by Hunt, Jack
Matt, Baja, Specs, and I had been messing around over the July 4 weekend, when Baja had the bright idea to fire off the fireworks we had from the top of the school building. It wasn’t like we were the first ones to climb all over it. Other kids did it. It was common to see police being called out because kids were loitering there after school hours.
Anyway, things got a little out of control and you could kind of say a firework came at me. I was paying more attention to escaping a rocket going up my ass than a skylight.
I was lucky to survive. But my father didn’t see it that way. He yelled at me, the first chance he got when visiting me in the hospital.
He said he was going to nip my attitude in the bud for good. I just thought it was another one of his distorted ideas to get me to follow his career path.
Two day after I got out of the hospital, I woke up at four in the morning, to my father handing me over to a bunch of goons who tossed me in a van and drove me out of Castle Rock. I had tried to put up a fight. I got one good swing in on one of them. Something I paid for later when they made me run eight miles and endure a freezing cold shower.
Apparently I was there because of drug use. My father hadn’t even mentioned the school incident. Smoking a few doobies wasn’t exactly what I called drug use. It was for medicinal purposes. To help me cope with all the assholes in this town. Either way, Dax hadn’t let me live that one down, and nor had my father.
“Point taken. But that was then. This is now,” I said.
“You’ll have to prove you can be trusted—”
“What are you gonna do, Dax? Make me run laps? Force me to drop and do twenty? Please, the days of your military bullshit are over.”
“I swear I’m liable to put a bullet in your head, long before a Z gets a hold of you.”
He was being a jerk. I got up and joined the others and left him to play with his gun.
I peered over the edge and watched as two creepers fed on the remains of… well... I couldn’t see if they were male or female. It was just a bloody mess of human flesh torn apart. More had gathered in the street. They moaned, gnashed their teeth, and moved slowly along.
I knew we weren’t going to be able to stay here. But I wasn’t going anywhere until I had Jessica. I was pretty sure the others weren’t going to follow Dax’s lead. Scot was already showing signs of being pissed off at having to take orders.
About to get some shut-eye I heard another scream, this time it was further down the street. In the opposite direction of where Jessica and Izzy were. It seemed to be coming from Maggie’s Gift Store.
“Dax. Dax, Maggie and her daughter are in trouble.”
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“What?”
He continued cleaning his weapon with a rag.
“You heard.”
I got up, checked how many bullets I had left. There were eight in the magazine. I knew Dax would try to stop me, but I wasn’t going to see them die. Maggie had been good to us as kids. Her daughter grew up with us. She was one of these kids we never hung out with, but she always had a kind word. The store to the right of us had no gap. I shot Dax a look, he was busy cleaning. I sprinted and launched myself onto the next roof.
“Johnny, get back here.”
I didn’t look back to see if he was following. There were four Z’s that had entered the ground floor of their store. Maggie and Angela were on the top floor, leaning out of their window screaming.
I raced forward and jumped to the next roof. The gap was small but could have killed me if I had slipped. There were three more roofs until I would be opposite them. I had no idea what I was going to do. I would think about that when I got there. By now I could hear Dax, Scot, and Jason behind me.
I came up to the next gap, but this was much wider. I halted, looked back. The others were coming up. I turned, gave myself some running distance, and raced towards it. I thought I had estimated the distance, but I must have miscalculated it. I was still a foot from the other side when I fell. With my arms flailing, I was grasping for anything.
Now what you need to know, is that phone and power lines run between the stores. Large industrial dumpsters are rolled in between the stores. It kept everything looking tidy, but it also meant that the chances of strangling yourself on your way down, or landing on a steel box, were high.
My arm caught on a thick wire. It felt as though it was almost yanked from its socket as the wire dug into the pit of my arm. Pain shot through my body. I bounced back and forth a few times before I came to rest. My entire weight was being held by a wire that was no thicker than an inch.
