Decay | Book 1 | Civilization

by Spitznogle, D. L.

  “This is your safety switch,” Guillermo said as he pointed it out. “I’ve fired guns before, but I’m no expert. Only fire it if you really need to. They’ll be attracted to the noise.” He could see the fear settling into her face. “Don’t worry. Bradley won’t let anything happen to you, and I’ll be right there to make sure nothing happens to him. You won’t even need to fire it.”

  “Thanks.” Emalynn’s angelic smile was a sign of hope to him.

  “There’s no point in waiting any longer. Let’s get moving,” Bradley ordered as he lowered the ladder and straddled the window.

  “I’ll go first.” Roger stood there in the hallway. His face still lacked emotion. In his hand was a wooden leg from his desk. The end of the heavy oak leg had a sharp hook whittled into it. The end he held had been shaved down to fit in his hand and wrapped in leather from a jacket he kept in his office for cooler days.

  “Wow. What is that?” Guillermo said with excitement.

  “It’s just a desk leg.” Roger said with little concern for it.

  “That’s a stupid name. You need something menacing. Something that will strike fear into the hearts of your opponents.”

  “I doubt they care,” sighed Roger.

  “You see this?” Guillermo pulled out his lawnmower blade. “This is Kadavre —with a K.” The smile on Guillermo’s face spread wide.

  “I see no point naming a desk leg. I also wouldn’t name a knife.”

  “This isn’t a knife.” Guillermo stated matter-of-factly. “How about Skull Smasher? That’s a good name. Oh, Dead Breaker.” He was pleased to have come up with something so quickly. “Dead Breaker it is then.”

  Bradley stepped back in from the window as Roger made his way closer. “Thank you for coming along,” he said as Roger stopped in front of him.

  The two men came face-to-face, much closer than Bradley felt comfortable with. “I’m coming along to make sure you don’t get that young lady killed,” he said quietly. “Everyone ready?” Roger climbed out the window and made his way down the rope without waiting for an answer.

  Bradley looked at his other two companions and shrugged his shoulders. He leaned out the window to watch Roger’s descent. As soon as he was on the ground, Bradley made his way out the window and down to the alley below. Once on the ground, he signaled for Emalynn to follow.

  The concrete felt so strange under Emalynn’s feet, even with her shoes on. The sensation of being outside again was like pure ecstasy to her. The warm breeze carried the salty aroma of the ocean with a hint of death that wafted through the alley.

  Roger moved to the end of the alley while Emalynn stayed close to Bradley. When Guillermo made it down they set out toward the street where Roger stood. Looking in every direction he could, Roger found himself satisfied that their path was clear.

  “The way looks clear. The bait shop is your building, right, which is where you want to go?” Roger asked Bradley, who was surprised by Roger’s sudden “take-charge” attitude change.

  “Yeah, once inside we go to the back of the store. I’ll run over first and check the building. When I’m sure it’s clear, I’ll signal for the rest of you.” The three nodded in understanding, and Bradley double checked the street.

  As he made it across the street, he pushed open the door to the bait shop and slowly entered while staying low to the ground. Moving quietly to the back he concluded that the store was empty. Opening the door to step back out onto the street he noticed that there was a man making his way down the sidewalk in front of the news building.

  They didn’t plan well enough, he realized, when he wasn’t sure how to signal this to them. He held up his hand as to say, “stop”. Then he raised his index finger to show there was one fiend, and he pointed in the direction he was coming from. Guillermo gave a thumbs up in acknowledgement, understanding the impromptu sign language, and led the group behind a dumpster in the alley.

  The fiend kept a slow pace as he moved down the sidewalk. Standing roughly six feet tall, the fiend’s long, slow stride was unbalanced yet steady. Blood stained the dead man’s legs, and it was a miracle his flip flops were still on his feet. Baggy Hawaiian floral swim trunks hung just below his waist.

  His shirtless torso showed off what was once a muscular chest and well-defined abs. Now, however, ribs poked through the thin gray flesh, and his stomach was distended from the buildup of gas. The man’s gray skin was probably darkly tanned while he was alive.

