All That Remain

by Travis Tufo

  FOR HOURS ELI sat there waiting for any sign of life, although he would have been more hesitant to act heroically at the sound of banging this time around. He decided he had waited long enough as dusk approached. He didn’t feel comfortable hanging around in the middle of the night like some poor sap in a Twilight Zone episode. He didn’t jog, but he certainly moved his feet quickly back to his car and drove back to his parents’ home in a speedy manner. Turning the wheel was hard on his shoulder, but he pushed through. Once he arrived, he completely avoided the house and went straight for the bunker; it seemed like the safer choice given the circumstances presented to him. Not too long ago it was going to be his crypt, yet now, he found security in it. When he reached the bunker and felt the locked door, his heart sank—deeper than it had when his girlfriend left him, deeper than when he lost his job, even deeper than when he heard he’d lost his parents. His eyes widened, choosing not to believe what was happening to him. His mind began to race.

  “The keys!” he yelled aloud, uselessly reaching into his back pocket. He knew for sure the keys were in the bunker, but he ran to the car anyway.

  “No...no...no! This isn’t really happening. Everything else in the whole damn world has happened to me already, but not this, this can’t be real.” After tearing apart the car to no avail, he sank to the floor. There were no tears this time, perhaps he was out, or perhaps he’d found a new way to cope with being the world’s biggest target.

  “Why me? Huh? Why does it always have to be me? I can’t even kill myself right!” Eli yelled to the rising moon. His pain soaked roars echoed throughout Swanville, hitting the lake in the middle and bouncing back. His rage would have gone on if his cries hadn’t brought back with them what they did. After the echoes of his own voice stopped, he could hear a distant group of moans. His rage quickly retracted and became fear. Soon, the sounds were not so distant, and they weren’t that of humans, but of something much worse. They lacked some quality that would have made them sound human; instead, the cries were lifeless, angry, bloodthirsty moans. Eli gulped down the fear that filled his mouth and ran for the house. Breaking records, he entered the home, nearly bringing up a trail of fire behind him. He slammed the door shut. Never had three locks on a door been locked faster. He sped into the home like a terrified kid running up a dark staircase to beat the monsters he knows are right behind him. Deep breaths were all Eli knew right then. Nearly paralyzed by fear, he didn’t know what to do but breathe.

  “THAT CAN’T BE more of whatever the hell was at that pizza place, right?” Eli tried to reassure himself, but it backfired when he began to connect all the events leading up to that moment. He remembered the frantic news broadcast as he dozed into his coma, the screams behind static he heard on the television when he woke, the lack of human life in what should have been a rather crowded town, and the phone lines being down. Then he pictured the grotesque monster he had slain earlier. It all added up to an enormous problem with a complicated answer.

  “Something really fricken’ bad happened, and it must have hit towns near Belfast. That weird shit that possessed that man in town; it must have hit other areas, right? Could it be only in Maine, or did it originate somewhere else? Wait, this is a terrorist attack. That’s it! This is some new chemical warfare and they struck Maine first! No...no, terrorists wouldn’t strike Belfast first. Or is that just what I am supposed to believe?” Eli was throwing out questions to the silent air faster than his brain could answer them, almost faster than his mouth could spit them out. He came to an abrupt halt and knew what he had to do next: find a weapon. He ran for his dad’s office trying as hard as he could, or as hard as the incredible pain in his shoulder would let him, to open the safe. Anyone knew just by looking at the massive steel vault that brute strength would never open it, but Eli was desperate. There was no way he would ever crack the one hundred twenty number dial. At first, he thought to get a sledge hammer, but he quickly turned that idea down as he didn’t want to create any unnecessary noise, and there were certain other physical restrictions at the moment.

