by Brown, TW
At almost six feet tall, Rose was a slender young woman. Twenty-six years old in a week, she was in the best shape of her life; at least physically. The divorce had taken some serious emotional tolls on her, but she knew she would recover from that in no time. Her shoulder-length hair was brown, but got just a shade lighter in the summer to where she could pass for sandy blond. Her athletic figure had been a source of disappointment when she was younger and many of her girlfriends were starting to look more feminine, but now she was almost grateful that she had never moved past a 34A cup size. Breasts were a pain when it came to running, much less when she was conquering one of the many obstacle course running events that she had become addicted to this past year. Besides, it kept men’s eyes on her face; unless they were fans of long legs and tight buns.
Running on long leads just to her left and right were her babies; a pair of Border Collies. The male was named Imp. He was a black and white shorthaired dog that lived to chase balls, Frisbees, and anything else that could roll or fly. Imp was overly social and seemed to believe that the entire world was there to be his plaything. However, he was an aloof dog when it came to giving or receiving any sort of affection beyond some polite petting and the very occasional belly rub. He was simply geared to be doing something active from the moment that his eyes opened each day.
Circe was a long-haired red and white that went against all conventional descriptions of a Border Collie when it came to behavior. She was a snuggler and a cuddler. Every evening, she would retire to the bedroom around seven or so where she would await Rose’s eventual arrival. She was not interested in chasing toys. However, anytime that Rose went to visit her sister on her and her husband’s hundred acre farm out in Sandy, Circe loved herding the goats.
Rose’s sister Violet—her mother had loved flowers a bit too much, causing most people to quip that it was a good thing that she’d never given birth to a boy—had plans for slowly weaning her husband and two children from anything commercially produced. They were always preaching the virtues of organic. As far as Rose was concerned, an apple was an apple. In any case, Violet obtained a small herd of a dozen or so goats and used them for milk, cheese, and who knew what else. She had them in a fenced pasture that offered plenty of room for the little animals to frolic and graze.
The first time Rose had taken Circe (who she had for almost a year before she bought Imp) to her sister’s place, she had not even given it any thought when she opened the door to get out of the car. In a flash, Circe had bolted and leapt the split-rail wooden fence that bordered the goat pasture. The dog had gone into herding mode instantly. In a matter of seconds (or at least that is how it seemed that first time) the entire herd of goats had been brought in close and kept in place in one corner of the large pasture.
“When did you teach her that?” Violet gasped with obvious awe.
“Umm…never,” Rose had answered weakly at first, thinking that her sister was going to pitch a fit over her precious goats being disturbed or some such hippie nonsense.
“She is a natural,” Violet gushed.
Rose had made it a point to bring the dogs over to visit her sister on a regular basis after that day. It had also been a bridge that brought her and Violet closer.
The two girls had never been very close. Partially because Violet was eight years older and saw Rose as little more than a nuisance while growing up. Rose, being the sensitive one, had internalized her resentment for years. Over the span of their life, a fairly solid wall had been erected.
For the longest time, their only interaction came when their mother had everybody over for the assorted seasonal holidays. For them to actually build a bond over goats and a Border Collie was odd, but the two would sit on the fence and watch Circe perform what came so naturally. Over time, Rose even learned the names of the goats and began to see their individual personalities.
It was Violet who told Rose that she might have made a mistake and settled when marrying Frank Crampton. Rose had sat silently on the fence and listened that day to her sister’s concerns. When she got home that night, it was as if the blinders had been opened and light had flooded the room to show her the error of her ways. Still, she had not been ready to give up just yet. She thought that perhaps it was the few extra pounds that she had gained since marriage. Not that she was what anybody could consider fat, but in her eyes, she could see every single pound.
That had started her renewed interest in running. It took almost no time for Rose to recall how much she loved running. However, when a friend introduced her to her first obstacle course race, Rose had poured herself into it with everything she had. Her dream was to compete professionally within a year or so. She had told Frank over dinner one night.
Frank had laughed.
That single moment had been the beginning of the end of her marriage. Now she was feeling better than she had in years. Her sister had even come to her first race of the season last week where she had finished first of all the women racers. Violet had been so proud of her and made no secret to everybody they passed that her sister had won the race. While it had been a bit on the embarrassing side, Rose could not help but feel delighted by this display. She had made her sister proud. That confirmed that she was on the right path.
“I think you should start doing whatever you need to do to be part of the professional circuit,” Violet said with stern seriousness as Rose stood under the hose to rinse off a majority of the mud from the course.
That statement of encouragement had been the catalyst. Rose had logged in and registered for the competitive heat of every race in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Northern California. If she could place high, she might be able to gain a sponsor or two before long. But if that was going to happen, she would need to up her training regimen.
Her earbuds were pumping some nice classical as she pushed herself just a bit harder when she reached the steepest hill of her run. Some folks might like to jam the hard stuff when they ran, but Rose found that classical took her away from the world and almost made her forget that she was running.
