by J. Rudolph
"Time to go!" Joey yelled. His voice pulled me out of the clean up thought process. It helped. We ran out of the main store area and climbed into the bed of the truck through the opening. There were several zombies stumbling towards us. I heard Joey's gun fire with a loud pop. Trent pulled his gun and started firing as well. More kept coming at us.
"Give me the keys!" I yelled at Trent. He fished through his pocket with one hand while continuing to shoot with the other until he found them. I got behind the drivers seat and yelled for them to hang on. I had to get us out of there. I drove over the median on the street to get us on the road to home. I sped through the streets. When we pulled into the complex Steven was waiting at the gate. He pulled the chain and let us through. We were so grateful that we got in that once we parked we sat there for a moment.
I started laughing. Trent looked at me like I lost my mind. "Those zombies looked at us like we were candy. Go figure it was while we were grabbing the candy that they showed up."
Trent shook his head at me. "We need to get this inside" he said.
It was amazing to look over all of our treasures once we put it all away. The cupboards of the medical unit were filled. We were covered for anything we may need a medication for. I went up to our house to find my medical books to keep down there in case I needed to reference things.
Eric Returns
It was after I put away all the meds that I realized I hadn't heard how the food run went. I wandered out to the common area to talk with Mercedes who was sitting on the steps leading to her unit.
"Hey Ms. Mercedes. How did the boys fair on the food run?" I asked.
"They haven't gotten back yet. See what happens when you send men folk to shop for the groceries?" She chuckled a bit but the look in her eyes said that she was more than a little worried. The grocery was just a mile or so down the road from the pharmacy. It should have been an easy grab and go. They understood our "We're Not Shopping" policy on runs. Daniel had even commented on the wisdom of doing this when we came back from our sporting goods run, so where were they? They know it is dangerous out there. My stomach lurched. The grocery is down the road from the pharmacy, in the direction that the zombies came from when we were out.
"Excuse me, Ms. Mercedes." I said as I turned to find Joey. I ran over to his apartment and banged on the door. When he opened his door I saw his gun in his hand.
"Where's the hit coming from?" He questioned, ready to go into battle mode.
"Huh? Oh, no, it's nothing like that, but we have a problem. The grocery team isn't back yet. They went to the store just down the road from the pharmacy. They should be here by now. They aren't. Joey, that's the direction that the zombies from the pharmacy were coming from."
"Oh, shit." Those two words summed up everything I thought.
"Do we send a rescue team?"
"No. No team. I'm going to go get them myself. I should never had let them go on their own." I didn't like the idea that he was going to put himself into a situation where he wouldn't have someone watching his back, and I told him so.
"I'm not going to put even more people at risk, Cali. I'm going to do this and get them back." He grabbed the keys to his old jeep and walked out the door past me.
We walked down the stairs together. I argued that this was a bad idea. He ignored me.
As we got to the parking lot we heard the sound of squealing tires come from the street as a car took a tight turn into the drive. I heard the sound of a car horn honking repeatedly. Several of us ran to where the commotion was coming from. It was Daniel behind the wheel of Eric's SUV. Tyreese was looking behind him at something in the back seat.
"Move the gate now!" Daniel screamed. Trent and Joey opened the gate after Steven got the lock off. They squealed into the complex. Daniel jumped out of the truck and opened the passenger door. "I need help getting him out!"
Trent ran to the open door to help. They pulled Eric out of the back seat. He was hurt, badly.
"What happened?" I yelled.
"We got attacked. We were loading the groceries and one of them came up on us. He grabbed Eric. There were so many of them. He's hurt. I don't know if he got bit or what. We had a hell of a time getting out." Tyreese explained.
"Fix him, Cali!" Daniel cried.
We took Eric over to the medical unit and laid him on the dining table that was in there so I could look him over. The unit had almost every adult in there. Martha stood by him with her hand on his arm.
"Its OK my sweet boy. It's OK. Mummy is here with you." Admittedly I thought that was kind of odd that she was speaking to him like I would speak to Drew. Eric was 42 for goodness sake. I wondered if my mind went on this route to distract me from what was going on.
I cut his shirt off his chest to try to figure out where all the blood was coming from. As I peeled the once gray shirt off of him, a collective gasp sounded out. Everyone in the room saw a clear bite mark across his ribs on his right side. Scrapes that matched up with fingernails went across his left. Blood poured out of the bite and scratches. He whimpered in pain.
I worried that he was infected. I didn't know what to say. I poured betadine into the wounds and covered them. I took his vital signs. His blood pressure was low and he was running a fever.
"I don't know what to say guys." I said to the group that had collected. "He was bitten. The CDC said that that was how you got this. I cleaned out the wound but I don't know what else to do."
Martha made a choking cry sound. Mercedes put her arm around Martha as she began to sob.
"That's my boy. He can't be sick. He's my boy."
"I'll keep an eye on him Martha. I'm going to give him some of the anti-viral medication I got and we can hope that it works. That was what the CDC was trying before we lost communication with the outside world."
