The Gorging

by Kirk Thompson

  Betty froze in her place and would have stayed there if Frank had not been paying attention. He grabbed her arm in a frenzy and broke her feet loose from the pavement. Betty’s mouth hung open as she looked over to the herd that was quickly approaching them. Frank kept pulling her and yelling, “Come on honey! You have to run! They’ll get us!”

  It must have been the luckiest part of their eventful day when Bobby spotted a short yellow school bus with DAVIDSON COUNTY SCHOOLS printed on the side, sitting around thirty yards ahead of them. “Let’s get in that bus,” he yelled. No one asked the obvious question, but instead ran straight for the bus. They would all get the answer once Bobby put his hand around the ignition to turn the key. “Is there a key?” That would be the question, but they could at least get inside of the bus to protect themselves from the hostiles coming at them.

  The hostiles must not have gone totally stupid, because they could still run, which is what the twelve year old boy decided to do when he dropped the severed arm to his side and started after them. The boy looked back at the other hostiles, growled something in their growling language, which got the others running with him. Bobby looked back to judge how far they had gotten away from the herd thinking they were safe, but that thought quickly vanished from his head when the boy was only ten feet behind him. Bobby could smell the blood that had soaked onto the boy’s shirt. Any closer and the boy could leap at him and take him down. Bobby was scared at the thought of the boy getting any closer to him. After watching so many horror movies and reading so many paperbacks about zombies and vampires, Bobby could only assume that if he got bit by one of the hostiles, it might turn him the same way. Isn’t that what happened to those people on that TV show? He was not about to stick around and find out. The bus is only five yards away now and the boy is closing in fast.

  Troy made it in the bus first. Betty and Frank quickly followed behind, nearly tripping on the steps going inside. Bobby got to the door, but something made him stop for a quick look. The hostiles were already approaching the bus. Bobby froze, his nerves tensed up and he couldn’t move his legs. He was somehow mesmerized at the sight of psychos coming at him. They were closer now. The boy leaped at Bobby.

  A hand reached out from the bus and grabbed Bobby by the red and black-checkered flannel shirt he wore. The boy hit the ground face first, sending his front teeth bolting out of his mouth in a blood spattered mess as Bobby was pulled inside the bus. The door slammed shut as the hostile crowd rammed up against it. Blood smeared on the clear glass of the door. The loud banging of fists and faces against the steel panels of the bus’s sides were agonizing to the ears. With each pounding they gave, a bloody fist print was left, smudging red with the yellow paint. The bus rocked back and forth, nearly rising off the wheels on each side as it rocked. Inside the bus is fresh meat and the crazy-ass people will do anything to get it.

  Bobby had fallen against the inside steps of the bus and looked up to see Troy sitting in the driver’s seat, holding the keys in his hand and smiling. He rattled them back and forth, showing off how lucky they were. Frank had been the one to grab Bobby and pull him to safety. With another helping hand from Frank, Bobby stood up in the aisle of the bus and looked out the window to see the boy had gotten up and was now beating on the bus with the others. He saw no pain in the boy’s face nor did he see any front teeth for that matter.

  “Stop shaking those keys,” yelled Frank, “and let’s go. I don’t want to die here.” He sat down in one of the seats, not paying attention how close he had gotten to the window. He started screaming hysterically as one of the construction workers jumped up and shoved his arm through the bus window and grabbed Frank’s hair. “Help! Help!” The construction worker pulled a chunk of hair out of Frank’s head, but got a second grip with more hair and held on.

  “Frank!” Betty ran to Frank and grabbed the construction worker’s hand. It was a big hand with a monstrous hold. She tried to break the fingers lose as the construction worker banged Frank’s head against the window, splintering the glass down the middle. His head made a thumping sound like a basketball on a gym floor with each bash it made against the window. Blood spurted from his temple as speckles of glass shattered away and stuck to the side of his face. Betty held on with all her might, but the construction worker was mightier. Obviously, years of using a jackhammer and carrying lumber from point A to point B gave him the strength in his grip he needed to pull Frank out of his seat and nearly out of the window.

