Z Fever

by Jay Mouton

  The little girl looked up at her big brother. She smiled at him, as one small hand came up to his face, and a tiny finger brushed away a tear that threatened to spill over and run down one of Gavin’s flushed cheeks.

  “It’s okay, Gavin,” she whispered up at her brother, still smiling at him. “It’s okay,” she soothed, “I’m okay, big brother. I’m okay.”

  They stood, together, hell erupting all around them. It was a cool, bright, February morning outside of the walls of Westside Elementary, but they might just as well have been huddled together in heated, frantic hallways of Bedlam. They held each other for another moment, and then Gavin broke away from the little girl.

  The boy looked down the claustrophobic hallway, did a quick one-eighty and glanced in the other direction. Involuntarily, he grinned when his eyes caught the stenciled, JERRY JENKINS PRINCIPAL in large letters on the door where the hallway came to an end.

  “What should we do, Gavin?” Ariel said, tugging on her brother’s left hand.

  She brought him back into focus, as he heard his sister add, “I’m scared, Gavin.”

  “Me, too, Ariel. I’m scared, too,” he said, his eyes now looking directly into hers.

  As screams kept erupting all about them, and echoed even louder through the long, confining hallway, Gavin looked around once more.

  The bus!

  Gavin Kingsley gripped his little sister’s hand ever tighter, and turned to his right. She felt the reassuring pull of her brother’s snug grip on her fingers, and followed him closely. Together, the two of them, swiftly, made the run down the hallway. Along the way, dodging other kids trying to make their own escapes.

  Gavin, Ariel’s hand still clutched tightly in his own, shot through the front door of the building, and out into the brilliant, sunlit morning.

  Just before they turned down the school’s long, front sidewalk, and to the bus parking area, Gavin and Ariel stopped and looked, in horrified amazement, all around them.

  Ugly, terrifying creatures that had been, less than five minutes earlier, teachers and assistant teachers, neighborhood moms and secretaries, and more, were now attacking children. They attacked each other, too. The madness spreading, like a north Florida brush fire, across the front area of the school grounds. The crazy scene spilling over and into the street as well.

  Gavin and Arial stared at each other for another second, when yet another terrified scream broke above the yells and pleas of many others. The sound prompted them both to break into a run toward their bus.

  “Children! Come, on, now!”

  Both Gavin and Ariel recognized the sound of their bus driver’s deep voice as it boomed over the volume of the unfolding nightmare that surrounded them.

  “Hurry!” he yelled, adding “young Kingsley, hurry!”

  Gavin and Ariel, miraculously, made it to the open door of their bus. Gavin helping his little sister scramble on, before leaping up onto the bus steps only inches behind her.

  No sooner had Gavin climbed up into the door well of the bus, when Ben Stuart gave a strong pull on the door handle. The doors slammed shut, hitting Gavin on his behind with enough momentum to push him forward. He stumbled, and fell on top of Ariel.

  The driver looked over at Gavin and yelled out above the din of the screaming and yelling that permeated the air all about them, “Where is young Strome?”

  Gavin felt a painful lump swell in his throat, as the sight of his friend, Ricky Strome, being eaten alive by Mr. Jenkins flashed across his mind; once again, he fought back the urge to cry, and won.

  “Ricky won’t be coming with us, Mr. Stuart,” he managed to get out.

  Ben Stuart almost asked what the boy was talking about, but stopped himself when he saw the look of near despair on the child’s face. The old man got the message.

  Mr. Stuart thrust the bus’s aging clutch into first gear, and not a moment too soon. Ms. Anderson, a Westside Elementary teacher assistant, or whatever it was that might once have been Ms. Anderson, slapped up wetly against the closed doors of the bus; it bounced off. Still, not before leaving a bloody imprint all over the glass.

  The few children that had been able to make their way onto the Taylor route school bus, screamed in near unison at the wet sound that filled the bus when the assistant teacher made contact with the door before making her less than graceful bounce away from them.

  The bus lurched forward, nearly crawling, but at least trying to grind away from what had become a blood-soaked war zone.