An hour later when I checked on his fever I noticed it went up significantly. "105.3" I said to no one in particular. "Damn. The meds aren't working." Martha stayed at his side. She looked up at me with a silent plea to just fix him already. I wished to all heck that I could.
15 minutes after I had taken his vitals, Eric had a seizure. When it stopped I went to assess him again. He was not breathing. His heart was not beating.
"He's gone Martha." I said softly.
"Is, is, is he going to turn into one of them?" she asked.
"I think so. This is what they said happens" I replied, feeling the weight of those words press down on everything in the room.
Joey came up to me. "How do we handle the next part?" he whispered.
"I don't know. Do we wait for him to turn or do we do this now?" I whispered back.
"Please wait." Martha said. She sounded like she was in a far off place. I hadn't thought she could hear our whispers, but clearly she did. "Please let me be with him for as long as I can be. Please. He has always been here with me. He never did leave home. He knew I needed him all that time and he never left. I don't want him to be shot unless he turns into one of them. He's my boy. Please don't unless he turns into one of them. Please."
Joey nodded his head. He understood.
Tyreese left the unit, his face wet. Trent followed him, his own eyes were starting to fill. Men. They never wanted to show their vulnerability.
Everyone else came up to Eric, one at a time, to say goodbye, then left the unit. Joey and I stayed back to give Martha some time to say goodbye however she needed to without an audience. I'd rather not have a bunch of people around if it were me.
About 30 minutes after Eric died I heard a sound come from the table. It was a low guttural sound. He stirred. I grabbed Martha and pulled her away from Eric and forced her to go outside with me. Right as we cleared the door I heard a single shot fire from inside followed by a thud against the table.
Martha fell to the ground. She sobbed so hard that she was hyperventilating. I called Trisha over.
"Trisha, take Ms. Martha to her apartment and get her in bed. I'm going to get some meds for her." I helped Martha to her feet an
d Trisha took her. Martha leaned heavily on Trisha. I truly had no idea she could ever be that human. I had always seen Martha as a bit of an ogre to be completely blunt. She kept this hard exterior on all the time so to see her like this was heartbreaking.
I went inside to get some Ativan for Martha. As I pulled it up in a syringe, I looked over at Joey. He looked terrible. It was tearing him up to be that guy who had to deliver the bullet to one of our own.
"I shouldn't have let them go on the run" he said quietly. "I should have made them wait until our team came back then gone with them myself. Maybe Eric would be alive if I had."
"No one could have known, Joey. No one could have seen this."
"I should have. We are in a war zone right now and I'm the one trained to deal with war zones. I doubt anyone here has even been in one. We should have researched this. I should have been there to look over them. I've been trained."
Aftermath Of The Bite
When the sound of that single shot cracked through the complex everyone knew what they needed. They needed the warm embrace of their loved ones. The sense of safety was gone. The sense of being alive and staying that way felt threatened.
I went upstairs to be with Martha and give her some meds that will help her sleep though the night. I held my tongue and didn't say what I had been trained to say. The platitudes of this will feel better in the morning or the ever popular he is in a better place were cold and hollow. I didn't say these things because she has lost her son and there are no cheery platitudes that would ever take away that sort of hurt. I slid the needle into her arm and pressed down on the plunger hoping it would help some. As it turned out, the injection worked well. She fell into a quiet sleep quickly. I walked away quietly. I couldn't bear the thought of waking her accidentally to start the hurt all over.
When I came down I noticed that people were carrying arm loads of canned and boxed foods. There were so many different things, I had no clue that they had gotten the stuff in the car when the hit came. I had imagined it in the parking lot not here. I was in shock. I was sure that going hungry was our punishment for sending a team out that was miserably unprepared.
"Pretty cool" said Tyreese. "He didn't die for nothing. He gave his life trying to scramble to get this in the car. That man was a hero."
Daniel and Trent looked like they had a heavy heart. "Build team finished a coffin." said Trent. "We also moved the body out of the medical unit to an empty one facing the garden."
Tanya came over and said "Garden team has started digging a hole. Will be deep enough in the morning."
DaWayne gruffly said in his best imitation of how someone speaks when they don't want to be caught crying "But those TV folks say you gotta burn the bodies. We burned that pile last night that came."
"Yeah that's what they said DaWayne. I can't do it. If someone in our family dies, and you are all my family now, we will bury them. If its one of those zombie things let 'em burn. I can't stand the idea of one of ours being treated like garbage." I think I was abundantly clear.
I needed to get to Drew and give him a hug. I needed to know and feel that my son was safe. Logically I knew that he was fine. Logically I knew that he was safe. For me, in that moment though, logical thinking had left the building as soon as Eric reanimated. I left the group that had gathered as they made plans for the funeral at dawn and went to the school unit where the kids were playing, hopefully being kept safely unaware of all that had just happened. They heard the gunshot but I hoped they all assumed that there was a zombie on the other side of the wall. When I opened up the door and stepped in, Drew jumped to his feet and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. Tears started to pour out of my eyes as I held him to me.
