by Stevie Kopas
“We’re gonna need to make sure we’re prepared just in case once we get in we have to stay in for a while. Or, I mean, something could happen along the way, we get stuck or we have to hide or something. I don’t know how any of this shit works, but we should probably stop somewhere and stock up.” Zach was nervous and it showed in how fast he was talking. It was driving Michelle crazy.
“Yeah. I see your point there. We don’t have much here,” Michelle threw Zach a dirty look he couldn’t see in the darkness of the room, “You already pointed that out. So we’ll hit the gas station up on the corner on our way to Emerald Park.”
“What do we do about the crazy people out there?” Lulu’s voice was shaky.
“Keep the hell away from them. You saw what they did to a child out there this morning with your own eyes. They’re obviously out of their minds.” Zach reached a hand out and squeezed his cousin’s shoulder reassuringly. “If the psychopaths out there are out for blood, then we do what we need to do to defend ourselves. I’m assuming you don’t have any weapons here?”
“I have a broken pool stick. I keep it under my bed in case anyone breaks in.”
Michelle rolled her eyes at her roommate. “No Zach, we don’t have any weapons.”
“Now hold on, I liked Lulu’s answer a little better. You have to get creative. Let me ask a better question. What do you have in the apartment that can be used as a weapon?”
“Like Lulu’s pool stick?” Michelle couldn’t help but be amused.
“Yes, like Lulu’s pool stick.”
“Let’s see. We’ve got a toolbox outside in the closet on the porch. That’s probably got some useful stuff in it. We have a bunch of knives in the kitchen but they can barely cut a steak.” She lit a cigarette as she thought of what other items in the house might serve as weapons of defense. “We have a couple of tennis rackets in the closet and I have a big ass mag light in my car, but other than that I think we’re fresh out of ideas.”
“Alright. Well that’s gonna have to work until we find something better. Let’s try to get some sleep, we’re gonna need our wits about us when we leave in the morning.” Zach went to get up but Lulu grabbed his hand.
“Will you sleep in my room? Please?” She sounded like a child as she asked. “I’m really scared.”
“Of course.”
Michelle left the living room with a sigh. She felt like she was trapped in the apartment with a bunch of babies. She locked her bedroom door and brushed her teeth in the dark. When she was finished, she curled up in her bed and out of habit, reached for her cell phone. She remembered that it was still outside on the porch with a shattered screen. She mumbled cusswords to herself and rolled over, falling almost immediately to sleep.
She woke the next morning to knocking at her door. “Are you planning on getting up anytime soon?” Zach’s muffled voice travelled through the crack in the door’s frame.
“I hate him so much.” Michelle said to herself as she stretched in bed and tossed her blanket to the side. He knocked again and called her name. “Yeah! Alright!” She angrily stomped into the bathroom and turned on the light. She washed her face and threw her thick curly hair back in a ponytail. She put some mascara on and brushed her teeth, faking a smile in the mirror before turning out the light and getting dressed.
Lulu and Zach were waiting for her in the living room with a mound of luggage piled around the coffee table. Michelle made a beeline for the coffee pot, “Are we going camping?” She smirked at Lulu as she poured herself a cup of breakfast blend.
“Did you even pack anything up?” Zach fiddled with his glasses as he spoke. “You already overslept, we need to get a move on.”
“As a matter of fact I did put a bag together. I don’t know where you think we’re going but it ain’t on vacation.” She gulped down the hot coffee. “We don’t know what to expect out there, or how long it will be until help comes along and clears this mess up.” She thought of the words that just left her mouth, would there be any help coming? She pushed the fear from her mind and finished off her liquid breakfast. “I’m just not too worried about my carryon luggage at the moment.”
Lulu looked at all of her bags, suddenly embarrassed. “I just wanted to make sure I have clean clothes.”
“Yeah, and I don’t even have any other clothes.” Zach stood up and pointed at the coffee table. “Take the hammer Michelle, and grab your bag. I’m ready to get out of here.”
