell?”
12.
David Serves the Crusade
South Team checked the ladders at each of the safe zones in their area – the grain elevator, the electric company, anywhere else they considered likely. But they only found spooked deer and timid canines out among the stillness.
The conclusion of their path wrapped around to Main Street, and in a single-file line in the middle of the four-lane road, they pedaled toward the central intersection.
They weaved expertly through the collection of abandoned cars left scattered from curb to curb. As they approached the middle of town, the societal detritus gradually multiplied.
South Team turned onto Detroit Street, then the five bicyclists traced their ways to the nearby park gazebo.
Ruth sat amongst the picnic tables, comfortably atop her cushion. Her large hat on her cotton top-hair flapped gently in the breeze.
She watched the search team parade to the edge of the sterling white gazebo.
“They just missed you,” she mournfully, somberly reported. “William and Wesley, they arrived safely not long after the search teams set off. Thank God you all made it back to us, too.”
“You seem awfully sad to be delivering good news,” Lily pried, and she skeptically shook her head with her bracing words. Her thick, bushy, brunette ponytail fluttered about her shoulder blades.
“The boy, Freddie – he didn’t make it. Wesley and William did everything they could, but they were attacked with little time to react. Poor dears fretted about our reactions, but they tried to rush here before you guys set off on the search.”
“Does Trapper know yet?”
“I’m afraid not,” Ruth winced, “still waiting for his team to report in. You lot are the first to return.”
“What about the generators,” Ben inquired without leaving his bike seat. “Are we still turning them on later today?”
“That’s the latest I’ve heard, yes. But, if any of you are volunteering to be gunmen watching over the generators, you’ve still got a couple hours before Anika and the others begin. Seems like everyone expects the action to start up sometime around high noon or after.”
“Seven has been a little shaken up since the last time; we had a really close call with Rhea, so I don’t think we’ll be outside when the generators turn on. I’d rather not leave Seven alone since we’re pretty much inviting them to the center of town.”
“It’s perfectly understandable.” Ruth winked and smiled warmly, “Take good care of them. They’re rummaging up on Prugh Avenue now. You guys might be able to hit a few homes before high noon. That should still give you time to drop off your plundered supplies, then beat home before the generators kick on.”
Lily volunteered, “I’ll stick around as a support shooter. I have nothing else that’s really pressing today.”
From beside her, David surreptitiously eyed the wound on her knee.
“I’ll stick around, too,” he muttered. “Help tie up loose ends.”
South Team nodded their goodbyes to the elderly woman, and the four survivors followed Ben to the corner of the park. They pedaled to the middle of Detroit Street.
They weaved around the abandoned cars and wind
-blown trash.
In the central intersection, a couple generators already sat side by side, prepped and ready for use.
Two of the survivors split off from the group to help set up the remainder, and South Team finally disbanded.
Lily followed Ben another block, then turned right on Second Street.
And David followed her lead.
Alone, Ben continued down the middle of Detroit Street. He crossed the bridge, swerved with the curve, and spotted the overturned caboose.
He peered above it to the bottom stretch of Detroit hill. It rose up tall, but it eventually descended down and out of sight. Seven and Rhea rummaged somewhere past the crest.
“Looks like I’ll be climbing you after all,” he huffed.
Lily veered into the first parking lot on her right.
Around her, the backs of the side-by-side, connected buildings supported a wide selection of ladders, all strewn about to provide a jumbled path up to the highest rooftops. And from those perches, the survivors established posts to watch over the central intersection.
She squeezed her hand brakes, slowed down, and checked around her for them.
Only then did she notice David.
He scanned the rooftops to ensure their solitude. Then he searched the littered ground around them.
“That’s a nasty cut you got there,” he muttered darkly.
Lily looked down at her scuffed knee.
“Yeah, I thought there was one more step down,” she laughed and peered down to her leg. “Instead I jammed my toes into the ground and toppled forward. Scraped my knee, like, duh Lily, you’re not a little girl anymore—”
David swung a rain-stained, wooden board down— It struck into the back of her head.
She collapsed, stunned.
Her head hit the concrete and turned awkwardly.
The rest of her body tumbled sideways, and she landed on her shoulder.
She gaped at David with pain, confusion, and fear etched into her wide, brown eyes.
He tossed the board aside, then kicked her exposed stomach.
Lily coughed and sputtered.
David reeled back. He kicked her again.