by Lanza, Marie
I stayed seated against the dresser, too afraid to move. I could only hope there weren’t any more of these things in the house or on our way back home. Then my thoughts went to Melody. We had to warn Mel and Jason. We all had to get out of this city, far away from these monsters.
Dan kneeled before me. “Hey, honey, you OK?” He rubbed my knee, taking me out of my thoughts.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine.” It was an obvious lie.
“We’re getting out of this house. We’ll take the trail back home and contact your sister, OK?” I’m not sure how Dan was able to pull himself together so well, but I was grateful for it.
Dan helped me to my feet and handed me a gun. We sat in the door for a few more seconds just listening. Mayhem wasn’t growling, so we figured we were alone in the house.
We moved the dresser out a little more so we could slip through. Then Dan checked again for any sign of danger and ushered me through the door. He went back in for a moment, mustered his strength, and pushed the dresser another two feet from the opened door. I watched in silent awe as he leaned the massive dresser against the door and slipped out, letting the dresser lean past the point of no return and seal the room. When he looked up at me, I nodded my solemn approval. His parents had ended it on their own terms, and the least we could do was allow them to rest in peace.
Mayhem’s interest was occupied by the dead bodies lying in the hallway, and he gave no signs warning us that anything was alive in the house besides us. Dan stepped around the dog and made his way to another bedroom where he could look out the windows and get a view on the street. I stayed with Mayhem, unable to tear my eyes away from these two diseased things that were once people.
Their bodies looked like Ebola Virus gone bad. Every vessel in their skin appeared broken, bruised, or bleeding and almost rubbery. They had rot in various areas with thick jelly like liquid oozing from wounds, and they smelled like they had been dead for months.
“All clear,” Dan whispered, walking out of the second bedroom.
We took every step with caution. Mayhem led the way with Dan’s fingers firmly gripping his collar.
I couldn’t bear the thought of him getting attacked by one of these things.
Could animals even get infected with this virus? What would happen to him if he were bitten?
Dan peeked out the back door first, then continued out of the house.
“Take Mayhem. When we leave this gate, you run and don’t look back. Mayhem will pull you. I’ll be right behind you.” Dan handed over Mayhem’s leash.
“Home, we’re going home.” I scratched Mayhem’s head and received an excited tail wag in response.
And on the count of three, we ran.
CHAPTER 4
All sense of time stopped.
I could only hear my breathing and my feet pounding on the ground. Each step felt hotter than the previous as my shoes hit the pavement. After what seemed an eternity, I was on the dirt.
We made it to the trail; this is a good thing.
Adrenaline flushed through my body, my mouth was dry, and I felt like my stomach was revolting against me, threatening to vomit. I was so winded from climbing up the trail but too afraid to slow down. Dan’s words kept repeating in my head, don’t stop, don’t look back. Downhill came, slightly relieving my legs from the nagging burn from climbing the rough trail.
Dan grabbed my arm as we approached the trailhead, slowing me down and eventually stopping me at the trailhead. We stood behind the entrance fence peeking out – nothing.
We didn’t take time to catch our breath before we dashed into the street and ran towards home. My eyes began focusing on our surroundings. I was in such a tunnel when we left the house earlier that I didn’t notice our neighborhood looked like a ghost town. It was abandoned for Mother Nature to have her way and rid her world of everything human. Yards seemed surprisingly wild and unkempt, fences were smashed, plants were trampled, and debris was strewn everywhere. Houses had broken windows and doors left opened with exposed trails of gear and supplies scattered outside. It seemed as if no one was left. Everyone had fled to who-knows-where, or maybe they didn’t make it out at all. Maybe they were sick and trapped in their homes forever. Perhaps they were rotting away with their minds falling into a dark hell as the virus consumed anything that was once their past selves. Or maybe, mercifully, they were all dead.
I began to hear Mayhem barking. Faint at first, like I was underwater in a pool and he was standing on the edge barking at me. His call pulled me from under the surface of thoughts, and I looked down at him, still gripping his leash. Then my attention was drawn straight ahead to what was alarming him, only a few hundred feet away a person with their back to us and not looking very well, stumbled down the street. It was an infected.
I pulled at Mayhem’s leash keeping my eyes on this danger before us. Dan took my arm and pulled all of us to our yard and through the safety of our fence.
“I don’t think it saw us,” I said, trying to get air into my lungs. “Its back was turned.”
“It didn’t see us, but it definitely heard Mayhem barking.” Dan bolted the fence door.
Mayhem growled at the fence with his nose pressed against the wood.
I ran back in the house, straight for the radio in the office. “Mel, Mel are you there?” My lungs were still trying to catch air, and my heart hadn’t slowed down.
“We’re here.” Melody’s voice cracked over the radio.
I took another deep breath in, “Dan’s parents didn’t make it.”
I waited. It seemed she was taking a second to absorb the news that they were dead.
“I’m so sorry,” her voice came back over the radio.
“Mel, it’s much worse than you can imagine. We watched the military gun down a group of them. Two of these things attacked us at his parent’s house.”
