While the agents didn’t see any evidence of the firefighters themselves, it was clear that they had once been there. A fire truck was parked in front of one of the flaming houses, its ladder erect and a fire hose lying by idly. Blocks away, an ambulance could be seen turned on its side.
Martinez was visibly nervous. “What the hell, man? What happened here?”
Carey brought the car to a stop and flipped the safety off on his weapon.
“I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.”
Martinez looked around and shuddered. “It’s like a ghost town. I think we should call Headquarters. This is too weird to just be coincidence.”
“We’ll call them after we actually know what’s going on,” Carey responded sternly. He opened his door and drew his handgun. Martinez did the same, and the two men began a search of the area.
Gray skies promised rain and did nothing to alleviate the trepidation of the agents. They walked through the empty street, guns pointed in either direction.
Cars were all over the place, wrecked and ruined, their hoods slammed into trees and electric posts. What was worse was that some of the side windows were shattered, the cobwebs of glass smeared with blood.
“1672 is over there,” Martinez pointed out. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. One of the windows was completely broken, its jagged edges covered in blood. Bloody footprints could be seen along the driveway, different sizes and strides. The footprints seemed to lead to the neighboring lawn and then abruptly stopped at a parked car, its door ajar. More blood could be seen on the driver’s seat.
“Hmmm… Now there are three sets of footprints,” Carey remarked as he followed the prints with his eyes. They ended at the neighbor’s house, whose door was also wide open. Blood was splattered across the door frame. It was a grisly scene.
Still, no bodies.
“Carey, hey, man, this really isn’t good. We need to get out of here. Something is all wrong,” Martinez whispered, as he looked ahead noticing similar destruction littered the silent road for several blocks.
“Shut up,” Carey growled. “Stop being such a pussy.”
Nearby, a slight noise caught their attention. It almost sounded like something was being scraped across the ground.
“Did you hear that?” Martinez hissed, his eyes wildly searching their surroundings.
Carey didn’t respond. He was straining to listen to a faint buzzing sound. He had his weapon trained in the direction it was coming from.
Birds exploded out of the trees a few hundred yards away, almost as if they had been frightened by an unseen threat.
Martinez had kept his handgun pointed in the opposite direction, but turned towards his partner when he didn’t respond. His eyes widened in terror.
Carey started to back up, never taking his gaze off of the impending danger. He now realized the source of the “buzzing sound.” All of a sudden, people appeared from out of nowhere, shambling from houses, from backyards, from further down the street. They were moaning loudly, their arms outstretched.
Carey narrowed his eyes. There was something off about these people. They looked angry. Hungry. And they smelled worse than they looked. As they drew nearer, Carey could clearly make out the dreadful features of their new guests. Their faces were torn, their bodies mangled. They approached with an uneven gait, their limbs moving awkwardly with each step. They didn’t look human.
Martinez took him out of his revelry. “Shit, man, we gotta move! They look pissed!” he yelled, the cacophony of moans too great for anything else.
Carey agreed with him for once. “Let’s get out of here.”
Out of the woodwork, more monstrosities spilled onto the street and lawns. They seemed to materialize without warning, multiplying, an endless supply of sick, lurching creatures. Hundreds of them were now visible, slowly shambling in on the pair.
Martinez didn’t need to be told twice. He gulped and ran towards the car. Carey followed him in hot pursuit.
They opened the doors to the sedan and flung themselves inside. Both men instinctively locked their doors.
Carey fumbled with the keys. By now, the zombies had closed in and had surrounded all sides of the vehicle.
Mottled gray faces pressed up against the windows. Glazed eyes widened at the prospect of heartbeats, flowing blood, supple skin. Bloody hands and stumps violently slapped against the doors.
Martinez pulled on the arm rest of his door as though his efforts would be enough to keep the attackers at bay.
He screamed at Carey, “Man, start the car already!”
