by Zuko, Joseph
“They need to eat too. We’re neighbors,” she said as she turned and headed back to the van.
“Are we feeding the whole complex now?” Cliff called after her.
“No, just them! I don’t know, maybe the ones that need help. Goddamn it, Cliff. I don’t know! Let’s go!” Tina did not stop to look back. The conversation was over as far as she was concerned. Cliff gave the two thieves a nasty stare as Long Hair fought to get to his feet.
Neck Tattoo gathered up the packages of meat and the bag of rice.
Cliff followed his wife back to the van. All the time he kept his eyes on the two young men. Long Hair hobbled his way over to building D as Neck Tattoo carried all of the food. Cliff scanned the apartment complex. Eyes watched them from every building.
How many other people are sitting with empty kitchens?
It had not even been a half hour since tons of shit exploded into the fan and they were already throwing rocks and fighting for food. They muscled the last of the supplies up into their place. Tina locked the door and turned her back to it. She leaned against the door and could feel the cold metal through her shirt. The cold felt great against her sweaty skin.
She dropped down to her butt and joined the massive pile of food in the front hallway of their place. The butcher knife shook in her hand. She let it fall to the floor and rubbed her palms together. A headache had already started to creep its way in. Stress, dehydration, fear and muscle fatigue were taking their toll. The muscles in her quads ached from the steps and she could already feel the knots forming tight in her back.
One of the cases of beer sat beside her. She ripped into it and took out two cans. Cliff stepped over a bag of beans and joined his wife on the floor. She handed him one.
“Thank you.” Cliff said with a grunt as his butt landed on the floor.
They popped the tops and took long drags of warm beer. The children played quietly in the back bedroom. Two of them pretended to be puppies as Eve trained them to roll over and play dead.
“This is a…situation we are in here,” Tina took another sip and rubbed at her thighs.
“If this thing is worldwide…then we’re in it deep,” Cliff wiped some sweat off his forehead.
“Oh fuck!” Tina gritted her teeth.
“What?” he sat up straight.
“Your Mother!” Tina held her hand to her mouth as if another word could further curse the situation. Cliff’s mom lived in a retirement community a mile away. She was in her seventies, but her body had withered away after years of substance abuse. She had been quite the rocker chick and lived the hard life for decades. “You have to go get her!”
“I can’t leave you and the girls!”
“You can’t leave her there alone. That would tear you up inside. You know it. You have to go, now!”
“We can’t take care of her here! We don’t have the right equipment.”
“If it’s her time to pass, she would want to be here with family. Not in that cold old folks home.”
“You’re right. I’m just scared to go outside again.” Tears formed in his eyes.
Tina reached out and pulled him in for a hug. He rubbed the tears out of his eyes and pushed himself up off the floor. He drained the rest of his beer and then opened the hallway closet, took out his heavy leather welding jacket that he wore to work.
“Girls, come here.” Cliff called his children. The little ones gathered around him.
“Daddy has to go get Granny. You stay as quiet as you can and behave for your Mama.” He squatted down to their level and wrapped his arms around all three of them.
“I love you.”
“We love you too Daddy,” Eve dropped her head onto his shoulder.
Alex, the five-year-old noticed his red eyes, “Why are you crying, Daddy?”
Cliff struggled to find the words.
“Daddy’s worried about Granny. That’s all,” Tina rose from the floor and finished off her beer.
“That’s it. Daddy’s worried.” He gave each of them a kiss and one last good squeeze.
“Don’t worry Daddy, it will be okay,” Eve whispered.
His grip on them was tighter than normal and they grunted from the pressure. He gave each girl a little bonk on the noggin. A forehead-to-forehead kiss.
“Bonk, bonk, bonk,” they said it together. He stood back up, zipped his jacket and reached for his truck keys that hung off a hook by the front door. His hand rested on the doorknob as he turned back to face his wife.
