by Josh Hilden
Kyle stared at her neck. Someone had wrapped a shirt around it but Kyle was sickened to see a deep red patch of crimson spreading across the makeshift bandage.
“What the fuck happened to her?” He asked Melanie Bailey, the cashier supervisor, who was following the little group and constantly looking back at the big glass windows in the front of the store. She didn’t answer him so he put a hand on her shoulder and said “Mel, what the hell happened to Jackie?”
She didn’t say anything, she just gestured toward the front of the store.
Curiosity overrode his concern and Kyle turned around and sprinted for the front end. Just as he arrived he saw Carlos opening the side door in the front vestibule and heading outside as one of the other people, Ben Millett, closed it behind him. Kyle walked right up to Ben and again asked the question.
“What the fuck happened to Jackie?” this time he was rewarded with an honest to god answer. Benny never ignored him.
“She was getting out of her car and some dude attacked her. The guy grabbed her and started biting her. She pushed him away and ran for the doors screaming her goddamn head off. The guy got back up from where she knocked him down and started following her. Christ, Kyle, he looked like someone had ripped his throat out, but he was stumbling toward the store. I saw it man, it was fucking awful.” Ben delivered the whole description in a dreamy tone, and Kyle thought that he had to be in shock. At least that was what shock always looked like in the movies. He had never seen it on Benny before and that, more than seeing Jackie hurt, scared him. Benny was supposed to be the tough one.
“So is that why Mike locked up the store, to keep this guy out?” It was the only way he could rationalize shutting the store and lowering the slated security shutters.
“Yep,” Benny was still not really there.
“Then why the hell did Carlos get the crowbar and go outside?” This was all starting to sound really stupid in Kyle’s opinion.
“When the sheep started leaving,” Benny had gotten into trouble more than once for referring to the customers as sheep, “the dude started following them. He was real slow, like he was stoned. So Carlos decided to go show everyone how big his cock was by beating the shit out of the guy. Course he needs the crowbar to do it.” Benny ginned as he said that. Carlos Boyd was not one of his favorite people either.
They watched through the windows as Carlos approached the guy, pointing the crowbar and yelling. The guy turned toward Carlos and began to stumble toward him. Kyle had to give it to Carlos the asshole was not backing down. Kyle had never doubted Carlos’s bravery. All that stuff about bullies being cowards was bullshit in Kyle’s opinion. He just doubted Carlos’s intelligence. Although they could not hear what he was saying, it was pretty obvious that he was verbally laying into the guy.
The guy got within arm’s reach of Carlos, completely ignoring the crowbar and it’s more than implied threat, and lunged. It was the last thing Carlos had expected the guy to do. He just stood there like a statue and let the guy bite him on the arm. Carlos screamed in pain and they all heard that. Carlos jerked his arm away from the guy with horrible results. Kyle could hear someone throwing up at the sight of the flesh tearing away from Carlos’s arm and the mini shower of blood the accompanied it.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” Mike asked from behind him. Kyle hadn’t been aware that Mike had returned from the back of the store.
Benny spoke up. “That psycho just bit Carlos. I wonder what he’ll … oh.” Benny didn’t have time to finish his question before Carlos started beating his attacker about the head and shoulders with the crowbar.
“Jesus Christ.” Mike whispered. He dashed over to his office and went inside. He came out a few seconds later with a grey metal box. During the time he had been gone, Carlos had driven his attacker to his knees and was now caving in his skull with the ever present crowbar. Mike opened the box and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol and box of bullets.
“What the hell, Boss?” Kyle asked. The idea that Mike not only owned gun, but kept it at the store had never crossed his mind.
“It’s mine. If the big wigs knew I had it I’d be in a ton of shit.” He looked at Benny and Kyle pointedly.
“Had what?” they both said almost in unison.
Mike nodded and walked to the side door. “Kyle, you close this behind me and when we come back you open it back up understand?”
Kyle nodded again and Mike opened the door and stepped out. In the brief interval that the door was open he could hear Carlos screaming at his attacker. He could also hear what sounded like far off moans, sirens, and gunshots. Then he slammed the door shut and latched it.
They were fascinated as they watched Mike approach Carlos and tell him to stop. It took three attempts but finally Carlos quit hitting the guy with the crowbar. Even from here they could tell that his head was nothing more than a pile of mush. They were beginning to walk back to the store when two more people approached. They also seemed to be either drunk of stoned, but both also looked to be severely injured with brown red stains on their clothing.
Carlos freaked out and started running back toward the doors. Mike held his ground and pointed the gun directly at the closer of the two people. The man, at least it looked like a man to Kyle, ignored the gun and kept walking. Mike fired a warning shot over the man’s head but neither of the shambling figures reacted to the noise.
