Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  “Well, I’m not,” she said folding her arms over her chest, realizing that she was embarrassed about the oversized t-shirt and the filth encrusted all over her.

  “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

  She told him that she’d been on the run since she had to leave the church shelter and her temporary lodging with Barry had gone sour. “Now I’m just…I don’t know…” She couldn’t say that she was headed home, or to find her family. She really didn’t know what she was doing beyond just surviving at this point.

  She was about to ask him some questions when a loud rumbling noise sounded from behind a hill up the street. The long narrow barrel of a massive gun appeared, followed by a huge tank.

  He quickly lowered his gun to the ground and raised his hands in the air. “Put your hands up.”

  “Why?” she asked, complying nonetheless.

  “Because if you don’t, they might shoot. There doesn’t seem to be much left of the law around here, but they’ve still got some patrols doing sweeps, knocking out any infected they see.”

  “We’re not infected.”

  “They don’t know that. Smile and wave to them. They need to see that we’ve got some brains left and haven’t gone over to the dark side.”

  They stood there like grinning idiots as the tank rolled up within fifteen yards, swiveled its gun towards them and paused. Cheryl felt her teeth clenching together. Please don’t shoot.

  The tank sat there like some gargantuan alien creature, deciding their fate. After a few seconds, it pointed its gun forward again and continued up the street.

  They lowered their hands.

  Cheryl knew that in some alternate universe, Mark would be alive and helping out the National Guard. He could have been in that tank and would have jumped out and rescued her. She wondered if the soldiers who had been in it had any sense of empathy for those they had shot, or for any of the survivors that they encountered and abandoned while doing their duty.

  “Why didn’t they stop and try to help us?”

  “Are you kidding? Over ninety percent of the country’s population was wiped out,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that. More than half were infected and died, and the other half were killed by the infected. A nuclear bomb couldn’t have done that kind of damage so quickly.”

  “Ninety percent?” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Jesus!”

  “It’s more than anyone was prepared to deal with, and they certainly weren’t prepared to handle this sort of epidemic. Now, what’s left of the government doesn’t have the resources to re-establish control, and they trust no one. You’re considered infected until proven otherwise. They’re doing the only thing they can, and that’s try to get rid of as many infected as possible.”

  She realized that made sense, no matter how much she wished she could have crawled into that tank and gone someplace safe. She imagined herself running after it and clinging to its top, begging them to take her with them, then the soldiers flicking her off like a tick and blasting her to smithereens.

  “Whose blood is all over you?”

  Cheryl had to think for a second. She’d changed clothes since falling in some stranger’s blood when the panic started a few days ago. “Some guy named Barry…and his mother.”

  “You took them out?”

  “I had to. They were infected…they attacked me.”

  “That’s a lot of blood. How do you—”

  Cheryl tuned him out and held a hand up over her eyes, shading them from the bright sunlight. At the top of the hill from which the tank had come, there was a strange alignment of black bowling balls wavering in the mirage of heat waves radiating from the pavement. They grew larger, misshapen, and finally emerged as tens upon tens of people, loping towards them at a slow, but steady pace. Not people, she realized. Eaters.

  All the blood drained from her head down to her feet, rendering her vocal chords inoperable. Her hand rose and pointed over the motorcycle man’s shoulder. He turned to look.

  “Shit. Time to go.”

  She stood there watching, her mouth hanging open, still unable to speak.

  He hopped onto his bike then turned around and pulled a second helmet off the back and held it out to her. “You coming or what?”

  The Eaters were a block and a half away now. She could hear their moans, and make out the taller adults and the smattering of children among them. She could tell that some of them were missing limbs or parts of their faces, and all of them looked like they had been doused in vats of blood. It was a traveling horror show, a carnival of the undead.

  Mark’s breathy voice whispered in her ear. Hold it together, Cheryl.

  The stranger turned the key, pressed a button, and his motorcycle rumbled to life. “Last chance, sweetheart.”

  Her arm felt like it was made of ripples of water when she reached for her gun and her bag. It seemed detached, like it was someone else’s arm in a dream, moving in slow motion. She tried to snap herself out of her daze as she threw the bag over her shoulder, then swung a leg over the back of the motorcycle, put the helmet on her head, and her arms around the stranger’s waist.

  He revved the engine and was about to take off when she said, “Wait!”

  “What?” he yelled.

  They were so close now, she could smell them. It was the stench of rotting flesh, more fetid than the spoiling meat in the sandwich shop where she’d been cloistered for a couple of days. She could see their white dead eyes. Even worse than that, some of them didn’t even have eyes—they had two empty black holes in their rotting faces like their orbs had been plucked out by ravens.

  With her heart beating so hard that if felt like it was smacking against her ribs, she hopped off the motorcycle, ran back to the fountain, scooped the shirt out of the water, threw it on, and ran back. She was barely on when he took off, the wheels screeching over the bricks.

