by Nathan Brown
Easy, Mikey. It’s just Tom … Thank god. He must’ve come back for Ma like he said he would.
Sheriff Tom was standing in front of the large, eight-by-ten foot window at the backside of the living room. His head was high and cocked to the side, as though he was trying to see something at the far end of the backyard or out near the lake. Mike figured the local lawman was waiting to see if those two escapees from the state hospital that Ma had mentioned on the phone, were still out there somewhere. Mike felt a momentary sense of ease at the sight of not only a familiar face but a law enforcement officer. This feeling was quickly shaken when Mike noticed that Tom’s service pistol was absent from its holster.
Tom’s right hand was concealed by his large torso, and Mike wondered if Tom was holding his pistol in that hand. He tried to speak to Tom as lightly as possible, not wanting to startle him. Mike didn’t feel like getting shot by accident. Not today. Actually, Mike didn’t feel like getting shot at ever.
“Tom,” Mike said, his volume just above a whisper. “Is everything under control or do you still have a situation? Is Ma still here or did you take her over to the Sheriff station?”
At the sound of Mike’s voice, Tom craned his head over his left shoulder, but did not speak. Not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he had an unregistered, 44-caliber hand-cannon concealed illegally in the back of his trousers, Mike released his grip on the Desert Eagle and once again bloused out the back of his shirt.
“Tom? Look I know you don’t know me all that well, but if you need an extra set of hands, I’ll do what I can to help. It’s the least I can do for you watchin’ after Ma the way you have.” Tom’s body followed his head only slightly, turning to look at Mike in an odd angle—his body was still profile to Mike but his head was turned further in his direction. His eyes locked on Mike but his head did not follow them, the neck muscles having reached their maximum point of extent. Mike began to wonder if the Sherriff had recently suffered a stroke, though he didn’t remember Ma having ever mentioned anything about it. Sherriff Tom made a grunting sound, as if clearing his throat, and Mike thought that perhaps he was finally about to speak. Then the throat clearing turned into a gurgled moan as Tom’s head and body turned to face Mike completely.
“Oh … sweet Jeezus.” Mike gasped.
The entire right side of Tom’s lower face was torn to shreds, as though something or someone had ripped the flesh from his jaw. Red-tinted edges of bone could be seen protruding through the remaining tatters of muscle and sinew. The gurgled moan grew into a savage growl as Tom dropped his shoulders and spread out his arms, crouching like a predator about to pounce. Mike slowly reached back for his pistol and held out his left hand, motioning for Tom to stay back.
“Easy, Tom,” Mike said. “You’ve been bit. You’re not yourself right now, but I can try to get you some help if you’ll let me. But I need you to hold it together.”
Tom’s growl grew more intense, sending out a pink spray of blood and spittle. Yellow eyes glared at Mike like those of a wild dog closing in on some helpless prey.
“Tom,” Mike whispered pleadingly. “Please don’t make me.”
The immense man roared, and every part of his large frame charged headlong at his target. Mike did not think, did not panic. His hands simply reacted without him, doing what they had been trained to do … what they had done so many times.
Before Mike was even aware of what he was doing, the Desert Eagle was in front of him, leveled, aimed, and fired. Tom’s head burst open like a piñata as the large caliber bullet drilled through his left eye socket. Grey matter, blood, and bone fragments painted the ceiling and walls with a grotesque mosaic of gore. The bullet exploded from the back of Tom’s skull and crashed into the large rear window, shattering both sides of the double-paned glass. Shining shards of sharp glass flew, reflecting slivers of light from the setting sun in all directions as Tom’s careening corpse spun with the impact and came crashing down upon Ma’s oak coffee table. One of the table legs gave at the joint, sending Tom’s shoulders sliding towards the floor, his immense rear end pointed to the ceiling.
Mike knew there was no need for him to confirm the kill. All that remained of what had once been Sheriff Tom’s head was a fragment of lower jaw from which a few crowned molars loosely hung. Mike looked at Ma’s broken coffee table, and a feeling of intense dread galloped across his soul like the proverbial dark rider on a pale horse.
