Swarm (Dead Ends)

by G. D. Lang

  Panic set in almost immediately as the chubby man looked back at the monster steaming towards him. Doing his best impersonation of the first moron to die in every horror movie ever, he tripped over nothing in particular and thudded to the ground, his keys flying several feet in front of him, the pack on his back shifting to one side making it harder for him to get up. And still I did nothing, aside from carefully click the door shut and lock it, at the same time silently reassuring myself that I’m not the hero. Watching a chubby out of shape computer nerd who spends his life in a chair attempt to maneuver his own body weight back into an upright position is nothing if not comical. By the time he got his inertia under control, it was already too late. The hunter ripped out his throat before he even hit the ground. It was fascinating to watch this from afar. Seeing a human, or something like it, eat another human being with the same ferocity and hunger of a lion eating a freshly killed zebra. Did they get full? I wondered. If nothing else I could use this as a learning opportunity. I adjusted myself slightly in the captain’s style seat, looking away for only a second before looking back to see the hunter now sniffing the air, most likely detecting my presence. It continued searching the air, looking around until it spotted the van. Before I could react it was sprinting towards me. I didn’t know what to do so I did nothing. I just sat there, still as ever, hoping he would go back to his kill. But these things seem to be driven by mass destruction, by some ancient virus-borne Imperialism that tells them to leave no one unharmed. Either that or they just have really short attention spans. Something I can certainly relate to.

  It hissed and drooled at the window, becoming angrier as its display of horror seemed to have no effect on the food source behind the glass. I hadn’t planned on continuing to be a human statue but it was too late to abandon the plan now. I was in too deep. And it almost seemed like it was working. Its agitation subsided and it lost interest, readying itself to go back, I thought, to the meal it had already created for itself. Instead it walked the length of the van. I watched it in the huge side mirror as it followed a scent trail, realizing too late that it was smelling me from the wide open goddamn back doors to the van that had completely slipped my mind. I glanced towards the ladder on the side of the store, trying to gauge the distance. Could I make it before that speedy little ankle-biter got to me? I wasn’t so sure. And the hunters seem smarter than the others anyway so even if I did make it, there’s a good chance they’ve refigured out by now what a ladder is and how to use it. I don’t think I’ll get that lucky twice. I only had one plan left. I looked intently in the rear view mirror, waiting for it to reach the open door, to realize just how close it was to sinking its teeth into me.

  The suspension tilted slightly as it stepped up into the back. I fought every urge to open the door and run too quickly. I needed him to be further in for this to work. Once he was about halfway in, I gripped tightly onto the door handle and pulled it slightly until it was just about to unlock. Then I turned my head back, shocked for a second as I was reminded of the pain in my neck, and said “Boo!” which sent the hunter flailing towards me, his head banging onto the carpeted roof of the van as the excitement of another kill beckoned. That gave me just enough time to open the door, lock it and shut it hard. Then I raced to the back as it attempted to fight through the door to get to me. I managed to slide one of the camp containers out of the back before the thud of it hitting the ground alerted the hunter to my presence. I shut the doors tight as it thudded into the back of them, scratching and thrashing around. Quickly, I ran back to the store glancing at the man writhing on the ground, grasping at a wound that would never heal, fighting the last throes of inevitable death.

  Inside the relative safety of the store, I went back and grabbed Red’s shotgun from his corpse. There was only a mild amount of blood on it, which I wiped off with a wad of paper towels. I loaded a shell into each chamber and made my way back out to the van. The chubby man grasped at his throat as he looked at me, his eyes burning with confusion and fear. As I approached he seemed to be pleading with me, maybe to patch the hole in his throat, maybe to tell him this is all just a bad dream. I tried to avoid making eye contact. That just made it harder to do what I had to do. I stopped about a half of a foot short of him as he reached into his back pocket. He pulled out his wallet with one hand, grasping at my boots with the other. The lucidity of imminent death seemed to overtake him and I wasted no time in choosing that moment to end his suffering and to avoid him turning into a chubby little hunter zombie that some poor sap wouldn’t take seriously until it was too late. The wallet fell to the ground, opening to reveal a picture of a family, of this man’s family. A beautiful wife and two daughters that would never see him again. I looked through the contents of his personal life. His name was David Singh and he was in fact a Microsoft employee and in a darkly ironic twist, an organ donor. Something made me put the wallet in my pocket, some sense of respect or closure maybe. I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe it was just the fact that there seemed to be a few thousand dollars in $100 bills pressed into the fold. It would probably be worthless but old habits die hard I guess. Even if it was just Monopoly money now, it still held weight, it still meant something.

