"Miss Taylor!?" The girl screamed as something hit the door from the other side, jerking Theresa out of the cloud of thought she had become enveloped in.
She darted to the door, her hand flipping the lock with lightning speed as she spun and placed her back against it. "Shhh," she whispered as she brought her finger up to her lips. She silently motioned for everyone to move to the back of the room and then carefully picked up the desk the little girl had been sitting in and placed it against the door.
She slowly started backing up when something pounded heavily against it. She startled and kept moving backwards towards the dozens of frightened faces that huddled in fear against the wall below the second story windows.
"What's happening Miss Taylor?" one of the boys asked just above a whisper as the screaming and animalistic howls continued to raise beyond the door.
"I don't know Brandon," she said, her words delivered on a breath full of fear. “I don’t know…”
Then something hit the door again. This time one of the girls screamed.
Theresa's face jerked towards the panicked child, fear and realization flowing from her gaze. She wanted to scream, "Shut Up!" She wanted to explain that if they all kept quiet that they just might survive; that they all had to remain brave and strong. But it was too late. The scream was followed by a guttural roar, accompanied by pounding that was much harder than before; pounding that was determined.
Theresa's eyes slowly fell to the door as the classroom erupted in a crescendo of shrill screams and wailing.
She envisioned piling all the desks in the room against the door. She thought about tying the children's clothing together in a makeshift rope and shattering the window to escape. She thought about how she should have stood along-side the other teachers that felt school should be closed because of the strange virus that had been spreading. She had a million thoughts and ideas rushing through her head as she knelt on the floor, huddled amongst the children, her arms wrapped around as many of them as possible in a protective, maternal shield.
It was as the door began to crack and splinter inwards that her thoughts began to move to her mom and sister. She hoped they were ok, still desperately clinging onto hope that someone would come in at the last moment and rescue her so that she could see them again. Then the door cracked inwards and the first ragged, flesh torn arm reached its way inside.
Outside the tetherball lolled its way around the pole, the thin clinking of the clasp still ringing across the grassy field. Above a doorway splintered inwards as a dozen screaming forms piled inside a classroom. A solitary handprint smeared crimson across a second floor window as a soft breeze lightly pushed the empty swing seats below.
Day 7
Moisture hung in the air, giving the thin light drifting into the alley a comic book stillness that softly illuminated the surface just beyond the entrance. The sun had already made its slow decline, leaving the low hanging mass of grey to blanket the city in a cover of moist darkness.
James Richards knew this weather well. For the last fifteen years he had front row seating for some of the worst winter’s Chicago had to offer, and from the cardboard, tarp roofed shelter that he had called home he had seen more rainy nights than he could count. Tonight was going to be another one.
Inside the cardboard shelter James leaned against the back wall, a pile of discarded blankets he'd collected over the years serving as his comfort and throne. He watched the mist fall whimsically slow through the flap of tarp that was tied back in the front and let his grip tighten around the jade bottle of cheap liquor store wine he held loosely In his grasp; his liquid meal that would warm him through the quickly chilling night. His eyes fell to his lap and he sighed, raising the bottle to his lips and letting the warm, watered down wine wash the drying tannins from his throat. As his hand came down his ears began to pick up on a commotion building in the street at the end of the alley.
He listened for a moment, the distant shouts slowly filtering through the paper thin walls, filling his ears with a slowly building curiosity. He was used to the sounds of traffic and the occasional fights or sporadic moments of passion as 2 am bar patrons filtered out of the local watering holes nearby and made their way drunkenly past the alley he sat unseen in, while the late night world buzzed around him. Tonight was different though; the sounds were different.
The shouts began to crescendo into a cacophony of noise; sirens wailing and screams intertwining with the building din filling the outside streets. It wasn't until James heard the first of the gunshots that he realized just how different tonight was becoming.
The echoing cracks rang through the night air, a royal Fourth of July serenade, shattering the mid-August calm. James tensed and set the wine bottle aside, slowly moving to his knees to peer his head from the dry safety of his home. As his eyes caught gaze of the street beyond, he froze.
At the end of the alley people were running past in a continual surge of fleeing fear. He could see cars rushing past and heard the frantic sounds of horns being slammed as impatient travelers screamed for escape. He had no idea what was going on but it was bad. Tonight was bad.
James kneeled at the edge of his house, steeled to his spot, watching unmoving as the street exploded into chaos. Then a police cruiser slammed full force into a fast moving ambulance traveling in the opposite direction. As the vehicles impacted, the sound of crunching metal and staggered sirens slowly garbling to a stop, shattered through the preexisting noise. James watched as the people rushing past didn't even seem to take notice as the engine of the cruiser burst into flames, the unconscious, or dead officer in the front seat slumped over the steering wheel, crimson liquid coming from his nose and mouth beginning to shimmer in the rising glow.
James stared. Fear was beginning to build inside of him, and as he knelt, entertaining the thought of slipping back into the darkness of his paper house he heard the sound of someone groaning in the alley opposite the maelstrom a short ways away.
