by JE Gurley
She’s wrong.
The woman was confused, sick with grief and the flu. Maybe she didn’t see things clearly or at all. Maybe he was wrong about the metal building. He had seen the dead stacked like cordwood, but maybe they were dead when they arrived. Perhaps, they sedated the gravely ill and transported elsewhere for further treatment. Josh had to be alive. To think otherwise would be to surrender. Gradually, he began to recover his senses. Night fell, but the lights did not come back on, plunging the camp into darkness that matched the mood. As Jeb sat on an upturned empty crate, deciding what to do next, he became aware of a noise in the camp growing louder. Then he heard screams. Thinking some group or the other had decided to assert their authority; he removed his pistol and held it in his hand. He did not intend to use it to quell the riot. He did not have time to get involved with the dying, but his death would spell certain doom for his family. He would use it to protect himself. People rushed past him, terrified and crying.
“What’s wrong?” he called out.
No one answered. They piled against the fence like frightened sheep, staring into the darkness the direction from which they had fled. From the shadows, a crouched figure approached him, moving in short sprints, and then stopping and sniffing the air. Jeb noticed the red eyes first, and then the blood dripping from the man’s mouth. The eyes focused on him with an intensity that alarmed Jeb. He read violence in them. Suddenly, the man leaped forward and attacked, his hand held out like claws. Without thinking, Jeb fired two rounds into the man’s stomach. The man fell back at the sound, but barely noticed his wounds. He snarled and lunged again. This time, Jeb fired point-blank at the man’s forehead. The bullet ripped through his skull and exited with a spray of blood and brains. He fell lifeless at Jeb’s feet. Before he could wonder why the man had suddenly gone insane, he heard more snarls, more screams. Dozens of people, men and women, leaped upon others, ripping flesh from limbs, sinking their teeth into necks and torsos, devouring the flesh. One frantic woman grabbed Jeb’s arm. He almost shot her until she spoke.
“He was dead!” she screamed. “He shuddered and died. A little while later, he sat up and attacked the other man in our trailer. He ate him.”
Her eyes were wild. Blood smears on her jumpsuit were from no wound on her that Jeb could see. He shook her.
“Who?” he asked. “Who died?”
“My husband,” she said. Her eyes grew wide with terror. She shoved the side of her hand into her mouth to stifle a scream. “Him,” she said around her hand.
Jeb saw an elderly man, his jumpsuit covered in blood and tatters of flesh, hunger in his blood red eyes, rushing at them. Jeb raised his pistol and fired, hitting the man in the knee, shattering it. The man fell, but immediately clambered to his feet and shuffled toward them, ignoring the injury. Jeb was astounded. The wound should have been agonizing and debilitating, but the man ignored it as if a mere annoyance. He shot him in the head. Like the previous one, the man died instantly. The woman began sobbing. More figures were approaching. Jeb guided her toward the gate. He would use his remaining bullet to shoot off the lock. Three men leaped from beside a trailer and stood craning their necks searching for prey, but they had not yet spotted him and the woman. He held tight to her arm, covering her mouth with his other hand to stifle her scream, and pulled her behind the trailer.
“Don’t scream or we’re dead,” he cautioned. She nodded.
Half dragging her along, they raced down a short alley between rows of trailers toward the gate. The screams of the dead and dying surrounded them. As the gate came into view, automatic gunfire erupted from the other side of the gate. Jeb threw himself and the woman to the ground, just as an explosion ripped through the air, destroying the gate and a large section of fence. In the glare of the flames of the burning gate, Jeb saw two men approaching with weapons in their hands. They were not wearing uniforms. The army had not returned to release them.
“Come on!” one of them yelled to the milling crowd. “Get out! Run!”
A few people, driven by the noises behind them, raced out the fallen gate. Most refused to leave the imagined safety of their huddled mass along the fence. Jeb stood. The woman refused to get up. Reluctantly, he left her lying there on the ground quaking in fear. He could not save everyone. However, he could save his wife and child. One of the men saw his pistol and rushed up to him.
