by Evans, Mike
Kristy opened the window, and Aslin yelled, “You got that building ready to blow?”
“Once that back door opens, we’ve got five seconds to get down that alleyway before the devil’s fireball comes roaring down and pours into the street.”
Ellie said, “So what do we do now? You going to lure them to the building and then pull the bomb?”
Clary said, “Yeah, you got a problem with that, princess?”
Greg and Shaun laughed at that. Greg said, “Oh, good god, do you have our group misunderstood, Clary.”
Shaun spoke up, “She’s anything but a princess.”
Ellie said, “What I meant was… how do I say this nicely? You are fat and old and you smoke. One of us needs to run through and stay ahead of those things. I don’t think you stand a chance if a horde of them is on your sizeable ass.”
Clary rubbed his chin, feeling the start of a second one and tried to think of any sprints he’d done lately. He did not have one come to mind. “You know, that might not actually be the worst idea.”
Greg rose a hand, standing up. “I’ll go; I know where I’m going.”
Shaun slid his pack off. “I’ll go with you. At least if they catch up, as slow as you are, I’ll be safe.”
“You wish I was. You stay here. You’ve risked enough today.”
Shaun pointed at Greg. “Apparently, you haven’t looked in a mirror any time recently. You stay. I’m perfectly capable of doing this on my own.”
Ellie laughed. “You hit your head, right? I mean, that’s why you’re talking like such a dumbass. Did that zombie earlier throw you into something and you hurt yourself?”
“You aren’t going, Ellie.”
Ellie stood to protest and Shaun yelled, “Sit down, Ellie, you aren’t going. I can’t take care of you if those things come.”
Ellie opened her mouth, ready to explain to him in a very detailed conversation that she didn’t need anyone taking care of her, no matter how much she appreciated the thoughtful gesture.
Kristy said, “I’ll go; I got this.”
Ellie shot her a look she would not soon forget. “Why in the hell is you going a better idea than me?”
“I’m not better, but I’m smaller, and I’m in freshman track. I’m quick.” She crawled out the window, diving into the back of the truck. “I can squeeze in anywhere.”
Greg said, “I’ll bet.”
Kristy smacked him hard in the chest. “Shut up, Greg. God, you’re so immature.”
They stared at the group of Turned. They were walking toward the truck slowly at first. Aslin gave the truck a little gas, moving down the street more quickly as their pace of pursuit was getting faster by the moment. Aslin sped down the street. The Turned started screaming guttural growls, fighting over one another, and tripping in the street, jumping while beginning a blood and flesh-induced state of mind. Clary said, “We’ll drop you off halfway down the street. You get in there and go out the back. We’ll circle the block so you can get in there and down the alleyway.”
The truck slowed down and the two hopped out, running. Aslin sped off and down the block to meet them again in the alleyway. Shaun and Kristy pumped their arms and legs hard, flying down the street. Within seconds, the Turned had made up the distance and were mere body lengths from grasping the teens.
Shaun pushed her ahead of him, letting her go first. The two sprinted through the entrance of the shop, leaving the door open behind them. The Turned came in, filling the place like a disease. Those that fought to get through the door were first in, those too impatient to wait exploded in, shattering the shop’s window with their faces and spilling into the room, turning it into a warzone in seconds. Shaun and Kristy never stopped moving.
As they rounded the corner for the back of the restaurant, Kristy slipped and landed on her stomach. She pushed herself up, only stopping for a second. One of the Turned reached out a hand covered with dried blood and intestines. It gripped Kristy's hooded sweatshirt, pulling her back a moment. Shaun fired off two rounds over her shoulder, shooting it and the one next to it squarely in the skull.
