“Poor kid,” Michelle noted.
Jeff saw Chris eyeing the boy, saw how Chris was considering the pistol in his hand. He sidled up to the man and said quietly, “Save the bullet.” He almost whispered it but I was close enough to hear him.
“What’s outside this door?” Michael asked Mark.
“An alleyway,” Justin answered instead. “It runs behind the pharmacy, behind the supermarket Kelsey and I work at, the other stores.”
“Which way to the river?” Jeff asked, obviously dis-oriented inside the store from the pain and smoke.
“Left.”
Jeff steadied himself. “Give me that?” Mark handed him the baseball bat. “We ain’t going to run but we’re going to move fast, okay?” he addressed the entire group. Angie hadn’t come in back with us, preferring to remain in the front of the store. “You,” Jeff said to Chris, “don’t want to use that gun.”
“And why the fuck not?”
“One shot will bring every one of those things nearby to us.”
“Shit.” Chris clearly saw the logic.
“Yeah. The other thing? We see any soldiers, tanks—anything like that? Take cover. They’re shooting first, I’m telling you.”
“You’d know, right?” Linda nodded to his bandaged arm.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Okay then, we ready?”
“Wait!” Michael said. “Shouldn’t we say a prayer or something?”
“What the fuck is this?” Chris demanded. “A fucking high school football huddle? Let’s fucking do this!”
Mark unlocked the steel door and paused. Jeff stood to one side of the door, the baseball bat cocked back by his ear, wavering in his weakening grip. Chris had the pistol braced in both hands, waiting for the door to open. Justin braced the mop handle in his hands, looking like a knight without armor, horse, or proper lance. I looked around the room for something, but there was nothing I could use as a weapon.
I had this intense fear that they were going to open the door and a dozen of those things would avalanche through it.
Mark looked at Jeff and, when Jeff nodded, pushed the door open into the alleyway. Jeff poked his head out the door and looked both ways.
“It’s clear,” he whispered. “Let’s go!”
“Move,” Chris gestured to me and Justin.
“Hey, you’ve got the gun,” Linda said. “You go first!”
The boy, Danny, groaned incoherently and stirred under the sheets.
“Oh, poor kid…” Michelle shook her dreadlocked head, but Mark gently pushed her ahead towards the door the others were already slipping through. I was in front of Mark and looked back, catching him pause to gaze lovingly about the room one last time, a room in a store I knew he had worked hard to build into a successful small business in an era of super-sized chain stores; a store he was now abandoning.
Thin coils of smoke floated through the air of the alleyway. The opposite end of the alleyway was obscured in the haze.
I covered my mouth and coughed as quietly as I could.
Jeff had stopped and was leaning against the alley wall, shaking his head to clear it.
“You okay?” Linda asked, one hand on his arm, the one that wasn’t wounded.
“Yeah, I—”
“Kid, get back here!” Chris shouted, heedless that his cry would attract zombies.
On the street before us, a few dozen zombies staggered around; their attention torn between all of us in the alleyway and Justin who had proceeded out into the street thinking everyone was behind him. Now Justin found himself cut off from the alley and us.
“Just!” I cried out.
“Fuck,” Justin ducked and dodged the outstretched hands of the nearest zombie. He parried with the mop handle and knocked a zombie back three steps. Justin looked back at me and the others, shrugged helplessly, and tore off up the street, weaving between the zombies.
“We can’t just let him—”
Chris cut me off, “There’s too many of them! We can’t go this way—”
“Move, back to the store!” Mark cried.
“No.” Jeff looked worse than before. “Head back down the alley the other way, go!”
We turned and rushed back down the narrow passage, into the thickening smoke. Mark was the first past the pharmacy’s back door and he paused to gently push it shut. As the remainder of the group passed the door, it flew open again and the boy, Danny, burst from the store. His eyes deranged, his face drained of all color. His hands latched onto me.
