by Paul Hetzer
“The first time I went out for a smoke is when I noticed that there were others like my wife around. Some old dude from down the street saw me on my sidewalk and charged down the road toward me faster than a guy that age should be able to move. When he got close I saw that he had the same look as my wife – bloodshot eyes and all. He ran at me snapping his teeth and making this loud wail, like ‘Aahhhhh’. When he got close enough I just slammed him in the face with my fist and turned his lights out.
“Then I saw others running down the road in my direction and decided it was time to go back in. They broke the window on the storm door and were beating on the front door. I thought it was going to come off its frame as hard as they were hitting it. Somehow it held. Luckily we didn’t have any low windows in the front of the house.
“I got my shotty from the closet and shoved a bunch of shells in my pockets. There were only two or three of those lunatics outside the house, but they sounded like a legion of banshees the way they were wailing. I could hear Glenda upstairs wailing too.
“I got some duct tape and taped her mouth shut. That damn noise was creeping me out. I couldn’t stay in the bedroom anymore because the smell was so bad. I got a bottle of whiskey and went in the living room and got slam-assed drunk. I don’t know when the lunatics out front finally gave up, but in the morning when I woke up, everything was quiet.
“I stayed drunk that entire day. I don’t even remember if I ate or not, or if I even went to check on Glenda. I came to that third day on the couch, laying in my own piss and vomit, surrounded by empty beer cans and liquor bottles. I knew I had to do something with myself or I was going to end up dead. I got myself cleaned up, fed and tried to think of some plan of action. I cut down the barrel of the shotgun so I could put it in a holster on my leg and went upstairs to Glenda. Even in the state she was in, covered in her own crap and long past crazy, she was still a beautiful woman, model type you know. She had silky long brunette hair and brown eyes that would make ya weak kneed looking in ‘em. There was no way I could put her down like some sick dog, for all I knew she would get over this at some point.
“I put a bucket of water in her room, along with the rest of the lunchmeat and bread and a bag of cheddar snacks. I took my bowie knife and cut her legs loose…she was struggling like a coon in a trap. I kissed Glenda on the forehead and then picked her up by her hair so she was standing on her tiptoes. I cut the cord around her wrists and got out of there quick. She hit the door hard after I closed it and was making grunting noises through the tape across her mouth. I told her I was sorry and I left.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand trying to hide the pain they showed.
“I went out, shot two of those crazies who were hanging in my front yard and hopped on my bike and took off down the road to the clubhouse. Damn if every crazy person I passed didn’t chase off after me. Time I got to the clubhouse which was about five minutes away, there must have been damn near twenty of those things following me. I ran inside the clubhouse quick and those things were right behind me. I had barely turned around when something slammed into my head hard enough to make me see stars.
“It was one of our prospects, Jake, standing there with a bat in his hand. He looked scared.” Frank bellowed out a laugh at the memory. “Dumb kid thought I was one of them things!” he laughed again. “I guess I would have too. My eyes were nearly as blood red as the crazies’ from drinking and my hair was all dirty and disheveled and I had blood all over me from those two I had shot in my yard.” Frank’s eyes reflected the mirth that thinly veiled the sorrow of his situation.
“Jake really rang my bell with that hit or I would have clocked him back. As it was, I was doing all I could to keep standing. I think when Jake finally realized I wasn’t one of them, he was even more scared. Probably thought I was going to break him in two. He lived there at the clubhouse with another prospect. They had both gone to work Tuesday morning and only Jake had made it back there later that evening. I guess he had a hell of a time getting back and it was a nightmare out in town. He got me some ice for the knot he had given me and a shot of Crown Royal to ease the pain. He said he had been sleeping next to the door and only woke up when the door started opening.
“The clubhouse was on the other side of the tracks, if you know what I mean, with shabby, run down row houses on each side. It was constructed like a fort, though, cinderblock with high, barred windows. We had a one-inch thick steel door set in a steel frame embedded in block to slow down any forced entries. We had security cameras so we could view all the areas around the building plus the bar area. I was pretty sure those lunatics couldn’t break their way in there. You could hear them outside though, scratching and pounding on the door, but there ain’t no way they were getting through.
“Jake cooked us up some burgers and we tried to figure out our next steps. Even though we were safe in there, we would have to get out sometime, at least for supplies. Plus I didn’t know how long we would have power. There was a small gas generator out back, but only about a day’s worth of fuel for it. We couldn’t get any outside radio stations or get in touch with anyone we knew, so we were cut off from what was happening. All we had was the security cameras, and what they were showing wasn’t so amusing. We were in some deep fucking shit.”
He looked apologetically at Jeremy again.