Shaun reached out for her hand, pulling her to keep going into the rear of the kitchen. They pushed through the door, seeing the grenade lying on the floor. It was strung up between the door and the food prep bench. They pushed hard as they saw the pin come out of the small, round device. They pushed even harder down the alleyway and made it a quarter of the way when a fireball erupted behind them. Pieces of the steel door shot past them. A black fireball engulfed the sky and shook the street beneath their feet. Shaun could see the truck ahead and pushed even harder. He ran with a smile of victory on his face. He knew something was wrong instantly when he saw the look of concern on Ellie’s and Greg’s faces. He pulled his pistol again, looking over his shoulder, ready to shoot. Kristy was standing, not running, in the alleyway. He stopped and looked at her; she had a small line of blood coming from her mouth. He ran up to her, screaming, “Kristy, we have to go! Come on! Some of those things will still be after us! Come on… Kristy?” She stared at him without answering, growing paler by the second.
It was then that Shaun saw the piece of jagged steel sticking out of her thin chest. The black shirt she wore made it hard to see, but he could see a wet line of blood running down it, just a little darker than the shirt itself. As he started to run to her, the Turned came out of the flames, burning and smoldering but still hungry. They were missing legs and arms and doing their best to get to their prey. Kristy smiled at Shaun, her lip trembling. She wavered in place, trying to keep her balance. She dropped to her knees and fell down face first. The turned that were left jumped, pouncing on her.
Shaun raised his pistol to fire. He could hear Greg and Ellie screaming for him to run and to get in the truck. He knew that there was nothing he could do to save her, but it did not make anything better. He ran sideways, watching her and finally started running again. The Turned tore into her like a feast of kings was to be had. Ripping at her neck, her back, her legs. She screamed in pain, a scream that would haunt all of them for the rest of their lives. Shaun stopped when he got to the truck, grabbed Greg’s rifle from him, and turned around, taking a knee. He fired one shot into the top of Kristy’s skull. The screaming subsided and he climbed into the truck, collapsing on the bed of it.
Greg watched in horror as they devoured what was left of the girl he thought he could have had something great with. Ellie squeezed his shoulder, trying to pull him down to sit. Greg shouldered the rifle, screaming and firing off every round of the thirty his rifle held. He dropped the rifle, collapsing on the truck bed, staring with broken eyes at the space where Kristy had been and at the thirty Turned who had their head’s blown off, lying in the alleyway. Clary stared at Greg, approving of his rifle skills and seeing more and more of a soldier in the young man. Clary screamed, “Punch it.”
Aslin floored it down the now deserted street, back towards Andy’s shop, where they prayed he would be there to greet them. Shaun took Greg’s rifle, dropping the clip, and slammed in a fresh one for him before releasing the charging handle. He handed it to Greg, shaking his shoulder. He was lost in his own world. “Greg, snap out of it, man. We aren’t done today; I need you, man.”
Greg yelled, “Did you see what just happened? You just shot one of our group in the head, Shaun? Did your heart die today too?”
“Did you want to see Kristy as one of those? Did you want to have to take her out? If that happened to me, I pray you would do the same, man.”
“Shaun, I don’t know what we should do if one of those things comes after us and gets us.”
“They don’t get another one of us. We learn every damn thing we can from these guys, and we stay away from them while the government is trying to learn what they need to do to cure these things.”
Greg leaned back against the truck’s bed, staring at Shaun. “If they can’t cure these things, we kill as many of them as we can so they can’t do this to anyone else. No one needs to
feel like this. All these things do is hurt. There isn’t anything good left in them.”
Ellie listened and watched the two boys, seeing a new hardness in Shaun and Greg she had not been witness to before. The truck came to a rolling stop in front of Andy’s. The teens looked at it with hope, as the iron gate fence was still intact. All the glass had been broken and most of it lay covered in blood from the Turned’s wounds they had endured trying to fight their way in.
Aslin backed the truck up so that it was ready to go and left it running. Aslin looked around the area. There were no Turned running around, but they were everywhere… at least fifty of them lying in impossibly uncomfortable positions on the ground. Aslin looked out his window and saw that everyone of them was missing a quarter inch of their skull where a bullet had gone in and painted the street with their hair, blood, and brains. He bent around looking in the back of the truck. Clary, Greg, and Ellie all were standing but had their hands in the air. Aslin opened the truck door and a raspy smoker’s voice hollered out from the shop. “You take one more step out of that truck, and I’ll shoot every fucking one of you in the head. I don’t know you, and I don’t need ya. You shut that door and get the fuck out of here, and you do it now, or you can go ahead and consider your life span over.”