I screamed hysterically and felt a paralyzing terror I hadn’t felt since I was a little girl lying in bed in the dark. The boy was trying to bite me, but Michael and Jeff pried him off, pulling the thing—it wasn’t Danny anymore—taut by its arms. The creature growled and snapped its teeth at both men. Michael yelled at Chris to “Shoot it! Just shoot it!”
I put my back to the alley wall and gasped, sobbing.
Chris aimed the gun at the boy’s head and hesitated just long enough for Mark to come forward, raising the bat he had retrieved from Jeff overhead.
“Hold him steady!” Mark called. Jeff and Michael braced the thing by its arms, turning their heads. Mark brought the bat down on top of the creature’s skull. It went limp in the other men’s arms. They let it drop, then turned and ran, following in the direction of Linda and Michelle.
Chris grabbed me by my arm and pulled me from the wall.
“Come on, kid,” he growled. “Move goddammit.”
“Are you okay?” Michael asked me as we ran.
“Yeah,” I nodded, wiped my nose and swallowed. “It didn’t bite me.”
“Thank God!”
As soon as the thing grabbed me, I’d urinated myself. I hoped no one could tell. I shivered uncontrollably. I didn’t want to die…not out here, not like this.
As we traversed the alley, the smoke went from wisps to roiling clouds through which we had to hold our breaths. When we emerged on the opposite street there were a few zombies limping around at the end of the block with their backs to us; no one else to be seen.
“This way to the river!” Michael called, moving ahead at a brisk pace.
“Let’s go,” Jeff tugged on Linda’s arm.
“We left the door open,” the overweight woman said, peering back into the smoke in the alley.
“What?”
“The door to the pharmacy,” Linda explained. “It’s open. That woman’s in there.”
“Come on, don’t wait,” Chris insisted, the rest of us moving away from them up the block.
“He’s right, let’s go.” Jeff pulled Linda by her arm. There was a faint moaning coming beyond the smoke in the alleyway. The zombies were coming.
The streets we passed through were chaotic. Storefronts and homes were burnt out and shot up, razed and in various stages of ruin. Other blocks appeared entirely untouched and there may have been human beings hiding inside the buildings. The streets themselves were pell-mell with cars, buses, motorcycles, and other vehicles. Again, there was no rhyme or reason to the scattering of automobiles; some streets were packed with them, others were clear except for vehicles parked in their normal spots.
We were heading towards the outskirts of the city; towards the river. There was a pall of thick black smoke rising from the downtown area. I was glad we weren’t going that way.
We avoided streets where fires burned and large groups of zombies congregated. We were often spotted by zombies, which would begin to stagger after us, following long after we had disappeared from view. Thank God they couldn’t run.
We passed bodies in the street. Some lay randomly scattered, sprays of red misting behind their heads on the asphalt. Others lay in groups, slumped over each other with blood staining the walls of buildings behind them as if they had been lined up and shot. There were a lot of people dead in their cars. Other cars’ doors were open, and there was no one in them.
“Wait!” Linda called ahead to the group. Jeff wasn’t feeling well and I was walking next to him. W
e reached Linda first. The chunky, white woman approached a car whose driver’s side window and windshield were smeared with blood from the inside.
“Linda,” I said, my voice hushed. “Don’t go near that car…”
She walked around the vehicle, peering through the passenger side window which was open a crack.
“Linda, please don’t go near that—”
Linda bit her lower lip as she looked inside. The color drained out of her face.
Chris motioned ahead of us, urging us to continue on, not daring to shout out in the open.
“Linda,” Jeff said as the woman reached out and pulled the passenger side door open. She immediately sprang back, gasping and pressing her arms to her chest, a look of horror on her pale face.
“Oh my God—Oh my God—”
I looked into the car. It was empty except for an infant secured in a baby seat in the back. The infant had turned and reached out for me with its stubby little arms, growling. Its face and body were covered with blood, whether from a wound or something it had been eating I couldn’t tell. The thing struggled against the restraints that held it in place, snarling.