  The neatly trimmed beard hasn’t changed since the day he died. It came down out of his shaggy, sandy blonde hair. In a thin line, it worked around his chin and back up the other side of his face. At least it would have, if the other half of his face was intact. His left eyeball bulged out of its socket, the flesh around it gone.

  As he walked by the opening to the alley, he came to a stop and looked around. His long body tensed up, and he quickly moved down the alley. Before the fiend could make it past the dumpster, Roger stood up, drew his weapon back, and swung the wooden hook powerfully through the fiend’s temple. The force caused the left eye to fall free and hang above the lip.

  Maybe I was wrong about Roger. He can handle himself out here just fine. Bradley thought in amazement before signaling the trio across the empty street. “Nice work,” he complimented Roger, who ignored him as he walked into the shop.

  Guillermo went through the ceiling first. Partly so he could check the next shop out, but mostly so he could hide the body of the little girl. He didn’t want Emalynn to see her and what he had to do. After a couple minutes of work, he signaled the group to follow him through.

  The sun was rising quickly through the sky even though it was still early. The group made their way out of the store and across the park where Bradley and Guillermo first met. The stiff body of the fiend that attacked him was still lying in the grass, his brains gradually squeezing through the gash in his head.

  Bradley wouldn’t mention this encounter to Emalynn. He only told her this was the spot he ran into Guillermo. She’d worry if she knew what had happened even though he clearly survived the ordeal. Guillermo continued to lead the way, followed by Roger, Emalynn, and Bradley who kept an eye on things from the rear.

  They made it safely to the back of Guillermo’s garage and he put the ladder in place. “Go ahead on up first, señorita. It’s safe up there.”

  After Emalynn made it through the window, Bradley followed. Before he reached the window, however, gunshots cracked through the streets. Bradley hopped from the ladder onto the roof of the garage. “Hurry up, guys,” he urged Roger and Guillermo. Both men scrambled to make it up the ladder.

  A woman who appeared to be in her early thirties limped past the garage out in the street followed by four fiends. Blood speckled her white blouse and long black skirt. Her black hair was in a loose ponytail. Both her feet were bare. Clutched tightly in both hands was a handgun.

  “I’ll see if I can help this woman,” Bradley said.

  “I’ll go with you. If that’s fine with you, of course?” Guillermo pulled his blade from his pack and jumped from the garage before Bradley could answer.

  “Can you wait here with Emalynn?” Bradley asked Roger. “We’ll be right back.” Bradley jumped down from the roof and pulled the handgun from his belt.

  Emalynn felt terrified to know she had once again been left alone with Roger. She stepped back to give him room to climb through the window. Smiling at him, she hoped he would keep his distance. His face no longer seemed to be drained of color, but he still looked like he lacked his humanity.

  Bradley caught up to Guillermo just as he had chopped into the skull of the closest fiend, a teenage boy. He went down to the concrete hard, landing on his face. His front teeth shattered against the street. Guillermo crossed himself. The fiends moved slowly, but the woman was injured and not moving much quicker.

  Aiming his pistol at the next fiend, Bradley realized how bad of a decision it would be to continue firing. The woman had fired a few shots and
somehow not attracted an entire horde, but Bradley didn’t want to risk it. Instead, he unsheathed a large hunting knife he’d found in the bait shop, jumped on the fiends back, and drove the knife into his head through his ear.

  The third fiend went down after Guillermo’s blade sliced through the back of her neck. Her body stopped working, yet she kept her eyes on Guillermo. Clack. Clack. She bit at the air. Guillermo swung the blade to the right, connecting with the face of the last. The blade was buried in the fiend’s head, entering at a slight downward angle that sliced through both eyes.

  “Ma’am! You can stop now. You’re safe,” Bradley shouted to the woman.

