by Hunt, Jack
I swung my legs back onto the roof, and rushed over to the front of the store where all the noise was coming from.
When I looked over the edge, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It was if the zombie run was still on, except instead of people grabbing blood tags from people’s waists they were tackling them to the ground and tearing into their flesh. My eyes widened, my jaw dropped as my brain tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Was this another event that the organizers had put on? Another way they were upping the ante? Getting people to think a real zombie attack was happening?
“Guys, you need to see this.”
Baja stood beside Specs who had these high-powered night vision binoculars. He put them up to his face and froze.
“What the fuck?”
I snatched them from him and took a look. He’d been facing in the direction of where the festival was going on. As I squinted trying to make out what I was seeing, I wasn’t horrified, I was confused. People were attacking each other. But this was no drunken brawl. It was an all-out war. I saw one guy smack another around the head with a plank of wood, another one looked to have snapped some lady’s head. If that wasn’t shocking enough, the look on their faces was.
I dropped the binoculars. My pulse started racing. My mouth became dry.
Then I heard the gunshots. One after the other. The screams grew louder and I knew right then that this was not part of the event. I raced over to the ledge at the front of the store and dropped down. I gestured to the others to keep low. Whatever the hell was going on down there? I sure didn’t want to alert them to the fact that fresh meat was up here. Peering over the edge I saw Mr. Thompson, the local butcher, swiping at a group of four Z’s. Except these were real. I couldn’t believe it. These were real, or seriously psychotic individuals. Either way they looked as if they were going to fuck up Mr. Thompson real bad.
“Get away. I warn you,” he called out.
Then even with all his attempts at warding them off, they charged him and he dropped to the ground. I couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but I could hear him screaming out in agony. The very sound turned my stomach. Then his screams stopped. The four creepers hunched over him, pulling at his flesh like buzzards dining on road kill. It was sick. I felt my mouth fill with vomit. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I twisted around and tossed up what I had eaten that afternoon.
Dax grabbed the gun that we’d been firing with earlier and raced toward the door to the stairwell that led down into our father’s saloon. I forced myself up.
“Dax. Where are you going?”
“Wait here.”
“But...”
He turned and gave me the look I’d seen countless times. The one where I knew he wouldn’t repeat himself.
“Barricade this door.” I watched him disappear into the stairwell. It felt like I was going into shock. This couldn’t be happening. This was the kind of thing we joked about.
I rushed over and pulled out the metal rod that my father had set up on the roof for clothes to dry on. I jammed it against the door and surface of the roof.
“I knew it. I knew this day would come. I told you guys,” Specs said, pacing back and forth. No one was paying attention to him. We were too fixated on what was happening. People we knew were running for their lives, others jumped in vehicles and tried to plow their way out of the town. Some made it through while others crashed. We watched the spectacle unfold before us. The carnage was incomprehensible. Vehicles swerved into buildings, trying to maneuver around large groups of undead. Harry’s Hardware exploded as a car drove straight through its window. People were still inside. I could have sworn I saw kids in the back.
I’d seen movies about outbreaks, horror flicks at the local drive-in, but nothing came close to this. It was pure chaos and terror. I knew these people. They were my neighbors, schoolmates, and families I’d grown up around.
Instincts told me to phone the police, but I’d already seen a cop car crash into a post, after three fast-moving suckers leapt onto the hood of his car. It was one thing after the next, as adults turned on kids and snarling kids attacked adults.
There was no time to think about what we needed to do. As the sound of guns went off below us, we hurried over to the door waiting for Dax to get back. Then again how we would know if it was him?
“We need to protect ourselves,” Specs said.
Weapons. Besides a pair of nunchucks we had nothing. Dax had taken the only gun we had. My baseball bat was in my room, and that dynamite piece that Specs carried was fake. He’d concocted it out of putty, but used a real safety fuse. We scanned the roof for anything that could act as a makeshift weapon. A piece of steel, wood, anything that we could wield.
A sudden explosion in the distance, and we watched as the old water tower tank at the town’s only historic farm collapsed. Flames licked high into the air, as all over the town fires started and burned out of control.
Banging on the door.
“Johnny, open the fucking door.”
“It’s Dax,” Matt yelled.
I shifted the rod and he burst out of the stairwell with our father, and two other guys we knew from around town. All of them were covered in blood. I couldn’t tell if it was theirs or someone else’s. Dax had an AR-15 assault rifle in his hand. He tossed me a Glock. My father was packing a 12-gauge double ought shotgun that he kept behind the bar.
“What about us?” Matt asked.
Dax handed a Beretta M9 to Specs who was the only one who had fired a gun besides Matt, who hadn’t touched one since his incident as a kid.
“So I guess I’m just bait?” Matt said.
“Just stay close,” Dax said.
Both Dax and my father were sweating hard like they had just come out of a sauna.
“Now listen up. A shit storm is going down right now. You guys need to stay here. I’m gonna try and make contact with law enforcement,” my father said.
“No. You can’t go back down there. It’s suicide.”
