by Brown, TW
Mildred Patterson was afraid of her son.
That look was like a slap to his face and stung inwardly a great deal more than any physical blow. Mildred Patterson was a small woman. Her son was easily two and a half of her if they were on a scale. Since he’d been thirteen, he had towered over the woman. Yet, she’d never hesitated to grab him by the ear and scold him if he got out of line. She had always known that he would never strike back at her. Not that she’d been a physical disciplinarian; she stopped using the switch when he’d turned twelve.
But right now, she was looking at her son and seeing a total stranger. She’d just witnessed him basically drive a piece of metal through a woman’s head.
“Mom, you don’t understand…” he began, and tried to reach back and put a comforting hand on his mother. She jerked away and let out a frightened shriek as if she feared that he might make her his next victim.
“Don’t you touch me!” she yelped, Her hands went for the door and she forced it open and tripped over herself trying to get out so fast.
Jonathan put his car in park and jumped out as well. He came around the front of his car as his mother was scrambling to her feet. She threw her hands up defensively and began to wail.
“Please…somebody!”
Jonathan stopped and put his own hands up in the air. He thought it over for a second and then knelt on the ground, lacing his fingers behind his head.
“I won’t hurt you, Mom.” He unlaced his fingers and reached down slowly into his pocket with one hand. He produced his phone and slid it to his mother. “Call somebody. I won’t move. But believe me when I tell you, I didn’t murder anybody. It isn’t what you think.”
Very slowly, Mildred Patterson picked up the phone. Her eyes were wide and never left those of her son. She swiped at the phone and held it to her ear. A look of confusion came to her face. She pulled the phone away and stared at it, then tried again.
From his knees, Jonathan looked around at where they were. He felt his stomach drop. Just to his right was the cemetery.
“Oh crap,” he whispered.
4
Worse than Expected
Jamie spun after cutting down the last of the terrible figures that she’d faced off against and turned to see how the two men were doing. The chief was just taking down his last one as well. Her eyes found Stephen and she felt her stomach try to turn inside out.
The man was walking backwards. Even from this distance, she could see the glisten of tears on his cheeks. Looking at the small figure that he kept simply trying to shove away, she understood exactly what had reduced the man to tears.
The little girl could not be any older than four or five. Her tiny hands kept reaching out for the much larger man who apparently could not bring it on himself to finish her like he had the other zombies. A voice in her head told her that she needed to rush over and help him. However, her feet simply refused to obey that command. She remained rooted in place and could not bring herself to go to his rescue.
She felt the lump in her throat grow larger each time the child swiped at the large man. At some point he had obviously dropped or lost his weapons and was fending off the attempted attacks by doing nothing more than pushing the child back.
Chief Gilstrap must have witnessed it as well, because at last he rushed up from the side. His body blocked her view, but when he moved again and turned to face Mr. Deese, the child was no longer standing and was nothing more than a crumpled heap on the ground.
Slowly, Jamie’s feet began to move forward. She approached the two men and then slowed to a stop when the details began to come into focus regarding the small child. That was not a sight she cared to see any closer than necessary.
“How is this happening?” Jamie broke their relative silence.
“I got no idea,” Chief Gilstrap said with a heavy sigh as he removed his hat, wiped his face with his hands, and then slapped the hat back on. “Been hearing rumors, but it is sorta like Kentucky. You hear something, and then it is gone the next day and the person stops answering your queries. Had a chief over in Clemson shoot me an email last night about a nasty bit of business that happened at some big apartment complex near the college. The next day, it was like the man had vanished off the face of the earth. Sent him an email a few hours later and it came back saying the email address did not exist. I know for a fact that’s a bunch of crap.”
“That poor soldier mentioned something about this being worse than his chain-of-command was letting on and there was word that all of Japan and places over in that area going totally dark,” Jamie offered.
“How could an entire country, much less that whole part of the world go dark and nobody hear about it?” Stephen scoffed.
“I’m just sharing what he told me.”
“Yeah, well he was probably delirious. That is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Sounds like a bunch of that crazy internet talk.”
Jamie locked eyes with Stephen Deese and saw that he couldn’t maintain contact. She doubted he believed his own argument.
“Sorta like flesh-eating zombies walking around attacking people?” the chief said, obviously picking up on the other man’s struggle to come to grips with what they had all just witnessed. “I hate to say it, but this is exactly why the problem might be worse than we think. Nobody in their right mind is gonna believe it. And if the government is trying to keep it off the public’s radar, then we might be much worse off than we realize.”
“You think?” Jamie blurted, her hands gesturing to the bodies scattered on the ground around them.
The trio stood in silence for a moment, each obviously lost in their own thoughts as they took in the horror that lay as physical evidence before their very eyes. Jamie’s gaze returned back to her house, but somehow, everything suddenly looked different. It was as if the world had grown darker. Her little town felt less safe, and extremely vulnerable.
The thought hit her like a punch to the gut.
Her town.
