Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  The assault would have killed any normal person, but she knew it wasn’t enough to permanently put him to rest. With a sigh, she grabbed her gun, aimed, looked away, and winced as she fired a few rounds into his head.

  She watched his body for a few seconds to ensure that it remained still. She remembered his cocky attitude when he’d first been gracious enough to let her in. “Guess it’s not your house anymore, Barry.”

  The sound of her voice seemed loud against the rat-a-tat-tat shots coming from the video game on the television. She stood there for a couple of minutes, feeling like she was a character in some bad video game. Just a few days ago, she’d been sitting at her desk at her job at the insurance agency, wearing a pretty powder blue suit and high heels. Now, she was standing in a stranger’s house with two corpses, wearing bloody fatigues that had belonged to her dead fiancé, and truly had no plan, no destination.

  Where was she going to go? It was certain that there was no one at the office anymore. That afternoon when she’d gone out for lunch, and this had all begun, the rest of the employees had probably either fled or were now dead. Her apartment was seven to eight miles away. Not far if she had a car, but there was no guarantee that the roads would be clear enough for her to get there even if she did. If she couldn’t go home, where would she go? The answer was obvious, if not practical. She had family in Arizona, hundreds of miles away, but she knew that she had to find out if her father and her aunt there were okay. Since Mark was dead, what else could she do? She’d keep heading southwest, knowing that every step took her in that direction, and hope to eventually find a ride going that way.

  With Barry dead, she had a little more time to prepare for the journey. Back in the kitchen, she rummaged around until she found a tote bag. Then, she traded the flimsy plastic grocery sack for it and tossed her supplies into it. The lamp, now a blood encrusted club that looked like some ancient relic, went into it along with some toilet paper, a can of chili, a can opener, and a spoon.

  Further down the hallway, she found Barry’s room. It was a worse disaster than the rest of the house. Trash covered the floor six inches deep, and the walls were papered with layers of posters: pro wrestlers, bikini models, and crazed painted faces from a band called Insane Clown Posse. Ironically, there wasn’t a single image of Sting.

  Something shiny and metallic caught her eye on the far side of the room. It was a Japanese throwing star. She had only heard of them and didn’t have a clue how to throw them, but she knew they could be lethal weapons. Reluctantly, she waded through the sea of rubbish to add it her supplies.

  On the way back through, she saw a clock on the wall above the doorway. It was after five a.m. Really? That created an even greater sense of urgency. She had no idea if the Eaters slept, but she realized now that she would be more of a walking target in broad daylight. With that in mind, it seemed prudent to travel with the cover of darkness on her side.

  A couple of minutes later when she peeked out the back patio door, the sky was still a purplish-black, and she couldn’t see anything past a mesh lawn chair tipped over on its side. Outdoors looked dark and uninviting. What was she thinking? How could she venture out there all by herself without a clue where she was going? She knew there had to be other shelters or houses with kind people who might take her in, but after the horrible experience at the church shelter, she really didn’t want to go to another place like that. And as for kindly strangers, it felt like she’d just played a life or death game of musical chairs and had been the odd woman out. No one who didn’t know her was going to let her into their home, and even if they did, the crisis might have strained their psyche, making them even more dangerous than Barry. She could imagine the spectrum of survivors out there—altruistic angels who wanted to rebuild a safe and peaceful society and anarchic demons that saw this apocalypse as a license to indulge their dark side without consequences. Everyone else probably fell somewhere in between.

  Back in the living room, she looked around at the mess, including Barry’s dead body. For the very first time since the epidemic ended life as she knew it, she began to cry. She dropped the bag, wrapped her arms around herself, and let out a wail that came from the pit of her soul. She was hungry, tired, and scared for her life. But most of all, she was lonely. She missed Mark…and she missed her coworkers, her family, and her friends. Where were they all now? Were any of them still alive? She didn’t want to imagine them dead or changed into Eaters, roaming the streets in search of rotten meat or human flesh.

  Her coworker, Lanny, lived the closest, but his house was east on Colfax. She’d been there once to deliver a client’s file to him, so he could work from home with his killer sinus infection last winter. It wasn’t an experience that she cared to repeat, because it wasn’t the best area of town. There were kitschy boutiques and tattoo parlors that made it more hip than it had been in the past, but the area crawled with hookers, gangs, and drug dealers. Now, it was probably a den of Eaters and living predators that were even more dangerous. Her chest heaved up and down with sobs at the realization that Lanny probably hadn’t ever made it back to his home anyway. He’d left the insurance office on foot for lunch that day just as she had. Right now, he was either in some sort of shelter like she had been for a few days, or what was left of him was splattered all over a sidewalk.

  She allowed herself a few more minutes of self-pity then tried to recompose and think. As tempting as it was to stay put in Barry’s house, the walls and the roof provided a false sense of security, because the windows were vulnerable. And holing up with two disease-laden bodies didn’t seem like a good idea. Even if she couldn’t catch the virus from them, it wouldn’t be good to stay here with the stench of their decaying bodies.

  There was a voice again in her head, deep and resonant, like Mark’s. Stop crying and standing around doing nothing. You’re just stalling…you’ve got to get going.

