by Jamie Marks
Anderson stepped outside and cursed himself; he felt disappointed that he had lied. He had never been a liar, and at no time ever felt the need to lie before. She had a hold on him. Those few short days after Susan had gained consciousness were like none other he had ever had. He’d never known a woman like her before. Susan was different; she made him feel vital.
Listening to them both argue inside did nothing to put his mind at ease. I need to focus; I need...
He saw some movement out there in the darkness, and lots of it.
“It could be the trees moving?” he said to himself as he raised his night-vision goggles.
There were dozens upon dozens of the Dead making their way toward them.
“WILLIAMS!”
Williams jolted awake.
His head surged forward, and he slammed the ridge of his nose to the .50 caliber.
Williams’s nose cracked like a dry twig. A moment later his legs began to buckle, and then they suddenly gave way.
Williams slipped into the cabin of the Humvee without touching the sides...
Out cold.
Charlie screamed.
He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew it wasn’t good with Anderson abruptly screaming as he did. In a sudden panic, Charlie brushed past Cook, knocking him unceremoniously to the ground, while his fat legs pounded the concrete beneath him, and his chubby arms pumped the air. His fists clenched tight.
Tyler, on hearing Anderson yell, “Williams,” spun in the open glass door’s direction, with his rifle to his shoulder.
Then Susan screamed.
Standing at the rear entrance of the gas station store was a child. Susan judged that he couldn’t have been any more than thirteen years old, but he looked older with his face splattered with blood and his bottom lip being fat, as if he had been ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
The ghoulish-looking boy stepped toward Susan, who backed away and bumped into Tyler, who had spun around and seen the child.
“Get out of my way,” she said to Tyler.
Tyler leveled his rifle at the boy.
“I said...” Susan shoved Tyler, knocking the barrel of his rifle upward and causing him to pull back on the trigger.
The shot whizzed over the boy’s head and hit a fire extinguisher that exploded. White foam went in all directions.
Anderson didn’t know what to do... there were too many of them. Williams is gone, he’s knocked out, which means we have no .50 Cal, and only my fucking rifle; even at this range, I couldn’t take out enough to keep them back for long. A grenade, I’ll throw a grenade! He yanked one of the solid metal eggs from his webbing and pulled the pin.
Everything else happened fast.
Cook sat up. “Damn, Charlie,” he said as Williams dropped inside the Humvee.
Tyler re-corrected his aim. “Fuck you, Susan,” he said, but held his fire. Something isn’t right, he thought, as the boy slipped on the expanding white foam and fell behind the front counter without so much as a grunt.
Tyler lost his line of sight.
Anderson reefed back his arm to release the grenade, when suddenly he heard a noise coming from his right side. Glancing hurriedly before he could throw, Anderson saw Charlie coming toward him quickly.
“Charlie!”
Cook got to his feet and rushed to the Humvee. Opening the rear door, he thrust his head inside and saw Williams lying unconscious on the floor.
Charlie slammed into Anderson’s right side at full-speed.
Anderson felt his feet lift from the ground, and his ribs crack, the grenade flew from his hand and soared high into the air.
It landed on top of the Humvee and then rolled.
Cook, hearing something hit the roof of the Humvee, looked at both sides. He then saw what the panic was all about. “Oh, God,” he said as the Dead began to swarm toward him.
There was a bright FLASH!
The glass blew inwards on the gas station’s storefront, knocking Tyler to the floor and sending his rifle skidding across the room toward the counter. As he lay on his side, he saw an orange fireball shoot outward on the other side of the Humvee.
Tyler blinked a few times, dazed from the flash. When he opened his eyes again he saw the boy standing near him, covered in white foam.
Outside, giant and bright orange flames jetted toward the street, engulfing the nearby Dead. The Humvee’s far side doors were now torn from the main cabin and had disappeared, while Williams, who was unconscious inside, was now lying in several bloody pieces by the roadside.
Officer Cook was nowhere to be seen.
The back of Charlie’s shirt was on fire.
With a grunt, Anderson pushed the big man off to one side; I must have broken a rib or two? Even so, Anderson got to his feet; he was shaky, but he was in one piece. He rolled Charlie over onto his back, and extinguished a few flicking blue flames that were attacking the big man’s shirt.
“What happened?” Charlie said, he sounded weak.
“I don’t know,” Anderson said. “Something must have sparked it,” he lied.
Looking around, Anderson could see only fire --- it was now merely a matter of moments before the entire place went up. “We have get to get the fuck out of here!”
The boy stood motionless, mesmerized by the explosion and flames outside.
Tyler reached for his sidearm.
Trying not to draw the boy’s eyes to him, he moved slowly and pulled his gun free without a sound, while cocking the firing mechanism simultaneously, but still unsure if the boy was a threat.
The boy then turned and stared at him without any sign of malice, almost peacefully.
Tyler could see he was alive --- he was only a boy. He was not one of those Dead things, just a scared, beaten little kid who was in shock, who needed his help.
