by Jay Brenham
He looked down at his watch. 7:30 a.m. He’d missed his radio rendezvous.
He gave the fridge a considering glance as he went into the kitchen. He could either try to eat everything now, before it spoiled, or leave it closed so it would last as long as possible. Judging by the fact that there were still two dead bodies in Jack’s yard, he didn’t expect the power to come on any time soon. He grabbed a couple of granola bars out of a drawer instead of cracking the fridge.
A siren screamed in the distance and he looked outside. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there was smoke on the horizon in the direction of Virginia Beach. He ran his hand down the side of his face and rubbed the back of his neck. What the hell was going on?
At the end of the road a figure walked down the centerline. His gait was lumbering and strange, like he was drunk, or injured.
As the man approached, Sam could see that he was wearing a torn suit. One sleeve was ripped off and dried blood covered his left arm. He looked like he needed help.
Sam wasn’t going to be the kind of person who sloughed his responsibility to help someone. As a precaution against other rioters, or whoever had attacked this guy, Sam grabbed the sledgehammer from his bedroom. There was no one else in sight. Sam paused—what if this guy was some sort of psycho drug addict?—but then he pushed the thought away. If he was the one hurt, he’d want someone to help him.
Sam opened the front door and stepped onto the front steps. “Hey buddy,” Sam called, making sure to keep his voice low. “You look pretty beat up. Do you need some help?”
The man’s head snapped up at the sound of Sam’s voice. He went from an amble to a sprint, moving toward Sam at full speed, his face contorted with rage.
Sam took a step back but there was no time to get inside. The man was moving too fast. A jolt of adrenaline surged through him. He slid the sledgehammer to the ready position, one hand just below the hammer and the other hand at the end of the hickory handle. His feet were braced. When the man was a few steps away, Sam pivoted to the left, bringing the sledge back and accelerating the twelve pound hammer into the man’s chest.
The hammer smashed through the man’s rib cage and sank into his chest cavity. Sam actually felt the bones break.
The man went from a sprint to the ground in less than a second. Sam held onto his weapon even as the man crumpled to the ground. There were no screams of pain. The mad man lay on the ground in front him, his extremities twitching with the random firing of neurons. A gurgle escaped his lips.
As Sam backed away from the man, blood began to seep through the dead man’s shirt, flowing onto the sidewalk in front of his house. A small noise made Sam look up.
Jack was looking out from his house. He was pressing the radio against the window.
#
Sam stepped back inside and locked the door. His hands shook and his face was slick with sweat. What had just happened? He sat down for a minute in the dark house—with the blinds drawn, it was gloomy and dim inside—then picked up the Motorola radio and turned it to channel 3.
“Jack, you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt. I guess I’m alright,” he paused, then added, “I’ve never had to do anything like that before.”
“Anything like what? Defending yourself?”
“I think I just killed someone, Jack. I’d never even seen a dead body until last night.”
“Neither had I. You did what you had to do, same as me.”
“What the fuck is going on, Jack? I thought he needed help! People don’t act like that. Maybe once in a while somebody goes crazy and attacks a random person, but two people attacked you last night. Then this guy goes after me today. It’s…it’s not normal.”
“I know.” Jack paused. “We have one of those emergency radios that you hand crank. You got anything like that?”
“Yeah I have one. I’d completely forgotten about it, actually.” It had been another hurricane preparation purchase from a few years back. He hadn’t touched it since.
“Theresa is pretty scared. We’re going to listen to the radio. Maybe we can find out some new information. Maybe one of the bridges opened back up and we can make a break for it. Why don’t you listen to yours and see what you can find out? Check back in an hour?”
“Yeah, check back in an hour.” Maybe by then there would be someone—anyone—who could tell him things would be alright.
Sam switched the walkie talkie off and stared at the wall. What was he going to do? Jill and Grant were a few hundred miles away but at least they were safer where they were. He had just killed a man he’d intended to help. That guy had to have been on drugs. Some bad drugs.
This was all so messed up. He had some food, and thank God he had plenty of water saved up between the eight gallon container and his bathtubs. But the power was out and his house was going to be an oven by this afternoon. The temperature had been hitting record highs all over the eastern seaboard for the last week. As far as timing for a crisis, this was probably the worst in terms of Norfolk’s weather.
Sam went upstairs and found the emergency radio. The crank made a buzzing sound as it rotated. After a few minutes, he flicked the switch on the radio, moving the dial until he heard a voice.
“This is the emergency broadcast system. There has been a public disturbance. Individual homeowners are advised to remain inside their homes. Do not go outside. If you see someone outside your residence, do not attempt to make contact. Individual homeowners are advised to remain inside their homes. Repeat, this is the emergency broadcast system...””
The message began to repeat.
Sam continued to scan the radio but kept hearing the same radio transmission. The emergency broadcast was identical on every station that had reception. He sighed and put the radio down.
In the meantime, he needed to begin thinking about how to defend his house from the inside. His entire downstairs was surrounded with windows. He had ten windows on the downstairs floors alone and two doors that had windows set in them. He would be at a disadvantage sleeping near so many windows.