Below, several biters were waiting anxiously for me to drop. I would have made an easy meal. I felt like a pig on spit.
“Hold on,” Dax shouted as he arrived at the edge and peered over.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
“Trying to be a fucking hero.”
The Glock in the back of my pocket was starting to slip out. I could see directly below me an open dumpster. It was full of black bags and untold shit. The chances of me landing in it and not cracking my head on the side were not high. Knowing my luck I would knock myself out in the fall. Then who knew what would happen. Those creepy fuckers would be all over me.
I could tell this piece of flimsy cable wasn’t going to hold for long. Below three Z’s wandered in the dark, occasionally looking up at me with milky gazes.
“Here. Take this.”
Dax tossed down a rope but it was out of reach. Scot and Specs were peering over. They tried again to throw it nearer to me. I was hanging on for dear life with one arm over the cable and the other stretched out for this damn rope. I couldn’t get it. I went back to holding the cable with both hands.
“Shit.”
Scot aimed his gun down and was about to take a shot at the crawlers below when Dax yanked him back. I could hear them arguing even from halfway down. Something about, did he want to shoot me? Right in that moment I heard a snap, in the next breath I found myself slamming against the side of a building. They were all made of wood, but it still hurt like a bitch. I tried to catch my breath as I dangled, gripping the cable for dear life.
I looked up but there was nothing they could do. I had three options. One, swing on this and hope I could hit the window that was to the left of me. Two, drop and hope the Z’s made a nice cushion, or swing and drop into an industrial garbage can. I didn’t like any of the options but I was sure that wire was going to snap any second.
Being as I had already had some experience with going through a skylight and cutting myself up, I decided to drop into the dumpster. Now, I wasn’t dangling over it. I was going to have to swing a little. As I began to move, the Z’s looked up. Fucking creepers. I hated them.
I rocked back and forth. Once, twice, and then I let go. I fell about ten feet and landed hard. If people think landing on garbage is soft, they didn’t land on this shit. Someone must have thrown out their computer, as my ass hit something hard. The instant I hit, I could hear the walkers heading over. I reached up and yanked the thick plastic top down. I was now in darkness and it smelled so bad I began to gag. The noise of them outside banging into the metal and slapping the top was even louder inside. It echoed. I reached for my Glock but it was gone.
Shit. It must have fallen out on my way down.
The noise continued for what seemed like ages, but then it was silenced by the sound of gunfire. I readied myself for the worst.
The cover above me opened and it was Dax. He grabbed me by the collar and yanked me out.
“Ease up, Dax.” Specs tried to get between him and me.
“You ever pull a stunt like that again, I will shoot you myself. You understand?”
I threw my hands up. On the ground around us were the zombies.
“We need to go.”
Scot was at the far end of the alley keeping an eye out. We never did save Maggie and her daughter. By the time we had made it out of the alley, the noise of gunfir
e had attracted even more Z’s. Within five minutes we were back on the roof. Dax slammed the door shut and tossed me a look of death.
Jason handed me my Glock. “Lose something?”
I took it, disappointed that I couldn’t have saved them.
REALITY CHECK
When the sun arose that morning the reality of our predicament dawned on all of us. The streets were a bloodbath. It had been less than twenty-four hours since we had witnessed the carnage. I don’t know what made me think it would get better. I soon would come to know that optimism didn’t exist in this new world. How many other cities and small towns had been overrun by this virus? How many had survived the night in Castle Rock?
You could say our day started with a bang.
Dax, Scot, and Jason had made a decision to salvage what food they could. We’d been told to not fire off any rounds. After yesterday’s incident, the last thing we needed was to attract a horde of Z’s. Down below, there was no movement over at the gun store. At this point we had no way of knowing if Jess and Izzy had made it.