Michelle retrieved her overnight bag from her bedroom and looked around one last time before shutting her door. She didn’t know if she’d ever set foot in her own bedroom again, but for the most part she just didn’t care. Back in the living room she noticed that Lulu had set all but two bags to the side, one that she carried and one that Zach had shouldered. “Are you driving?” Lulu looked at her, broken pool stick in hand.
Michelle nodded and grabbed her keys and the hammer from the coffee table. She looked from Zach to Lulu and back to Zach again. “Here goes nothin’.” She unlocked the front door and pulled it toward her. An assortment of sounds hung on the air and an awful odor greeted them on the second floor landing. Michelle cautiously descended to the first floor and looked around, not a soul to be seen. She avoided the pile of remains in the courtyard of Janice and her son, she hoped Lulu would choose to do the same, she didn’t want her holding them up by vomiting again. The trio walked in silence down the sidewalk around the building, not knowing what to expect around the corner in the parking lot.
Michelle’s red Camry Hybrid sat crookedly in its space, the result of a night of drinking. The majority of their neighbors’ cars were still in the lot, none of them brave enough to leave after what happened to Janice, or perhaps none of them lucky enough. Michelle absentmindedly played with her car keys as she walked, unknowingly pressing the alert button. The car’s alarm went off, startling all three of them. “Oh shit! Sorry!” Michelle dropped the keys and bent down to pick them up. She fumbled with them and finally got the alarm turned off. Violent cries erupted all around them.
“Oh Jesus Christ, no.” Lulu grabbed her cousin’s arm and began crying. The maniacal screams grew louder and the three companions could now hear the sound of rapid feet slamming against the pavement, headed their way from all directions.
“Get to the car! Hurry!” Michelle broke away from her companions and headed to her car, the hammer clattered to the ground behind her but she ignored it. Her heart raced as she finally saw what was after them. Vicious, mangled creatures that looked like something out of a horror film raced toward her, growling and hissing all the way. She yanked her car door open and threw her bag inside, slamming the door and screaming for Lulu and Zach to hurry up. The two barely made it to the vehicle in time as the first of the eaters pursuing them slammed its body into the driver’s side door and pounded its fists against the window. Lulu screamed and continued to cry in the passenger’s seat.
“Lulu! Shut up!” Michelle yelled at her and threw the car in reverse. She put her foot on the gas and smashed into the body of an eater. One of her front tires ran over it and Lulu screamed again as Michelle put the car in drive and took off toward the exit of the apartment complex. She checked the rearview mirror and was not surprised that the group of dead still chased the car. Some of them were dismembered, some of them half naked, but all of them equally terrifying. Every corner she turned in the complex on her way out it seemed as if more and more of the crazies were appearing out of nowhere. “There’s so many of them.” She whispered to herself. Her mouth hung open, she was dumbfounded. She had no idea it would be this bad.
“Michelle!” Lulu cried out and Michelle brought her eyes back to the road just in time to see the disfigured, half eaten teenage girl charging the car head on.
“Fuck you!” Michelle pushed down on the accelerator and the Camry plowed into the girl at 50 miles per hour. The girl’s body smashed into the windshield and rolled up and over the car. Lulu’s screams were endless. Zach was yelling for her to stop. Mi
chelle’s adrenaline was pumping full force. She checked the rearview mirror and couldn’t believe her eyes. The girl she’d just run down with her car was getting back up. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me.” She slowed the car just a bit to navigate the final turn for the exit and sped back up, making a left out of the complex and heading toward Emerald Park.
Zach turned around in his seat to see what Michelle was talking about but she’d taken the turn too fast. “What happened? Is the girl dead? Are they still back there?” Michelle ignored his questions and kept driving. She passed the gas station. “Hey, what are you doing? I thought we were going to stop there?” Zach was clearly in panic mode.
