Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  She didn’t answer immediately. She was too focused on the bloody bald spot she’d seen at the back of his head and her paranoia that the group of Eaters were just paces behind them. She surveyed her condition: her clothes were torn; there were scratch marks all over her skin; the back of her head hurt like hell where she’d also lost a chunk of hair, and mentally, well, she was pretty sure that she was in a state of shock…and feeling kind of angry.

  She punched him in the shoulder. “You almost got us killed!”

  He threw his arms up in the air and squawked back. “What else were we going to do? Climb the mountain? Fly over the side of the cliff? There was nowhere else to go but straight up the middle.”

  She knew he was right. But still, it had been sheer madness diving straight into a wall full of infected mouths and clawing hands. Could he have waited a few more seconds until moving forward then taken advantage of a few holes to weave in and out of them? She didn’t know. But she did know that feeling such a loss of control, unable to make any decision about her own survival herself, really sucked.

  “Nice moves by the way. What made you think to do that?”

  “Hunh?” she mumbled.

  “The way you twirled that gun and gouged him.”

  She thought for a moment. “Keys. They tell women and little old ladies to stab an attacker in the eye with their keys. Figured it might work with the gun barrel.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged, flipped down the kickstand, and hoisted himself off the motorcycle. “I could really use a drink. How about you?”

  She told him about the warm beers still tucked into her bag.

  “No thanks.” He carefully made his way down to the stream, hopping over big rocks on the bank like a billy goat, then crouched near the edge and scooped up a handful of the chilly water, pouring some into his mouth and over his face. “Come on, this is great!”

  She really did not want to get off the motorcycle. She felt more secure staying on it. “Just a second,” she called. She lifted her helmet. The pain was worse as it came off, and when she touched the back of her scalp, it was wet with blood on the bare spot where the chunk of her hair had been ripped away. She was thankful that Aidan had the helmets. In Colorado, there was no helmet law. In this state, riders enjoyed feeling the wind through their hair and the taste of bugs in their teeth. She knew that she partially owed her life to that red piece of fiberglass that had protected her head. She set it on the back of the bike and joined him on the stream bank.

  “Whose helmet?”

  He sighed and wiped at his brow with the torn sleeve of his leather jacket. “My girlfriend’s.”

  Cheryl didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “Where is she?”

  “When I left the construction site, I went straight to her house, knowing she was home with her kid.” He crouched down and started raking his wet fingers through his hair. “I found them…what was left of them anyway.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh God, I’m sorry.”

  He closed his eyes. “She was a good gal. I might’ve married her and adopted her rugrat.”

  He wiped away a tear and squeezed his head in his palm, and Cheryl saw a gash across the back of his hand. “You’re hurt. Were you bitten?”

  “No. They were clawing at me.”

  “It looks like teeth marks.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She wondered if he was telling the truth, or if he didn’t really know how he got the wound in all that chaos and was just guessing. She scooped some of the cool water into her mouth, making a mental note to stay alert around him just in case. The fact that Barry had been eating crispy fried burgers and playing Death Masters one minute then coming at her like a hungry wolf the next was still fresh in her mind.

  She took off the damp camouflage shirt and noticed with a frown that it was badly torn in several places. She rolled it up, squeezed the water out of it and started to put it back on.

  “You shouldn’t be wearing that. It’s still sopping wet. You’re already shivering. You’ll freeze to death before we get to the cabin.”

  Cheryl hadn’t realized that she was shivering until he pointed it out, but maybe it was more due to the harrowing experience that she’d just had than the temperature. “Freeze? It’s July, and it must be well over ninety today. Aren’t you cooking in that leather jacket?”

  “Not up here.”

  She realized now that the temperature had actually dropped a few degrees since they left the city and gained elevation. She inhaled a deep breath, appreciating the crispness of the cooler air. It smelled fresh, like pine and spruce, and sky, not like the city that was suffocatingly hot and ripe with the smell of blood and death.

