Our Last Bow

by Edward Punales

  It wasn’t okay. A sudden rush of regrets and guilt flooded me. I wanted to apologize for every time I’d talked back to him, for every time he wanted to teach me something (how to drive, how to shoot) but I wouldn’t let him, for every time-

  “Guys.” It was Dave’s voice. We didn’t feel like listening. Even Mom was starting to breakdown. We didn’t even-

  “Guys!” Dave shouted. We turned to him. He took a breath. “We have to get out of here.” He’d gotten a little teary-eyed himself. “We don’t have time for this.”

  For about half-a-second, I wanted to punch him in the face. Then I heard a new batch of undead moans coming from somewhere down the road. Mom, Stan, and I looked at Dave.

  “There is nothing we can do.” Dave said. He was already standing up. “We need to stay alive, and get the hell out of here.” As hard as it was to admit, he was right.

  We all took one last look at Dad, quietly said our goodbyes, and got up.

  “Okay now listen.” Dave said. We were wiping the tears from our faces as he spoke. “We’re going to into the house, take whatever bare essentials, food ammo, water, whatever we might-” another note from the chorus of the walking dead played from somewhere unseen, and Dave began to speak faster. “Only take the essentials, and move quickly.” We went back into the house, while Dave stayed outside with a rifle. I had taken a single step inside the house, when I stopped.

  “Where’s Suzy?” I asked, a cold chill going up my spine.

  “We don’t know.” Stan said, sadly. I felt confusion and anger mix with my grief.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “We haven’t seen her since the town got attacked.” Mom said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She was getting some supplies from the school on the day the zombies came.”

  When martial law was first declared, the army had decided to use the local high school as a makeshift supply depot, where people could get food, medicine, and the like.

  “We were all told to take shelter in whatever building we were closest to.” Mom continued.

  “So she’s at the school?” I asked.

  “Guys, get in there, and get supplies!” Dave said. Mom and I immediately stopped talking, and began to rummage through the house for supplies with Stan. We each found a backpack, and proceeded to load them with things we thought we’d need. When all three of our backpacks were full, we went outside to the jeep.

  “Okay let’s get going,” Dave said, taking my backpack from me and putting it in the back of the jeep. Mom was already in the jeep, and Stan was getting my Dad’s rifle that still lay next to his body.

  “We have to go to the school.” I said.

  “No, we’re going to Brooks.” Dave said sternly

  “But Suzy is-”

  “I heard, and we can’t risk it.”

  “But we know where she is!”

  “No we don’t. We know she was going to the school, that’s all. She could’ve gotten sidetracked and ended up somewhere else. She might not have even made it to the school.”

  “We still need to check!” I shouted.

  “No. We need to-” Dave’s sentence was cutoff, when he let out a painful scream. He looked down, and saw it.

  A zombie had crawled out from under the jeep. Its arms and legs were gone, and it was wiggling on the ground. Dave tried to shake it off his leg, but it just kept hanging on with its rotting teeth.

  “Get it off! Get it off!” He screamed. I and Mom tried to kick at it, but it wouldn’t budge. Quickly, Stan pushed us both out of the way, and shot it in the head with his rifle. It stopped moving instantly.

  “Oh no.” Dave said, as he collapsed to the ground on his injured leg. He pushed the limp zombie corpse off him, and lifted up his pant leg. He covered the bleeding bite mark with his hand.

  “Shit.” He said, his voice laced with pain and fear. He looked up at us, an expression of pure desperation on his face. I tried to think of something we could do, but came up with nothing. We just stared back, looking as confused and frightened as he was.

  He looked down at the wound, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes as he shook his head.

  “Well, I guess that’s it.” He said. The desperation had left his face and voice. He opened his eyes, and looked up at us. We stayed silent. He held out his bloodless hand, and I pulled him back up on his feet.

  “All of you get in the jeep.” He said limping back to the house.

  “Dave?” asked Stan.