An hour passed and Sam switched on the walkie talkie.
“You there, Jack?”
“I’m here. What did you hear?”
“Just an emergency broadcast message telling me to stay inside and not to approach people outside my house. You?”
“Same. I could almost pick up a transmission from one other station. There were people talking on it but it didn’t come in well. Something about an infection that’s affecting people’s judgment. Maybe I’ll be able to pick the transmission up later, depending on the weather.”
As Jack spoke, Sam heard the sound of screeching tires down the road.
“You hear that?” he asked.
“Yeah…can you see what’s going on?”
Sam hurried to his upstairs window, which looked out on the street. He heard the roar of a motor as a red sports car squealed around the corner and headed straight down the road. The car ran all the stop signs and blew past Sam’s house, engine roaring. There was only one person in the car from what he could see.
When the car approached the train crossing at the far end of the street, a man darted in front of the vehicle. The car hit the man and swerved off the road, becoming airborne as it hit the train track. It landed hard, sparks flying. Brake lights flashed red as the driver tried to save himself from running into the ditch, but he was moving too fast. The car slammed into the ditch and rolled onto its side.
“Shit, Jack. We’ve gotta help that guy.”
“Look at the other end of the street, Sam.” Jack’s voice was hushed.
Sam looked out his window. At least a dozen people were following the path of the car, sprinting full out just like the man who’d rushed Sam. More poured in from side streets, their clothing torn and red with blood, faces twisted with anger.
“Sam.” Jack’s voice held a warning. “Don’t do anything to make your presence
known. If you go out there, you’re as good as dead. And there’s nothing I can do to help you.”
”I know. I know. You’re right,” Sam said. But he felt ashamed at the thought of cowering inside and not helping the driver. Somewhere inside his head, a nasty voice said perhaps there was a reason the military had never trusted him with anything more dangerous than a paintbrush.
Sam looked back toward the crashed vehicle. A man was struggling to get out of the car from the passenger side window. He pushed against the window opening with both hands, pulling his hips and legs free and jumping to the ground. He had a bag slung over one shoulder and a handgun in his right hand.
The first of the rioters had already gotten to the train tracks by the time the man reached the road. Sam heard shots ring out and the first rioter dropped. More shots echoed but one shot didn’t always seem to be enough to stop them. Some rioters fell, stood back up, and continued the chase. Some did not fall at all.
The man shot at the first few rioters but when he saw the large number of people behind them, he turned and began to run to the golf course adjacent to the crash site. Focused on his pursuers, the man didn’t bother to look to either side.
A rioter came from his left flank and tackled him onto the pavement. The driver’s head struck the pavement hard and, as Sam watched, the rioter grabbed the driver’s arm in his mouth and began to shake his head like a wild dog might shake its prey. The driver put his gun to the rioter’s head and pulled the trigger, then gunned down his closest pursuers and stood up. He glanced down at his arm for a long moment.
Sam tensed, watching the other rioters close in.
Without warning, the driver put the barrel of the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. A red mist sprayed from the top of the driver’s skull and he crumpled to the ground. Sam sucked in a breath.
There must have been as many as thirty or forty rioters by then and they descended upon the driver’s body. To Sam’s horror, they appeared to be eating the corpse. A female rioter emerged from the feeding pile holding an arm like it was the Stanley cup, twirling the severed limb and splashing blood across the crowd. Others saw the arm and began grabbing and fighting for it, a group of seagulls after a piece of bread. Sam slid down the wall next to the window. He was breathing hard.
“Sam, what the hell is going on out there? Can you see what’s happening?”
He realized Jack had been speaking for the past few minutes.
Sam didn’t want to talk; he needed to think. Needed to think of a way out of this. Those weren’t rioters; they were psychopaths. Something was wrong, wrong with everyone he’d seen since this started. Those people were sick...insane...
Sam held down the transmit button on the walkie-talkie. “He’s dead Jack. One of them bit the driver and he shot himself.”
“Shit.”
“That’s not the worst part. They’re tearing him apart and eating him. Celebrating his death.”
“What the hell?”
“Jack…I don’t know if the ground floor is safe anymore. Maybe we should move to the second floor of our houses.”
“It’s gonna be hot as hell on the second floor with no air conditioning,” Jack said doubtfully.
“I have plenty of water to drink and I think it’s a safer bet. Defending a staircase will be easier than defending all of the windows in my living room.”
“I guess you’re right.” Jack paused. “No matter what, we need to lay low until those rioters find another street. I don’t think either of us would be able to survive if all of them attacked at once.”
Jack was right. They’d been lucky so far. The largest group of rioters they’d encountered had numbered two.
Sam continued to look outside. The rioters, if that’s what they could still be called, appeared to be done with the man’s corpse. Blood covered their faces and hands. Some were intentionally making stripes of blood across their bodies as if painting themselves in team colors.
The rioters had gathered in a large circle and lifted one of their own into the air, a conquering hero returned home. In his left hand, he held the severed head of the driver by the hair.
