“Ya, I have a few bottled waters and a shit-ton of beer in the mini fridge over there,” Seth said.
Gus opened it up and glanced over at Willy now laying sprawled out on the sofa. One foot rested on the floor, the other knee up, boot on the couch cushion, blood dripping down his ankle hidden out of sight, blood slowly starting to soak into the fabric.
“Ha, do you really have to ask?” Willy said as if to read Gus’ mind.
Gus smirked and reached in the fridge, pulled out a cold beer, and handed it to Willy.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about.” Willy grinned as the beer reached his hand.
“It’s going to be dark soon.” Gus was back at the window again, the horde of undead still growing below. “The boards and chairs downstairs aren’t going to hold those things out forever. There’s just too many of them.”
“You still haven’t told us why you need to shut down the station. What do you think that’s going to accomplish?” Seth said, sounding none too happy.
“Look, pal, we don’t make the orders, we just follow them. Our orders were to come in, shut you down, and call it a day.”
“So, is that what happened to the other stations and phone lines then? I take it that I’m right, because we still have power, which tells me the phones would be working as well,” Seth said pulling a beer from the mini fridge, eyeing George to see if he would like one as well.
George shook his head and went back to preoccupying Billy.
Willy lay eyes closed, drink emptied, cold can pressed against his forehead with one hand.
“Number one,” Gus stepped away from the window and stood in the middle of the room. His massive arm stretched out, and he shook his finger forcibly in Seth’s face. “I don’t appreciate the attitude, and second… well… there is no second.”
Pulling his hand away from Seth’s face, Gus calmed down. He pulled out his sidearm, released the magazine, examined it and slid it back in, then glanced down at Willy, who was looking worse by the minute. “Willy, are you feeling any better?”
The soldier’s eyes had closed. Willy appeared to be asleep.
Gus turned to the others. “This thing, whatever it is… all of those people coming back to life like that. It’s not everywhere. It’s just here in the south. That much I can tell you. The rest… well, the rest is classified, some of which even from me. All I know is we’ve been flying that bird back and forth from town to town for the last two days, and every place is the same. You are the first group of survivors we’ve come across. Most signals we have shut down were on auto pilot with distress signals.”
“Well isn’t that just some peachy news,” Seth said. “Once the cavalry does show up, how the hell are they supposed to even get to us, let alone us to them? We are fucking trapped in here.”
2
The door to the shelter latch swung open, Cynthia, Eric, and Kent instantly jumped back into the room looking at one another not really sure what the actual plan might be, weapons held tightly.
A rot festering body plummeted down into the room, and then another and another. As each fell, the crushing sound of bone and flesh slammed against the cement. The third one landed on its neck the entire twelve feet face first. Its neck made a teeth-grinding crunch as the zombie’s flimsy body met the solid floor below.
The three blood-soaked creatures slowly began rising to their feet, blood and other mess stuck to the ground from their bodies as they rose. The room filled with the stench of decay and mildew. Not a single one of the creatures was fully intact. Each one had been obliterated in some disturbing way. The one that had cracked its neck upon entry walked with its head cocked to one side.
The closest zombie now fully stood, lurched forward, both forearms missing. Biceps outstretched, bloodstains from its wounds, and bone peeking out from both limbs. The zombie’s eyes instantly grew wide with excitement. Several more of the undead fell into the hole.
“Shit!” Kent leaped forward, crowbar in hand. With a thrust, the metal punctured the zombie’s soft skin. Its chest caved in, giving way to the crowbar rupturing its heart. Kent furiously pulled the weapon from the creature’s sternum and took a step back. Thick blood splattered over the floor. The monster wasn’t even fazed. It kept coming toward them.
With not much room between them, the wall and the zombies, Cynthia started screaming. She dropped her makeshift club, the metal clanged against the cement floor, and then backed into the corner.
Eric remembered when Kent had rescued him. He came up from behind him and smashed that little zombie girl’s head in. Her brains and chunks of something else all over the street where she fell.