  “Oh God, what do I do?” He looked around the office for a sheet of paper with the combination on it He then ripped the office to pieces looking for the mythical sheet of paper. After reading the hundredth useless document, he gave up. He wanted nothing more than to have a gun, but it didn’t look like he was going to get one. Before he left the office completely, he decided it was in his best interest to at least check the closet. When he opened the door to the tiny room, his eyes lit up like the face of a little kid on Christmas who got what he really wanted. It wasn’t a gun, but it was the best he was going to get. It was a machete. Well, he thought, let’s not give it that much credit. It was a Walmart machete. Could it kill some mushroom zombie freaks? he pondered, naming the unknown, but fast approaching evil. Why not? And, he smiled, will it take a few swings and a little more effort? Oh, most definitely yes. But Eli was ready for it.

  “Oh man, is this ever a life saver.” He gripped the machete in his strong hand, not really sure of the craftsmanship of a Walmart sword. It was light, but he thought it would be capable of doing what he needed it to. He shaved the blade against his thumb nail to see how sharp it was. Its sharpness could be compared to that of a spoon that had any sign of an edge sanded down to be as blunt as possible. Eli was holding what was effectively a small, thin, metal bat. He would have been better off with an actual bat.

  “I mean, am I surprised? No, not really.” He rolled his eyes, but while his eyes traveled in their unimpressed circle, something caught his attention. A rock, but not just any rock, it was a whetstone. Eli’s face at first showed signs of confusion, then excitement, but it ended back on confusion.

  “If I know anything about myself, and my luck, then that’s not a whetstone.” He grabbed the stone and dragged his blade across it.

  “I’ll be damned.” It was most certainly a whetstone, a hefty one at that. For the next fifteen minutes Eli sharpened his blade. He wondered why his father, a gun expert who knew very little about blades, owned a whetstone. Yet Eli wasn’t about to question a good thing.

  “Hell, he probably just got it from one of the houses they flipped.” At the end of the sharpening, he felt great about his blade; it was his Excalibur.

  “I could really get used to luck like this.” Feeling about as safe as he was going to get, he took his newly sharpened butter knife with him as he went to the bathroom to take a shower both to calm himself down and to remove the rest of the nasty speckled blood. Eli wasn’t surprised that the water heater wasn’t working, and, he knew soon enough the electricity wouldn’t be on for the house at all. Therefore, the cold water wasn’t going to push him away. He watched as the tub beneath him turned red with a mix of his blood and the monster’s...fluids. He worked up the strength to rinse his wound. At first it stung too much and he had to pull away, but after a few attempts he managed to drench the gash in the ice cold water. It hurt quite a bit, but the coldness helped numb the pain a little. Content and feeling clean, he left the shower, grabbing a clean white towel from the cabinet. It was late at this point, and he was beyond tired. He climbed three flights of stairs so that he could sleep in his mom’s office; he felt safer the more stairs there were between him and the front door. With his sword of Avalon solidly grasped in his hands, he lay down, hoping that when he woke up it would all be normal again, or that at least when he woke up someone would be able to tell him what the hell was going on. He managed to slip past fear and gently fall into a slumber.

  It wasn’t the best sleep he had ever got, but it was going to have to do. It was 11:30 a.m. when he woke up. What woke him up was the sound of banging.

  “Oh, crap. That’s a familiar noise,” he said, wiping his eyes.

  “Wait, what if it’s Max?” Eli jumped up out of his makeshift bed and ran down the flights of stairs. He felt the impact of each step severely in his shoulder, but the adrenaline was too strong for the pain to hinder him; he was a locomotive going down thos
e stairs, nothing was going to stop him. The banging was coming from the front door. Once he reached it, he was reluctant to open it. Suddenly Eli realized it didn’t really sound like a normal person knocking. It was more like something angrily pounding their fists on the door.

