Medora: A Zombie Novel

by Welker, Wick

  Oak Brook elementary was in the exact direction of the traffic jam. Up ahead, she could see cars beginning to drive on the sidewalks to bypass the abandoned traffic. Without hesitation, she did the same. She pulled up onto the sidewalk, forcing a man who was running towards her to step up onto an adjacent lawn. He immediately showed her his middle finger and continued running. His angry grimace scared her and what frightened her most was that the man could see that she was covered in blood and he acted just as callously as if she spit in his face. It was then that she realized there would be no police to call and no Good Samaritan neighbor to help her. The angry eyes of that man told her everything about what had changed that day.

  She maneuvered her car around stray bicycles, fire hydrants and people. When a break of traffic occurred in the street, she would cross inward and emerge on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The only flow of traffic was back and forth between the sidewalks and across grass. There were sick people mingling in the streets, trying to follow the running people, faintly clutching their hands and arms in their direction as they ran. Some were lying on hoods of cars, or curled up and shivering next to houses. As she started to follow the new traffic pattern that snaked over people's lawns and into playgrounds, the sick people would come up to her car and look in, peering at her and pushing their faces to the glass. She could see they had changed. Their eyes were vacant with limbs hanging limply, but she knew their danger from the attackers in her home.

  The scant number of infected people in the neighborhood and streets was only enough to cause annoyance to those passing by who would only push them down when directly in the way. Ellen wondered how anyone could think that what these people had was just the flu. The flu was missing a couple of days of work and lying in bed waiting for a fever to break. What these people had was beyond any sickness she knew; it was as if the infected people had completely forgotten whom they were as though they had Alzheimer’s, behaved with the violence of rabies and had a touch of leprosy to make their skin decay.

  Ellen could see up ahead that the makeshift traffic had actually shunted through someone’s backyard, cutting into an alley behind the house. The wooden fence had been completely trampled and tossed aside from the infiltrating traffic, and deep grooves had been carved into the grass from the car tires that passed through. As she passed through the backyard, she saw a single woman in a bathrobe slumped on the step of the patio to the home. She had a bat in one hand and held a cigarette to her mouth with the other.

  Ellen knew she was just two or three blocks from the elementary school. Her whole body was telling her to abandon her car and run to the school and run to her daughter, but on foot she didn't trust the streets. Everyone she saw was on the verge of exploding with anarchy. However, after the traffic started taking her to in a direction away from the school, she decided it was time to ditch the car and make a run for it. On the front lawn of a house, she put the car in park and could see the top of the school’s swing sets through the backyard of the house.

  While holding her breath, she got out of the car and ran to the backyard, hoisted herself on up to the fence and momentarily perched on top, her head spinning around from the combination of severe nausea and dehydration from running. She was now looking at the core of the traffic jam: Oak Brook elementary. Cars were parked around the building, circling the entire perimeter and radiating outwards through the playgrounds and grass. It looked like a chaotic car dealership. Parents and children were filing in between the cars, running from the sick, ducking into truck beds and trying to drive their cars through the thicket of people. There was a set of legs lying underneath the tire of a station wagon, hiding the torso underneath the body of the car.

  She was about to jump down from the fence when she heard the sound of branches breaking a few yards down. She saw a huddled mass of people that were accumulating against the fence of someone’s backyard. It was a group of infected that were all pushing in the same direction at the wooden fence, a few houses down on the same fence that Ellen found herself. The wood beneath her feet began to jolt with the advances of the sick on the fence. With every push, she could feel the fence slanting downward. Fearing that she would become an easy target if she simply jumped to the ground, she carefully walked along the top of the fence, crouching over for balance until she was able to grab hold onto a large tree and lifted herself into it. She curled up her legs against her chest and put her back to the trunk of the tree, hiding behind a thick wall of bright green leaves. Holding her breath, she hoped and waited for the crowd of the infected down below to break down the fence and move on to the next obstacle that would stop them.

  Another rocking of the fence sent a blunt vibration into the tree, slightly swaying it with Ellen bracing herself with the branches. She waited for the next wave and then it all happened too quickly. The fence indeed came down like a domino, bringing all the attached fences from four or five yards crashing at once. With the fences, a single long lightning rod next to the tree that Ellen was hiding in, also fell down, hitting a power line on its way, snapping it into two, releasing a vibrant shrill of sparks and electricity into the hot air. Before she could begin to register in her mind what was causing the caustic, fiery sound above her, a bolt of hot pain hummed into her entire body. All of her muscles spasmodically thrust outward at once, making her fall from the tree and slam into the grass below. Her back uncontrollably arched and her lips felt singed with smoke. Her entire being quivered and shook, trying to understand and cope with the extreme electrical energy that was just passed through it. She could feel her heart beating erratically beneath her chest, pounding at the walls causing her to breathe paradoxically, inhaling when she should exhale; her breathing muscles fighting against each other rather than together for a single breath.