“The heads, take out their heads!” Eric yelled as he confidently darted toward the armless zombie in the lead. Several more continued to fall from above through the open latch, each one moaning as they slapped the pavement floor. The room was now crammed with bodies. There had to be ten or more of those things in the room with them.
Eric’s bedpost effectively met with the creature’s face as he leaned in with all his weight, thrusting the object deep into its skull. Blood and tissue shot out onto Eric’s arms, hands, and the floor. He aggressively yanked the metal post from the zombie, the dead thing now surely dead as it lay motionless with a gaping hole and blood dripping from what used to be its right eye.
Kent and Eric hesitated for a moment, both staring down at the dead creature on the floor. Eric had never killed anything before in his life, except for the one time that he accidentally ran over a cat. That, however, wasn’t really his fault and he knew it, because had that stupid animal not randomly darted back in his direction as he passed it by, it would have been fine. But instead, it practically committed kitty suicide and jumped right back in front of the oncoming motor vehicle, both wheels giving it a good once over. Eric still felt bad about that, at least a little.
“Look out!” Cynthia shouted from behind them as a tattered zombie, who clearly had previously worked for UPS, came down on Kent.
With arms stretched out, the creature grabbed hold of Kent by the shirt. Its germ-infested mouth swung open, teeth flared, Kent unable to shake free. The zombie’s brown shorts and shirt were covered in blood, grass stains, and something chunky. Its face was ghostly white, and its mouth was covered in blood. It almost made the thing look like a show clown covered in dried paint, who for some reason decided to eat all the paint.
Right as the creature’s teeth started to descend upon Kent’s tender, juicy flesh and muscle-filled arm, Eric’s weapon came down on its back with full force, knocking it away from them both.
As it staggered for a moment, Kent’s adrenaline caught up to him, and he instantly snapped. Gripping the blood-drenched crowbar, Kent fell upon the staggering creature, shouting relentlessly as he did so.
“You stupid UPS asshole! Fucking die already! Aaaahhhh…”
Kent’s weapon repeatedly met the zombie’s head as he shouted. The other zombies that had fallen into the shelter, with outstretched arms, made their way toward them, moaning.
Cynthia jumped up, grabbing her metal bedpost from the floor, following suit with the others.
With all three of them shouting and swinging, dull thuds and thunks, wet splatters, and bones cracking sounded in the underground room. Undead after undead fell to the floor covered in more blood than before.
With just about each reanimated corpse that fell to never again rise, another fell into the hole taking its place. The small room was beginning to get claustrophobic.
“There’s too many!” Cynthia shouted.
Almost completely cornered to one side of the room, the three would-be warriors clung tight to one another’s side, weapons drawn. A very large, overweight male zombie closed in on them, fifteen or more right behind it, others still were falling into the shelter from the open latch, one by one.
The dead man’s shirtless belly shook with each step toward them. The dead man was only wearing a dirty old pair of whitey-tighties and one half-loose sock.
He seemed to have nothing really wrong with him. No bite marks or blood. He was just pale and bruised on one side of the chest. Then he stumbled and slightly turned showing bite marks on his back, torn muscle and tissue exposing the backside of his ribs.
Behind him, the pantry shelf crashed to the floor. Several zombies fumbled over the shelf and its contents, pushing forward among the small crowd, trying like the rest to get at Eric, Kent, and Cynthia. Canned food and toilet paper now littered the floor.
With the overweight zombie almost on top of them, Cynthia screamed and took two steps forward, slamming her weapon into the beast. The zombie’s head shot back as its neck exploded. Blood rained out like a struck piñata full of children’s candy. Her metal rod lodged in its throat, extending out of the back of its neck right under the skull. The weight of the zombie overpowered her as it fell forward, teeth and eyes still fixed on her during its descent.
Trying to hold the putrid thing back, she stretched out her arms, thrusting hard in a forward motion still holding the lodged weapon, with a firm grip. As she screamed, eyes closed, landing back against the wall from the mass of dead flesh falling upon her, the creature dropped at her feet.