Shaun said, “Andy, sir, it’s us.”
“Us who? I don’t know any fucking us.”
“Shaun Fox, sir. We were here yesterday with my father… I mean my dad… Frank Fox.”
“Well, what the hell are you doing back in town already? Christ, I gave you enough supplies that you could have lived the entire summer without having to fire one bullet or catch one fish. What the fuck are you already doing back here for? Where the hell is your dad, and who's the big sonofabitch in the back of the truck with you kids? If the Army only sent in one man they really are as stupid as everyone thinks they are!”
“No, sir, we aren’t stupid; we’re homeless.”
“What the hell happened to the cabin?”
Shaun lowered his arms slowly and put the rifle sling on his shoulder. “One of the boys with us stayed behind and burned it down. We thought that my dad was completely responsible for the outbreak yesterday. But it was his assistant who forged records and set the day of hell into motion.”
“Ya don’t say. Well, that peckerwood is one dead man, isn’t he?”
“My dad actually already dealt with him. Somehow, he was Turned into one of those things. I don’t know all the details, but it looked a lot like Dad and him had a fight, and it ended with his assistant having a broken axe handle shoved under his chin and up through his brain.”
“Yep, that’ll do, it won’t it, son? Well, what the hell are you all doing in the back of the truck? Quit wasting your time; we need to get packed up and outta here. This ain’t no place to try and survive. I got a farm on the outskirts of town. We just need to grab some more shit since ya’ll can’t make it without me.”
Clary started to lower his hands slowly, when Andy yelled, “No! I think you ought to keep them up just another minute or two. I haven’t decided if I like yous or not yet. What are you doing here already?”
“Sir, Andy, is it? My name is Clary and me and my SEAL team were air dropped in. There were six of us and now we are down to two. We were suppose to retrieve Dr. Frank Fox’s notes and files. We did that and then the government decided that they could live without us.”
Andy laughed and in the black of the store a single light ignited followed by warm embers on the end of a cigarette. A long glow brightened for a moment and the smell of tobacco burning floated out from the store, followed by a very ill sounding cough. “Wait, you mean to tell me that you got dropped off in goddamn Zombieville, USA, and you were suppose to send the government the research they needed before you got your dumbass back on that plane. Jesus Christ, you must be the dumbest sonofabitch in the world. I’m not sure you two can come with me if you are that damn ignorant.”
“We were just following orders, sir, we…”
“Orders, shmorders, son. You boys got screwed, is what you got. Damn, man, you got enough problems going for ya. Go ahead and put your hands down.”
The steel barred door rattled and the glass that was left shook off and fell to the ground. It opened wide and Andy poked his head out with a filter less smoke hanging from his mouth. He mumbled with it between in his teeth. “Y’all get in here, and quit wasting time, will ya?”
Clary stared at the old man, taking him all in… what little there was left of the old man. He had blood-covered, dingy overalls on and a white shirt that had more blood on it than white at the moment. Clary walked into the store, looking around. He whistled lightly, “Holy shit.”
He stared at the row of assault rifles all set up with scopes and pointing towards the window. Each one of them had a stack of clips next to it, and on the ground a stack of spent ones with more bullet casings than he would be able to count. Aslin held the door for the teens to enter; Shaun nodded and said, “Go on in, thanks. I’m going to get some fresh air. I’ll come inside in a couple of minutes.”
“Don’t go doing anything stupid, Shaun.”
Greg walked past him, patting him on the shoulder. He was feeling down and out but managed a smartass comment nonetheless. “Don’t make Shaun make promises that he’s just going to break, Aslin. He will break your heart, brother.”
Shaun laughed as he returned to the truck and hopped up into the back. “I’ll stay put; don’t worry about me.”
Aslin nodded and put a military crate in front of the door to keep it open. “You see anything, Shaun, you get your scrawny ass in here. Don’t go playing the hero, you got it?”
