by Weeks, TJ
Sandra stacked the food in her car carefully and drove to the Kiser’s. Sandra took one pan with her and lightly knocked on the door.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Kiser opened the door together. “Well, look at you up and
answering doors!” Sandra joked with Mr. Kiser.
He smiled and opened the door further to invite her in. Sandra explained to them both what she had done and made two more trips to and from the car. She put all of the covered dishes into the refrigerator.
“Miss Sandra, you did not have to do this. I am good enough to cook for us and there is only us two.” Mr. Kiser advised her.
“You need to take time to rest and I love to cook. So it worked out for us both.” Sandra told him handing him a pie.
Both of them were thankful and asked if she would like to stay for some of the food she had made. Sandra declined, but promised to come stay for dinner soon. Sandra hugged them both and left out to start making her way home. As she began to back out, she looked both ways and lightly pressed the gas pedal. She turned her wheel and put the car in drive. She pulled forward and
rounded the first corner and had to slam on her brakes. A woman stood in the middle of the street. Her long white coat was dirty and covered in blood. She looked as though she had been in the ER all day and didn’t go change before coming home. Sandra looked a little closer as the woman took a step forward and saw that it was one of the doctor’s she used to work with from her emergency room days. Sandra opened her door and stepped out.
“Doctor?” She questioned. The doctor looked at her, but refused to answer. “Doctor!” She said again to gain her attention.
The doctor finally looked her way and stumbled as though she was going to fall. Sandra ran to her and caught her just before she hit the ground and stood her upright. The doctor’s face was not right. The color appeared to have faded and the blood on her coat was dried. Her hands were curled up like they had been stuck that way.
The doctor raised her eyes to Sandra’s. They were filmed over with a glaze. Sandra let the woman go and backed away.
“Doctor?!?” She questioned again slowly backing away. The doctor began to move toward her and as Sandra reached her car and had backed around her open driver’s door, the doctor lunged and her chin hit the top of her door. Her jaw fell to the ground and she backed up and lunged again and face planted once more into the door, breaking her teeth from her head.
Sandra jumped into her car and grabbed for the door. She pulled it closed just as the woman, who was apparently not who she thought it was, tried to grasp the top where her blood had splattered from the break of her jawbone. Sandra closed the door hard and fast. The woman stood outside of her car and rammed the window with her face until she was unrecognizable. Her cheeks were both gushing with liquid that looked like lemon lime Gatorade. Her deformed hands would slam onto the window and then she would ram it again with her face. Sandra put the car in drive and drove forward. She was only able to go a few feet before a man wearing a pair of tan cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt rolled onto her hood and slammed into her windshield. Sandra put the car in reverse and backed up trying to get the man off of her hood. The man rolled off and fell hard to the ground. Sandra stopped to watch him. He rose to his feet and limped back towards her car. Sandra put the car back in drive and drove around the stumbling man.
She stopped once she caught a glimpse of him in her rearview. He had watched the car pass by him and began walking her way. She waited for him to get close to be able to view him through her ‘objects appear closer than they are’ side mirror. He was dirty and his face was so drawn up, he looked as though he had been
dehydrated for days. But Sandra knew there was something more. As he reached out to touch her trunk, she sped off without looking forward, her car ran over something. She stopped quickly. She looked back to see a child lying on the ground. She
watched the child lie still for a
moment and then begin wiggling as it tried to rid itself of the pain and injuries of being ran over. Sandra backed up and turned her car so that her window was next to the injured child. The little girl had long blonde hair that was hung down her back, she raised her head and locked eyes with Sandra. Her face was bloody and her hair strung over her face, her hands looked as though she had been
digging in trash barrels full of guts. Her clothes were covered in dirt and she was barefoot. Sandra placed her hand on the handle of the door to open it, she wanted to help the little girl, but was hesitant.
Her gut feeling said just leave, her head told her that she is supposed to help the injured. But, what was this little girl? Sandra questioned. She could hear the growl from the little girl through the closed car window. The little girl stared intently at
Sandra. She still had not pushed her door open to help her, she sat quietly and watched the little girl wiggle across the asphalt. Sandra let go of the handle and put both hands back on the steering wheel. She closed her eyes, knowing that it was wrong, she drove away anyway. She stopped at the end of the block and turned to see the little girl on her feet. She was limping, but walking nonetheless.
“How in the hell?” Sandra asked herself out loud. She jumped when a loud bang sounded on the side of her car. A man stood at her window staring at her. He reached his arm out and hit the window with the nub that was left at the end of his forearm. Both of his hands were gone, he wore an orange jumpsuit and orange slider shoes. His nubs were dried with blood and Sandra realized he was at one time a handcuffed man from the jail. She peered up to the man’s face and the skin was peeled from one side of his face.
