Out With A Whimper

by Michael Noe

  Chapter Three: Venturing Out

  Leaving the house took a lot of courage and mental anguish. It was unavoidable though. If I remained in my current state, I would die. I was running low on food and water. If I wanted to survive, I had to take a walk on the wild side and actually leave my safety zone. I could make a blanket fort and stay inside of it with my comic books and stale Cheetos, but soon I would be up the creek without a paddle. I had no idea what lurked out there. According to my horror movie logic, there were bad people out there mixed in with the zombies. The moment I stepped a few miles from home, I was out in the open and anyone with a buck tooth grin could bend me over a car and corn hole me. Times were different and if some guy told me I had a pretty mouth, I could bet he didn't want to hang out and play Euchre.

  Things had changed and the lines were all muddied. People saw weakness a lot easier and I wasn't the kind of guy that intimidated anyone. You would think that the zombies would be the bastards but your fellow man is always the real bastard. Why is it when a nuclear bomb hits, the bullies always survive? Is there a law somewhere that says the wife beaters will inherit the earth? The nice, law abiding citizens are always pushed aside by the macho assholes that take whatever they want because they can. The idea of natural selection seems great but it never works out. The weak are always smashed into the shit.

  Whatever existed, I wasn't prepared for it. I had no weapons at all. I paid someone to mow my lawn and when my car broke down I took it to a mechanic. Some people are born mechanically inclined while I was born with the knowledge that if something breaks you hire someone to fix it. That was my world. My reality was to look down on people who did the shit jobs while privileged people like me made fun of them for having a job that actually meant something to them. They had the ability to carry on in this society while people like me panicked. I had always assumed that someone would be around to fix everything. Now they weren't and I was beginning to see just how fucked I was.

  It was a great lesson to learn now that I was all alone. Who could I rely on when the shit hit the fan? There wasn't anyone, and yes, I loved being alone, but it didn't change the fact that I was clueless. As I paced and tried to figure out some plan, I knew that I would need weapons. It was just a fact of this new existence I was thrust into. Without them, I may as well just hand myself over to whatever threatened me. I had no idea how to fire a gun, but any idiot could thrust a knife or an ax. I had seen plenty of slasher films to know that you could do some serious damage with weapons like that. All I needed now was a summer camp full of chicks and I was ready to go sex crazed and retard strong.

  When I finally emerged from my front door, the reality of what happened set in. The silence was almost deafening. The usual night sounds had been replaced with a silence so loud it made my skin crawl. The smell was horrifying; if my stomach had anything in it, I would have vomited in my bushes. Take a piece of pork or a chicken and leave it in the sun for about two weeks. That was the smell that hit me like a wet blanket. It was so bad I could taste it in the back of my throat.

  For some reason I had decided to venture out at night. I can't tell you how stupid that decision was. All the shit I read and watched convinced me that traveling at night was somehow safer. It's bullshit because in the dark there are far more places to hide and the headlights of my car gave me away. I guess the shadows and shit are great if you're on foot, but I wasn't. I needed supplies and a trip on foot wasn't going to do me any good. The dark was thick and only cut by the moon as it drifted in and behind the clouds. The only good thing was that it hid the majority of the carnage that was left behind.

  The neighborhood I drove through looked like a war zone in Iraq. There were bodies scattered about in what I could only assume was various states of decay. Fires burned brightly, lighting up the night sky in a surreal glow. Entire blocks were covered in thick, dense smoke. There was no one left to fight the fires so they continued to burn. This was a neighborhood that had once been drenched in history and was now reduced to smoke and ash. As I neared downtown, the trees that had escaped the fire broke away to reveal the heart of my hometown.

  Here, the darkness was surreal and the usual crowds of people that existed were gone. From what I could see, I was alone. The library and post office were dark, and no other shadows or people moved beyond or away from my headlights. It was unnerving. In the light of day, everything would have been out in the open. Nothing would have had a chance to hide. Now? I had no idea what I was heading into. All I could do was take a deep breath and move forward. I had come too far to turn back now. There were no other options. The days of delivery were all over.

  I could have been the delivery. It was possible that I was heading straight into the danger zone and didn't even know it. The lines of communication had been severed like an umbilical cord. I was floating out of the safety of the womb into a world full of uncertainty. Everything was changed. Bodies swung from trees, and in the fountain in the center of town, bodies floated on the surface as if they were going for a night swim. As I stopped the car in front of the hardware store, I looked around, expecting a gang of gun-toting rednecks to greet me with a sneer of ignorance.

  It seemed fitting that the new world would be overrun by cousin-fucking hillbilly cannibals. It was a horror cliché that made my knees weak. Just get through this and get your ass back home. It seemed easy to do but my hands wouldn't stop shaking. I peered into the shadows, afraid that someone or something would begin to saunter toward me. The shadows wavered and elongated as I headed slowly toward the darkened maw of the hardware store. It wasn't too late. I could turn around and forget about all this. Head home and hide behind my locked front door. I'd be safe from whatever existed out here.

