by Mark Clodi
"Dad! Daddy!" screamed Becky from inside.
Mike barged through the back door, gun in hand. There was Earl Evans, right in front of him. The girls were nowhere in sight.
"Out of the way Earl!" Mike yelled, pushing the man sideways into the half prepared pizzas.
The older man stumbled into the pizzas lined up on the counters. He rebounded and pulled a pizza with him as he hit the floor. Mike was only partly aware of the mess being made behind him as he rushed into the main room of the store, looking for Becky.
"Karl?" Mike said upon entering the main room of the store. Karl was his neighbor and he hhad Sarah cornered near the freezer section near the back of the store. Karl's back was to Mike, but he would recognize the man from any angle due to the dirty John Deere cap he constantly wore.
Karl didn't respond to Mike's question, he just grabbed the frightened girl and started to kiss her. Sarah screamed and thrashed at the man with her hands.
'He's not kissing her neck' Mike realized when he saw the blood. "Karl! Stop. Now."
The man continued to maul the girl. Mike grabbed Karl's head and pulled it off of Sarah's neck. The young woman collapsed on the floor, sobbing and trying to hold in the blood from the gaping tear in her throat.
Karl twisted in Mike's hands and started thrusting the man backward towards the coffee machines. Becky was screaming shrilly for help as Mike crashed into the counter with his back. The coffee pots went flying as Mike was slid along the counter before falling off of them onto the top of the waist high ice cream freezer. The glass door above the freezer held his weight for a moment as he fought with Karl and then it gave way and Mike half fell into the freezer.
Karl was still grabbing at Mike and didn't see Becky heading towards him with the heavy fire extinguisher from behind the counter. The first blow hit him in the shoulder with a sickening crunch. The second blow flew wide as Earl had crawled into the room far enough from the kitchen to grab one of Becky's ankles and pull her off balance.
Karl pulled himself onto Mike's legs, biting through the khaki colored fabric to get at the man's meaty thigh. Earl had to be content with getting a bite of Becky's lower leg. Neither of the father-daughter team was out of the fight yet, Mike took a chance and fired his gun from where he lay in the freezer. The first shot passed through the side of the freezer and struck Karl in the thigh. The hole in the man's leg immediately started oozing a thick black fluid, but it didn't stop him from keeping his mouth pressed against Mike's leg and tearing another chunk of flesh off.
Screaming Mike thrashed sideways, finally getting enough leverage to cause the freezer chest to topple over. Rolling onto his stomach he was again bitten by Karl. Leaning sideways Mike brought his pistol up and pressed it to the top of Karl's head. "Stop, Karl." When Karl went down for another bite, Mike pulled the trigger.
Becky had been pulled into the pizza room by Earl; she ended up coming down on her bottom hard and falling backward. The fire extinguisher fell from her numb fingers and was just out of reach. Earl tried to take another bite and Becky kicked him with the bottom of her foot, shoving herself closer to the fire.
Finally her hand closed on the thin rubber hose of the nozzle, she used that tenuous grip to pull the entire canister her way. Once she had a firm grip on it, she swung it over hand into Earl's head. The end of the fire extinguisher caught him just above the bridge of his nose and crunched through his cheek bones down into his upper row of teeth. Earl didn't flinch from the blow. He didn't acknowledge it in any of the ways a normal human might. Instead he just lowered his face once again towards Becky's leg. She swung the canister around again and this time it fell on the back of the old man's head. This blow seemed to have the effect Becky was looking for; Earl stopped moving entirely.
Mike got to his feet, reeling from the pain of his wounds. Stumbling to the counter he grabbed it with one hand and pulled himself up. His thigh hurt, it wasn't just the bite and the blood loss, it burned.
"What the hell is going on?" Mike said aloud, taking in the sobbing girl in the corner and the two dead next to him and his daughter.
"Daddy? Are you alright?" Becky asked.
"Just a bite, I'll live. You?"
"Earl bit me too. What does it mean?"
"I don't know, Becky. Maybe some kind of rabies. I can't think of anything else that would cause this."