Imp and Circe trotted along almost as a reminder that she was not as fast as she might think. She was almost certain that the look she received periodically from Circe was an “Is that as fast as you can go?” sort of look. Meanwhile, Imp was getting better at not suddenly stopping to make his mark on every shrub, tree, and street sign that they passed.
She was a bit too immersed in her music, which is why she did not notice that Imp had started to swing wide as they approached the upcoming corner. She did not hear the low rumble of a growl building in his throat. Instead, she was being swept along by Piano Concerto No. 21 - Elvira Madigan.
She came to the sharp switchback turn, only vaguely aware that she was hitting the toughest part of her trek. It was sheer reflex that allowed her to leap just in the nick of time to avoid the figure sprawled across the narrow road. That was also when Imp and Circe reacted. Circe scuttled to the side of her master, ears flat on her head and tail tucked in tight to her body.
Imp was an entirely different story. He began barking furiously, teeth barred and hair standing up around his neck almost to the point of resembling the mane of a lion. His tail was straight up and he hunched low as if ready to spring at the downed body.
Her hands swiped at the thin cords, yanking the earphones free. Out of habit, she had already hit the button that paused her run tracking app. She hated nothing more than being timed while she stood waiting to cross a street; it completely screwed up her average per-mile pace.
“Hey?” she called softly.
She took a tentative step forward and realized that the dark shadow on the road was from a slowly growing pool of blood. As this realization struck, Imp lunged to put himself between her and this injured person.
Plucking her phone free from the armband she wore, Rose quickly called 9-1-1. After a few seconds, as the signal bounced its way to a tower, there was the blessed sound of ringing. After over a dozen rings, Rose glanced at her
display to ensure she had dialed correctly.
“You have reached the City of Portland Emergency Dispatch Center…all lines are currently busy. We are sorry, but due to a high volume of calls, all operators are currently assisting other callers. Please do not hang up. You will be answered in the order that you were received,” the computerized voice droned.
Rose locked the phone so that she would remain on the line and then stuffed it into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Imp was growing louder by the minute as he snarled and barked at the body. The figure twitched once and then started to move. This caused Rose to take an involuntary step back, but it also caused Imp to retreat and switch from the incessant barking to a lip curl and growl that was unlike anything that she had ever heard from the young Border Collie.
“Imp!” Rose hissed, regaining her composure and pulling both dogs’ leashes in tighter so that they were at her side. Circe instantly took her ‘sit’ position, but Imp stayed on his feet, crouched low and looking ready to spring at any moment.
The person pushed up with both hands, and that was when Rose knew that something was terribly wrong. The person’s left hand, the one closest to her, was missing three fingers. And by the looks, they had been taken very recently and with an incredible degree of violence. Then, the man turned his head her direction.
Rose gasped at the same instant that Imp lunged. The dog was strong enough to cause her to stumble forward, but she quickly regained her footing and backed away in a hurry, dragging the agitated dog along with her.
The man was…wrong. That was the best way that she could explain it to herself. His eyes were filmed with a thick and foul looking white that was shot through with black tracers. At first, her mind was trying to rationalize it by saying that perhaps the person had seriously bad cataracts. However, the nasty rip and gaping wound where his throat belonged was throwing all guesses out the window.
Rose had heard something from her sister Violet about a sickness or some such thing that was going around. However, with the departure of Frank, she had lost the big screen television. In all honesty, she hadn’t missed it. She spent her evenings with music and a good book. As far as she was concerned, television was a drain on time that she could not afford now that she was training.
Something Violet had said suddenly rang in her mind. ‘They say that people are acting crazy, attacking each other and even biting. It is like some twisted horror movie in some places, and there are even a few locations that have supposedly gone dark. No word coming out of them in a while now. Parts of China, Japan…all silent for the past few days.’
This person’s throat injury certainly could have come from a bite. It was nasty and jagged. What did not make any sense was how this man was getting to his feet. He should not be able to draw breath. If he wasn’t actually drowning on his own blood, then he still should not be getting any air into his lungs. She could see the ugly ribbed tube that was the larynx. It was mangled and torn, and therefore, this person should be dead.
Then the smell hit her. How she had missed it up to this point had to be due to shock. The stench was unlike anything she had ever experienced. As if catching up, her gorge began to rise as well.
Covering her mouth, Rose continued to back up as the man slowly made it all the way to his feet. He took an unsteady step in her direction and raised his hands as if to reach for her. The mouth opened and a harsh wheezing sound escaped.
“That can’t be,” Rose breathed as she backed up another step, bringing Imp and Circe along with her.
She was still backing away when the ferns alongside the road and to her left began to rustle. A figure emerged that looked even worse than the man she had in front of her. This one had a flap of meat dangling where the left cheek should be. She could see the bloody teeth through the ugly hole. To make this one even more improbable, the left arm had been ripped away right at the elbow joint.