“I’ll see you, girl.” It was something he had said to her thousands of times over the years, but it was the first time it brought Tina to tears. Cliff checked the peephole.
All clear.
He raced out the door and Tina locked it behind him. Again his boots crashed down onto the concrete steps leading out of his place. His heart pounded, not from the run, but from the Mount Everest sized pile of fear that was piling up around him. He felt stupid for leaving his family, but the idea of someone chewing up his mother ripped out his heart. It was a five-minute drive to her place. He should be there and back in fifteen.
Cliff unlocked his 2002 black Dodge truck. He needed to drive it to carry his mom’s wheelchair back home. A bunch of building supplies lay in the bed. Some extra stuff he had to clean up yesterday at work. He looked back at his apartment before hopping into the cab. Four heads looked down at him from his bedroom window. He looked back at the top of the stairs to his place. He could build a barrier with these supplies. A little something to keep the freaks from his front door. He gave his family one last wave and tossed the meat cleaver into the passenger seat as he hopped up into the truck.
The Dodge always smelled like the job site. Dirt and fresh cut lumber. He slammed the door shut. He had to because it was the only way to get the damn thing to close anymore. It had been like that ever since he was at work and moved his truck out of the way of a cement mixer. He left his door open because he needed to move fast and get back to his spot on the concrete pour. He tapped the gas and had only moved backwards a couple of feet when his door crashed into his boss’s brand new seventy thousand dollar Ford F-450 Platinum. It screwed up the hinges on his door a little and he could never afford to get them properly fixed, but the damage to his boss’s truck, oh baby. He destroyed the fender, passenger door and rear quarter panel. Almost lost his job and the ribbing that followed lasted for months. No insurance meant that he had to pay out of pocket. No cash meant that his boss had to garnish his wages for a year. It was a rough twelve months.
Every time Cliff got into his truck he was reminded about that horrible day. This time the thought of that horrible day only lasted half a second. Today was ten times worse. He twisted the key. Both the engine and the radio kicked on. The beefy system spewed brutal heavy metal. The tires threw little chunks of asphalt as he sped backwards. He jammed it into first and tore out of the lot. He watched as a few families loaded up their cars to bug out of town.
Should he load up his family and head out to the woods?
Or batten down the hatches and hold tight till all this shit blew over?
Will it blow over?
Could the government rally and stop this from spreading?
It was so hard to tell which move was the right one. The heavy metal music got his blood pumping. He hammered his fist down onto the steering wheel and kept beat with the song. At the edge of the lot Cliff came to a stop and checked the street. He did a quick look to his right and his heart wanted to shoot out of his butt. A young woman sprinted across the street. Her face torqued with fear. A pack of infected monsters pursued her relentlessly. She changed course and headed for Cliff’s truck the second she saw him.
“Please!” she called out to him. Her blood stained hands waved in the air to make sure he had seen her. Cliff was compelled to help her but the six infected were so close to reaching her. He pulled the emergency brake, reached for the cleaver and threw open his door.
Chapter 8
The heavy metal rock b
lasted from the cab and muffled the woman’s cries for help. Cliff put one foot on the asphalt. The young woman was ten feet from the front of his truck. Cliff had the cleaver up, ready to fight when one of the infected reached out and clutched a fistful of her long blonde hair. Her head snapped back. She came to an abrupt stop and her feet flew out from under her. The woman fell brutally to the rough street surface. The infected were upon her. There was nothing he could do but watch them tear her apart. Their mouths ripped into her soft tanned skin. Her eyes turned white as they rolled back into her skull.
Cliff hesitated for a moment. He was driven to save her but knew she was lost. He climbed back into the cab, yanked the door shut, dropped the emergency brake and stepped on the gas. As he pulled away, Cliff spun the dial to max on the sound system so he did not have to hear the screams of her death.
Cliff made a few turns and fished his cell phone from his pocket. He kept one eye on the road as he speed dialed the retirement community where his mother lived. It rang and rang. No answer.
