Somewhere in the darkness, a twig snapped.
Come to think of it, “cooking” might be a generous term for
what I was doing. Burning. Scorching. Charring. Those would be more accurate.
Through more luck than skill I was able to club a
jack-rabbit. I’ll never forget that stunned moment we both shared when he
popped his head out of a hole not two feet from where I was standing. We froze,
both unsure of what to do. Something inside me, some primal survival instinct,
propelled my motion before my conscious brain could respond. The rabbit was
only stunned by the first clumsy attempt, but somewhere between the third and
fifth smack with my bat, he stopped screaming.
The screams of a rabbit are eerily human. I wish I didn’t
know that.
I pulled my crumbly, black rabbit-flesh out of the fire and
started to munch on it. More because I knew my body needed the calories than
for any desire to eat. I might not ever want to eat again, but my wants and my
needs are separate things. I wished for something to drink as I choked down the
meat and I thought about screams.
I think the worst was the piercing scream of my grandmother.
She’d broken her hip. But it wasn’t the pain that made her scream. It was rage.
She couldn’t move fast enough to get at what she wanted. She couldn’t attack
anyone and make them like her. So she screamed. She was still screaming and
dragging herself along as I left her. I may never stop hearing that scream.
***
The day had started off so well. I woke up to a full house.
My family was all in town for a reunion and my place had become the landing
zone. Some were on couches, some were on the floor and, of course, grandma had
my bed. I slept in a tent out in the yard. I stumbled into the kitchen and
started making a pot of coffee, barely noticing anything else. While I was
occupied with the beans someone crept up behind me.
I’m not too proud to admit that I screamed like a little
girl when my brother shouted my name. He laughed like he always did and then
helped me to clean up the beans that had scattered all over the floor when I
jumped. Jerk.
“Move over, dude. I’m makin’ breakfast for the family.”
“Okay,” I said, “But when did you go shopping?”
“Pshaw, why would I go shopping? You’ve got plenty of food
right here.”
“Um, Okay. Maybe I should
get that coffee going.”
So I made the coffee while my brother raided my fridge.
Slowly the rest of my family got up and joined us in the kitchen. Coffee was
consumed and then made afresh. Before too long, slices of bacon and pancakes
were being distributed to those conscious enough to consume them. I was on my
second or third slice of bacon when the air raid siren started going off.
I don’t know that I’d ever heard the thing in the eight
years I’d lived at that house. So we all filed out front to see what was going
on. Nothing. There was nothing that we could see in the blue skies to justify
the siren going off at 8:27 AM on a Saturday morning. I think it was my mom who
thought to turn on the TV to see if there was more information. Lo and behold
that damn emergency broadcast system was finally doing something besides
interrupting my favorite show.
“… calm. Stay in your homes. Do not venture outside. The
National Guard has been deployed. Anyone found outside will be shot on sight.”
And then the message simply repeated on a loop.
“Holy shit! What does that mean?” my brother asked.
I replied, “Dude, how should we know? We have exactly the
same amount of information that you do, dumbass. Why don’t you try Googling it
to see what’s going on?”
“Give me a sec … okay, here it is … wait … what?”
“Dude! Tell us something!”
“Um … it says here that, uh, that. Shit. It says here that
there’s some sort of virus or something that’s making people, um, it’s making
people go, well, kinda, um, crazy, I guess.”
“A virus has made people
National-Guard’s-gonna-shoot-you-on-sight kinda crazy?”
“Yeah, dude, yeah.”
“Well, where the hell did it come from? What are we supposed
to do?”
“Hold on . . . huh . . . um . . .”
“Sometime today, dude!”
“Sorry, sorry. It says that it may have come from, like, an
asteroid or something. But then there’s this one guy commenting saying that it
was a government lab and some other dude thinks it’s the effin’ Ruskies.”
“And . . .”
“Well, that’s about it I—“
“What are we supposed to do, moron.”
“Oh, yeah. Um, they just say to stay inside. Well, the
commenters think that we should, like, go all Bubble-boy and stuff, y’know,
like plastic over the windows and everything.”
I sighed and then looked around at my family. My brother,
I’m pretty sure he was stoned already, was going to be little help. Grandma was
looking at me sweetly with that I-have-no-earthly-idea-what-the-two-of-you-just-said
expression she wore so well. Mom and dad were glaring at each other as if one
or the both of them were to blame for this mess. Not much help anywhere. So I
decided what we were going to do in the face of a mysterious virus and a
trigger happy National Guard.