  She shook herself back into something like temporary sanity and resumed her search for weapons and supplies.

  Hoping to find something else of use, she searched for the garage. She half-hoped there would be a car in it, with keys and a full tank of gas, of course. Then she remembered seeing the police officer’s car swarmed by Eaters. In an instant, it had become a death trap. Maybe she would be better off staying on foot. She figured she would be safer that way, as long as she could always outrun the infected.

  She found the door to the garage just off the kitchen, not sure how she’d missed it before. She must have figured it was a pantry or broom closet earlier. She had just opened the door a crack when she thought she heard a moan coming from the living room.

  Cheryl froze, hoping that the sound had come from her imagination. There couldn’t be any chance that Barry had revived again, knowing that she had given him several direct hits in the head. There was no chance he could have survived that, right?

  With her bag on her shoulder, and her finger on the gun’s trigger, she took slow steps towards the front of the house. Before she reached the living room, there was another moan. This time, there was no chance that it came from her imagination; it made every hair on her skin prickle up.

  When she rounded the corner, she expected to see Barry still lying on the floor where she’d shot him. She stopped in her tracks when she saw that he was just two yards away from her, crouched on his hands and knees, at the end of a red trail. There were bullet holes in his temple, but from their side entry point, it looked possible that they hadn’t actually entered his brainpan. Blood had dribbled down over his eyes, enough that it looked like he’d be blinded by it. The lack of vision didn’t seem to matter to him as he half-crawled and half-slid, using fistfuls of carpet to pull himself towards her. With each move forward, he let out another painful moan.

  The sight of him was so horrific that her hands trembled as she tried to steady the gun and aim. She fired a shot, but it missed, splintering into the coffee table behind him. He was moving slowly, but was getting dangerously close now. She backed up
a few feet and aimed again, this time just grazing his arm. Like a homing missile, he just kept coming. She tried to fire again, but the gun was empty. She continued to step back, fumbling in her pocket for another magazine.

  She retreated further, backing into the dining room. She was just about to give up on reloading and try her luck with using the rifle as a bludgeon when Barry bumped into the grill. For a second, he seemed comically stuck behind it, clawing with outreached hands like he was treading water. Then the grill crashed to the floor, bumping the knob to the gas feed.

  Flames shot out horizontally, licking over the carpet, and engulfing him. It didn’t surprise her that he was more flammable than the carpet. He was probably so full of beer and whiskey that his blood was high proof.

  Blue-orange flames shot up from the top of his head and acrid black curls of smoke filled the room with odors of burning plastic and cloth as pieces of trash caught fire near his feet. He stumbled towards her, a walking fireball that was beginning to char as black as his burgers had been. The flames roasted his head, causing the skin to shrivel, crack and peel off in flakes. With the hair and skin burned off, it looked like a blackened skull with melting white eyes. Any normal human being would have toppled by now, but he was barely slowed by the trauma.

  Mesmerized by the sight of this strange burning creature, she backed up to the patio door. When her hand touched the handle, she remembered that she had considered setting the house on fire herself to create a distraction, so that she could slip into the twilight like a quiet little mouse. She had imagined using the grill, piling trash and dirty laundry on top and then cranking the gas. She had vetoed the idea with a shudder, though, worried that it would be cutting off her one refuge if the flames drew Eaters and they surrounded the house.

  Now, she had no choice. Ready or not, she had to leave now. Thanks, Barry.

  He was just a couple feet away, reaching out with his torch hands, when she bailed out the patio door and quickly slid it shut behind her. She tripped over the fallen lawn chair then moved to the edge of the patio and looked back. As she had hoped, he didn’t have the brain cells left to figure out how to open the door. He slammed into it, butting against the glass again and again like a robot whose motion button was stuck on forward. The curtain beside him caught fire, and the flames spread up to the ceiling, turning the scene into an inferno.

  For a few seconds, she watched him burn like a helpless puppet. Then, she turned around and faced the darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cheryl stood in the grass just beyond the patio with her tote bag over her shoulder and her gun in her hands. Her nose wrinkled. It wasn’t from the smoke; it was from an unpleasant metallic smell, like the air was filled with blood. Just as disturbing, it was uncomfortably quiet. Besides the crackle of flames coming from the house, there wasn’t a single sound—no passing cars, no barking dogs, not even the sound of the wind whispering through the trees and rooftops. It was like the world was watching and waiting for something. She hoped it wasn’t waiting for her.

  Looking up, she saw a sprinkling of stars like a dusting of powdered sugar across the sky. It seemed like way too many stars for the normal nighttime city sky. She wondered if that meant that the power was out in a lot of areas, allowing the stars’ light to shine through. The sight of a beautiful night sky would normally have been comforting, but right now, it looked like it was just one big mouth waiting to swallow her.

  Was this an important moment in history? Had the infection been pervasive enough to permanently change the order of things? Was she one of the last survivors of a dying breed? If it got too bad, the whole human race might vanish, because the sick would eventually run out of live people to eat, then they’d eat each other and eventually die off themselves. Zombies couldn’t reproduce, could they?