  “Get out of here.” He was already pulling his pistol out from the holster on his hip.

  “Dave, I’m sorry.” I said, walking after him.

  “Its fine, get in the jeep.” He said. He got to the stoop in front of the door, and sat down. He looked at the gun he held in his hands. My mother walked over, and gave Dave a hug.

  “Thank you.” She said to him. They both had tears in their eyes.

  “No problem ma’am.” He said. She got up, and looked down at him. Stan and I joined her. He put the gun down, and shook me and Stan’s hands.

  “It was a pleasure and an honor to beat the shit out of you guys in Halo.” He said.

  “Same here.” Stan said. Dave wiped the tears from his face and smiled. He glanced down the street, and the smile vanished. We followed his gaze, and saw the new pack of zombies coming down the road. It looked like there was about three or four of them, but there could always be more nearby.

  “Alright.” Dave said standing up. He put the pistol back in his hand, and turned the safety off. He walked over to the edge of the lawn, and stared down the oncoming zombies. Without looking at us, he said. “You guys need to get out of here. I’ll distract them.”

  “We’ll leave you one of the rifles.” Stan said.

  “No. You’re going to need them more than me. This pistol is all I’ll need.”

  “We’ll never forget you man.”

  “Go now.”

  Stan nodded, and we all got in the jeep. Mom drove down the road. She couldn’t help but glance in the rear-view mirror, as Dave shot a bullet into the air, and got the zombies attention.

  “Come here you motherfuckers!” Was the very last thing I ever heard Dave say. We all watched as our friend shrunk behind us as we drove.

  About a minute passed before any of use spoke.

  “Where are we going?” I asked my mom. I was sitting in the passenger seat next to her.

  I knew it wouldn’t be safe, but I still wanted to check the school. Every logical bone in my body told me that something bad had most likely happened to her. But as long as there was that slim hope that she was okay, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving this place until I was sure.

  But it wouldn’t just be me who was going to be in danger; Stan and Mom would be putting themselves on the line too.

  “I’m not sure.” She said. She looked away from the road, and looked at me for a moment, before putting her arm around my shoulder, pulling me toward her, and giving me a big kiss on the cheek.

  “I missed you so much,” She said, trying to drive with her left arm, while the right one embraced me in a half-hug. I put my arms around her waist, like when I was little.

  “I missed you too Mom.” I said, resting my head on her shoulder. The jeep hit a pothole, and the car momentarily jumped up. Mom had to let go of me, and take hold of the steering wheel. It almost veered off the road, but she was able to straighten it out.

  Stan sat in the back seat, his rifle sitting in his lap, as he scanned the streets for zombies.

  “How do we get to the high school?” My mom asked. Both I and Stan turned to her. “If there are any zombies nearby, we’re going to leave. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. She looked back at Stan in the rear-view mirror.

  “Stanley, are you okay with this?” She asked, seeing the anxiety in his eyes. He was quiet for a moment, before speaking.

  “Yes. But only because it’s Suzy.” Stan said. “If it’d been any of your other gir
lfriends, I’d have told you to go fuck yourself.”

  “Amen.” My mom said.

  We drove another two blocks before we encountered another zombie. It just stood on the lawn of a house, staring vacantly off at the morning sun.

  It started following us as soon as we passed it. Other zombies came up on the sides of the road, and did the same thing, collecting around us like flies on a corpse. We quickly had a trail of the dead forming behind our jeep, like ripples forming in the wake of a boat on a river.

  Mom just kept going, trying not to think of them.

  “Can’t you go faster?” My brother asked, doing his best to keep the fear out of his voice.

  “I’m not used to driving a jeep.” She replied, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. “The steering is very stiff. I don’t want to lose control of the thing.” We stayed quiet after that, watching in horror as the throng of zombies behind us increased in size.

  “Oh no.” My mom said. We turned and looked at the obstruction before us.