“You’d better scoot. Zombies are coming.”
“Zombies?” he asked dumfounded.
“What the hell did you think they were – friggin’ pissed off postal workers?”
Before Jeb could get a grasp on what the man was implying, he raised his weapon, an AK47, and shot into a crowd of people rushing toward them. One or two fell but the rest continued toward them. He fired again, this time aiming for their heads. All of them went down. He grinned.
“You got to blow out their damn brains to stop ‘em.”
Jeb grabbed the man by his sleeve and jerked him around to face him. “What do mean zombies?”
“The walking dead, the dead arisen, the possessed – whatever you want.” His voice rose as if preaching at a street corner, a zealot declaring the end of the world. “They die of the flu and they come back as walking corpses. They don’t feel no pain. I tell you, it ain’t like in the movies. Those bastards move like lightning.”
The man’s fervent smile as he spoke, frightened Jeb almost as much as the idea of zombies. Jeb shook his head. “I, I don’t understand.”
Misunderstanding what he meant, the man replied, “We’re setting you free. If you’re not sick, find some place to hide out.”
Before Jeb could explain, the man raced off into the night, firing his weapon and laughing maniacally, like a man with a martyr complex seeking absolution in danger. The second man still stood by the gate, herding people through. As Jeb watched in horror, a woman leaped onto his back and bit savagely into his neck. Blood sprayed across her face. The man screamed and fell, beating at the woman with his fists. Another woman joined in the fray, attacking his stomach with her hands like claws. The man quickly fell silent. Jeb saw the man’s dropped weapon lying a few feet from the carnage. He approached carefully, picked up the AK47 and fired until it clicked on empty, spraying bullets into the two women’s head and upper torso. The high velocity 7.62 caliber bullets tore through their skulls like butter, taking parts of their faces with it. The recoil of the powerful Russian Kalashnikov assault weapon surprised him. It was much stronger than his hunting rifle. Jeb stared at the fallen man, his would-be rescuer. He was obviously dead, his throat torn out with deep bites in his chest and face. Jeb fought down the rising bile burning the back of his throat. He looked at the crowd of frightened people, many of them staring at him as if he were in charge. He thought it odd that frightened people looked to those with weapons as authority, even when such men imprison and then abandon them.
“Run!” he yelled to break their lethargy. He repeated the other man’s words. “Find shelter.”
To his relief, many heeded his advice and ran into the darkness. He heard more shots from deeper in the camp, but they ominously fell silent. From the numerous roars coming from that direction, he assumed the first man was down as well, victim of the zombie horde, his martyrdom complete. Jeb decided it was time he escaped. He spotted a bag on the ground beside the dead man and assumed it was extra ammunition. He grabbed the bag, shoved a fresh clip in the AK47 and slung the bag over his shoulder. He stopped long enough to kill two more zombies attacking stragglers and joined the fleeing crowd. Behind him, the zombies now owned the camp. The screams of the dying and the inhuman growls and roars of the zombies followed him into the night. Glancing back, the glow of the burning gate illuminated a scene from hell, the undead surrounding fleeing people and dragging them down like wolves attacking an injured elk or lions on a gazelle. He shook his head in disbelief. Zombies. Christ, what’s next?
He had seen how fast the creatures could move, so he did not linger near the camp. The remaining sur
vivors scattered into the night. A few, he hoped, might manage to find shelter, but he knew most would quickly fall victim to the inhuman things in the camp once they had finished their grisly meals and sought new prey. He could do nothing to save them. As he raced back to where he had left his truck, a shadow came at him from the darkness. He fired one shot but missed. The old woman, wearing nothing but a pink housecoat, growled and swiped at him with her claws. She was so close he could smell her fetid breath. Jeb backed up, stumbled over a saguaro skeleton and fell down a small wash. As the woman stood above him on the bank, he took careful aim and shot her in the mouth. The back of her skull flew off, embedding in the trunk of the saguaro behind her. Black blood dripped sluggishly down the cactus as the woman’s body hung suspended by the long cactus spines.
