by TW Brown
There was a sudden and sharp lurch as the Suburban jerked to the right. Fortunately, we were only driving about thirty miles per hour. Marshawn had no problems slowing us down and coming to a stop. No sooner had he done that when I jerked instinctively as the glass, just inches from my face, exploded. I felt something sting my upper lip, but I was already trying to figure out where the shooter was hiding, and so I didn’t really feel it for more than a few seconds.
“Heads down!” Alex barked at the same time I was realizing that we were being shot at.
“And hang on tight,” Marshawn added.
I heard him stomp his foot to the floor, sending the Suburban forward with a jolt. I could also hear the wheel grinding away at the pavement. Fortunately, we were angling away from the culvert on the driver’s side and in no danger of dropping over the edge.
When the second shot was fired, I heard it. Of course, I was amped up from all the adrenaline that had just dumped into my system. I also knew that the shooter was on my side from the bullet that had come frighteningly close to hitting me.
I risked a look as we continued to chug along. That was also when I realized we had to bail out of the Suburban as soon as we could manage. The noise from that rim grinding away on the asphalt was excruciatingly loud. Fortunately, Marshawn was not stupid. He yanked the wheel to the left at the first side street he reached. As soon as we passed a few homes, he angled us for the curb and brought the big SUV to a stop.
“End of the line, folks!” he called out with far too much cheer in his voice for my liking.
I hopped out and hurried to the back hatch to let out Michael and Chewie. They both came pouring out like their behinds were on fire. Each for different reasons. Chewie always got excited when we stopped after a ride in the car. I could take her around the block and, when we arrived back home, she would jump out acting like we’d gone on some incredible journey. Michael’s reason was something else entirely.
“I think Chewie needs to potty,” the little boy said, holding his nose for emphasis.
I had no need to wait around for the funk to hit me in the face and grabbed Chewie’s leash, pulling her down the side of an old home that had the front door wide open. I resisted the urge to duck inside because I had no idea what might be waiting within and did not want to become trapped inside by any zombies that might be lurking.
I could hear footsteps behind me, and glanced over my shoulder to see the rest of the group in a single-file line. They were all right on my heels, and it was a comfort to see that Michael was holding Darya’s hand.
We all made it into the backyard of the potentially abandoned residence. Once everybody had a chance to collect themselves and we got a look around, I spied a road through some trees. That was also the direction I heard a low rumble coming from.
I signaled for everybody to stay put and hurried to the tree line in a hunched over crouch. I watched as a school bus crept past. The entire thing was covered in absolutely filthy graffiti. On the top, in the front and rear, metal posts and a railing had been welded into place. Each of those spots had a man holding a rifle. Next to each of the gunners was another person with binoculars scanning the area.
“Little early for the wanna-be Road Warrior types, isn’t it?” Marshawn whispered.
“Apparently not.” I hoped that I’d been able to conceal the fact that he’d just scared the piss out of me…literally.
“Those are just kids,” Alex said from the other side of me.
This time I am certain I jumped enough to be noticed by my companions who apparently did not understand the universal gesture for ‘stay put’. I shot her a nasty look, but she was paying me no mind as she peered through her own set of field glasses to get a better look at the bus and its occupants.
“I count seven,” Alex whispered. “The four on top, the driver and two more moving around inside.”
“You think those are the ones who shot at us?” I turned to her.
“Probably.” She gave a nod and opened her mouth to say something else when an electronic squeal echoed off the trees lining the road the bus had been prowling along.
“To the people who thought they could just roll into our area,” a voice belonging to what sounded like a kid in maybe his late teens called out. “We have laid claim to this area. You are trespassing. This is your only warning. If we catch you, we will show no mercy.”
The bus continued to prowl along the road away from where we were hiding. All the while, whomever had spoken, continued to repeat his message.
“He’s reading it from a script,” Marshawn snorted.
“How do you know?” I turned to the man with an eyebrow arched in curiosity.
“He is saying the same thing over and over…word-for-word.”
“You wanna take them down?” Alex hissed.
I glanced over to see her gripping and re-gripping the rifle she had unslung at some point and now held in her hands. There was a dangerous expression etched on her face, and I was beginning to wonder if having her along was a good idea.
“Why?” I asked as calmly as I could manage. “What would the point of attacking those kids be? We need to get out of here as quickly and quietly as we can manage. If we stop and pick a fight with every person we encounter, we will either take forever getting to our destination, or we won’t get there at all because we will all be dead.”
“They shot at us first,” Alex snapped back. She turned back to face me, her eyes glittering with either anger, hatred, or a nasty combination of the two.
“We are in their area. They are protecting it. You don’t think we will be doing the exact same thing when we get to McIver?” I shot back. “Once we get settled, I plan on us holding our place. Anybody who comes into what I consider our home will face the same…if not worse.”
She opened her mouth, and I thought she was going to argue. I seriously didn’t have the time, nor did I possess the extra energy it would take. Instead, she shut her mouth and gave a barely perceptible nod.