  Bobby turned to Troy and punched his shoulder to get him to unlock his eyes from the situation developing in the middle of the bus. “Start the damn thing,” yelled Bobby. “Let’s go.” Troy started the engine with no trouble and pulled the gearshift selector to “D” and punched the gas pedal to the floor with his foot. The herd of hostiles outside of the bus continued to beat on the sides with their bloody fists even as the bus began to pull away. The construction worker holding on to Frank’s hair must have realized Bobby’s intention of speeding away. This prompted the worker to reach in with both hands, successfully pulling Frank’s body through the window. Betty grabbed his shirt, but it did no good. The fabric ripped as easily as newspaper. Frank screamed in hysterics as he fell to the ground beside the bus. He bicycled his feet as he tried to stand to make a getaway, but it did no good.

  “Stop!” Betty said. She ran to the front of the bus and reached for the lever to open the folding door.

  Bobby grabbed Betty around the waist and pulled her away from the exit. “Don’t do it Betty. They’ll kill you, too.”

  “No! I want my Frank.” Betty kept trying to pull away from Bobby as she reached for the lever to open the door. “No! No! No!” Her knees trembled and a sick feeling over took her stomach. Her head was bursting with pain. She fainted and fell limp in Bobby’s arms. Bobby looked out of the emergency exit window at the rear of the bus and watched as the herd of hostiles enjoyed their lunch, chowing down on poor Frank’s body. Frank’s screams quickly faded away as the bus drove further down the road, headed north.

  “Is she still alive?” asked Troy. He kept his foot glued to the floor, swerving the steering wheel left and right to avoid abandoned cars and the occasional body lying in the middle of the street. The traffic lights worked as though nothing had happened, but Troy didn’t bother to slow and look each direction as he blew through red light after red light. The chances of another car coming down the street were slim to none.

  “She fainted,” said Bobby, as he laid her across the front seat of the bus. “Slow down before you kill us.” Bobby looked out of the front windshield at all the cars that Troy kept coming dangerously close to.

  “We’re not going to hit anything. There’s no one else on the road except for us.” Troy turned his head and looked back at Bobby. He kept his head turned for a long while until Bobby looked up from Betty and caught him staring.

  As Bobby looked up and noticed Troy, a walking figure caught his eye in front of the bus. They were approaching too fast to slow down for whatever it was they were going to hit. “Look out!” yelled Bobby, but it was too late. Just as Troy jerked his head back around and looked out of the windshield, two loud thumps came from underneath the bus as the bus bounced slightly with each thump. Troy slammed the brakes, sending Bobby falling forward against the windshield and Betty into the floorboard beneath the front seat.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Troy. He rose up from the seat and looked over the steering wheel. Bobby pulled himself up and looked out of the windshield himself, both of them not realizing that whatever they ran over would be behind the bus. Bobby’s blood was pumping fast and his heart was racing. He had been the only one to see that the walking figure in front of the bus had been a teenager.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Bobby as he crossed his hands and grabbed his stomach. “I think we just ran over a kid.”

  Troy’s jaw dropped down to his chest and his eyes bulged out of their sockets as he looked at Bobby, stunned at the words tha
t had just come out of Bobby’s mouth. Troy had killed in the war, but never so much as harmed a child. The men he had killed were the enemy and were dead set on killing him and his Infantry Battalion. Troy could squeeze the trigger with ease in the face of death, but a child? No sir. That was never on his agenda. Troy swallowed a lump in his throat the seemed like the size of a baseball and managed to put a few words together and said, “Do you think he’s dead?”

  Bobby nodded his head slowly as he stared at Troy. They both simultaneously turned their heads and looked at the rear emergency exit of the bus. Without saying anything, they both slowly walked to the back, Bobby in front and Troy following closely behind. They got to the back and stood side-by-side, leaning on the brown bus seats. Troy put a hand over his mouth and began to shake as if it were ten degrees below zero. Bobby stood frozen as he looked at the mangled body twenty feet behind the bus.

