Evolution of the Dead

by R. M. Smith

  The pilot spat a large glob toward her. She ducked down onto the couch. Sliding down further, she grimaced putting her weight back down on her foot.

  The stairs!

  Hobbling badly, cussing, she crossed the cement floor of the hangar.

  “God, wake up! If you’re dreaming, wake up!”

  She grabbed the rail of the stairwell as the pilot started sauntering toward her. More of the dead began pouring into the hangar, their faces yellow, bloody, sunken-in.

  “This is going to hurt,” she cried as she mounted the stairs. She held onto the rail, pushing with her chest, keeping the weight off her broken foot as much as she could. She literally crawled up the steps, banging her exposed shins on the metal stairs. At the top, she limped into the office, her hand on her left knee, bracing her foot against the reeling pain. She clumsily slid the file cabinets in front of the door hoping they wouldn’t teeter over.

  Her hand scraped along the edge of a piece of paper taped to the side of the file cabinet. Someone had taped it there – years ago. A handwritten list was scrawled on it:

  Store List

  Petroleum Jelly

  Cotton Swabs

  Popsicle Sticks

  Plastic Bags

  Beneath it: Don’t forget to pick up Greg’s depression medication.

  Carmen whispered, “Depression medication!” Her mouth dropped open, her eyes widened. “I forgot to take my medicine!”

  In a loud booming voice, Carmen’s doctor’s voice rose above everything else, overcoming her surroundings. The room was forgotten. The dead crawling up the stairs after her were shoved out of her mind.

  You must take this medicine every single day, young lady. It will help you get through your swings of depression. I know the loss of your twin sister weighs heavily on your mind. You must take it. You cannot miss a dose. If you do, you will have hallucinations!

  “I’ve missed taking my medicine for two fucking days,” she whispered, falling down on the bed. She was out of breath. “I’ve been hallucinating all of this! Is any of this even real?”

  She listened.

  It was quiet.

  Of course it’s real, darling. I’m real too. I’m your motherly reminder. I’ll keep harping on you until you take your medicine.

  Why do you think everyone has been so concerned about you taking some pills for your pain? It isn’t about the pain darling. It has been your subconscious telling you that you need to take your medicine.

  Swallowing, she stood up, ignoring the rocketing pain in her foot. She walked over to the file cabinets.

  She peeked her head around them.

  “Am I really here?”

  The peeling yellow face of a woman with no eyes shoved herself at Carmen. The woman opened her gagging mouth. Inside, all of her teeth had fallen out. Worms swam, clogging her swollen throat. She was preparing to spit.

  Carmen dodged out of the way. Spit started flying over the file cabinets. The cabinets shook as the dead pushed against them.

  Looking around for any escape, Carmen considered the dusty windows. With no other immediate option, she picked up one of the chairs at the end of the bed, stepped onto the bed, and threw the chair at the window. Glass shattered. Pulling a crumpled blanket off the bed she quickly cleaned the broken glass out of the frame of the window.

  “Yeah, this is real,” she breathed.

  Take your medicine!

  It was a long drop down to the ground.

  “Fuck,” she whispered. “Another jump?”

  The file cabinets were knocked over. Dead people stepped over them.

  Closing her eyes, holding her breath, she jumped sideways out of the window. Her intentions were to land on her good foot, but of course it didn’t happen. All of her weight came down on her broken foot. She screamed in pain, falling onto her side. She ended up leaning against the hangar next to the one she had just jumped out of.

  Her vision swam. She leaned against the wall, clenching her teeth and her fists. The pain was too much to bare.

  Suddenly, a door opened behind her.

  Someone with strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her inside.

  Sacrifices

  They ran up the jet way hand-in-hand. They hoped the inside of the terminal would be safe, or at least safer than outside; or cleaner and not full of puking spitting dead people.

  The door leading into the terminal from the jet way was locked. Scott peered through a small window in the door.

  The inside of the terminal was dark. There were no lights. Even the emergency lighting was off.

  Still, Scott could see people moving about.

  They were the shuffling dead.

  Suddenly, a bloody hand slapped against the other side of the window. It left streaks on the glass.

  Kim jerked back, scared.

  “It’s a dead end,” Scott said. “It’s no better in there than out here. We’re so screwed.”

  Kim asked, “What can we do now?”

  Scott slowly shook his head. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

  She tried to wrestle away from the person pulling her into the hangar but their grip was too strong and she was in too much pain to put up a fight. She was dragged over to a couch and gently lifted onto it. The person ran back over to the door, locked it, and shoved something in front of it.

  Carmen closed her eyes.

  The person came back. They stood over her for a second. They sat down next to her on the couch.

  “I’m Mike.”

  “Carmen,” she whispered without opening her eyes.

  “I was about to leave. I’ve got a truck out back.”

  Carmen didn’t say anything. Her leg felt like it had been crushed by a ten ton boulder.

  “I’m leaving,” he said. “They said on the radio that they’re going to burn the city. They’ve got it contained on the outside, but in here, it’s out of control.”