  The volume of the moans behind them seemed to increase as they roared through the plaza. It was a discordant unified wailing, like the sound of a herd of dying animals. She likened it to the anguished laments of addicts deprived of their precious drug. The infection made rotten things and flesh such a necessity for them; it was like they thought they were dying without it. It was still a mystery to her why they didn’t know they were dead, and why they wouldn’t stay dead without catastrophic brain trauma.

  They went over a speed bump in a path that merged the pedestrian area to the road, and she was literally jolted back to the reality that she was riding on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle. This was only the second time that she’d ever been on one. The first was when a buddy of Mark’s had taken her for a spin. He did a wheelie on the highway with her on the back that had nearly turned her hair white. She’d vowed to never get on one again. But of course, circumstances dictated life. Never say never…

  “My name’s Aidan, by the way.”

  “Cheryl,” she yelled back over his shoulder. “Where are we going?”

  “I got a place up near Genesee. I figure if I can make it up there, it’s a good place to retreat for a while. There’s a lot of infected in the city. The further we get away, hopefully the safer it will be.”

  She caught most of what he said, but it was hard to hear over the growl of the engine and the wind whipping past the helmet that covered her ears. She held on tightly to his waist, feeling odd about riding with this stranger, but thankful that he’d taken her with him, instead of just leaving her there.

  About five minutes down the road, he pulled into a gas station.

  “I need gas,” he said after parking near a pump. “I’m not sure we have enough to make it all the way up.”

  She looked around as he swiped a credit card into the machine. The place was eerily vacant, but at least didn’t have any dead patrons littering the lot.

  While he pumped gas into his tank, she gave him a quick recap of how she’d gotten into her solitary plight. Then he reciprocated.

  “I was at work when this all star
ted, hammering cross beams near the roof of a house. This mob came up the street. They were like a pack of wild animals. They came straight for us, surrounded the house, and started attacking. I saw half my buddies, the ones on the ground, get their heads and limbs ripped off. Me, Ricky, and Antonio were up high out of their reach. We started throwing things at them. You could hit one with a hammer, dead on, and it wouldn’t even flinch. A nail gun was pretty useless too, unless you hit them in the head. I’ve never seen anything so gruesome in all my life. It was like a battlefield…blood everywhere.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “I have to thank some strangers for that. There were some vigilantes that drove by, guys with semi-automatic rifles, hanging out the windows of a low-rider. They looked like gang members, just cruising around and shooting for sport. They killed more than a dozen of those monsters that were clawing at the beams, trying to get to us, then they rode off, hootin’ and hollerin’ with their guns up in the air like they’d just scored a big one for the team.”

  “Wow,” she said. “What’d you do after that?”

  “Well, we didn’t know what the hell was going on. We just kind of hung out on the roof for a while with all this carnage on the ground below us. Obviously, we didn’t have a television. There was a radio on the ground, but it had been destroyed. So, we weren’t able to hear any news reports to find out if this was just an isolated thing or if there could be more coming. We expected police to come, or a fire truck…something. But there was nobody. The street was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a new neighborhood, so there wasn’t any normal traffic. Finally, after the road stayed clear for a few more minutes, Ricky said, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here’. So, we jumped down and took off. A few blocks away, I came across some guy that had crashed his car into a light pole. He was definitely dead, so there was nothing I could do to help. I took the rifle from the passenger seat then drove straight to—”

  There was a loud crash inside the gas station shop. They both turned and looked in that direction, but there were no lights on inside, so they couldn’t see what had caused it.

  Aidan glanced up at the numbers on the pump. “Good enough. Let’s get going.”

  They hopped back on the motorcycle and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the gas nozzle on the ground and the receipt flapping out of the machine.

  A few miles down the road, after they had gained a few hundred feet in elevation, a mass of dark clouds rumbled above, a sure sign of a summer squall. A couple minutes later, the sky let loose. It was a downpour that was sure to be brief, as they nearly always were, but plenty to soak them from head to toe while they rode.

  They kept on driving as the rain pelted them and limited their visibility. Cheryl worried about Aidan taking the curves so fast as they drove higher. One slip on the wet pavement could send them careening over the edge, flying out over a couple hundred foot drop into a grove of pine trees and aspens. She closed her eyes and held on, trusting that this wasn’t his first time driving in such dismal weather and hoping that he knew this road like the back of his hand after commuting from his mountain home to his job day after day.

  She didn’t open her eyes until she realized that they were slowing down. The rain was still hammering down as he came to a full stop in the middle of the road.

  “What are you…?”

  She looked ahead, through the sheets of water pouring down. A dozen yards in front of them, the road ahead was a solid wall of Eaters—a small infected army.

  “Aidan!” she yelled with a trembling voice. “Turn around.”

  The mass started shambling towards them and he revved the engine, but didn’t move.

  “What are you doing? Let’s go.”

  “We can’t.”

  She screeched now. “What do you mean?”

  “Look behind us.”

  She saw them in his side mirror before she turned around. There was another group closing in on them from the rear. They hadn’t heard the approaching moans, because of the loudness of the motorcycle engine. Now, they were trapped between the two oncoming groups with a mountain on one side of the road and a sheer drop down the other.