  Gavin and Ariel had climbed up from the floor of the bus, and slipped into the seat right behind Mr. Stuart. They sat close together. Ariel, more frightened now that she was in a, seemingly, safer place than she was while they were making their way down the hallway of Westside Elementary. Her young mind, now, took a few moments to contemplate and attempt to fathom what was happening all about. Nothing made much sense to her, and what she did comprehend seemed to offer noting more an aching fear that balanced on a fringe of becoming panic. She held on even tighter to her brother’s hand, while Gavin leaned forward Mr. Stuart’s seat to try to talk to him.

  “What’s going on, Mr. Stuart!” the boy all but yelled, over the old man’s shoulder. For the first time that morning, Gavin heard the fear in his own voice, and struggled to control it.

  “Don’t know, young Kingsley,” Ben Stuart said, his furrowed, wrinkled hands smoothly turning the huge steering wheel and taking the bus down Madison Street.

  The cries of the children behind him made Gavin wince, and he felt himself, involuntarily, squeezing Ariel’s hand ever tighter.

  Ben Stuart carefully, but with increasing speed, tried to weave his way down the street to the turn, where Madison Street bisected North Glen Avenue, better known as County 125. It was difficult to avoid hitting anybody, or thing for that matter, but he managed it.

  On the street, in front of the bus, children ran in all directions, crisscrossing Madison, and running to various destinations in the little burg. Ben Stuart wished he could stop and help all the kids around him; instinct, and the madness they were caught up in, told him that would be a fool’s errand at best, and, more than likely a suicidal one. And, he felt a fever coming on. He wanted to try to get the little ones that were on his own bus route safely home if he could pull it off. He had no idea what was happening at all, but he knew that his kids would get dropped off at their homes if it ended up being the last thing he ever did during his earthly time.

  It crossed his mind that it sure was a damned, bad time to start coming down with something —!

  * * * * *

  The old man slowed the bus as they neared the stop sign.

  He glanced to his left and right, trying to check for any traffic coming from either direction, knowing that he would have to swing the vehicle’s long body wide nearly spanning the width of the county highway.

  Nothing.

  No cars. No trucks.

  Nothing.

  Well, nothing but crazy assed people zigzagging erratically across the blacktop.

  Gavin starred out from his perch right behind Mr. Stuart. Marvel, mixed with fear, filled his head; he could feel the rapid pace of his heart as it increased and pounded from within his chest.

  Ariel, in spite of the whimpering of the few children that had made it onto the bus along with her and her brother, had calmed slightly. While she sensed danger all around, the simple fact that her big brother Gavin was sitting right next to her had the effect of comforting the little girl. She gave a little squeeze on Gavin’s hand. Feeling this, the boy turned and smiled down at her.

  Mr. Stuart managed to maneuver the long bus out onto the highway, and they were now heading north and, hopefully, toward safety.

  As the bus picked up speed, Gavin heard Mr. Stuart let out a sigh of what, to the young boy, sounded like relief.

  “Are we going to be, okay?” he said, to the old bus driver.

  Ben Stuart, a man not at all prone to deceit, told the first lie that he could recollect tell
ing in a long, long time.

  It was a whopper.

  “We’re going to be just fine, young Kingsley; just fine,” he said, over his shoulder to the young boy leaning over his seat back. He hoped his words comforted the boy, but the old man could not squeeze a drop of confidence out of his statement for himself. His eyes focused on the highway before them, and his hands squeezed ever tighter around the steering wheel.

  At the very same time that Ben Stuart was lying to Gavin Kingsley, as they picked up more speed heading up County 125, Ariel gasped when, off on the left side of the road, she saw her mother’s car parked in front of the EZ Stop Food Store. Well, Kayla Kingsley’s car wasn’t so much parked in front of the store as it appeared the Mrs. Kingsley had driven her black, 2011 Toyota Camry, right through plate-glass windows that had, once, lined the entire front of the little, cinderblock building.

  She tugged on Gavin’s hand, still enveloping in her own.

  “Gavin, look!” She blurted out to her big brother.

