One Hour to Live

by Gary M. Chesla

  One Hour to Live

  One Hour to Live

  January 28, 2017

  Gary Chesla

  Kevin McNally had experienced a lot of good things in his life, at least that how he felt.

  But as we look back at Kevin’s life, maybe he had been a little unlucky.

  His mother died when he was young, then his dad was injured in a mining accident.

  His hometown, Bolivar Pennsylvania, was practically a ghost town by the time he graduated high school, when the mines shutdown forcing the town’s residents to leave and search for work elsewhere.

  Then when Kevin left to go to college, he couldn’t understand why he never heard from his girlfriend Lisa.

  The summer with Lisa before he left for school had been amazing and he couldn’t understand what had happened.

  That instance probably wasn’t bad luck, that was more of a case of Kevin just screwing up.

  But, then again, I guess you could say his screw up was a result of bad luck.

  But Kevin had pushed on and tried to focus on the good things in his life.

  One day Kevin found that he just might have a second chance to rekindle his relationship with Lisa.

  It was the day he had hoped for, the last two years.

  Unfortunately, the day he received his second chance was also the day the dead overran his hometown.

  Kevin’s timing had never been very good.

  Kevin soon realized that he wasn’t just unlucky.

  Cursed more accurately described Kevin’s life over the last year since the dead arrived.

  Unlucky suggested that he actually had a chance.

  As Kevin looked back, none of them really had much of a chance to survive.

  Cursed, maybe, maybe not, but things were about to get even worse.

  Today, Kevin really screwed up.

  Or maybe he was just unlucky, really, really, unlucky.

  In either case, Kevin knew he wouldn’t live through the next hour.

  What would the next hour bring?

  Some good luck would be nice, but I wouldn’t count on it.

  All I can say is that it would not be a good day the few remaining residents of the town of Bolivar.

  Chapter 1

  Kevin McNally crawled around the bottom of the tree as he looked out into the clearing.

  The rough tree bark, along with the jagged stones and thorn bushes that surrounded the tree, scratched the tender flesh on his face, arms and legs as he crawled.

  It hurt like hell, but Kevin didn’t complain, he just ignored the pain as he moved his body into a sitting position as quietly as he could.

  It took him forever to get himself into a position where he could slide the bow over his shoulder and angle it in front of him where he would be able to load an arrow onto the bow and make the shot.

  Kevin moved slowly, he knew he would only get one chance, only one shot and then it would be over, one way or the other.

  If he wasn’t quiet or his movements gave away his position, it would be over before he would even have a chance.

  He needed to make this shot.

  Kevin’s eyes grew larger as he studied his target.

  He took three long, deep breathes and slowly let the air escape through his nose as he tried to calm his nerves.

  Kevin watched as the bow shook in his hands.

  He had made this shot many times in years past, but in years past he never had as much riding on the outcome of his efforts as he did today.

  Besides, he hadn’t had this kind of opportunity in over a year.

  It was enough to make him start doubting himself.

  In front of Kevin, standing fifty yards away in the center of the clearing was a large buck. He didn’t know how many points were on the buck’s rack. There were a lot, but Kevin didn’t really care, he couldn’t eat the damn horns.

  The deer’s massive chest and hind quarters were what interested Kevin.

  He hadn’t seen a deer like this in over a year.

  In fact, he hadn’t seen any animals in over a year.

  When the world went to hell, all the animals had suddenly disappeared.

  Kevin didn’t know where they went, all he knew was that they were here one day and gone the next. It was like in the old days, the days before the dead, when he walked into the woods with his rifle at the start of hunting season.

  The birds and crickets all became quiet, a silent warning to all the other animals that danger was present.

  The animals must have known that a danger was approaching. A danger so bad, it required them to do more than be quiet, it required them to run for their lives.

  Kevin had also assumed it was because animals had more sense than most of the humans he had known.

  The animals had been able to sense the danger long before the humans figured out that something was wrong.

  Within a few days of the animals disappearing, the dead arrived.

  By the time humans realized something was very wrong, it was too late to do anything about it.

  Kevin wished that he would have followed the animals example and went where ever the hell they went.

  He didn’t know where the animals had gone, but where ever they went, it would have been better than staying around here.

  Of course, it would have been better, but how the hell was anyone to know what was coming?

  “Hindsight was always 20-20,” Kevin’s dad had always told him that when he was a kid.

  That saying was never more true than it was now as he looked back over the last year.

  But realistically, Kevin figured that no one would have been able to foresee what was going to happen.

  No one in their right mind would have thought that the dead would come back to life and attack the living.

  At least not any normal folks like himself.

  Until it had happened, who would have even thought it was possible?