Turning on her heel and giving both leashes a good yank, Rose took off at a sprint. She was halfway up the hill when the oddest thought hit her. She tried to brush it away, but her mind refused to let go.
Early on, after she had taken to running, she had entered in a fun run just before Halloween. In this event, individuals were dressed in rags and made up to look hideous; the object had been to reach the finish line without having the flag worn at the waist torn away by one of the “zombies” that sprinkled the course. Adding more fun to the event, if your flag was snagged, then you were now one of the so-called infected.
Of course, that had all been in fun. And Rose had fallen victim to a man who had been hiding behind some stacked hay bales. She had just sprinted away from a small pack and, after losing them in the massive corn maze, she had taken just a moment to catch her breath. That had been her downfall.
“Zombies?” she managed to gasp as she reached the crest of the hill.
She practically skidded to a stop as she looked out across the parking lot that was just below. She saw her car as well as several others. However, she also saw something that defied reason.
People were streaming from the entrance of the local zoo. She could not imagine a scenario that would put zombies in the actual zoo proper—if that was what this madness might be. Then she remembered how the back side of the zoo was bordered by the woods of Washington Park and how the zoo train ran on a circuit that took it around the fringe. There was a tunnel that led into the zoo from the park.
As her eyes scanned the scene, she saw several dark figures on the pavement of the massive parking lot. Then, her eyes stopped and fixed on one scene in particular.
One of the local mass transit busses was stopped a good twenty or so feet from the transit boarding area. As she watched, a woman fell out backwards through the open door and landed awkwardly on the ground. A young man was wrapped around her. Rose could hear the screams as this woman was mauled.
Similar scenes were playing out all over the place. A low moan from behind reminded her of what she had been fleeing just a few moments ago. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the two whatever-they-were that had been pursuing her as they rounded the corner down the hill a ways.
While there were only two back the way she had come, and a hellish landscape of violence down below, her car was down in that lot. She gave another slight pull on the leashes after she spotted the exact location of her vehicle. This would not be a time to have to search for where she had parked.
Rose unzipped and reached inside the little knick-knack pack she wore to keep things like her car keys and little doggie waste bags. She hated when she ran trails and stepped in piles left behind by inconsiderate owners and vowed that she would never be that person; thus, she always kept a roll of the handy little bio-degradable grab bags when she and the dogs went out.
Grabbing her keys, Rose wove through the high brush and ground cover that was supposed to deter people from tromping around in the landscaped park surroundings. She emerged from some waist high bushes and into the actual parking lot and came to a halt.
The scene before her was beyond any nightmare she could imagine. There were people on the ground being ripped apart by others who seemed deaf to the pleas and shrieks of their victims. She’d never been into horror movies or anything of that sort, but something about this rang a bell from a movie that she might have seen at a Halloween party.
“Zombies?” she breathed again as her wide-eyed stare scanned the parking lot in search of the easiest route to her car.
Meanwhile, Imp and Circe were both reacting to this in their own way. Circe had pressed against Rose, ears flat and tail tucked in between her legs. Imp was barking furiously, the hackles around his neck standing straight up. In between his furious barks, he snarled and growled in a way that Rose had never before seen from her dog.
“Crap,” Rose gasped.
Several of the people—or zombies, or whatever they were—had turned their attention in her general direction. Rose saw her opening and took off, giving the leashes a hard tug as she did. Circe was right at
her side, but Imp was lunging at every one of the horrific creatures that came within a few yards.
“Imp!” Rose snapped when the agitated Border Collie lunged in the opposite direction that they were running, almost pulling Rose off her feet.
The dog did not even seem to notice the yank and continued to try and attack a heavyset man with blood all over his chest, his tattered shirt revealing sections where bites had been savagely ripped from his fleshy middle. Fresh blood dripped from his mouth, and he swiped at the dog who dodged the awkward attack with ease. A handful of these zombies (she had no other idea what to call them) were closing in, and in a few seconds would be between her and the car. Rose had no choice; she dropped Imp’s leash and took off with Circe still at her side.
She reached her car and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Her hands were shaking, making it almost impossible to get the key in the lock of her 1983 Honda Civic. At last, she managed to get the door open, but one of the zombies was now just a few feet away and rounding the rear of her car.
She noticed the peculiar filmed over eyes with the black tracers, and her mind made a note to bank that as important information to process later. This particular zombie had several bites on one arm, and she noticed that it looked like it had been bandaged at some point. Again, that was something she could think about later, right now she needed to get away from this place.
Rose yanked her car door open and was almost knocked over as Circe leapt in past her. The terrified dog ducked into the floorboard area on the passenger side of the car and curled into a tight ball. Rose jumped in to the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. It made an ugly crunching sound. She looked up to see one arm of the male zombie caught in the door, its hand was opening and closing just a few inches from her face.
