First Zombie

by Fisher, Sean Thomas

  “Okay, everyone get down and keep quiet,” Clark decided, pulling his wife to the floor and planting their backs against a wall.

  Trading uncertain looks, everyone slid to the floor and pressed up against a piece of furniture or empty wall space. Finn sat next to Miranda against the loveseat, the shotgun wrapped tightly in his hands. Their wide eyes roamed the room in the silence stretching between them, every sniffle or cough feeding Finn’s anxiety. Gripping the rifle, Tyler gave him an encouraging head nod. Finn nodded back and looked over at Jake, who gave him an unnerving smile. Time slowed to a crawl like the dead things outside, tension bulging the walls outward. They were sitting ducks and Finn wondered if the dead could really smell them on the wind. Maybe their sense of…

  April’s phone vibrated in her hand and the screen came to life. Her eyes got big along with her husband’s. With horror pulling on her twisted features, she turned the screen to face them and Finn stopped breathing. The dead woman staring into the Ring Doorbell mounted outside made him shudder. Her lips were completely gone, exposing black gnashing teeth just as hungry as the decay eating away at her skin. Long dark hair hung in her face as she clawed at the screen door, moaning and choking on her own vomit.

  “Holy shit, it’s a package zombie,” Tyler whispered, pressing up against a wall.

  Finn stuck a finger in front of his mouth, giving everyone a reassuring look that couldn’t be farther from what he really felt.

  A shadow passed across the room, drawing their eyes to the window above Clark and April. Miranda stiffened against Finn. The man peeking inside was tall and bony with a long gray beard hiding his bloodstained lips. Moaning in pain, the corpse gently scratched at the window, leaving smear marks across the screen and glass. Nobody dared to move, let alone breathe. The man pet the window, making soft noises with his hands that reminded Finn of the moth bumping against the lights at the rest stop. He took a hand from the shotgun to give his wife’s hand a comforting squeeze.

  “In here, fuckers!” Jake cried out, catching an elbow to the face from Mac. A bone chilling crunch filled the room and blood gushed from his crooked nose. He fell onto his side and bled on the carpet, knocked out cold.

  “Bailey,” April shouted, covering her mouth too late.

  The bearded man punched a fist through the window and grabbed April by her hair, sending Champ into a barking fury. April screamed and wrestled against the dead man’s iron grip, slowly lifting off the floor.

  “Grab onto her,” Clark screamed, dropping the Remington and hugging his wife around the waist, wrestling against the dead man’s stubborn hold.

  A gun blast rang out, making everyone flinch. The tall man flew backwards and disappeared from sight, taking a patch of April’s hair with him. She collapsed into her husband’s arms, blood running down her face in wiggly streams. Tyler stepped closer, a thin trail of smoke floating from the barrel of his silver cannon. Two more stiffs took the tall man’s place at the window, reaching wildly through the broken glass and coldly slicing their arms to shreds. Tyler blew them back to hell where they came from and glass broke out in the kitchen, shattering onto the laminate flooring.

  “They’re inside!” Mac announced, storming off with the M16 tucked into a shoulder. She disappeared around a corner and rapid gunfire followed, drowning out April’s cries of pain.

  “You’re okay, sweetie,” Clark said in a shaky voice, yanking an afghan from the couch and pressing it against his wife’s scalp to stop the bleeding.

  The window broke out across the room and dirty claws reached inside with shafts of sunlight. The moaning grew louder and the trailer began to shake. The smell of rot rolled in on humid waves, spoiling the air around them and triggering their gag reflex. Rising to his feet, Finn turned the shotgun to the window and blew their fingers and hands off. He pumped the Browning, ejecting the spent shell casing to the floor, and fired another booming round through the window. Pieces of bone and skin went flying. Tucking the rifle into the inside of his shoulder socket, Tyler joined forces with Miranda against the broken window with April’s blood running down the wall. Levering and firing, Tyler unleashed a flurry of deafening bullets.