I waved everybody over and we waited, huddled close while we let the bus slowly rumble away. Just when we thought we could get up and start moving, the damn thing did a U-turn or something and came sputtering back up the street. It made a few more passes, the entire time, the person on the megaphone kept reading the exact same warning.
Eventually, they must’ve gotten bored. The bus rolled away and about five or ten minutes later, we heard distant gunfire and the muted and now undecipherable sound of somebody speaking on an amplified megaphone.
“Okay, we still need to find a vehicle if we want get out of here fast and also reach our destination sometime today.” I stood up and stretched.
All the little aches and pains stacking up on me were beginning to really add up. I did a very quick inventory and realized that there were fewer places that didn’t hurt than those that did.
“Let me duck inside this house real fast,” Marshawn said, not waiting for a reply as he jogged to the back porch and gave the doorknob a twist.
It opened, and he ducked inside after drawing a weapon from his belt. I took that time to check on Michael and Chewie. Both were sitting in the grass. The boy was feeding small pieces of jerky to my dog.
As I watched them, something inside me felt like it changed. I was not seeing them as two separate beings anymore. In my mind, Chewie and Michael were almost as one. It didn’t make any sense to me. I had no feelings I could relate this to, but there was something different.
I needed to care for them both. Everybody else would be able to take care of themselves, but if push came to shove, I needed to be able to take care of the two of them at any cost. Chewie had always been my responsibility. But now, there was just something about the boy. Not in a mystical “chosen one” sort of way. No, these two were my family.
“Hey!” Alex snapped her fingers in front of my face and I glanced up at her.
“What’s up?” I asked with a yawn, realizing that I was much more in need of sleep than I’d been all
owing myself to realize.
She stared down at me for long enough that I began to get uncomfortable. And by that, I mean even more uncomfortable than I was already just being around her. I didn’t know why, but there was something about Alex that…did it for me. I wasn’t sure what that was, but I knew I was in no way ready to have those kinds of feelings for anybody else. The loss of Stephanie, while now several weeks old in a world where every day seemed like a lifetime, still felt fresh. Or, at least it felt to me as if it should.
“You and I need to be on the same page if we are going to make this work,” she said as she sat down beside me. “I have no idea what your problem with me has been, or why you are always giving me dirty looks, but maybe we just start from scratch and let everything before just be like water under the bridge?” Her voice rose just a bit at the end, making that last bit seem like more of a question than a statement.
“Why would you think I have a problem with you?” I asked after I made certain to wipe away any sort of edge to my tone and hopefully any sort of expression that might come across as a dirty look. In fact, when I gave it two seconds of my time, I decided that I had done no such thing. I was about to open my mouth and tell her those exact words when she started talking.
“It’s just been really hard for me, and you guys coming along when you did almost felt like too much of a good thing. Maybe I wasn’t very friendly in those first few minutes…” Her voice trailed off, and I thought that she was done, but after a moment, she started talking again. “You have no idea what had just happened literally minutes before I ran across you guys.”
I looked up to see Marshawn poke his head out the door and give me a wave and then a gesture to just stay put. Obviously he’d found something inside the house. Either that, or he wanted to look around a bit more. I saw Darya and Tracy had both moved to the porch steps of the house Marshawn was searching. Chewie and Michael were still sharing jerky as well as a bottle of water. I looked over to see that Alex had a faraway look on her face. I could see something warring across it, but I didn’t know her well enough to know what those feelings might be. Then…she spoke again.
“I was at my sister’s house getting dressed for my wedding when it all fell apart…”
***
“The dress looks beautiful, Allie,” Samantha Lynn, my baby sister gushed as she stepped back with her phone and took a few pictures—as if she hadn’t taken enough already the past few hours, and I wouldn’t be forced to stand in ridiculous poses and take a bunch more over the next two or three hours.
She also used the name ‘Allie’ which she knew I hated
“I feel like I am being squished,” I snapped, giving her both middle fingers as she tapped her phone to take still more pictures.
“Alexandria, we have discussed this.”
Great, now my mother was going to start, and she was using my full name…which I hated even more than being called ‘Allie’. I silently swore that I would get them both back for doing things they knew would only make me more annoyed.
“No, Mother, you have lectured,” I shot back.
“It is not every day that a mother gets to see her oldest daughter married,” my mom retorted with almost as much gruffness in her voice as I managed. “You will do this one thing and then you can go back to being—”
“A giant lez,” Samantha Lynn whispered.
“Samantha Lynn, you will not use language like that in my presence,” Mom scolded. “You shouldn’t be using it at all. It is not decent, nor is it ladylike.”
My mother was about to replay the same argument she’d been having to one degree or another with first me, then my sister in some form over the past two-plus decades when a shriek came from what sounded like right outside the door. I started to step off the stool I had been forced to perch on for the past hour when a loud thud sounded. Samantha was close and held up a hand to signal she was going to check it out. Before I could tell her to get away from it, she opened the door and squeezed outside. Less than a few seconds later, the door flew open with a crash.
