Decay | Book 1 | Civilization

by Spitznogle, D. L.

  “Hopefully we can at least get what we need to patch Kyle up and go,” said Kathrine. “I can’t believe this. Look at these people. They look like they have been through hell.”

  As the truck moved through the hospital parking lot, people came up and banged on the doors. The blood on their hands smeared the glass. Deacon pulled the truck as close as he could to the entrance, jumped out, and ran around to the other side to help Tommy and Kyle.

  “Get back please. We have a firefighter injured,” he told the crowd as they closed in. “Don’t worry. We aren’t cutting in front of you. We’re going to grab what we need and be on our way.”

  The bloody people moved in closer still and reached for Kyle and Tommy as they climbed down out of the truck. Tommy shoved them back and held on tight to his friend as he tried to rush him to the entrance. He quickly lost Kyle in the mob as the group became too thick to keep away.

  “Kyle!” shouted Tommy. He plunged into the crowd to save his friend. “Get off him!” He was followed closely by Deacon and Kathrine, who fought people off as they made their way to Kyle. When the three finally made it through the violent crowd, they saw Kyle being ripped apart.

  His screams were weak, but they were enough to express the pain he felt as his left knee was stomped on until it bent backwards. Two men pulled on his head while a woman bent his fingers back before biting them off. One of the men shoved two of his fingers into Kyle’s right eye and pulled and twisted his head until his neck snapped.

  Kyle’s body went limp, his pain had ended. Tommy released a battle cry and swung his strong arms at anyone close by. Deacon continued struggling to reach Kyle’s body when he heard Kathrine’s scream erupt from behind him. “Kathrine!” he yelled before charging back to where she was.

  Tommy smashed several of the attackers. He was as sure of what was going on as anyone else, but he intended to fight for the lives of his friends. Moving quickly behind Deacon, he punched and kicked anyone that came within reach.

  “Kathrine!” Deacon yelled again as he saw her lying on her stomach. A group of people stood above her, stomping on her back and pulling her hair. She kicked and punched at them, but it was not enough. Blood sprayed the concrete from her broken nose.

  “Deacon. Please help me,” she sobbed. “I want to go home to my little boy. Take me home to my boy.”

  Tommy charged hard into the group, knocking everyone back like bowling pins. Deacon followed close behind. Together they picked Kathrine up from the parking lot and started toward the truck. Through all the blood and dirt on her face, Deacon could see that her left eye was swollen shut and her nose was busted wide open.

  As they reached the truck, Tommy yelled out in pain. A woman had latched onto his leg and bit deep into his calf. Deacon helped Kathrine up into the truck and turned around to help Tommy. He stomped on the woman’s neck, and just when she let go another woman grabbed ahold of Tommy. This one scratched at his face while chewing the skin off his arm.

  “Get in the truck!” yelled Tommy. “I’ll hold them off. You get Kathrine the hell outta here.”

  “I can’t leave you behind, Tommy.” Deacon ran back to the truck and grabbed the red fire axe. As he returned, he swung it hard into the second woman’s back. She seemed to be unfazed, so Deacon swung again and again. Tommy was able to knock her off, and Deacon used this opportunity to chop into the woman until his arms were sore. In the end, her head was nothing more than a mushy pile.

  Tommy wasn’t there when Deacon turned back to him. In his place stood several others, and before Deacon had a chance to move, they were all over him. He cowered down, not sure what to do. Pulling his thick coat over him, Deacon lay on the concrete. The men and woman around him punched, kicked, and scratched at him in an attempt to rip him apart, yet his bunker gear was far too thick.

  Strong arms wrapped around him, lifting him up off the parking lot. Deacon was sure this was it for him. His body was flung over his attackers’ shoulders, and he realized that he was not being attacked. He peeked out of his coat to see that he was being carried to the truck by Tommy.