My father grabbed me by the shoulder. “Time to grow some balls, boy.”
He’d always been that way. Maybe it was his military background. His need to act all tough and shit, but it was liable to get him killed this time. This wasn’t any war he or Dax had been in.
“Now listen up, you pussies. You jam this door tight. Dax, make sure nothing happens to them. If I’m not back in an hour, you take the jeep and get the hell out of here. You hear me?”
He grabbed Dax around the back of the neck and pulled his head in close to his. They banged heads the way I’d seen them do it countless times over the years. It was some sort of macho bullshit. I could never quite make sense of it.
“Hoorah!”
My brother yelled the same.
“When I get outside, cover me.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was like my worst nightmare. Being forced to act all military and shit. We weren’t built for this. Dax, maybe. My father, sure. But even then, they hadn’t been trained in anything but war with people. These weren’t people. Whatever the fuck they were, they weren’t people.
“Now move that post.”
My father gave me a look. It was one that I was sure I wouldn’t see again. We had never really got on well. His lack of empathy matched my lack of enthusiasm for the military. It had in many ways divided us. It was as if I had let him down, through my unwillingness to give my service to the country. But was that the only way to serve your country?
I thought back to our last argument.
“Put in four years. Then decide,” he said.
“I’m not gonna do it. It’s not for me.”
“Why? It was good for me. It was good for your brother.”
Like I said, Dax had only put in four active years. Just the bare minimum. But it didn’t matter to my father. He had on blinders to anything outside of serving Uncle Sam.
My father disappeared down the stairs, and we barricaded the door with the pole, and wr
apped it tight with several rounds of clothesline.
“I can’t stay, my family is down there,” Baja said.
“We stay here,” Dax said without even looking at him.
The other two that came up with Dax were Scot Thomas and Jason Cole. They were one year older than us. He’d known them through the gun range. Both of them were packing heat. One of them had a Browning M2, while the other had a Winchester rifle.
“No, Baja’s right. We need to get out of here,” Scot said.
“You heard what my father said. We don’t move.”
“Who put you in charge?”
“Shut the hell up and keep an eye on the store across from us.”
There was an advantage to having stores close together, we could move from one to the other pretty easy. Except for a few that were several feet apart. In those cases we used a plank of wood, or rope. In the past we had been pulled aside by the police for doing parkour across the roofs. What the hell did they expect us to do? Jump over boulders?
From where we were, we could see the tops of all the roofs along Main Street. Over the course of the next twenty minutes, we watched as a few store owners took to the roofs on the other side of the street. Several were unable to barricade themselves in and Z’s pushed through. We tried to help by firing off several rounds. Dax took out two, and Scot managed to get one but there were too many. We watched in horror as old Bob Riley, who owned a candy shop, was overpowered and ripped apart.
You would imagine shock would set in, but it was quite the opposite. There was so much going on down below in the streets, that your eyes immediately turned to the next unfathomable act of violence.
It was then I caught sight of a police car speeding down Main Street. It crashed into Matt’s father’s gun store. The lights on top were the only thing illuminating the occupants that crawled out through the front window.
It was Jessica. The other one was Izzy Maitland. She had dated Dax a long while back when he was fifteen.
I recognized the cruiser as her father’s but he wasn’t with them.
“Jess,” I cried out to her and she looked up. They were trying to get into the store. It wasn’t the crash that had my mind whirling with fear, it was the group of Z’s that were heading their way. Like the ones in the run, they were a mixed bag. Slow suckers who were dragging ass, ones that were a little faster, and some that were moving like apes along the ground on all fours.
I leveled my gun and started firing off rounds. At the distance they were away from us, I was lucky to get one of them. Specs was having even worse luck. Luckily Jason picked off a few of the fast-moving ones.
In an instant both of them were gone. They had made it inside, but whether they were alive was anyone’s guess.
“I’ve got to get down there.”
I tried to jump over to the next store, when Dax knocked me to ground.
“Are you insane?”
I leapt up and again he held me back. “You are not going down there.”
“But Jessica’s down there.”
“And they’re in a gun store. I think they stand a chance. But you don’t.”
I shoved back and he twisted me around in a standing headlock. He’d always been a lot stronger than I was. Even at the ripe age of eighteen, I couldn’t pry his death-lock grip loose.
“Get off!” I yelled.
“Are you going stop acting like an idiot?”
He released his grip.
“Screw you, Dax.”
“Yeah. You’ll thank me for it later.”
“The fuck I will.”
I moved back to the edge to see if the crawlers had made their way inside the gun shop. While Scot and Jason had picked off the remainder of the biters, I couldn’t help wonder if more would show up. The only upside was the cruiser had jammed itself so deep inside the store that the gap between the hood and the glass was barely wide enough for someone to squeeze through. It wasn’t completely secure, but it would have to do for now. I had to hope Dax was right; that they were alive. There was a faint possibility that Matt’s father was still one of the living. He could protect them. I had no idea if she had ever shot a gun before, it just wasn’t a conversation you brought up when you were looking to get laid.