Shaun did a half-ass salute and looked at the empty, desolate street. Aslin walked in through the door leaving, him to his own thoughts. Andy said, “We need to get outta here, but I don’t want to leave everything I have here. Looters are gonna come eventually, and if they want anything they can go get it themselves from somewhere else.”
Ellie got a shopping cart and started walking behind Andy with it. “Well, why didn’t you leave yesterday, Andy?”
“Are you shittin’ me, sweetheart? The moment you all went to leave and that damn van backfired, those things came from nowhere and were crazy with rage, trying to break into the damn place. I set up them rifles after a few hours, but for everyone of them, I shot another ten took their place. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept pulling the trigger.”
“Where’d all the blood come from on you?”
Andy looked down at himself for what must have been the first time, “Oh hell, you mean this? Well, some of them were sticking their arms in the windows, and I decided after I was getting worried about the ammunition supply that maybe I’d be better off with chopping some arms from their places. It, uh, got a little messy after a while.”
Ellie looked near the edge of the building where the front show windows once had been and saw the smashed-in glass. On top of it was easily twenty plus arms. Different sizes, small and large but all gorily chopped from their place and bloodied heavily. “Yeah, I bet it did get messy. Have they been out here all day?”
Andy nodded. “Yeah some dumb shit dropped a damn bomb in the middle of town. Once it went off, those damn things came in droves through here. I don’t know what the hell that dumb shit was thinking, but he brought all of those bastards into town.”
Ellie and Tina smiled awkwardly. Tina said, “Yeah, what dumbass would set off a damn bomb in the middle of town? That seems like such a bad idea.”
Andy nodded. “Those things can hear real good, and I think they can smell. I saw them sniffing for blood when nothing was there to smell, and they could tell exactly where it was coming from. A couple people that weren’t turned came running through the streets with packs on their backs. Those things jumped them before they ever knew what hit them. They didn’t stand a chance.”
Ellie said, “Well, I’m glad that we needed to come back here. I don’t like to think what would h
appen if you had to stay here any longer than you needed to.”
Andy said, “Ah, it wouldn’t have been too bad. Eventually I’d run out of smokes or food and would have blown my brains out. I’m not one to wait around for miracles, but it’s a good thing you did stop by. What’d you do with my van, anyways?”
Tina said, “Well, we had some car problems and had to get something else.”
“Christ, girl. I’ve had that damn van longer than the two of you have been alive put together.”
Ellie said, “We might as well be honest with you from the start. We blew up your van. It died and then these stupid zombies tried putting their heads through the window and everything just kind of went downhill from there. Shaun thought it was a good idea if we tried to blow some of them up. We didn’t quite know yet that those things were going to be so into the whole sound thing. We learned real quick though.”
“You bet your ass. If not, you’d be dead already. You kids had a good thing up in that cabin, but you help me get all this shit in the back of that truck, and we’ll be out of here in no time.”
Clary said, “Andy, I really appreciate you helping us out with this. Never in a million years would I have thought there’d be anything like this happening but in some damn movie.”
Andy nodded. “Yep, it’s pretty much bat-shit crazy. You boys know what the good stuff is. You go get as much as will fit in the back of that truck. If we can kill them with it, I want it. You got it?”
Clary nodded. “You know, they might be able to get a cure with all that stuff we sent to Washington. They might be able to heal these things.”
“I don’t give two shits if they can heal them or cure them. If those things are stupid enough to come out to my farm, then I’m going to put a round through their head, just like I did with all the others out front. Got it?”
They both nodded, realizing if there was a cure to be had and one of those things had their blood rage set on them then there was nothing they could do but protect themselves. It wasn’t their fault, and it wasn’t the fault of the people who Turned. They knew it was better that the other guy lose when shit hit the fan. Clary and Aslin assessed the firearms, packing everything that could be useful, along with more bullets than they'd’ seen in some armories. They had multiple shopping carts packed to the brim, and they made their way to the door. They dropped everything when they heard the gun blasts coming from outside. Aslin looked around the store, not seeing Shaun. He yelled, “Shit! Shaun’s outside; move, move, move.”