Baja was in the process of doing his morning stretching. If you squinted your eyes for a few seconds you could almost imagine it was Bruce Lee. That illusion was soon dispelled when he moved on to nunchucks and hit himself in the balls. Specs was still trying to get hold of his father using a makeshift transmitter that both he and his father carried. Specs was sure that he would have made it. I had to agree. They had spent their entire lives waiting for an event like this to happen. They even had a bumper sticker on the back of their minivan. While most had those stick figures of a pleasant family, theirs just said, “Preppers survive. Pussies don’t!” Yeah, it caused a little bit of an uproar among the religious folks in town.
Matt was still curled into a ball. He hadn’t shifted position the entire night. I grabbed up a can of soda to take over to him and asked Baja to take my position.
As I approached him, I knew something wasn’t right. He wasn’t moving at all. His skin had changed. It had become pale, and almost translucent. You could see veins in his neck and face. It was the same appearance that I had seen on the Z’s last night, when I had got within spitting distance from them.
“Matt?”
I was careful not to get too close. Up until this point we really didn’t have much to go on as to how people were turned. Was it a bite? A scratch? Did you have to get eaten? Everything we knew was based on fictional accounts through movies. He’d been bitten in the tunnel. Though we had just assumed it was one of the runners being an asshole.
If death had a smell, I was inhaling it now. “Matt? Hey bud,” I said, leaning over him to get a closer look. I had no idea how this worked. It still hadn’t sunk in. It felt as if I was in a walking dream state. A nightmare that wouldn’t let me wake up.
That’s when he turned. At first it was slow. I caught sight of his starved sunken cheeks, then his eyes which were milky white. Then, as if seeing me as breakfast, his lips drew back. Gone were the perfectly white teeth, now all that glared back was decaying black Chiclets.
I staggered backwards, utterly beside myself at what I was seeing. That’s when I lost my footing. What happened next, occurred so fast that even now I have a hard job trying to piece it all together. Matt, or what was left of him, let out a howl. I swear if he had been alive, he would have shit his pants. Instead, I nearly did it for him.
Even if I had shit my pants the smell of Matt was worse. How do you describe it? Take a shit and stick your nose in it, and that wouldn’t even come close. Matt moved faster than anyone I had seen. He didn’t hesitate, like a rabid animal he lunged at me, snarling and drooling black shit from his mouth. Instinctively I raised my legs to boot him in the face but I wasn’t fast enough. He was on me like a cheetah on a gazelle. Now I was in a fight for my life. Specs and Baja spun around and froze. They weren’t prepared for this. I honestly think they were still processing it when I kicked him back, reached for my Glock 17, and fired a round into his skull.
Matt didn’t drop like a fly, he fell back and tumbled over the edge. I heard the sound of his body hitting the ground. My hand was shaking, still outstretched.
I’d just killed my best friend.
If anyone asked later, when was the moment did it all become real? That was it.
The next noise we heard was Dax and the others banging on the door to let them back in. Baja dashed over and pulled the pole out of the way and untied the rope.
“What the hell happened?”
My eyes were wide, and I was in shock. I couldn’t even reply if I wanted. The only thing I could hear was the gnashing of Matt’s teeth when he was inches from my face. Scot and Jason rushed over to the edge and looked over.
I didn’t even have a second to respond. Dax took a hold of my arm and yanked me upright.
“Get your shit together. We’re getting out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here. This place is going to be crawling after the noise of that gun going off.”
“He’s right,” Specs said. “They’re coming.”
A surge of undead were making their way towards the saloon. The pole and rope might have held some of them off, but it wouldn’t last.
“They won’t find their way up here,” Jason uttered.
“You want to stick around to find out?” Dax said.
We gathered up as much as we could carry, then one by one we went across a plank over to the next building. Scot and Jason took it with them after we were across. When we reached the next gap, they tossed it over. Dax eyed the distance and then took a run. We held our breaths. Like an Olympian he sprinted and lunged. He barely cleared it. As soon as he came out of the roll, he tied off the washing line around a metal air vent and then slung the other end across to us. Scott tied it off and we took turns shimmying over on the line. We could hear the sound of metal thumping. It was getting louder as if a hundred fists were beating against a metal door.