A short distance away, Sam saw one of the rioters army crawling after the larger group. It was the one who’d been hit by the sports car. He was obviously paralyzed from the waist down but shouted maniacally as he dragged himself along the pavement.
CHAPTER THREE
Sam knew the world had become a darker place. As he watched the blood-soaked men and women run shouting and screaming past his house, he resigned himself to the necessity of survival.
He didn’t know people could act like this. Jack had said earlier that this was the result of an infection. These weren’t rioters; Sam wondered if they were human anymore. They were sick, infected husks.
Jack wasn’t Sam’s only neighbor but he was the only one Sam had spoken to since this mess started. Were his other neighbors faring as well as Jack? Had they heard any information? There was no way of finding out. If Sam went around knocking on doors he was just as likely to be shot as he was to be attacked by the infected.
Over the next few hours, the infected moved on, their zeal for terrorizing focused elsewhere. Maybe they’d found other victims, Sam thought with a shudder.
Sam eyed his staircase speculatively. He needed to fortify the house in case the infected got inside. It was an old house and the staircase was narrow and walled on both sides, something he’d never appreciated until now. Narrow meant easier to barricade. There had been a door at the bottom of the stairs, back when the upstairs was still unfinished. By the time he’d moved in, however, the upstairs attic had been made into a second floor. Sam had removed the door and thrown it away. The door frame was slightly wider than the other doors in the house, so there would be no swapping doors. Without a door, what would be the best way to barricade it?
Until Sam thought of a way to fortify the stairwell, he decided he needed to do three things. First, he threw a bag together with everything he needed to survive in case he had to leave the house in a hurry. The infected ran fast; he couldn’t weigh himself down with too much food and water. He grabbed an old day hiking pack and threw in a couple bottles of water, a handful of granola bars, a multi-tool, matches, some spare batteries for the walkie-talkie, a wad of toilet paper and a bandanna. It was a pretty sorry excuse for a survival bag, but he needed to stay light. If he was being chased, he would have to drop the sledgehammer; it was simply too awkward to run with.
Next Sam took a second hiking pack and filled it with things that were not as essential to immediate survival: a change of clothes, socks, food, money, cell phone, and a charger. If there was an opportunity to escape in his car he would throw this pack in the trunk.
The third thing he did was to bring a large amount of food upstairs. Besides the sledgehammer, the crowbar was his only other serious weapon, so he kept both close by as he packed.
There was no doubt about it: he would’ve been better off with a gun. Not that a gun had saved the poor sports car driver, but at least he’d been able to spare himself a painful death.
Sam glanced involuntarily toward the train tracks. The remains of the man’s body lay still in the middle of the street. A few feet away Sam could see a black shape: the gun. The gun had been fired but there might be some rounds left. Had the driver saved the last shot for himself? What if he’d had other weapons in the car?
Sam shook his head. Whatever was in the car didn’t matter. Venturing outside would be stupid and dangerous. He’d seen what happened to the driver and he couldn’t risk it. He wasn’t that desperate.
Barricading the stairwell was Sam’s final self-appointed task before he would allow himself to sit down. He’d just started when he heard a woman’s scream.
Sam bolted to the window. A blonde woman was running down the middle of the road. He’d seen her before, though he’d never spoken to her. Every neighborhood has a loud family whose parents yell at their children constantly. That was this lady. Her
name was Gloria, or at least he thought it was. Maybe Jack had mentioned it at some point.
She was good-looking but always looked exhausted. From speaking with neighbors Sam knew she was a single mother with three children. As far as Sam could tell, Gloria was not abusive; she was just a shitty parent. Or maybe she was just tired of parenting by herself. Having one child with two parents seemed hard enough to Sam; he couldn’t imagine being by himself and taking care of three.
Gloria was wearing a pair of pink sweatpants with the word “Juicy” written across the ass. Her black tank top barely containing what it was supposed to cover. Dark streaks of mascara lined both cheeks and she was clutching a metal garden rake in one hand.
A boy, probably no more than eight or nine years old, sprinted after her. The boy was her son Bobby, he had met him once when Bobby had hopped his back fence for a ball. At first it looked like Bobby had no arms, but as he got closer, Sam could see that the boy’s arms had been tied behind his back. Just like the rioters who’d cannibalized the driver, the child’s face was twisted in anger. He gained ground on Gloria and just as it looked like he was going to overtake her, she turned and extended the rake towards the child, striking him in the chest until he fell onto his back. He thrashed against the pavement, like a turtle flipped on its shell.
Damnit, damnit, damnit! Sam chanted the word in his mind.
The world out there was dangerous. He wasn’t this woman’s hero. Why should he risk himself to help her? There could be a thousand of those things around the corner and they would rip him to shreds. There was no sense in both of them dying and, unlike the driver of the sports car, he didn’t have a bullet to quickly end his life.
Sam glanced at his watch. 1:50 p.m.
He wasn’t due to check in with Jack for another ten minutes, but he turned on the radio anyway.
“Jack, are you seeing this?” he called into the radio.
No response.
He had to think fast. What should he do? Despite the noise they were making, Gloria and her son were still the only two people on the street. They were nearly in front of his house now.