Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  They rode in silence towards the next town. Aidan deftly maneuvered around obstacles in the road: wandering Eaters, abandoned cars, and a rockslide that peppered the road with boulders as large as beach balls.

  A short time later, they landed in Georgetown with the moon hanging over them like a crooked smile, seeing all from its perch in the sky, and telling them nothing about its dark secrets.

  They tried four gas stations, under the peril of attack each time from a lone Eater or two wandering nearby. There was no power, and nothing worked. Aidan broke into an automotive shop and took a section of hose and a gas can. They used it to take gas from a truck on the lot, being careful to avoid stepping in the blood splatters on the ground next to it.

  “I’m so tired,” she said as he screwed the cap back onto his tank. “Maybe we could find a place to sleep?”

  Aidan glanced across the street towards a bank and a shoe store. “I don’t think we should stay here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just a hunch or whatever, but we haven’t seen many wandering infected here, and it seems like they’re starting to flock more. One finds food, and the others nearby join the group. That either means that there aren’t many here at all, or there’s a large number that might surprise us when we’re sound asleep.”

  Despite her fatigue, she agreed that his theory might hold weight. So they drove on to Silverthorne.

  Once they reached that town, the Alpine Chalet seemed to beckon them with its flickering red neon sign and its letter board that said, Skiers Welcome! Unfortunately, from the looks of the empty parking lot, it didn’t seem to have any live occupants on this particular day of the year. A number of Eaters mulled about in random patterns, but they were slow-moving and not too fierce-looking, so they decided to check in.

  Aidan kicked in the door to room 127.

  The room was like a small efficiency apartment, a ski bum’s dream with a small kitchen, and a sitting area in addition to two full-sized beds. After a quick perusal of the room and bathroom, Cheryl didn’t find any bodies or blood, and that made her exhausted mind very happy. What more could you ask for in lodging these days? If they picked up a bed bug or two, it would be the least of their concerns.

  After backing the motorcycle inside so it was facing the front door, Aidan found a warm beer in the unplugged mini refrigerator. He popped the top as he reclined on a bed. “They can put it on my tab.”

  Cheryl peeked through the curtains. There was a small entourage near the door now, but they weren’t trying to get in. “How long do you think we’ll be safe in here?”

  “Hard to say.”

  There weren’t many bullets left in the rifle. She looked around the room for something else to use as a weapon, and her eyes went immediately to the heavy lamp on the nightstand. Not only did lamps never run out of bullets, they’d saved her butt more than once.

  There was another door on the left side of the room in front of the bathroom. She guessed that it connected to an adjacent room. It didn’t look as sturdy as the front door, and that bothered her. “I’m going to see what’s next door.”

  She took the gun, turned the lock, and opened the door slowly. After fumbling for a second, she found a light switch on the wall and gasped when she saw two eyes looking back at her from across the room.

  They weren’t live eyes, she realized. They were dead, glassy, sunken eyes in a human head that sat on top of the television set. Part of the top of the scalp was blown away, and a purplish tongue draped out over the chin. The neck looked like it had been severed with a sharp blade. It was as if someone had cut it off of the body, fearing that, like a vampire, it might come back to life without that added precaution. The lake of blood on the floor around it added an extra element of discomfort to the ugly vignette, but she was surprised that it didn’t terrify her. She’d seen so many horrors at this point that it seemed as benign as a wax dummy in a museum—as long as it didn’t open its eyes or try to speak to her.

  After checking out the rest of the room, she went back to tell Aidan. She found him in the bathroom, and he didn’t seem to hear her as he washed his hands. The water ran pink as fresh blood oozed from his wound.

  “It looks infected.”

  “Nah,” he grumbled.

  She hadn’t noticed the dark circles under his eyes until now. He looked weary and wobbled for a moment, looking like he might pass out.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just need to rest.”

  “We’d better fix you up first.” She tore a piece of sheet from one of the beds to use as a bandage and played nurse.