Carlos reached the door and started pounding on the heavy shatter resistant glass. Kyle ignored him. He was enthralled by the bizarre three man dance that was taking place in the parking lot. Benny moved past Kyle and opened the door for Carlos who darted in and then slammed the sliding door shut reengaging the lock.
“Man, what about Mike?” Benny asked as he moved toward the door evidently planning to unlock it.
Carlos dropped the crowbar to the floor, grabbed a towel of the customer service counter to staunch the blood flowing from his forearm, and turned to look at Mike in the Parking Lot. “When he comes back you let him in, but do not fucking unlock that door for any other reason. Those fuckers are crazy.”
Benny nodded and returned to his spot next to Kyle and resumed his observations.
The man and Mike were less than fifteen feet apart with the man steadily closing the gap. Mike leveled the pistol at the man’s chest and was screaming for him to stop. Then there was a muzzle flash and the 9mm bullet impacted the man’s chest. It exited from his back taking a significant amount of flesh with it.
Other than a slight stagger, the man wasn’t even slowed down.
The normally calm and cool Mike Haehl lost it. He started shooting wildly into the man who ignored every hit like a drop of rain. Then on the seventh shot a round went high and smashed through the top of his skull. The man dropped to the ground six feet in front of Mike.
Mike’s victory was short lived. As he stood over the fallen body and delivered two more shots into the man’s head the second person, clearly identifiable as a woman who seemed to be missing part of her left hand, closed with him.
He never even saw her as she got within kissing distance of his back. She threw her arms around him in a clumsy fashion and sank her teeth into the back of his neck. He screamed and tried to throw her off but she was locked tight. Blood poured to the ground and after several frantic seconds of fighting Mike collapsed and convulsed on the asphalt as she fed on him, ripping strips of flesh from his light frame with sick ease.
This time Kyle was the one who threw up.
4
The Breakroom
The break room was in a panic following the death of their boss. Carlos retrieved the crow bar from the floor before the other two could even think about it. They fled to the break room where the rest of the employees, including the now unconscious Jackie, had congregated.
“What happened?”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Is Mike really dead?”
“What’s wrong with these people?”
“How the
hell could you guys leave him out there?”
They were bombarded by these and a dozen other questions after they had entered the room and Benny had locked the door. Kyle wasn’t sure what to say. Hell he wasn’t even sure what the fuck he had just seen. That guy had taken seven rounds before Mike had been able to put him down and that was not physically possible.
“Hey I got a signal.” Melanie Bailey said from the other side of the room. She had been adjusting the cheap rabbit ears of the break room television. The store personnel had been petitioning for cable to be installed for years, but the best that the management would do was a digital converter and set of rabbit ears. There was still a bit of static but the picture was clear enough. It was Channel 2 the Dayton NBC affiliate, and the people on the screen were some of the local news anchors. They were speaking and below them was a banner reading:
THREAT LEVEL BLACK … SEAK IMMEDIATE SHELTER
“If you are just tuning in, we have new information on the crisis that seems to be sweeping the country and maybe even the world.” The man, he was the local morning anchor, adjusted his tie. “The reports that have been reaching us here at Channel 2 are of massive riots and scenes of mob violence all across the country. Here, in the Miami Valley, contact with reporters and citizens attempting to reach areas in downtown Dayton to assess the situation have been lost. We are attempting to reestablish contact with these people.”
There was the sound of talking from off camera and the anchor looked toward the source of the sounds, annoyed. The sounds of talking rose and then the sound of something heavy hitting the floor was audible. The camera shook for a second and then stabilized back on the anchors. The report continued.
“Statements from officials at the state and federal level are confusing. A statement released by the Department of Homeland Security says that the bodies of the recently deceased are rising up and attempting to consume the flesh of the living.” He shook his head in disbelief and then continued, “A statement from the Ohio Department of Disaster Response says that what we are seeing are cases of mass violence that are probably the result of some sort of bacterial or viral infection.” He nodded after reading this.
The camera swung to the female co-anchor who was usually the midday meteorologist. “The governor has called out the national Guard in an effort to stop the rising tide of violence and in a statement … “
She never finished as the male anchor broke in. “We are getting word that the President of the United States is about to make an address to the nation. We apologize for the quality of the news feed, but it is being broadcast directly from Air Force One which is en route to an undisclosed location.”
The image flashed bright and then there was a brief burst of static that was replaced by the worn and tired face of the President. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days and his once youthful countenance was now that of a man tottering toward the end. The voice that had inspired so many, and rallied a nation that had been on the edge of a collective nervous breakdown was still there, strong and confident.