She was the mayor of Liberty. It was her duty and responsibility to see after the best interests of the citizens. She needed to act now and ensure that her tiny community was as safe as possible.
Her mind fast-forwarded through what little she knew of the movies. Just as quickly, she tossed all of what little she knew into a file in her head and promised to return to it later. Right now, she was only able to focus on one thing: everybody always died in those movies. It was on her to make sure that did not happen here.
“Gentlemen,” she said, getting the attention of both men, “we need to get everybody in town together right away. This is not voluntary. Do what you need to, enlist anybody that you think will help, and get the word out immediately. I want everybody gathered…” She considered her choices and then came up with the most logical location that she could think that would be able to allow the entire town to gather in one place. “Tell them to be at the high school football stadium at 11 AM.”
***
His eyes continued to flick back and forth between his mother and the cemetery. So far, there was no sign of any movement coming from the sprawling graveyard. Meanwhile, his mother had continued trying to get the phone to work. At last, she regarded him with a suspicious look.
“What have you done to the phone, Jonathan?” She thrust it towards him with accusation dripping from her words.
“I haven’t done anything. What’s wrong?”
“It won’t work. I can’t get it to call nine-one-one.”
“Here, let me—” he began, but her squeal of fright and stumble backwards to get away from him froze Jonathan in place. He very carefully knelt back down and re-laced his hands behind his head. “Mom, I wish you’d listen to me.”
“Listen to you?” Mildred Patterson snapped. “I don’t even know who you are!”
Jonathan felt his stomach twist into knots as he watched tears trickle down his mother’s face. Her disappointment and sorrow was clear. She was not seeing him; instead, she was seeing a cold-blood
ed killer. How was he going to convince her that there was something terrible happening and that he was just trying to save her?
Why couldn’t a zombie show up now when he needed one? He was still mulling that over when his mother’s expression changed. She cocked her head to one side and it struck him that she was listening to something. He couldn’t believe that her hearing had been that much better than his and dismissed it to the fact that he’d been pre-occupied.
A car was coming. They were just a bit past the bend in Old Norris Road and that car would be coming around it from behind his mother. What he now feared was that it might actually hit his mother. She was just standing in the road, and it was clear that the oncoming vehicle was moving a bit faster than it should.
“Mom, hop in my car and pull it over…quick!”
Despite her advanced age, Mildred Patterson was no decrepit old lady. Her morning exercises had obviously kept her quite a bit more agile and spry than many people her age. She did as she was told, but her eyes still never left him and they narrowed a bit when he got up and moved off the road himself.
Did she expect him to just stay in the road and get run over? Better yet…is that what she wanted? All of these thoughts evaporated when he spied the vehicle rounding the corner. Despite everything, the last thing that Jonathan Patterson wanted to see at this exact moment was Chief Gilstrap’s patrol car.
The vehicle slowed and came to a halt, the chief rolling down his window rather than actually getting out. The man stuck his head out of the window and Jonathan actually had to squint and rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. There were dark flecks all over the man’s face as well as a blackish smear on the right cheek that looked almost like it may be dried blood!
“Is there a problem here?” the chief asked, sounding absolutely exhausted.
“Umm…well…” Jonathan was not sure how to answer. In truth, yes, there was absolutely a problem here. However, the last person he wanted to reveal that to at this moment would be the Liberty Chief of Police.
“My son killed a woman!” Mildred Patterson stumbled forward, one arm outstretched and a finger pointing accusingly at her son.
The mood changed in the blink of an eye. Chief Gilstrap practically exploded from his car, gun drawn and pointed at Jonathan.
“On your stomach…NOW!” the man barked.
Jonathan did as he was told, a sick feeling growing in his gut. However, it was not just due to the fact that he would likely be booked and thrown in jail, it was what would happen in the weeks to come when this zombie problem grew worse and there was nobody to bring meals. He would die of starvation, locked in a tiny cell. Being bitten and turning into a zombie was suddenly gaining in appeal.
“Sir, I didn’t kill anybody!” Jonathan protested as he felt a knee come down firmly in the middle of his back. The metallic clink of handcuffs followed, and he felt the cold metal tighten on first one wrist and then the other.
“Yes he did,” Jonathan’s mother insisted. “He did it right in front of me. He jammed a tire iron up through the poor woman’s head!”
Jonathan was jerked onto his knees and spun around to face Chief Gilstrap. This close, it was clear that the flecks and the smear on the chief’s face were, in fact, blood. Also, he could not help but let his eyes drift down to the man’s hand where a near-perfect bite mark stood out on the skin. It had been wiped off, but blood still oozed from the wound and one rivulet was trickling down the man’s thumb.
“Alright, ma’am,” Chief Gilstrap said, the tone of his voice softening just a bit. He nudged Jonathan and locked eyes with him. “Did you kill a woman by driving a tire iron through her head?”
“She was already dead,” Jonathan blurted.