God, I could have killed him, Tyler thought. “Everything is going to be all right, little buddy,” Tyler said as he reached out to the boy. “It’s okay.”
The bullet fired from Susan’s new Colt smashed the boy’s right eye and blew apart the same side of his skull as if it were bone china.
The kid crumpled to the ground. He was dead.
“You can thank me later, Captain,” said Susan. Both of her hands were wrapped around the smoking Colt.
Tyler wanted to kill her! He raised his gun. “You fucking bitch,” he said.
STEVE AND KATHY
The Dodge skidded around another corner, left, left. Shit, left again! Am I driving in a circle, where am I going? Steve glanced at Kathy.
“Slow down!” she said. “Just fucking slow it down!”
Steve ignored her, well almost --- he slowed a little – not much, but it was better than nothing; The night, the last few days, the past week, the previous month, buying the house, the move from interstate. It was all stressful! Kathy’s family, the Dead fucks, my back...
As they drove, the darkness began to impose a negative aura around them as their headlights searched for the right path to follow.
He was losing it; he was losing everything. If he could have he would have cried, and not for those Dead things, but for him, Kathy and their life. If it was not for the headlights of the Dodge, and the dashboard display, he felt that the darkness might engulf him utterly, and drag him into a black almost forever lasting pit. He felt confused by the adrenaline rush, and the strange composite of emotions ranging from rejoicing for surviving to the loss of everything.
The complex feeling that comes with the loss of humanity, of being shrouded with fear.
He slowed down and attempted to ignore the darkened figures passing his window as he drove by.
None of the figures moved like free men. They moved like clay figures in a stop-motion film.
They weren’t like him or Kathy, and they never would be again as the Dodge drove by them.
“Steve, slow it down,” she asked him again. This time her voice was mellower with a light and reasoning tone. “We’re not in a race, baby.”
He smile
d at her in the dashboard lights, his and her face an eerie green.
The Dodge then suddenly came to a full halt with a loud screech...
“I love you,” he said.
He wasn’t sure why he had to say it at that moment, why he had to stop the Dodge. Nevertheless, he had to.
Kathy didn’t answer; she didn’t have to.
Kathy touched Steve’s cheek with the palm of her hand and said, “I’m so tired.”
“I know,” he answered her.
They both closed their eyes for a moment.
They were together, unlike so many others, alive.
Steve opened his eyes and saw the sign pointing the way to Macon.
“Well, honey, let’s get this thing done.”
Steve put his foot down on the accelerator and headed for the on-ramp, and into chaos. The road ahead was jammed with cars, trucks and buses, anything that people could use to leave town in, or on.
The smell was horrendous, burned bodies and rubber --- the odor of gas and rot.
Within the shadows of the fires that were burning among the wrecks were black specks of movement.
Specks that were there one minute, and gone the next.
Somewhere out there, among the wrecks were the living and the Undead, both hidden in the darkness and the smoke.
Neither Steve nor Kathy said a word to each other as Steve shifted the Dodge into reverse.
In the distance, they heard a scream and a few rapid shots.
Then silence.
It was over, all over.
The town, the road to safety, Macon...
Everything was gone. They couldn’t go home, and they couldn’t leave Forest Park.
“We’re with each other, Kathy. We’re still together. It means something. We’ll work it out.”
Steve saw a dark shadow move close by, and then more shadows coming toward them as he reversed. They crept along, no faster than Steve was rolling backward.
“If they were people like us, they’d be running toward us, or yelling for help,” Steve said.
“I know,” Kathy answered.
“Where to now, honey?” he asked.
“Just keep going back; there’ll be another way, another road or something? There’s always another way.”
They headed in the other direction for a while, a little lost and unsure of what to do next.
Steve slowed down and then eventually brought the Dodge to a complete stop in the middle of the road on a darkened street with no fires, no lights --- no, nothing --- but their headlights.
“What are you doing?” Kathy said.
“I want to see how dead this town really is.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Steve touched Kathy’s knee; he could feel her trembling.
“Trust me?” he said.
She hesitated for a moment, not because of a lack of trust between them, but confusion.
“Now it’s just a matter of time,” he said.
“Let’s just go,” she said.
“Give me a minute. If things are as bad as I think they could be, this won’t take long.”
Then he saw them.
One, and then another walked into the twin beams of the truck’s headlights, moving slow and awkwardly. Neither of them raised their hands to shield the light from their eyes.
In the red glow of the brake lights behind them, more appeared, walking toward the rear of the Dodge and avoiding the middle of the road. Maybe they had seen what a car, or truck could do. Perhaps they remember? Steve thought as they plodded toward them, their steps deliberate and difficult.
Kathy tried to remain calm. “Steve, don’t screw this up, whatever you’re doing.”
He nodded.
“Steve.”
“I won’t, just give me a little more time,” Steve said as he reached around behind his seat and grabbed his flashlight.