It wanted to eat me. It couldn’t have been more than a year, a year and a half old, and it wanted to eat me.
“Come on, Kelsey,” Jeff had put an arm around Linda’s shoulders and was moving her forward.
We walked quietly for a few minutes until we caught up with the rest.
Michael was calling out to an apartment building. “There’s someone in there,” he said when me, Linda, and Jeff drew next to him. “I saw them in the window and they hid.”
“Come on, Michael,” Jeff said.
“But there’s people in there…” Michael watched as the soldier and the overweight woman walked by him. I stood there with him.
“Look, Michael,” I pointed down the street. There were a few dozen zombies struggling our way in the distance.
Michael turned back to the apartment and yelled out as loud as he could, “You’ve got to get out of there! They’re going to bomb the city! The Army is going to bomb the city at noon! You need to run—”
The sound of a door slamming open startled us and we turned. A zombie stepped from a vestibule onto a porch. It was decked out in a wetsuit complete with a snorkel and mask attached to its head. The skin of its face was grey and veiny. When it saw us it grunted, stepped forward, and promptly tripped over its finned feet and fell down the three concrete steps to the sidewalk.
“Damn.” Michael motioned to me. We turned and walked off quickly as the thing dragged itself up, unphased, and started to limp after us, the mask askew on its head.
“What’d you see back there?” Michael asked Linda and Jeff when we caught back up to them. He hadn’t asked me.
Jeff shook his head.
“Something fucked up?” Chris ventured, noting how distressed Linda looked.
“As messed up as that?” I pointed to a mound of human intestines we skirted, each of us avoiding it like it was a pile of dog poop. I wrinkled my nose.
“That,” Michael spoke quietly, “is disgusting.”
“You okay?” Michelle asked Linda.
“Yeah, I just—my kids, I’m thinking about my kids. How they’re doing.”
“Where do you live?” Jeff asked her.
She told him and he nodded, “That area was cleared this morning.”
“You sure about that?” She looked at him, wanting to hope.
“Yeah.”
“How about Matheson Street?” Michael asked. “You know anything about that?”
“No, I haven’t heard,” Jeff admitted.
“Have you heard anything about King Avenue?” I asked him.
“That in the city?”
“No, the suburbs.”
“Far as I know, the suburbs were okay. Things might have changed since, but like I said, far as I know.”
“You from around here?” Michelle asked Chris.
The man with the gun shook his head, “No. I’m from out of town. Stuck here. For this shit.”
“You don’t look good,” Linda pulled herself out of whatever she was feeling and addressed Jeff.
“I’m not.”
“Why’d they shoot you?” she asked him.
“Yeah, Jeff,” added Chris. “You never did tell us why your own guys shot you.” The way Chris said it, it was a challenge. It was apparent that Jeff was feeling worse by the minute, but he couldn’t have appreciated Chris’ attitude. That said, Chris had the gun.
“I ran,” Jeff said. “They were all over us. I had guys killing themselves all around me rather than get bit…”
Linda looked knowingly into his face. Michelle had a look of dismay on hers.
“So I turned and ran before they could get me. I deserted.”
“You didn’t desert,” Linda said.
“Yeah, you did what anyone would do,” Michelle added.
“No, I didn’t,” Jeff shook his head. “Men and women stood their ground and died there, fighting these…things. I ran. And someone shot me.”
“You can be court-martialed and shot for deserting,” Michael noted.
“What are you,” Chris asked, “military, too?”
“No, I’m a high school teacher.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Hamilton,” the school teacher said.
“Just and I go to Cleveland…”
“My fiancé is in the National Guard,” Michelle was saying to Jeff and the others. “He was called up two days ago. I hope he runs if he finds himself in a situation like yours.”
“Listen!” Mark called. The noise came fast, and then was gone. A jet shooting by overhead, low to the ground.
I had seen planes fly over the city in the past, but had never heard them before.
