The Drumhead

by Richard Correll

  It looked so normal at first glance, the long line of cars that stretched down the road to where they formed one single multicolored ribbon. Millennium Park on the right had already retired for the day to sleep among the trees and shadows. A dark cement divider separated the north and southbound traffic on Michigan. It was dotted with plants, flowers……..and bodies.

  They lay on the once pristine cement with clear signs of mutilation, like a butcher had gone postal up and down the street. Here and there, some of the bodies rocked back and forth in the darkness. Their hands pushed skywards in a vain attempt to grasp the stars and pull them to earth. As Maggie’s eyes became accustomed to the night, Millennium Park was alive with shadows that blended into the background in the black on black darkness. They lazily leaned on one leg or another in perfect stillness just watching for the ideal moment. The ribbon of cars was less than perfection upon closer inspection. Passenger and driver doors were carelessly open to the foreboding darkness. In some, figures had pushed and clustered about the aperture. A wall of hands clawed blindly inside while others pushed themselves further in to protect their gruesome rewards from unwanted competition.

  Maggie slowly turned back to Chalmers and Brenda. They were suddenly motionless, caught in a realm of indecision. What now?

  “Plan B.” Maggie whispered as she watched the following hoard move closer with every step. “Private, Chalmers, Plan B.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “That other station you were talking about,” Maggie concentrated on the corners of her eyes as she turned right and left constantly, trying not to be caught from behind. “You and Brenda make your way there.”

  He nodded and spared a glance to Brenda as he started toward the lakeshore to turn right and double back on Van Buren station. A thought physically made his head jerk back to Maggie and ask: “Are you coming, Ma’am?”

  “I’m gonna buy you some time, private.” Maggie raised her M16A3, slipped her hand into the barrel grip and started walking up Michigan. “Get moving!”

  “Ma’am!” It was Brenda. “Damnit! Maggie!”

  “Get moving!” She turned back and opened up with a five second burst on the horde that had been following them up Monroe. In the patchy darkness they looked like a wall that had grown a thousand hands that had no central control. The appendages weaved back and forth without rhyme or consistency, they grasped at thin air. Like a blind creature looking to pull anything toward its hungry mouth.

  “Damnit! Get moving!” Maggie repeated as puffs of darkened matter imploded and separated themselves from figures as the 5.56 millimeter shells found their mark. Parts of the wall buckled as bones shattered and could no longer carry weight. The figures in the front crashed to the pavement followed by the ones rushing up from behind. Maggie snapped the release button and the empty clip fell into the street. A second was in place quickly. You won’t have much time to do that again. She reminded herself coldly and charged up Michigan. Maggie headed toward the cement partition to cross the road to get to a subway entrance. In her way was a white midsized car that had partially driven into the concrete median. A woman’s body was splayed about like a doll belonging to a careless child. She leaned against the rear bumper with her head to the sky. The chin suddenly tilted as Maggie approached and a hiss erupted from her lips. The closer Maggie got, the greater the clarity was revealed of her features. Her long brilliant, coral colored red hair added to her doll like appearance. A Raggedy Ann that hissed a challenge in the darkness. The side of her head had been clawed free of hair and the ear had been chewed down to something that looked like a rabbit hole. Her professional clothes had been ripped apart with a road map of crimson stains that marked her passing. The head cocked sideways and her mouth slithered open to reveal pearl white and ruby red teeth. It was almost hypnotizing to watch Raggedy Ann stand up slowly, spasmodically to her feet and block Maggie’s path. She turned her head gradually and the tepid luminescence of distant street lights captured the widening of the puss yellow eyes as she lurched forward.

  Maggie carefully aimed the M16A3 and touched the trigger. The report was heard through the trees and echoed off the buildings on the north side of Michigan. The woman’s head snapped back as the bullet made contact. Her fiery red hair ballooned outward as if trying to break her fall. The body pitched backward like a rose that could no longer support the weight of its blooming flower. When her shoulders made contact with the bumper of the white car it rocked slightly in recognition. The eyes were closed. The teeth had been chased back into their lair. Raggedy Ann was asleep.

  Maggie’s eyes immediately pivoted 360 degrees. A semi circle behind her was now forming. The hands greedily clawed at the air just twenty yards back. They had followed so long for this moment that now seemed to be so close at hand. Maybe they didn’t see the way we did anymore, the thought pursued her. Maybe they just see flesh, appendages and hunger. Anything else was invisible to them.

  What once looked like odd branches and shadows in Millennium Park now revealed themselves as they staggered away from the floral canopy. Faces frozen in nightmares looked curiously at Maggie for a moment.

  Who are you? …………You’re not one of us……………..

  The eyes would take in the moment. It examined the scent of the air. A slow, organic calculation began that reached a cold, logical conclusion. The mouth opened and the eyes concentrated on the figure before it. It moved. Hunger……….