“Bill!!” Sandra said to herself. Sandra sat as still as she could while he tried to get through the window to her. He finally turned away and headed toward someone that was running down the street. The woman was screaming as she ran and kept looking over her shoulder behind her. Sandra watched as another woman took large hurried steps after her. Bill started towards the
screaming woman. The woman stumbled as she tripped over a little girl that was walking toward her. She fell to the ground and the little girl fell with her. Sandra watched the small child bite into her shoulder. The woman and Bill both trying to catch up with her, did as she laid their screaming in agony. They both bent down and began taking their own chunks of her flesh into their mouths.
“Oh shit!” Sandra stated. “No way!” Sandra pulled off and headed in the opposite direction of the flesh eaters. She had to make it to her daughter and grandchildren. This was it, this was what the world had been waiting for. Sandra always thought that the zombie apocalypse would be
something that was only talked and written about. Never did she think that it would actually become reality. Yet, here she was, in the middle of three people eating a woman in the middle of the road.
She drove the few miles out of town to her daughter’s house. She pulled into the driveway and pushed open her door. She hurried to the door and burst inside.
“LIZA!” She hollered. Sandra ran through the house into each room hollering for them. Tears streamed down her face with no response. She ran out the side door into the one car garage. Liza’s car sat inside. Sandra knew that they had to be there.
She grabbed a machete looking knife that leaned against the back wall to carry with her from now on. She suddenly heard movement inside the car, she turned quickly to see a small hand reach on top of the dashboard. Sandra moved around to the side of the vehicle and peered inside. Down in the floorboard was her small grandson. Sandra could feel her heart about to beat out of her chest. She reached for the door handle when her grandson peered up at her. His eyes were glazed over and his skin had already turned. She stepped back and released the handle. She side stepped around the car looking for her
daughter and granddaughter. Liza sat up from the backseat and shot her head in her mother’s direction. Blood covered her face and her
granddaughter laid bloodied in the seat held down by her own mother’s hands. Sandra backed out of the garage and went int
o the house. She closed the garage door and locked it. Sandra sat down on the couch in the living room and put her head down between her knees. She could not catch her breath. She began to feel dizzy from hyperventilating. She slowed her breathing, took huge breaths in through her nose and blew out through her mouth. Sandra sat up after a few breaths and gathered herself. She stood up and processed the whole situation; her children and grandchildren were already turned. The world was all beginning to turn, if they were not already. Sandra gripped the knife and walked to the door she had left open. She closed the door behind her and started her way back to her car. She rounded the corner of the house and a man stood at the hood of her car. He looked lost as he looked around and walked in circles in the driveway.
Sandra tried to walk softly around the back of her car to get in. She rounded the trunk and the man turned towards her. He began walking her way and stumbled a bit as he reached the back door of the car. Sandra raised the huge knife and split the man’s skull in two. He fell to the ground with it embedded into his head. Sandra reached for the handle and pulled as hard as she could. She knew that losing her only weapon was not an option. She had to get out of there and find somewhere safe.
She stepped over the man and scanned the area before opening her car door. There were no other
zombies in sight and she got in and set the oversized knife on the
passenger seat. She backed out of the drive and pulled back onto the street. She put the car in drive and realized she had nowhere to go. Her
neighborhood had been taken over.
Mr. and Mrs. Kiser crossed her mind and she hoped that they had locked themselves inside their house and were safe, but Sandra knew that if she went back that she would be attacked. She decided the best thing would be to get out of town and see if the rest of the world had been
infected.
Sandra drove down the road directionless. She drove slowly up and down the residential streets of nearby neighborhoods. Zombies would line the streets in some areas and a few stumbled through yards on others. A few laid with their heads smashed in on other streets and some were like ghosts towns.
Sandra would stop and wait for the street to clear of them if they were in her way. Most of the time, they would come bang on her car and once they were distracted by something or someone else, they would move on, which gave Sandra the chance to move on. She refused to stop for anyone in case they had been infected, but did not want to kill them unless they personally threatened her life. She knew the hospital was not
somewhere she could go since she had already seen one of the doctors that had turned.
Sandra turned on the small
highway just outside of the
neighborhood she had been trolling around. She drove slowly as she came upon a horde of them covering the two lane asphalt road. Her car hit a few of them and she gassed it as they rolled underneath to make it over them.
Sandra could see the end of the massive group as her car sputtered to a stop.
“NO!” She hollered. A man stopped and peered inside the car and bent down to get a better view of her and then as some of the others came head on into the window to try and get a taste of her. Sandra didn’t panic, since the others did not have the strength to break it when they had ran head on into it several times. She watched the man as he did it over and over and tried start the car to pull forward some to get away from him; instead the noise of the car turning over made two more take notice of her inside. One of them bent as the other had but on the passenger side and began banging his head on the window as well. The last one was a small framed woman and she crawled onto the hood slamming her hands to the top of the windshield and sliding them down to the bottom.