James allowed his gaze to slowly shift from the street beyond to the darkened shadows at the opposite end. He sat still as the sound of shuffling feet and moans began to slowly work their way in his direction. In his years on the street he had been accosted more than once, preyed upon by some drunken asshole with something to prove to himself or a group of equally indignant friends.
He paused, then called out to the black mass working its way towards him with a methodical gait.
"I gots no money," he shouted, receiving another raspy, gargled growl as a response. "I gots nothin for ya," he reiterated, watching as the shape began to get closer.
Suddenly he didn't feel safe. Something was wrong, but through the Thunderbird haze he couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
James slowly began to back into his shelter, calling out as he did. "Go on!" he shouted. "Leave me alone!"
His foot hit the bottle as he backed up, a thin layer of chills bunching his dirty skin into a mass of small bumps as the bottle tipped and clinked against the exposed ground where the blankets being pushed back from his scooting backwards, scrunched up behind him.
The footsteps approached, the low raspy growling prefacing the slow, deliberate crunching of boots against the grit and broken glass scattered about the alley floor. Then the shape took form as it began to make its way into the shelter, and the sounds of an old homeless man screaming joined the symphony of disquietude.
Outside the world had been torn into chaos. The sounds of screaming raising into the night air, tearing through the slowly falling moisture and staggered blasts of gunshots in the distance. The mist had turned to rain, the falling drops filtering the noise of a neighborhood drawn into madness. Inside a dark alley a homeless man fought against death in the quiet solitude of a makeshift shelter. Inside a darkened alley the sounds of death filtered lightly into the streets beyond, and the crimson hue of a spilled bottle of wine took on a deeper shade. Tonight had become a very bad night.
Day 8
A soft breeze rustled over the tops of th
e corn stalks, moving the mid harvested field in a tide of ebbing sway. In the distance, beyond the sprawling rows and solitary, oxide red combine, was a small farm house. A thin wisp of smoke drifted upwards into the early dusk air from the small brick chimney that rose quaintly from the side of the craftsman style structure. The front door was open, and through the screen door, an aroma of cornbread and coffee wafted gently past the porch.
Inside the house, Mary was just finishing setting the dining room table, the routine she had maintained, and prided herself in for the last thirty years of her marriage. “Paul,” she called out through the kitchen window towards the large barn a short distance away. “Suppers almost done. Come in and wash up.”
Her husband set the hammer he’d been using to knock the front tire of his backhoe back into place down and wiped the blackened line of sweat running down his forehead with his sleeve. “Be in in a minute,” he called out, his gaze still locked to the tire that had started to pull itself away from the rim, its edge wavy from years of use. “Piece of—” he muttered to himself before pulling a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his hands.
Paul turned around and walked towards the house, letting one last heavy breath of frustration escape. This wasn’t the first time that tire had derailed itself, and like the four years before, he told himself he’d cough up and get a new one after the harvest.
As he approached their house the aroma of his wife’s cooking drifted past his nostrils and small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. Even after thirty sem odd years, he still looked forward this moment every day.
“Go on,” Mary smiled as he turned the corner into the kitchen. “Go get cleaned up. Food’ll be ready by the time you’re done.”
Paul walked up behind his wife and softly brushed her lightly greying hair away from her neck and leaned forward to kiss her.
“I don’t think so Mr. Murray,” she said playfully, dodging her head to the side. “I could smell you in the barn from here. You go wash up before you tryin’ to put those lips on me. I got no desire to be kissed by no hog.”
Paul smiled and popped her lightly on the butt with the back of his hand. She spun quickly and he flinched backwards. “Ok, ok! I’m goin’”
“And use soap,” she added with a teasing glare.
“Yes Mrs. Murray,” he replied, the grin across his work weathered cheeks growing larger.
“You hear about that stuff that’s goin on up in Ralleigh?” she called out a few minutes later as she was finishing up the last few dishes.
“Yeah,” he replied, wiping his face with a towel and hanging it over the top of the shower door. “Heard Bill over at the feed store talking bout’ it this mornin’. ‘Parently there’s some groups of people actin all kinds a crazy. Said it was happnin’ over in Asheville as well.”
He walked into the dining room and took a seat at the table. “Probly’ a bunch a riled up rich kids getting their kicks offa expressin’ their freedom a speech. Bunch a damn fool, hippy nonsense you ask me.”
Mary sat the last plate on the table; a white ceramic dish with a small stack of maple cornbread still steaming under a dairy cow patterned towel.
“Well Margie said one of the women comes in the diner has a boy that lives up in Detroit. ‘Parently whatever it is that’s happenin’ down the way, it’s also goin on up there.”
Paul reached out and pulled the towel back from the plate and grabbed two small loafs, setting them next to steamed green beans and crock pot broiled chuck roast.
“She says the news is sayin’ it’s some kind of virus or somethin’; some new sickness.”
“Yeah,” Paul replied, scooping a small portion of mashed potatoes onto the plate in the last available spot. “Well let em’ do whatever they want to, as long as they stay there, and we’re here.” He paused, looking down at his food. “Amazing as always.”