  Gavin’s head quickly turned to his left, and as soon as he caught view of the Camry. The car’s front end, somewhat, crumpled up and pointing slightly skyward, was still fully recognizable. Still, he did a double-take. The fact that his mother had a fetish for Garfield the cat, and had four of them clinging to the back window of the Camry, offered the most convincing evidence for the Kingsley children.

  “Mr. Stuart! STOP!” Gavin and Ariel yelled out, in unison.

  Ben Stuart, unsure of anything anymore, and acting on instinct, pumped on his breaks, and slowed the bus as carefully as he was able. The fact that the bus was only moving about thirty miles an hour made the act easier for him.

  “Hold on, little ones!” the bus driver yelled out, but not taking his eyes off the road in front of them.

  Most of the children on the bus had been, for the most part, silent, other than the faint sounds of some of them crying. All of them sat close to another child. While none of the other kids on the bus were siblings, several of them were cousins, and all of them, more or less, were friends.

  The bus slowed, quickly, and then came to a complete stop almost in the middle of the highway.

  There still wasn’t any traffic on the road, other than Ben Stuart’s bus full of Westside’s finest. The man slipped the bus into neutral, then park. He let the engine idle, and then turned his large frame towards the door in order to speak to the Kingsley children.

  Gavin and Ariel got up and, together, scrambled forward to the door. Gavin, quickly making his way down the steps of the door well, stood directly in front of the double doors and pushed.

  “Mr. Stuart, the door won’t open!” Gavin cried out, over his shoulder. Ariel leaned into her brother’s back and tried to help him open the doors.

  “Young Kingsley! Ariel Kingsley!” the old man said, his voice holding the authority of adulthood long endured.

  The children stopped pushing, and turned, their heads tilting upward towards their bus driver.

  “Mr. Kingsley! That’s my mama’s car! She could be hurt!” Gavin pleaded, adding, and then immediately regretting what he’d just said, “She could be dead!”

  Ariel’s little fists came together as she turned back towards her brother, and began to throttle him, crying out, “You’re a liar, Gavin Kingsley! You’re lying! Mama isn’t dead! That’s my mama’s car! She’s in the store!” She cried out, as her little hands tried to land continued blows upon her brother.

  “Shush!” Gavin said, almost in a whisper. He gently caught hold of her wrists, one at a time, to stop her strikes. Then, he attempted to sooth his little sister; he knew he had said the wrong thing.

  “Shush! I didn’t mean mama is dead, Ariel,” he said. The girl was now sobbing, one warm cheek pressed up tightly against her big brother as he let go of her wrists and wrapped his arms, protectively, around her.

  “Listen to your brother, Ariel. Your mama, why, she’s just fine. She, probably, just getting something for you and your brother,” Mr. Stuart said, telling what he was pretty, damn sure was his second lie of the morning.

  “Mr. Stuart,” Gavin said, again looking up from where he and Ariel stood, his embrace obviously comforting the younger child, “can I just run into the store and get my mama?”

  The old man considered Gavin Kingsley’s piercing eyes, giving a quick prayer that just maybe the boy understood that his mother was, probably, not exactly his mother anymore.

  “Young Kingsley,” the old bus driver said, exhaling deeply, “Gavin. Boy. Look around us, son. Look over at the EZ Stop, son. What you see over there?”

  Gavin, still clutching his little sister, his arms draped, protectively, around her, turned his head and peered over at the store. He glanced at the dark metal of his mother’s Camry, as a glint of sun reflected off the glass of the rear window. He took in the grins on the faces of his mama’s Garfield cats, and thought that those grins were now kind of sad for some reason.

  As the boy stood, unable to collect his madly rambling thoughts enough to make the decision to try to break open the doors of the bus to get to his mother, the thing that had been Kayla Kingsley exploded through the front door of the EZ Stop Store.

  * * * * *

  The creature, once his raven haired, fair skinned and beautiful, loving mother, beelined for a child that had, virtually, appeared from nowhere. The child, not much older than five or six, was standing, alone, along the side of the road. The sunlight, now shining down almost directly above them, created an aura around the child that Gavin willed would protect it from what was running toward him at a frantic rate.

