Judgment

by Tom Reinhart

  Glancing towards the front door, there were several more maledicted all in various stages of decomposition and madness entering the house. A quick look out the window showed me there were dozens of them in the yard, and more and more behind them coming from the tree line beyond. A large group of them, moving together as a pack, were headed for the house.

  I raced into the back bedroom where I thought JD was, and found him fighting off three of them. I began beating one of them back, suddenly hearing JD scream out in pain, yelling obscenities. “You motherfucker!” he screamed, but with a twinge of pain in his voice, and his fighting seemed to double in its ferocity. After a few moments we had the maledicted in the room subdued, but more were coming down the hallway. I reached down to help JD get up, and saw the blood, lots of blood, gushing from his midsection. One of the maledicted had attacked him with a knife, and split his gut wide open.

  I helped him up and he got to his feet as best he could, clutching his midsection tightly with his left hand while holding his tire iron with the other. “We have to get the hell out of here!” I told him as I smacked another maledicted in the face that had just come through the bedroom doorway.

  “Yeah, go, go. Right behind you,” JD strained to say while tightly holding his stomach. We had to push our way through the hallway, knocking down several maledicted and stepping over them. From the living room I could see through the windows, and outside the yard was full of them. We had seen larger and larger groups as time wore on, but nothing this big. For some reason they were attracted to each other, swarming together into large mobs. Being cornered by a group this size was the last place we wanted to be. Suddenly JD yelled out. I turned to see him in front of the basement door, where the woman I had fought down there had come up and grabbed him as we went by.

  Startled and reaching for the woman with both hands to defend himself, JD had let go of his gut, and I watched his intestines spill out onto the floor. He collapsed immediately with the old dead woman jumping on top of him.

  As I moved towards him to try to help, I felt cold rough hands grab my shoulders from behind. I heard a crazed scream in my ear just before feeling a dead man’s teeth dig into my back. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed his head, attempting to flip him off of me.

  Instead of flipping him, his head broke off at the neck into my hands. I dropped it and turned before another could grab me, fighting several of them off with my bat as I tried to get to the front door. All the maledicted I pushed past continued on towards JD and as I took one last look back from the front door, I saw him swarmed under a pile of them, his blood flowing out onto the floor all around them. I knew he would die from his wounds and that there was nothing I could do to save him. I knew the best thing I could do for him was to make it out alive to get back to Evelyn, and keep her safe.

  Once out in the front yard, I dodged through several dozen maledicted and made it into the corn fields, where I was quickly able to disappear and make my way back home. Once there, I would have to tell Evelyn what had happened, and that was something I didn’t want to do. Behind me I could hear the insane maledicted laughing and screaming. I never heard JD again, and I simply hoped that he had actually died, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I had to settle for hoping Evelyn would never see him again, wandering around in the field with his intestines hanging out.

  Chapter 11

  The Motel

  “And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.”

  ~ Revelation 9:6

  The world was strangely quiet; it had been becoming more so with each passing day. Walking down the rural highway in the late morning, there were no sounds of human life, neither close nor in the distance. Birds flitted above us while random deer wandered the fields on both sides of the highway, but beyond that there were no signs of life. Our boots kicked up dust off the asphalt as we walked upon the remnants of mankind, insects scattering before us to avoid our crushing steps. Looking to the sky, I wondered why we hadn’t seen a Judge in several days.

  We had left the farmhouse the same day JD had died. The mob of maledicted was too close, too big, and too dangerous. We moved on to other houses, drifting around randomly like vagrants always looking for a better place to hide and more loot to sustain us. Evelyn took her father’s death fairly well I thought. I guess the reality of living in the world we were had hardened her.

  Fortunately, she never saw him again, although I knew he was probably out there, somewhere.

  For the several weeks afterwards I could tell she had become hardened even more. She became my trusted companion, always at my side. She had become more independent, stronger, and although her voice had never returned, she spoke with her heart. We had become an inseparable couple, and for the first time in over a year, I felt like I loved someone again. We had embraced each other fully, spiritually and physically, and our relationship became the one oasis in which we could hide from the madness around us. During the last few days we had suspicions that she had become pregnant, unifying our bond even further.

  Wandering up the country highway, I could see a motel and a small town just beyond. They offered a strange combination of excitement and fear; one at the potential of shelter and loot, the other at the danger of the unknown. The small motel wasn’t far off now, maybe a few hundred yards. One of those old fashioned single story motels, a long row of doors and windows led to an office sign at the very end. Eerie and uninviting, it reminded me of a place where you would see a horror movie filmed. I wasn’t quite sure if it seemed more like a truck stop or the Bates Motel. For sure it wasn’t a Motel 6, because no one had left a light on for us. I just knew it was the type of place I would normally drive past in search of something better.

  But that was in the past, in another time, another world. Today we needed reliable shelter, and the potential to find food and water and other things of use. About a half mile or so past the motel, the small town sat taunting us with promises of scavenging opportunities, and if that worked out, this motel could turn out to be a good place to stay for a while.