  “Oh my God,” said Troy as he trembled. “I can’t believe I just killed a kid man.” Tears started to drip from the corners of his eyes. “I’ll go to jail forever. I’ve been drinking.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to jail. Besides, I don’t think anyone is ever going to notice.” Bobby shook his head and looked over to Troy. “I don’t want to be cold, but it’s not like we can get out and check on him. Look what happened to Frank—and he was in the bus. It was probably one of those crazy people anyway.”

  “It still doesn’t change the fact I’m a murderer now.”

  “I think you’re exempt from those laws for the time being. We can’t sit here. What’s done is done. He was probably crazy anyways. We have to keep moving now.” Bobby turned and walked to the front of the bus. “I’ll drive from here. You just sit with Betty and make sure she doesn’t freak out when she wakes up.” He sat in the driver seat and restarted the engine.

  Troy nodded and walked to the front. He lifted Betty from the floorboard and laid her back on the seat. She was still unconscious. Troy was scared for a moment that he had killed Betty also, so he checked her pulse and was relieved when he felt the blood pumping through the vein in her neck. He sat down in the seat across from her and put his head in his hands. His shoulders jerked up and down as he cried quietly. He kept his head down below the seat so that Bobby couldn’t see him in the rearview mirror. He was upset that he had not only killed a kid, but that he had been drinking when he did it. He thought to himself that he would have been okay with it if the kid had been one of the crazy people, but he would never know for sure. He would be afraid for a long time, never knowing whether or not the teenager was one of the hostiles.

  On the ground behind the bus, the teenager had just enough life left in him to turn his head toward the bus. He looked at the rear of the bus and let out a faint growl and hissed.

  Bobby put the bus in gear and pulled away down the street, leaving short tire marks imprinted with blood on the pavement. He kept a fast pace, but slower than Troy had been. He didn’t want any more mishaps the rest of the way to Kentucky. It would not be the final stop in the trip, but Bobby wanted to see the farm he was supposed to be visiting for his news story. For some strange reason, he felt as though Kentucky was the ground zero for this whole ordeal. He hoped that the craziness had not spread across the country and that his wife and son were fine, but without a working phone or any other means of communication, he would be wondering for a long while until he would reach home. He knows that Troy will travel with him for the entire trip back to Wyoming, which would hopefully not take more than a couple of days, but could take longer if Troy decides he no longer wants to drive after killing the kid with the bus. Bobby was not so sure about Betty. If she does not flip out after waking up, she may stay along for the ride until he reaches St. Louis. She would surely get off the bus there being that it is her hometown. She may have different plans before getting that far. She may decide to sneak off the bus and go back to look for Frank after they make their first pit stop. A woman in her condition, having just lost her husband of several years, would certainly be in no condition to travel alone.

  “I’m driving us to Kentucky,” said Bobby as he steered the bus around stalled cars and trucks. “Just north of the state line.”

  Troy wiped his eyes and looked up at Bobby, seeing his reflection in the rearview mirror. “What for?” asked Troy.

  “I think it may be where this whole thing started. I don’t know if there is anything there that can help to stop it, or if there is any explanation to why it started, but I feel I need to at least check it out. Not just for me, but for my friend, Pete.”

  “I understand,” said Troy, “but after that I want to head straight back to Wyoming.”

  “That’s the plan.” Bobby slowed the bus down and edged it slowly between two stalled utility trucks blocking an intersection. A sign just on the other side read I-65 2 MILES AHEAD. “I’m going to need your help driving from there. Will you feel up to it?”

  “I think I can by that time. Let’s just get this over with quick. I don’t want to sound like a whiney child, but I really do want to go home.”

  “I do, too. I wish there was a way that I could check on my wife and son. I hope they are okay.”

  “Hopefully they’ll be fine.” Troy leaned back in the seat. The tears had stopped dripping from his eyes, but he still felt like he was going to burst into tears any moment. He would be scarred for life, not only from running over the child, but also from all the near death experiences of the day. He looked down at the floorboard and leaned his head against the seatback in front of him.