“Fuck,” he hung up and put the phone back in his pocket. He weaved past a couple of cars that were parked in the center of the street. Their windows were busted out and blood coated the seats. The tires screeched under the Dodge as he course corrected after the last car. Cliff checked the speedometer. He was doing sixty on a street zoned for thirty-five.
A car crash blocked the intersection ahead. The vehicles were burnt out shells. Black smoke filled the sky. A group of infected roamed the accident, looking for a snack. Their bodies were charred and smoldering. When they moved, flakes of ashed skin floated to the asphalt. A few of the monsters had spotted the approaching truck. The horde took off and raced toward him. They moved as fast as their barbequed bodies could carry them.
He mashed the brakes with both feet. The meat cleaver slid off the seat and fell to the floorboard. The palms of his hands worked quickly to turn the wheel. At this speed the truck’s tail end spun around and Cliff’s rear quarter panel made contact with the leaders of the group.
The metal around the rear tire folded easily under the weight of their scorched bodies. The fire had weakened their joints and their limbs crumbled on impact. He took out four of them, but a large group still gave chase.
He was headed in the wrong direction and did not have time for this bullshit. On his right was a parking lot to a strip mall. Cliff cranked the wheel and pulled into the lot. He got the truck heading back in the right direction. The crispy bodies followed him into the parking lot. They reached out and grabbed for the side of the truck. They hit the front quarter panel of the Dodge. Cliff’s passenger side mirror knocked the block off one of the infected. Their blistered arms folded backwards and the bodies were knocked to the ground as he zipped by. Cliff pulled out of the parking lot and was able to bypass the whole horde without any head on collisions.
He maneuvered past the accident and kept rolling down the street. At the next intersection two police cruisers had formed a V shape in the center of the road. Four officers stood in the center of the V. They emptied their pistols at the oncoming pack of infected.
The nine-millimeter bullets ripped in and out of the diseased torsos, having no effect. Cliff downshifted and turned south at the intersection. Two of the shots missed the infected and hit the passenger side door of the Dodge. Foam stuffing exploded out of the passenger’s seat.
“Fuck me!”
The gunfire faded in the distance. Then there were no more shots. Cliff checked his mirrors. From this distance he could tell they were overrun.
Goddamn!
Four officers with proper training and equipment didn’t stand a chance against them.
What kind of chance did he have with a meat cleaver?
Leaving the apartment was a bad idea.
He was only a minute away from his mother’s. Cliff stepped on it to get the truck back up to sixty.
Cliff pulled his truck into a parking lot and turned down the heavy metal music. A crashed sedan rested on top of a sparking transformer at the edge of the block. The sedan probably knocked out the electricity to his mother’s building. Great! The place was called East Vancouver Retirement Community. It was a bland two-story building with no discernable features. Cliff hated that his mother lived here, but it was the best they could afford.
He came to a screeching stop in the emergency lane outside the front doors. He killed the engine and reached over to pick up the cleaver from the floorboard. The parking lot was full of the staff’s cars. It was black inside the double doors that led to the main entrance. The eaves above the doors blocked out the sun.
He saw no movement inside.
Cliff popped the glove compartment and fished out a flashlight, checked the batteries and luckily they still had juice.
Thank God!
His mother’s room was on the second floor. No power meant he would have to carry her down the stairs. He moved fast, jogging to the front door. The sliding doors stayed shut. No power to the sensor. He spotted a big ceramic flowerpot next to the doors and picked it up. He heaved it into the glass and the windowpane shattered. The flowerpot exploded on the floor and the potting soil spread out across the white tile that led into the main lobby.
Cliff paused before entering. He wanted to see if the sound alerted anyone or anything to his arrival. After a moment he heard feet shuffling down the main hallway for the lobby and as the figures stepped from the dark hall into the light of the lobby, Cliff recognized the two women. They worked the front desk, answering calls and checking people in.
