Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  The rest of the group came straight for Aidan and Cheryl.

  “Faster!” Aidan yelled.

  Downhill. Why did she have to start out downhill? There were too many trees in the way. As she sped up, branches scraped at them, and they bounced up and down over rocks hidden in the leaf litter.

  “Left. Left!”

  She narrowly avoided a multi-trunked aspen as a spray of leaves slammed into her face. The unexpected maneuver threw her off balance. Aidan instinctively leaned to the right a half second before it occurred to her, helping them avoid laying the bike down completely. Cheryl knew that if that happened it was all over, at least for Aidan. He certainly wasn’t going to be doing any running. If she had a brief head start, it might be possible to outrun the pack, but she couldn’t run indefinitely, and one advantage the Eaters had was that they were indefatigable.

  Dodging more trees, like a racehorse flying through barrels, she kept on. There were spots of mud hidden underneath the leaf debris, and twice the back tire spun out, threatening to dump them, but she held on. Fear seemed to have suddenly instilled her with a flash course in equilibrium that helped to keep them upright.

  There was a tree-free area coming up. When she reached it, she dared a glance back and was immediately sorry. The slope had added some momentum to the group. They were moving with unbelievable speed, their wobbly feet stumbling one after the other in a macabre salsa with their torsos and heads flopping from side to side as if they had no neck bones.

  She faced forward again, and she heard a click behind her (or maybe she just sensed it, because it seemed impossible that she could hear anything over the roar of the motor and the chorus of groans) and knew that Aidan was preparing to fire. If he was going to use up ammo now, she knew he wasn’t sure if they were going to get away and was going to attempt to pick off a few.

  A couple of gunshots followed, and she felt Aidan’s body kick back into hers with each round. That wasn’t helpful; it was all she could do to hang on the way it was and it looked like the terrain wasn’t about to get any easier.

  She gripped the handlebars tighter as they entered a steeper area of the slope. Densely packed pines forced her to tap on the brakes and slow down. Some of the Eaters tripped and tumbled down the slope, rolling past them like dead bodies tossed out of hell. She knew they’d be waiting at the bottom near the road, maybe with a few more broken limbs and heads gashed by boulders that had stopped their freefall. It was also disturbingly possible that they could be joined by more of the undead down by the road that just hadn’t started climbing up yet.

  Three seconds later, that dread was confirmed. She saw a glimpse of the road a few yards ahead in between a pair of massive boulders, but the view was partially blocked by the silhouettes of human heads. Damn…damn…damn! There wasn’t going to be any easy ride once they hit pavement.

  She veered to the right at the last possible moment, just avoiding crashing into the boulders. A glance back confirmed that the tactic worked. Bodies collided into the boulders, heaping upon one another into a pile of rotten flesh. She gave herself a mental high five. No brains. No brakes.

  Aidan tapped her shoulder from behind.

  With that group slightly delayed, she focused all of her attention on the upcoming road, preparing for the worst.

  How many? How many waiting for them?

  She knew they’d be drawn to the sound of the motor and the shrieks of the others. Would they be starting to climb up in a loose, easily penetrable formation, or lined up shoulder-to-shoulder? She hoped for the former. She’d just learned barrel racing; there wasn’t time to pick up linebacker skills.

  It looked like those skills were indeed going to be necessary, though. Up ahead, she could see a crowd anticipating their approach. There was no gauging the total number of them; she knew that what she saw could be just the tip of the iceberg. More could be lingering nearby or coming up the road to join their ranks.

  Aidan pointed over her shoulder to the right. She saw where he intended for her to go. There was a clear patch of asphalt on the other side of a three-foot wide stream. She’d have to jump the bike to get to it. It would be a Hail Mary event, but it was either that or head straight into the waiting mass of death.

  The stream came up too soon. She didn’t think she was ready, but the next thing she knew, they were flying through midair and smacking down onto the pavement. The impact threw her forward into the handlebars, slamming against her ribs and knocking some of the wind out of her lungs.

  She felt stunned for a second as she tried to retain control and steer towards the center of the road away from another gathering group that was advancing towards them. Her speed was still much faster than she felt comfortable with, so she let off the gas just a hair. As the machine obeyed, slowing down just the right amount, she felt like it was cooperating with her as if it had the same mission. Now if she could just steer it better and retain her balance, they might be alright.

  She pulled away from that mob of Eaters, and was only a few yards down the road when it curved and she found herself heading towards another lot of them. The swaying dead bodies with filmy white eyes stood in a random arrangement, stretching across the span of the road.

  There was no choice but to hunch down and blast her way through. It was a scene much like they’d encountered on their mountain ascent. At first, that gave her confidence, but then she realized that she hadn’t been the one driving the motorcycle on the way up.

  She felt Aidan’s hands squeeze tightly around her waist. He hadn’t fired a shot since the first round. Was he saving ammunition in case things got even worse up ahead?

  Her steering was so wobbly that when she tried to swerve around an Eater reaching for her with skeletal fingers a handlebar smacked into his arm, and she saw it detach from his body and fly up into the air.