  Bobby drove the bus another two miles down the road and took the northbound entrance ramp onto Interstate 65. There were numerous cars blocking the lanes, but the side of the road looked to be mostly clear. They were another forty miles from ground zero.

  They drove about twenty miles down the interstate and could go no further because of an overturned semi-truck. The double trailers were long enough to block both lanes. Bobby made the decision to back the bus up about a quarter of a mile to the last exit they had passed. A sign at the exit reading US31 gave them renewed hope that they could make it the rest of the way before it got too late in the day. Troy and Bobby had agreed to find a hotel along the side of the road once Bobby saw ground zero.

  Route 31 was fairly clear compared to the interstate. Betty was still asleep and Bobby stayed behind the wheel of the bus for the whole trip. They hadn’t see a living soul the twenty miles they had driven on the interstate. There were more dead bodies than they had seen since the plane crash. Most had died in horrific car crashes. Some had crashed because their passengers had gone crazy and started attacking the driver, causing a chain reaction of pile-ups. Even though a majority of everyone seemed to have gone crazy, most of the gore on the interstate was a result of crashing. There were mangled bodies that had been torn into large chunks from 18-wheelers splitting cars in half. The worse that Bobby and Troy had seen was a compact car that had been flattened by an overturned bus. The driver of the compact had been squished and his insides were squeezed out like a smashed tomato. The part that had nearly made Bobby throw up in his mouth was seeing the driver with his guts hanging out of his mouth, which dangled down one side of the driver’s cheek and down to the ground like a long necktie. Troy could not make himself look at the squashed driver. He kept his head turned the entire time toward the opposite side of the interstate. Betty was the luckiest of them for having stayed unconscious for the duration of the trip. She slept peacefully with no dreams, while Bobby kept driving and Troy kept weeping over the kid he ran over.

  “I think we’re only twenty miles or so from Kentucky,” said Bobby. “We should be there shortly if we don’t run into anything else crazy along the way.”

  “I don’t think things can get much crazier than they already are.” Troy looked at Bobby and watched him drive.

  “I wouldn’t talk like that. The last person that talked like that got eaten alive by a bunch of fucking cannibals.” Bobby looked in the rearview mirror at T
roy. They stared at each other for a brief moment then looked over to the seat at Betty. She had started to awaken and was moaning as she slowly sat up. “She’s waking up,” said Bobby. “Check on her.”

  Troy put his hands on her shoulders and held her up as she glanced around the bus.

  “Where—am—I?” asked Betty. She squinted her eyes and held one of her hands to her forehead. “My head hurts.” She looked at Troy and shook her head. She was stunned at this strange man that was sitting beside her. “Who are you? Get away from me!” She jerked herself loose from Troy’s arm that was draped over her shoulders.

  “Relax lady. It’s me Troy.” He tried to grab her hand to calm her down. “You passed out.”

  “Let go of me,” she said as she quickly stepped over his legs and into the aisle of the bus. “Where’s my husband? Frank. Where are you?” She looked to the back and to the front. “Frank.”

  Bobby kept switching his attention from the road to the rearview mirror and back to the road again. “Calm down Betty. Take a seat before you fall.” Bobby looked back to the road just in time to miss a stalled car. The swerving of the short yellow school bus sent Troy sliding against the sidewall, banging his head on the window. He let out a loud groan when his head made contact with the glass. Betty was thrown into one of the seats and fell to the floor.

  “Where is my husband?” Betty jumped up from the floor as Troy jumped into the aisle to keep her from running to the front.

  He grabbed Betty by the shoulders and shook her. “He’s dead woman. He was pulled out of the window in front of your own eyes. You watched it. He’s dead.”

  Her mood changed immediately. She looked Troy in the eyes and her mouth hung open like a child watching the ice cream man speed away without ever stopping. “He’s dead?” She knew Frank was dead, but she asked anyway. She started shaking her head and sat down in the seat. “Frank is dead...My sweet husband is dead.” She dropped her head down into her hands and started to cry. Troy sat down beside her and held her closely and comforted her.