Carey shoved the keys into the ignition and breathed a sigh of relief as the engine turned over. He was in no mood to live out the over-done scenes in horror movies where the car never started just when the protagonists were trying to escape imminent danger.
Unfortunately, while the sedan did start, it didn’t move an inch. Its tires spun uselessly as Carey tried to urge it forward.
“It’s not moving!” Martinez cried.
“Thank you for pointing that out,” his partner replied, rolling his eyes. “We’re surrounded, that’s why.”
The horde encircling the vehicle rocked it from side to side. Due to the increasing number of bodies jammed against the car, the men watched in horror as the corpses’ heads, once pressed to the windows in vain attempts to chew through the glass, popped like rotten tomatoes before their eyes. The carnage of gore, pus, and blood caused Martinez to vomit.
Carey shook his head. “It stinks enough out there. Now you’re trying to torture me in my own car, too?” he asked sarcastically, hoping to lighten the mood.
Martinez wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He worried that the pressure coming from all sides would be enough to crush them where they sat.
As he feared, tiny cracks began to spider Martinez’s window.
Martinez backpedaled to the middle of the seat and stared at the swiftly cracking glass in disbelief. As if sensing that they were one step closer to their prey, the zombies began to beat harder on the glass. Their twisted, rotting faces sneered at the two men, gnashing their teeth expectantly.
“We’re not going to make it out of here, are we?” Martinez was practically sitting in Carey’s lap, tears forming in his eyes.
“Not this time,” Carey answered in the same stoic tone he always used. “I’m sorry, kid,” he said, his tone softening.
Just then, the glass tore away, and dozens of hands reached into the vehicle. Countless disfigured fingers made purchase on Martinez’s legs and began pulling him out of the open window.
Carey immediately opened fire, but Martinez, who had put his gun on the floor in an effort to hold on to the arm rest, had no means to defend himself.
As soon as his calf was through the shattered glass, the rabid, starving creatures sank their teeth into his leg, ravenously tearing away strips of flesh before chewing and swallowing them. They fought over his appendage so viciously that his shin split in two, the white bones gleaming from the ravaged skin. Martinez screeched in agony and struggled, but continued to be yanked out.
Carey managed to shoot the ones nearest the door with head shots, but just as quickly as he had begun, the slide locked back, and he realized the magazine was empty. He tried to grab Martinez and pull him back into the sedan, but the horde outside outnumbered him. Before he could blink, Martinez was sucked out of the window only to disappear in a writhing mass of creatures whose moans drowned out his screams.
Seconds later, new hungry faces peered into the window, reaching at Carey who had now become one with the driver’s side door. They began climbing in through the windows, slowly pulling their decaying bodies over the glass.
He fiercely kicked and punched the first two who came in, but they were on him in an instant. Carey grappled with each, using all of his strength to keep their snapping jaws away from his face.
To his shock and utter dismay, the window erupted behind him, and a swarm of hands grasped his head, vigorously biting th
rough his hair and scalp.
Overwhelmed with pain, Carey lost his grip on the two creatures on top of him, both of whom took advantage of his weakened state and bit down into his neck and shoulder. Blood began to trickle down his face into his eyes, and he felt his body being pulled backwards.
In an instant, his entire head was ripped off of his neck. In reality, it was all over for him in a matter of seconds, but in Carey’s final moments, it felt like forever.
Chapter 8:
Mark regretted the fact that he didn’t have a cell phone, but he was very grateful to have his bike. After leaving the movie theater, he had stopped the first police officer he’d seen, but the man barely acknowledged him and hurried him along. He was yelling directions into his walkie-talkie, and he brushed past Mark as he ran in the direction from which Mark had come.
He didn’t know what else could be done. No one was willing to help him go back and rescue Alex. He held high hopes that his mother was home from work. She would know what to do.