  “Are you worried about me?” he asked as she knotted a loop of cloth. “Do you want me to sleep in the other room?”

  “No. Just wake me if you start thinking that my arm looks tasty.”

  A few minutes later, he was snoring on the other bed. She didn’t sleep alone, though. Her bedmates were the gun and the unplugged lamp. She laid there in the dark, listening to the moans and gurgles outside, worrying that it was going to be harder to get out of the motel in the morning than it had been to check in.

  * * *

  Hours later, she woke from a dream about Mark and was angry with herself for not finding a more creative subject to dwell on. Just shut up about Mark. He’s gone. Get over it. She told her brain this but didn’t think her heart was listening.

  A soft bluish-light filled the room, and there was a scratching sound coming from the far side of the door that connected to the other room. She looked over at Aidan and saw him lying there with his eyes wide open.

  “We should get going,” he said quietly, turning towards her.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Yeah. It’ll probably take them some time to scratch through that door, though. It’d be nice to take a shower before we hit the road.”

  A shower sounded blissful. She hadn’t had one since braving one at Scary Barry’s house. By the smell of Aidan’s funk, it had been longer than that for him. She let him go first and got up to look out the window.

  The crowd outside had apparently dispersed to look for an easier meal, because the parking lot was empty. That would have made her feel better if it wasn’t for the creepy scratching on the inside door. It sounded like it came from the fingers of just one hand, but she could imagine the rotting face pressed up against the wood, and a dozen others behind it, silently waiting for their chance to help break through. The head on the television set was probably nothing but a skull now; they’d probably gnawed on it for breakfast.

  After that thought, she was surprised that her stomach gurgled, reminding her that there was no food in the motel room. Hunger pains stabbed her from the inside. Anything would do—a brown banana, stale popcorn, a petrified egg. Was the feeling even a fraction of what the Eaters felt? Though they were clinically dead, they had to feel something, if nothing but that insatiable lust for flesh and garbage.

  When Aidan came out of the bathroom, wearing a towel around his waist and rubbing his hair with another, she looked away, but not before noticing the tattoo of an eagle with widespread wings and the penned word, Freedom, across his left pectoral. It made her uncomfortable to realize that she was ogling his half naked body as Death was literally knocking on their door. With her arms folded, and her eyes averted, she suggested that they could find a convenience store and break in if it was locked. He agreed after mumbling something about ham and eggs, and fucking Eaters.

  After they were both cleaned up (at least underneath their old blood-stained clothes) and ready to go, Cheryl took another peek out the window. She expected to see the same empty parking lot, but instead it was like looking through a kaleidoscope—an ever-changing pattern of gray, red, black, and purple. She jumped backwards, landing on the edge of the bed.

  The window frame was filled with a collage of faces mashed up against the glass, blocking out most of the light from the rising sun. They were piled up on top of each other with their opaque eyeballs squished flat an
d their snakelike black tongues licking at the glass.

  They seemed to see her with their dead eyes and it whipped them into an even greater frenzy. Loud thumps rattled the front door, and a second later, the thumps began on the connecting door as well.

  Aidan seemed unfazed as he held out the keys to his bike.

  “Seriously?”

  “You handled her pretty well before.”

  She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t done it alone. She had been silently channeling Mark, even if she hadn’t heard his voice. She’d pictured him perched on her shoulder with white wings, giving her pointers. But she didn’t tell Aidan that. He probably didn’t want to be burdened with tales about her dead fiancé any more than she wanted to hear about his dead girlfriend. “Why? What are you going to do?”

  He picked up the white square ceramic lamp base by its narrow top. “I’m going to whack us a way out of here.”

  She looked away from the riot outside and exhaled the content of her lungs. Getting out of here would be tricky, even if they still had all their guns. If she’d thought they’d pushed their luck in the past...