  “You might as well just drop that wet thing and leave it here.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’ve got warmer shirts and sweaters up at the cabin.”

  She flattened it out over a rock and looked at the name on the front. “It was Mark’s.”

  “Mark?”

  “My fiancé.”

  “Where is he?”

  She smoothed out the wrinkles on the damp sleeves. “I told you back at the gas station…dead.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head rapidly from side to side, trying to shake off the memory and the stabbing pain in her heart.

  They both turned and looked at the sound of a car approaching. A second later, a Jeep whizzed around the curve and passed by them without slowing. Two young men stood up between the roll bars, holding Uzis, with their fists in the air, shouting something that was lost on the wind as they passed.

  “Guess they played Red Rover and won too.”

  Cheryl smiled at the thought of this all being some kind of game. Winner gets to live. Loser gets their brains scooped out, one mouthful at a time.

  “You ready to go on?”

  “Yeah,” she said after she took one more drink from the icy stream.

  He rose with her. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this. You’re pretty alright.”

  “Thanks. You are too.”

  Their eyes locked for a moment. How strange, she thought. How strange to realize that she cared about this person that she’d just met. He’d saved her life just as Mark had. If not for both of them, there’d be no more Cheryl.

  “Come on then, the cabin’s not far.”

  They walked back to the motorcycle and reached for their helmets. She paused before she put hers on. “You know, there were two groups; one coming down the mountain, and one going up.”

  “I know. It doesn’t much help my theory that all the infection is down in the city.”

  Her eyes grew wide at the thought that they weren’t necessarily headed somewhere safer, but she kept her worries to herself for the moment and mounted the bike.

  Once back on the road, Cheryl realized that Aidan was right. It was chilly in the wet shirt with the cool wind whipping past them. Her teeth chattered, but she refused to give it up. She rationalized that the air was drying it with every second that passed.

  When they were another mile up the road, a few vehicles passed by them, all going west. There was a police car with flashing lights, a school bus overloaded with people like sardines in a can, and a little old man with silver hair that stood straight up in the air like Don King. From that brief glimpse, Cheryl thought he looked shell-shocked enough to drive right off the side of the mountain.

  Five minutes later, they rounded a curve and slowed when they spotted a man stumbling down the road towards them. His head listed sideways, and his shoulders were crooked like his spine had been broken and glued back together at the wrong angle. As they got closer, they could see that his skin had a gray pallor and papery texture, and his eyes were a lifeless filmy white.

  “He’s sick,” Cheryl yelled.

  “I know,” Aidan said as he cruised to a stop just ten yards away from the man who continued to amble towards them.


  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to find him on my doorstep tonight. We need to take him out.”

  Cheryl and Aidan unshouldered their guns at the same time.

  “Be my guest,” he said. “It’ll be good practice.”

  The man shuffled closer. His arms stretched out in front of him, and he let out a loud wail that echoed off the canyon walls.

  Aidan held one hand over his eyes to shield the sun. “Hey, I know him. That’s Bill Taylor. He runs a tackle shop up near Bear Creek.”

  “Correction. That was Bill Taylor. Now, it’s a corpse coming to see if you taste like chicken.”

  “Alright, he’s close enough. Take him out and try to double tap him in the head. Don’t waste bullets.”

  Cheryl took her AK off the full automatic setting and plugged him twice. He fell onto the side of the road and lay still.

  “Nice. We’ll give it a sec. If he doesn’t move, we’ll go.”

  A minute later, they passed by the body and continued towards the cabin. They hadn’t gotten very far when they saw a couple up ahead, arguing by the side of the road as the man struggled to change a flat tire. They were facing in the opposite direction, headed east, down the mountains, and towards the city.