In the back corner Sarah started moving. Her eyes were opaque and the blood from her torn throat had all but stopped.
"Daddy!" Becky yelled pointing at her co-worker.
"Let's go, Sarah." Mike said, limping over to help his daughter up.
Sarah came towards them as they made it to the front door; Mike raised his hand and pointed the pistol at her. Sarah didn't seem to know what it represented. She just plodded towards them at a slow walk. When she had closed to five feet Mike shot her.
"No! Why did you do that?" screamed Becky.
Mike didn't answer. He pulled his daughter with him out the front door and into his patrol car. He drove out onto the highway and was soon speeding like mad for the nearest hospital, which was almost thirty miles away. Turning on his lights and sirens Mike pressed the pedal down and tore up the road.
Mike crested a hill and barely saw the tractor before he slammed into the back of it. The farmer, Neil, had finished working on it earlier that afternoon and was driving to the farm shed. The patrol car hit the tractor on the right side as Mike instinctively swerved and the impact took off the large five foot tall wheel, sending it bounding through the fence and into the corn field beyond. The tractor flipped over into the ditch. The impact tore the patrol car apart and killed Mike and his daughter instantly.
Neil was jerked around by the impact and spun sideways into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The tractor didn't have any safety equipment to handle an impact at this speed and Neal was thrust partway through the tall driver's side window as the vehicle rolled into the grassy ditch. He came to rest with the top of the cab pinning him to the ground, his legs were inside the vehicle and his torso was lying face up with his head pointed down into the ditch. Neil lost consciousness momentarily, but slowly his world came back to him. Above him the stars shone brightly in the clear night. He didn't feel any pain.
'I don't think anything is broken, I'm just stuck.' he thought. This was replaced by fear that the next car that came along would hit the wreckage and then he would be hurt. The very thought of that sent him into a frenzy and he tried to pull himself out from under the wreckage. It was no good; he was pinned.
Giving up in defeat he lay back on the grass in the ditch and wondered what happened to the people who hit him. Above him a wide swath of the galaxy went black, replaced by the silhouette of a man.
"Oh God! You startled me! Did you call for help?" Neil asked.
A warm, wet splat sounded as something fell from the man above him, striking Neil in the chest. Neil couldn't see what it was, but it felt like blood.
"Are you hurt?" Neil asked to the silent man beside him. A rustling in the grass on the other side of Neil caused him to look that direction, right into the dark face of Becky. With a flash of teeth the zombie latched onto Neil's face and started eating. Her father lunged into Neil's torso and the man's screams were short and high pitched as he died.
Five minutes later a car full of teen agers intent upon seeing the latest action flick slammed into the back of the tractor, rolling it off of Neil, who had revived. This provided the three zombies with four injured and easily catchable meals. The seven zombies had an easy time with every other vehicle that piled up that night and by the morning the sizable mob was heading back towards town.
Twelve in Billions
You think a zombie apocalypse is bad? Try it a thousand miles away from home.
'Hot again today,' Joe Trenton thought. 'A bad day to die.' He had been having this same though upon waking every morning he woke up in this, hot, humid country.
Joe had lost contact with his family and friends yesterda
y, a sure sign that the plague was racing around the world faster than anyone could control. It was just a matter of time before it reached the small armpit of the world that he was living in. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras he was on the ass end of communications anyway. Sure the Internet went everywhere, but that didn't mean electricity or phone service was reliable. Unlike some of his fellow volunteers he had electricity in his house. But getting a phone line put in was a bureaucratic nightmare and cost far more than he could afford on his monthly stipend.
Sighing, Joe rolled out of his hammock and stashed his laptop back into its pack. He would try the Internet Cafe in downtown Olanchito after he checked in at work. As an education volunteer he had expected to be teaching at the local school. That job had become a sought after pipe dream. The school wanted to parade him into endless meetings that all started late, if they started at all. Half the meetings were fund raisers where Joe was expected to give a speech in his broken, mid-Ohio accent. The other half were to motivate the students. When the parents of the high school aged girls found out he was single, not gay, and didn't have a girlfriend waiting for him stateside the evening meetings took on more of a matchmaker air.