“Hurry it up,” Jason shouted to Scot as he pulled himself across the line. Jason was the last one. No sooner had Scot made it and Jason was in the process of untying the line when Z’s burst through the door above the saloon. Their milky white eyes settled on Jason. He was on the roof but the gap between the saloon and the one he was on wasn’t far. We had used a plank to get over, but realistically, you could have jumped it.
Like a stack of dominoes piled up, they stumbled over each other. I raised my gun to fire at a few but Dax pushed my arm down.
“We need to conserve ammo. Don’t.”
The Z’s were trying to get over to Jason but falling into the gap. There were so many of them that it almost looked like water pouring over a brim as they disappeared. Jason was struggling to get the knot loose.
“Forget it. Let’s go,” Scot yelled.
Realistically we needed that line. Some stores were squashed together, others you could jump, but many would require a line.
“I’ve nearly got it,” Jason yelled back.
My heart was beating a mile a minute. I was ready to start shooting if any of those Z’s managed to get over. Luckily Jason untied it and ran to the edge. He used it to swing to the wall and then we pulled him up.
We were so distracted by getting Jason to the other side that we hadn’t paid attention to the fact that we were now on the same roof as Carlos’s wife. It was almost like she had been waiting for us to get over before she made a move.
She made a spluttering sound, like someone gargling water, then began crawling towards us. Slow but capable of biting any one of us. Baja raised his nunchucks and slammed it down on her head, several times until it crushed in. Blood splattered all over his yellow and black jumpsuit. After, he turned and vomited.
“Where now?” I asked.
“The bank,” Dax said.
Castle Rock County Bank wasn’t attached to any other building. It was also the highest structure in the town, besides the old water tower. The problem was, we weren’t going to be able to swing, jump,
or use a plank to reach it. The only way to the top was from the bottom.
We made it across three more roofs until we found ourselves on top of the funeral home which seemed a little bit ironic to all of us. From where we were positioned we had a clear shot of the local police department. It no longer resembled the professional establishment with pristine cruisers parked outside, and a shiny American flag flapping in the wind.
Now it resembled a war zone. Windows were smashed, doors torn off their hinges, and blood smeared over walls. Beside the building were several burnt-out cruisers, with bodies inside.
“Isn’t that your dad’s car?” Specs said.
He was right. Our father had made it there. The driver’s side was open but he was nowhere to be seen.
“We need to go and see if he’s alive,” I said.
“No. We stick to the plan.”
“Plan? This isn’t an operation, Dax. He could still be alive.”
“He wouldn’t want us to risk it.”
“Screw what he wants.”
Dax shoved me. “That’s the attitude that’s gonna get you killed.”
I wanted to tell him where to go, but I was tired of it.
“Now listen up. We’re going down through the stairwell. This is a lot like clearing rooms. You stick close to me, stay behind. Keep your guns on the ready. Don’t shoot unless I say.”
Dax readied his AR-15 assault rifle and entered the stairwell. It was dark, no lighting.
“Flashlight?” Scot asked.
Baja handed one to me, and I passed it to Scot who was directly behind Dax. We moved as one unit down the stairs. It reminded me of playing war as a kid. Except I knew if anything jumped out at us, all hell was going to break loose.
Dax hadn’t always been an asshole. Before he went into the military he’d been a pretty cool guy. He’d speak up when my father would rag on me. We’d spend the occasional weekend down at the firing range. He was the first one to show me how to fire a gun. There really wasn’t much else to do around here except drive, shoot guns, and drink. Something changed in him after the military. He’d never really got into why he left. I just knew that my father had been pretty mad the day he came home. It didn’t last long. That was one thing about my father that was good. He preferred you tried and failed, than didn’t try at all. I guess that’s why I didn’t get a free ride growing up.