by Jay Wilburn
A green hose looped out in our path over a grassy mudslide that had consumed part of the sidewalk. We ran wide around it toward the clutter of Styrofoam and wrappers painted to the curb and gutter. A rusted chainsaw rested in the nest of the coiled hose. On the other side, a severed head lay staring blankly past us at the sky. As we passed through its field of vision, it blinked twice and began biting silently.
There was a bleached skeleton in the tall grass near the driveway. It was scoured with teeth marks over the clean bones. The broken cord from the chainsaw was still clutched in its boney fingers.
More bodies drifted out from the houses and yards on both sides of us and just ahead of us. We needed to move faster if we wanted to reach the front of the neighborhood. A battered man in swimming trunks bounced himself against his chain link fence as we passed. He held up the skeleton of a small dog by its collar and shook it at us.
Another staggered out of his open garage across the street with a note pinned to the front of his shirt. His head lolled to one side on his broken neck where an orange, extension cord was tied tightly around the pinched flesh. He made it about three steps out on the driveway before the cord pulled taut and jerked him back off his feet. He stumbled backward and fell on his back as the metal supports of the garage door rattled on the ceiling inside on the other end of the extension cord.
The others closed in on us more successfully.
We moved out into the street to squeeze between the closing gauntlet of the dead from both rows of houses. We moved through as they met in the street behind us and around us. The mass behind us was growing and the swell of their ranks was closing in on our backs.
My stomach cramped up and I staggered trying to keep running. I added my own small moan to the chorus around us. As I grabbed my stomach, Doc grabbed my shoulder and pulled me forward.
He said, “I know, Mutt. I’m going to have to change when we get to safety too, but we have to run now or it won’t matter.”
As we put some distance on the ones behind us, others emerged three and four houses ahead of us on each side of the street. They turned toward the noise and then started walking after us in the center of the street.
The first one reached the sidewalk in front of us and to the right. We started angling left, but there were more coming from that side. His foot hooked between the bones of a rib cage sitting by itself at the end of his driveway near the tilting mailbox. According to the box, he was either Mr. Cox or he was the one who ate him. He dragged the rib cage forward each time he took a step. He stepped on the stock of a discarded shotgun. It broke loose from the rusted barrel and he stumbled. He stepped on a scattering of red, plastic shells near the gun. One broke open and spilled beads around and over the slope of the curb at the end of the drive. The others rolled and he fell backward off balance. The back of his head cracked against the broken edge of the gun stock. He lifted his head back up slowly. We angled back toward him as we passed by with the zombies on the right reaching out to us in the street. He lifted his head about a foot off the ground before the wound on the back of his head split open spilling wet mash out of the back of his skull over the gun that had finally destroyed his brain. He collapsed back onto the sidewalk for the last time as we stepped back over the curb to try and run ahead of the ones filling the street from our left.
They drove us up off the sidewalk and into the yards. We could see the faded sign covered in vines that welcomed visitors to the neighborhood a few doors down the road. We ran up the slope near a porch. I raised the gun as we approached the side yard. They rounded the house two doors in front of us headed to the street without even looking our way.
After a few seconds, I couldn’t even see the sign anymore.
Glass shattered and rained out on the porch beside us and in the grass in front of us. Dark fluid exploded onto our shoes as the body crashed through the railing from above and crushed the lattice as it tumbled into the grass at our feet. Its spine pulled out from its legs as it lunged forward in the grass and grabbed my pants leg. Dry mud flaked off my clothes under his grimy fingers. I dropped my gun hand and fired through the back of its head.
The ones in the yards in front of us whipped their heads in our direction and started walking shoulder to shoulder as that closed off our line of escape. I didn’t realize how scared I was until I felt fluid running down my leg. I honestly wasn’t sure if it was urine, food poisoning, or splatter from the flying zombie.
“This way,” Doc yelled, “Keep-”
He rounded the corner into the face of a bearded man in chaps and a leather jacket. Doc hurled the ax off his shoulder in shock. The blade planted into its face right between its mirrored sunglasses. The lenses flew out in both directions to reveal empty eye sockets. The force of the strike actually flipped the jacketed zombie up off his feet and twisted him in the air. His sleeve pulled up as he fell to show an enormous hunk out of his hairy arm over the legs and one wing of an angel tattoo. The meat inside was still red around the exposed bone. As he fell face down on the ground, his pony tail whipped around still held by four rubber bands down the length his hair.
He was wearing a Riding Dead stencil on the back panel of his jacket. I actually tried to look at the location patch on the sleeve until he started getting up. The ax pulled loose from his face as he rested his knee on the handle while lifting his body. He spit out three bloody teeth with the pink roots still attached as he stumbled up with the ax in his hand. He clawed out and Doc grunted as he dodged the biker zombie’s hand. It whirled the ax at the noise and Doc actually went to his hands and knees as he scrambled away from the swing. I kicked a plastic bucket as I ran by on the other side. The eyeless biker flung himself at the new noise. The ax head carved the house cutting through the color on the siding. I ducked away and ran with my hands and the gun over my head. Even if the ax had just cut me, I would have been infected.