“Screw it, we’re going to have a family reunion! Call
everyone and tell them to come over here. We’ll just have the party inside.”
“Um, dude, you have, like 500 square feet of space,” my
brother observed.
“It’s actually closer to 650, and that’s not a problem.
We’ll just move all the furniture back against the walls. It’ll be fine. And
since when are we the kind of people to let the damn government tell us what to
do?”
“Yeah,” they all observed with differing levels of
enthusiasm and commitment.
“So, get calling.”
Thirty minutes later we had nearly the entire
extended-family crowded into my tiny house. We were making the best of it and
having a good time. Funny how food, music and beer can make any gathering into
a party. Along about my third, or maybe fifth, beer there was a knock at the
door. I squinted and scanned the crowd. It looked like everyone was there, but
maybe I was missing someone. I couldn’t get a proper head-count with everyone
moving around.
I yanked open the door to see, well, I guess it was the
first of them that I’d ever seen. The
infected. He was about six foot, maybe six-one. He was an older guy, balding
and with the kind of suit that screams: Salesman. The tie was supposed to be a
“power tie” with its bold red color and diagonal striping. But all that was
incidental, to the look in his eyes.
Hunger. Ravenous hunger. I can’t think of anything else to
describe it. I shudder just thinking about how deeply that hunger burned in his
eyes. In that frozen moment I took in all the details of his face. His teeth
were chipped, almost every one of them, and there was blood lining his gums.
His lips were pulled back in a feral grin. At some point, his nose had been
broken and the blood ran down his face and stained the front of his shirt a
muddy orange-brown.
He took one step toward me and started to say – something. I
reacted, I didn’t think, I just reacted. I leaned back and drove my right foot
into his chest with a hollow thump. As he stumbled backward I slammed and
locked the door in his face. Within moments he was up, pounding and clawing at
the door.
I blinked. Once. Twice. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“What, dude?” my brother asked.
“We’re in an honest-to-goodness horror flick.”
“Nah, dude, you’re just overacting.”
“Really? We’re locked down because the National Guard is
shooting people dead in the streets because of some virus that makes people
crazy that came from space or China or the government and outside on my damn
lawn is a goddamn, fucking zombie!”
“You watch your mouth, young man!” grandma snapped.
“Sorry, grandma,” I said with a sigh.
“So, dude, what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Idunno. I. Don’t. KNOW!”
Why did they look to me? Maybe someone else could have saved
them.
“We have to move,” I said, “We can’t stay here; not with all
of us in such a small space. We’ll run out of food and we’ve already run out
of, ahem, sanitary options.”
“Sorry, how was I supposed to know you didn’t have a
plunger?” my uncle asked.
“I haven’t needed one until now. But never mind that. We
need to get to a place we can hole up. The grocery store up on Main Street has
plenty of food and we can hide out in the offices in the back.”
“How do you know there are offices we can hide in?”
“Let’s just say that the assistant night-manager and I had
some, er, business meetings in the offices. I have a key to the back door.” I
was blushing. That can’t have been good for my leadership image. “Just grab
something you can use as a weapon. I’ve got some baseball bats in the closet.
Break apart a chair or something. We just need to be able to get past this
mo-fo on my front porch and keep anyone off us until we can get inside the
store.”
They got to work making weapons. I don’t know, there were
maybe twenty of us in that tiny house. I looked around and counted up the
fighters, me, my brother, my dad, my uncle and my two cousins. Just six of us
who could do any damage. My mom and aunts and the kids were all finding
“weapons” but they wouldn’t do much good. Grandma just sat there with that same
sweet expression on her face.
“Alright. Here’s the plan. I’ll go first and then I want the
guys to back me up. Dad, you’re bringing up the rear. Keep any stragglers close
to us and sound off if we’re being followed. Got it?”
A general assent mixed with a lot of doubt was voiced in
more of a grunt than any real words.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
“Young man!”
“Sorry, grandma.
***
I yanked open the back door that Captain Zombie hadn’t
noticed yet. I charged out with my bat held high and came around the corner of
my house. He should have looked surprised, but the only thing in his face was
that same, consuming hunger. I didn’t hesitate. The bat caved in the side of
his face. I kept pounding away until he was down on the ground. I was vaguely
aware of hands pulling me off of the – the pile that was left.
