by J. D. Demers
Hanging in his closet was a black ammo vest. It had numerous pockets to store magazines along with other things necessary during wartime. I also came across a mobile first aid kit that would attach to the back of the vest.
There was a storage bin on the floor where I found a multitude of survival gear. There was a small propane cooker, water purification pills, a compass, about ten knives for different purposes, a tomahawk, a roll-out solar panel and a host of other small doodads. I decided to use the cooker to heat up the ground beef in the freezer that night. I had to eat anything that could go bad first.
I quickly went through his bug out bag, and saw that he had yet more ammunition and quite a bit of other survival gear. I decided not to check it all out because I had faith Dave knew what he was doing when he put it together. Hell, even if he didn’t, he still knew more than me. I threw the bag in the living room, just in case I had to leave the house in a hurry.
I heard a crack of lightning outside, and jumped. Other booms started to sound off in the distance. I walked over to Dave’s window and peeked out. Rain was coming down harder now.
I wondered what the rain did to the zombies. If they could hear thunder, would it make them go crazy? Would they walk around in circles, looking for whatever was making the noise? Would the motion mess up whatever visual sense they had? Even then, in the first days, I was trying to think ahead. I wanted to know my enemy. That’s probably one reason why I’m alive today. Not because I was brave or anything, but because I wanted to know the best way to be scared. Being scared meant not doing stupid things. Being scared would keep me safe.
I walked over to the living room and looked out the front window. The corpse that had been standing out front was gone. I peered up and down the street, but didn’t see any of them moping about. Believe it or not, I was disappointed.
A flash of movement caught my eye. I saw a figure running to the side of one of the houses across the street.
It was running. That meant it wasn’t really an ‘it’ at all, but a ‘someone’. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t seen or talked to another living person in over a day. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you interact with people every day of your life, even if it’s just from the social media or the television, one day becomes a long time.
I decided to take a risk. If the person was running, they probably needed help. I remembered watching the man get eaten alive by the two zombies that pulled him out of the car. I probably could have saved his life, but I did nothing. I know now that wasn’t a possibility rescuing that man, but I wasn’t as educated on the infection at the time. I peered to the right to see if there was a zombie near my front door and saw that it was clear.
I grabbed the Glock and cracked the door, scrutinizing my senses as I listened and looked around my yard. Nothing. I opened it about half way and moved out on the porch. I saw the figure run around another house.
It was a young woman. She was wearing a soaked pair of jeans and an orange T-shirt. A mess of sandy blonde hair was halfway covering her face. She whipped her head around, scouting the area around her. She looked scared and on edge. I waved, too frightened that if I screamed out to her I would attract a zombie.
I wasn’t too worried about handling one or two, but if a bunch of the dead came, I would run out of ammo fast. My spare magazines were back in the house and I hadn’t even reloaded since I had used the gun to put Dave down. Lesson learned, I quickly told myself. Always be armed, and always have back up ammunition.
Luckily, her paranoia kept her on the lookout and she spotted me. At first, she hesitated. She might have thought I was a zombie or something. After all, I was shirtless, standing in the rain, waving my hand at her. However, I think when she saw I was holding my gun in a defensive posture and not in her direction, she realized I was one of the living. I waved her over and she bolted toward my house.
I pushed the door open and took a few steps out into the rain to give her enough room to get past me and provide cover for her just in case one of the dead jumped out at her. She ran through the door without even a glance in my direction.
I backed up into the house, and checked all angles to make sure nothing saw her or me, and then I quickly shut the door.
Chapter 5
Dave
March 21st Afternoon
“Thanks,” the woman said with a shaky voice. I would have guessed she was about my age or a little older. She was short, somewhat chunky, and her face was pretty, but haggard and tired. She was shivering and her soaked clothes were dripping on the carpet.
“No problem,” I said, as I moved over to the window. I wanted to make sure nothing took notice of us going into the house. The street was still deserted. “Where did you come from?” I asked her.
“I live down off Jupiter,” she stammered. That really didn’t mean much to me. Jupiter was a road that cut through half of Palm Bay, but I guess that really wasn’t important. She stood there with her arms wrapped around her body, and trembled.
“Do you have a towel?” she asked evenly. She had a hollow, frightened expression on her face. I thought she may have been in shock or lost in thought because she wasn’t looking at me when she spoke.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I’ll get you a change of clothes, too. You can get dressed in my room.” I moved to the hallway closet and grabbed some towels and then ran into my room to get her some old sweat pants and another shirt. She went in and thanked me as she shut the door.
“What-what’s your name?” I asked through the door.
“Sarah,” she responded after a couple of seconds.
“I’m Christian.” I paused for a moment and thought about what to say. “Do you know what’s going on?” I asked. “I haven’t heard anything. You’re the first person I’ve seen since… well, since the dead started walking.” I really didn’t have another way to say it. But I will tell you, the first time I said it out loud to another living person sounded awkward. It’s funny, today we say it like it’s normal, but at that moment, it sounded very unnatural.