  I followed the path back to where he was first attacked and found his keys. I threw them in the center console of the Prius once I realized the car was already on. The readout said it had well over 300 miles left on the current charge. I looked towards the van and realized the hunter trapped inside was no longer making any noise. It was too quiet. And not the good kind. More like calm before the storm quiet. I jerked my head around in all directions, looking for any movement, praying that I saw none. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. I readied the shotgun just in case as I pulled myself out of the car, my long legs struggling to get out from behind the wheel. For the first time, I missed my old Mercury. It left a lot to be desired but it had great head and foot room and the bench style seats were beyond comfortable. I tiptoed around the perimeter of the van, making sure none of the doors had come open but I saw nothing. With a super-sized bit of hesitation, I stepped up onto the runner below the passenger side and peered in. The hunter was writhing on the floor, taking turns thrashing at the seats and grasping at his head and stomach. At least five jokes about the dangers of Indian food seemed to stream into my mind all at once. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Maybe they did actually get full, who knows. Maybe when I opened the doors at some point, the inside of the van would be filled with zombie shit, sprayed all over the walls like some puppy expressing its unhappiness about being left in the car alone.

  Whatever it was that was happening, I knew this was my only chance to kill him without some horrible form of collateral damage delaying my trip to the ocean any further. God, I could smell it now. My lungs yearned for the salty air. It’s all I could think about. It was the only concrete thing in my mind. The lone beacon of hope for something better, some miniscule scrap of normalcy. I didn’t dare open one of the front doors. It may have a little indigestion but the speed of the hunters I’ve seen so far is just so complete and animalistic. They don’t think. They just pursue. Also, I didn’t want to have to clean blood off of the containers that were still in the back. Laziness is a hard habit to break. I hopped off and went towards the back doors. I readied my unwilling hand on the handle, propping the shotgun on my leg with the other hand. I counted down from three at least 5 times before I had the balls to actually turn the handle. When I did, the thing only looked at me. My brain couldn’t process this odd display of docility so I raised the shotgun and fired. Cuts of meat studded with bone and brain coated the windshield, a Pollock masterpiece in a darker world. I lowered the gun, my eyes taking a few seconds to snap back into the present. The shock of what I had seen just before I pulled the trigger hit home. Did he plead for his life? Was he in the process of asking for help when the proper amount of pressure was applied to the trigger? I wasn’t sure now if I had imagined it. I wanted to press the rewind button but it felt as if I
was processing a dream that succeeded in convincing me it was real. I didn’t know which one I believed so I decided that believing the one that wouldn’t make me go insane with guilt or confusion was the right course of action.

  After loading the car up with as much as I could, I closed up the store, locked the screen from the inside and climbed up through the roof access and down the ladder. I made up a sign with some supplies from the store and posted it on the window where everyone could see:

  Red’s dead baby. Red’s dead.

  Door is locked for security. Access store from roof.

  Two Dead Zeds inside. Sorry about the mess.

  Good Luck.