She opened her eyes, arms still outstretched before her. The weight of the zombie’s body was too much for its own skin. The zombie’s head was attached to the blunt object, body motionless on the floor before her. She screamed even louder.
The weapon was lodged between bits of the zombie’s spine. Its milky-white eyes and coffee-stained, blood-filled teeth still busy at work chomping in midair. She dropped the weapon, still attached to the amputated face.
To the ground it fell, and she vigorously kicked the bodiless head. It bounced toward the other end of the room, getting lost between the legs and feet of the other ghouls still walking toward them.
Eric and Seth continued fighting for their survival, delivering blow after blow to heads, puncturing eyes, mouths, and skulls.
The overweight body on its stomach now, revealing its wounds, was partially leaning against Cynthia’s leg. She bounced to one side giving a little room, quivering at the sight of the lifeless, headless body.
“This isn’t going to work. We aren’t going to make it,” Cynthia screamed hysterically, flailing her arms about aimlessly in a panic, standing next to the oversized corpse.
“She’s right, there’re too many of them. We have to do something.” Kent heaved out of breath in mid-swing, crowbar cracking a zombie’s skull wide open. A litter of bodies lay before them, but every second seemed like more were in the room than before.
“I got it! The generator!” Eric lunged forward with all of his might—knocking down several zombies and taking one down for good with a solid blow to the face from his broken bedpost. A zombie’s eye popped out as he retrieved the weapon.
“Get to the bathroom,” Eric shouted, completely surrounded by the undead making its way across the room toward the fallen supply of food.
“What are you doing?” Cynthia huffed as Kent pulled her by the shirt toward the bathroom.
Swinging wildly and pushing to keep the zombies off of him, Eric furiously kicked the PVC pipe from the ventilation system to the generator and pulled out his pocketknife. He stabbed both drums of gasoline next to the generator and jammed the knife into the generator’s fuel tank.
He turned and hastily made his way for the bathroom door, Kent and Cynthia already behind it. Totally surrounded by the undead, Eric forced his way through the crowd, pushing with everything he had to get to the door unscathed.
One zombie got a solid grip on Eric’s wrist and used the leverage to lunge forward. The monstrous jaws wide open fell upon Eric’s shoulder—biting down hard. Eric flinched but didn’t let it slow him down. With the creature still holding onto him, it came down for another bite. Eric turned and punched it square in the jaw, separating its jaw all together with his right hand. A few loose teeth glided through the air.
The zombie stumbled back releasing its grip, as Eric reached the door, shouting, “Open the fucking door!”
The door swung open, and without breaking stride, Eric fell into the cramped bathroom, slammed the door behind him. Instant pounding erupted from the other side.
“Are you out of you ever-loving mind?” Kent said, shoving him on his shoulder.
Eric instantly winced as a jolt of pain shot up his shoulder to his head.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Cynthia asked with a flustered tone. She stood in the bathtub to make room in the already cramped area.
The room was pitch black, the light off. It took Eric a moment to collect his thoughts. “We wait.”
“Wait, and for what exactly?” Cynthia again asked with the same flustered tone.
“Please tell me you have your lighter on you,” Eric said, standing next to Kent at the door.
A moment later, Eric felt something small and hard push on his arm. He took the lighter. Eric flipped back the lid and pulled down on the flint wheel with his thumb. The flint sparked and lit the wick. Shadows danced wildly around the three of them in the room, each one’s face looked menacingly evil in its golden glow, twice over reflecting in the bathroom mirror. They all stared at the flame as it danced about, sounds of the undead moaning and pounding before them, nowhere else to go, trapped.
With a very unsure look on his face, Eric smiled at Kent, and said, “It works in the movies… here goes nothing!”
He reached for the doorknob, one hand holding the lit Zippo.
“What worked in the movies?” Cynthia asked.