'If I have to decline one more invitation for dinner I swear I will go crazy.' Most of the 'women' were fifteen or sixteen years old and, while that was a perfectly normal age to date and marry here, Joe could not imagine what his parents would say if he told them he was dating a sixteen year old when he was twenty three. And he could imagine what his college buddies would say. Nobody 'got it', not unless you were in country, living with and like the locals.
So far the plague had spread into Mexico, There were no local outbreaks that Joe had read or heard about. Rumors were rife and Joe used them to avoid the local high school, Instituto Francisco J. Mejiao, where he would end up sitting at a desk all day anyway. He was just adapting to the local custom, after all, by not showing up for work once in a while. Instead he got dressed in loose shorts, sandals and a baggy, cotton button up shirt that would have fit him twelve months ago when he came to the country. He had lost weight, almost thirty pounds and all of his clothing was loose now. He looked over the plastic containers that kept the mice out of his food in what passed for his kitchen, then he checked his wallet. He had enough money to eat out. The small home-style restaurants were always open, except when they weren't.
Today Doña Ria's was open for business. He came in and sat down and within moments a plate of food was delivered to his table. There was no menu. You came in and ate 'comida tipica' here or you went elsewhere. Menus and choice were for those who were moving up in the world. Joe was just moving sideways, a visitor, and the locals accepted that, as they had with so many volunteers before him. The typical food was solid fare, beans, corn tortillas, plantains, a quirky sour cream that Joe loved and some meat, probably bologna. After asking what was in the delicious lunch soup one day Joe had learned not to inquire about the contents of his food too closely. He still ate the tripe soup when it was offered, but he never questioned the Doña again.
Surprisingly, other than the staff, there was no one here this morning that Joe knew. He reached into his pack and pulled out a worn paperback, a thick fantasy novel by Terry Brooks that had probably passed through more volunteers than Joe had birthdays and was published five years before he had even been born. If this book could tell tales...I bet it has seen a lot over the years it has spent in the Peace Corps Library. The informal library was just an alcove at the headquarters out of the Capital, where Joe had to travel a few times a year for medical booster shots and official meetings. The lack of people he knew meant he could read in peace without offending anyone, though he did nod to a few of the people before burrowing into the book.
The Doña herself came over and refilled Joe's coffee, a dark black liquid the consistency of crude oil. Joe liked the coffee, or at least he did now. Like the beer, it grew on you. She was still standing next to him, too polite to interrupt him, but the fact that she lingered let him know she wanted something.
"Sì Doña?" he inquired.
"Joe" she started in Spanish, "Have you heard any news? With your computer?"
"No Doña, the electricity is out and Mister Cruz's internet was not working this morning. Do you have any news?"
"The paper didn't come this morning. When the television was on, it was only blank with the emergency noise."
Frowning, Joe tucked his book back into his bag and asked, "Have you heard anything else?"
"Hondutel is down; they are not even sending telegraphs." Hondutel was the national telephone company and even in the twenty first century telegraphs were still in use, although their popularity was dwindling now that the company had semi reliable cell phone coverage.
"That does not sound good. I was going to go to the Cafe after breakfast to check news. They probably are not open if the phones are down."
Doña Ria hesitated, then asked, "Could you come back here after? If you learn anything, and let me know?"
The woman's daughter lived in Los Angeles. Apparently she was married to a Canadian she had met through an ad in one of the 'mail order' papers that circulated in the country. "I will Doña; I will stop even if I don't learn anything." Rising to his feet Joe picked up his pack and said, "I will go now and come right back. I am sure your daughter will be alright, it is just a sickness."
"I hope so Joe. The news is terrible..."
Joe had heard it too. Like the local food, he didn't want to know what was going on too closely, he just skimmed the details of where the sickness was heading.