“I’m not stopping anywhere until I know those freaks aren’t following us anymore.” She took a series of turns, Zach was glad she knew where she was going and that Lulu had finally stopped screaming. As they sped through the streets of Haven, Michelle dodged scattered groups of people as they ran. People were either being chased, hiding, or dying right before their eyes. Michelle took one last right turn that took them the wrong way on a one way street. She scanned the area and pulled the car off to the side of the road, right in front of a corner store about two miles from their home. She was still breathing hard and her hands were shaking. She had a sinking feeling that nobody would be coming to help them. “This is where we stop. Get in there, get whatever we feel like we’re gonna need and get the fuck out.” She turned around and faced Zach, her face flushed and her palms sweaty. “I hit that crazy chick doing fifty and watched her ass bounce on that pavement. That would have killed anyone.”
“Yes! We’re all aware of this!” Zach shouted at her in anger.
“Yeah, well, what you’re not aware of is the fact that she got right back up and started chasing us again.”
V
The corner store had already been cleared of any real necessities by the neighborhood inhabitants. Michelle grabbed several plastic bags and began filling them with whatever was left that could be useful to the small group. Zach nervously cleaned his glasses on his shirt and kept watch at the door. Every so often he would duck down as a random person would run by screaming. Sirens wailed in the streets and the sounds of breaking glass and screeching tires were nonstop. Lulu followed Michelle around the tiny store like a puppy, whimpering and trembling. There was almost nothing of nutritional value left in the store but Michelle kept searching. She grabbed packs of batteries and shoved them into the bag regardless of type. Matchbooks and lighters, candy and gum, cigarettes and Tylenol; whatever she could get her hands on she took from the shelves.
“Hey.” Lulu quietly called out to Michelle as they made their way through the last corner of the store. “Look at all this spray paint.”
Michelle turned to her and made a face. “What do we need spray paint for?”
“Windows.” Lulu picked up a can with each hand and shook them gently. “We can paint all the windows. Those psychos won’t be able to see through the paint.”
A smile crept across Michelle’s face. She couldn’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming joy that Lulu had proven herself useful after how hysterical she’d been. “That’s my girl.” She winked at Lulu and tossed her some plastic bags. “Fill ‘em up and let’s get the hell outta here.”
The two women grabbed their corner store treasures and headed for the door. Zach was crouched beside the entrance, he put a hand up, motioning for them to stop and get down. Lulu and Michelle ducked into the aisles opposite from one another. Zach peered out the door to see if the monster was still lurking around Michelle’s red Toyota. There was a man who looked as if he had been almost beaten to death staring curiously at the car. Blood ran down his face and chest, staining his white t-shirt. His hands were mangled horribly, as if someone or something had been chewing on them. Wheezing grunts floated on the air from the man, he cocked his head a few times left and right like he was trying to understand a puzzle. From somewhere in the distance horrendous screams could be heard, the man by the car shot up straight and took off full speed in the direction of the screams.
Zach let his breath out in a whoosh, he’d been holding it the entire time. He looked over at his cousin and her roommate and nodded toward the car. “We’re clear.” Michelle gathered up her bags and stood up, noticing now what she did not see before. On a shelf in front of her were packs of solar powered garden lights of various sizes, but all had the same solid metal stakes on the ends of them. She grabbed as many as she could fit into her already overflowing shopping bags and decided that it was an extremely useful find.
Outside, Lulu scanned the area, trembling in fear of being noticed by an eater as Zach packed up the trunk. Michelle jogged over to the car, arms outstretched and he took the rest of the bags from her. She pulled a pack of garden lights out and opened them up as he slammed the trunk closed. She nonchalantly threw the trash behind her and admired the heavy, shiny object she held in her hand. The end of the stake wasn’t sharp enough to cut, but would be useful to her in other ways. “Perfect.” She said to herself as they piled into the Camry and drove off toward Emerald Park.
Michelle tried avoiding main roads, sticking to the narrow side streets lined with vacation homes and small shops as they got closer to the center of the tourist mecca of Haven. She thanked her lucky stars that the city was already in its off season, otherwise their nightmare would have been unimaginably worse. She swallowed hard as she pulled onto the last cluster of side streets she’d be able to navigate before being forced to take the main strip that lined the Gulf Coast to enter Emerald Park. She nearly choked as Lulu screamed and Zach yelled out for her to stop. Michelle slammed her foot down hard on the brakes, everyone rocked forward as the car came to a halt just inches before plowing into a pregnant woman who had run out into the street.