  Only lunatics, nut jobs and the guys down at the local bar.

  Kevin had seen it all happen with his own eyes. He had watched as the living died in more gruesome ways than he had ever seen in any horror movie.

  After all he had seen, he still didn’t understand it any more than he did when it all started.

  Kevin was sure the bastards that were responsible for what happened should have seen what was coming, but the assholes were probably blinded by their own arrogance.

  Kevin had heard rumors, a few, not many, that the government was responsible for what had happened.

  Those people thought they were more important than God himself.

  Who knows, it was even possible that the government wanted this to happen. With everything he had heard about the “New World Order,” maybe they were trying to thin out the human population for some grand scheme and their plan had gotten out of control.

  When everything went to hell, after the first day, rumors and wild guesses were all they had to let them know what was going on.

  The networks had all shut down, the power went out and life was thrown back to what Kevin assumed it had been like during the middle ages.

  After that, it got worse, much worse.

  Those that had never believed in Hell, quickly became believers.

  Those that had never believed in God, now knew they had been right all along.

  If there was a god, why did he let this happen? Maybe it was because he was powerless to stop it.

  Either that or God just didn’t care.

  In either case, the idea of a god no longer mattered.

  A god that would let this happen, He wasn’t worth wasting your time praying to him for help.

  No one waited for him to appear and save them.

  It was way too late for that anyhow.

  Kevin and
the few others that had survived however, were expecting to see the devil himself appear at any time.

  They had watched his minions, thousands of them at a time, descend upon the land to torment mankind.

  Kevin had seen the devil’s minions slaughter and devour those that dared to stand up to them.

  He had seen things that made Dante’s Inferno seem like a kid’s comic book in comparison.

  They all knew the devil couldn’t be too far behind.

  It became every man for himself. It was a free for all.

  Soon the rumors, like everything else stopped.

  Hell had taken over the earth and there was nothing left to speculate about. It was impossible for the human mind to imagine anything worse than what it had witnessed over the last year.

  All anyone knew for certain was that Man’s reign on Earth was over.

  Kevin hoped that the large buck in front of him was a sign that the animals were now returning.

  The animals were the only ones that had sensed everything that was coming long before it happened.

  Could it be that the animals now sensed it was safe to return?

  If they did, Kevin would put more stock in the animal’s actions then he would if someone showed up and told him that the world was now beginning to return to normal.

  After his experience over the last year, he wouldn’t believe a damn thing another human would tell him.

  People would kill you just for the hell of it.

  No one did anyone else any favors.

  If you did happen to meet up with another living human, if you wanted to live, you had to watch your ass.

  You certainly couldn’t expect anyone to help you.

  Animals didn’t lie.

  They didn’t kill you for no reason at all.

  They didn’t kill you so they could steal your things.

  If this buck was a sign that the animals were indeed returning, Kevin was sure it wasn’t for some devious reason.

  Unlike humans, animals were incapable of deception, hatred or cruelty.

  Animals just lived and let live, that was of course, unless you were an item on their menu.

  Even then, they only did what they had to do and nothing more.

  Kevin stared at the large buck.

  Could it be that the worst was over now?

  Maybe there was a god and he had just now noticed what was happening to the world.

  “Better late than never,” Kevin thought, then he added, “Right! Real funny Kevin.”

  Whatever it would take, praying, voodoo, he would be willing to try anything for it all to be over.

  Kevin had been hoping this bloody nightmare would end for a long time now.

  He could hope.

  Hoping hadn’t done a damn bit of good, but he tried to hang on to the idea it would all end one day.

  Hope was all he had left.

  When he would no longer have anything to hope for, he knew that life would no longer have any meaning. As it was, there wasn’t much left to live for, except that it seemed better than dying.

  He didn’t fear dying, if that would mean the end of it.

  He feared wandering aimlessly for eternity in a living hell.

  Kevin lived in the small town of Bolivar, Pennsylvania.

  It had been a small coal mining town.

  In Bolivar’s heyday, there had been a large brick factory, numerous coke ovens, a bowling alley, a small movie theatre, a drugstore, a bank, four churches, a dozen bars and a gas station. The town was surrounded by coal mines of various sizes where most all the town’s four hundred residents made their living.

  When the coal mines began to shut down, the brick factory and coke ovens soon followed.

  The bowling alley and the bars were the last to go.

  Kevin guessed that the few people that had remained needed some sort of entertainment.

  By Kevin’s sophomore year in college, there wasn’t much left of his hometown.

  A dozen or so families remained, the rest of the houses and businesses stood empty and abandoned.

  A large sulfur creek where the orange and smelly drainage from the abandoned mines ran through the center of town, served as a reminder of the glory days when coal was king.