"Let's go home, kiddo." I said to him, with the sound of being very tired not disguised well at all. "Hey Jody?" I called, "I'm taking Drew home. We'll see you tomorrow."
We were joined by Trent. We went up our stairs, locked the doors, and just stayed with one another.
We were grateful that the electricity still worked as we sat around watching DVD's together and Trent was able to throw a frozen pizza in the oven. It felt like life was almost normal for a bit. It was a moment of freedom from the zombie apocalypse. In that moment people weren't dying. In that moment monsters were not coming. We were a family having an evening in. I wished to all high heaven that this could last forever, that somehow I could bottle this moment where I could hold my son close and put my head in Trent's lap and use it any time I needed it.
When darkness fell outside we turned in for the night. We all piled into the king sized bed together not wanting to be apart from the family. It didn't take long to fall asleep, but I woke up several times in the night. My dreams were filled with zombies who wore the faces of people I knew.
The Funeral and the Fight
When we woke the next day, no one had a lot to say. We went through our morning routine of getting cleaned up and breakfast then went over to the garden area to see if they needed any help setting up the spot where we were were going to bury Eric. We decided against pulling chairs out for everyone, though Tanya suggested we get one for Martha. We figured that it wouldn't be a very long service.
The funeral was a quiet affair. It began midday and Mercedes led the service. She had lovely words to say. I watched Martha sitting silently. She did not cry. She did not move. It was clear that her world was over. I tried to wrap my brain around her loss. I couldn't. I kept my arm around Drew not wanting to ever let him go. As the funeral came to a close the alarm bell rang out loudly in the previous silence.
Trent leaned over to me and asked "Is this a part of the plan in the funeral, a send off?"
I looked at the faces of everyone and they all had the puzzled look.
"I don't think so." I whispered back.
Joey got up to investigate. I saw him run off to the watch tower where DaWayne was at. He came running back and said "It's go time.” He sighed and added, under his breath, “Damned zombies, interrupting stuff."
"Jody, take the kids to your place and lock up!" Trent yelled. She was up and gathering the kids in a flash.
I had taken to carrying my gun with me. It was still weird that I became a gun carrying girl. I was one of those girls that just didn't see the point in having a gun. I see the point now. Heck, I wished that we had some AK-47's when in the world before zombies existed I had adamantly felt that there was no purpose to them.
We ran to the main gate since that was where DaWayne was pointing at.
We should have gotten there sooner.
About 40 zombies were pressing against the gate. The whole thing was shaking against the weight of them trying to push through the gate. They managed to push hard enough that the gate had jumped the track. With each push they moved the gate just a hair more. The bicycle chain was holding together but the other side was not secured by anything other than the chain that ran the gate motor. There was a lot of play in that chain. After one more push the gate moved just enough to start letting them though one at a time. The only positive thing about this was we were able to pick them off as they came through. Joey fired at any that came to the opening. Trent was firing at the ones near the opening. Daniel and I were shooting random ones.
Each time a bullet struck them there was a horrible smell of rotting meat. Black congealed fluid poured from their bodies as they lay on the sidewalk missing a large portion of their head. The smell alone made me want to vomit. Adding in the visual of bodies that had been torn into and partly eaten, arms missing from being ripped off, missing strips of face and now, in a pile outside the gate, missing a great deal of the brain, sort of sealed the deal. I turned around and puked. I was not alone, Daniel had lost the content of his stomach as well. Maybe it was the full lighting that made things seem more graphic. Maybe it was that this time we weren't filled with the excitement of our first ever zombie hit. This time it was just gross.
"Aren't we a pair?" I said with a chuckle.
"What are we going to do with
all of them?" Daniel asked.
"I think that we should drag them into the middle of the street and torch them." Joey said.
I loved that idea. It felt like we would be making a statement to the zombies that said if you mess with us this is what will happen. I knew that the zombies didn't care. I knew they weren't connected emotionally to one another. It didn't matter. It felt like a statement to me. I went to grab some thick gloves for everyone. When I came back we went to work. The smell was terrible. I had already vomited so nothing came up when my gag reflex was triggered as we kept moving the bodies. On the third body a flicker of recognition hit. "Trent? Isn't this one the one who slammed up against the glass at the pharmacy last night?"
Trent let go of the body he was moving to take a look. "Hey Joey! Check this out! Look at him in the face. What do you see?"
Joey studied the zombie. “Well, I'll be damned. It has to be the same one from the pharmacy. That is frigging weird.” The recognition of this zombie stuck a chord of fear in me. Could he have followed us?
"Are you kidding me?" Daniel dropped the body he started moving, "This is one of the ones that hit us at the grocery."
"Do you think this is a fluke?" Trent asked.
"No." Joey replied. "They are finding us. This is what happened after the sporting goods store. It looks like once they find fresh meat they can find us."
"But how?" Daniel wondered out loud.
"Maybe smell? I haven't got a clue but it seems pretty clear to me that they are indeed finding us." Joey said with a pondering look on his face. "If we can figure that out then maybe we can prevent them from following us in the future."
Barriers