by Jimmy Bird
Momentarily forgetting where he was, Artie began blinking his eyes as if he was coming out of a strange dream. Suddenly aware of where he was, he started looking around for anymore threats. Luckily for him, he found none.
With his tire iron still in his hands, he stepped towards the front door. He could see his reflection in the glass screen door, he almost didn’t recognize himself. He looked like a crazed, deranged man holding a tire iron. He arrived at the door just as his kids were opening it. Relief hit him hard at the sight of his children, causing him to drop the tire iron, which ironically created a loud banging sound.
Seeing their dad up close, covered in blood caused his kids to hesitate. It was an understandable reaction, especially, after the surreal experiences. The best way to describe what they were feeling was like being in their own personal horror movie. A movie that didn’t appear to have a good ending.
Artie dropped to one knee and reached out to his children. He wanted to show them that everything was safe. They looked around him at the bodies on the porch and looked a little unsure. He stayed patient with them and kept his arms stretched out. He waited until they were comfortable enough to trust him.
He didn’t have to wait long for them to rush to his waiting arms because they heard a noise behind him. He instantly realized his mistake from dropping the tire iron. The noise must have attracted more zombies.
His kids released him and turned around to run back inside their house. Artie had other plans and grabbed their hands. He knew that they wouldn’t survive long if they stayed.
Holding onto his kids’ hands, he led them back towards his car. They raced as fast as they could back to the instrument of their salvation. When they got there, they froze in fear. He had to usher them around the dead bodies that were lying on the ground in front of his car. Without waiting for them to get ready, he opened the backdoor and pushed them in.
He told them to buckle up as he shut the door. He opened the driver’s door and jumped in. He was in the process of buckling his own seatbelt when he realized that they made it to the car just in time.
A zombie had reached out and began banging on the trunk of his car. His kids started to freak out, but Artie told them to calm down. In a soothing voice, he told them that it would be alright as he leans down to get his car keys.
With his keychain in hand, he grabbed the correct key and slid it into the ignition. It started right up, causing the zombie to bang even louder. Artie shifted it into reverse and pushed down hard on the gas pedal. The car pushed the zombie over as it became a speed bump.
When Artie successfully made it out of the driveway and into the street, he shifted it into drive. He hesitated, he wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe it was because of his wife or maybe it was because the zombie that he had just run over was trying to get back up. One thing that he did know was that anger raged through him for losing his wife and he wanted to take that rage out on something. He thought about running the zombie over again when he saw something in the rear-view mirror that caused him to change his mind.
A large group of zombies were making their way towards them. He forgot all about the zombie in his driveway as he did a quick calculation in his head. He knew at that moment that they wouldn’t have survived if they had tried to stay at the house. He pushed down hard on the gas pedal to try and out run the large zombie horde that was coming towards them.
Chapter 7 Cleo
Cleo waited patiently for his turn to speak. He wasn’t considered one of our strongest survivalists, but he was known for his comic relief. I must be honest, it was one of his best qualities because he never saw things in a negative way. In fact, when we were preparing and training our survival techniques, he was the one that kept us from ripping out each other’s throats. He knew how to keep us all calm, considering we still worked together.
Like the rest of us, Cleo rushed out of work to go get his loved ones and bring them back to the safety of the Warehouse. Unfortunately for him, he had to make a few difficult decisions that could have gone either way. It was just too bad that either didn’t go his way. Hold on before I get too far ahead of myself.
Cleo knew the plan. We were to go home, get our family, and rush back to the safety of the Warehouse. Like the rest of us, he had to fight bumper to bumper traffic. The only bright side was that while he was stuck in traffic, he managed to get in touch with his recently engaged fiancé. He told her to meet him at his dad’s place because it was the midway point between them. He told her that everything was going to be alright, he knew of a safe place for them to hold up.
In the grand scheme of things, it seemed wrong that he had left her in the dark about the Council and the Warehouse. They had only been together for a short time, so he wanted to slowly bring her into the fold. Even though he loved her, he wasn’t sure that she would have accepted our survivalist group. He was afraid that she would have thought that we were just some overzealous, doomsday preppers like everyone else did.
So, he hid that side of him and made sure that when we were around her that we kept our mouths shut. She knew that he had close friends but always thought that we were just crazy about camping and since she didn’t like camping much, she would never go with us. He was planning on bringing her into the fold within the next few months anyways. He wanted to make sure that she was ‘the one’ before he tied the knot.
Anyways, back to the story. She informed him that she would be there, but first she had to find her son because he wasn’t answering his cell phone. Cleo told her to hurry because he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to wait around for her. She seemed genuinely shocked that he would knowing leave her but told him that she understood. She did plead for him to wait if he could. She wanted him to know that as soon as she found her son, they would be right there.
After he hung up the phone he tried to call his dad “Pops” but was unsuccessful. Cleo was worried about his dad and rightfully so. Pops was an old military veteran. His long military career had caused arthritis, especially in his knees which made it difficult for him to move around. Cleo knew that whatever was happening did end up coming across his dad then it would be difficult for him to survive.
