We Are All Dead

by Jimmy Bird

  We turned onto the street where the gate was located and was greeted with a sight that forced me to slam on my breaks. My sister’s white car was sitting at the gate with about thirty or so zombies surrounding it. I could barely see their frantic faces as the zombies rocked their car back and forth trying to get to them. I tried to get their attention to let them know that I had arrived without drawing some unwanted attention of my own. I figured if I used the horn then I would get surrounded and we would both be stuck.

  Without any success, I decided to pick up the phone and try to call my sister. I could only pray that it would work. To my surprise, she answered the phone.

  Tina, “Brother! Where are you?”

  “Turn to you right. See me?”

  Tina, “Help us!”

  “Calm down. I need you to back up, so I can pull in and get to the electronic card reader.”

  She informed me, I can’t backup. These things have us surrounded.”

  “Do you know why there are so many zombies around you?”

  She questioned, “Zombies?”

  Calm, I told her, “Yes. I believe that they are actual zombies. Well? Why are there so many here?”

  She informed me, “The zombies were already at the gate when we arrived.”

  What? You know what? Never mind, what are we going to do? We need to get into the safety of the Warehouse and its medical supplies. I investigated the rearview mirror at my wife. Time was running out.

  Ut of the blue, an idea popped into my head. It was a crazy idea, but I figured that it was better than doing nothing.

  “Tina. I’m going to run over the group gathered behind you and as soon as I do, I need you to quickly back up.”

  Confused, she asked, “Why do I need to back up?”

  I told her, “I’m hoping that the group in front of you will follow the car. I can back over that group and pull up to the card reader. You can then follow me in. Be ready to move.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I hung up the phone, but I didn’t move. All that kept running through my mind was the ill-conceived plan that I had just come up with. The plan was crazy, borderline loco. I knew it. Hell, I think my sister knew it. The more I thought about it, the more I started to second guess it.

  I turned my head and looked behind me at my screaming children, at my wife and the blood she was losing, and the look on my son’s struggling face as he tried to reach out for his momma. All the thinking and second guessing went right out the window. I was in no dream. I knew that there was no do over if this plan was to fail. But not trying meant that we would all die. There was no doubt about it. We would most likely be surrounded by zombies and my wife would most likely turn. When she did, then she would come after us and I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

  I turned my head back towards the mob surrounding my sister’s car and thought to myself. How did we find ourselves in this mess? It started with my oldest son sacrificing himself to save his little sister and now my wife was lying there dying from the hands of that same son. Once again, I looked back at my wife and noticed that she was halfway laying on the bench seat caddy corner to me. She was using her hand to try to stop the bleeding, but it was a failed attempt. She began to cough up blood as she struggled to breath. I reached out and tried to comfort her. I looked into her eyes and saw sadness as well as fear. I automatically knew that she didn’t have long, which meant that neither did we.

  The only thing that I could really do was to make sure that I got the kids someplace safe before she died, before she came back like our son did. I knew that she would want me to do that. I turned back around and faced forward. I made sure that the car was in drive. I held down the brake and gas pedal at the same time, so I could power stale. It was a way to warm up the tires, so they could get a better grip on the concrete road. This way I didn’t have to worry about getting my RPMs or my speed up when I hit the zombies at full speed. All I needed to do was time it right.

  The noise from squealing the tires started to draw some of the zombie’s attention towards me. When I had more than ten of them headed my way, I took my foot off the brake. I plowed into them with such force that it was like the SUV was a bowling ball while the zombies were the bowling pins. Once enough of the zombies were on the ground, it was like driving over multiple speed bumps going as fast as we could go (I was glad that we were in my wife’s big SUV and not in my low riding Malibu). Blood and body parts flew everywhere, they even hit the windshield. It was a nasty sight that made it difficult to see, even with the wipers on.

  I raced past my sister’s car missing it by mere inches until I was satisfied that she could move and slammed on my brakes. I glanced at my rear-view mirror and waited for her to move. I waited for what seemed like an eternity, but it was more like a few minutes. She wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t her car moving?

  I silently urged her to hurry. Ignoring my mirror, I turned my head and looked out the rear-view window. I could see movement in her car. I focused on the movement and noticed that it looked like someone was trying to signal me. I just couldn’t tell what they were trying to say. I looked around trying to figure what they were trying to tell me when I realized that my children were still screaming.

  I quickly and calmly told them, “Calm down. I know that it’s hard to understand, but it’s important for you to calm down.”

  It looked like my plea was falling on death ears. After a couple of failed attempts to gently calm them down. I finally snapped.

  In my Dad voice, I yelled, “STOP SCREAMING!”

  Almost like a light switch turned on, they quit screaming in unison. Their actions caught me off guard because it usually took me at least ten minutes of yelling to get them to stop and listen at home. Maybe, it was a sign of things to come.

  Putting all that out of my head, I turned back towards my sister’s car. After watching their movement inside the car, I came to realization that something was wrong with the car. I believed that she had become so frantic with everything going on around her that she had somehow flooded the car, causing it to die. I silently cursed under my breath as I prayed for her car to start.