“Holy shit.” Michelle panted as she stared at the disheveled looking woman. Her big belly jutted out from her small frame, she looked like she was ready to pop. The woman had one arm outstretched toward them, the other held her stomach tightly. She was sobbing and covered from head to toe in blood and what looked like a dozen other substances.
“We have to help her.” Zach adjusted his glasses on his face and pushed his matted black hair back from his forehead, the day proved unfortunately humid and he was drenched in sweat. The pregnant woman lost her balance and braced herself on the hood of the car with a thump. Zach threw open the car door and ran to her side. Lulu said nothing, her eyes were filled with tears and her hands were over her mouth. She looked back forth from Michelle to the woman on the hood.
“Goddamnit. Fine.” Michelle unbuckled her seatbelt and exited the car to help Zach. She narrowed her eyes in disgust once she got a better look at the pregnant woman. Blood dripped down her legs from an obvious miscarriage and several wounds could be seen all down her side through the holes of her blue nightgown.
“Were you attacked?” Zach put his arm under the woman and held her up. He tried to get a better look at the woman’s wounds. “I think she’s been stabbed.” He looked at Michelle but she shook her head.
“Those aren’t stab wounds, Zach.”
He examined them more closely and realized she was right. They were clearly bite marks and they were deep. Chunks of her flesh were missing and she was bleeding very badly. He noticed another gaping wound nearer to her protruding belly and his heart quietly broke for her.
“We need to get her into the car. Come on, we need to get out of here.” Michelle helped the two of them along, putting her arm under the woman on the side opposite Zach. They stumbled as her feet gave out from underneath her. She had stopped sobbing now and was quietly moaning in pain. “You got her?” Michelle asked Zach and he nodded. She opened the door to the backseat and ran around to the driver’s side as Zach gently placed the woman into the car.
Lulu unbuckled herself and turned around to take a look at their new passenger. “Oh my god.” She was crying now. “Is she dying?” She looked at Michelle with terrified eyes. “Is her baby dead?�
�� Michelle said nothing and put the car in drive as soon as Zach’s door slammed shut. I know I’m going to fucking regret this, Michelle thought to herself as she sped down the empty streets.
“Do you think we’ll be able to find her a doctor?” Lulu asked Zach who was trying to keep the woman upright in the backseat. He shook his head solemnly at his cousin and she continued to sob quietly to herself. The woman’s limp body kept falling over onto Zach, he was now covered in both her blood and whoever else’s was all over her. Michelle kept glancing in the rearview mirror at the near dead woman in her back seat. She tucked a stray curl back behind her ear and watched as the woman’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. Michelle’s grip tightened on the wheel as the woman began gurgling and going into convulsions.
“Shit, I think we’re losing her.” Zach tried his best to hold her still but her body rocked in his arms. Lulu whipped back around and quickly buckled herself back in, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. As soon as the convulsions had started though, the woman had fallen still once more. Zach’s chest heaved up and down as he stared down at the dead woman in the backseat with him. Flecks of blood smeared across his glasses and he squinted through them at her lifeless face. He bent down and put his ear to her mouth but felt no air and heard no sound. He lingered there for a moment, devastated by the fact that someone had just died in his arms. He quietly announced to Lulu and Michelle that she was gone and didn’t realize that her eyes had already glazed over and reopened anew. It was too late for him as the once dead pregnant woman tore Zach’s ear off. Zach began screaming and Lulu joined in as she realized what was happening to her cousin.
Michelle swerved as one of Zach’s flailing arms hit her in the head. The pregnant woman’s death grip was holding his head in place and her teeth were tearing into his face. Blood sprayed out and splattered onto the windows, the seats, Michelle, Lulu, and even as far as the windshield.