“Yeah,” it was all the eloquence I could muster.
I took off at a brisk walk toward the grocery store. Every
so often I’d glance behind to make sure that everyone was following along. I
kept having to slow down so that grandma could keep up. I was doubting whether
the mile from my house to the store was going to be too much for her when I saw
movement behind us.
She wasn’t making any attempt to hide or sneak. She was just
running, full bore-sprint, right for our family.
“Dad! Behind you!” I yelled.
He spun around to see the woman running toward him and
brought his bat up in a ready stance. I couldn’t help but remember when he
taught me to swing a bat for the first time. The woman was closing quickly. She
was too far away for me to see clearly, but her eyes must have had the same
hunger burning in them. She was, maybe twenty-five and was cute, once. She had
short, brown hair that was cut to frame her round face. She had on one of those
spaghetti strap tank-tops that showed off her figure quite well. But the skin
had turned pallid and sickly; it was covered in dirt and blood. I don’t know
how much of it was hers. It was streaked all over her body as if she’d rolled
in it.
I saw my dad rear back to swing as she neared his range and
then… Then his shoulders slumped. I could read his mind in that moment. He’d
taught me how a man is supposed to treat a woman and one thing he made clear is
that a man never, ever hits a woman.
“No Dad, she’s not . . .”
I never got to finish. She smacked the bat aside and leaped
onto him. He stood up for a moment and held her at arm’s length with his left
hand. She struggled and snarled like a trapped wolf. Then she just went for the
expedient thing and bit the hand that was holding her. She didn’t bite it like
a kid in a fight will bite, to wound. She bit with fervor and when she lifted
her mouth, her teeth were still closed on the flesh she’d claimed from my dad’s
arm. He bellowed in rage, but still he didn’t raise the bat against her. Damn
him and his morals.
By this time my cousins were next to him and they beat the
shit out of that woman. She fell down on the ground after the first dozen
blows. They didn’t stop for quite some time after that. My dad collapsed to the
ground, breathing heavily. My mom was at his side in an instant and found a
handkerchief in her purse to press against the wound on his hand. He put his
arm around her shoulders and I could see the look of thanks he gave her, along
with a weak smile.
The look transformed. I saw my dad die.
The smile was the first to go. His lips hung slack like he’d
just gotten a shot of Novocain. His nose started twitching, almost like a
dog’s. Then I saw his eyes. The look of love and thanks was like paper with a
flame behind it. It was breached, consumed and then destroyed. The arm around
my mom’s shoulders clenched until he had her by the throat. She screamed out
horror and confusion.
Then I watched as my dad bent down and ripped the throat out
of my mom with his teeth.
Her scream ended in a wet gurgle as she died.
Rage like nothing I’ve ever felt descended on me. I don’t
know how I traveled the fifty yards from where I was watching to where my dad
was kneeling over the corpse of my mom and drinking the blood spurting from her
veins. I was standing over him before he knew I was there and I rained down all
my fury through the bat. I didn’t stop swinging until the bat was broken and my
brother was dragging me away.
I dropped to my knees and wept. I realized I was howling
when my throat started hurting. I shook my head and looked around at my family.
They were in shock and everyone was staring at me. Why did it have to be me?
I climbed to my feet and I felt the weight of everything
drop on my shoulders.
“Move, dammit! We’ve got to get off this street. You see
what happens when you stop, when you hesitate,” I pointed with the splintered
handle of my bat at the wreck that used to be my dad’s face and the bled-out
corpse of my mom. “This is what happens. Don’t slow down. Don’t show mercy.
Don’t stop running. Now, follow me or you’ll all die.”
They all died anyway.
I don’t know if they can smell blood or if it was just the
wrong moment, but they came shrieking down the street toward us. It looked like
they used to be a sports team of some sort. There were remnants of uniforms on
them. Number 37 was in the lead.
“Mother Ffff—“ I stooped and grabbed the bat that had been
my dad’s weapon, “Let’s do this!” I shouted to the remnants of my family. My
cousins spread out on my left and my right. Behind them my uncle and brother
joined me. “Alright, go for the head first. Incapacitate as many as you can and
then we’ll go back and kill them once everyone is down.”
They made various sounds of agreement as I broke into a trot
and then a run. There were about a dozen of the teammates coming toward us.