  She made a mental note to tell Aidan that she wasn’t sleeping in any buildings again. She’d take her chances in the great outdoors where there weren’t walls to bar her escape. The problem with sheltering in buildings was that they were only temporary fortresses with an unknown window of safety. So far, none that she’d been in had been impenetrable. So putting four walls around you seemed like walking into a trap. If they were mice hiding in a cardboard box, sooner or later, the toothy cats would find a way in.

  Aidan put his helmet on then pulled back the covers on one of the beds and pulled off the sheet. “Tie this around you. Cover as much of your body as you can.”

  It seemed like a useless idea, but she figured that if it prevented even one pair of teeth from puncturing their skin, it might be worth it. After she tied a knot underneath her chin, turning the sheet into a cape and put her helmet on, she had another idea. She picked up a quilt from the closest bed. “Throw this over the first bunch. It’ll give you a second’s head start.”

  “No, I’m not letting go of this.” He held the lamp over one shoulder like a baseball bat. There was fire in his eyes as his adrenaline began to boil up to a maximum level, psyching himself up for the brutality to come.

  Cheryl got on the motorcycle, feeling extremely uneasy. If this plan didn’t work, and the room filled with Eaters, that would be it. Game over.

  The door that connected to the second room started to bulge inward with a loud crack. They had only seconds left before their plan was thwarted.

  The next thing she knew, the front door was open and Aidan was smashing in heads. Blood, bits of gray flesh, and viscous fluids sprayed everywhere, as his arms seemed to fly back and forth in a blur. It was like the classic video game Space Invaders. He killed one row of aliens off then another row mounted up over the bodies of the fallen ones and came right at him. He grunted and swung…and swung again.

  Suddenly, she realized that there was a heap of bodies in the doorway with a red haze lingering over them. Aidan hunched over, breathing so hard, she thought that he was going to collapse. Beyond the doorway, the parking lot looked empty. “Come on,” she urged, after giving him a couple of seconds to recover.

  He was bloody and sticky from head to toe as he hopped on the bike behind her and circled her waist with sweaty hands. With a quick twist of the throttle, she rode over the hill of dead ghouls, leaving the blood bath at Motel Hell behind them. Anyone who saw them pass by would think that they’d seen two blood-splattered ghosts, riding down the road like bats fleeing hell.

  * * *

  Breakfast was cold, charred pizza. They found it in the oven of a pizza parlor on the outskirts of the town and had to step over the remains of bodies to get to it. From the looks of the scene, the employees had been taken by surprise, and pizza cutters were woefully inadequate weapons.

  Every little town they passed through after that felt like déjà vu. Most of the population had fled or seemed to be in hiding. The only signs of the former residents were remnants of corpses or a stray bone in the road. In some areas, the power seemed to be off, and in others, red blinking traffic lights seemed to flash warnings for them to move on. Cheryl was surprised that Aidan wasn’t raising any doubts about her quest to continue on towards Tucson. She knew there were probably plenty of abandoned houses with enough supplies to tide them over for a while. Maybe it was the fear of staying in a ghost town that kept him in forward motion. She chose not to question him. Any mention of stopping might put a hole in her plans.

  They eventually started to see some people but wished that they hadn’t. Many had live eyes but were staggering along the roadside and had the first signs of sickness, so they rode on by as fast as they could. Occasionally, they encountered someone who had pink sunburned skin and wild red eyes who looked like they just were dehydrated, disoriented, and in a state of shock. When they stopped and tried to talk to such a person and give them some water, they just kept walking like they were trying to walk their way out of a bad dream, one footstep at a time. Cheryl felt a terrible pang of guilt when they left someone behind, but what could they do? She and Aidan weren’t doctors; they had only as many supplies as they could find and carry, and they had no shelter to offer. There was nothing they could do except say a little prayer in their heads to a silent God, hoping that the person would eventually wander towards some people that would take them in, or that their death would be mercifully quick.