Oh, no … dear God, no … Ma!
Mike turned to his left to make a break for the back bedroom where he’d told Ma to take shelter. As he rounded the corner of the entryway wall, he suddenly collided with a man in a pair of blue scrubs. Another pair of yellow, decayed, diseased eyes closed in upon him. Hands grabbed and teeth gnashed, missing Mike by a hair’s breadth.
The man gripped Mike’s shoulders and pushed forward against his bracing arms. Mike rolled onto his back with the force of the push. He shoved the sole of his boot into the man’s hip and, as he felt his lower back make contact with the tile, he pushed off hard with his leg. The man flew through air, flipping head over heels over Mike and landing hard in front of the fireplace with enough force to knock the wind out most people.
The former Marine got to his feet and brought his weapon around. He pulled the trigger, but was suddenly thrown forward as someone shoved him from behind.
Another one. Gooddammit, I’m not paying attention.
He did his best to roll forward with the blow, tucking his body into a tight ball to avoid running straight into the other attacker. He couldn’t be certain that he’d made the headshot. He’d been hit too soon to see.
Mike rolled back to his feet, spun around, and fired two rounds—a “double-tap,” consisting of one center-mast shot to the chest, followed by a clean headshot. The first shot was completely unnecessary, if not useless, he realized. But, once again, the conditioning of years of combat training overrode conscious thought. The second attacker, whom Mike now saw was a tall and skinny man in Wranglers and a flannel shirt, fell to the floor in a lifeless heap. The headshot must have caught him in the mouth, popping the upper half of his head off almost like a bottle cap.
Mike spun 180 degrees to confirm his kill on the man in the scrubs and was tackled once again. The bullet had blown a good six-inch hole through the man’s chest, which should have put him down. But he was still coming, pushing Mike back into the living room. The pair collided with the red brick fireplace that sat along the right wall of the living room, and Mike felt the unforgiving masonry crack against his shoulder blades. His wrist smashed hard against the mantle and his grip was loosened. The heavy pistol flew from his hand. The man gnashed at Mike’s throat, biting and clawing desperately. Mike raised his right leg, shoving his knee between them as he groped for the fire poker that he hoped would still be to this left, where Ma had always kept the fireplace tools. His hand closed around cold iron and, flipping the tool up, Mike thrust it upwards at his attacker’s lower jaw.
Mike had been expecting to hear the sound of impalement. Instead, the tool impacted with a bwoooong sound, one that resembled a gong. He glanced at the tool in his hand only to realize that he’d grabbed the fireplace shovel. The shock of the blow had, however, stunned his attacker briefly. Mike shoved him off with his knee, reared back with the shovel, and swung as though he were the last man at bat in the World Series.
Gong!
The man roared and stumbled back. Mike swung again, this time upwards, catching the man just under the chin.
Gong!
The scrub-wearing, homicidal madman was thrown onto his back, and Mike scrambled to retrieve the Desert Eagle from the floor before his attacker could recover. He tossed the shovel aside, rolled at the weapon, wrapped his fingers around the grip, and came back up just as the man in scrubs was stumbling to his feet. Mike took one gasping breath, aimed, and squeezed. The man’s head became a mess of red and white fragments, washing the front of Mike’s shirt and pants with blood and gore.
&n
bsp; “Ma?!” Mike called out as he removed the clip from his weapon and took inventory of his ammo. He slammed it back home … two rounds left … one in the clip and one in the pipe. He now regretted his decision to leave the extra clips in the vehicle. He wondered if anymore of these things were still hiding somewhere in the house. Just in case, he took up the fireplace poker in his left hand and the Desert Eagle in his right before making his way towards the back room … towards Ma.
She woulda locked herself back there like I told her. Ma’s a tough old bird. She’s gonna be okay.