  The child, who’d obviously been crying, turned as he noticed the big, yellow school bus; a symbol his tender mind comprehended as familiar and friendly. The child, timidly, raised a little hand and waved over toward the bus. Gavin could see the boy’s puffy cheeks below his eyes. The boy’s teardrops, hanging from his eyelashes before making their short falls to the ground below, sparkled like tiny diamonds through the refracted rays of sunlight.

  Ariel, who’d had her face buried in the warmth of her brother’s chest, had also turned her line of sight to behold the child, and then, heartbreakingly, her mother.

  “Mama!” Ariel yelled out, breaking out of Gavin’s tender embrace and, again, strained as she pushed with all her might against the doors of the bus.

  “Mama!” Ariel Kingsley yelled out, repeatedly. She turned away from the bus doors for a moment, and looked up at Gavin, her own tear filled eyes pleading with the boy.

  “Gavin! It’s Mama!” She yelled up at him, once more turning to the double doors and pushing, ultimately, futilely.

  “Ariel! Ariel! Stop!” Gavin yelled back at his sister.

  She ignored him, and continued to push against the doors.

  “Ariel! That’s not Mama!” Gavin said, his voice nearly choking up, again.

  “That’s not our mother,” he said. Then, his voice filled with lonely resignation, he added, “not anymore.”

  It was at that very moment that Gavin and Ariel Kingsley watched their mother, Kayla, sink her teeth into the, once, unblemished neck of another Westside Elementary School student.

  Gavin relived the scene he’d witnessed less than ten minutes earlier when his teacher, Mrs. Gelfie, and his friend, Ricky Strome, had their throats torn out in pieces by the monster that Mr. Jenkins had become. Only now, it was Gavin’s mother who’d become the monster.

  Ariel screamed.

  The other children on the bus, all of them now pressing up against the school bus windows, were watching the same bloodbath just across the road from them. Several yelled out and screamed along with Ariel. All of them were now crying with various intensity.

  Gavin and Mr. Stuart, who was now standing directly behind Gavin and had placed his hands on the boy’s shoulder, an attempt to comfort the child, both let out a collective gasp as they watched the arch of blood spray out from the little boy’s torn throat. Cascading forth, ebbing, and then trickling onto the storefront par
king lot. Several smaller drops of his life blood made the distance nearly half-way to where the school bus was now parked.

  Old Mr. Stuart, who’d, long ago been in a war, in a faraway country called Vietnam, was shocked at just how much blood the little boy seemed to have held contained within his tiny frame.

  Gavin watched as his mother —.

  NO!

  His mind shouted out at him.

  That isn’t your mother! That isn’t Kayla Kingsley!

  The children on the Taylor bus wailed behind them. More screaming erupted from the back of the bus.

  “Children!” Mr. Stuart’s voice boomed out, and echoed throughout the cocoon that was now their refuge from the horrors that surrounded them “look away! Turn away!”

  Ariel, who was, by now, crying hysterically along with the rest of the kids on the bus, was still pounding on the double doors. She was yelling out to the beast that was ravaging the body of a dead child not a stone’s throw from where she stood, fighting to escape the bus, but totally helpless to do so.

  “Mama! Mama!” the girl screamed and cried.

  Gavin, too, felt powerless to help his mother; or, to help, the child she was feeding upon.

  Mr. Stuart turned back toward Gavin and gently prodded him to try to, further, calm his sister.

  The old man felt a sharp stab of pain at the center of his forehead; it emanated from within his skull, but felt as if something trying to break out of his head. He reached up and felt his left cheek, then the same, pained forehead.

  He was burning up.

  The fever, was increasing in intensity.

  Gavin was still watching the monster across the street from the bus, but he was now rubbing Ariel’s skinny arms in an absentminded attempt to continue to comfort his sister.

  The ravenous beast’s bared teeth gleamed white and brilliant in the steady stream of sunlight. Gavin could plainly see specks of blood and flesh dripping from the monster’s jaw as it chewed frantically upon the dead child’s body. The boy’s wide-eyed stare caught the sight of random pieces of the child’s flesh as it flew from the monster’s gaping maw.