  Maggie turned and traversed the median in three strides. She came down the other side and fired a point blank burst into a figure that popped up from the pavement. The only thing that registered was the impossibly large mouth that snapped at her. She dodged a grasping arm from a foreign car and looked up to see the clear plastic glass canopy of an entrance to the underground. She could avoid the streets and move invisibly below from Avenue to Avenue on the way to the train station if she couldn’t find transport. Maggie sprinted passed a coffee shop that had a brightly colored motorcycle imbedded in its store front window. A crotch rocket, that’s what they call those bikes. The barrel of the M16A3 passed over the scene quickly without firing. Those still feeding on what remained of the rider barely noticed her passing.

  She looked up and saw them. She saw them all.

  It looked so surreal, another normal rush hour in Chicago. Tired office workers and factory people side by side coming out of the underground after riding the train. They would go home and throw dinner in the oven, talk about their day and watch television. All of the things that Maggie was pretty sure were long gone now. In the new world, they had heard the gunfire as they lingered in the darkness below the streets of the city. How they had arrived there was really a moot point now. They had been trapped. Hungry mouths had at first consumed them while their saliva interacted with the new host to create a reawakening a few hours later. They had stood in the darkness among their new kind for hours. Perhaps they had been there for days. It had probably started slowly, one figure turning to the faint resonance in the air of distant gun fire. One would turn, then another. Like an exclamation point to their early suspicions more gunfire must have been heard. Then they began to move. First one and then another and then another………

  This is it. Just let it happen. Maggie watched a woman ascend the steps onto the sidewalk. Faces appeared that were a moment of petrified horror. The carcasses lurched up the stairs in a slow procession. They spilled on to the street like an ever widening army that signaled an end point, a termination. Hic est fini. Let this happen, she didn’t hear the voice inside her. It was more a casual feeling close to her soul. A large woman faced her whose stomach lining hung around her knees. Her short blond hair and bangs were specked with gray matter and crimson. She greedily eyed Maggie and howled in exaltation. Do they even know they have me? She wondered.

  It doesn’t matter. The feeling caressed her ears. This is why you sacrificed yourself so that Chalmers and Brenda could get away. You could have gone with them, the argument was logical. But, you chose t
o do this, it continued.

  You want it over. No more nightmares of his hands on you. No more shakes and cold sweats. Just lie down on the sidewalk and it will be over before you know it.

  There might even be enough of you left to join them………

  There was another sound at her ear. It was a small woman with oriental features and a tattered business suit. As Maggie turned toward her, the woman raised a hand that had been hacked several times by a serrated knife. The lack of blood near the wound betrayed the gashes had happened after she had died and revived. An eye socket was a blackened space on her face now filled with blood and the remains of an iris.

  Just lie down…….

  Maggie’s hand caught the woman by the throat and she threw her shoulder into the slight form. The blow sent the staggering figure careening backwards. She eventually lost her balance and rolled on to the pavement. She was an instant obstruction to others of her kind who tripped, tumbled and stepped into her fallen form. Before she turned back to the subway entrance Maggie had a grenade in her hand. She tossed the metal spheroid high in the air and it came down twenty yards behind the large crowd that blocked her path. While the fuse burned down she brought M16A3 up to her shoulder and fired.

  Just lie down…….

  The arc of the burst was very tight as she moved forward in a jog. Just a few degrees to either side, enough to create a hole. The flash of the grenade brought stars and blobs to her eyes as she stepped over the first few fallen bodies in what was now turning into a hard run. The blast had knocked more bodies aside. Maggie kept her splash blinded eyes close to the ground to keep from tripping over multiple forms that lay scattered about like broken dolls. As she passed the opening, she noticed a blackened heap of humanity writhing like a jagged slug halfway down the stairs. The first few at the top had been knocked over by the blast and had tumbled down into more of them. It was a slow procession of thrashing figures that struggled slow motion to untangle themselves. Some just lay among the mass of decaying flesh with expressionless faces. As if they were awaiting a message to tell them what to do next.

  A half balding man with grey pocked skin and a black jacket reached up and pulled on her pant leg. Maggie kicked the arm aside and almost stumbled into the street. The jog had become a run which became a sprint. Maggie had completely lost count of any ammunition that might be left so she used the rifle to butt and pushed figures out of her way. She stepped off the crowded sidewalk and dived on to the hood of a cab and climbed on to the roof to reload. As she ripped the new clip from her belt and slapped it the rifle. A slender, almost delicate rectangle caught the light of a city streetlight as it slipped out of her pocket and landed on the cab’s roof before sliding off onto the abyss below of concrete and once living appendages.

  She saw her cell phone slide off the roof into a sea of grasping fingers that looked like coral on the bottom of an ocean. They swayed and clutched without rhythm. The noise from a thousand throats was deafening. Speed, that’s all you have on them, she realized. Not intelligence? The query came from within. I used to think that, not anymore. She jumped on to the trunk of the cab and fired a quick burst that gave Maggie enough room to get a head start. It suddenly occurred to her how tired she was getting. How heavy everything was starting to feel.

  Just lie down in the street. It will be all over soon…………

  “Shut the Fuck up!” She said to no one as she sobbed loudly. Why can’t you do it?