  There must’ve been at least thirty of them. They were standing in the middle of the road, a barricade of decaying bodies blocking our path. Mom was about to put the car in reverse, when we turned back to again see the other throng, still there, no less big or intimidating than it had been moments before.

  We looked up and down the road, trying to find a place we could go that was not blocked by these creatures. The houses that ran alongside the road were very close to each other. Simply turning, and driving in-between them would’ve been impossible for the wide frame of our jeep.

  We were trapped.

  In the back seat, I could hear Stan cocking his rifle.

  “We might be able to make a run for it.” I said.

  “No, no.” My mother shook her head. “We can’t go on foot. We can’t risk losing the jeep.”

  “So what do we do?” Stan asked. The zombies on the road ahead of us hadn’t noticed us yet, and simply stood there, staring at the sun.

  The orange light of dawn had gone away, to be replaced by a bright white-yellow morning sun that shined against a bright blue sky. It had been gray and cloudy these last few days, and this was likely the first time these people had seen a clear blue day since becoming zombies.

  Maybe somewhere in their mindless brains, they could recognize this simple, yet beautiful phenomenon, and for a moment could remember what it was like to be human. Maybe.

  “Maybe we can ram them.” I said.

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “We saw Dave do it just a little while ago.”

  “But Ben that was nowhere near the number we’d be dealing with here.” Stan said, careful to keep his eyes on a pair of zombies walking toward the rear bumper of the jeep.

  I looked ahead at the zombies down the road. The crowd there did look very dense, probably denser than any group of zombies any of us had seen up to that point. But the jeep looked pretty tough.

  “Guys they’re getting closer.” Stan said from the back. The pair from earlier had gotten within five feet of the jeep.

  “Sit down and hold onto something.” Mom said. She gave us a few seconds to get ready before she floored it.

  It still took the zombies down the road a few seconds to notice us. By the time their rotted eyeballs finally fell on our jeep, we’d already started to run them over.

  The jeep kept going. Zombies fell before us like dominos. We could hear their bones and innards get crushed, as we drove over them. The ones along the side of the car tried to swipe and grab us, but we were going too fast, and their slow reflexes could not keep up. We tried to lean away from the sides all the same.

  The crowd was very thick, and we quickly found ourselves surrounded on all sides by the living dead. Their howls and moans drowned out all other sounds. The smell of death and blood had replaced the oxygen, and suffocated us. Bodies with torn clothes, with hands eternally clawed to catch prey, and faces stuck in expressions of anger and mindless contempt were all that could be seen.

  I’m not sure how long we drove through that crowd; it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. Time doesn’t matter much when you’re given a glimpse of Hell.

  At the very end of the crowd stood a zombie in a green sweater vest. He stood directly in front of the jeep; his long gangly arms already stretched out, and ready to receive us.

  A zombie stood on either side of him, and the jeep took both of them out quickly. But the green sweater wasn’t going down easy.

  His legs were pulled under the jeep, and ripped from his torso by the tires. One of his clawed fingers had gotten caught in the grille, when he’d shot his hands forward to attack the jeep. His other hand had managed to grab hold of one of the headlights, and he was able to keep a hold on the hood of the jeep.

  By the time we’d exited the crowd, the green sweater was still there, staring at us from the hood of the car. The zombies that we hadn’t run over began to chase us. But my mother hadn’t slowed down yet, and we were quickly out pacing them. The only zombie we had to worry about was the green sweater.

  With a lethargic grunt, the creature removed its hand from the grille. Its ring finger had been ripped off from the middle knuckle up. Other than that, his hand appeared completely fine, when he slammed it on the hood of the car. It landed mere inches from the windshield, pulling his torso further up the hood.

  “Move out of the way!” Stan said from behind me. Mom and I leaned away from the middle of the jeep, as Stan pushed his rifle in-between us and tried to aim.