  She slowly came to a stop and turned to them as they came up to her. It was obvious she was out of breath. From the looks of her she hadn’t eaten in days. The deep bite marks on her thin left arm spewed blood along with a foamy white substance that dripped onto the concrete. Bradley knew from the experience of the initial attack that anyone who was bitten would not last much longer.

  Her southern accent wasn’t thick, but it was enough to say she wasn’t from around here. “Three children are on the roof of the supermarket just a few blocks from here. They’re waiting for me to return with food. I can’t go back to them like this, but they’ll starve to death by themselves.” The words she spoke were carried on forced breath.

  “We’ll get to them. Are you the one who fired the big shot?” Bradley asked.

  “No, hun. We heard it, so I moved to the roof thinking it meant a chance at being rescued. Will you promise to get the children?” Her face was wet with tears and blood.

  “We’ll get to your children. I promise.”

  “They ain’t my children, but I couldn’t leave them by themselves. I saw what those characters did to my family, and I couldn’t let that happen to them poor babies. Promise me right now you’ll get them and keep them safe.”

  “We’ll go for them now,” Guillermo said reassuringly.

  “Thank you kindly.” She looked up into the sky. “It’s time for God to take me to see my own family.” Without hesitation, she put her gun to the roof of her mouth and pulled the trigger. The gunshot rang out as her head snapped back on her neck. Skull fragments and chunks of her brain splattered sickeningly on the concrete as they fell from the hole in her head.

  “I can get to the children if you want to head back,” Bradley said without taking his eyes off the dead woman.

  “No. I’ll go with you. We’re close, so it won’t take long.” He placed a hand on Bradley’s shoulder when he saw the pain that he felt over the loss of a woman neither of them knew. “If we can save those children, then her death won’t be for nothing.”

  The two men slowed down when they heard the gurgling moans of the fiends growing louder as they approached the gas pumps. The supermarket was on the other side of the station. Inside the gas station, fiends wandered around in the isles. Keeping low so they wouldn’t be seen, Bradley and Guillermo crept past. With the gas station cleared, they ran at a dead sprint toward the supermarket.

  Bradley was surprised by how easy it was to make it this distance, and it gave him hope of finding the big gunshot. Most of the fiends in this area had gone out to inspect the commotion from just a few moments ago. At the back of the building they found a ladder that went to the roof. There were marks on the ground from where the woman had been moving a stack of crates to and from the ladder.

  “Hello?” Bradley spoke quietly as they looked around for the children. Swaying gently in the breeze was a large blue tarp propped up as a makeshift tent. A boy about eleven or twelve stepped out from around the tent first, holding a baseball bat defensively.

  He was about five feet tall. His shaggy brown hair curled up an inch or so as it emerged from the dirty Zoo York hat. The low top Vans on his feet were also beat up pretty bad, and he wore a sweat stained blue shirt with ‘manager’ embroidered on the left breast that must have come from the supermarket.

  “Hello. We’re here to help you. A woman sent us up here to take you back with us. You’re safe.” Bradley held out his hands to show he was unarmed.

  “What did you do with Danni?” The boy demanded with a stern voice. The fear could be seen in his brown eyes.

  “We didn’t do anything, ok. She was attacked, we tried to help her. She told us there were three of you up here, and we needed to get to you.” Bradley kept his hands out as he slowly moved closer to the boy. “We have food and shelter. You’ll be safe with us.”

  The boy sat the bat down against an HVAC unit and went into the tent. A few moments went by before Bradley could hear the children inside crying. It broke his heart to have to hear them taking the loss of this woman, Danni, so hard. He decided it best to give the children some time. Both men understood that losing someone who had cared for them for this long must be very hard.

  While waiting for the children, both men heard a car engine coming from the south. The sound only lasted a few seconds, yet it was loud. Almost as if the driver was in a hurry or possibly stuck. They waited silently for a few minutes hoping to catch a glimpse of the vehicle on the road, but they never saw it.

  “Must have come from where the gunshot came from?” Bradley asked.