“The lunatics outside stopped beating at the door after a few hours and we had some peace and quiet. I woke up the next morning and took a shower and Jake had a hot breakfast waiting when I was done. We talked about where we could get some more weapons. We didn’t keep anything in the clubhouse because the police liked to conduct raids every now and then and we had a couple members who were felons. They didn’t need that kind of shit. Usually everyone brought their own pieces with them, and left with them. Our prospect was one of those felons who couldn’t carry anything that went bang. So all we had was my shotty and some bludgeoning weapons. There was a gun store in town, but the way Jake made it sound, we would need an army to get to it through all the crazy people that were out there. On the security monitor showing the front of the clubhouse I saw this chick come running at our door and start banging on it, a mob of lunatics right on her heel. Jake ran to the door and threw the deadbolts and slammed it open. I was like, what the fuck bro?! That chick fell through the doorway with those crazies all over her and there was Jake punching and kicking them off of her. I got my shotgun and shot until it was empty and there was a pile of dead people blocking the door behind her and Jake. They were still piling in over top of the dead ones. There was no way we were getting that door shut so we knew we had to get out of there fast. she was We helped the girl up and we all rushed to the back of the building and out into the backyard.
“We have a tall security fence around the back of the property. Jake and I swung the girl up onto the top of the fence and she got down on the other side. We were right behind her. I had to club a couple of those batshit crazy people in the head when they started climbing the fence behind me, but we all got over. That chick had a piece of her shoulder torn open from a bite and it was bleeding bad, you could see the bone. She also had bite marks in her calf and arm. She was so terrified that she couldn’t make a sound. Her voice was just froze up. She kept up with us, though, and we hauled ass out of the neighborhood. She must have been running on pure adrenaline. We ran about two miles, dodging through yards until the houses thinned out near the edge of town. The girl dropped at the border to a field and couldn’t go any further.
“Jake and me got her moving again. There was an old abandoned farmhouse at the end of the field and we ran for it. We broke into the house and just dropped in exhaustion. When I looked back out there was no one following us. We were safe for the moment.
“Come to find out that this was Jake’s latest squeeze. Her name was Karen. She said she had been trying to get to the clubhouse since this shit all started. She went through hell getting there, dodging those crazies, hiding out at night in empty homes. Damn, but
if she didn’t make it only to get half eaten at the door. She was not doing well by the time we got to the farmhouse. We got the bleeding stopped, but she had a fever setting in and looked pale as a ghost. We figured maybe she had lost more blood than we thought. We had to get her help, but the damn hospital was on the other side of town from where we were.”
Frank paused for a moment then said, “She turned into one of those things after a while. I heard Jake yell and then growling noises from the back room. I grabbed the shotgun and ran back there. He had her pinned to the floor and she was hissing and snarling at him, trying to get free. Her eyes looked like all the blood vessels had burst and bloody spit was spraying out of her mouth. I could smell that candy sweet smell in the room. Jake said the bitch had bit him out of the blue while they were laying there resting together.
“Since I had seen it happen to Glenda, I knew right away what Karen had become. I put my boot on her neck and told Jake to back away. He got off her then looked at me like I was insane when I put the shotgun to her forehead. I pulled the trigger and blew half her head right through the floor then I racked in a shell and pointed it at Jake. He was standing there looking at me like he was seeing a spook. Blood soaking through his tee shirt around his pec. I told him to lift his shirt and when he did I saw the bite mark.
“I wasn’t sure about this at the time and I know I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I was forming an idea about them crazies biting you. Jake kept asking me what the fuck I was doing. I just told him to shut up and do what I say. I made him go out back where there was an old clothesline that I cut down and used to tie him up. He was all kinds of pissed off. I told him that once I saw he wasn’t going to go insane like his girlfriend, I would let him go.
“I think he realized what I was talking about because his eyes got real big. I let him sit there, trussed up against that laundry pole and I just sat and watched him. He kept asking me if I really thought he was going to go batshit like everyone else. I told him I didn’t know but I wasn’t taking any chances.
“It didn’t take long. We were in the shade of the house, still he was sweating like a pig, and his talk started getting slurry, like he was drunk. He just kept saying, ‘Oh shit, oh shit, don’t let me become one of them!’”
Frank grimaced. “Poor kid, he knew what was happening to him. I told him I would take care of it. He had stopped talking by the time his eyes turned red. The whites kind of just went red all at once. Real creepy! It was just like my wife except a lot quicker, and he never did pass out, just sat there with his head down, drool dripping down his chin and his eyes half-closed and watching me the entire time. I got up to stretch one time and went over to check on him. I lifted his chin up with the barrel of my shotty, and when I did he snapped at me with his teeth. I knew he was gone then. It hadn’t even been an hour yet. He was chewing on the barrel of the gun when I pulled the trigger. I felt very alone then.”
Frank paused and looked off into the distance. He remained quiet for a long moment before he continued his story. “I hightailed it out of there after that. The sound of the shot was loud enough to carry and I heard some wails in the distance. I headed northeast toward the highway. It was rough going through some of the thick scrub of the woods before it opened up into some more farmland and the highway north of Tappahannock. I was walking across a field when I saw this beat to shit car with smoke and steam coming out of it crawling up the road at no faster than a running pace. I figured they had to be healthy people to be driving the car. The engine locked up and I ran the rest of the way up to it. That’s when I met these two darlings here.”
Frank took a long pull of water from his bottle, slaking the thirst that had built up over his long narrative.