Several streetlights were knocked out, sending one half of the town into darkness, while the others flickered. I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before they made their way up to the roofs on our side. I slumped down, my back against the brick. I stared down at the Glock in my hand. How had it come to this? What could cause the dead to walk the earth?
I had been sitting for but a few minutes when Specs began shooting. The threat this time wasn’t on the ground. It had made its way to the roof on our side. Three stores down from us, the owner, Carlos Santo, and his wife were running from what appeared to be their two sons who had turned.
“Stop shooting. You are liable to hit them,” Dax yelled.
Carlos and his wife were heading in our direction. I knew there was at least an eight-foot gap between their store and the next. It couldn’t be jumped, that was for sure. They would need a ladder or an extremely long plank of wood. The one that Baja had been on wasn’t even long enough. The gap between the Black Dog Saloon and the next building was only a few feet.
Their sons were shuffling after them. It was the weirdest shit I’d ever seen.
Dax took position. When he felt he had a clear shot, he fired. It hit the Z in the neck, but didn’t stop him. There was no way Carlos’s wife was going to make it. In a matter of seconds we watched helplessly as their oldest son jumped on her back and clamped his teeth into her shoulder. The scream was horrendous, and gut wrenching.
Fuck this. I aimed my Glock and shot two rounds into the youngest one who was still chasing his father. He went down.
“Come on,” we shouted and waved Carlos towards us. But he stopped. Instead of trying to find a way to jump the gap, he looked back at his son who had practically torn apart the woman’s neck. His mouth was full of blood and flesh. Tears were streaming down Carlos’s face. He was uttering his wife’s name over and over again.
“Carlos. Move it,” Dax cried out.
He looked over his shoulder at us for a few seconds, long enough that he didn’t see his son coming at him. We tried to fire off a few rounds but they missed. Both of them disappeared over the edge. They wouldn’t have survived the drop. It had to have been at least thirty foot.
The look on our faces said it all. This was beyond anything we could have imagined. Zombie movies and books didn’t do this justice. These things were psychotic.
NO WAY OUT
That night we didn’t get much sleep. What should have been a night of laughter had turned into terror. Our father never returned. Dax had said we would leave immediately but someone had already stolen the jeep.
A few hours passed and the screams became less. We figured those who were still alive were probably doing the same as us. Hunkering down inside a basement, on a roof or in some part of their home. Others may have fled the town, but I didn’t imagine they would have got far.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” Dax said.
I couldn’t see that happening. All of them were worried about their families. We had no clue what was going on, or how far this extended. If it had found its way to our small town, it must have come from the cities.
Specs was carrying a small battery-powered radio that he had turned on. He was trying different stations but not having much luck. Eventually he came across one that was broadcasting a message that appeared to be on a loop.
“If you are hearing this message right now, stay inside. Don’t go out. An unknown virus appears to have infected people causing individuals and groups to turn on each other. If approached, aim for the head. Destroy the brain. That’s the only way you can kill them. I repeat. Aim for the head. Stay tuned to this channel. We will update it with more once we find out where the safe zones are. We are broadcasting from Salt Lake City.”
Jason and Specs roamed the perimeter of the roof. We planned to take it in turns to give everyone a chance to sleep. Not that anyone could. Our minds were preoccupied and on high alert. Matt was looking worse than ever. He had curled into a ball and was sweating.
“What’s the matter with your friend?” Scot asked.
I didn’t think it was a good idea to say that he had been bitten in the run. Everyone was acting twitchy, and liable to make a snap judgment. At this point he was just ill in my mind. Baja seemed to be the only one that had managed to fall asleep, that could have been because he had drunk the most that evening, or smoked the biggest joint ever.
Dax sat with his back against the wall.
“You think dad made it?”
His eyes dropped. “I doesn’t matter now. He’d want us to stay alive. That’s what I’m going to do. Keep us alive.”
We’d heard of a virus spreading before. Ebola. The local hospital had made everyone wear masks and wash their hands. But that was as far as it went. However this was no normal virus, if that’s what it was at all.
“Makes you wonder if this was made in a lab. You know how these fuckers mess shit up. Half of the illness I think can be traced back to a test tube.”
Dax remained silent.
“Tomorrow, where will we go?”
“You heard what they said. Salt Lake City.”
“And food?”
All we had was snacks. Chips, donuts, and a few bags of jerky. Nothing that was going to sustain us for the days ahead.
“We’ll see what we can grab from the house. I’ll take Scot and Jason down tomorrow.”
“I’ll go.”
“No you won’t,” Dax shot back.
“What’s the deal with you? I’m eighteen. I’m capable of looking out for myself.”
“Really? That’s why you ended up at Tagon.”
Tagon was a juvenile reform center in Utah. Basically a boot camp in the middle of the wilderness run by ex-military assholes who had nothing better to do than shout and inflict punishment on you through physical exertion. My father had sent me away to one when I was sixteen for breaking into the local school. It wasn’t exactly a break-in, I fell in through the skylight.