They were in no order as they ran, they weren’t a team anymore. One stepped
into the path of another and the offended creature lashed out in frustration.
Those two tore each other apart before we ever had the chance. Make it ten.
Over the last ten yards I broke into an all-out sprint
straight for #37. I didn’t slow down as I ran by him, but my bat did separate
his jaw from his face. Too soon there was another one in front of me so I
brought the bat from left to right in a vicious back-swing. This blow glanced
off a shoulder and up toward the thing’s ear. We grunted in unison, mine in
frustration, his in pain. My second swing crushed his eye socket and sent him
spinning to the ground. The one behind him took three swings before he
succumbed to the Louisville Slugger’s inexorable might.
I spun around to see how I could help my family. My cousins
had each dispatched a zombie and were, together, circling a third. My uncle had
two of them at his feet and a broken table leg in his hands. My brother. Oh, my
brother. He’d taken the first one cleanly, but the second one had caught his
golf club and was wrestling him for it. I ran up behind it and crushed its
skull. I checked again to see my brother, cousins and uncle were all safe. Then
I scanned the area around us and saw—
One zombie had gotten past us and was running toward the
women.
My aunts stepped up to protect the kids and my grandma. They
wielded their chair legs with murderous intent. They swung their cudgels wildly
as the former-athlete stepped within reach. I’m pretty sure they both had their
eyes closed. He slowed and grunted under the barrage. But he grabbed one of the
chair legs and bit through the wrist holding it. My aunt screamed as her muscle
and skin were eaten off of her arm. My cousins were there by then and clubbed
the zombie to the ground. Then they turned to their mother, my aunt. Her arm
was clutched tightly to her chest.
“Kill her! Do it now!” I bellowed. They either didn’t hear
or couldn’t bring themselves to do it. My other aunt started swinging her
chair-leg only to be stopped by my uncle. He was, I guess he thought, defending
his wounded wife. But while he was facing his sister-in-law, his wife-no-more
took a bite out of his shoulder.
I turned to my brother, “Can you do this?”
He swallowed hard, “Yeah, dude. Yeah.”
“Ok, then, let’s go beat the shit out of our favorite
uncle.”
We ran toward the scene that was getting worse by the
minute. By the time we arrived, both of my aunts, my uncle and one of my cousins
were – changed. They were fighting over my other cousin, which is the only
reason he’d lasted so long. I broke the spine of my uncle, just below his ribs.
He fell over twitching. Next I shattered the cheek of my aunt and then I caved
in my cousin’s nose.
My brother tried to save my other cousin, but he was just a
breath too late. So he beat him to a pulp instead. For all my brother’s faults,
I will say that he was very thorough. Unfortunately that left my aunt free to
ravage through the kids and finally infecting my grandmother.
I thought my heart had broken when I had to kill my dad.
What was left died when I took the head off of a seven-year-old girl who was
trying to eat my face. After that I chopped wood. It wasn’t the youngest of my
family any more, it was only dead matter that needed destroying. They fell
easily, not willingly, but easily. Over the corpse of my five–year-old second
cousin I looked at my brother as he finished pummeling – I couldn’t recognize
who it was. I told you, he was thorough.
So, thorough that he didn’t notice grandma hobble up behind
him. She bit him hard on the arm.
“Ow! Grandma! Damn!” He shouted.
I sighed in resignation. Now I would have to kill my
brother. As he turned to shove our zombie-grandma away I saw the mark on his
arm where her mouth had been. The wet, gum-print bore testament to her
inability to feast on human flesh.
“Dude, you’re ok,” I said with relief, “I thought grandma
had you. Good thing she left her teeth at home.”
“Yeah, good thing, dude. It’s like, one bite and you’re
gone, dude.”
Neither of us saw our cousin dragging himself along the
ground until he had bit through my brother’s Achilles tendon.
My vision narrowed to a tunnel and my bat started swinging.
First I destroyed my cousin, and then I turned to my brother. His eyes didn’t
have the hunger. They just had a pleading look. That was the last thing I
remember of my brother. That pleading look. I didn’t stop swinging my bat until
his body ceased twitching on the ground.
I glanced at grandma and saw that she’d fallen. Then I
looked around at the carnage. Most of the bodies were motionless, but some of
the teammates were starting to stir. There was blood everywhere on the street.