Cleo pulled onto his dad’s street and found out what the rest of us had found. Cars were turned over, with the people running around acting crazy. He knew most of Pops’ neighbors and wanted to help but knew that he couldn’t. It was very distracting, and Cleo did his best to keep focused on driving. He knew that his number one priority was to get to his dad’s house. After what seemed like an hour, he eventually made it to his destination.
As Cleo pulled into the driveway and got ready to jump out of when he noticed something out of the corner of his eyes. It was enough to set alarms off in his head.
He sat still for a second as he tried to figure out what it was that he had seen. He knew that it had to be something that was out of the ordinary. He looked around until he spotted the thing that had bothered him. The front door was wide open, and Pops was nowhere in sight! Pops never left his front door open, even with him having a screen door. Seeing the front door wide open was not a good sign, not a good sign at all.
We watched him with intense silence as he stopped talking. Now that I think about it, Cleo had never really been that serious about the doomsday preparation that we were doing. Wait, that’s not entirely true. He was into the training but was skeptical about all the preparing we were doing. He thought that it was a good idea, but a waste of our time and money. I guess you can say that he thought that the government and military would take care of us. He stared at his hands as he became serious and admitted to us that he should have taken the training more seriously. After a few seconds, he continued with his story.
It seemed that after all the preparation we had done, he realized that he needed to switch gears from being the comic relief to that of the serious survivalist. With his thoughts on his father, he knew that he needed to mentally prepare himself for what he could possibly find.
Cleo knew that before he could even start to look for Pops, he needed a weapon. After thinking about it and running through his options (which wasn’t much), he figured that it was probably a good thing that he had always kept his golf clubs in the trunk. Now that he had decided on a weapon, he just needed to get them.
He turned off his car and slowly, if not cautiously, got out. He instinctively put his keys in his front right pocket. He tried to keep an eye on Pops’ front door while trying to watch for everything else going on around him. After seeing all the chaos that was unfolding around him, he considered himself lucky that no one seemed to have noticed him yet.
He slowly crept to the back of the car. He reached into his pocket for his keys and silently cursed himself for putting them there. He wanted to hurry up and pull them out, but it was an epic fail. When he finally fished his keys out of his pocket, he reached down and used his keys to unlock the trunk. He slid the key into the lock and turned it. The locked made a snapping sound as it unlocked. He tried to remain silent as he lifted the trunk lid.
He reached inside the trunk and grabbed the closest club he could reach. He started to remove one of his irons from his golf bag. It wasn’t easy while the bag was still in the trunk. He tried to keep a watchful eye out for danger as he fought the club and bag. He had just started to successfully work the club out of the bag whenever he heard a scream coming from the direction of his dad’s house.
Forgetting about trying to remain silent, he quickly removed the club and slammed the trunk lid shut in one fluent motion. Fearing for his disabled dad’s life, he knew that he needed to hurry. All thoughts of his own self-preservation went out the window as he raced towards the house.
He was so focused on reaching his dad that he almost didn’t see the impossible sight that was limping towards him. Cleo noticed that it came from the back corner of the house. He did a double take as he stopped dead in his tracks. There were no other words to describe what he was seeing, except for, maybe that it was a walking abomination.
Cleo’s rational mind began to see a pattern. Maybe the reason that the thing was coming towards him was because it must have heard him slam the trunk closed. Like everyone else, Cleo had to take a few seconds to process what he was seeing. You know the old saying, “Seeing is believing.” It was hard to tell what he was seeing without believing in it.
He understood what he was seeing though. It was once a human, but it was hard to tell if it used to be a man or a woman. After thinking about it, he was pretty sure that it used to be a female. It took him a few more precious seconds to understand what he was seeing because part of the woman’s lower face was missing.
Cleo stood there staring at the woman. He couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu that he was getting from watching her until it hit him like a freight train. She looked like his dad’s next-door neighbor. With all the damage to the girl’s face, it was difficult to recognize her. Cleo knew that if it could happen to his dad’s neighbor then it could happen to his dad.
Stop it! He knew that he couldn’t afford to think about that right now. First things first, he needed to figure out how to make it to the front door before the zombie was able to get to him. Yes, he finally realized what the neighbor was and because of that, he didn’t have enough confidence in himself to think that he could race past it. He decided that his only option to finding his dad was to take the zombie out. He was so focused on coming up with a plan that he didn’t even see his dad sneak up on the zombie from behind.
Pops hit the back of the zombie’s head with a shovel. He used enough force that it snapped the zombie’s head forward causing a loud cracking sound. She collapsed in a heap at his feet.
Seeing his dad alive and standing above the fallen zombie sent a feeling of relief throughout Cleo’s body. He didn’t even realize that he had been shaking until he tried to take a step towards his dad. He became weak in the knees and fell to the ground. It was as if seeing his dad alive had taken all his strength from him. No, that didn’t sound exactly right. It was as if seeing his dad alive and unharmed had been such a relief that he had forgotten about all the chaos around them. To be honest, I know it’s a feeling that we all have experienced at one time or another. It’s a feeling that is just so hard to put into words.