He reached the truck without further incident, but he panicked for a moment when he could not find his keys. His stomach sank with the thought that he had left them in the clothes that he had discarded for his gray jumpsuit. Searching again, he found them in his pocket. He breathed a sigh of relief and forced himself to calm down. Panic could kill. Inside the truck, he took a long moment to catch his breath before cranking it.
Christ. I missed seeing my wife by minutes, my son is missing or dead, and zombies are attacking the living. It can’t be happening. Did my mind snap while I was in the camp? Am I crazy? He took stock of his mental faculties. His memory was intact. He could remember lectures from college, notes on patients, so his higher brain functions were still functioning. God! It is real.
His short drive home soon became a nightmare. The roads swarmed with zombies not wearing the ubiquitous gray jumpsuits of the FEMA camp. They wore street clothes, or in one case, no clothes at all. He was unsure what to do. He had shot them in the camp, but he could not bring himself to run them down, so he avoided them when he could; dodging around them when they lunged at the truck. He turned onto other roads when they blocked him. Their attacks did not seem coordinated as in the camp, more like solitary animals. He shuddered at the thought of being the hunted instead of the hunter. He had never enjoyed accompanying his father on his frequent hunting trips. Now, he remembered why.
Gradually, it dawned on him that his truck lights might be attracting the zombies. Most of them seemed massed between him and Tangerine Road, his route home. He decided to drive into the Saguaro National Park, find a safe place to park in the foothills and wait until dawn to return home. He could see Wasson Peak looming over the Tucson Mountain range to his south. He took Sandario Road to the unpaved Bajada Loop trail through the park, ignoring the ‘one way’ sign, and drove up into the mountains. Shutting off the engine, he leaned over the steering wheel and allowed the pain to wash over him.
The adrenalin rush of survival had evaporated, giving way to the dull throbbing realization that his son might be dead and his family destroyed. He could have easily given in to the pain and anguish, submerged himself in the tempting pool of pity and self-loathing he knew lurked nearby. He had seen it happen enough to his patients. He was fully aware of the five stages of grief. He was still in denial. Anger was fast approaching. He had already passed through the third stage, bargaining, a little out of sequence. He knew what he should have done. That was part of his anger. He had failed as a father and as a husband. He refused to give in to the fourth stage – depression. He allowed the anger to surface, forging it into a weapon with which he could beat back his sorrow. His story was one repeated countless times across the country. He could do nothing about the plight of others, but he could dedicate his life to finding his wife, even if he had to kill to do it. He had always felt pride in the military, enjoyed the quickening in his chest when he saw a man in uniform freshly returned from a stint overseas. Now, he hated them. They had probably murdered his son, taken his wife from him. He would have his vengeance,
* * * *
Daylight brought no end to his living nightmare. His short naps interrupted by the distant cries of coyotes and once the distinctly human cry of someone in pain, had given him no rest. The first dark fingers of depression were trying to insinuate themselves into his mind. His fatigue made it more difficult to combat the invasion. Even his brain was tired but he fought back. Giving in and succumbing to their false promise of relief would have been easy, but disastrous.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and took stock of his situation. He was armed. He had his pistol with just one remaining bullet, but he had the appropriated AK47 and a bag of extra clips. He rummaged in the floorboard, found a partially full water bottle and drained it. His stomach grumbled from lack of food, but he didn’t think he could eat so soon after witnessing the savage carnage at the camp.
The creatures he had seen were no longer human. Whether or not they were zombies as the man who had freed the survivors claimed, he didn’t know. Jeb had trouble getting his mind around the concept of the dead rising. It seemed too . . . too end of the world to believe. Maybe it was the end of the world. What else could account for such a departure from reality? Had God reached down his finger to smite the wicked after Rapturing the good? No, God was not the one who had taken his wife away from him. It was the army. Remembering that fact, brought rage to his hands. They clenched into fists with which he pounded the steering wheel until they ached.