Speeding down the road, he turned his bike onto Crescent Lane which emptied into the left side of his neighborhood. Mark gasped and stopped pedaling for a moment, his bike gliding swiftly as he took it all in. People were frantically running between houses and onto the street. He noticed that most of them were covered in blood. A young woman, her head reared back and her arms outstretched, stumbled quickly towards an elderly man who was wheeling forward on his wheelchair, all the while throwing intermittent looks of panic over his shoulder.
Blinking rapidly, his mouth agape, he shook his head and pedaled as fast as he could until he got to his house. He dropped his bike and ran to the house, narrowly missing globs of red and yellow that were scattered about the patchy grass.
The door was open.
“Mom!” Mark screamed. He ran into the dark, cramped space, scanning each room for any sign of his family. When he didn’t see anyone, he began to cry uncontrollably.
He walked slowly into the kitchen, stood deathly still, and took a deep breath. He had to keep it together. It was obvious that his family was gone, but perhaps they’d left some clue as to where he could find them. He looked around the messy kitchen, hoping to find a sign. The cabinets had been thrown open. Cans of food rested on their sides. Mark stared at everything, trying to notice something different and out of place. He looked down at the dingy linoleum floor. Then he saw it.
Blood splatter.
His eyes followed the trail of blood, and he observed something else. The cheap little knife rack his mom had gotten at Wal-Mart a couple of months ago was missing several knives.
Mark’s stomach dropped. Was that their blood? Were they hurt? Dead? He wanted to vomit. He felt so impossibly alone that he slumped down on the floor and buried his face in his hands, defeated.
A few minutes passed as he wallowed in his grief before he detected a different kind of trail. He jumped to his feet immediately.
Cheerios! His sister’s favorite snack. He followed the trail as it led out the back door. On impulse, he picked one up and nibbled it. Still fresh. Mark decided that they must have left very recently, and maybe if he followed the sparse trail of cereal, he could figure out the direction they’d gone.
He was just heading back to the kitchen to gather a few food items to sustain him on his journey when a shadow shifted ever so slightly, catching his attention. Mark turned around hastily, but saw nothing. Shrugging to himself, he walked to the cabinets and began shoving whatever cans remained into a plastic grocery bag.
A throaty wheeze from behind him made him jump. He dropped the bag of groceries involuntarily when his eyes met those of his mother’s boyfriend.
Brandon.
For the life of him, Mark could never understand what his mother saw in him. She had met him during one of her night shifts at the bar, and since then, she hadn’t seemed to be able to shake him. Jaclyn Newton was only twenty-seven, having had Mark at a very young age with a guy from high school he had never met to this day. Her parents ostracized her once they found out about her pregnancy, and she was forced to rely on herself to make ends meet. Her life hadn’t extended far beyond work and taking care of Mark and Natalie, whom she had a few years ago with another man Mark didn’t know. Being a single mom with two kids hadn’t afforded her the opportunity to enjoy her youth as much as most young adults. Sometimes she missed that. Brandon had come off as exciting with his party-boy, carefree habits, and maybe this was why he had managed to trap his mother in his web.
The way Mark saw it, all Brandon did was insult her; he never built her up and encouraged or complimented her like he saw Alex’s dad do with his mom. His mom always seemed sad, no matter what Mark said or did to try to make her smile. To add to that, Brandon didn’t do anything to help the family out, although he had no problem eating their food and using the meager resources they had for himself. He constantly reminded Jaclyn that the kids weren’t his, and he had no responsibility to them. That made her sad, too.
And he was pretty certain that the lowlife had cheated on his mom. Mark had come home one day after school with Alex to find some young, slutty-looking girl in the living room drinking a beer and smoking a joint. A second later, Brandon had come out of the kitchen in just his boxers and an old t-shirt. He had told his mom about it, but Brandon insisted that the other woman was his cousin from out of town…. whom he had never mentioned before. How ironic, Mark had thought. When Jaclyn said she believed him, her son had gaped at her in total disbelief.
Still, if Mark thought Brandon was evil while he was alive, he was even more terrifying right now.