“My fellow Americans,” he began, and nobody could miss the hitch in his voice before he continued. “We are confronted this dark evening with a crisis the likes of which the human race has never faced. There is no way to preface this, so I am just going to say it,” He cleared his throat. “The recently deceased are rising from the dead, and are attempting to consume the living. I know that this sounds like an idea from a bad Hollywood film but it is not.” There was a small flicker in the picture and then the President continued.
“Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with other experts, have confirmed that what I am telling you is true. I know that this will be hard for many of you to believe, but I am telling you this with absolute honesty. In less than five hours the situation has reached epidemic and nearly apocalyptic proportions. Contact has been lost with many of the city and county governments across the United States. Flybys conducted by the Air Force, Coast Guard, and Navy have shown that many of the larger urban centers appear to be overrun by these creatures.” As each thing he said served to build on the unreal quality of the information being distributed, the President became more calm and collected.
“What you are about to see are news feeds from cities across the country. Most are stationary cameras with no audio. These images are horrific, but I feel it is necessary for you to understand what we are dealing with. If you have children in the room, you might wish to have them leave.”
The dark and haggard face of the President, the man that the history books if they are ever written will remember as the Great Reconciler, was replaced by five minutes of the most disturbing images ever broadcast on American television.
The first scene was of an attractive Asian reporter in New York City being attacked and devoured by a child sporting severe wounds. She attempted to fight off the child, who was joined by another smaller child that knocked her off of her feet. She screamed for her camera man to help her, but that brave soul dropped the camera to the ground and could be seen running away as the children savaged her and her screams stopped. The time stamp on the image jumped fifteen minutes to show the woman, covered in dried blood, struggle to her feet and look vacantly around before limping away in the same direction that her camera man had fled.
This was followed by a shot from a street camera in Houston Texas of dozens of the creatures besieging a family trapped in a minivan that had overheated. There was no sound, but the image of the father bursting from the back of the van and attacking the Dead was horrifying. He used himself as bait to lure them away off camera. This distraction and apparent self-sacrifice allowed his wife and their two children to make a break for safety somewhere off screen. The image then shifts forward in time to reveal the father, who has had most of his exposed flesh devoured, drag himself back to the van and climb inside the open door.
A shot, obviously from a news helicopter, showed the Golden Gate Bridge framing the skyline of the city of San Francisco. Boats by the hundreds could be seen fleeing the city, and there appeared to be refugee camps on Alcatraz and Angel islands. Naval vessels seemed to be rescuing people from the coast and fighting off the Dead at the same time. In the distance the city burned.
An aerial view from above a Super Wal-Mart in Des Moines Iowa filled the screen. It was obvious that the people below were alive and not the Risen Dead. They were streaming all over the store like ants on the bloated corpse of an animal on the highway. In the distance, a convoy of pickup trucks and other four wheel drive vehicles entered the spacious parking lot. They pulled to the front of the store, and dozens of heavily armed men dressed in coveralls and baseball caps disembarked and began gunning down everyone that refused to hand over whatever they have managed to take from the store. In less than five minutes, they cleared the area of competitors and entered the store, except for three men who went from body to body and discharged one pistol round into each skull. There were dozens more images of violence and death, and then the President’s face returns to the screen.
“My fellow Americans, my fellow human beings, now more than ever we need to come together as a nation and as a species, we cannot give into the desire to turn on one another and revert to our baser natures. I implore you to do the right thing and help one another whenever possible, because if we don’t stand firm together during this emergency we will all die alone.”
He shuffled through some papers in front of him and then continued, “I have federalized all National Guard units that are remaining within the United States and they are establishing Safe Zones near all major metropolitan areas. Please monitor television and radio broadcasts to locate the nearest safe zone, and make your way there if possible. Do not attempt to travel across country to locate loved ones. The interstate system is a clogged mess of wrecks and road blocks, and has been ordered shut down to all but essential traffic. All American military units outside of the continental states have been ordered back home to help with the crisis.”
“I will now turn this over to Dr. Lynn Sanders, Acting White House Representative of the CDC. Doctor.” The President stepped away from the podium, and an attractive Asian American woman of approximately 50 years of age came forward to take his place. She also looked as if she hadn’t slept in the last few days.
“My name is Dr. Lynn Sanders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The individuals are definitely deceased. We have performed many experiments and the results are beyond conclusive. It has been established that the only way to stop these Risen Individuals is to cause substantial damage to the cranium. The brain must be incapacitated. It has also been determined at a horrible cost to police, military, and emergency response personnel that the bite of the Risen Individual is one hundred percent lethal.”