  “Why the hell don’t my parents have a peep hole?” he said, sliding his way over to the window to see if he could see what was making the noise. No luck, so he went back to the door. It was suddenly quiet. He listened, wondering if whatever it was had left. Before he could consider opening it to check, the thing on the other side answered his question. One powerful smash against the door and Eli knew that what was out there wasn’t friendly. He went back to the window to see if he could get a better look now that he was sure that something was still there. When he moved the curtain out of the way he gained vision of another poor soul infected with the fungus. She looked very similar to the earlier victim, the same dead skin, same eyes, but the fungal strands were protruding from different spots. Just by glancing at its lifeless skin, it was obvious to Eli that whatever human soul had lived in that body was dead and long gone. The body was nothing more than a vessel for this zombie fungus strand to move around and spread its spores. Eli took a good hard look at the girl’s withered form, trying to look past the agonizing pain that radiated from her and see what she had been before her body was taken from her.

  “She must have been about sixteen when this thing possessed her.” Eli was correct; the girl standing on the deck throwing her body against the door was sixteen years old, taken from her high school life. Eli couldn’t find it inside himself to open the door and ask if she was okay because if she wasn’t, he knew he wouldn’t be able to help her, nor could he hurt her. So instead, he slithered downstairs to the basement and snuck out the back door. He managed to run around the house and hop into his car undetected by the possessed young girl. However, before he turned the keys that were already in the ignition, he realized that humans don’t make it too far without food and water. All it took for him to realize this was the rumbling in his stomach. He opened the door of the car, no more than twenty feet away from the front deck where the girl stood, still flinging her body desperately against the door. The door and the siding around it was splattered in blood. The girl had managed to use her body as a battering ram so many times and so hard that she had split open her chest. Blood flowed from her open wounds like a faucet, yet she showed no signs of pain. Soon enough the entire door was going to have a free, shiny new coat of red. He retraced his steps back into the house. He grabbed an extended trip backpack from his father’s office and quickly headed to the kitchen, opening all the cupboards and the fridge, still running from a backup generator. He wasn’t sure if he’d return to the house, or where he might go, but he knew he couldn’t stay put. In the course of five minutes, Eli managed to fill that bag up with plenty of crackers, juice, canned food, a bag of beef jerky, and ten water bottles. While Eli was filling up the pack he noticed something—the banging had stopped.

  “She probably bled out.” He gave a sigh of relief and threw the backpack on his shoulders. He took the same safe path around the rear of the house to the driveway, however, this time when he rounded the corner, he was met by his unwanted guest. The moment she locked eyes on Eli she opened her dark mouth, revealing a few rotten teeth, and let out an earsplitting scream. Blood drooled from her mouth as she continued this high pitched screech. She was wearing a white blouse, or at least it was once white; now it was completely soaked in blood. Eli dropped the bag from his left hand and used it to cover his ears. In his right hand he held the machete. At the end of her screech, she charged towards him.

  “Holy shit! You’re faster than the last guy,” he muttered, just barely dodging her attack. She quickly turned right back around and headed for him again. Eli had never been more afraid of anyone than he was afraid of this hundred-pound teenager right now. He managed to once again jump out of her way.

  “Please don’t make me do this.” He turned to her, she was just beginning to pivot to charge again, like an angry bull. Eli knew there was no negotiating with her and that he couldn’t play tag all day. He lifted his machete high; she pushed her feet hard into the ground and lunged at him. Eli moved backwards as this terrifying girl got closer, hoping to sink her fangs into fresh flesh. Her last step left her within punching distance and triggered Eli’s arm to fall like a guillotine. With all the force he could muster, he swung that machete downward. It connected with her face, slicing right between her eyes. As the blade cut through her forehead, a disgusting snap could be heard clear across the front yard. The blade cracked her skull and simultaneously broke off in her head. That’s right, one swing was all this fine Walmart brand machete had in it. However, that one swing was devastating. Dark blood spewed from her broken skull like a garden hose. In pulsing bursts, blood shot from her head and splattered all over the gravel below. She dropped to the ground like a meat puppet. Eli was left holding nothing but a handle.