  The machinegun fire stopped out in the kitchen and the front door burst open with a wood splitting crack. Finn spun around, chest heaving. The dead pushed inside like it was Black Fucking Friday, knocking over a halogen lamp and immediately veering off toward Clark and April. Champ barked and growled, tearing into a dead man’s rotten leg while Tyler cocked the rifle and shot a black man just before he latched on to April. Pumping the shotgun, Finn blew the head off an elderly woman with no hair. He pumped again and took aim at a naked zombie so decomposed it was impossible to tell its gender. Squeezing the trigger, he dropped it just inside the doorway, creating the beginning of a dam. Finn turned and unloaded two thunderous blasts on the dead men tearing into Champ. They fell to the side and a dead blond-haired woman pounced on the dog. Ejecting the spent shell casing, he lined her up in the gunsights and squeezed the trigger. The gun dry fired and Champ yelped in pain as the blond sank her teeth into his back. Gunfire and moans filled the air, adding to the chaos swirling about Finn’s head. His frantic eyes fell to the box of shotgun shells resting on the coffee table, bullets buzzing through the air around him like bees. Sprinting for the shells, he slid to a stop when Nathan stumbled into the room. Matted hair hung across the shoe clerk’s broken glasses, a dark purple bruise ringing his neck where his nametag had been hanging. Moaning, he reached for Finn with bloodstained hands, bumping the coffee table and knocking it over. The shotgun shells spilled out of the box, landing in a pool of spilt coffee and empty beer cans.

  Finn flipped the twelve-gauge around and swung for the fences, smashing Nathan’s face in with the buttstock. The gangly clerk dropped to his knees, giving Finn a good view of the zombies tearing into Jake’s unconscious body lying just beyond. Machinegun fire erupted, puncturing the sides of the trailer as Mac stormed back into the room. Shafts of sunlight stabbed inside, illuminating the decay clawing at the faces of the walking dead. Pieces of flesh and bone rained down on Clark and April, a ghastly storm if ever there was one. Emptying their weapons, Tyler and Miranda stopped to reload while Finn laid down some cover with the Glock 22, dropping one gruesome skeleton after another. Burnt gunpowder twirled with the stench of death, the trailer shaking as more of the dead tried squeezing inside.

  Finn jerked the handgun around and picked off a heavyset man sneaking up on Mac. She gave him a grateful nod before sprinting across the room and sticking the gun barrel against the back of a young girl’s head. Clark pushed against the dead girl trying to eat into his face, putting as much distance between them as possible without getting bit. Mac adjusted her aim and pulled the trigger, spraying the girl’s brains across the wall. Jolting to the side, her sharp teeth took a piece of Clark’s forearm with her to the ground. He howled in pain and covered the wound with a hand to stop the bleeding.

  “No!” Mac screamed, staring in horror at her father.

  A thin woman bit into the back of Mac’s shoulder and she barely noticed. Heart pounding, she held her father’s frightened gray eyes, the grim future whisking through her mind. Finn kicked the woman off Mac’s back and stepped forward, sinking a round right between her eyes. He turned to the zombie slobber on Mac’s bulletproof vest and breathed a sigh of relief. A few more shots rang out and then the room turned deathly quiet. Outside of a mailman stirring beneath a pile of corpses in the doorway, a country silence fell over the room, blending with the smoke lingering in the air. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, blocking the doorway and smelling up the entire trailer.

  “We get em all?” Tyler panted, doing circles with the rifle.

  “Mom!” Mac kicked the black man out of the way and dropped to her knees, tears tracking her cheeks. April sat on the floor with her head leaning back against the wall, staring blankly at the ceiling with blood leaking from a hole in her forehead.

  “Oh good, Lord,” Clark c
ried, pushing to his knees. “April!”

  “Oh fuck, I shot her,” Mac cried, falling into her mother’s lap.

  Clark shook his wife by the shoulders. “Can you hear me, sweetie? April!”

  Finn looked over at Miranda, the green t-shirt rising and falling on his chest. “Are you okay?”

  Nodding, she jerked hair from her face. “You?”

  He nodded back and jumped when Tyler shot the mailman, ceasing the thing’s futile struggles.

  “Holy shit,” Tyler breathed out, wiping sweat from his brow. “We get em all?”

  Finn stepped over Champ’s body, grimacing when he noticed the dog was missing a rear leg. Peering out a window, the blood turned cold in his veins. “We have to go.”

