Clickers vs Zombies

by J. F. Gonzalez

  He awoke to a different world than the one he’d fallen asleep in, and found that his prayer had been answered.

  PART TWO

  JULY 6

  SEVEN

  Mission Viejo, California

  Dawn.

  Rick roused from a fitful sleep, coming to sudden wakefulness in the upstairs hallway.

  He looked around bleary-eyed, then realized where he was. He’d fallen asleep on the hallway floor between Richard and Melody’s bedrooms.

  He lay back on the floor, feeling a wave of desperation wash over him. The realization of what had happened last night was forefront on his mind. The noise from outside told him last evening had not been a dream.

  Off in the distance was the sound of hundreds of car alarms. The house smelled of smoke from a fire burning in the hills of the Saddleback Mountain region. Rick had retreated upstairs after raging through the living room last night shortly after receiving that phone call from Melody and Richard. After the connection had been broken and he’d been unable to reach them again, he’d tore through the house, yelling in rage and frustration. Princess had cowered in the downstairs bathroom. After experiencing the terror of not being able to get in touch with his kids, Jeanette had called him from Lancaster. She’d been frantic. There were National Guardsmen all over and the Governor of Pennsylvania had declared martial law. “It’s happening all over,” she’d told him. “Zombies. I know it sounds hard to believe, but I’m seeing it on the news and—”

  Rick believed her. He’d had the TV turned to the news all afternoon and early evening as he tried to track Richard and Melody down. And at some point during their conversation, the connection had been broken. He hadn’t been able to get back in contact with her. Even worse, he hadn’t been able to get in contact with her team leader at the corporate office in Irvine, nor the hotel front desk where she was staying, nor the corporate headquarters for the company her firm was consulting for. The line for the Pennsylvania State Police was busy. Then, Melody had called.

  He’d been relieved to speak to Melody and Richard, but that relief had quickly jumped to anger and frustration when the call was disconnected. Unable to reconnect, he’d expended his anger on the living room furniture. He’d been on the verge of grabbing his keys and wallet and heading to his car in the garage to make the sixty-mile drive north to San Pedro when common sense prevailed. If you head out there now you might never see them again. There is shit happening and if those things get you, Richard and Melody don’t have a chance. The temptation to dismiss that voice and forge ahead had been strong, and he’d almost ignored it and ventured out, but he decided to heed the warning and stay inside. It sounded like World War III outside anyway. And it was only getting worse.

  So he’d gone back into the house and made sure all the doors and windows were locked. He drew all the drapes over the windows. Then he’d called Princess in and when the dog came to him, slinking toward him in that fearful way dogs get when they think they’ve done something wrong, he’d swept her into his arms, buried his face in her fur, and wept.

  Once he got control of himself, he’d gone through the house and turned off all the lights. He’d stolen upstairs, Princess following, and made his way to Richard’s bedroom, which looked out over Pablo Lane. He’d peeked out between the drapes and looked out at the chaotic scene below.

  Their neighborhood was descending into an apocalyptic war zone. Off in the distance he could see the glow of distant fires. There was the sound of gunshots. A man wearing no shirt, his guts spilling out of his belly, walked down the street. The neighbor girl two doors down, Brooke Rey, darted out of the house screaming. The man with his guts hanging out zoomed after her and took her down, tearing into the flesh of her neck and face with a resounding crunch. Rick had watched, spellbound, barely able to breathe. The thing that had killed Brooke was still feeding on her, eating her face, when Brooke’s eyes opened. She rose to her feet and the other zombie—that was the only description Rick had for them—stopped feeding. Together, Brooke and the zombie headed down the street.

  Rick had retreated from the window, his heart racing. Oh God, please watch over my kids, pleasegodohjesuschristplease!

  He hoped Jeanette was safe, too. But try as he might, his thoughts centered entirely on Richard and Melody. At least they were safe. They’d had the resourcefulness to act quickly and sequester themselves indoors. It was probably best they were seeking shelter inside an abandoned building in Sunken City rather than somewhere else, where there were more people. There would be less people in Sunken City, if any.