  The worst experience was passing a group of kids, a flock of ragamuffins with dirty cheeks and torn clothing. They ran into the middle of the road when they heard the motorcycle approaching but then seemed to change their mind and darted off to hide in tall stands of weeds. Aidan looked back at her with a grimace and shook his head. It was a silent confirmation that the number of stray people was just too great; they couldn’t pick them up and take them home (home?) any more than they could help the dozens of wandering cats and dogs they saw. During these hard moments, Cheryl tried to keep her dad and aunt at the forefront of her thoughts. She kept on going for them, hoping against all odds that they had somehow made it to a shelter and were okay.

  Abandoned cars were common on the mountain roads. They passed an SUV with a smashed windshield. Its wipers were torn off, and the driver’s side door was open. Streaks of dried blood raked down the outside of the door and continued across the road where a single shoe—a man’s tennis shoe—lay on the dotted yellow line. It was just another point of interest along their route, nothing worth stopping to investigate unless the vehicle looked promising for supplies or they needed to siphon gas.

  A little further up the road, they passed up an invitation to stay with a survivor that they encountered. The crazed desperation in the man’s red-veined eyes was just too unnerving, and both Aidan and she agreed that they might find themselves robbed or attacked in the middle of the night.

  She still heard Mark’s voice in her head, chiming in at random. Sometimes she got tired of his saccharin sweetness, always cheering her on and telling her that everything was going to be fine. Everything was not going to be fucking fine! It never was going to be again. A worldwide epidemic of the Black Plague would have been preferable to this. At least the people who died from that disease stayed dead! From now on, it was soldier up (Mark’s favorite phrase) or die.

  In Vail, the empty ski lifts swayed in the wind over the treetops like giant fishing hooks snared on a line. Cheryl wondered if they’d ever run again, or if they’d spend the winter idle as snow blurred them into the landscape. The latter seemed like the answer a little later when they saw a cap that said Vail Ski Patrol on the roadside when they stopped to get a drink of water from a creek. It was flattened with a tire track across the top and had speckles of dried blood across the brim.

  Later that night, they met a forest ranger who was filling a basket with mushrooms underneath the trees beside the road. He wore h
is ranger shirt open, baring his wooly chest, and his hair and beard were long and wild. After chatting with him for a few minutes, it was obvious that he wasn’t unhappy about the crisis. He was a proverbial mountain man who ate weeds, herded goats, and took infrequent baths in an alpine stream. That night, he gave them shelter in his cabin and served them a nettle stew with chunks of deer meat and gritty cowboy coffee. He took great pride in showing off his assortment of weapons that included rifles, axes, and long two by fours with nails poking out of one end. Before they parted ways the following morning, he gave them some advice as he sharpened a hunting knife on the edge of a piece of granite.

  “These infected—Eaters, as you call them—are just like wild animals. You’ve got to imagine that the world is filled with nothing but these snarling wolves now. Always keep your guard up, and you can fight them off. I’ve had to kill more than a few, including most of a Japanese tour group that came through here. One minute, they were photographing wildflowers, the next they were helping themselves to mouthfuls of their buddy’s brains.”

  A tour group? Cheryl shuddered. That sounded like a lot of corpses. “What did you do with the bodies?”

  “Nothing. There’s enough scavengers around here to take care of them.”

  The visual that conjured up wasn’t pretty: mountain lions carting off limbs, coyotes playing tug of war over intestines, and vultures pecking at eyeballs. It didn’t seem sanitary either. Didn’t they use to burn bodies during plagues?

  He had more advice about what route they should take. “I wouldn’t try heading due south. I heard that Leadville is in pretty bad shape, and you could easily be cut off on one of the narrow passes between ridges. It’d be a little shorter and a lot cooler going that route, but I’d recommend you keep going west through Utah then go south. Avoid Phoenix. Find a way to skirt around it. Someone came through here a few days ago from there and said it was the devil’s town. Nothing but blood sprayed like graffiti all over the place. Even worse, what’s left of the uninfected there are roaming in gangs, looting and terrorizing anyone they run across. They’d be more of a danger to you than any of the sick ones you’d see.”