  A sign next to the road, about five feet high, declared the name of the motel ‘The Garden’. There were more words on the sign, but they were obstructed by the heavily overgrown plants that were slowly consuming it. The Garden was a fitting name, as the entire motel was overgrown with weeds and foliage. Vines grew steadily up the walls, cresting the rain gutters and creeping up onto the roof. The whole place had a dirty look about it; the look of abandonment and dilapidation. But then again, six months into this biblical apocalypse, so did the rest of the world. I guess I did too.

  Entering the parking lot we headed to the office first. Halfway across, I caught a brief scent of death; the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh. A shifting breeze made it impossible to tell which way it was coming from. While unpleasant, it wasn’t uncommon, so it wasn’t necessarily alarming. Watching Evelyn walk in front of me, I suddenly saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and quickly looked in that direction, towards the line of motel room doors. “Hey, hold up,” I whispered to Evelyn, although it was probably a little louder than I wanted. She paused and turned, then looked in the same direction that I was. “I think I saw something.”

  Evelyn started walking back towards me, but I put up my hand motioning for her to remain still. “Just wait a second.”

  She nodded knowingly.

  I carefully studied the row of rooms. Some doors open, some closed. Some with the windows broken, others with the curtains drawn tight and motionless. The possibilities of what could be in each room were endless and terrifying; survivors, maledicted, Judges. There was just no telling. We stood in the parking lot, motionless for several minutes. I scanned each window, each doorway, waiting for some kind of movement. A person, a Judge, an animal; anything. The only thing we saw were ugly green curtains gently blowing back and forth in a broken window.

  Evelyn relaxed her stance, pointing at the curtains.r />
  “Yeah. I guess it was nothing,” I said, beginning to cautiously walk again. Evelyn continued on to the office door. It was partially open, creaking slightly as it rocked back and forth in the breeze. “Wait,” I told her, grabbing her arm and moving past her. “Let me go first.”

  Inside was typical of what we found everywhere; a filthy looted mess. Papers strewn about the floor, desk drawers pulled open or thrown about, dust and trash everywhere. One corner smelled like urine, and the darkened color of the paint near the floor supported that someone had been pissing there. A small collection of opened and emptied cans of food were piled up on the reception desk next to the little bell and a sign that read ‘Ring for service’. A sleeping bag lay on the floor behind the desk, but it was covered with ash and hadn’t been disturbed in quite a while. Whoever had been staying here, and pissing in the corner, seemed long gone.

  On the wall behind the desk was a row of hooks meant to hang room keys, from which one set still hung. Not that we couldn’t get into any room we wanted, but given the opportunity, I preferred to have a room that might actually be still locked. It gave us the best chance at a room free from six months of mayhem, maledicted, or worse. I grabbed the green key tag and blew the dust off it, revealing the engraved number 106.

  I held it up for Evelyn to see, gave her a slight smile, and then headed back out into the parking lot. A slight stench of death and rot still hung in the air when the breeze stilled. With Evelyn close behind we headed towards the row of rooms; past 101, then 102, peering into each window as we went. Each room looked the same; like a rock band had trashed the room and the maid had never come the next morning. Passing 104’s broken window, its curtains suddenly blew outward, startling us both.

  Passing 105, I glanced into the open doorway and saw a shotgun lying on the bed. I stopped suddenly, causing Evelyn to stumble into my back. Any found weapon was not to be passed up. I stood in the doorway for a moment, just looking and listening. The shotgun was partially concealed by the bed sheets, a spent casing not too far away. A large blood splatter covered the headboard, with chunks of flesh mixed in. On a pillow I could see a large piece of skull and hairy scalp. The blood was dried and dark, having been there for so long even bugs were no longer interested in it. Someone had either been killed or committed suicide; but the body, whether walking or not, seemed to be long gone.

  I approached the bed and bent down to retrieve the shotgun while Evelyn waited in the doorway. Checking the chamber, I could see one shell still inside the dusty, rusting weapon, and I snapped the barrel closed. In the quiet stillness of the room, the sound was a bit loud, and a startled pigeon in the parking lot took flight. Suddenly a loud combination of moaning and screaming erupted from the bathroom. Chaotic banging, the sounds of stumbling, and the opening of the bathroom door sent a mind-numbing chill up my spine. A moment later a very large man appeared before us. A maledicted, he stood there for a moment, a horrific vision that caused Evelyn to jump back and let out a muffled squeal; the best scream her injured throat could muster.

  He was a big tall man, and heavy set. He had a business man’s clothes on, now covered in old blood, and half his face and skull were gone where the shotgun blast had hit. The remaining portion of his brain was visible, and one eye was dangling grotesquely from its socket. His skin was ashen gray and rotting, the blood from his veins long since gone. His remaining eye was locked wide open, unblinking, as if his eyelid had dried up and stuck in place. He reeked of death, a walking corpse with a living soul still inside.