  Miranda rushed to his side and her eyes got round. “Oh God,” she whispered, gun wrapped in a fist.

  “Sonofabitch.” Tyler peered past them to the mangy throng gravitating toward the trailer, struggling to catch his breath. “Where are they coming from?”

  “I don’t know but we’re not sticking around to find out,” Finn replied, turning from the window. “Reload and let’s get out of here!” Crouching, he boxed up the wet shells from the floor and reloaded the gory shotgun.

  “I’m so sorry, Mommy!” Mac pulled back from her dead mother and stroked April’s bloody cheek with a gloved hand, teardrops clouding her vision. “I’m so sorry.”

  Clark wrapped his family in his arms and cried with his daughter, bleeding all over them. “It’s not your fault, Bailey! It’s not your fault!”

  “Yes, it is!” Angrily, she pushed away and got to her feet, the badge heaving on her vest. Her wild eyes snagged on Jake’s mangled body and she dropped back to her knees. “Oh, God no!”

  Scooping up the bag of ammo, Finn dumped the extra shells inside and passed it to Miranda. “Mac, we have to leave. More are coming!” he said, studying the pile of bodies blocking the door.

  “Why! Why!” Mac sobbed over Jake’s lifeless body, tracing his lips with a finger.

  Finn stared through the open doorway, watching an even larger group of corpses shuffle through the field. Judging by the speed of the previous throng, they had a handful of minutes to load up and drive away. Maybe less. “Mac!”

  Lifting her wet face, she stared up at him like she didn’t recognize him. Like she never helped him escape the police station in one piece. She wiped her nose with a glove and got to her feet, retrieving the M16 and pulling the strap over her head. Slapping in a new magazine, she went to a broken window and watched the dead shuffle closer through angry eyes. She tipped her chin down and spoke through her teeth. “These bastards are mine.”

  “No, there’s too many of them,” Finn protested, searching the pile of bodies for a place to step without breaking his neck. “We’ll waste all our ammo!”

  “He’s right,” Tyler agreed, reloading the rifle. “I’m already low.”

  “Bailey, you go with these good people,” Clark panted, looking at Finn and leaning against his dead wife. “You take care of my baby girl, Finn! Okay? Can you do that for me?”

  Pressing his lips together, he gave Clark a firm nod. “I will.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you, Daddy!”

  He gestured with his wounded arm, blood seeping through his fingers trying to slow the flow. “It’s too late for me but it’s not for you! Now, you get in that car and don’t stop until you get somewhere safe. Do you hear me?” Bailey stared at him without reply, tears storming her cheeks. “Do you hear me?” he yelled, breaking her trance.

  Faintly shaking her head, she wiped her grimy cheeks. “No.”

  “Young lady,” Clark barked, wincing with the outburst. “You get in that car this instant and that is an order!” Exhaling, his muscles loosened with the tension in his voice. “I’ll be fine right here with your mother.” He glanced at his dead wife and smiled, tears glistening across his leathery skin. “I love you both so much.” His eyes snagged on Champ’s bloody body and his face sagged with sorrow. “Champ?”

  Finn slipped a foot between a dead old lady and a young boy wearing a blue suit and silver necktie who might’ve recently died from some terrible disease before resurrecting to walk again. “Mac,” Finn whispered, imagining bony hands latch onto his ankle and yank him to the ground where one bite would seal his fate. “We have to go!” He tiptoed through the doorway and turned to help Miranda over the smelly mound of flesh and bone. She passed him the ammo bag and slipped on a broken skull before tumbling out into the fresh air. Finn caught her in his arms and hugged her tight, relief washing over him on a humid wave. The moaning off in the distance, however, turned that to a short-lived victory. Sunshine winked off the vehicles, making it difficult to see how many were coming.

  “Stay here,” he told Miranda, handing her the bag and hurrying back to the front door. “Give me the guitar,” he yelled at Tyler, taking the six string from the big man as he scaled the mountain of corpses. Tyler cleared the bodies with a quick hop and Finn stuck his head inside the trailer. “Mac! We are leaving!”

  Clark wrapped Mac in his arms and hugged his daughter for the last time, teardrops spilling from his eyes. “I love you so, so much,” he said into her neck, rubbing her back. “And I’m so proud of you. None of this is your fault.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she sobbed against him, breathing him in through wheezing, wet intakes of air. “I’m so sorry.”