  Look around! There's nothing here! I didn't know that. Not for sure anyway. The dark plays tricks on your mind. As a kid, I was scared of the dark, which I'm sure a lot of kids are. The closet itself was the portal to hell and if I left it open, who knows what might have happened. I would lie there awake at night, fighting sleep, afraid that the door would swing open and some hideous monster with blood dripping from its fangs would come lumbering out of there to kill me. I knew I was being stupid but I was so convinced that there was something in the dark waiting for me, that I would keep my feet wrapped in the blankets just in case the toe monster wanted to pull me under the bed.

  This was the exact same mentality. My mind was working overtime to convince me that there was something there. It could have been anything. Rats, or a stray dog. I didn't hear anything though. The silence was there to greet me as I broke out a window to gain access to the store. I looked around just to make sure no one heard me. There was nothing. The street remained empty. Nothing came out to grab me. I almost wish something had. It would have eased the fear a little. If you know that there's someone out there, you can deal with it. It's the not knowing that makes things worse. The unknown is always more terrifying than the known.

  I entered quickly and found what I needed. I grabbed a few flashlights and batteries as well as a machete. I couldn't grab anything that required electricity or was too heavy. I needed something that was light and easy to carry. With that done, I headed back out toward my car. There were a few cars in the parking lot and the bodies weren't as thick as I had feared. There were wallets and ID’s, but I didn't touch any of them. Just seeing them was enough to creep me out. I kept my eyes on them as I walked to my car. I had convinced myself that at some point they would all sit up and rush toward me. That was all I needed. In the movies, that kind of shit happens all the time.

  You think you're safe and then the dead begin to rise but I’m not sure if they can smell your pumping blood, or maybe it's the fear that they smell. It's quite possible that they’re pissed off that you're alive and they're dead. Whatever it is, it's a Hollywood invention to make people scream. None of that applied here. Everything that the horror films taught me about the living dead was a lie. I was scared, but I wasn't even sure what I was scared of. That was the w
orst. The unknown was terrifying. This was a new world. One that I wasn't able to rationalize or even adapt to. It was a wasteland of broken bodies and darkness. What scared me the most was that I was alone. There was no one to save me or even reassure me that everything would be okay.

  My city was a broken ruin and no matter how many times I wanted to convince myself that this was a nightmare, I knew it wasn't. This wasn't something I would wake up from. I was awake. Just looking out my windshield was enough to convince me that everything I knew was gone. Small stores, once lit up and beaming, were now dark and silent. I would have to swerve around stalled cars and corpses as I ventured to Wal-Mart. I had no idea what I would do if it were burning. I would have probably cried and then tried to find a gun or some other way to kill myself.

  That was the only option left. I could only keep going if there was food to be found. I wasn't a hunter. I had no idea if there were any animals left to kill. In the old world, everything was tastefully packaged for my consumption. I never imagined that it would be all gone. We were told that this was never going to end. The world would keep advancing and like everyone else, I believed it. There was nothing left. This was the future, and as I looked around, the reality slammed home. What was the next step? Was someone out there, attempting to rebuild? Was it even worth it? I honestly didn’t think so. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  I cleared my thoughts as I swung the car into the parking lot. It looked like an automobile graveyard. My tires crunched over bodies in various states of decay. I pulled up to the door and felt my heart begin to race. The glass of the door was broken. In the headlights, I could see discarded boxes and blood splashed on every conceivable surface. Beyond the doors, it looked as if the bodies had been attacked inside the store. It was easy to imagine what had happened. Just seeing the way the bodies were piled, I envisioned the chaos that occurred here. When the attack happened, there was no way to escape.

  Those who tried to run were either trampled by those who were quicker, or just stupid. As the dead advanced, they were killed. They had tried like hell. That was obvious from the way the bodies were situated. There were drying pools of blood leaking from the pile sitting by the door. I had to find another way and even if I did make it in, there was no telling what I would find inside. The smell of decay was strong, but inside the store it was stronger. Meat had started rotting as well. I could taste it on my tongue as I pushed a cart through the abandoned store. The aisles were littered with a wide variety of debris.

  My flashlight didn't help my visibility by any means. It cast a wider range of shadows at every intersection. I grabbed as much as I could but the smells were distracting. I grabbed canned food, a portable DVD player and as many batteries as I could shove into my cart. I couldn't help giggle as I saw just how much shit I had. It would make the drive back interesting but on the bright side, I wouldn't have to do this again for a while. I had enough junk food, and canned food to last me a month at the most. I was surprised that there wasn't a mad rush for food. It was possible that when things erupted, there wasn't enough time to collect resources.

  This wasn't like a blizzard or even a tornado. Weather, you can plan around, but this? There was no alert, or even an emergency system for the undead. No matter what you put in place, there was just no way to leave without becoming food. From the weak beam of the flashlight there were quite a few people that had made it here, but they didn't make it back out. In history books, there were all sorts of tragedies that struck, but in those cases there was some kind of warning. In something like this, no one would take them seriously.