  After a few long seconds, a miracle happened. Her car began to back up. She was lucky because some of the zombies had already started to rise to their knees. If not for the miracle, we would have both ended up trapped.

  As soon as she had moved out of the way, I put it in reverse and gunned it once more. The zombies that I didn’t hit the first time followed my sister’s car. Without waiting for my sister to stop, I plowed right into the zombies that had been following her.

  I stopped and turned the wheel sharply to the right. I shifted it into drive and pushed on the gas. I pulled up to the gate’s card reader and lowered the window. In one fluent motion, I pulled the card out from my wallet and scanned it. Luckily, the card reader was still working.

  I used the window switch to roll up the window as quickly as I could (it didn’t roll up as fast as I would have liked since it was electric, but it was still faster than the gates). As soon as the gates were open enough for my SUV to squeeze past, I rushed in. I yelled at the kids to undo their seat-belts as I jumped out of the driver’s side and slammed the door shut behind me. I ran around the front of the SUV (it was the shortest route to my children) to the rear passenger door.

  I made it to the door just as my three remaining children were waiting for me. I opened the door and started to grab the first one whenever I noticed that my wife had stopped breathing. I looked from her to my oldest son who was still fighting to get out of his seatbelt. Something must have gotten his attention because he forgot about his momma and began reaching out towards his siblings.

  As I lowered the first of three to the ground, my glaze wondered back toward my wife. The sight of her caused my eyes to start watering. My heart broke even further as I realized that I would no longer be able to tell her that I loved her. To make matters worse, she wouldn’t get to see our kids grow up. Thinking back on it, seeing how things have
progressed, I’m not even sure if that was a bad thing.

  I know this sounds kind of cold hearted, but we were now on borrowed time. Just as I reached for my second child, our time had run out. Her body had already started to twitch. So instead of helping my remaining two kids climb out one at a time, I grabbed them both and managed to shut the door in one motion. By the time I finished shutting the door, my sister had already raced through the gate.

  Since the Warehouse gates had motion sensors on them for safety purposes, the gates wouldn’t shut behind us. That means that the gates won’t shut if it registers movement and we had a lot of movement heading towards us. It seemed that the noise we created had attracted even more zombies. They seemed to be coming from everywhere. They were coming from around the surrounding houses and even the ones that I had run over were now crawling towards us.

  When my sister’s car came to a stop next to mine, it literally looked like one of those clown cars from the circus. My sister, Christina (5’3” Caucasian) had jumped out of the driver side and ran toward me. Next, her fiancé Bobby (5’8” Caucasian) jumped out of the passenger’s side followed immediately by my mom Nancy (5’1” Caucasian) who was a registered nurse, my 14 year old nephew Seth (5’6” half Native-American, half Caucasian), my 12 year old niece Shaelynn (5’3” half Native-American, half Caucasian), my 15 year old adopted brother Jesse (5’8” Caucasian), and my sister’s God-child 18 year old Mia (5’9” Native American who was going to trade school to be a nurse’s assistant).

  I fought back tears as I struggled to pull the Warehouse door key out of my pocket. My emotions were beginning to get the best of me as I shakily handed the door key to my sister. Without saying a word, I motioned towards the door.

  I eventually found my voice, “Get everyone inside!”

  She looked down at my children, “Where’s Nichole and little Jimmy?”

  My words caught in the back of my throat as my eyes darted toward the SUV. My sister’s eyes followed my gaze and immediately understood. Her eyes watered up, but she said nothing as she turned to usher the kids towards the door. Bobby and I would stay behind and hold the zombies off until everyone else arrived.

  Seth wanted to stay and help us, but I used a little reverse psychology on him, “Seth. If me and Bobby fail to hold off the zombies, then it would be up to him and Jesse to protect our family. You two are the last line of defense.”

  With a disappointed look in his eyes, he reluctantly agreed turned to follow the others. To make sure that he did what he was told, I watched him catch up with the others before I turned back towards Bobby. We knew that we needed to hold the zombies off long enough for the rest of the Council members to show up. I silently prayed that it wouldn’t take them too long to get there.

  I glanced back over to make sure that our family had made it to the safety of the Warehouse door. My sister easily pulled it open without even using the key. She turned back towards us to tell us that the door wasn’t even locked. That wasn’t possible. It should have been locked by management when they had sent us home.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on the matter though as I motioned for them to hurry up and go inside. It was only after I was sure that they were safely inside that I turned my full attention back to the problem at hand. I turned to find that Bobby was already waiting for me with a baseball bat in one hand and a tire iron in the other. At least someone was thinking ahead.

  He asked, “Which one do you want?”

  Without thinking about it, I reached for the bat. As I grabbed the bat, we looked at each other silently. We didn’t have to say a word because we knew what the other was thinking. We were determined to stand our ground to protect our family no matter the cost. We turned and stood shoulder to shoulder as the massive horde of zombies made its way toward us.

  Just as soon as they got within arm’s reach, we started swinging wildly and as fiercely as we could. We wanted to keep them at arms length, just far enough so they couldn’t bite or scratch us. I don’t want to brag, but for two versus many, we were able to hold our own. We were extremely successful for those first few minutes, but things somehow took a massive turn for the worse.