  She opened her eyes and saw a power line wildly whipping back and forth in the air above the tree, spewing sparks and threatening with a punctuated lashing sound like a leather whip. Gasping for air, she coughed repeatedly and then alternated between choking and retching. Her vision darkened and she briefly lost consciousness, drifting along, with the pain slipping away from her thoughts. Quickly, the school that lay only a few hundred feet burst into her thoughts again making her jolt out of a sleepy haze into an upright sitting position. Long strands of grass brushed at her skin and she felt an overwhelming need to drink water.

  Her eyes and head were throbbing as she crawled on her hands and knees to a shallow mud puddle and she slurped up as much water as she could at one time. As she guzzled the water, she saw the source of the puddle, which was a leaky sprinkler head and she moved over to it, drinking from it like a drinking fountain. There was a stirring sound at the side of the house. Looking quickly over her shoulder, she saw movement and so she quickly crawled into a doghouse that incidentally had a dog in it. Curling up next to a Golden Retriever, she waited for whomever it was to pass by the doghouse. Sleepiness began to overtake her again and her entire body ached with pain. She was afraid that she would die if she slept, die next to this friendly dog that seemed to welcome her companionship by licking her nose.

  “Hey there,” she said, giving into the fatigue, “let’s take a little nap, okay?

  *****

  Keith clutched at the handles of the metal double doors of Oak Brook Elementary and pulled them with no movement.

  “Hey, let me in! I need to get in there. My wife and daughter are in there! Ellen and Jayne Sanders? Have you seen them?” He yelled at the doors hoping for a response, grasping onto the aluminum baseball bat that he rummaged out of his garage along with some of his own running shoes that actually fit his feet, a backpack of random food from the kitchen and three flashlights.

  He looked behind him and saw small movements past the cars that were parked all around the doors. An anonymous arm lay lifeless, sticking out from beneath the bottom of a truck and a dog barked from the passenger seat of another car.

  “Hey!” He rammed the bat into the door producing a tremendous t
hunder that resonated within the metal doors. “I need to get in!”

  The door suddenly creaked open an inch, so Keith slipped his fingers in, trying to get leverage to yank it open but someone was holding it firmly in place.

  A man's voice spoke from within, “Go 'way, ain't nobody you know here.”

  “No, there is, my wife and daughter, Ellen and Jayne Sanders. My little girl goes to school here.”

  The man let out a low chuckle. “No, no, you don't need to worry 'bout that no more. All the kids are gone from here now.”

  “Who are you? Can I talk to a teacher or the Principal?”

  “Listen, you need to back away and leave, there's nothing here for you.”

  “If you don't let me in, I'm going to break the window around the corner and I'm coming in.”

  Another low chuckle. “You talkin' about that window right there down the sidewalk?”

  “Yeah, I'm going to shatter the shit out of that window and I'm coming in for my daughter, you son of a bitch!”

  “I don't recommend you do that. No, I wouldn't do that for your own good.” The door slammed shut.

  “Dammit!” He looked behind him, turned to walk down the sidewalk, approached a low window completely black with tint, and cupped his hands around his eyes trying to see in with no success. Someone bumped the window from within and he backed off. Then another bump followed by a thick thud.

  “That's it.” He lifted his bat over his head with both arms and brought it swiftly into the window, smashing the frame into black tinted shards of glass. He looked in and dozens of eyes stared back at him in unison.

  “Jayne! Jayne, are you here?” He climbed into a large gymnasium, tried to get a better look in, and realized that children were staring at him. He swallowed and gripped the bat. They were all infected, all of them. No time for thinking. With his bat he nudged the chest a young boy who grabbed onto Keith's leg and tried to gnaw on his calf. He kicked into the chest of an overweight preteen girl and tried to move swiftly around the crowd. They surrounded him quickly and seemed to move faster than the infected adults.

  He started swinging the bat from left to right to clear a path ahead of him towards the gym doors that would lead into the rest of the school, clipping some of the children in the arms. He refused to think that one of them could be his own daughter, knowing that if he saw her bloated infected face trying to bite him, he would sink in despair that very moment and let himself be devoured by half dead children.

  He pushed them over as he moved, making them topple over one another and slowing the general speed of the crowd towards him. Trying his best to kick over as many as he could without resorting to using the blunt force on children, he made it across the gym to locked wooden double doors. He was about to pound on the door but the children were quickly at his back forcing him to bring the bat into the side of one of their faces, completely shattering a cheekbone. He swung the bat at another boy’s knee making him topple over.

  Making a final lurch to the wooden doors, he slammed on it with the bat, producing a thunderous sound that resonated to the walls of the gym.

  “Someone open this door, right now! I'm in here, a person is in here, and I’m not infected!”

  There was no response at the door and more small figures were falling on him, toppling over one another and grabbing at his legs. He swung down hard and then swung at the doors again.

  “Open up! They're swarming me!” He paused and then kicked downward. “Open up, you bast…” The doors opened inward and he fell through into a bright hallway of white light. Looking up, a gigantic belly of a man loomed over him.

  “Get up! Get out of the way, gotta get this door closed.” Keith scrambled to his feet and kicked back into the gym at a body crawling on him and the door slammed shut and clicked.