It was time to leave, quickly. I reached down and retrieved the Bic lighter
from my brother’s pocket and I discarded his baggie of weed. As I trotted away
to the sound of grandma’s enraged screams I muttered under my breath, one last
time, “Sorry, grandma.”
***
The grocery store was bare when I arrived. There was no food
left and ample evidence of scavengers. I decided to not stick around to meet
the next crowd. I took the side street down to the edge of town. I hid in the
doorway of the barber shop for twenty minutes as I was waiting for people to
stop wandering around. I’m guessing that they were infected, but I didn’t
bother to ask. Just as the sun was touching the western horizon there were no
people left in sight. I ventured out of my questionable shelter and ran for the
woods. I was wheezing and cursing my time playing video games when I crossed
the 200 yard field. I immediately turned to see if I’d been followed or
spotted. There was no sign of movement. I waited another five minutes just to
be sure. By this time the sun was setting in earnest.
I broke a trail for the first hundred feet or so before I
came across a game track. I vaguely remembered something about woodsmanship
from my time as a scout so I followed the trail. Before long I arrived at a
stream. I drank my fill. Giardia be damned, I had bigger concerns at this
point.
Not long after that I came across the rabbit and then built
a fire to cook the poor, crunchy bastard.
I think sitting silently is worse than moving with a
purpose. I could kill my brother without thinking in the heat of the moment,
but now I can’t stop thinking about it. All of it. They’re all dead and they
relied on me. I don’t know if anyone could have done better, but I doubt they
could have done much worse.
There was the sound again. Closer this time. My fingers
searched for the bat while my eyes scanned the darkness.
The shape that came crashing out of the trees wasn’t
vicious; there was no hunger in the movements. As she emerged into the light I
recognized my cute little assistant night-manager. I felt a genuine smile dawn
on my face and I saw the reflection in hers.
“It’s ok. You’re safe. It’s just me,” I said.
“Oh, I am so glad to see you.” She fell into my arms and I
hugged her tight. I could feel her heart pounding against my ribs.
“Were you followed?” I asked.
“What?” she mumbled through her hair and my shirt.
“Were you followed?” I repeated with a bit more urgency.
“Um…”
I held her away from me and looked into her eyes. “Were.
You. Followed?”
“I…um…I don’t think so…”
“Did you check? Do you know?”
“Uh…”
The explosion of sound answered my question. I heard them
coming from all around.
“Damn,” I muttered, “Can you swing a bat?”
“What?”
“They followed you. Here’s a bat. Try to knock them out, if
you can.” I handed her the spare bat I’d thought to retrieve from the earlier
melee. “Hey, I should have told you this a long time ago, but, I guess I was
just too scared. I love you.”
“What?”
I just smiled at her and hugged her again. Then they came
from all sides. Everywhere I looked they were boiling out of the darkness at
the edge of the firelight. My bat started swinging on its own. I still had that
silly smile on my face as they surrounded us.
About the Author:
James learned how to write from Socks the donkey. Socks
didn't say much, but his soulful eyes spoke volumes. That Irish ass stared at
James while he tapped away on his laptop in a trailer on a farm in County Cork.
Since his asinine education, James has written extensively, publishing
thousands of articles and a growing library of books.
James and his wife Andrea currently live in the
awesome-capital of the world. When they aren’t fighting crime or growing
heirloom tomatoes, they sing in a choir (it’s not a community choir, it’s
better than that), walk to brunch, deride skinny jeans, and make things out of
garbage.
James is a self-published author with a marketing budget of
whatever he finds in the couch cushions. So, if you enjoyed this book it would
really help him out for you to review it online, tell your friends about it,
and buy several more copies.
Other Works:
Fiction:
Like
Mind – An action-comedy where the NSA are portrayed at the bad guys for
once.
Helen
and Nela Have a Fight – A short story about relationships and consequences.
Non-Fiction:
The
Marriage Challenge: 52 Conversations for a Better Marriage – One
conversation a week that will help you have a better relationship.
The
Marriage Challenge: State of the Marriage Retreat – A short handbook to
help couples find the purpose for their relationship and put it into practice
in their daily lives.
Contact:
Website -
jamestwood.com
Email -
me@jamestwood.com
Amazon.com
- /James-T-Wood/e/B006RBPJZC
Twitter - @jtw78
Facebook -
/jamestwood
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