  They looked startled as Cheryl and Aidan approached. And who could blame them? They surely looked like two battle-worn bums in torn clothing riding on a big Harley. Aidan pulled over, and the man stood up, pushing his black-rimmed glasses back up on his nose. With the way he was dressed—a polo shirt, long plaid shorts, and a light windbreaker—he looked more ready for a round of golf than for combat with a gang of flesh eating corpses. The woman was a little mousy thing with short brown hair wearing jeans and a lime-colored t-shirt that said, “Green Queen”. Cheryl thought she couldn’t weigh more than ninety-nine pounds, and it seemed obvious that she was the one who had dragged her boyfriend camping. She figured that the woman probably had a garden and a compost bin, and was petitioning her town to let her keep the chickens that she’d been hiding in her backyard. She suddenly got an image of a flock of chickens squawking and scattering as Eaters grabbed them and bit off their heads. What a bloody mess this couple would come back to…if they made it back.

  “Where ya headed?” Aidan asked after skidding to a halt in the dust beside the road.

  The man raised the tire iron in the air with an exasperated look. “Back to Denver, if I can ever get these lug nuts off.”

  Cheryl and Aidan exchanged a look.

  Aidan’s mouth drew into a firm line. “You don’t want to go back there.”

  “No, we don’t,” the woman said. “It’s such a nice day.” She looked up at the sun breaking through the clouds. “I’d just as soon—”

  “Speak for yourself, hon. I’ll be a lot happier back in the comfort of my own home where I won’t have to fight off ticks and poop in the woods.”

  Cheryl shook her head, shocked that this couple had literally been so cut off from civilization that they didn’t know what was going on. “You don’t understand. You CAN’T go back there.”

  “What are you talking about?” the man asked.

  Aidan told them about the spread of the infection, sparing few of the gory details, which seemed to either put them into shock or make them think that the couple on the motorcycle was loopy from a good quantity of drugs. They stood there with dropped jaws for a couple of seconds. The man kept his hand tightly wrapped around the tire iron and spoke first. “You expect us to believe that?”

  Pointing towards their car, Cheryl said, “Turn on the radio. 105.8. They’re still broadcasting. At least they were earlier today.”

  The woman glanced at the man then opened the driver’s side door and got in. After a minute, she yelled out the rolled down window, “All I can get is static. Both FM and AM.”

  Cheryl shrugged. “Most of the stations are down. Earlier this morning, I heard a DJ still broadcasting from downtown but—”

  “We never get good reception up here in the mountains,” Aidan said. “Especially AM.”

  Cheryl motioned to the woman. “Keep trying.” The last thing she wanted was to see this couple get back on the road and head east, right into death.

  “Wait. I got something.”

  She turned it up, so they all could hear.

  The announcer sounded out of breath, speaking in a high-pitched tone like he was in pain. “Total chaos…buildings…burning around me. I hear glass breaking on the ground floor. Folks, if you’re still out there listening, this is 105.8 KYXI…and this may be my last broadcast. Stay indoors. Arm yourselves…”

  “Oh my God,” the woman said, covering her mouth.

  The man’s dark blue eyes narrowed. “This is some kind of joke.”

  Aidan shook his head. “You heard it on your own radio.”

  “I do smell smoke,” the woman whispered.

  In unison, they looked up at the light haze in the sky high above them. They listened to the radio for a couple more minutes until the frantic announcer’s voice disappeared and was replaced by static.

  “Yeah, well, I’d like some more confirmation. Claire said we had to live off the grid for a few days. No cell phone, no BlackBerry. Couldn’t even bring my iPod. Good thing I didn’t listen.” He went around to the trunk of the car and opened it. Then, he reached in and unzipped a backpack. “I’ll just call my buddy, Jeff. He’ll tell me what’s going on.”

  “You brought your phone?” Claire asked, sounding half angry and half thankful.

  “Yeah, hon. I did.” He finished dialing then held it to his ear.

  “Haven’t you both noticed that almost no one is headed towards Denver? The few cars passing by have all been going the other way. We just left Golden. It’s pretty much a ghost town right now, because everyone’s either gone, or holed up somewhere…or dead.”

  Neither answered. Claire had her arms wrapped around her torso with a strained look on her face, and the man gritted his teeth as he kept the phone to his ear.