  “Damn you, I told you to not break that window in.” A man with a very round face and stubly facial hair stared back at Keith. “Didn't I tell you? We got all the damn infected in there, and there's no where else to put 'em.”

  “I'm-- I'm sorry, but my daughter goes to this school and I've got to find her.”

  The man looked at him and pursed his lips together. “Sorry, buddy, but I think you found her. We put all the infected kids in that gym.”

  “No, no she wasn't in there. I didn't see her. She wasn't in there. Where are the other kids, the other kids that didn't get infected, they can't all be sick? Her name is Jayne Sanders.”

  “Look, I don't know any names. I'm just the head janitor here. Most of the teachers left a while ago, just a couple of us left here now. I'm sorry, but your little girl is probably in that gym and she's not your little girl any more. All the healthy kids were taken home a while ago.”

  “Well, I got to find out.” Keith turned back to the gym door to unlock it.

  “Hey! What in the hell are you doing? Do you know how hard it was to get all those damn demons in there? I'm not letting them get out again. Hell, probably half of them have already gone through that window you busted.”

  “I'm opening this damn door.” He turned quickly, unlocked the door and peeked through. Most of the kids had moved out through the window or were headed towards it.

  “Jayne, can you hear me?” Slowly, their heads swiveled in the direction of his voice and they began to move towards him. Some of them cried out with a long drawn out whining.

  “Look now, close that door, close it! She might be in there. She might not but the only way you're going to find out is if you go along bashing all their heads in with that bat until you find her. Do you want to do that?” Keith stayed motionless at the door until the burly janitor closed it for him. “Come on, most of us are holed up in the teacher's lounge.”

  “Okay,” Keith passively submitted. “Do you know if my wife is here? Her name is Ellen Sanders.”

  “Well, I don't know, she could be, there are quite a few people crammed up in here. We can find out for you.” The man's voice had taken a tender tone, almost fatherly, trying to console the man whose wife and child were probably dead.

  Keith realized that he had probably fallen into some sort of shock. He wasn't thinking anymore, only taking orders from the unknown janitor. They walked down a thinly carpeted hallway. There were bodies; most slumped up by the walls, pushed out of the way by panicked foot traffic. Keith began to stop at every child and bent down to see his or her face and then moved on. The janitor waited patiently as Keith examined each of their faces.

  Chapter thirteen

  “Hey, folks, this is the Captain speaking and I assure you that the safety of our passengers is the number one priority of this airline. We did have a minor incident with an unruly passenger who has been detained and has been deemed sick with the flu. We are 100% certain that there are no safety threats to this plane or anyone on board and this incident was an isolated and random event. We were able to make up our delayed time in the air and do expect a timely arrival in Holland once we reach a cruising altitude. We do expect some slight turbulence up ahead, so I will be switching on the safety belt sign shorty. Thank you.”

  *****

  Dave wished he had died. At this point, he only had a vague feeling of actually being alive. He mostly knew he was alive by the pulsating pain of his face like a horse with its hoof squarely standing on his forehead. Voices began to distill from the static sound in his ears and the images of open rib cages and hanging limbs in downtown Manhattan began to flood his mind.

  Someone was near him. “This guy’s waking up.”

  Dave’s legs jerked into life as he tested to see if they worked.

  “Whoa, whoa, watch him! Watch him!”

  Opening his eyes, he saw the black circular tip of an automatic rifle looking back at him. He feebly swiped at it and let out a long and painful grunt from the cracking pain in his head.

  “Alright, put a bullet in it.”

  “No! No, I’m not sick! My head is just killing me.”

  “Whoa, okay. Hold your fire.”

  He
looked up at three towering men staring down at him; above them were tall pine trees.

  Dave squinted at them through the sunlight, “What happened? Where are we?”

  “We got the hell out of New York, that’s what happened,” one of them replied while snorting and walking away.

  Another spoke up, “You’re a pretty lucky guy, Sir. We were leaving the city and happened to stumble onto you. I thought you were one of the infected but then I heard you trying to talk so I just scooped you up and threw you on top the Humvee and here you are. Where did you even come from? That entire section of the city became completely infected in a matter of hours. Must’ve been hiding somewhere?”

  The man spoke with a certain nonchalance that comforted Dave. He detected some sort of accent from another state but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  The man continued, “I mean, shit, that entire street was raining with thousands of bodies. Thousands. My socks,” He bent down and lifted his pant leg up. “My socks were originally white, and now they’re fucking red like Normandy beach. The amount of bodies must’ve been three stories high right in that street, don’t you think, Captain?” He gestured to the other man standing at Dave’s left.

  “Yeah.” He also slowly walked off.

  Dave fell silent knowing that he was singly responsible for the deluge of bodies that flooded the street. He alone lured thousands of the sick off the top of a skyscraper and survived. “My girlfriend is dead,” he blurted out in some sort of attempt to change the subject.

  “Yeah, well, everybody’s girlfriend is dead now, buddy.” The man paused and cleared his throat. “What’s your name? You hungry? Why don’t you get up off the dirt there and get something to eat. All we got are rations, but we got plenty.”