Mildred Patterson stammered and appeared to be unable to string any coherent words together. The chief made certain that the woman was staying put and then turned his attention back to the Jonathan.
“What do you mean she was already dead?” he asked in a hushed whisper. The officer’s eyes narrowed, but Jonathan did not think it was in anger or even disbelief.
“This is gonna sound stupid—” he started to explain, but the police chief cut him off with a mutter that Jonathan did not think he meant to blurt out loud.
“After tonight, you’d be surprised.”
“The woman that I put down was torn up. She had most of her throat ripped open. And the two that were with her looked even worse. One of ‘em had his guts hanging out. I know it sounds ridiculous—”
Again the chief cut him off. “Can you take me to them? Show me?”
Now it was Jonathan’s turn to sound like he was confused. He had expected a number of possible reactions, but this was certainly not one of them.
“Umm…yeah, sure.”
“Ma’am,” the police chief turned to face the elderly woman who now looked as confused as she did horrified, “you can ride along with us, or you can take the car and return home.”
Jonathan explained that he’d been picking up his mother at the senior center, so perhaps it might be better if she either returned to his house, or (and this was his preference) perhaps the chief could make her come along in the back so that she could see that her son wasn’t a murderer.
“I don’t have time for a lot of nonsense,” the chief snapped as he spun and returned to his vehicle. “Ma’am, I need you to get in the car right now and come with me.”
“I won’t ride anywhere with that…that…monster!” Mildred crossed her arms across her chest and planted one foot for emphasis.
“Fine, stay here.” With that, the police chief climbed into his patrol car.
Jonathan rushed over and stood at the front passenger door. He waited a moment and saw the chief glaring back at him like he was an idiot. He turned around and waved his cuffed hands as an explanation. A string of expletives erupted from the car and Jonathan heard the door open. As he waited to be for the cuffs to be removed, he saw his mother move meekly to the rear driver’s side door and wait for the grumbling, cursing police chief to finish with her son and then come back to get in the car. He paused long enough to open the door for his mother and then close it again once she was inside.
After a very jerky and much-too-fast-for-comfort turn around, the police car was rocketing back up Old Norris Road towards the senior center. Jonathan was just starting to whisper a silent prayer that those other two zombies would be present so that he didn’t end up being thrown in jail when the pair appeared directly in the middle of the road as the cruiser rounded the bend.
“Hang on!” was all Chief Gilstrap had a chance to shout before being drowned by the shriek of tires and the heavy and meaty thud of one of the walking corpses being slammed into head-on at over forty-miles-per-hour.
***
Stephen stood beside his wife Terri and watched the lady step up to the podium. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: Dr. Linda Sing, CDC spokesperson.
Stephen turned the television up just enough so that he could actually hear what this woman had to say. He noticed immediately the absence of any reporters blurting out questions. She was obviously not taking any.
“This ought to be a doozy,” Terri sniffed as she leaned into her husband.
“I have been asked to address the issue of a peculiar illness that is apparently sweeping the country. While we are still in the preliminary stages of trying to figure this out, I want to make one thing clear.” The woman leaned forward at the podium a bit and made it a point to almost glare into the camera. Her mirthless face looked as if she had perhaps not allowed a smile to creep across her lips in many years. The bright lights only washed out her features that much more, giving her a look that Stephen thought seemed very much like that of the zombies he’d just finished dealing with not more than ten minutes ago. “Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”
�
��And that is how we are going to end up going the way of the unicorn and the dinosaur,” he muttered as he muted the television. “I’m sorry, honey, I can’t listen to this.”
“I don’t want to seem like I’m not supporting you, Stephen,” Terri began, seeming to choose her words carefully, “but are you absolutely certain about this?”
“I know what I saw.”
Stephen walked into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. He looked longingly at the plate of bacon and eggs sitting at the breakfast nook. Today was supposed to be his Friday. Terri always made him a hearty breakfast and spent a little time with him before she headed over to the elementary school where she was a third grade teacher.
Today would be different. He really wanted to sit down and eat, but the mayor had been very emphatic that they get everybody rounded up. He had been given a key to one of the patrol cars and was told which neighborhoods to take where he would be driving up and down the street announcing an emergency meeting at the high school. He’d also enlisted his wife’s help. She was supposed to go in to work and have the school use its emergency call program to notify all parents with school-aged children.
They knew that a few people would slip through their fingers, but if they could get a majority of the town gathered, then they could rely on everybody else to get the word to those few who might miss what was going to be said this morning.
“And she wouldn’t actually share the plan with you?” Terri was asking as Stephen filled his travel mug one more time and got ready to head back out.
“She wouldn’t say a word, only mentioned that we were not going to go out like they did in those ridiculous stories.”
Terri kissed her husband as he walked out the door and climbed into his truck. He waved to her as he backed out and gave a much closer look around just to be sure there was nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, he’d made certain that she had his entire arsenal laid out in their bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room, but that did not lessen his degree of apprehension about leaving her alone.