  He’d tried calling the kids again. And he’d tried calling Jeanette again, too. And at some point he’d crept downstairs in the dark. Princess followed him, keeping a discreet distance behind him. She could tell something was wrong, and it was a wonder she wasn’t barking at the disturbances outside. Maybe she sensed that the chaos outside wasn’t normal. He’d gone to the kitchen and found lunch meat for a sandwich. He fed Princess, then quickly made a ham and cheese sandwich for himself, which he’d wolfed down with some bottled water. Then he’d gone back upstairs, went into the master bedroom and turned on the TV. Princess hopped up on the bed with him and he’d watched the news until the station suddenly got jolted off the air.

  The two hours he was able to see was enough.

  In short, it was global chaos. The dead were returning to not only eat the living, but to kill every living thing, which in turn, joined the ranks of the dead. These weren’t the shambling corpses of the Romero films. These were cunning, fast, creatures. Reports were coming in from traumatized witnesses claiming these zombies could run, drive, shoot guns, and even talk. Furthermore, when they spoke it was as if they were being powered by something that was controlling them.

  Simultaneously, there were reports of strange sea creatures invading beaches all over the world. These creatures were being described as monstrous scorpion-lobster hybrids. They were highly venomous. One sting resulted in painful death by massive corrosion of the flesh. Their claws were as strong as steel, and the creatures themselves ranged in size from as small as a housecat to as big as a tank. Some wag in the media had named them Clickers because of the sound their claws made, and the moniker had stuck.

  When the TV went out, Rick tried calling the kids and Jeanette again. Then he’d wandered around upstairs, moving between Melody and Richard’s bedrooms to the master bedroom, as if searching for them. Finally, he’d settled down on the floor in the hallway, where he’d fallen asleep.

  Rick sat back against the wall and stretched. Princess had stretched out beside him last night. She looked at him with sad eyes that seemed to ask, is everything going to be okay? Rick looked at her, then patted her head, caressing her muzzle. “Just me and you for now, puppy. Okay?”

  Princess wagged her tail at the sound of his voice.

  “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and get some breakfast.”

  Once downstairs, Rick went to the kitchen. He fed Princess, made sure she had fresh water, then prepared a bowl of cereal for himself. As he sat at the kitchen table eating, he thought about what to do. He hadn’t looked out the window yet, but it was much quieter now than it had been last night. In fact, he didn’t hear a thing from outside. He could smell the smoke from the fire—that might be a concern if it spread and started coming down the hills into Mission Viejo. There was a very good chance that could happen. If so, he had to get out of here.

  But not without making a plan of action.

  Rick pulled the cell phone out of his pocket. He’d charged it the night before, and it still had a full charge. He tried Richard and Melody again. Once again, there was no signal.

  That left only one option.

  He had to venture out and head to San Pedro. To Sunken City. To find his kids.

  Lancaster, Pennsylvania

  Jeanette cowered inside a milking stall in a barn, trying not to scream. The previous night, shortly after speaking with Rick, the local fire company had come to her hotel, announ
cing an evacuation. It wasn’t mandatory, but with martial law in effect, her choices were simple—remain inside the hotel and hope that things got better, or go with the volunteer fireman to a safe location. That location, as it turned out, was a National Guard Armory in Wrightsville. The firemen had loaded Jeanette and the rest of the evacuees into a commandeered school bus. An armed civilian volunteer sat up front next to the driver. Another one guarded the back. They’d used back roads mostly, avoiding the highways due to massive congestion, and when they began to cross the Susquehanna River via a bridge in a town called Columbia, the driver had announced that they were only ten minutes from their destination.

  Jeanette had breathed a sigh of relief—and then the guard up front shouted.

  “Look out!”

  Jeanette and the other passengers had leaned forward and crowded into the aisles, trying to see what was happening. The guard in the rear cautioned them to sit down, but everyone ignored him. Through the windshield, Jeanette saw a man with arrows sticking out of his chest and his bottom jaw sheared away barreling towards them on a motorcycle. He raced across the bridge, weaving in and out of stalled and wrecked cars.

  “Move,” the guard shouted at the driver. “Get out of the way!”