  -Sam Woods

  Even amongst an apocalypse, I couldn’t resist a good Pulp Fiction reference. I also posted one of Jane’s drawings on the door, one of my favorites for one of my favorite spots. It featured a scene ripped right from Little Red Riding Hood with the Big Bad Wolf looming in the shadows behind Little Red, teeth snarling, waiting to pounce. But the Wolf can’t see under the hood, where Red is in fact a zombie, luring the wolf into her jaws. And if you look close enough, you can see what looks like a severed head peeking out of Undead Red’s little picnic basket. God, I miss Jane. Not so much for who she was but for what we could’ve become together. She gave me that feeling as soon I met her, the feeling that people get when they meet someone that they always want to have in their lives. Those little signals from the important parts of your mind that say don’t screw this up. I feel like I will end up missing her much more than I want to, more than I deserve to.

  Chapter 20

  I decided to familiarize myself with the intricacies of the Prius while on the road. I didn’t want to spend any more time here. My childhood memories all but destroyed, I just wanted to leave the Sunrise Market before I got too comfortable with it, before I let myself stay and attempt to believe that everything was going to be alright, empirical evidence be damned. This thing was loaded. Touch screen navigation system, rear back-up camera, automatic parallel park assist, and a hard drive full of music. I attempted to scan for any radio stations several times but not a single station came in. The front seats made it look like I was a college kid on spring break: Red Bulls overflowing the cup holders, beef jerky and Reese’s Pieces littering the passenger seat, bottles of vodka, tequila, and whiskey resting precariously on the floor amongst dusty old t-shirts and sweatshirts taken from the store’s shelves. At some point I’d need to find a Wal-Mart or something where I could get some new underwear and other supplies but for right now, I’d make do with what I had. I plotted the course to Ocean Shores into the navigation system just to see if it still worked and surprisingly it did, though I wouldn’t really need it. There was probably no stretch of road I knew better than the one that led to the coast.

  It took a while to search through the music hard drive to find something I liked amongst the classical and folk music. I settled on The Allman Brothers’ Greatest Hits, hoping it would keep me alert. For the first time since this all started, I’m beginning to be affected by the lack of peaceful sleep. I sang along to “Whipping Post” while I carefully cranked the volume to the highest acceptable level considering the circumstances. As I reached for a few stray Reese’s Pieces, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the passenger side mirror suddenly fell off the car with surprising swiftness. I turned the volume down as I tried to process it and a second later I remembered that I was in fact, driving. I looked ahead just in time to see a bullet shatter the windshield and hiss right past my face and into the back seat. I slammed on the breaks, sliding sideways so I could see clearly what was ahead of me. A bunch of backwoods hicks in one of those ridiculously jacked up monster trucks blocked the road ahead. One man stood atop the cabin reloading his rifle. They were blocking the only damn road into Ocean Shores. Before I could get my bearings, two men on dirt bikes revved out from behind the truck, revolvers in hand, closing in fast on my position. I fumbled to shift into reverse and slammed the accelerator. The Prius jumped to attention and revved off quickly but they slowly began to gain ground. There was no way I was going to hit any of them with a semi-blind pistol shot so I glanced over at the bottle of vodka and the t-shirts and figured, what the hell? I steadied the wheel with my knees, grabbed the book of matches I had seen in the center tray and stuffed a t-shirt into the bottle, my only knowledge of how to make a Molotov cocktail coming from a bunch of 1980’s action movies.

  Even as I rolled down the window, my confidence in the plan was minimal at best but the fuse had been lit. Now all I had to do was throw it. I let it fly while also keeping my eye on the rear view mirror and the exit that I had passed once going forward and now would have to revisit from the opposite direction. It was my only chance to get away from these morons. If I made it, it would take me north on Highway 101, away from Ocean Shores and towards the depressing depths of the Northwest corner of the Pacific Peninsula. I wasn’t going to see my old beach anytime soon. After arching through the air in what felt like slow motion, the bottle hit directly in front of one of the dirt bikes, covering a patch of road in angry flames. The man panicked as he tried to avoid it and slid out, both bike and body crumpling along down the asphalt like a cartoon. This made the man on the second bike slow down his pursuit. He still followed but at a much safer distance. He fired a few shots but they all missed. It’s hard enough to aim a weapon while standing upright. I can’t imagine how much the difficulty spikes while moving and attempting to balance a two-wheeled vehicle.