Pops watched his son fall to the ground. Worried, he rushed as fast as his legs would go to be at his son’s side. Because of his bad hips and knees, he couldn’t move as fast as he wanted or needed to, but still managed to run fast. It seems that when someone’s life is in danger (especially a loved one) you can make your body do things that you thought were impossible.
By the time he reached his son’s side, he found him smiling. Confused, Pops asked him why he would be smiling at a time like this. Cleo responded to his dad that he was just glad that he was alright. Pops returned Cleo’s smile as he responded in a similar manner. Pops smiled for only a few seconds then was all business again. Cleo continued to smile despite himself because it reminded him of what his father was like during his childhood.
Pops told his son to get up and follow him. Without waiting for a reply from his son, he turned back towards the house. It was Cleo’s turn to be confused as he asked him where he was going. Pops quickly explained that the neighbor’s three kids were hiding in the house. They ran to his house for help when their mom was attacked by ‘crazy people.’ Pops had let them in and told them to run to one of the back bedrooms. He told the kids to lock the door, keep quiet, and hide until he could come get them.
Pops shamefully admitted that he wasn’t strong enough to hold the door shut against the crazy people that had been chasing the kids. He then stated that he didn’t want to give the kid’s hiding place away, so he had escaped through the backdoor. Pops had been working on a plan to save the kids whenever Cleo showed up. The scream that Cleo had heard must have been from one of the trapped kids.
He wanted to grab his dad and leave, but being the honorable man, his father was, he wouldn’t allow them to leave until they had saved the children. Cleo knew that his father wasn’t normally a stubborn man, but when he made up his mind on something, he wouldn’t budge. Since Pops refused to leave until his task was done. Cleo saw that he had no other choice but to help his father save the children.
Cleo figured that they had a few minutes before more zombies showed up. He also decided that since he was the faster then his dad, he would go inside the house to draw the zombies out. The plan was for Pops to stay outside of the house and stand on one side of the door frame with his shovel ready. Just as soon as Cleo cleared the doorway with the zombies following him, then Pops was to swing away. That way he could take out as many as he could before Cleo finished them off with his golf club.
Cleo slowly made his way inside the house and quickly found three men and one woman banging on his dad’s back bedroom door. He figured that it was probably a good thing that his dad had changed out the old hollow style doors all those years before, otherwise the zombies would have already torn through it.
Cleo could clearly hear the children screaming for help which seemed to drive the zombies crazy. With his golf club in both hands, he slowly walked toward the four zombies. He managed to get within six feet before one of the male zombies seemed to have ‘sensed’ him and turned around. With the club secured in both hands, Cleo swung it sideways like a baseball bat as hard as he could towards the man’s right temple. He connected perfectly right behind the right ear (he told me that I would been proud of his swing). With a loud thump, the zombie slammed into the hallway wall.
Hearing the commotion, the other three zombies turned their attention toward the noise that was directly behind them. He noticed that the other three zombies were turning in his direction just as the zombie he had hit fell to the floor. What Cleo failed to notice was that he was no longer holding his golf club. It had been pulled out of his hands as it went down with the zombie, lodged in its head.
Events began to happen way too fast for him to grasp. In fact, they had h
appened so fast that Cleo didn’t even realize that he was no longer holding on to his club. He started to lift his hands into an attacking position ready to swing again when he realized that he no longer holding the club. Confused, he looked down and saw that it was still attached to the zombie’s head.
His eyes widened at the seriousness of his situation. The zombies took a step toward him. Even though he no longer had a weapon to defend himself, he still had the plan. Keeping a careful watch out for other possible zombies, he slowly backed his way through the house towards the front door. He made sure to walk slow enough so the zombies could follow.
Once he was through the doorway, he stopped. He felt that he was far enough to clear his dad’s shovel swing radius. He stood there waiting for his dad to swing the shovel, but it never came. He watched in horror as the zombies started to walk through the doorway towards him.
Worried, Cleo risked a glance to his left. His darkest fear was confirmed when he noticed that his dad was lying face down on the porch with a zombie eating on the back of his head. Cleo could see a fraction of Pops’ skull protruding up under the hair. His shovel was lying next to him.
He took a step backwards. After a quick calculation, Cleo figured that while he was inside getting the zombies attention, Pops must have been attacked from behind. The thought of his dad dying because of him caused such pain, rage, and guilt that he forgot all about the zombies that were coming toward him through the doorway.
He reached down and picked up his dad’s shovel. Letting his anger flow, he repeatedly hit the zombie’s head with the back part of the shovel. He didn’t stop until he had successfully bashed in the back of the zombie’s head. Once the zombie’s head was smashed in, he stabbed downward with the pointed blade part, disconnecting the head from the body at the neck.