  No one’s gonna believe you, bitch………

  She saw a bald headed business man in a white suit stagger in front of her path. He was grossly overweight with an un-tucked white shirt and a missing cheek. It made him look like a nightmare anatomy lesson as his tongue licked the air out of the side of his face. The pattern of his baldness reminded Maggie of Murphy long enough for her to pull the trigger.

  The anatomy lesson disappeared in an explosion of crimson and bone. The body dropped to the pavement without hesitation. Maggie paused over the body for a second.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” She howled in exaltation.

  The pain in her joints suddenly eased as Maggie put her head down and screamed at the top of her lungs. It didn’t matter where they were. What they looked like, if they were a threat or not. They all looked like Murphy. Faces became meaningless and strategy became rage. She put her shoulder into a young woman who must have been beautiful when she was alive. Her perfect African features were marred by pock marks of teeth and claws. The woman slammed to the sidewalk as Maggie took a second to toss a grenade in her lap. Maggie turned and charged up Michigan as the swell of pursuers tripped over and moved around the woman like an incoming tide.

  “C’mon! C’mon, God Damn it!” She couldn’t help herself. Maggie wanted to kill them all. It all didn’t seem real anymore. It was just an illusion riding the tide of an adrenaline rush.

  The grenade’s explosion was a few yards away and might have been fatal had not mutilated shadows hounding her taken the brunt of it. They pitched back, staggered forward and came crashing to the ground as if tossed around by a giant’s hand. Only to stand up, begin to crawl and continue to pursue the sweet scent on the wind. Hunger…….

  She charged a huge man in construction gear and slammed her rifle into the roof of his mouth as his arms tried to encircle her. Maggie let out a barely human scream as she pulled the trigger and felt his hands grip the headset on her radio as a liquefied geyser of dark matter rose and expanded through his safety helmet. What was left of the big man fell to her left, headset and radio in a death grip as Maggie continued the mad charge.

  A kid in an oversized t-shirt, floppy jeans and a sideways ball cap howled at her as he tried to come closer. They made eye contact for a brief second before Maggie pulled the trigger. The force of the impact threw his body backward as the bullets exited and slammed into several shadows behind him. Two featureless figures in the dark stopped and fell forward. A large splash of a red entry wound was on their forehead. For a brief instant they remained standing as they supported one another before gravity took over.

  Just lie down………..

  “FUCK YOU!” She screamed at the night and went into a hard sprint past Randolph Street. Pauline Books, a 7-11 and Chicago Sports had a pattern of bullets through their darkened windows. At least someone else had put up a fight. She ducked past a man with shattered spectacles and a crazy maze of purple hair. He was behind Maggie and not a threat but the rage was in control now. She turned and fired a single shot that penetrated his eye .The purple hair waved in the air as the man staggered and fell to the pavement. Maggie listened to the sound around her that was growing fainter and had a minute to access her situation as she heaved oxygen into her lungs. For a quiver of a second she caught a reflection of herself in the darkened windows of an abandoned car. The eyes burned wild with a soulless fire. A laceration of grim satisfaction exposed her teeth. It had completely taken over her face. Yes, a laceration. In no sane world could it be called a facial expression.

  I look just like one of them. What is the mortal distance between us and those things? She wondered briefly. The snap of her last clip into the M16A3 brought her back to the streets of Chicago. She took a deep breath and headed up Michigan toward Lake Street. Maggie decided crossing the bridge that linked Michigan to Magnificent Mile was a trap just waiting to happen. So, west on Lake Street it would be.

  *

  The first thing Brenda noticed at a side glance was the trees in the park. They had been placed with almost mathematical precision. The green of Chicago on the lakefront had been a sense of pride to this city. Now, it was an ally to the new masters. The moonlight tried to peel back the dark as it peeked out between the clouds. It cast shadows into the cimmerian void, catching a form here and a shadow there. The feeble light was a harbinger, a warning of shadows that had menacing substance behind them.

  Brenda kept her pace down the centre of Monroe, keeping as much space as she could between herself and the darkness on either side of her. A man
in a white golf shirt shimmered in the streetlights as he approached. His mouth had been drawn into an upside down half moon by the rigor mortis of death. Brenda carefully took a breath and squeezed the trigger with a steady finger and emotionless eye. The first 5.6 shell punctured his neck while the next one caught him a half an inch up the bridge of his nose. His body contorted on impact and spun around like a macabre dancer before finding the pavement. On instinct, she turned one hundred and eighty degrees and was surprised by a dark skinned woman with chiseled facial features and a body that was surrendering to age. Her checked shirt was still sopping with huge stains of blood that glistened like wet leather in the moonlight’s feeble shadow. She was just 10 yards away. Brenda squeezed off a few more precious rounds and turned again. Another appeared behind a parked car in front of the Art Institute. He was dressed as a courier and his hands extended from the rags and tears of his uniform. Two quick bursts and a dot appeared on his forehead while a starburst of blackness marked the exit wound in the back of his skull. Brenda started to slowly rotate her vision from right to left as her pace down Monroe continued.