  “The undead are rising from their earthly home and attacking the living.” Who would believe that shit? No one would, until they saw it for themselves. Even then it would have been too late. There was nowhere to go. A store like this was massive. Once you were deep in, there was no escape. I could see the dark outlines of blood everywhere I walked. Nothing made it through here and survived. As scared as I was here in the dark, being here in the daylight wouldn't have made any difference. It was like being immersed in a labyrinth. No matter where I went, there was no way to see the light of day unless I was closer to the check out.

  What struck me the most was just how much food was rotting. There were rows upon rows of frozen food cases and meat. All of it was slowly rotting. I took the electricity for granted. We all had. We relied upon our computers and television to entertain us and now there was nothing left. I was resorting to batteries and portable radios and DVD players to keep in touch with a piece of my life that would probably never return. We were all a product of our environment. All of those technological advances did me no damn good now.

  The silence was too much. The squeaky wheels were the only sounds in the abandoned store aside from my breathing. I made my way out of the store and quickly loaded my car. I was loaded with enough beer to stay drunk for days and the amount of junk food would balance out the soups and canned fruits and vegetables. Once in the car, I breathed a sigh of relief and headed for home. This was the tricky part. I had been gone a little over two hours. That was plenty of time for someone to break into my house and try and take up residence.

  It wasn't like there was anything to steal anymore. The bright, shiny shit was useless. There was nothing of any value anymore. All they could do was use my house as a place to hide out. It was tucked away in this little cul-de-sac which at one time was great if you wanted privacy. Now? Not so much. It was a great place to pretend that I was better than everyone else, but I wasn’t. I was just another pretentious asshole. One of many. The world was full of us at one point. We were the people that had a knack for being self-absorbed. It didn’t really get us anywhere, but damn was it fun while it lasted.

  I pulled into the driveway and gave a quick look around. The house looked the same way it did when I left. The door was still locked and the windows were still intact. I needed to figure out a way to keep it secure when I left. Home Alone style. That kid in that movie was pretty handy for being twelve. There had to be a way to set up a primitive alarm system so that I could keep the house safe from intruders and looters. How long would my luck hold out? I had no idea. Someone would come snooping around. I was sure of it. I just needed to make sure that no one got in.

  I unloaded my loot as quickly as I could. The next trip wouldn’t be as difficult. I know I had grabbed too much stuff, but I wanted to keep myself from venturing out too much. If there were any survivors, I didn’t want them to find me. I was happy in my solitude and didn’t want any one ruining it. Survivors led to crazy ideas and the last thing I needed were crazy ideas that led me straight to death’s front door. I wanted to leave the heroics to those who had a sense of adventure. Mine was gone and in all honesty, it never even existed. I was okay with the way things were.

  I unpacked everything and placed flashlights in various rooms of the house. Candles were placed in the living room and kitchen and gave off a weak glow that reminded me just how primitive things had become. This was the new Wild West. Things would be handled with a gun and fists. It didn’t take long for the old world to collapse and now we were freefalling into a world that was unsafe and unsure of where it was headed. I knew where I was headed. I was drinking a warm beer and headed for bed. Thoughts of the new world frightened me. I was a new breed of gunslinger except I didn’t own a gun. Not yet anyway, but I would have to eventually.

  Not too long ago, people were clamoring for stricter gun laws. It was the hot button issue that all political candidates used to get votes. Hard to believe that there weren’t any more politicians, nor were there any laws. Strange how things change, isn’t it? You believe in something so strongly and suddenly it doesn’t matter. I was never for or against guns, but now I could see how useful they were. They spoke louder than I ever could. All I needed now was a t-shirt with an American flag on it and a catch phrase like; You’ll get my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

  It was hard for me to imagine what existed out there beyond my
safe cocoon and I didn’t want to. There was nothing out there for me. I was safe here in my house, drinking piss warm beer and pretending there was nothing out there that could harm me. Leave the hangings and the gunfights at dawn for the pretend cowboys who were just too stupid to know any better. The only thing to complete the new Wild West were horses. I wondered how long it would take before we started traveling by horseback.

  It seemed as if the drunker I got the more twisted and primitive my thoughts became. How long would it take until I was running around in a loin cloth? I could ride around on my trusty steed, looking for a woman that I could claim as my wife. The old rules were eroded so I figured if I fancied her, I could hit her in the head with a club and claim her. I could ride around like a rampaging Mormon, thumping any woman that caught my eye. I could even begin my own religion and tell people that I was Christ himself, come back to save them all. The world was just a wilderness that they were wandering around lost in. They could find the truth and light through me. I was the one to lead them to Paradise. All they needed was to give me their bitches. They could be my lost flock of sheep and I would be their herder. I would have my own little harem.

  I began laughing. It felt good to laugh despite the fact that I shouldn’t have found anything remotely funny. The situation was as dire as it could get, but the beer was making things a lot less serious than they were. I wasn’t a drinker but the beer enabled me to forget about everything for a while. I needed a moment to just forget. I knew that no matter what happened, the same bleakness would be there to greet me in the morning. The same silence and corpses would still line the street, rotting and stinking. For now though, I had nothing to worry about. Tomorrow was a million miles away. I would worry about it in the morning. I wasn’t in no shape to deal with it in my drunken state. I fell asleep in my Lazy-Boy recliner and I dreamt about horses and easy women.