“Jesus Christ, Harmony! Are you OK?”
“Yes, Dan killed them,” I responded.
“Dan killed two people?” she asked, sounding concerned and horrified at the same time.
“I wouldn’t really call them people anymore, Mel.”
“There’s someone out there!” Jason called from the background.
Silence over the radio. Then crackle, then silence again.
“Mel? Mel, what’s happening?”
“There’s more than one Harmony. A handful of sick people are walking down the street,” Melody whispered over the radio.
“Don’t let them see you Mel. Get away from the windows,” I begged her as I made my way to the front room where Dan was with Mayhem.
“They’re out front here too.” Dan was looking out the window through a space we left between boards…
Over the radio, we heard the baby start to cry.
***
I could hear Jason quietly ‘shushing’ the baby, trying to stop her crying. Then silence again. Melody must have kept hitting the talk button during their shuffle exchanging the baby.
“Harmony?” Jason called out over the radio.
“Are you guys alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, Aubrey’s just fussy. We’re going to settle her down. Let’s hope those things just keep moving along.”
“Yeah, and when they do, let’s get the hell out of here,” Dan said over my shoulder.
“My parents’ place. Their ranch home in Summer Springs Valley. Lot of land, not a lot of people,” Jason said.
“We like this plan,” I said, while Dan nodded in agreement.
Summer Springs Valley was about three plus hours north of here in the Central Coast. Jason’s parents had about ten acres of land running into the coast with a ranch style fence encircling a home that sat on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean.
“We need to grab a few more things after what we saw earlier, but the truck is otherwise packed,” Dan said.
“OK. We’ll pack and be in touch. Say two hours?” Jason suggested.
“You got it.”
I carried the radio a
round with me ‘just in case’ as we packed a few more things around the house and garage. We stuffed boiled water jugs, all our canned food, and anything we could use as a weapon, from kitchen knives to tools, in the truck.
Dan pulled out two gas cans along with a siphoning hose. “How full is your car?” he asked.
“I don’t know… more than half?” I answered, confused on what he was planning to do with those things.
“The truck is full, but we need your gas. It’ll be the last thing we do before we leave to get them,” he explained.
“You want us to go out there with those things?”
“We have no choice, honey. When we leave here there’s no turning back. And we have no idea what the roads will be like.” He looked right in my eyes and his words punctured my gut.
The thought hadn’t quite hit me we were leaving our home and may never see it again. We may never see this life again. Nothing in this house mattered, nothing material anyway. Our lives, Mayhem’s life, our families, that’s what mattered in these final moments. I was ready to get over to my sister, to see them, hug them, and truly know we’re all in the safety of each other’s company.
“Dan… Harmony, are you there?” Mel whispered over the radio.
“We’re here,” I called back.
“It’s getting bad over here. They must have heard the baby crying. They’ve swarmed the front of the house,” Mel continued whispering with a panic in her voice.
“Mel, you guys hang in there. Twenty minutes tops. We just need to get gas for the cars,” Dan explained.
“They’re so ugly. The noises they make against the windows. I think they smell us.” Melody spoke softly, sounding distracted by the infected outside her home.
Loud bangs, shrieks, horrible gurgling hisses muffled from the walls separating the infected from my family came over the radio.
“We won’t be able to get to our car with these things outside,” Jason informed us in a hush voice. “We’re locking ourselves in the bedroom.”
“We’ll be there soon,” I promised. No one really knew how long it would actually take us to get there.
“Hopefully, we’ll give them a good distraction with our truck to give you time to get to yours,” Dan said.
“OK, sounds good. Hurry.”
We loaded Mayhem in the truck. Dan grabbed the cans along with the hose, and I grabbed a machete and gun.
Dan took the lead, and we snuck over to the back fence and looked out.
“Fast and quiet. Use the gun only if you have to. We don’t want to draw attention,” Dan whispered, not taking his eyes off of the front yard.
Without Mayhem it was hard to be sure if it was clear, but we couldn’t take the chance of him barking and letting every infected in the area know where we were.
We stayed low against the house and then quickly moved against the car that was parked in the driveway. Dan didn’t waste any time syphoning the gas from my car. He placed one end of the hose in the tank and the other in his mouth to get the flow started. My focus turned to the street. With the sound of bubbles bursting, Dan gagged and coughed at the taste of gasoline. I took a quick look to see if he was ok; he was fully concentrated on the gas flowing through the tube and into the can. I looked back around the car and out at the neighborhood.
“Honey, we have company,” I silently breathed the words.
An infected hobbled slowly down the street, just wandering with no destination. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, and I almost felt sorry for this thing that was once a person.
Was anything human left? Or were their bodies just a decaying shell driven solely by this virus?
Dan didn’t take his eyes off the task before him. “Only act if you have to,” he reminded me.
Then another came around the corner. Now two infected shuffled aimlessly down the street in our direction.
“Hurry baby, they’re coming this way,” I requested with growing urgency in my voice.
“One more minute.”