  “That would be my guess. It looks to be to our advantage. Most of the fiends are moving that way now,” Guillermo pointed out. Several fiends moved below them on their way to find the new noise. He crossed himself and brought his silver crucifix pendant up to his lips. “Just the Lord looking out for us.”

  Over the next couple of minutes Bradley could hear the children moving around as they gathered their meager belongings. They continued to weep softly as they worked. When the boy stepped out of the tent a few moments later, his eyes were red from crying.

  “We’ll go with you then. If it’s ok,” the boy said.

  “Of course, that’s why we’re here,” Bradley said with a welcoming smile.

  The other two children emerged from the tent. They were both a couple years younger than the first boy. Bradley could tell they were twins. The eight-year-old boy had curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and suntanned skin. He had the typical California surfer look to him. His swimming trunks settled in just below his knees, showing off his dirty shins and bare feet.

  The girl was a mirror image of her brother only with longer, even curlier hair. She wore a pink one-piece bathing suit with a matching dress and leather sandals with a broken strap on the left one. Mud streaked down her face where the tears and dirt met while she was crying.

  “My name’s Bradley. This is Guillermo. We’re with two others who are in another building just over there.” Bradley pointed slightly north-east of where they were. “Are we looking alright to go?” He turned to Guillermo, who had been keeping watch from the side of the building.

  “Si. It’s now or never. They seem to be heading south still.”

  “Good, here is what we’ll do. The two of us will go down first and cover the parking lot. The little ones come down next followed by you, big guy.”

  “I’m Tyson. They’re Andy and Amie.” Tyson introduced them as they moved closer to the ladder. Bradley could tell he was nervous.

  “Just stay close and everything will be fine,” Bradley assured. “Here we go.” He slid down the ladder, holding onto the sides with his hands and feet.

  Guillermo patted Tyson on the back and gave him a friendly nod. Then he started down the ladder, using the rungs to climb. As he made it about halfway down Tyson helped Amie over the edge and onto the ladder. When all of them were on the ground they moved as a group toward the gas station at the other side of the lot.

  Stopping against the building, they waited out a couple of fiends who shambled down the opposite sidewalk. Once they were out of sight, Bradley rushed them across the street and into the alleyway. The garage came into view as they came out the other side. Emalynn waved excitedly from the window as she saw them. Roger was waiting across the street next to the garage. The bodies of a couple fiends lay at his feet.


  The small party made their way to the garage. Roger didn’t look pleased at all to see the children. This was a change from his usual look, so Bradley felt that he had at least accomplished something today. They helped the children up the ladder and into the window.

  “This place is a hell hole. Is this supposed to be funny?” Roger asked as they were all inside the building.

  Amie held her nose to keep the smell out while Andy teased her about touching the blood on the floor. Bradley found himself smiling, as this reminded him of his own childhood. He would chase the girls he liked around the playground with frogs and fence lizards.

  “Just don’t touch any of that,” he said in a fatherly manner.

  “This isn’t it. We go through to the next building. Just over there.” Guillermo showed his new guests the way to the office where his plank rested on the floor against the wall. With the help of Bradley, they slid the board across the alley. Guillermo went across first and helped the rest as they crossed.

  “Make yourselves at home. There are rooms up above, and you can go all the way to the roof where there are fresh vegetables growing. You kids can eat as much as you like but don’t waste anything,” Guillermo said.

  “When I was a kid we had to eat everything we took. If we wasted anything then mi Madre would smack our knuckles with a wooden spoon and make us sit at the table until we cleaned our plates. ”

  Guillermo went into his own room quickly after sharing that brief story. He didn’t want anyone to see him cry. Thinking back on his childhood like that made him miss his large family. Back then he thought it was so hard to be a kid. Now he only wished he could go back.

  Chapter 8

  Everyone had settled in peacefully as night took hold of the city. The children went to bed with full stomachs for the first time in months. Bradley was the last one to fall asleep. He had been trying to plan their next move. Without really knowing where they would be heading, he found it rather difficult to come up with anything solid. They would have to think on their feet and just go.