  Most of Tommy’s face was covered in blood. He was missing most of his left ear, and a chunk of his neck had been torn open. Blood spewed from the gash. “Get in the truck, and this time shut the hell up. Get in!” Tommy yelled at Deacon as he threw him up onto the driver’s seat.

  Deacon finally was able to take a good look at his friend. The fingers on Tommy’s right hand were broken and bent to the side, and the right side of his face was just as bad as the left. Even as Tommy stood there he was being attacked. The strong man held back the rushing crowd as Deacon started the truck.

  “Hop in, Tommy!” Deacon said through the window. “We’re ready to move.” He looked down at Tommy, who made eye contact one last time before pushing his way through the violent crowd. “TOMMY!” But it was too late. Tommy only made it ten yards before being dragged to the ground.

  Looking back to Kathrine, whose pale skin made her look terribly sick, Deacon knew he had to leave. He now had only the hope that he could save at least one of his friends. He would take Kathrine to a hospital in the next town over. Backing the large truck up was difficult with the number of cars in the way. The occasional bump in the street turned out to be a person who failed to step aside for the fire truck.

  After successfully backing out of the hospital parking lot, Deacon saw that the destruction was happening exponentially. In the short amount of time they were there, the chaos had spread like a California wildfire. Deacon decided that he would slow down for nobody. After what he just witnessed, he knew there was no hope for anyone running around the streets anyway.

  A man reached up from the back seat and grabbed Deacon’s hair. He raised his right arm and blocked the attack with his heavy coat. Kathrine punched at the man weakly in an attempt to help, but she had no effect on him other than drawing his attention.

  The man turned to Kathrine, his busted glasses just barely holding on. Deacon struggled to maintain control of the vehicle as he tried to pry the man away from her. Pulling hard on the man’s red University of Southern California shirt, Deacon realized he was losing this fight. He propped his knee under the steering wheel and reached both hands around the man’s waist.

  By the time Deacon finally pulled the man away from Kathrine it was too late to regain control of the truck. The thirty-five-thousand-pound truck collided with a large palm tree. It was only moving at forty miles per hour, but the amount of momentum caused the front to collapse a split second before the palm tree snapped and fell slowly to the ground.

  Deacon’s vision was blurred as his head throbbed. He knew he could have only been there for a moment, yet it felt like he had the worst hangover of his life. In a daze, he stepped out of the truck and fell to the street where he threw up the small amount of liquid that was in his stomach.

  As the dizzy spell passed, he stood and walked back to the truck to find Kathrine. Climbing in the driver’s side first he saw the man crushed between the dash and broken windshield. His body twitched and jerked as if he was trying to free himself. It’s only nerves, Deacon thought.

  Before climbing back out, he grabbed the axe from under the twitching dead man. Making his way around the truck he checked the street around him. For the most part it was empty. He could see what appeared to be a woman eating the remains of a child on the sidewalk. I must be seeing things. After climbing over the trunk of the downed palm tree he noticed that the passenger door was wide open.

  “Kathrine!” he yelled as he ran to the open door. “Kathrine! Can you hear me?” No response. KATHRINE!” he screamed it this time. All sound stopped. The distant rustling of feet and pained moans dissipated. Then Deacon realized that everyone within sight of him was watching him with curiosity, and then they moved toward him.

  Chapter 11

  “I never saw Kathrine after that. Those damned people chased after me the whole way back to the firehouse. I managed to hide out there for a while, at least unt
il things settled a bit and I ran out of food. If only we had paid more attention to the reports. I initially thought it was just a bunch of drug addicts attacking everybody. After all, they get doped up on a pharmacy list of drugs and they’ll eat your damn face or arms off,” he said before putting the piece of rabbit back onto his plate and pushing it aside.

  After filling up on the freshly cooked meat and the vegetables that Guillermo had brought, they began to plan their group’s move to the attic. Bradley and Roger would head back for Emalynn and the children, and Guillermo would stay and scout further south. When they made it back with the children, they would eat and sleep. In the morning they would move along.