She tried to start the car again and it only turned over and then stopped and began to make just a clicking sound just as her windshield cracked down the center. She grabbed the knife next to her while the woman slammed her hands against the windshield again. The crack became bigger with every hit of her hands. She growled like she knew that she was making headway to Sandra.
Sandra could not open either of her doors. There was no escape from her own car. She watched the windshield crack from top to bottom and then from side to side and then spider in all directions. It had been broken so bad now that she could no longer see the woman that had created the mess of her windshield.
Sandra was at a loss. She glanced in her rearview mirror to see more heading her way. She had to get out. She flung open her door and hit the man just as he came forward, he fell backward and Sandra came out ready to fight them all. She stabbed the man that had fallen and raised the knife back up and stabbed the woman on her hood in the back of the head. She pulled out the machete and ran to the other side. She stabbed the other one that was still slamming his head into her side window in the temple. She swung the knife back up and hit him again in the head with a slice to the top of his skull even though he had already fallen and appeared dead.
Breathless and tired of the whole situation, the others were gaining on her, she stood back up from pulling the knife out of the last one’s head, and walked at a fast pace down the road. She quickly realized that they were starting to come from all
directions. She started running.
Two more came up from the side of the road, Sandra swung the machete with bad aim, meaning to hit him in the side of the head, she hit him in the neck instead and sliced his neck. His head fell from his shoulders, the other was right behind him. Sandra turned the blade toward him and swung again with such force that she almost fell, she caught her balance and continued running as fast as she could. A group of small children came in front of her as they approached from the side of the road and started heading her way. Sandra knew that she was going to come across more of them besides the one she had run over, but was hoping that she
wouldn’t. She kept running towards them, praying that she would make it through the little zombies without being bitten. She started swinging low blows with the machete before she even got to the creepy kids that were waddling to her. She took a few out right away and pushed others away with her other hand. She swung the machete back to the other way and took out a few more. Wishing the knife was a little longer, she brought it up over her head and lunged it into one that had gotten too close.
Sandra had made it through without getting bit by the little creepers. She ran as fast as she could down the road. She looked back to see that she was getting ahead a bit and slowed to a jog. She scanned her surroundings, realizing that she was near the school that she drove to everyday to pick up her grandchildren. Being the closest location, she decided that she needed to make her way there.
Then she saw it, smoke was
coming from the factory next to the school. She hurried her pace back to a sprint to gain some more space between her and the horde that was still coming her way.
Finally, she was far enough ahead that she was able to slow her pace to a walk. She was tired, hot, thirsty and out of breath. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on. But she needed to get to this factory, there had to be people there if smoke was coming out. She had a few more hills to get over before she would get to it so she ran down each hill and walked up the next hill.
When she reached the fence, she didn’t dare holler and attract more of the zombies to her.
She pulled back the gate and squeezed through and quietly closed it back the way it was. She took a few steps and looked around as a mass of people were running towards the back of the school. She was excited to see actual people that were not staggering around. She fell into the crowd the best she could without being noticed and ran with them. They all piled up at a door and entered quickly and orderly, so Sandra fell in line with them. She made her way to a back corner of the small compact bunker the others had led her to and sat on the floor taking in big breaths. Bottles of water were being passed around and Sandra gladly took one, gulping it down as soon as it hit her hands afraid that someone would notice that she didn’t belo
ng there and kick her out of the safety these people had found. She gripped onto her knife in case that happened. Her breathing had finally slowed and she was at least somewhat hydrated before everyone else began settling in and making themselves comfortable. She listened to the conversations about how everyone would stay in there until the others got back. Sandra didn’t know who ‘the others’ were, but she was glad they had not noticed her and was hoping that no one did. She drew her knees to her chests, rested her head and closed her eyes until the door to the building opened suddenly. Sandra shot up and watched as hugs were given all around.
A bearded man hugged his family and quickly gave instructions to everyone. They all did as they were told. Sandra followed suit, hoping that she could help and they would let her stay. She followed everyone and waited. A horde was led out of the school. Others were fighting them as they exited and took a slew of them out before one came at her. Sandra took her stance waiting. She grabbed a small one and stabbed him in the head until he fell but kept stabbing him while she stood over him, until she heard a voice behind her. Blood covered her face and hands from the overkill. She was so angry that this was the situation she was in, she took it out on this guy that had no control over who he had become.
“Whoa, I think you’ve got it!” She heard the man’s voice that had given instruction earlier. “You okay?
Sandra shook her head at the heavily bearded man while wiping the blood from her face. He offered for her to take a seat.
Sandra took that as she would get to stay and sat with a woman on a nearby bench. She was safe, and hoped that she would be able to join this group that seemed to have it all under control. They worked together to save each other.
Sandra didn’t think that she could be in a better group.
SHIANNE BURGESS
SHE ROLLED out of bed and