  “God…Damn...It! One shot?” He threw the handle across the yard and looked down just once at the gruesome scene. He saw that the fungal growths on the woman were wiggling back and forth, and the sight gave him the chills.

  Chapter Nine

  HE RAN FOR his car. He started the engine as quickly as he could and drove towards where he had just killed the creature. Without stopping, he reached his arm out of the moving vehicle and grabbed the backpack. From this point on, Eli just drove, not knowing where he was going.

  Minute after minute, mile after mile, the girl’s bloody death took a toll on Eli. He started to second guess the event; he felt like he’d made the wrong choice by killing her. Then he thought of the man in the pizza shop.

  “God damn it! I just left that man lying dead in there!” Eli was furious with himself, tears formed in his eyes.

  “These people are obviously sick or something, they needed help and instead I murdered them,” he said as he pressed his foot harder on the pedal. He was easing his way up to eighty miles per hour, and on Maine back roads, that’s more than dangerous. Eli tried his best to repress the guilt he was feeling so that he could focus on keeping an eye out for any sign of normal life, but all he could think about was that he was a murderer. Not once did he return to the justification that he had acted in self defense, even though he knew those creatures would have gladly killed him to feed or possibly even create another infected being. Eli never wanted to get pulled over more in his life than he did right now as he flew past car after car abandoned on the side of the road. A cop right now would be heaven sent. Even the houses looked deserted, each one of them was pitch black. It was like everyone but him and the two people he killed had been lifted off the planet. Eli drove through the day until the sun was setting in front of him. Before it would set completely, he was sure to run out of gas; the warning light had come on ten miles ago. He was panicked, exhausted, confused, he didn’t want to sleep in his car; he would be a sitting duck if any more of these...possessed creatures were around.

  “Where the hell is everyone? Wait…what’s that?” Eli spotted a light through some trees as he flew past. He slammed on his brakes, nearly spinning his car. He flipped it into reverse and backed up a little before the car began to struggle for gas. Pressing harder on the pedal helped a little, but after a few more feet the car was just rolling off momentum.

  “No...no...not yet.” He turned the car off and tried to start it again, with no luck.

  “Well shit. I hope the people at the car rental place got sick too.” Eli grabbed his sack and slammed the door behind him. He left the car sitting right in the middle of the road, perfectly splitting the median. He walked back the way he’d come for a few yards before he could make out the light he’d seen. He could just see it through cracks in the dense woods. To him, this light was as good as a beacon shining down from heaven. He took a deep breath and entered the forest, determined to ignore the creeping fear of going into a wooded area as the sun was setting, especially with the
circumstances around him. Step after stumbling step he made his way towards the light, butterflies building in his stomach. Loud snaps of twigs and leaves sounded underneath each of his steps and he cringed with the noise he created. He didn’t want to attract any attention to himself. The woods were quiet—so quiet that Eli had an undeniably eerie feeling about the whole place. The wind wasn’t even blowing; the only sounds he could hear were his crunching steps.

  “Am I almost there?” Eli nearly answered his own question as he entered a small clearing. It was an open circle of nicely mowed grass with a little white bench in the center. From this lawn, Eli could see that the light was in fact coming from a house at the far edge. Eli took off for the familiarity of lighted windows. The butterflies in his stomach couldn’t flap their wings nearly as fast as Eli’s legs were moving. He flew past the last few trees until he was right on the doorstep of the house.

  “Hello! Is there anyone there?” He banged hard on the door, and completely against what he wanted to do, he patiently waited for a response.

  “Is there anyone home? I need help!” he yelled nearly at the top of his lungs. He stood there on the front step in disbelief.

  “They must be ignoring me!” Anger rushed over him as he lifted up his hand to pound on the door once more. Before he could do so he heard the rustling of leaves behind him. The feeling of fear returned and he grabbed the knob, threw the door open, and entered the home. He slammed the door behind him and looked out the peep hole, finding nothing. He now had to deal with the owner of the home.