  “All circuits are busy,” he said. “I’ll try my Dad. He lives in Thornton.”

  Aidan revved the bike. “Look, you can’t head towards Denver. Look at us! You think we did this to ourselves? We barely made it up here with our lives. I got a cabin about eight more miles up the road. Come with us. You can try the phone, the TV.” He threw his arms up. “We don’t mean you any harm. We’re just trying to warn you.”

  A few minutes later when the man couldn’t reach his father or anyone else he dialed, he said, “Give us a minute.” He took Claire by the arm and led her over to the far side of the car where they huddled and whispered.

  Aidan let out a nervous laugh. “You think they’ve got us pegged as psychopaths, or are they convinced?”

  “I don’t know,” Cheryl said. “But they’re fools if they don’t come with us. Dead fools.”

  They came back with frightened, but determined looks on their faces. “Alright,” the man said, “we’ll come with you. But we want one of your guns.”

  Aidan cocked his left eyebrow. “Really? What makes you think—”

  Cheryl put a hand on his arm then leaned over into his ear and quietly said, “Give them yours. Mine’s an AK. You’ve got a pissant .22 caliber. Might be good for taking down a squirrel.”

  Aidan huffed. “Alright.” Then he nodded and said, “Good point.”

  The man looked sheepish, like he’d called their bluff.

  “Okay, man. You can have mine if that will make you feel more comfortable with us, but as soon as we get to the cabin, and you’ve figured out that we’re telling the truth, I want it back.”

  The man’s eyes grew wide when Aidan agreed to his request. “Really?” He reluctantly took the gun from Aidan’s outstretched hand as if it was a snake.

  “Really. Now, let’s get your tire fixed, so we can get out of here. We’re sitting ducks out here on the road, and not just from the infected. There’s a lot of crazy yahoos running around shooting at anything that moves
.”

  “My name’s Kyle,” the man said, holding out his hand to Aidan.

  Cheryl thought he looked scared as he gave Aidan a firm handshake and they all made their formal introductions.

  Aidan left his motorcycle running and helped Kyle with the flat tire. Cheryl talked with Claire as they worked.

  “Eaters?”

  “That’s what my fiancé called them.”

  Cheryl told her about the theory that mosquitoes had spread the virus that started with the dogs back in Afghanistan. She still wasn’t sure, though, that it was true. It was equally possible that it was some form of bioterrorism. Probably nobody really knew how the epidemic had spread so quickly in just a few days.

  She eyed Claire’s bare arms with concern and told her that it would be a good idea to cover up just in case.

  “We’ve been camping for three days,” Claire said, scratching a red welt on her arm. “I’ve already been bitten. We both have.”

  Good to know, Cheryl thought. Better keep an eye on them…and a weapon handy. “Don’t worry. It’s pretty unlikely that the disease spread like that, and even if it did, not all the mosquitoes could be infected. I was camping last weekend too. I got bit all over, and I’m still fine.”

  Claire looked only slightly reassured by that admission.

  As they talked, Cheryl tried to give her a clearer picture of the dangers they were running from, but she refrained from referring to the infected as zombies, worried that the moniker might conjure up comical, less serious images in the young woman’s mind. Claire would learn soon enough that the unfortunate infected weren’t just sick people or mentally unstable cannibals, they were re-animated, soulless, dead things on a search, eat, and destroy mission.

  “I’m hoping you’re exaggerating at least a little. Is it really as bad as you’ve said?”

  What an innocent little bird. “I wish to hell it weren’t.”

  A few minutes later, the guys finished putting on the spare tire. Kyle and Claire hopped into their car and tailed Cheryl and Aidan as they got back on the road, heading west.

  Riding along, the breeze made Cheryl’s damp torso shiver again, and she reflected on their weird situation—a couple of strangers following two other strangers who barely knew each other. It seemed inevitable that, at some point, trust was going to become an even bigger issue between them, maybe even a matter of survival.