  The course of events had already been so apocalyptic; it was hard to imagine how much worse things could get. She envisioned smoking cities filled with the charred skeletons of buildings, people holed up in caves, living on rats and insects. Would they regress to the mindset of past civilizations and come to worship the Eaters as some sort of gods to be appeased with sacrifices? And if there was one true God, how could He allow such a thing?

  She snapped out of her mental meanderings. There was no time to wax scientific, or theological. The raspberry sliver of light on the eastern horizon told her that it was time to move on before daylight made her too visible.

  She didn’t have any plan, except to head southwest. She considered scrapping that idea and heading for Boulder. It was known for its freethinking types who were into the environment and sustainability. They might have had more foresight to prepare shelters and stores of food for emergencies. Then she realized that she’d have to cover too much open grassland to get there. Highway 93, a long grassy stretch between Golden and Boulder, offered little in the way of shelter if she got in trouble. If she headed due west instead, the terrain became increasingly hilly and dense with trees as you approached the foothills, and that area would probably be more generous with areas of cover and shelter. Of course, she’d have to cover a lot of city blocks to get that far, wandering through residential areas, parking lots, and open spaces where she’d be a walking duck.

  She started across the backyard, tensing when she passed large objects that were hard to identify in the dim light. An old couch? A refrigerator? A jumble of bicycles? Any of them were large enough that someone could be hiding behind them, and she’d never know it until it was too late.

  She stopped suddenly, remembering that she needed to reload the gun. Right now, it felt like her only friend.

  After snapping in a new magazine, she went to the backyard gate, stood on her tiptoes, and looked over the top. After a quick glance in both directions, she decided that the narrow strip of lawn between the fence and the neighbor’s house looked clear. She tried to open the latch, but it seemed to be stuck. The sound of metal on metal was loud and made her cringe. When she finally got it open, she stopped and listened. A cricket had begun a serenade a few yards away towards the front yard. She took that as a good sign, meaning that no one was approaching.

  She walked cautiously towards the street and stopped underneath the fluttering leaves of an aspen tree to survey the block. All the houses around were dark. Some had broken windows. The street looked truly abandoned, and she wondered if Barry and his mother had really been the only ones who had stayed put when the infection got out of control.

  There was a little self pep talk as she steeled her nerves to step out from underneath the tree into the unknown beyond. She reminded herself that it was possible that she was in a badly infected area and just needed to get further away from this part of town to a safer location. That prod helped. She took a few steps, and then stopped again by the mailboxes, listening to the crackle of flames behind her.

  She was about to step onto the sidewalk when she saw a round white shape just over the fence line across the street; it looked like a volleyball balanced on the thin wood edge. After another second, she realized that it wasn’t a ball at all—it was a human head, and its dead white eyes were watching her.

  So much for stealth and her covert operation.

  The head let out an ear-curdling moan. As if cued, another figure emerged from the corner of the adjacent house, a tall, gangling man with bare feet, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. He lollopped along, head flopping from side to side, and wailed as others emerged behind him with the same awkward gait.

  She panicked. What should she do? Run down the street and take her chances that she could outrun them? Or, go back?

  Going for the known, versus the unknown, she retreated. She rushed back inside the yard and fumbled for the latch on the gate. They were closer now, just a few yards away. She could smell their stench as her fingers turned into all thumbs, dropping the hook over and over again. Two seconds later, they were at the gate, pushing against it, with open mouths and bloody teeth. She held it with the weight of her body, still trying to se
cure the latch. Hands reached up over the top and tried to grab her. She felt their icy fingers claw and scratch at her.

  Finally, the latch caught. She fell backwards onto the cool grass, crawling like a crab to get as far away as possible from the arms and hands dangling over the top of the gate. They screeched louder as she gained distance from them. She didn’t think they would be able to undo the latch, unless it happened by accident, but she wasn’t sure if the gate would hold if they kept pushing on it.

  The yard was filling with choking black smoke from the burning house. The glass on the patio door was cracked, and she could see a large dark lump inside—Barry’s scorched remains. Flames danced out of the upper windows. She could feel the heat from the hellfire within, which prevented her from getting too close. That left her very few choices for hiding in the yard. She decided to duck behind the tattered couch. A mouse scurried out from underneath it as she huddled next to it, scrunching down to try to make herself invisible and protect herself from the heat waves coming from the house.

  It bothered her that she had been spotted immediately upon leaving. Had they known she was in there and waited for her to come out? She didn’t know if it was the same Eaters that she’d seen earlier—she hadn’t gotten a good look at them.

  She remembered Kathleen’s remark when they were back in the sandwich shop. They’re like killer bees. Once they’ve focused their attention on you, they don’t let up.

  For what seemed like forever, she stayed huddled next to the couch with her hands hugging her knees, and her head bent low. As the minutes passed, the crackle of the flames grew louder, until it became a roar. Then there was a loud explosion that sent splinters of wood, shards of glass, and sparks flying around her.

  Shortly after that, the moans at the gate grew louder and more numerous. She didn’t need to pop her head up to look to know that the explosion had attracted more Eaters. The sight and sound of the burning house hadn’t scared them off. Instead, it had been like a beacon, an invitation to a neighborhood barbecue.