  Carmen opened her eyes. “Please, take me with you.”

  He was in his mid to late thirties. His hair was brown and messy. He had a short beard which was graying on the edges. His bottom teeth were crooked.

  “Alright,” he said. His breath smelled of cigarettes.

  She grabbed him on the arm. “Do you have anything for pain? My foot is killing me.”

  “Yeah, hold on.” He started digging through a large duffel bag next to the couch. “All I have is Tylenol.”

  “That’s fine,” she said.

  “I got some bottled water in the truck.”

  “Perfect. That would be great.”

  He reached for her hand as he stood. “Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

  This can’t be real, she thought. No one is ever this nice to a complete stranger. Especially not to me. Especially not now.

  Convincing herself that this was not a hallucination, she asked, “You wouldn’t have any Pamprin in your bag, would you?”

  He chuckled, “No, sorry.”

  Relieved that he didn’t have any, she said, “I could really use the restroom. Do you mind?”

  He pulled her up onto her good foot. Hopping, limping, he led her over to the women’s restroom.

  He asked, “You ok from here?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Thanks.”

  He pushed the door open for her.

  Inside, she hopped into a stall. Sitting down, she unrolled some toilet paper. She wiped her face, holding it against her skin. Her panties and legs were soaked in streaks of blood.

  Damnit, why did I forget my medication, she thought. All these voices, scaring me, pushing me, badgering me. It’s all been in my mind!

  She left the stall. At the sinks, she turned on the water and used hand towels to wash her face and her legs. She took off her panties. She washed the blood out of them with hot water, squeezed them out, and put them back on.

  Back outside, Mike had some folded clothes in his hands. He said, “Some friends of mine kept extra clothes here in case we got dirty when we worked. Maybe some of these w
ill fit.”

  A pair of sweats were a little big on her. Still, they felt very nice against her bare legs.

  “Are you always this nice to complete strangers?” she asked him as he helped her hop across the floor to the exit.

  “No,” he said. “But you looked like you needed a break.”

  “I did,” she smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  They left the hangar.

  Outside, Mike lifted Carmen into the front seat of his white Jeep Wrangler.

  He got in. Reaching into the back seat he pulled out a bottle of water. “Here you go,” he said.

  She swallowed six Tylenol. “Thank you.”

  The inside of the truck smelled like gasoline. Carmen wrinkled her nose, “Phew, it’s strong in here.”

  “Yeah sorry about the smell,” he said backing up. “I have some extra gas cans in the back in case I need to burn my way through the dead.”

  “They burn like leaves,” she said.

  “I know.”

  He yelled, “Oh shit!”

  Part of the group of the dead that had followed Carmen came around the side of hangar B. It was hard to see them in the darkness. They began to spit toward the truck.

  She screamed, “Go!”

  Squealing the tires on his truck, Mike and Carmen left the hangars.

  “We won’t be able to make that jump back across,” Scott said shaking his head, his hands on his hips. “Plus, it’s too dark. We wouldn’t be able to see even if we tried to jump.”

  “I’ve got my pen light,” Kim said with a quirky smile.

  “You and your penlight,” he said.

  “It helps,” she said with a shrug.

  He looked at her with his head cocked.

  “My husband liked to lock me out of the house at night. It was a sick thing he did. He’d make me take the trash out and then he’d lock the door. He wouldn’t let me back in.”

  “Guy sounds like a real winner,” Scott said with a crooked smile. “Why would a woman like you want to stay with such an ass?”

  “I don’t know why I stayed with him.”

  “Sometimes people just get stuck in situations,” he suggested.

  She nodded. “So I kept the light. I don’t know if it’s a good luck charm, maybe a form of security. I kept an extra house key outside, so whenever he locked me out in the dark, I’d use my light, get my key, and go back in the house.”

  “I would’ve left.”

  “I couldn’t. He’d find me. Wherever I went, he would chase me down, bring me back home, and beat me.”

  “You never called the cops?”

  “He. Was a cop.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Scott noticed lights moving across the runway. Had a plane landed?

  No, it was a car speeding away from the hangars across the way.

  “Kim! Shine your light at that car!”

  Quickly, she pulled it out of her pocket. She clicked it on. She started to madly swipe it back and forth in the car’s direction.

  “I hope they see it,” Scott shouted. “Hey over here!”

  “There’s a light,” Carmen said. “Over by the airport.”

  “What? Where?”

  “It’s, I don’t know, by the terminal over there. By that crooked plane.”

  “Where? Oh ok, I see it.”

  “Should we help them?”

  Mike asked, “I don’t think it’s the dead people, is it? They wouldn’t know how to contact someone that way, would they?”

  “No.”

  “They seem pretty desperate.”

  “Let’s go help them. Want to?”

  “Ok.”

  Mike drove toward the shining light.

  “They see us!” Kim cried. “They’re coming this way!”

  Scott hugged her.

  Suddenly, the ground around them started to make wet squishy sounds. Spurts of blood started to shoot up out between the cracks in the concrete.