  Guillermo set out first, shaking Bradley’s hand before parting ways. He moved to the south. Movement was much quicker now. He had been moving around on his own for a while. From here on out it was only houses. Yard after yard, Guillermo moved along quietly.

  Although he checked the yard before dropping down from the wall, the fiend came from out of nowhere. The hand grabbed his shirt, causing him to spin around, losing his balance, and landing on his back. He kicked into the fiend’s stomach with all his strength. The dead man fell to the ground with his thick stomach contents oozing from his mouth, but he was soon back to his feet.

  Guillermo pulled his blade from his pack and swung at the man, slicing through his fingers, which did nothing to slow him down. He continued his relentless pursuit. Guillermo kept swinging until the swinging turned to chopping. Both the man’s mutilated arms flopped down in front of him like short fat snakes in tall grass. As the fiend came closer the chops started landing in his face. Even after he lay in the grass no longer moving, Guillermo continued to chop into his head.

  He took a moment to rest against the wall. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was, but he knew he had made it quite a ways from the attic Deacon lived in. The sun was high overhead, making it hard to determine direction. He knew visibility would be at its best right now, however, and he knew his way around this area well once he had his bearings back.

  Climbing back to his feet, he continued to the end of the yard. The wall around the yard was roughly six feet tall. Guillermo easily lifted himself up with his strong arms and looked at the street on the other side.

  Fiends were moving around all over. He wasn’t sure what the best plan would be from here. He walked to the wall facing into the next yard and peeked over it. This yard was empty, so he pulled himself over and dropped down gently into the soft grass. He continued to make his way through the yard, thinking to himself how easy it will be to move from yard to yard behind the wall.

  As he approached the end of the house on his way through the yard three fiends stood there facing the other direction. Guillermo stopped and backed up against the house. A fourth fiend came out of the door behind him and grabbed his arm.

  Guillermo spun around to face the fiend and jumped back. The short girl was missing her right eye and her lips were gone. Left in their place was gruesome teeth marks and bits of hanging flesh. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen when she was killed. Her eye probably gouged out while a close friend or family member chewed her lips off.

  The blade cut through the dead flesh on the fiend’s arm, slicing clean through the bone. He let out a low grunt as he plunged the blade deep into her good eye. Her body instantly fell lifeless to the concrete patio, which was enough to alert the others to his presence.

  Instead of fighting the remaining three, Guillermo decided it would be best to just make a run for the wall and hop into the next yard. He jumped hard, grabbing the top of the wall and propelling himself over.

  Unfortunately, he came down into a filthy swimming pool. The water tasted putrid as it found its way into his mouth and rushed up his nose. He flailed around trying to right himself and make his way above the water. As his head broke the plane, a filmy layer of slime stuck to his face. He spit out the water and inhaled a deep breath.

  Much of the slime on his face was sucked into his mouth. It was like eating a ball of snot. Before he could clear his eyes of the gross membrane, a hand grabbed hold of his ankle and pulled him back under the water. He found himself staring through the murky liquid and into the decayed face of a dead woman. It was obvious from the way her loose skin seemed to float away from her body that she had been under the water for quite some time.

  Guillermo kicked as hard as he could, but it wasn’t enough to free himself from her grip on his ankle. He lifted his head above the water to take a breath. Then plunged himself down and grabbed the skin on the woman’s hand, it slid from her bones like a glove, revealing the soft muscle underneath. He was able to shake his ankle free of the skin-gloved hand and surface once again.

  He looked around into a yard full of fiends, and they were all making their way toward the pool. He swam to the only opening he could see and climbed out quickly. He reached back to grab his blade, only to discover he had dropped it when he fell into the pool. His only option now was to make another run for the next yard and pray there was no water-filled death hole.