“We had a radio at our house,” she started to say and then stopped. I could hear her sniffling. I guess with all the rain and how wet she was, I didn’t notice her crying. I just sat there and waited until she pulled herself back together.
“We had a radio at our house. They must of-of heard it. A mess of those things… zombies or whatever… they surrounded the house.” She started crying, sucking in quick breaths as she spoke, “They just kept on pounding and pounding, trying to get in. Then one of them got through a window, and the rest followed. They were everywhere. Coming through the bedrooms, the living room… they killed everyone!” she cried.
This may sound a little selfish, but I was irritated that she didn’t answer my question. I was completely lost with what was going on. I only knew what the news had said a couple of nights ago. I decided to open the door, hoping that she had finished changing.
She was curled naked, next to the bed. Her face was buried in a towel that was only partially covering her. I wasn’t sure if I felt guilty or not at the time, but she didn’t seem to care because she just kept crying and repeating, “They’re all dead! They killed them all! I have no one!”
Believe it or not, I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know Sarah at all and there I was in the room with her while she sat naked and crying. I wasn’t the most sensitive person. Sure, I had cried a ton since everything went to shit, but that didn’t mean I was comfortable around someone else who was emotional.
I turned to give the appearance that I hadn’t seen her.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “You’re okay now. You’re safe. They’re not going to get you here.”
I was, of course, speaking out of my ass. How did I know they weren’t going to get us? Calming down hysterically young women wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
“We’re not safe!” she continued. “No one can stop them. They just keep coming back!”
She burrowed her head farther into the towel and continued to cry about how everyone was dead and how we would never be safe. Sarah told me that she thought the radio had attracted the zombies. Her crying would probably have the same effect. I had to calm her down.
I moved and took a knee next to her.
“It’s okay, we’ll get through this together,” I said as I put my arm around her. “But you have to be-”
Before I said another word, she screeched and pushed me back. Her hand landed right in my bad shoulder.
“Ouch, watch it!” I said as I knocked her hand down. I wasn’t trying to hit her or anything, it was just a reflex. She looked at me and shook in fear. PTSD was thrown around me so much as a veteran that I never really considered it affecting a civilian. But that’s what this was. Whatever messed up situation Sarah had survived through had put her over the edge. All she knew was fear.
“Get away from me!” she whined, covering herself.
I stood up, and rubbed my bad shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you Sarah. I just want to know what’s going on,” I said in frustration. I just wanted her to be quiet. I also wanted to know what was going on.
She calmed a little, but something caught her eye. She started to stand, still covering most of her body with the towel. She raised her hand and pointed at my shoulder.
“What-what happened?” She stammered. “Were you bit? Are you infected?” She had backed up into my bed. Instinctively, I moved closer to her.
“Yeah, I was bit,” then added quickly, “But I’m not infected.” That did not calm her down.
“Everyone who gets bit gets infected you dumbass!” She shouted at me. “It’s in their mouths!” I had been worried her crying would bring the zombies down upon us, but shouting was almost a sure thing. She looked around my room frantically, and then spotted my golf clubs in the corner near my dresser.
“Get away from me! You’re going to turn into one of those crazy things! I’ve seen what happens to the ones that don’t die!” she continued as she walked around one of my water storage bins and grabbed my five-iron out of my golf bag.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. She had evidently heard information on the radio and witnessed some crazy stuff, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess at the time I thought she was saying I was going to turn into a zombie. Later, though, I realized she had been referring to a scab. But I didn’t know what a scab was yet. All I wanted to do at this point was calm her down. She seemed unreasonably frantic and scared.
“Who said that?” I asked as I backed out of the bedroom and into living room. “Sarah, I’m not infected. I fought it off last night. Trust me.” I thought I heard something crash outside, but the crazy woman in front of me drew my attention back as she swung the club harmlessly in my direction, trying to ward me off.
“The radio! They warned us,” she yelled, exiting my bedroom.
“Get away from me!” she screamed again as she moved out of the hallway. Unconsciously, I was backed up toward the front door in the living room as she came out. She nearly tripped over Dave’s bug out bag, but regained her balance. Still yelling at me to get away, she looked around the room desperately for another exit that did not involve going through me. She eyed the back door.
“Don’t follow me!” she said, swinging again as she backed up through the kitchen toward the back exit. That time, she hit the empty carton of orange juice on the counter and knocked it across the room. Her towel had slipped completely off by then, and both of her hands gripped the golf club like a baseball bat.
“Please,” I pleaded, “I’m not sick. We’re safer together.” The truth was, I thought I was more worried about being alone again than I was about her safety.
Sarah didn’t hear me though. She was focusing more on getting out of my house. Her left hand gripped the back door knob as her right pointed the club at me as she gave me a death stare. She opened the door and spun around to leave.
My nightmare became reality.
Dave approached the doorway just as she turned around to go out. I froze. In my dream, Dave was still coming at me, even though he had a bullet through his brain. Zombies could not function without their brain. That’s what the urban legends told us. You shot them in the head, and they fell over, never to move again.