  Like all maledicted, his thought process was short circuited, unable to find relief from the pain of death. His one good eye darted back and forth between Evelyn and I, his body shaking subtly with growing excitement like a puppy whose master has just returned home. Suddenly he lurched forward, arms outstretched, trying to speak through dead vocal chords. The sounds were still clear enough to understand. “Help me! Help me!” he gurgled through rotted lips as he approached me. Evelyn backed fearfully out of the room and into the parking lot. I instinctively raised the shotgun in front of me, not pointed at him, but as a barrier between us. His hands reached for the shotgun as he fell to his knees in front of me. “Kill me! Kill me please!”

  I could see in him there was no desire to harm me. He truly wanted someone to end his suffering. “I can’t,” I blurted as I backed away from him, “There’s nothing I can do.” I yanked the shotgun from his grasp and tried to move around him to the doorway. Still on his knees he shifted to block me, grabbing my shirt with rotten fingers. The stench wafting off of him made me nauseas. He grew more frantic, his look more crazed, tightening his grip as he tried to pull himself up on me. “Get off me!” I yelled, pulling back from him, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Kill me! Kill me!” he repeated, his demeanor becoming frighteningly hostile. Instinctively reacting to defend myself, I swung the shotgun, hitting him in the mouth. His lower jaw dislodged and dangled unnaturally from his rotting face. Releasing one of his hands from me to feel his own jaw, he fumbled around with it for a moment as if trying to put it back in place. I stood temporarily frozen, one of his hands still locked onto my shirt, his large and decaying frame blocking my path to the door. Suddenly he broke out into wild laughter, flicking his own jaw around on its twisting tendons like some bizarre toy. His madness was revealing itself, the insanity overtaking him. He started screaming, strange gurgling screams that came only from his throat as he rose to his feet. Standing a foot taller than me, he reached for me again, and I felt overwhelming fear rush through me. I tried to lean back away from him and position the shotgun, until a sudden dull thud sent another piece of his head flying across the room.

  He staggered sideways, just enough for me to see Evelyn behind him with a metal pipe, loading up for another swing. Before I could react she hit him a second time, the pipe slamming hard into his shoulder. It staggered him even further, giving me the opportunity to get around him. I bolted for the door, shoving Evelyn out ahead of me. I could hear a mixture of bizarre laughing and unnatural screaming coming from within the room as she and I retreated to the middle of the parking lot.

  The sun peeked thinly through the clouds, rain fell gently on my head, and the maledicted appeared in the doorway, maniacally mocking us. His head broken even further by Evelyn’s pipe, he reached up and ripped his own jaw off and threw it at us as he stepped out into the parking lot. I could smell it as it landed at my feet. “Kill me motherfuckers!” he screamed, the syllables now barely understandable. For the moment Evelyn and I just continued to back away from him as he approached. We couldn’t kill him, he was already dead. The only thing I could do was hobble or dismantle him so he couldn’t harm us, and leave him for nature to reclaim. Making eye contact with Evelyn, she seemed to understand as I circled around him, putting him between us so we could begin taking him apart.

  * * * *

  The next morning I stared out the window of room 106, watching the vultures pick the bones of the maledicted we had beaten into pieces in the parking lot. I wondered where his soul went if he was never able to truly die. Perhaps Father Donovan was right, and this was how ghosts were made. One of the vultures raised its head and turned towards me, a string of rotten meat hanging from its beak. It looked at me through the dusty glass as if wondering when I would become available too.

  Today Evelyn's morning sickness was in high gear. So I left her to sleep longer and I set out on my own for more supplies. We needed aspirin, toilet tissue, and whatever other miscellaneous crap I could find to make life more comfortable. I'd also planned to gather up sheets and other linens, things to start stockpiling for when the baby came.

  I decided not to head towards town though. In the other direction, about a mile up the highway, I knew there were some large farmhouses scattered on either side of the road. Evelyn had told me to stay away from there; too open, too isolated, and especially to never go alone. But I knew places like those could be treasure troves of loot. With her asleep in the mote
l, this would be my chance to check them out.

  This morning from the position of the sun I felt about a quarter of the daylight time had passed, so it was probably between nine or ten. I was never completely sure about the time anymore. I'd stopped wearing a watch weeks ago. Anything electronic or battery powered with the time on it was now a thing of the past. I had found a wind up pocket watch and for a while I tried to keep time with that just to maintain some sense of normalcy in life. But after a while it seemed pointless. The closest thing we needed to time keeping now was limited to "It'll be dark soon".

  Evelyn was trying to keep a calendar on the wall, marking off the days as each night passed so we could estimate when the baby would be due. We probably weren't even close to being right, but she needed to feel like she knew.

  We tried to form routines, to eat at certain times, to make all our trips for supplies at the same times every day, to go to sleep at the same times. We tried to form some sort of a normal life, but it was hard when animated corpses could appear at your window any minute, or an angel from Heaven might spontaneously combust you while you were going to the bathroom in the bushes.

  Yeah. Welcome to the new life.

  But we were making the best of it.

  The road, as usual, was empty. Any signs of human life had become harder and harder to find as the weeks wore on. Ash blew up and down the highway, collecting in piles along the sides against the tall grass. Deer seemed more and more abundant, the same familiar herd moved back and forth across the road with regularity, unafraid of human interaction since there was none to be found. It seemed like nature was reclaiming the earth as humans faded from existence.