  With just the two of us, we were easily outnumbered. We tried as hard as we could, but we couldn’t control the situation as they began to circle us. We had to back pedal several times to keep from being surrounded. After about ten minutes of fighting, our hopes of surviving were starting to dwindle.

  I risked a glance toward my wife’s SUV and saw Jimmy’s head moving back and forth as he continued to try to free himself from his seatbelt. Just then I saw my wife’s head slowly rise next to the window as she looked around. I had to look away as the pain of losing them both was too much for me.

  I silently apologized to my wife for failing to protect her and our oldest child. I vowed to her that I wouldn’t lose another one of our children. With a renewed strength to protect our remaining children, I fought harder.

  We fought off the zombies for what seemed like an eternity when in fact it was just a matter of minutes. With our backs literally up against a wall we fought on. With our chances of surviving still dwindling down, I knew that we needed a miracle to happen and fast. Luckily, we got one.

  First, we heard a horn coming from up that street. It was loud enough that some of the zombies turned toward the noise. Bobby and I looked up just long enough to witness a white SUV run into the gathered zombie horde from behind. Ruff stopped just in front of the bottom of the steps that led to the Warehouse door. The zombies turned toward Ruff, which gave me and Bobby a chance to catch our breath.

  Ruff and his wife (who was carrying their grandson) got out of the SUV. Without waiting around, Ruff's wife ran up the steps towards the safety of the Warehouse door. Ruff came running over to us, swinging a machete at anything that wasn’t human. He created a nice little path through the undead.

  We didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries as another wave of zombies came at us. We stood shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the zombies. I looked over at Ruff and Bobby. They were concentrating on the threat approaching us. I realized that our odds of survival just increased by a fraction. It wasn’t much, but it was better than it was. With a renewed hope, I looked back towards the zombies and prepared myself for the inevitable.

  We continued to stand our ground, waiting for them to get within arm’s reach whenever a tannish gold truck plowed into the zombie herd. It pulled up next to Ruff's SUV. Danny jumped out of the driver side, popping off rounds at the zombie’s heads as his daughter and son got out of the passenger side. They immediately ran towards the door. Our odds of surviving just kept increasing.

  Now that there was four of us, it looked like we were going to survive whenever we heard screaming coming from inside the Warehouse. I volunteered to go check it out. To my surprise, I was encouraged by the others to go find out what was going on.

  They continued to fight off the zombies as I turned and run towards the door. At that exact moment, another vehicle arrived causing more zombie bowling pins to go flying. I didn’t have time to observe what had just happened because the screaming from inside increased.

  I frantically raced up the steps, two at a time until I reached the door. I hurriedly opened it and took a step inside. The first thing I saw was my nephew Seth lying on the ground, fighting to hold up two zombies with a six-foot gas pipe bar above his chest. It looked as if he was bench pressing the zombies. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case because they had him pinned to the ground. I heard more screaming to my right and looked over. I noticed that another zombie was making his way to where everyone else had gathered, which included my children. They were a good thirty to forty feet away and looked like they were getting further away.

  I noticed that even though Jesse was scared to death, he had picked up another gas pipe and positioned himself so that he was in the zombie’s way. I did a quick calculation and determined that I couldn’t make it to Jesse in time to save both him and Seth. I
could only hope that Jesse would be able to hold the zombie off long enough for me to get there.

  The gun fire stopped outside, and I automatically figured that they had been overrun by the zombies, which meant that we were about to run out of time. Without any further hesitation, I raced towards Seth. When I was within arm’s reach, I swung the bat as hard as I could and connected with the top most zombies’ head. With a loud crack the zombies’ head turned in an impossible angle as its body rolled off the dog pile.

  Seth used his strength to lift the last zombie up for me. I swung the bat as hard as I could for a second time. I hit the zombie on the side of the head so hard that it went flying off. Blood poured from the severed neck onto Seth’s body. He freaked out and kicked the headless body off him. I quickly reached down to help him up. Without saying a word, I turned and raced towards the last zombie and my family.

  Jesse had managed to hold the last zombie off by poking it in the chest but was quickly giving ground. To his credit, Jesse had made sure that he stayed between the zombie and everyone else. As he continued to back up, he lost his footing on something and fell backwards. The zombie immediately jumped on him.

  Seeing Jesse on the ground, I willed myself to run even faster. I made it to them just as the zombie leaned down and opened his mouth. Jesse had put his right arm up in an instinctive defensive gesture as he tried to stop the zombie. I lifted the bat up as I continued to run. I was within a few steps whenever I swung the bat down in a desperation swing, trying to beat the zombie before he could bite down.

  I hit the back of the zombie’s head with such a force that its head snapped forward. Jesse screamed at that exact moment. The zombie’s body went limp. I reached down and pulled the zombie off him. I let go of the body and stood over it with my bat raised, ready to swing down. I needed to make sure that it wouldn’t get back up.

  When it didn’t move, I relaxed just a little and allowed myself to look over at Jesse. I noticed that he was holding his right arm with a pained expression on his face. I could see blood slowly run down his shirt. I dropped the bat and knelt next to him to see what the issue was.