  He pulled back and forced a toothy smile. “Me too, sweet pea. Me too.”

  “Mac!” Finn yelled into the room, returning his attention to the approaching horde.

  “Goddamn,” Tyler breathed out, mopping sweat from his face. “That Nathan dude is in there!”

  “I saw him,” Finn panted, watching the dead amble closer. “He should’ve come with us.”

  Tyler gravely shook his head. “Poor kid.”

  Mac suddenly appeared in the doorway, gripping the M16 tightly in leather clad hands, face twisted by rage. Finn and Tyler dumped everything in the back of the Ford Bronco II, taking up most of the space and shutting the tailgate. Leaping the slippery bodies, Mac poured out into the sunshine and quickly retrieved a black duffel bag from her cruiser.

  “Get in, Tyler,” Miranda cried, holding the front seat up so he could squeeze into the back. Mac pulled the machinegun strap over her head and powerwalked to the truck, blinking tears down her bloodstained face. Finn held the front seat up and Mac tossed the bag inside before a booming shotgun blast snapped her glassy eyes around to the trailer.

  “Dad,” she cried out, breaking into a sprint.

  Snagging her by the duty belt, Finn pulled her into his arms and lifted her off her feet. Mac kicked and screamed, struggling for freedom. “There’s no time for that,” he shouted, straining to hang onto her. “They’re coming!”

  “Dad!” she cried, breaking down in Finn’s arms and giving up her fight.

  “We have to go, okay?” he whispered in her ear, carefully setting her back on the ground. “I promised Clark I’d take care of you and that promise starts right fucking now.” He hesitated before letting her go. “Now, get in the truck.”

  Just when he thought the pretty cop would dart back inside the trailer to join her parents in eternal bliss, she gave him a shallow nod and squeezed into the backseat. Finn climbed in and slammed the door shut, hitting the locks and starting the engine. The small SUV lurched forward, spraying gravel against the trailer as it sped around the circle drive. Taking a hard right onto the paved road out front, the Bronco II slid sideways before the wheels found purchase and shot them into the great unknown.

  The dead grew smaller in the mirrors and the tires clicked against the cracks. Their breath rushed in and out, eyes staring dully out the windows. And then, in a moment where silence and safety met in the middle, they were gone again.

  11

  Hailstorm

  Nobody said a word, preferring to stare vacantly out the windows and watch the world go by instead. It was like they lo
st more than Clark, April, and Jake back at the trailer. It was like they lost a part of themselves as well. The innocent side that comes from never killing another human being – dead or alive. There was something terribly unsettling about blowing the face off an eleven-year-old girl, even though she was trying to kill you. At one time, she was somebody’s baby girl, high on butterflies and sidewalk chalk. Finn got into the gas and released a tired breath. He felt like one of those things on the inside.

  Decimated.

  Empty.

  Lost.

  Where could they go? What could they do to stop the spread? And how could they live with themselves if they didn’t? Nowhere would be safe and if it was, it wouldn’t be for long.

  They stopped for gas and snacks at some rundown shack out in the boondocks, where life went on like business as usual. Oh, the news was out, and people were talking, but where the infection hadn’t yet reached, life went on with a casual flare to it that left Finn reeling. They had no idea what was coming their way. Seeing it on Twitter and Facebook was one thing, but seeing it play out in person was another altogether. To smell it. Feel it. Taste it. Getting back in the car, they locked the doors and Finn drove.

  “All these people are screwed,” Tyler said, tipping back a bottle of Mountain Dew in the backseat. “And they don’t even know it yet.”

  No one responded because nobody wanted to admit he was right. Not when they could they could avoid the ugly truth and just breathe instead. So, Finn drove. He passed a big green tractor and the man seated atop gave them a friendly wave before fading into the background. No matter how many miles they put between them and that terrible trailer, it didn’t seem like enough so Finn drove on. Much to his chagrin, Tyler broke out the guitar and started playing, singing off key and getting under his skin. Sensing his distress, Miranda squeezed his hand and bit back a smile, carving his agitation into a splinter of annoyance.