One of the women looked like she’d been scalped. Her skull, exposed on the right side of her head and the rest of her brown hair was matted with blood. Two steps behind her was a heavyset woman. Massive chunks of flesh had been bitten off her thick arms. Excess skin hung down off the back of her triceps. Their pace quickened as they entered the lobby. The scalped woman kicked over what was left of the plant as she moved for the busted window.
Cliff couldn’t stop his body from shaking with fear. When the scalped woman stepped over the threshold he buried the cleaver in her face. Before it dropped he grabbed the dead body by the throat and forced it back into the lobby.
He got enough momentum going to knock it into the other infected woman. The corpse acted as a shield and he pushed both of them backwards until the heavyset woman tripped on a coffee table in the middle of the room. Cliff pinned her down with the scalped woman’s limp body and swung the cleaver at the top of her head. The cracked cranium drained black blood out onto the white tile. He extracted the blade and tried to hold his breath to listen for anymore of the infected staff or tenants of the building.
He was met with silence.
Cliff peered down the dark hallway. He couldn’t make out any movement. He tried to remember how many people worked here. There were at least ten nursing staff, probably a janitor or two, plus the forty occupants that were just waiting around to die. Fifty potential infected people could be waiting in the dark corners of this place.
“Fucking fantastic,” Cliff whispered to himself. He clicked on the flashlight and shined it down the hall. The light illuminated a sign that read “STAIRS”.
Cliff snuck down the hall. He paused to listen for any movement. Still nothing.
Where the hell was everyone?
Cliff moved next to the door that led to the stairwell. He pointed the flashlight through the small glass window in the door.
A set of bloody dentures crashed into the glass.
Cliff yelped as he jumped back from the door. He covered his mouth with his forearm to muffle any more noise from escaping. Black eyes cased in wrinkled skin watched him through the window. The thing’s head bobbed back and forth as it shuffled behind the door. It did not know how to open the door.
As it swayed, Cliff was able to see a dozen other seniors behind it. All of them had turned. He took a step closer and tried to look past the old person’s twisted face. He flashed the light into each of the infected faces and didn’t re
cognize a single one.
He took a deep breath and kept moving down the hall. He flashed the light into each room he passed. There were bodies on some of the floors and some were resting in wheelchairs. Blood covered the beds and walls in nearly every room.
An infected old woman lay on the floor at the end of the hall. It crawled towards him. Its atrophied legs dragged behind it. Cliff hurdled the old woman, but he came to a stop a few feet from her, realizing he needed to take her down now. He wouldn’t be able to jump over it while pushing his mother’s wheelchair. The infected had already started to pivot on its belly and chase after him.
“I’m sorry ma’am.” He swung the cleaver and put her out of her misery.
At the end of the hall was the last set of stairs that led to the second floor. He flashed his light through the window and it was clear. Just to be sure Cliff knocked at the window. The sound echoed up through the concrete corridor.
He waited.
The sound of unsteady footsteps echoed through the stairwell. Cliff couldn’t tell how many infected were in there until he saw the lone staff member stumble down the last few steps. It was a male nurse.
It crashed into the door. It was a big fella and his weight hit the door with a heavy thud. Its powerful arms banged over and over into the solid oak. If there were any others up in the stairwell they would have come down by now.
One infected was better than a dozen.
Cliff pushed the handle and put his shoulder into the door. He hit it fast knocking the door into the big guy. The infected fell back onto the stairs. Cliff jumped through the doorway and landed on it, cleaver first. He hacked the steel blade into its big head. Its skull smacked against the stairs and crunched from the impact.
When Cliff fell forward onto its dead body his flashlight hand landed on the big man’s chest. He propped himself up and his flashlight sunk into the gaping wound in the dead man’s ribcage.
The stairwell went black.
Cliff pulled his hand out of the bloody hole and the flashlight’s glow had become a dim, red color.