He’d felt this way many times before. His entire body, every nerve, every one of his senses, peaked at a level of intensity that a training sergeant had once described to him as “turning your body into the head of a penis.” He forcefully slowed down his breathing. In this heightened state of awareness, his own breathing, even his pulse, sounded out in his skull as loudly as would the drums of war. He stepped into the kitchen and navigated slowly over the body of the man in the Wranglers, suddenly recognizing the large, oval-shaped silver belt buckle at the fellow’s waist. This was, or at least had been, Percy Watkins, an older man who lived in the house around the corner. He’d borrowed a post-hole digger from the guy once when Ma’s fence had needed repairing.
Mike crept on into the hallway. All was deathly silent as he reached the door to the back bedroom. Mike had to stifle a whimper when he saw that the door was open a just a crack. He used the poker to slowly shove the door open. About halfway, the door hit something. Mike decided to risk drawing attention and flipped on the hallway lights. Through the crack he saw a pair of feet, adorned with a pair of bloodstained and very familiar blue slippers.
“Ma? MA!” Mike lost all resolve and began shoving on the door until he could get himself inside.
Had Mike eaten anything that day, he would have puked it up. What he saw sent him into a mixed fit of sobs and dry heaves. There before him lay what remained of his beloved Ma. She must have seen Sheriff Tom through the window and gone to open the front door to let him in. That had to be how they’d gotten inside … why the front door had been opened.
Ma was wearing her favorite flannel nightgown, now torn open to reveal her ruptured abdomen. Her face was frozen as if in a scream and her entrails were strewn in a bloody mess about the floor. It didn’t take much examination to know they had fed on her. Mike wiped the torrential flood of tears from his cheeks and scanned the room. His father’s rifle lay propped up in the corner. Ma must have left it behind when she’d gone to answer the door. Trying hard not to look too long at the horror before him, Mike put the poker down and went to retrieve his father’s weapon. He stepped around Ma’s body with uneasy steps.
Just as he put the Desert Eagle back into his waistband and took up the rifle, he heard the sound of a raspy gasp from behind him. He spun around, snapping the rifle butt into his shoulder, ready to fire.
The weapon turned to lead in his grip.
The barrel drooped towards the floor and Mike let out a long and terrible wail of pain, horror, and sorrow.
Ma was awake … though he knew that she was no longer alive.
This is not Ma, he told himself, though the thought was of little comfort.
Her spine must have been damaged when they’d fed upon her. She crunched forward, clawed for him, barely sitting up, her legs not moving. She chomped at the air. Yellow eyes darted back and forth.
Mike’s vision blurred. He could see the twisted figure before him. In his mind’s eye, he could see her reaching out to give him a hug.
His hands shook. He tried to line up the sights, but they wouldn’t sit still. In all his years, he had never held a weapon so heavy.
His shoulders convulsed. Not since his first firefight, when he’d been paralyzed by terror, had his body refused to obey him so vehemently. This wasn’t the enemy … this was his Ma.
For more than a brief moment, perhaps longer than he would ever realize, Mike O’Connell stood over the reanimated corpse of his mother like a gelatinous statue, in a state of near-catatonic shock.
At some point, Mike realized that he had cocked the lever on the antique Winchester rifle, a late 19th century piece that had always been the pride and joy of his father’s gun collection. As though in a trance, he pulled back the hammer and drew a bead on his Ma with Dad’s rifle. She had long been the most beloved person in Mike’s life … the only reason he’d ever had to come back home, the only thing that allowed him to still feel human.
“I’m so sorry, Ma,” he bawled, trying so hard to aim through the veil of tears. “I love you. Go be with Dad.”
With a cry of pain that could have shaken the very pillars of heaven itself, Mike pulled the trigger … and all again was silence.
“I’d rather know you’re with him in Heaven, not here in this hell.”
Mike stood there, his mind trying to reconcile the matricidal sin his hands had committed. The rifle fell from his trembling palms. The crash of the stock thudding to the carpet slammed through him like roll of thunder.