  “Get back!” Scott yelled.

  He grabbed her hand. They ran up the jet way.

  “Oh man, the ground is covered in shit,” Mike said as he slowed the truck. “We’ll have to burn all of this to get to them.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Longer than we have.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  Carmen said, “Let’s try to help them.”

  Mike jumped out of the truck. He opened the back hatch, grabbed a can of gasoline, and poured it out on the concrete close to the edge of the boiling sickness.

  Backing up, he lit a match and threw it on the gas. Immediately, fire lashed up into the sky. It lit the edge of the vomit. It burned through it like peeling edges of paper.

  Scott grabbed Kim. “They’re burning it. They’re burning it away.”

  She hugged him. “We’re saved!”

  It took less than 10 minutes for the vomit on the ground to burn away. The dead in the crooked plane stepped away from the fire as it burned below.

  Mike drove over to the jet way.

  Scott and Kim ran down to the truck.

  Scott opened the front passenger side door to get in. Kim opened the door behind.

  Carmen and Scott’s eyes met.

  Together, they both said, “Oh shit.”

  Leaving the airport, swerving around over-turned jet ways, dodging parked ground vehicles, Mike Owens sped away from the approaching evolving dead.

  Scott, Kim and Carmen were not talking.

  “I sense there’s some bad blood between you three,” Mike said, breaking the silence. “Do you know each other?”

  “We knew of each other,” Carmen said, her arms folded, her brow furrowed.

  Kim started, “Carmen, I…”

  “Just keep quiet,” Scott said.

  Kim looked at her hands in her lap.

  “You’re a son of a bitch,” Carmen said to Scott. “How could you leave me like that?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I wanted to bring you along,” Kim said.

  “Yeah. Sure you did.”

  “I did! He’s the one who said we should leave you behind.”

  “Oh, you do everything he says now? Is he your master? Just because you two fucked doesn’t mean he owns you now, Kim.”

  “Fuck you. I know that, Carmen.”

  “Then why didn’t you stand up for me? You know I have a broken foot.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Mike said, “Ok. So what happened here?”

  Carmen told him about Scott and Kim leaving her after Scott’s dad and sister died.

  “I’m sorry about your loss,” he told Scott.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. By the way, I’m Mike Owens.”

  “I’m Scott Olson and she’s Kim Schlaegel.”

  “Hello,” Kim said quietly.

  Carmen said angrily, “We should have left them behind like they did to me, Mike.”

  Scott said, “Hey we’re here, alright, so don’t talk like we’re not.”

  “I just can’t believe you left me there! Did you know that I had to walk half-way across the runway with my broken foot? I was chasing you guys. I didn’t want to be left alone.”

  “I told you to stay there.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Kim asked, “Did the guy from the bathroom come out?”

  “No.”

  Scott asked, “Stacy didn’t come out, did she?”

  “No, but both of them would have. The things evolved. They learned how to turn door handles.”

  “They did not,” Scott disagreed.

  “Yes, they did! They chased me back into the fucking hangar! I had to climb the steps and they followed me up those, too! Only way I got out of there was by breaking a window and jumping out.”

  Kim asked, alarmed, “From the second story window?”

  “Yes!
If it wasn’t for Mike, I would be dead now. He saved me.”

  “Damn Carmen,” Scott said. “I didn’t know.”

  “No. You didn’t care! You were a selfish pig just like Nick was. You couldn’t handle helping me. You thought it would be easier just to sacrifice me and leave me behind.”

  Kim had her head in her hands. She was crying.

  “Pretty fucked up, dude,” Mike said.

  “It was very fucked up,” Carmen agreed.

  “I was overcome with grief,” Scott finally said.

  “That’s still no excuse for doing to me what you did.”

  “You don’t know how close I was to my dad and sister…and to lose them both…at the same time…I was destroyed, Carmen. I lost everything dear to me in my life. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have any kids. My dad and sister were my support. They were my heart…” He broke down crying.

  “I’m sorry about your family,” Carmen said, her heart aching.

  Kim was wiping tears from her eyes.

  Mike crashed through a closed exit gate. “I really hate to break up this reunion,” Mike said, “but you guys, we need to get ourselves in the right frame of mind here. I don’t know what we’re going to face out here on the road but we need to be prepared for anything.”

  Scott grabbed Carmen by the shoulder. His hand was shaking. She put hers on top of his.

  “Carmen,” he wept. “I’m sorry for leaving you. Please forgive me.”

  “I do, Scott.”

  “I’m sorry for the pain you had to go through because of me.”

  “And me,” Kim added.

  Scott said, “I’ll never leave you again, you understand?”

  Carmen was nodding, crying.

  “I won’t leave you either, honey,” Kim said. “I’m sorry for leaving you, too.”

  “Ok.”

  Mike said, “Alright. I’ll tell you guys what I heard on the radio.”

  Wiping his eyes, Scott asked, “The radios are working now?”

  “No, it was on the radio in the plane in the hangar that I work in. They’re going to initiate a burn.”

  “A burn?” Kim asked.