  He pushed hard into the closest fiend, knocking him into the water, and he ran straight to the wall. He jumped and used that momentum to help carry him over. The grass was soft as he landed on the ground, but it still knocked some of the wind out of him. He lifted himself up onto his knees and looked around the yard as he held his stomach. The problem with this yard is there was no wall around it. He had landed on a corner lot, and every fiend on the block had stopped to look at him.

  Chapter 12

  “Research and development,” Jonathan said to himself one morning through a mouthful of waffles. It didn’t take long to figure out how to make them. The box of mix told him everything but how long to cook them. After overcooking a few, he found the perfect timing.

  Finishing his breakfast quickly, Jonathan walked to the garage, grabbed a pair of binoculars, and climbed the ladder to the roof. Once on the roof, he looked out across the desolate town. At first, he hated to see the town like this, yet lately it has been comforting just to know that there was at least something else outside of his world in the house. He had a plan, and the first part required understanding what was out there.

  There was no pattern to be found in the way the dead moved out in the streets. They seem to be completely sporadic. Sometimes there would be one or two roaming about while other times the streets were barren. Occasionally, throughout the day, the dead would move in hordes with no discernible reasoning.

  Jonathan theorized that this was completely coincidental. The dead never showed any signs of understanding each other. He also wondered if, by grouping up, the dead were remembering a time when they had social interaction.

  Several days wasted on the roof is how Jonathan felt about what he hadn’t learned so far. He would have to modify his plan if he wanted to learn anything useful. He spent another entire day planning and thinking. Regardless of what he felt, he needed to learn, and there only seemed to be one sure way to study these creatures. He had to capture one.

  Although he wasn’t learning much from studying the movement of the undead, he continued to climb to the roof several times a day and have a look around. When he wasn't on the roof, he was in the family room where he had brought out a chalkboard. He made a short list of some supplies he would need. A rudimentary schematic was drawn up for how he would capture one of them.

  Knowing that his lack of physical strength would literally be his weakness, he decided that he could use his father’s car to make up for it. His plan was to create a primitive snare trap with a length of rope and use the car to haul the dead body over the property wall. Once he had one in the confines of the wall, he hoped to have enough time to tie the dead up and move it into the back behind the generator shed.

  The next two days were stressful for Jonathan. He wasn’t sure what he could use as bait to draw one of the dead into the trap, and he also had to deal with the outrageous number of them wandering around out in the open. There would not b
e any way to make his way out of the yard to set the trap before they were all over him.

  The third day was spent experimenting with the trap and how to place it for the best chances of making a catch. The diagram for the spring trap was for catching small animals, and Jonathan lacked a spring mechanism. His plan would call for him to be on the other side of the wall and pull the rope tight as his victim stepped into the trap. He would then run to the car and drive it forward until the dead body was pulled over.

  The following day was going to be the day. Clouds drifted in the sky, but they were thin, and the sun shone brightly. The street out front of his house was clear, so it was time to act. Jonathan stood in his yard making his final mental preparations when he heard the gunshots off in the distance. He ran through the garage, grabbed his binoculars, and climbed to the roof.

  Most of the dead in his area were moving toward the sound. He wasn’t sure if this was good for him, or bad. A few minutes of silence passed, and a single gunshot sounded. Jonathan couldn’t see where it came from, but the dead were going to find it. He only hoped whoever it was would be alright.

  A few more minutes passed before Jonathan decided it was time to return to work. Most of the dead had moved north, but a few stragglers stayed behind. He finished his walk around the yard and felt confident that he could pull this off.

  His first move would be placing the car in its spot. He climbed into the driver’s seat of the BMW. After adjusting the seat and mirrors he buckled his seatbelt. His father was very strict on wearing seatbelts. He pressed the push button ignition and the engine roared vigorously to life.

  He pressed the button on the remote to lift the garage door. Although the garage was well lit through the skylights, the sunlight pouring in was blinding. His father never let him drive the BMW, yet he had driven his mother’s Chrysler 300M. Once the garage door was opened fully, he pressed the brake down and shifted the transmission into reverse.