  Kevin’s family was one of the few families to remain in Bolivar. It had been his dad’s hometown and his dad before him.

  The McNally family had always worked in the coal mines.

  Kevin’s dad, Bob, had been injured in a mining accident years back and was receiving a permanent disability pension.

  When the mines began to shut down and the other Bolivar residents started to leave to find work elsewhere, Kevin’s dad didn’t feel the financial need to leave.

  Bob had lived in Bolivar all his life and planned to be buried here.

  Besides, in a way, he liked how peaceful and quiet the town had become.

  Kevin’s dad was happy where he was, but Bob also knew there would not be a future in Bolivar for the next generation of the McNally family.

  He and the town of Bolivar would soon die and fade into the past. One day soon he and the town would only be a fond memory for Kevin of his childhood.

  Before Bob left this world, he wanted to know he had done all he could to help his son.

  Bob knew his son’s future would be somewhere else, so he made the necessary financial arrangements for Kevin to attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

  The world was changing and he wanted to be sure Kevin would have the tools and the education to make a good life for himself. Maybe in a place like New York or Boston, a place with the kind of opportunities that the Bolivar area could no longer offer.

  Change was coming, but he could never have imagined how much things would change.

  It was a good plan, however there was no way he could have known at the time that it wouldn’t matter.

  The world was indeed changing, but it wasn’t the kind of change where a college education could prepare Kevin for the future.

  When Kevin came home for a visit during Spring break, he and his dad sat down to discuss Kevin’s plans for his future. The idea that there would not be a future that they could plan for had never crossed either of their minds.

  Kevin slid the arrow over the bow string.

  He slowly pulled back against the string’s tension as he looked down the arrow shaft at the deer.

  He thought about why the animals had all left the area and did the fact he was now seeing a deer for the first time again in over a year mean anything?

  Kevin almost felt bad for the deer.

  He liked wild animals.

  Maybe to say he respected wild animals would be more accurate.

  Animals were honorable creatures, nothing like what mankind had become.

  Kevin felt bad knowing that the buck had managed to survive all this time and now he was going to kill it.

  Kevin felt regret for what he was about to do, but he knew the deer would understand. This was a matter of survival.

  Kevin’s intentions were honorable. He was doing what he had to do to survive, nothing more and nothing less.

  “Forgive me my friend,” Kevin whispered as he pulled the arrow back as far as he could.

  Kevin let go of the arrow abruptly as a horrible pain shot through his leg.

  The arrow flew wildly off to the right as Kevin rolled on to his side in agony.

  The large buck darted off into the brush as Kevin dropped the bow and reached for his leg.

  “Holy Fuck!” Kevin screamed as the pain intensified.

  When his hand touched a cold slimy object instead of his leg, Kevin began to panic.

  He franticly grabbed at the rocks near his head, wrapping his hand around the first solid object he touched.

  Kevin turned and started pounding on the cold slimy thing on his leg before he even got his first look at it.

  He didn’t need to see it to know what it was and what had just happened.

  “How the fuck could I be so damn
stupid?” Kevin yelled as he pounded with the rock and kicked his feet.

  One of his wild swings with the rock must have found its mark as Kevin felt the pain in his hamstring release.

  He quickly sat up, rolled onto his hands and knees as he continued to pound the rock against the dark rotting skin that covered the bloody hairless skull that had finally stopped moving.

  The skull was attached atop of the leathery body that at one time had been a young girl.

  Kevin assumed it had been a young girl, at this point it was hard to tell for sure. All he could say for certain was that the body was small, had been or maybe it still was female, was badly decomposed and smelled like hell.

  He glanced at the unmoving body for a second then focused his attention on his blood covered pantleg.

  “Shit!” Kevin thought to himself as he tore the blood-soaked material away from the wound.

  “What the hell is wrong with me? I know better than to be this careless.” Kevin swore. “A fucking moron could have smelled this thing coming from a mile away. You would think I’ve never been out here on my own before.”

  Kevin pulled at and cut the denim material of his jeans away from back of his upper leg.

  Blood flowed from the circular pattern of puncture marks on his skin.

  A pattern left from the teeth that had pushed through his jeans and into his flesh. The small zombie obviously had a lot of teeth missing, but unfortunately it still had enough remaining to bite through Kevin’s jeans.

  Kevin threw the rock in his hand at the motionless body that laid on the ground in front of him.

  “If there is a god, he’s a sick sadistic bastard,” Kevin thought as he remembered praying for this madness to come to an end.

  Kevin knew that his nightmare was indeed coming to an end. In fact, it would all be over in about an hour.

  He had seen many people get bitten by these damn zombies over the last year, especially at the start before anyone knew what the hell was going on.