What was once his mom’s boyfriend stood in the awning of the kitchen watching Mark with great interest. White lips were pulled back over red teeth, and several strands of long brown hair hung from the corner of its mouth. The zombie’s own hair was slicked back in blood, fresh blood, and its jaw touched its chest as it leered at him with hungry, livid eyes. Trembling, Mark scanned the rest of his vitiated form and gawked at him in shock. Brandon had five knives protruding from its body, one near the sternum, one in the neck, one over the heart, and two in the stomach, yet none of these impediments seemed to slow the creature down. Mark didn’t even have time to wonder how the man was still alive. His mind was too muddled to piece together what was happening.
It lunged for him so quickly that he barely had time to react, and he scrambled over the cans until he was outside. He could hear the undead man in hot pursuit. Mark turned from side to side desperately trying to find his bike. When he saw it, he felt another wave of panic hit him. There were a handful of zombies moving towards him, drawn to the noise him and his mother’s boyfriend had made as they left the house.
Brandon was still behind him, making guttural moans as it pursued him. Mark made a split-second decision and dove for the bike, lifting it up as quickly as he could. The creatures were so close. Their wretched smell was overwhelming. Mark jumped onto the seat, his feet slipping on the pedals. He wondered for the briefest of seconds if it would have been better to just run. The bike seemed to move ever so slowly as he tried to gain momentum. He felt like a turtle slugging through peanut butter. Fingers brushed across his legs, pulling the rear wheel backwards.
Mark yanked the bike forward as hard as he could and breathed a sigh of relief when the bike finally sped up. He looked behind and saw the zombies reach for him, their faces full of anger and frustration as their meal escaped. But he wasn’t paying attention.
Off to the side, Brandon was half-jogging perpendicular to him. Just as Mark passed the second house, Brandon knocked into him hard, and he fell off the bike and landed in a heap, gasping from the impact. His mother’s boyfriend was rising from the cement just as Mark began to get up, his head spinning.
He looked up just in time to see the zombies forming a circle with him at the center of their ring, their ruined faces slowly blocking out the sunlight as they enclosed around him. He noticed one of them was old and frail, and he kicked at it with all his might, collapsi
ng the circle and breaking free. He started running in the direction where he’d seen the last Cheerio, down towards the highway. He could only hope that those Cheerios meant his mother and sister were alive, and that the long brown hair in Brandon’s mouth belonged to someone else.
***
“Haven, I think you need to see this,” Rosemary called out from the living room. She had a habit of turning on the television every night to channel three. Haven had just finished washing the dishes from dinner and dried her hands on the towel. Faith was at her school library studying for an early-morning exam.
She walked over to her grandmother and sat beside her on the cozy plaid couch. Rosemary had opened the chute of the fireplace and started a small fire, its glowing flames casting shadows along the walls.
Her grandmother’s taste was eclectic to say the least. A world traveler well into her seventies, Rosemary had collected various mementos from all over, and most of them were proudly on display throughout the house, including two Japanese swords over her bed, a Native American tomahawk hung above the hearth, and a giant shark jaw with rows of menacing teeth in the bathroom over the toilet. Not a woman to shirk from self-defense, Rosemary had been a rising star in her younger years on her school’s rifle team. Still, since her husband’s passing, she’d always felt a little safer with her unique weaponry easily accessible in every room of the house.
“Raleigh,” Rosemary finally responded, her eyes glued to the television screen. “It’s absurd. All of these cities… It looks like rioting, but it’s hard to say.” She wrung her hands nervously. “I hope your sister gets back soon. I don’t like her out after dark anymore, especially in that rickety old car she refuses to stop driving.”
Haven furrowed her brows at the scenes playing out before her. “Raleigh? Houston isn’t that far away.” She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. “What is this?”
A very harried news reporter, her eyes wide with terror and her voice wavering slightly, attempted to gather her wits about her as she stared into the camera.
The Good, the Dead, and the Lawless: The Undoing Page 9