  I wanted to make another bottle of fire water but the exit loomed in the mirror and I began turning towards it. Another shot rang out, this one shattering the rear passenger window. I panicked and turned the wheel too hard as I reached the exit, flying up and over the embankment. After that it was hard to tell which way was up. Grass defied gravity. Trees took root in the clouds. Candy and dried meat descended from the heavens. Screeching metal and breaking glass surrounded me though I couldn’t hear it. I only seemed to assume what sound they would be making. All I heard was a ringing in my ears as everything finally came to a stop. The world still felt upside down because it was. My body strained against the seat belt as I stared down at the caved in roof. The ringing in my ears subsided. The rumble of the dirt bike got closer and then stopped, followed by the diesel growl of that ridiculous monster truck. I highly doubt they were here to reason with me, especially after I tried to set one of them on fire. I could hear shouting back and forth and then doors slamming as the truck came to a stop.

  “Is that sumbitch in there?” one of them asked.

  “He better be. If he’s alive, he won’t be for long” another one said.

  I heard another rumbling sound that I couldn’t quite place. It didn’t sound like a vehicle. Maybe a helicopter in the distance? I couldn’t be sure. They heard it too.

  “What the hell is that? Earl, turn the damn truck off, you hear that?” the first man said. One of them was named Earl. How shocking. I’m sure Joe Bob and Skeeter would be introducing themselves shortly. When the truck’s engine ceased, the rumbling increased tenfold and seemed to resonate through the hills as it got closer.

  “Jesus Christ! Get the hell outta here!”

  “Leave the bike; just get in the truck for chrissakes! They’re comin’ in hot!”

  I sat there listening intently and half-assedly praying that it wasn’t what I thought it was. The next 30 seconds seemed to move in fast forward. Dirt and debris swirled in the air just inside the tree line, announcing their arrival. The swarm I had seen through the telescope had made it to us with disturbing quickness. Before I could react, a pack of hunters trampled over and around the upturned Prius, grabbing onto the guy that was on the bike before he could make it to the truck. The man in the truck wasted no time in getting the hell out of there, running over at least a dozen of them before getting enough traction to take off. The rumbling and pounding was deafening now. The seatbelt cut into me but I didn’t dare move. The sheer force of their numbers
actually turned the car at least 30 degrees as they smashed up against it. But the whole time they just kept running, some went after the escaping truck, others just kept going straight across the highway and into the tree line. I was too afraid to even breathe.

  Something caught my eye to my right and I looked over to see a zombie that had tripped, some young girl in what looked like a Girl Scouts uniform. As she struggled to get up, she spotted me, her lifeless eyes suddenly filled with passion, anger, and hunger. She began pulling herself inside through the broken window, oblivious to the shards of glass ripping through her arms. I fumbled to find the pistol, knowing it would do no good if I used it. I may kill her but the noise would alert twenty more. My only chance was to try and fight with this girl, maybe try and snap her head off or strangle her with the seatbelt. Her legs were being trampled by the swarm outside but she still soldiered on. She was halfway inside when she seemed to get caught on something. She attempted to shriek and make that horrible call of the dead that I had heard before. If she couldn’t get me she wanted one of her brethren to do it for her. Luckily her vocal chords didn’t seem to work too well with the shard of glass currently protruding into her larynx. She tried again and the smallest of sounds came out. I stretched hard for a large shard of glass just out of the reach of her hungry mouth. She wasn’t close enough yet for me to plunge it into her head so I had to find a way to silently bait her to come closer. I sliced my hand with the glass and squeezed it into a fist, dripping fresh blood directly in front of her face. She got excited and began licking and thrashing to get free. I held my bloodied hand just out of reach for some extra incentive. That seemed to do the trick. I pulled my hand out of the way just as she surged forward and plunged the shard of glass directly into her forehead, letting her own momentum do most of the work. She dropped silently and I waited for the swarm to pass, hoping I would somehow go unnoticed in the middle of this mortifying undead migration.