“We didn’t know who or what he was,” Amanda piped up in the silence. “He asked us if we were bit and all we could do you know, was shake our head ‘no’. We were really freaked out at that point and couldn’t even speak.”
“I told them they may as well get out of the car instead of sitting there roasting like a couple of chickens in an oven,” Frank said after he had satisfied his thirst. “They looked at me like I was going to eat them.” He laughed.
“Shoot,” said Kera in her melodious voice, “we didn’t know him from Adam and he looked like he was going to eat us!”
“It took it a minute to click in our heads that if he was one of those crazy people he wouldn’t be talking to us,” Amanda said. “So Kera and I got out of the car.” Amanda looked at Frank and smiled. “He is kind of intimidating at first, but you warm up to him real quick and we felt the safest since all of this started with him there. He asked us where we were going and we told him anyplace but there and pointed back toward Tappahannock.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I had no desire to go that way either, so we all just started walking north, never even discussed a destination. The road was empty in both directions, only an occasional house and lots of woods. I didn’t even consider that Port Royal would be as bad as Tappahannock,” he growled, “it was just a direction to go and I was enjoying being around other survivors and not being chased.” He smiled. “I told you I ain’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer. We walked all through the afternoon and the sun was getting low in the sky, so we decided we would have to hole up for the night. I was hoping to find us a car to use also. We were near Champlain so we figured we could find something there.
“We found a house set back off the road a bit that had a car in the driveway. It seemed like a decent place to shack up for the night since there wasn’t much but woods around it. I checked out the doors of the car, they were locked.”
Frank’s expression turned grim. “It must have heard us coming up the road. When we walked up I thought I saw movement behind the big picture window and before I could say anything to the girls the window just exploded and this crazy naked filthy young dude lands on the porch.
“He stands up all cut up and bleeding from the glass and wails that spine-chilling howl like a wild wolf. Before we can even turn around and run, he jumps over the railing and launches himself at us. The girls both screamed and hauled ass the opposite direction and I’m back-peddling as fast as I can trying to pull the shotgun out of the leg holster. That boy was almost on me before I got the damn gun free. I shot him and it ripped through his guts. He didn’t even slow down. He fucking runs right into the barrel and impales himself through the hole I just made in him. I rack another round in and just pulled that trigger again real quick like. The buckshot must’a tore through his spine because he dropped like a rock.
“I’m still trying to back up and this boy with a hole clean through his middle is still trying to claw his way through the gravel after me, leaving a trail of blood and guts behind him like some grotesque slug! It was fucking hideous! I beat feet out of there. Caught up to the girls on the main highway and we went north.” Frank paused to finish off his bottle of water. “I decided that looking for a car at a house wasn’t the best plan. A few more miles up the road was an old boarded up house. It was almost dark, so we decided that would be our safest bet. The nearest homes were several hundred yards away. We figured if we were quiet we would be okay. We tried to pry some of the planks off the door and after some hard work and too much noise I finally got two off so we could squeeze inside. The place was a mouse-infested hole. There was an old stained mattress on the main floor where the local kids had probably come to smoke their dope and bump uglies. I don’t think any of us cared. We were dog tired and we all just sat down on that smelly mattress and went to sleep instantly.
“I woke up the next morning really hungry. I woke the girls up and told them we gotta get moving. We slipped out the back and made our way to the road. I looked at the other houses that were nearby and picked one that didn’t have a garage or any cars around it.
It was a small Cape Cod that looked pretty well kept up. I told the girls to wait at the road and keep an eye out up and down the highway and I went up to the front porch, watching
the windows the entire time. I scouted the place out, looking in all the windows, and didn’t see any movement. The front door was locked but I kicked it open. There was no sign anyone had been in there in days and no smells either, so I told the girls to come on up.
“Power was still on and the fridge was still working so we had ourselves some breakfast then stuffed a pillowcase full of some extra food for the road. Amanda thought we should maybe just stay there for a while, and we talked about it. There was really only enough food for a day or two, so we decided to continue hoofing it.
“We were on the southern side of Port Royal before noon. We didn’t see any of the crazy people the entire morning. There’s a store and restaurant at the intersection of 301 and 17 and we figured we could get some more food there. There were some abandoned cars around the intersection and parked at the restaurant, so I was thinking we could get ourselves a car too. I only had half a dozen or so rounds left for the shotgun so I was hoping we wouldn’t run into too many of those critters. We hadn’t seen any of those crazies yet, which was surprising since it was a larger burb and all.
“But damn if we didn’t run smack into a pack of those motherfuckers the second we turned the corner. I think they must have been as much surprised as we were. We all just stood looking at each other for a second. Then the girls screamed, I yelled, they snarled, and the chase was on. They came pouring out of the restaurant, from the gas station across the street and out of buildings and yards all around. Chee-rist there was a shitload of ‘em! We were running up 301 and they are just swarming around us from everywhere, right on our tail and fucking fast ones at that!
“I knocked a bunch down with a shot from the gun which gave us some running room. Up ahead I saw the bridge and the remains of the wreck, and the crazies were there too. I told the girls to go to the right to the brick building and we got there just as they closed around us.