But there he was, back from the dead… again. His body was more decomposed than what I thought it would be at that point. His skin was flaked away, and there were several dissolved patches of flesh scattered about. The flap of skin below his temple where the bullet exited still dangled there. He was wet from the rain and dripped water that pooled behind him. I could see he had ripped the patio door off its hinges to get in. That must have been the noise I heard a few moments earlier.
Sarah screamed and started to back up, but Dave was already upon her. He grabbed her shoulder with one hand and hugged her with the other as they fell to the kitchen floor. Her scream, somehow, became louder and curdled as he bit down on her face. He ripped a chunk of skin and muscle off with his teeth, seemed to swallow, then continued down on her neck. She was beating on him, and yelled for me to help.
Do something! The voice screamed in my head.
But I did nothing. I couldn’t. My legs had no feeling. I wasn’t breathing. I just stared as my oldest friend tore into her over and over again. Her scream died down in seconds as she faded away. Dave had eaten at least half her neck, and started to tear into her chest when she finally went limp. Blood pooled all around them on the laminate floor. I felt my heart beat. Another thump pounded in my chest, and another, until I finally shook myself out of the terror.
“Dave…,” I croaked rhetorically. I wasn’t really calling out to him, but something in my brain told me to talk to him. I was losing my mind. He was dead. I could see he was dead. I could see he was still a zombie. Albeit, one that could function without a brain. Things were not adding up.
Dave heard me and stopped chewing on Sarah’s throat. He tilted his head and eyed me menacingly. Slowly, he clumsily rose and took a step forward. But before he could move again, my gun was up, and I fired. The first shot hit him in the chest, and did nothing but make him lean back. The concussion from firing the gun indoors racked my brain again.
I hated how Hollywood made it seem so easy to shoot someone in the head. You only had to be off a centimeter at ten feet to miss. I took better aim as he started toward me again. The next one hit him in the cheek. The shot spun his head almost half way around, exploding the side of his face and dislocating his jaw. But he kept coming. He was only a few feet away when I fired the last three shots in my magazine. One hit his neck. The second hit him in the forehead and the third missed as he collapsed to the floor from the previous shot.
He flopped down motionless. I stood for a second, staring at him until a bolt of lightning crashed outside and brought me out of shock. I ran over and grabbed the two spare magazines, reloaded and shoved the last one in my back pocket. I returned to the back door and leveled the Glock at Dave’s motionless head.
He was lying awkward and twisted against the wall. The back of his head faced me and I could see a decent sized exit wound at the base of his skull. Blackish blood and goo could be seen dripping out of the hole. The smell was worse than before and started to fill the house.
I kept moving toward the back door, avoiding Sarah’s body like the plague, and stepped out on the patio. My backyard was clear and I didn’t see anything near the fence. The wet blanket I had wrapped my old friend up in was still out in the yard, but the grass around it was gone. It looked like it had been ripped up from the roots. Much of the grass in my part of Florida was really a weed. It grew above the dirt, and spread across yards like vines. We called it crabgrass. It was probably only a few square feet of the lawn, but it was still weird. I brushed the thought off, not thinking that it was important.
I stepped back in the house and looked at Sarah. My heart dropped and a few tears started to form. Everything happened so fast. The
first living person I had encountered after the apocalypse was dead within fifteen minutes. I couldn’t make sense of it all.
I snapped out of it. I couldn’t think about it now. I started moving their bodies into the back yard. Just like before, it was hard. I wasn’t the strongest guy, and with my shoulder in pain, it became an agonizing job. First Sarah’s, since she was closest to the door. After her I moved to Dave. She was easy compared to his big ass.
I stood there in the rain and looked at the two of them. Would Dave get up again? Sarah was bound to be reanimated. I wondered how I could stop them from coming back. In a movie I saw about vampires, you had to cut their heads off to kill them. But these were not vampires, were they? According to myth, vampires blow up or melt in the sun. These things may not have been numerous while the sun was out, but they were still out and about. These were not the zombies of Hollywood fiction, either. Everything I thought I knew about zombies was flying out the window.
I went back inside and grabbed a machete out of Dave’s room. I was shaking for the entire walk to and from the house. I knew what I had to do, but the thought of it was tearing me apart. It was barbaric.
I watched a documentary months before about what it would be like if a virus wiped out most of humanity. Dogs and cats would go feral in three days or die. It also said that if humans were to survive, they would face similar challenges. Those that could not cope with the new world would not make it. Those that could change would be able to carve a new life out of the rubble that was left. I was reminded of this as I stepped out to the back yard.
Sarah’s arms were twitching.
“Jesus Christ!” I said as I exhaled. That was fast. The man at the intersection hadn’t turned that fast. Hell, I didn’t know if he ever turned. But Sarah turned right before my eyes. I almost went back inside and shut the door to hide, but I remembered what the documentary had said. I had to do this.