Stepping out into the humid morning he made a beeline for the central park. The Internet cafe was located on the edge in a building that had been a local disco-tech, and it still had the lights and disco ball to prove it. Stepping past the 'burachos', drunks, sleeping on the street Joe moved into the square, so intent on getting there that he almost ran into one of the locals staggering along in the opposite direction.
"Pardon me." Joe said, stepping by the man, who smelled of smoke and urine. The man grabbed for Joe, as if to steady himself, and Joe responded by steadying the old man and turning him back the way he had been headed. Doubling his pace to get away from the foul smelling farmer he took two steps towards his destination and stopped cold. Ahead of him there were bodies in the street...and people were leaning over the bodies.
It was too much information for him to process all at once. It held him paralyzed while his brain tried to make sense of it. Over in front of the building where he had been headed there was a group of people, the usual vendors, street children and vagrants who more or less lived in the town square. Some of the people were down on the ground, Joe recognized Jose, who shared his name and was the owner of the Internet cafe, lying on the ground. The man's guts were being pulled out of his body by a group of dirty, bloody street children, who were...eating them. Backpedaling Joe ran into the old farmer whom he had passed a moment earlier. The poor nutrition and hard life had only allowed the man to grow to a height six inches below Joe's own, putting his teeth at a perfect height to bite into the American's neck.
Like most grown men and women in the country this old man was missing several teeth and it took Joe a moment to realize the man was biting him, not kissing him. The kissing thing had been attempted before, resulting in much embarrassment and anger for Joe. Some men just assumed that because he didn't have a girlfriend that he would be up for a same-sex one night-stand. The old drunk's remaining teeth broke his skin and tore a furrow across the side and back of Joe's neck as he tore himself away. Throwing himself sideways he eluded the farmer's pitiful attempt at grabbing him and stepped into the street. This was a mistake; the crowd of cannibals in front of the cyber cafe looked up, almost in unison as Joe yelled and moved into full view. The mob scrambled to their feet as Joe backpedalled the way he had come from.
"Stay back!" he yelled, holding his hand to his neck to staunch the bleeding.
The crowd shambled towards him. Joe turned
and fled, knocking over the farmer in his haste. Good manners almost made him stop to help the old timer up, after pausing for a moment he shook his head in disgust and fled back towards Doña Ria's. It was not a long journey and he burst through the doors, getting everyone's attention as he did so.
"What happened?" Doña Ria, asked, coming forward to press a dishcloth to Joe's neck. One of the other men hastily grabbed a seat and sat Joe down, while the rest gathered around to hear what Joe would say.
"They went crazy! In the central park! They...had people down on the ground, and they were eating...eating Jose!" Joe blurted.
Looks of disbelief and shaking heads met his words. "Are you sure?" asked Severino Fuentes. Joe had eaten at the Fuentes household once; they had a fifteen year old daughter.
"Yes. They looked up at me after a drunk ran into me and tried to bite me. Then they came towards me and I ran..." At that moment the front door to the restaurant was pushed open.
"Mother of God!" screamed the Doña. "Get out of my house! Get out!"
One of the street vendors, missing most of her left forearm was staggering into the dining area, dribbling blood on the floor. Behind her more of the mob that had followed Joe pushed into the restaurant. The men lifted Joe up and pushed him back behind them towards the kitchen with the women, then turned to face the people filing into the dining room.
In Honduras the primary method of farming for small 'campesinos' was to slash and burn an area of the jungle to clear it for planting crops, and this was the heart of the slashing season. The men, mostly farmers and field hands, carried the tools of their trade with them on their way to work. In this case it meant that they had machetes, which came out surprisingly fast. As the old vendor approached, Severino lashed out sideways with his blade, loping off her good arm in one swift blow. The workers' machetes would still be sharp now, unlike the end of the day when constant use would have dulled the blades. The old woman didn't react at all to having her arm cut off, she just reached for Severino with her mutilated left arm. The man next to Fuentes landed a blow on top of her head, crushing it in. The old street vendor went down in a tumble, but she was replaced with two new people, both sporting wounds that should already have killed them.