  The next obstacle came far too soon for her to react. It was a squat form with decaying rolls of blubber sloughing off its sides. There was no immediate indication if it was male or female, or even something that had once been human. She twisted the handlebars away from it and tried to speed up in the same instant. The motion pulled her opposite the white-eyed dead Buddha figure and lifted the front tire from the pavement.

  For a split second, the motorcycle reared up like a horse frightened by a snake, balancing on the rear wheel. That sliver of time seemed to happen in slow motion. In her movie mind, they were two knights on a black and silver steed, frozen in the blue sky as decayed hands reached up for them.

  Then, the front wheel came down with a violent impact. It was a miracle that she held on and didn’t soar head first over the handlebars. Her bruised limbs were thrust away from the bike and before she could grab the reins again, the front wheel ran over a pair of feet—bare toeless things that looked more like putrefied fish filets than human flesh.

  There was another sparse group up ahead, each wobbly form zigzagging towards them. She felt like a pinball as they smacked through them, ringing into one after another. Her tunnel vision, hell bent on finding her way out of this pocket of Eaters, kept her looking straight ahead so she wouldn’t focus too much on the scores of individual dilapidated faces with missing teeth, sparse hair, scrappy skin, and exposed jawbones. Hands clawed as they passed, and she had to block out the shudder she felt from every corpse finger that touched her and grabbed at her clothing.

  After a couple of seconds, she saw clear road ahead. They were almost out except for one last obstacle—a single chain of Eaters spanning the road just before a sharp curve. She’d have to bust through them and somehow manage to slow down immediately afterwards to avoid flying straight off the side of the cliff. Even with her helmet on, the thought of crashing into such a wall of rotten flesh made her stomach tighten. Many in the line were bloated and had skin sloughing off. Fluids dripped down their bodies: blood, pus, and rivulets of indeterminable green and black sludge.

  Aidan’s grip tightened around her waist again.

  She floored the gas and
burst through the mass of rotten flesh a second later, but she lost control after that. The back wheel of the motorcycle skidded out into the shoulder and crashed into a section of guardrail, causing a spray of gravel to fly over the side of the cliff. The momentum would have taken them up and over if they hadn’t both thrust their bodies in the opposite direction at the same exact moment. It saved them from falling to their deaths, but the over correction flung them to the road as the motorcycle crashed onto its side. They landed hard, bouncing a couple of times, and would have been a splatter of red meat if they hadn’t had their helmets on and their clothing hadn’t given them some protection. Aidan’s leather jacket made it through intact, but her heavy camouflage shirt had a new long tear through the elbow.

  “You okay?” Aidan asked as they limped to their feet.

  “I think so,” she said as she straightened up and dusted off, feeling like every bone in her body was bruised or cracked.

  The moans came closer, and she saw the first of the line rounding the curve.

  “We gotta go.”

  Sore and stunned, they hobbled over to the bike. Its tires were spinning and the engine was still going, but it had a rough, whining sound. With a heave and a grunt, Cheryl tried to lift it up, but found that it was too heavy. Aidan shifted his weight to his good leg then gave her a hand.

  “I could have done it,” she said, although she wasn’t really sure that was true.

  Aidan shot daggers with his eyes, a look that seemed to say that this was no time for bravado.

  Two seconds later, they were back on the road with the motley crew just a few feet behind them. After the group was far behind in the rearview mirrors, she inhaled a deep draught of the crisp mountain air and sighed it out. The rain clouds had long cleared out, and the sky was a crystal clear shade of azure blue. Her heart still pumped wildly in her chest. They were out of danger for the moment, and she felt a strange sense of exhilaration. Maybe it was the wind blowing in her face, the sense of accomplishment after the world’s shortest course in Motorcycle Stunts 101, or maybe it was simply from once again cheating death.

  Mark? Where are you? Throughout that ordeal, she hadn’t heard his voice at all.

  Here.

  She felt a pang in her heart. You’re still with me.

  No, you’re still with me. You came through that on your own.

  It was true. She had done some miraculous things without guidance from his spectral voice, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t still need him.

  * * *

  A half hour later, they were following mountain curves up and down passes and had chased the morning sun fifteen miles further down the road. Aidan wasn’t holding on to her any more from behind. Her mind was far off, and she was startled when he signaled for her to pull over with a pointed finger over her shoulder.

  She let off the gas and slowed to a jerky stop by the side of the road, leaving the engine running as she eyed a semi-truck parked in the middle of the road, fifty yards up ahead.

  Aidan slapped her back with his hand. “Get off.”

  “What?”

  “I said get off.”

  She twisted around and looked at him, worried that stress and fatigue were causing him to lose it. Through the clear plastic of his helmet, she could see that his eyes were wide with fury. Her body tensed as she got off the bike

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The bike—you told me you’d never driven one before.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  She stared at him, not knowing what was prompting the accusation.

  “Thing is, I don’t know why you would lie about such a thing.”