  My mother had neglected to ease on the accelerator, and without the impediment of zombies to run over, we were quickly gaining speed on the bumpy road. Mom kept an iron grip on the steering wheel, trying to keep the car steady, and Stan’s rifle swayed from side to side as he tried to shoot the monster that was climbing toward us.

  “Take the shot!” I said frantically.

  “I can’t! The jeep keeps moving!” He responded. I could see his iron sights constantly shifting as he tried to hold it still. I turned to the zombie still on the hood, and watched him lift his other hand off the headlight to continue to crawl closer to his prey.

  I heard my mom say, “Oh shit.” It was the first time I’d ever heard her curse.

  I turned to see the black steering wheel slip and wildly rotate under her hands. Then there was a sudden jerk, and Stan’s rifle slammed into my face. It went off, and put a bullet right through the windshield. I didn’t get to see if it hit the zombie.

  The jeep veered off the road. Our screams ended almost as soon as they started. There was another violent jerk, and I found myself catapulted out the side of the jeep. I flew through the air, catching glimpses of the jeep as I tumbled in mid-air. I couldn’t tell if it was still moving, or if Mom and Stan were still there. Then I hit the ground and blacked out.

  When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the swing set.

  It stood there, its rainbow colored metal gleaming in the sun. The swings remained completely motionless in the still morning air.

  I sat up. My hands and face were covered in sand. I looked around and realized I was in the playground.

  The playground was just like most others; a swing set, a jungle gym, and a slide that sat in a large sandbox in the middle of a green park. Growing up, Mom and Dad used to take me and Stan here at least a few times a week. It wasn’t Disney World, but it was ours.

  I stood up, and looked around. I couldn’t find Mom or the jeep, but I did find Stan.

  He was sitting against the jungle gym, his rifle lying a few feet away from him.

  “Dude!” I said, scrambling after him. He didn’t move. I got right up next to him, and grabbed his shoulder and tried to shake him. I felt something wet, and pulled back bloody fingers.

  I pushed his body forward, and saw the back of his bloody scalp, and the dented metal it had smashed into, before turning back to his face. His vacant eyes continued to stare at the ground, never blinking or moving.

  I hit him. “C’mon man! We g
otta go find Mom!” Still nothing. I picked up his rifle, and tried to force his hands to hold it. “Stan please!”

  “Ben! Stan!” my mother’s voice called.

  “Mom!” I shouted back, standing up.

  “Ben!”

  I looked down at my brother. His blood continued to pour from his head, and out onto the jungle gym and the sand. I remembered the little footprints his sneakers would make in that sand when we were little, and would chase each other around the slide.

  I bent down, and gave my brother a hug. He still felt warm.

  “I’m sorry man.” I stood up.

  “Ben!” My mother shouted again. I took one final look at my brother, and took off.

  Following the sounds of her calls, I was able to track her down. She was still in the jeep. It had crashed into a tree, and I could see what was left of the green sweater crushed in-between the bark and hood of the car. His guts oozed out of his torso and fell onto the ground.

  I ran around the car to the driver seat.

  “Mom, are you alright?” I asked.

  “I think so…..but I need……help getting out.” She said. It sounded like she was having trouble breathing. Then I looked down. When the car had crashed into the tree, it had actually pushed the dashboard onto her, pinning her to the seat. The steering wheel was digging into her stomach. She was trying to push it off her when I showed up. One of her legs was bleeding.

  Her eyes fell on the rifle in my hands, and they went wide. “Where’s Stan?”

  “He…” the tears prevented me from finishing the sentence.

  “Oh god.” Mom said, her face a mixture of horror and disbelief.

  “I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. She was about to break down too, when we heard the moans.

  We could see them coming up the road. They’d caught up with us. At that distance they appeared almost as a shapeless mass on the horizon, made up of sickly shades of brown, gray, and green. They shuffled and crawled, their moans and growls growing louder with each step they took.

  My mom turned back to me. I was trying to push the dashboard off her. It was so heavy.