Stumbling into the room came a scene I will never forget. A man was riding on my sister’s back, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Despite looking strange due to his eyes being messed up with the tracers and the skin of his face being so pale and slack, I recognized him, and knew he was some friend of my soon-to-be husband’s only brother. He was some military guy home from the Marines. Apparently, he’d come just for the wedding. I might’ve been able to recall his name if not for the geyser of blood that was pumping from my sister’s throat as this bastard ripped it out with his teeth.
Samantha Lynn let loose with a gurgling scream and my mom started yelling something unintelligible about how this son of a bitch needed to get off her daughter. And that was what froze me for just a split second and probably saved my life.
I’d never heard my mom swear until that moment. She was on this guy before I could move. She kicked him in the side of the head, but he didn’t even seem to notice as he tore into my sister’s throat again and came away with another huge chunk. Her screaming had stopped, but now she was making this horrible gurgling noise that I know will haunt me forever.
My mom grabbed one of the heavy crystal candlestick holders that sat on the table. Oddly, she had just chewed Samantha out not more than ten minutes earlier for not having taken them downstairs yet. She smashed the man in the back of the head hard enough that the crystal broke. When my head would eventually clear, I would realize that is what saved us. A big chunk of the candlestick holder jutted from the back of the man’s head.
Unfortunately, my mom also cut her hand really bad. I would look back on that later and kick myself. In the moment, we didn’t give it any thought.
By now, there were more screams coming from downstairs. I had to hike up my dress, but I still managed to run out into the hallway. Looking downstairs, I saw the front door open and two people I didn’t recognize stumbling through it. At first, I thought they were drunk. They kept bumping into each other as well as the door frame, but then one of them looked up and I saw the eyes.
The news had been talking about it for a few days, but I hadn’t heard of anything to do with the ‘Blue Death’ making it out this way. Last I’d heard, it was a few limited cases globally and that town in Kentucky or something that had been quarantined. It was like any other supposed illness that the news over-dramatized. It was a problem someplace besides here, so I didn’t really think about it.
By now there were more screams and strange moans coming from not just downstairs, but also outside. I reached the landing on the stairs and could see that there were three fights taking place just inside the house. I also realized that I was not dressed for the situation. One of those things at the bottom of the stairs was now coming up.
I glanced at my mom and realized that the shock had finally crashed down on her. She was just standing at the top of the stairs a few steps behind me. She kept staring back and forth between the room where I knew my sister lay dead, and then to me. Her mouth would open and shut, but she wasn’t saying anything. I looked back down to the entrance and saw my fiancé, Paul Morris, go under a pair of the creatures as they pushed through the congestion in the entry hall. He never even saw me. He was just trying to save everybody and rushed into the fight like the former Marine he was.
When I heard him scream that terrible scream, I rushed back up the stairs. I reached my mom and had to physically turn her around and shove her back to my sister’s bedroom. Imagine my surprise—at least in that instance—when I slammed the door behind me and turned around to see my sister standing up.
That was also when the smell hit me full force. Of course, my mom threw herself at Samantha, hugging her and babbling. That thing was not my sister. I knew it the moment its head jerked in my direction and then back to my mom. It wasn’t just the eyes or the terrible rip in her throat and all the drying blood down her front. I can’t explain it other than to say there was nothing left of my sister when I
looked at that monster.
Having not lived under a rock my entire life, I got an inkling as to what this might be. I grabbed the other candlestick holder from the table and charged at the creature that was now looking down at my mom, its mouth opening as a guttural moan escaped it right before it was about to take a bite from her shoulder.
My swing caught the thing in the nose. That hadn’t been enough to kill it, but it did knock it back so that its teeth clicked together when it missed the flesh of my mom’s shoulder.
Now my mom was yelling again. This time, she turned her anger on me. That plays into part of my theory as to why this happened so fast and wiped out so many in those early days. Nobody was prepared to embrace fiction as reality…especially when it came to having to turn on your former friends and loved ones.
“Alexandria Marie Ramsey!” she hollered. “What on earth do you think you’re—”
My sister lunged at Mom, her teeth once again clicking together loud enough to get my mom’s attention. She knew right then and there that her daughter, my sister, was not okay. She might not have been quite ready to accept that she was one of the walking dead, but she knew danger when it tried to take a bite out of her.
She couldn’t put her down, but she was smart enough to step behind me and let me do what needed to be done. And that was my first zombie kill. My own sister.
It took a few minutes, and the screams from outside the room were getting fewer, but the moans were also getting louder as the undead began to outnumber the living. We needed to get the hell out of this place. My mom had shut down and was just staring at the ruined thing that used to be Samantha’s head.
I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the window. Taking a look outside, I saw where the problem had come from. An ambulance had crashed up the street. From the looks, it had rolled into a power pole. Not hard enough to take it down, but certainly with enough force to end its days as a useful vehicle. There were three cars all stopped around it.