We pressed ourselves against the car hoping they would either just walk by or something else would get their attention.
I was so distracted by these two that I failed to see what was in the other direction. The movement caught my eye. It wasn’t a big movement, it was just enough to catch my attention. A slight flutter in my peripheral vision. Something so insignificant that if it happened any other day I may not have even noticed. But on this day, all my senses were on high alert, and this small flutter of a shadow caught my attention.
He stood there in his front door and stared right at us. He once was our neighbor from across the street, two houses down. I couldn’t even remember his name. He was dirty and bloody and had a gaping wound down his face. Brown sludge that I assumed was the blood that soaked his body had smeared against the front door. He growled at the sight of us and began limping in our direction.
“Fuck the gas, Dan.” I couldn’t take my eyes off our neighbor.
“Thirty seconds!” he said, determined to get every last drop.
But we didn’t have thirty seconds. This beast was coming right at us, and he was moving fast despite a steady limp in his left leg. The wound on his face still had the outer flesh hanging on by his facial muscles that didn’t want to let go. It looked like something had taken a bite right out of his cheek. His skin was grey with a slight hint of purple. He snarled and growled as he approached us.
I gripped my machete, but I knew when I stood to confront him the two down the street would see us anyway. So instead I pulled the gun, aimed, and fired, hitting him the shoulder. He stumbled back, became more aggressive, and continued towards me. I took another shot, hitting his chest. He was getting too close too fast. I dropped the gun and took the machete with both hands like a baseball bat. He looked so angry, fully concentrated on attacking me. Nothing could take his bloody eyes off me. He hissed and snarled as he continued his advance. I readied myself and took a swing like his head was the baseball. It went clean into his face.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” Dan said from behind me.
The other two, seeing the commotion, had begun to approach us and were already in the neighbor’s yard.
“Let’s go.” I picked up the gun and ran back for the fence, holding it open for Dan.
Dan followed with the cans, and I bolted the door shut behind him.
The infected snarled and clawed at the fence. They pressed so hard against the wood it bent and creaked with the weight of their bodies.
In the garage I grabbed the radio sitting on the truck’s hood and climbed into the passenger seat. Mayhem was sitting patiently in the back seat wagging his tail, happy we finally returned. Dan loaded the gas cans in the back and climbed in the driver seat immediately firing up the engine.
“This is it. When we open this door we’ll never see our life here again,” I said staring straight ahead, absorbing our reality.
Dan took my hand and gave it a light squeeze, and then reached up to the visor, pressing the garage door button. The garage door opened, humming with a slight squeak as it rose to the ceiling.
Mayhem paced back and forth in the back seat with his tail wagging. He then became stiff with his hair spiked and growled at the back window. He sensed the two infected before they even came around the corner.
Dan threw the truck in reverse and pressed on the gas. He clipped one infected, sending it to the ground while the other hissed and banged its arms against the truck.
The tires screeched against the pavement as Dan hit the street and put the car into drive. We both took a moment to grab one last look at our home, but it was interrupted by the two infected relentlessly pursuing us. Dan reached up pressing the garage door button, shutting it. I think a small part of him still had some hope to come home.
Dan drove forward leaving the infected chasing the truck, their bodies looked like limping dolls getting smaller and smaller in our side mirrors.
“Mel, are you there?” I called out over the radio. We waited.
“Mel, we’re on our way. Are you there?” I called out again.
Dan concentrated on navigating the maze of road blocks and infected wandering the streets. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him give me a concerned glance as I called out to Melody with no response.
The streets were much worse outside of our immediate neighborhood with cars jamming intersections, some looking like they had caught fire, others riddled with bullet holes. Our truck immediately caught the attention of all the infected roaming the area.
It was a straight shot once we left the neighborhood. Turn left, down for a mile, then another left onto Melody’s block, and less than a half mile to her house. Easy enough.
“Why isn’t she answering me?” It was a rhetorical question.
“They’re fine. Maybe they left it when they locked themselves in the bedroom or the batteries ran out. We just don’t know,” Dan calmly theorized.
“Mel, Jason, are you there?”
A drive that typically took us less than ten minutes took double that time due to maneuvering blocked lanes, avoiding the infected, and making a few detours. The infected didn’t move fast enough to make contact with the truck, but we certainly captured their interest.
Dan’s eyes stayed mostly straight ahead, just taking an occasional second to check the rear view mirror. “Are they following us?”
I turned in my seat looking out the back window to see groups filling the streets. “Yes, but they won’t catch us.”
The infected filed into the streets, shuffling along in a slow shag step, and followed in our direction.
When we turned into Melody’s neighborhood, we saw piles of bodies burning in front yards sending columns of black smoke rising and blocking out the sky; it gave the feeling we were in an enormous cavern as opposed to the outdoors. The smell of burnt flesh leaked through the air vents of the truck.
“I think we are invited to Satan’s personal BBQ in Hell,” Dan said.
Arriving at Melody’s house brought more fears racing through my mind making my chest feel like it was closing in with every breath I took.
“The military came through here,” I said.