Eric quickly opened the door just a crack, it was slightly heavy to push open with the restricting mob pressed against it. Eric tossed the lighter out into the other room and slammed the door shut holding the handle tight, pulling back on the door with all his weight.
Nothing happened.
“What worked in the movies?” Cynthia shouted over the sounds of their oppressors trying to get it.
Kent said, “Would you just chill out for at least one—?”
BOOM… the fuel fumes from the generator caught, catching the two drums in a blaze. Instantly, the bathroom door blew from its hinges, sending Kent and Eric flying back into Cynthia. All three of them came crashing down into the tub, bathroom door on top of them. Eric still held the doorknob in his grip, the door no longer attached.
Zombies lay scattered about in the other room. Some of them had caught fire, and others fell to the floor with fewer limbs than they had previously. Arms and legs were tossed about among the strewn bodies. The room was filled with black smoke that bellowed out into the back yard from the open shelter latch.
After a moment, Eric and the others finally came to.
“Everyone okay?” Kent shouted.
“I’m okay,” Cynthia mouthed.
“Me too.” Eric nodded, realizing that if their ears were ringing half as bad as his, they too could hardly hear a thing.
The three of them shook it off, and after a moment, gathered themselves together, and made it out into the main living space of the shelter. It was a disaster. A thick black fog covered everything.
Stepping over bodies, the three hurriedly made their way across the room toward the door. A large ray of light beamed into the room from overhead.
Around them, zombies started to shuffle about. At the foot of the ladder, Cynthia made eye contact with a bodiless head, eyes still fixed on the group as they began to climb the ladder. Its chubby cheeks and punctured jugular bled out on the floor, her makeshift weapon still lodged in its neck. The beds, or what was left of them, were blazing behind them.
After climbing the ladder, the three stood in Tyler Wellington’s back yard filled with bodies covered in black ash and red gore. Behind them, smoke poured out from the underground shelter that had held them safe from the outside world up until now. It was a miracle they made it out alive. They could have easily been blown up, eaten, or choked to death from all the oxygen being removed from the shelter during the explosion.
&n
bsp; Eric thought of the door that lay on top of them in the tub. It had been their saving grace.
As they dusted themselves off and took in the surroundings, Kent slapped Eric on the shoulder again, looking happier than ever. “You have got to be—”
Eric winced and grabbed his shoulder, startling both Cynthia and Kent. He slowly removed his shirt and jacket.
“I got bit,” Eric said, a defeated intonation in his voice.
After examining the shoulder, Cynthia smiled. “Didn’t break the tissue.”
Eric was too shaken up to really want to take a good look at it. The skin wasn’t broken, sure. But it still hurt. It was bruised to hell and back, but the flesh hadn’t been torn. No blood. Feeling slightly overwhelmed in a good way, Eric put his shirt and jacket back on, and looked around at the yard.
They all did.
Zombies littered the ground around them as they stood next to the door, some now slowly starting to move. They must have been standing around the shelter opening when the generator blew, because their top halves were blackened. One zombie was on fire.
Several zombies lingered in the street closer to the front of the house, but didn’t pose any immediate threat. The rest of the yard was empty. Despite the lack of numbers before them, the grass was almost nonexistent. Footprints tracked the entire yard, turning most of the landscape into a mud path.
As they soaked in the events of the afternoon, they stood dusting themselves off, black dust puffing out around them as they patted themselves down. Eric pointed to the house connected to the back yard, gesturing they make in that direction.
As they made their way across the yard, spirits lifted and the sun shining, no one even took notice of the bloody cut on Eric’s right hand, discoloration already setting in on his knuckle. It was going to be dark soon.
3
The front yard had a few stragglers shuffling about in the grass and driveway. Quite a few more were in the streets. Scattered mud tracks led from the Wellington driveway out into the street heading in practically the same direction Kent and the others had intended on going. Kent wondered if the tracks were from the mass of zombies that had been in the back yard trying to get into the shelter. Whatever had gotten their attention, causing them to leave the yard, Kent was thankful.
The End Page 7