Mary smiled. It still brought a blush to her cheeks every time he said it.
Outside the wind shifted directions, but three lines still cut their way through the tight rows, unmoved by the shifting gusts.
“Tire again?” Mary asked, knowing the answer to the question before the words had even formed. For the last four years, just as harvest was about to be finished, she’d hear Paul bangin’ away at the rim of the tractor’s front tire, and for the last four years, she’d pretended not to hear his vulgarities drifting through the windows.
“Yeah,” he replied, letting his hand rest on the table for a moment. “Eventually I gotta get that thing replaced.” He paused again. “S’pose I’ll take care a that after harvest.”
Outside the three figures emerged out of the field and continued their determined gait past the towering barn towards the house. Their gazes were blank and their arms hung limply to their sides as they staggered one awkward step after another.
“Ya know,” Paul said, glancing out the window at what was left of the standing stalks. “I think we did pretty good this year, all things considered.” He paused, nodding with a satisfied smirk. “Think we might just clear eighteen thousand.”
The past few years they had barely cleared fifteen thousand bushels cause of the dry seasons, and Paul looked forward to the added bonus. He figured he might just be able to finally get the tire, though he had grown to have a love hate relationship with beating against it. The thought of replacing it almost made him begin to miss the struggle. It was routines that kept him going, and that tractor tire had become just that.
Paul paused, his fork hanging in his hand with a piece of meat still pinned to the end of it. “We expectin’ company?” he asked, his brow furling slightly as his eyes squinted out the window.
“No,” Mary replied. “Why?”
“You stay here,” he said, setting his fork down and wiping his mouth before standing up and walking towards the living room.
“What is it Paul?” Mary asked, concern beginning to creep through her tone.
“Not sure,” he answered. “Got a couple fella’s just came from out back of the barn. Their headed towards the house.”
Nervousness began to creep its way into Mary. They had lived on this property for the last thirty years, and in all that time, they’d never once been called on unknowingly, let alone had strangers approach their house.
“Paul?” Mary said, the nervousness in her voice bringing a tremble to his name.
Paul opened the closet door next to the kitchen and grabbed his 12 gauge. He pulled two shells from a box and loaded them in, locking the barrel back into place before shoving a couple more in his pocket just for good measure. Then he turned and made his way to the front door.
“I help you fellas?” he called out as he slowly opened the screen door and stepped out onto his porch.
The three men approaching didn’t reply. They just kept walking, their arms hanging at their sides, eyes locked to the ground in front of them.
“I think you need to find your way back to wherever it is you comin’ from,” he added, pulling back the hammer on his Remington. “I don’t want no trouble.”
The three men continued forward, their steps making Paul wonder if they’d been drinking in his field and decided to try somethin’ stupid. Now however, their eyes were locked to him.
“Last warnin’ boys,” he called out, the stock of the gun rising to his shoulder as he leveled it at the chest of the one closest.
Mary sat at the table, her hands wrung together with her dinner napkin twisted tight between them. It wasn’t usual to see that type of worry in her husband’s eyes, or to hear the threatening tone that was drifting in through the kitchen window. Moments later she screamed as the sound of a gun she’d never heard go off erupted from the front porch.
Seconds later another blast echoed through the house; then silence.
“Mary!!”
Paul’s shout reverberated nearly as loud as the gunshots, the fear in his words paralyzing her to the seat she was in.
“Run!!!”
There was one last guns
hot before she heard a scream from her husband that she’d never heard before. It was a scream of panic, and pain.
Mary sat at the table, her eyes locked to the dining room as the sounds of her husband’s voice slowly faded from screams, to muffled chokes, to silence. Then she heard the screen door creak open.
As the wind gently pushed its way through the corn field, the smell of cornbread and cooked beef slowly drifted through the air. Outside of the farmhouse the still body of a rural farmer lay sprawled across the porch that he had built decades before. The man’s jaw hung open, tongue lolling from the corner, steel blue eyes drying and locked to the vastly large, cloud tufted sky.
Across the steps, in a sprayed puddle of quickly coagulating blood, was the remains of a dinner that had been made with love, the stomach that had just contained the still warm meal torn open and lying ripped apart next to it. Inside the farmhouse a macabre dinner lay cooling next to an overturned table, red mist covering the piled food in a crimson glaze.
Next to a shattered plate and crumbled remains of quickly cooling cornbread, the fingers of a delicate hand began to twitch.
Day 9
Jim pulled into the KCRQ parking lot. He had received a text from his station manager telling him that he was needed back at the T.V. station urgently. He had been packing for his yearly vacation to Yosemite, and in twelve years with the station he had never once received a message like this, let alone from the station manager. He resolved that his vacation had been cancelled.
As he parked his car he could see that things were a bit more chaotic than usual, there was a buzz about how people were making their way into the building and as he chirped the alarm on his Lexus he heard a screech of tires. He spun his head to see the news van flying through the parking lot, and then looked up to see the heli taking to the air as well.
The Last 21 Page 3