  “I can’t,” the driver yelled. “The bridge ain’t wide enough for us to turn around. We’re—”

  The rest of his sentence was cut off as the dead man on the motorcycle rammed into them head-on, crumpling the hood and driving part of the motorcycle into the engine block. Steam erupted from the radiator and the bus shook as if struck by lightning. The zombie flew up and over the hood and smashed through the windshield, exploding in a shower of gore. A piece of shrapnel sheared off the top of the driver’s head, killing him where he sat. The passengers were silent for a moment, and then everybody screamed at once.

  “Quiet,” the guard at the front ordered. “Everybody quiet down! We’ve got to get our shit together.”

  The guard at the rear of the bus collapsed into the seat beside him and began to weep. “It’s fucking hopeless, man. We’re screwed.”

  “We’re not screwed,” his associate said. “We’re only a few miles from the armory. They knew to expect us. We’ll just have to go the rest of the way on foot. Once we cross the bridge, we’re in Wrightsville. We can follow the river the rest of the way. Keep off the roads, and we should be okay.”

  “Better shoot him,” an old man said, nodding towards the bus driver. “If what they’ve been saying on the news is true, he’s liable to come back any minute and start trying to eat your face off.”

  “His brain is damaged. I can…I can see it from here. That metal shard gouged a furrow in it. I don’t think he’ll be coming back. Now, everybody off the bus. Single file. Bring only what you need. Leave your belongings and stuff here. We’ve got a long way to walk, and we don’t need to be weighed down.”

  There were thirty-six of them when they left the bus. An aerial attack from a flock of zombie birds subtracted two from their number when the unfortunate victims jumped over the side of the bridge to avoid being pecked to death and were killed in the fall. By the time they reached the far side of the bridge, they’d lost another—the old man who had suggested shooting the driver suffered what appeared to be a heart attack. The guard shot him in the head before he could get back up again. The gunshot attracted unwanted attention, and zombies began converging on them from all directions, including the corpses of the two evacuees who had jumped from the bridge and now waded out of the river, water streaming from their bodies, and their expressions alight with malignant pleasure.

  At that point the group broke up because everyone ran in different directions. Jeanette dodged two waterlogged zombies and fled down the riverbank, not knowing or caring where she was going. Indeed, she cared for nothing as she ran, save her own survival. She remembered crossing the bridge again back into Columbia. From there, she’d headed into the country, figuring the less people, the less chance she would have in running across any of the living dead. When she stumbled upon the dairy farm at the top of a hill overlooking the river, she’d run inside, not bothering to seek help at the farmhouse. For all she knew, the inhabitants could be dead—or the living dead.

  The barn was empty. All of the dairy cows were out in the pasture. She’d seen them off in the distance as she approached the building. She wondered if they were alive or dead. She’d watched them for a moment from the safety of the barn, then slunk back inside. She started walking down the barn, trying to figure out where the animals were kept. Toward the end of the barn was a single stall with a name plate etched in a gold lettering affixed to the door—Imogene. Engraved next to the name was the figure of a cow.

  Who the hell names their cow? Jeanette thought. Regardless, she headed back down the barn, looking for a more suitable spot to hide. Then, hunkering down inside an empty stall in the middle of the barn, she’d wept silently until exhaustion and fear overwhelmed her. At last she’d fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  And now here she was, awake only a few minutes, and all of the fear and panic from the night before fresh in her mind again. Although she’d left her suitcase on the bus, Jeanette still had her purse with her. She rummaged around inside of it, found her cell phone and checked it, only to find that she had no service. When she tried to call Rick anyway, she received a message that simply said ‘Network Error’. She tried calling the kids, but the message was the same. When she tried checking the internet, it didn’t connect.

  She leaned back against the wall, and watched a spider skitter past. Jeanette wondered if the spider was alive. Obviously, animals could become zombies, too. She’d seen it herself first hand when the birds attacked. But how far did it extend? What about the cows outside? What about this spider? Could insects become zombies? Fish? Reptiles? Amoeba?