  Her heart pounded, and her breaths came shallow and fast—not enough oxygen getting to her brain. “What are we…going…to do?”

  He revved the engine again. “Go through them.”

  “You’re crazy. We can’t!”

  “No time to debate it, hon’. Just tuck in and hold on!”

  Just as the Eaters in the rear came dangerously close, he charged forward. With her head buried in his back, and her arms tight around him, she couldn’t see anything, but she could smell the stench before they hit. It was like a thousand rotting corpses with flesh decayed into a nauseating stew of blood, pus, urine, and feces all mixed together. There was no time to gag as they crashed into the wall of bodies. The impact almost knocked them off the bike. It was clear that the group hadn’t parted at all as they drove over arms, legs…heads? The rest hadn’t fallen like dominoes—they were a sea of snapping teeth and bloody grabbing hands. They clawed at their clothes and their hair, pulling and yanking at anything they could. Then, the motorcycle began to slow.

  Oh no. Oh, God. Please no.

  An Eater had a fistful of her hair. She held on to Aidan, screaming with pain as the Eater pulled it and tried force her head back. She knew that if he succeeded, her face and neck would be an open buffet for the crowd surrounding her. So just as if she was holding on for dear life to the edge of a skyscraper, thirty stories up, she held on, even as the roots of her hair tore away from her scalp from underneath the helmet.

  Aidan revved the engine, trying to break free of the hold of so many hands, but they were slowing down from the drag of so much weight. “Hit them!” he yelled.

  What? She did not want to lift her head. But as she realized they were about to come to a standstill in the midst of this hungry mob and she felt teeth and hands tearing at her clothing, she knew that she had to summon some kind of supernatural strength inside her to help.

  She kicked to one side then the other, smashing her boots into shins and kneecaps. Then with one great exhale, she lifted her head and unshouldered the rifle. Using her elbows and the heavy gunstock, she began to hit left and right. She slammed into heads and chests, impacting some with a thunk, and into others with more rotten flesh with a squish.

  She could see Aidan kicking as he tried to do the same. They picked up a little speed, but still weren’t free enough to break away. They were too close to try to shoot, and she was worried that they might grab the gun barrel if she tried, so she alternated between using the gun as a bludgeon and punching with her fist. Her knuckles cracked into jaws, sending teeth and blood flying. She bashed another on the head with the gunstock then was about to defend the other side again when an Eater with flaking gray skin on his bald head and mottled rivers of blackened veins on his bare arms, grabbed her wrist. She couldn’t get the gun around quickly enough to bash him as he started pulling her arm towards his mouth. She felt his cold, sick breath on her wrist as the motorcycle leapt forward. He didn’t let go. Instead, he stumbled forward along with them, crushing her arm with a vise-like hold.

  “Aidan!” she screamed, close to being pulled off.

  He looked back and saw her plight, slowing the bike just a hair. “Hit him! In the face!”

  It was a dangerous proposition—she’d have to let go of Aidan’s back in order to reach around and butt the Eater in the head with the gunstock. She wasn’t sure she had the strength left to hit him hard enough to knock him off, especially from such an odd angle. She had another idea that upped the danger another couple of notches, but there was no time to do math and weigh the pros and cons, because he was leaning forward now, stumbling along, jaws snapping, trying to gouge at her arm with his teeth. In another second or two, he’d find his mark if the others around her, clawing to get a hold, didn’t first.

  During her sophomore year in high school, she’d been on the f
lag team, where she’d twirled either a flag on a long pole or a fake wooden rifle painted white along with the band’s music at football games. She prayed that her muscle memory, after so many years, would still be there. Because she’d only have one chance.

  Clenching the sides of the motorcycle painfully hard with her knees to hang on, she let go of Aidan. Then, in one swift motion, she twirled the rifle around so the barrel faced away from her. She grabbed a hold of it like a spear then spun around and slammed it into the Eater’s cheekbone. As it connected, it slipped upwards and pierced through his right eye socket. She almost went with it as her knees popped up, but using every muscle in her core, she was able to swing back around. The gun barrel popped out of the Eater’s skull with a sucking pop sound, barely audible above the moaning and the whine of the engine. In the same instant, they shot forward, and broke free of the mob.

  She had not even realized that the rain had stopped until she saw a bright streak of sunshine slanting down over the road. They drove through it, and for a quick second, were in a spotlight slicing through the gloom.

  You made it kiddo…didn’t think you had it in you.

  Whether it was God or Mark rattling around in her head mattered less than the fact that she was still alive to hear it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Aidan drove ten more miles, going faster than before, whipping dangerously around sharp curves before he dropped his speed. With her rifle slung back over her shoulder, she laid her head on his shoulder and held on tight, feeling her heart still beating wildly. After a few more minutes, he pulled over to the side of the road next to a roaring stream that bubbled up white froth over the tops of boulders in its middle and looked like it had just been fed by a gully-washer from somewhere higher up.

  He left the engine running, took off his helmet and turned around to face her. “Are you alright?”