He knelt and gingerly scooped up Ma’s lifeless corpse. He worked his arms into a cradle to pick up her destroyed body in one piece. Carefully, lovingly, as though she had simply fallen asleep on the couch, he carried her to the bed in the next room. He retrieved her favorite quilt from the hall closet and covered her with it gently. He stepped out of the room and shut the door, making sure it was shut as firmly as possible … as though he never wanted it to open again.
He turned around and slumped against the door, sliding down to the floor. His head hung between his knees as the metal-armor of his mental world shattered like a stained glass window.
Moments later, something caused Mike to pop up his head, pulling him from his sad trance. What was that? Was some knocking on the front door? He had only been dimly aware of the sound at first. He listened closely. There it was again.
Who could that be? A survivor? Or one of these godforsaken things? I don’t think these undead things bother to knock.
* * *
Joseph drove straight through the small towns of Alvord and Bowie without so much as slowing down. He blew through both towns with tunnel vision. He didn’t give a damn what was happening in the small towns. With the exception of a few northbound truckers, he was still one of the relative few running in that direction. He guessed everyone else felt that just being outside of the Metroplex made them safe. He wasn’t about to take any chances—road rage could easily escalate into another riot if enough people got involved and no cops were around to keep things under control.
Joseph kept his eyes on nothing but the road. He wanted to know exactly what was in front of him … and to hell with everything else. Perhaps if he had paid more attention to his surroundings, he might have noticed the figures shambling with the same off-kilter posture as Ryan or standing absently in front yards or beating against the doors of roadside homes. He might also have noticed the bloody palm prints on windows, blood pooled on front porches and smeared across doors.
Keep your eyes on the road, Joseph. Fuck me, I killed Ryan. Get to Wichita Falls; you can sort things out there, away from all the craziness in the city. Shit, I killed Ryan. Eyes on the road, moron.
His mental mantra was interrupted by the sudden realization that he wasn’t alone on the road anymore. Other cars swarmed around him and flew past him, snapping his mind back into gear. Joseph started watching his escape routes again.
He could almost hear his high school Driver’s Ed. teacher preaching about knowing where your escape routes are. For the second time that day he was actively driving defensively, something he hadn’t really done in years.
The miles rolled past.
A sapphire blue Taurus calmly passed Joseph on the left side. He looked over in time to see that there were dents in the hood. He had no doubts that the car next to him had come out of a riot similar to the mess from which he had recently fled. He looked at the driver through the cracked passenger window. The woman’s face was ashen, dam
p hair sticking to pale skin.
Something moved in the back seat of the Taurus. It was small and fleeting; for a moment Joseph thought he had imagined the flash of motion.
Joseph kept glancing back at the car.
A small, bandaged hand arced slowly toward the rear passenger window. The hand turned and pressed against the glass as if its owner was slowly rolling over in the back seat. A child’s face appeared in the rear window next to the hand. The kid’s face was a mess of gashes and blood, and he looked like he’d recently been mauled by a pack of rabid dogs. The cuts on his face, oddly, seemed to have stopped bleeding. Something had bitten off the top half of his left ear and torn off a piece of his lower lip.
The child pushed himself into a kneeling position and turned toward the woman driving the car.
Joseph took both eyes off the road and watched the little kid grab a fistful of the woman’s hair and her shoulder. He dragged himself over the back of the seat and sank his teeth into the flesh of her collar. The woman jerked down and to the left, trying to get away from the child’s teeth. She groped for a handhold on the child’s blood slicked T-shirt. The kid grabbed her right hand and latched onto it like a pit bull. Joseph nearly vomited when he saw the kid pull his head back, taking away a chunk of flesh from the woman’s wrist as though it was a turkey leg.
Joseph noticed the road curving to the right just in time to keep from running off of it. He hit his horn in a futile attempt to warn the woman in the Taurus. She either didn’t notice or was too focused on trying to protect herself from the psychotic child. The Taurus plowed through the rail and rolled several times. He wasn’t sure, but Joseph thought he saw the child fly out through the windshield before the car crunched to a rest on the driver’s side. The woman may have still been in the car but, from what was left of it, she was certainly dead.