  Jeanette closed her eyes and ran her hands through her hair. Her thoughts strayed, returning once again to Rick and the kids. She prayed they were okay. She was just about to try the phone again when she heard footsteps outside. It sounded like people running. She froze, her heart hammering. The footsteps were joined by more. Some of them sounded like galloping. She wondered if it was the cows returning to the barn.

  Then somebody shouted. It was a man. She could tell that much. But his words were garbled and slurred, and it sounded as if he was in great pain. A cow mooed, drowning him out. The sound was malicious and baleful. Then another man spoke.

  “What’s wrong, Levi? Can’t cast your spells with your tongue bitten off and your hands broken? Too bad for you!”

  The injured man tried speaking again. Jeanette cringed, hearing the anguish in his voice. And yes, it occurred to her that he did indeed sound like someone trying to speak without a tongue.

  “Take him,” his tormentor said. “Let’s finish this. Ob will be pleased.”

  There was the sound of a struggle, followed by a gruesome, decidedly wet noise. Then laughter. Pulse racing, Jeanette peered over the top of the stall. She saw a group of dead humans and cows standing over a headless body dressed in blood-splattered Amish clothes. One of the zombies clutched the severed head in its hand. The victim had a long, curling beard and beautiful, soulful eyes that seemed to be looking directly at her.

  “Here, Levi,” croaked the zombie. “Look at your body before you leave.”

  It turned the head toward the lifeless form lying on the ground. Jeanette shuddered.

  “And now he has departed,” the zombie said to the others. “The great magus Levi Stoltzfus is no more. A pity our brethren will find this head useless.”

  The creature tossed the head into the open barn door. It smashed against a wooden support beam and then rolled across the floor, coming to a stop only inches from Jeanette’s stall. She bit her hand to keep from screaming, but her efforts failed her when the severed head opened its eyes again, stared at her, and grinned. Jeanette shrieked, stumbling backward. The dead, alerted by her outcry, stormed into the barn and dragged her outside, where t
hey gleefully fell upon her.

  By the time they were finished, there was barely enough left of Jeanette’s corpse to rise again.

  Palos Verdes, California

  Like most of those across the planet who survived the first night, Dr. Alfred Post and his wife, Janice, stayed barricaded in their home, turned off the lights, shut the drapes, and retreated to the rear bedroom. They monitored the situation on the TV for as long as the networks were on the air. One by one, the networks went off the air beginning with the local affiliates. Then, at one a.m., the power went out.

  They’d stayed in the back bedroom, which used to be their son Ben’s room. Ben had just graduated from Harvard Law School and had accepted a position with a Washington DC firm just six months ago and relocated. Al and Janice hadn’t even had the chance to fly back to visit.

  “What are we going to do?” Janice asked. Her voice cracked.

  “What else can we do?” Alfred asked. “We stay put.”

  That seemed to be the general consensus of their immediate neighbors. Palos Verdes was an upper middle-income area. There were a number of cul-de-sacs that were nestled within the winding hills of Palos Verdes that could be considered wealthy—mansions behind gated fences, patrolled by private security. Al and Janice didn’t have nearly the income to live in one of those neighborhoods, but their spread was certainly better than most citizens. Their neighbors were physicians, lawyers, high-level executives, entertainment professionals. There was even a professional surfer that lived in the next neighborhood.

  When things started escalating in the city below last night, Alfred had stepped outside briefly. His next door neighbor on their left, Carlton Burke, had also stepped out. Alfred had ventured out clutching the 9mm handgun he’d bought ten years ago and only used at an indoor firing range he went to in Torrance. After thinking about George’s wife and what had happened with her, he was pretty certain she’d died, and that when George had come back to tell him she wasn’t alive, she was really deceased. The brief screams coming from George’s house he could have sworn he’d heard had been on his mind ever since, and he’d retrieved the pistol from it’s storage space in his office, making sure it was loaded and he had spare clips. If George and his wife had risen from the dead, Al wasn’t sure why they hadn’t shambled over to try to get them. He’d peeked through the blinds at their house, which sat in the lot below them in the hilly neighborhood, and it was quiet. Had they moved downhill into the streets below? Perhaps. But he was taking no chances. The 9mm was staying with him at all times.