  “You’re out of your freakin’ mind. I’m not lying to you. I’ve been on the back of a motorcycle before, but I’ve never driven one.”

  “I don’t believe it. You handled it like you’ve been riding for years. There’s no way a virgin could have done that.”

  “Virgin?”

  “Who are you, Cheryl Malone? Have you been bullshitting me ever since we met? You told me you were an insurance agent when this all started, but you’re standing here next to me wearing bloody combat fatigues, you shoot an AK-47 like it’s a kid’s BB gun, and you just popped a wheelie on my Harley like it was a damn crotch rocket.”

  She thought about it for a second. Everything he mentioned did seem strange, but then, life had gone strange. Beyond strange. In a matter of days, the world was unrecognizable from what it had been, and his accusations were insulting. What did he think, that she was some sort of double agent? A thief out to rob him? Of what? His leather jacket? His precious motorcycle? Did he think that all of her actions were just part of some grand scheme to trick him? Into what? A spew of defensive four letter words began to swirl in her mind when it suddenly occurred to her that his paranoia might be a symptom of infection. She hoped that he was just insane with misplaced anger and not sick. She nixed her angry rebuttal. “I can’t explain any of that, I’m just trying to survive.”

  His eyes turned into slits, crinkling at the corners. As she looked into them, she also checked out his hands in her peripheral vision, noting that they looked strong and tan with no hint of a gray pallor or peeling skin.

  “I’ve heard that adrenaline can give people super powers. In a crisis, some people can suddenly lift an entire car to save a person trapped underneath. Maybe it’s possible that you can also acquire new skills,” she offered.

  “I don’t buy it,” he said. “But, given the state of my knee, I guess I’m glad that you acquired these bizarre super powers, if that’s what it was. All I know is that if we’re going to keep hanging together, you’ve got to be straight with me. No secrets.”

  Secrets? She didn’t have any secrets. She was just an average person who, until just a few days ago, had worn pretty suits and handled insurance claims in a stuffy office for an annoying boss, and had dreams about a princess wedding to a fiancé who was now nothing but a pile of ashes.

  She supposed it was fair to suggest that she’d acquired some emergency superpowers since then. How many Eaters had she put down by now? After the attack at the cabin, the count was easily up to at least a couple dozen

  All of a sudden, she wanted a cigarette. It was an odd craving, since she’d never smoked. She felt dirty on the outside with all the blood and grime and wanted to feel as foul on the inside, make her transformation complete. Mark had smoked. It was his one flaw in an otherwise perfect regimen of habits. If he was here with her, instead of Aidan, she’d have bummed one off of him, and he’d have been shocked at the request. Or maybe he wouldn’t. She’d probably be unrecognizable to him at this point.

  A metal clang rang out from the truck parked up ahead.

  “I don’t know why that’s sitting there, but I don’t like it.”

  Aidan didn’t glance at it as he slid forward and took the handlebars. “Just get on.”

  She didn’t argue, just hopped on behind him, glad that he felt ready to drive again, even if he was being a jerk. Feeling awkward with him for the first time, she tentatively put her arms around him, holding on tightly when he rolled forward.

  As they neared the truck and they heard more thumps and bangs from within, she wondered if it was filled with cattle that had been on the way to a slaughterhouse or horses that had been bound for a ranch on the western slope. The thought of distressed animals trapped inside caused a pang in her heart. For a fraction of a second, she wondered if they should stop and try to open it to set them free.

  But as they got closer to the truck’s cab, she came to her senses.

  They coasted by the driver’s side window and saw faces pressed up against the glass—trapped Eaters with black tongues, parts of skull visible under sections of torn, rotten flesh. Their eyes were vacant, though they seemed to stare at them as they passed.

  Cheryl could only guess that the truck had been transporting them somewhere when
they’d broken through the glass partition that separated the cab from the bed and killed the driver. Now, they were trying to figure out how to get through the glass. All it would take was one inadvertent elbow smacking the door handle, and they’d come tumbling out to terrorize anyone passing by. They rode past, and she looked back at the mash of gray and bloody faces smashed up against the windshield and hoped that one of them had accidentally hit the lock button.

  Aidan drove for a while without another word to her. They didn’t see any other traffic on the road until a blue compact car passed them. It wove erratically across the yellow line before disappearing around a curve up ahead. The windows were tinted too dark to see the driver who didn’t respond to their waving hands, attempting to get his attention.

  Shortly after, they passed a sign that said Idaho Springs – 3 miles. Just before they reached the town, Aidan pulled over next to the parking lot of a small mom and pop store with a sign that said JLM Mart. Cheryl thought that it would have looked like a pleasant place to stop for a soda and a snack if they were a couple of people out for a leisurely drive on a normal day, but there was nothing normal about this day, or any day now.

  On this fine sunny July day, the shop’s windows were boarded up, there were cars outside with smashed windows, and there were dozens of blood splatters and dribbles across the parking lot making it look like a giant Pollack painting created by some demon artist in the sky.