Judgment Day. What had Robert warned against Judgment Day? Jeb had thought it odd at the time since Robert was not a Christian. Did Judgment Day have some other connotation, a military one that he wanted Jeb to know about? The abrupt manner in which the phone conversation had ended, brought to mind unseen listeners of the brief exchange between them, listeners who did not want the secret revealed.
Jeb shook his head. Conspiracies. How many of his patients claimed to be the victims of a conspiracy, the delusion of the paranoid schizophrenic? Was he crazy even to consider such a possibility? If there were such a conspiracy, its roots were so far up the chain of command that, even the President had to be in on it, an unthinkable thought.
The morning was quiet and cool. The sun was just rising over the mountains. Where he had parked was still in shadow. Jeb got out stretching his legs by walking around the truck. The absence of the usual morning sounds slowly registered on his mind. He returned to the truck and took out the AK47, feeling a little more comfortable with the heavy weapon in his hands.
“Drop it,” a voice commanded from behind the rocks.
He let the rifle slip from his fingers and fall to the ground. A man stepped from behind the rocks holding a .45 pistol. A woman with short blonde hair, younger than him by several years, followed him. She looked more curious than frightened. His eyes returned to the man with the pistol. His face was betrayed his anger. He looked dangerous.
“Where did you get it?” he asked, pointing the pistol to the AK.
“From a dead man back at the FEMA camp. He and another man blew up the fence to free everyone.”
The man nodded, lowering the pistol but did not put it away. “It was Craig’s. He and Will went to scout the camp after the army pulled out. Both of them?” he asked.
“Craig, yes. The other man, I don’t know, but I heard screaming and no more shots afterwards. With what was going on, I thought it best to be better armed.”
“Better armed?”
“I broke into the camp with only a pistol. When all hell broke loose, well, the pistol didn’t seem big enough.”
The man laughed. “You broke in?”
Jeb nodded. “Looking for my wife and son that were sent there two days ago. Three days now. They left on the trucks with the army.”
“Sorry.” The man slipped his pistol into his holster. “Name’s Mace Ridell. My friend is Renda. Don’t know her last name. We were recently residents there.”
It began to make sense to Jeb. “The explosion the night I broke in. Your escape made my breaking in possible.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“What did she look like?” Renda asked.
“Five-foot six, long blonde hair, eyes as
green as emeralds, beautiful – a former Miss Arizona. My son is six.”
Jeb noticed a look of sorrow come to Renda’s face and prepared himself for bad news.
“I saw her. They were taking a young child to the . . . to the medical building. She was trying to stop them.”
When Jeb’s face paled, and he wobbled unsteadily on suddenly rubbery legs, the expression on Mace’s face became grim. “You know, don’t you?”
Jeb nodded. “I was inside. I saw . . . I saw what they did.”
“He was probably already dead,” Renda added quickly. “The sheet was over his face. I only knew it was a child by the shape beneath the sheet.”
She had meant well, but her words did not assuage the feeling of guilt that washed over Jeb. Guilt and grief rolled into one large, bitter, and hard-to-swallow pill. What Mace said next drove home his helplessness.
“He would have changed into a zombie. You saw them; know what they are.”
Jeb glared at him. “You want me to thank them,” he yelled.
Jeb’s outburst had no effect on Mace. “Had you rather have been the one to put a bullet in his head, or watch him kill your wife?”
Jeb could no longer hold back the pain. His body shook with sobs that erupted from deep in his chest and spilled over him like an unstoppable tide. He yelled until his lungs ran out of air. He felt arms around him, guiding him to his truck. Someone opened the rear hatch and sat him in the cargo area, his feet dangling over the edge. He knew if he opened his eyes, the world would return with all its pain. He kept them squeezed shut, a dam against reality.
He did not know how long he remained that way. The truck was no longer in the shadows when he swallowed his fear and opened his eyes. He remembered a soft voice in his ear urging him to let it all out. At first, he had imagined it had been Karen’s voice. Mace and Renda were standing a few yards away, speaking quietly. When Mace noticed Jeb’s movements, he motioned for him to join them.