With a flick of the switch, he turned it on to show what was approaching them from the sides of the Dodge.
On either side of the road, he could see the Dead shuffling along the pavement.
Waving the flashlight around some more, he saw them walking out from abandoned houses, the doors left wide open, and from gardens, and from behind high and low hedges alike.
They appeared beside fences and among the abandoned and parked cars on the street. They snuck around from people’s driveways and front lawn paths. All attracted by the rumbling sound of the Dodge, the intensity of its headlights and the sudden movement from the flashlight.
Some were horribly mangled, while others looked relatively fresh, maybe because of the flu virus.
They were coming from all sides.
Steve rolled the Dodge forward.
The Dead in front of the Dodge moved out of the way; their actions were slow and almost measured, but they were no different from a dog who had a lick of road sense.
The Dodge cruised down the darkened street as if in a parade,
“I don’t think anyone’s been evacuated, and I’m damn sure now that most of the town isn’t in hiding, unless they’re sharing their houses with these Dead fucks.”
“Why not us, why are we alive?” Kathy asked.
“You might as well ask why the sea is green,” Steve said. “I don’t think it matters any more why it’s not us, Kathy. We should just be happy it isn’t.”
Ahead of them was a car, which was sitting horizontal on the road. The car doors were wide open, and the windscreen was cracked like a spider’s web and caked with blood.
As they drove along, it was as if they were seeing the world with new eyes.
It’s amazing how much you can really see when you open your eyes to what is around you.
Steve rounded the corner at the end of the street and repeated the identical thing over and over again, street after street. The result was the same. Each street was dead and abandoned.
On turning the next corner, expecting much of the same, they saw something, which shocked them both. Crossing the road in front of them was maybe one hundred of the things, moving in a tightly packed group.
“Something is bringing them together, something must have attracted them. There are people here somewhere,” Steve said, “They’re focused on something. There might be people, people who could help us.”
“Do you really think there are people around here?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn the headlights off,” Kathy said.
Steve did and then pointed to the gas station. “It would have been nice to have grabbed some more fuel too.”
“Can we go around them?” Kathy said.
“We could drive through that park.”
“Do it,” she said.
As Steve mounted the curb into the park, there was an explosion!
“Jesus!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Kathy said.
“Back the same way or through the park?”
Kathy shrugged; she didn’t know. She only wanted to get out of town. Steve was as confused as her.
“Fuck it. The park we go,” he said.
“Wait!” Kathy said as she saw flames spreading along the pumps, igniting the residual fuel from years of spillage. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the gas station, but Steve disagreed; he wanted to pass through the park --- damn the explosion, and the risk of another, larger one Steve said to her, as they debated each other for a minute or two.
Suddenly, there was another explosion.
This one was bigger, brighter and more devastating.
Kathy screamed as night suddenly turned as bright as the day.
A massive fireball soared into the air, the shockwave shattering the Dodge’s windscreen.
Steve and Kathy rocked in their seats as the Dodge heaved to one side and then the other.
The scorching heat was comparable to nothing either of them had experienced before.
Body parts and bodies flew in every direction. It was as if the darkened road had suddenly become the focal point of World War Thr
ee.
Scared out of his wits, Steve hit the gas, but the Dodge was dead.
He turned the ignition.
There was nothing, no response.
“What the FUCK!” he said, as he slammed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
“I can’t believe this!” he said when he saw what had killed his beloved Dodge.
A .50 caliber machine gun, which fell from God knows where, and had penetrated the bonnet of the Dodge, piercing the engine block, and destroyed any hope of it ever purring again.
“What are the chances of that ever happening again?” Steve said as he glanced at Kathy, who was looking back to him with white -knuckled fear.
“I don’t know?” she said, “but look at that.”
“Look at what?”
“I think he’s alive.”
“Help me,” said a man who was hanging upside down from the branches of a tree.
THE GAS STATION
A LITTLE BEFORE
As the thickening flames began to take hold, Charlie lay on the ground whimpering. His clothes were in tatters and burned. His hair was singed. Even so, he was still alive. Lying on his back near Charlie was Anderson. His face red from the unexpected blast and the heat, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.
Standing overlooking them both was Susan; her legs spread apart and holding a gun.
“You bitch,” Tyler said, his voice cracking. “You moronic, gutter trolling.”
“How dare you speak to me ---” Susan said.
Tyler tightened his grip on his pistol as Susan adjusted her stance and held her weapon pointing toward Tyler.
“How could you?” he said.
“How could I what?”
“Shoot the boy!”
Susan tilted her head to one side. “I didn’t shoot the boy.”
Anderson raised himself on his elbows. “What, who was shot?” he said, sounding confused.
“Your captain shot that kid,” she said as her eyes shifted in the Dead boy’s direction, “then he said he was going to kill me.”
“Liar,” Tyler said as he raised himself to one knee. “You killed a child, Susan.”