“Shit!” Chris cursed.
“Wh-what time is it?” Jeff asked.
“Eleven-thirty,” Michael checked his watch.
“Look at them.” As we walked, Michael indicated back to the zombies that were stumbling along behind us. The undead were no threat to catch up if we kept moving, but every zombie we passed turned and followed our group.
“Like the fucking Pied Piper,” Chris noted.
“The Pied Piper led the rats to the river and drowned them,” I said, thinking of the storybook I’d read to the elementary school kids I’d babysat on the weekends before getting the after-school job at the supermarket.
“Think these things can swim?” Michael asked.
“They can’t,” Jeff said weakly.
Three people burst out of an alley and startled us. The man in front was waving a gun.
“Hey-ho-ho—” the guy with the gun started to say, but it was too late. Most of our small group had hit the street or crouched down. Chris straight-armed the pistol he held and fired off three rounds. Two struck the building behind the man, raising small mists of concrete dust. The third shot struck the gunman in the belly.
The guy shrieked and collapsed. The woman with him looked at Chris and screamed, running over to the wounded man.
“Devon!” She knelt down beside the guy and held his head. “Why’d you shoot Devon?” she demanded of Chris. There was fear and hopelessness in her eyes.
Chris’ hand was shaking, but he held his pistol on the other people. The second man of the three had a bend in his knees and looked from Chris to the woman and the injured man as if deciding whether he should stay or try and run.
Chris was yelling at the three new arrivals. “What the fuck was he waving that at us for?”
“Oh Jesus, Chris,” Mark said.
“Come on.” Linda put an arm through Jeff’s and pulled him forward.
“You can’t just leave us here!” the woman with the wounded man cried. The zombies down the street were shuffling closer.
Chris stepped forward, his pistol tracking the newcomers. “Look,” he said. “I didn’t mean to shoot your friend, but he—”
“You fuck! You stupid mother—” th
e woman was crying hysterically and screaming at Chris. Reaching them, Chris looked down at the injured man. I watched as he reached down, pried the pistol from the man’s hand, and tossed it aside.
Linda was herding Jeff away down the street. Michelle and I were following, looking back over our shoulders. Chris looked at the other man who had come from the alley and said, “Help your fucking friends.” Then he turned and trotted over to join us. Mark and Michael looked at one another, but they too were moving forward.
Chris easily caught up with us. Linda and Jeff had been in the lead, but Jeff was moving unsteadily and looked pale. We turned a corner, putting the scene behind us out of sight. I wondered what would happen to those three people.
Chris walked beside Jeff and Linda and looked at the soldier like he was considering something.
“You got something you want to say to me?” Jeff asked. The challenge in his voice was unmistakable. I got the idea that Jeff might have been pretty bad-ass before he’d gotten shot.
“Yeah. I’m not going to let you slow me down. Slow us down.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“Good.”
“Chris, what the hell are you talking about?” Linda demanded.
“Yeah, Chris, you’re out of line—” Michael began to protest.
“Shut up, school teacher,” Chris snarled at Michael. “When I want to hear you, I’ll—”
“Hey, Chris,” Jeff interrupted whatever threat Chris was going to make. “Let me ask you a question. Back there, you didn’t hesitate, right? But back in the alleyway…the kid. You hesitated. Why?”
“You want the truth?” As they walked, Chris locked eyes with Jeff like he and the solider were the only two on the street. “I was thinking about my boy. My son. I couldn’t shoot that kid.”
I thought about Momma at home, waiting for me. Probably scared out of her mind. If I was with her…what would we do? Where would we go? Maybe we’d lock ourselves in the house and a man like Michael would call out to us from the street.
“Out here,” Jeff was saying to Chris, “you hesitate …you lose. You lose…you die.”
“I’m never going to hesitate again,” Chris promised. “I want to get home to my boy. And as for your I-got-shot-for-deserting-story, I call bullshit. I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.”
Eye Witness: Zombie Page 11