Doc regained his feet and we charged the back fence.
The mob groaned as they followed into the side yard after us. The ax man whirled around at the new noise. The ax blade flung around wildly in his hand as he turned. The blade sheered right through the top of the first zombie’s head. Its scalp twirled up and away with the force as its body toppled to the ground under the feet on the monsters behind it. The ax biker shoved and clawed viciously as the older dead pushed past him and around him.
We headed to the chain link gate on the right to the backyard of the jumping zombie I had shot in the back of the head out front. There was a tall, wooden privacy fence on the left that we couldn’t see inside.
As we approached, two little girls in sundresses stepped into view behind the gate. One was missing most of her face and one eye. The other eye turned in its socket tracking us. The other girl had dark scratches in her face, but the porcelain white skin was still rounded and smooth. An emaciated women wearing only a lacey, purple bra stepped out behind them. She opened her mouth and hissed at us.
Doc charged in the space between the chain link fence and the wood fence. His body tore through the thorns and thick weeds that wrapped around his legs. He had to turn sideways as he fought through. The wife and girls of the man I had shot on the front lawn began walking with Doc. I fired at the women and missed completely.
I sidled into the tiny space after Doc. It felt like a mistake right away. There was nowhere to move and I kept getting my toes hung on the chain link and my heels twisted against the wood.
The woman grabbed at me and missed. Her fingertips scrapped away splinters from the neighbor’s fence. The woman and her daughters rattled their fence as they dragged along its surface after us. Someone on the other side of the privacy fence began banging against the boards. Sections separated and they clawed through at Doc and me as we pushed through their flailing hands and the merciless thorns.
The zombies behind us bottle necked, but began hustling through the gap single file after us. They kept pace through the brush we had already torn up and their dead flesh didn’t hesitate as they pressed bare feet on to
p of long thorns. I heard the wooden gate to the fence next door crack and collapse as the dead flanked us in the neighbor’s yard.
The woman grabbed my sleeve as I tried to ignore the pain from the thorns ripping through my muddy, soiled pants. I thrust my elbow twice into her chest between the cups of her bra trying to knock her away. I managed to pull loose. I aimed back at her and the corpses shuffling in line behind me.
The fence burst open beside Doc as boards snapped out of the frame in several chunks. A man in a black tie stood in Doc’s path and locked his hands on both sides of Doc’s head over his ears. As Doc grabbed the monster’s wrists in desperation, I turned my aim back and fired over his head into the zombie’s forehead. It relaxed its grip and Doc shoved it back through the opening in the fence. Another one barreled through and nearly bent Doc backward over the chain link. I fired through the side of its head sending its brains and body flying back into the private backyard. A third reached through and grabbed Doc around the throat. I couldn’t see its head because of the fence.
The woman grabbed my gun arm. I slammed the flat of my forearm into her face three times over her fence, but she held on a dropped her mouth wide open. Her teeth seemed too big for her shrunken face. She leaned down to latch on to my wrist. I threw both arms back shoving her away from me. Her thin fingers clicked seven times as she fell back along the top of her chain link fence before she caught a grip and pulled herself back up to standing. Her legs were spread open as she got her balance and I had to look away from it.
The first dead man in line was on me. I lifted the gun and fired into his head. I hoped the bullet would travel down the line and kill them all, but he was tall and I only splattered the ones behind him as he fell and the bullet sailed over their heads.
The little girls’ hands fit through the fence as they grabbed at my legs. I stuck the gun through and shot through the forehead of the girl that still had her face. She closed her eyes as she was flung backward. I pressed the gun to the other girl’s head between her eye and empty socket. The gun clicked empty.
Doc had the extra bullets.
I turned and pulled out of the girl’s hands that were stuck in the fence.
Doc’s left hand grabbed a stake of wood off the broken board hanging from the top support of the open, privacy fence. He jammed it through the zombie’s forehead and screamed as his hand slid down the wood. As the zombie fell away from him, Doc opened his palm to reveal three, giant splinters projecting out.
He ran forward again as several more bodies filled the space in the opening of the fence. Some went after him along the tight space while the others turned back on me. The second zombie in the line from the neighborhood clawed at my back.
I rolled over the chain link fence and got whipped around in the air as zombies from both directions grabbed my shirt. The little girl stepped over her sister’s body and wrapped her arms around my left leg. I pressed my right leg against the fence and pushed back.
I pulled loose and fell to my back in the yard with the girl on top of me. I lost the gun. She pulled her head back with the material of my pants leg locked in her teeth. Her eye popped out of the socket as she strained. It dangled on the dead cord of her optic nerve against my thigh.
I pulled my hunting knife and jabbed it through a hole in the front of her skull where her face was missing. She let go of my pants and rested her head as I pulled the knife out of her brain.
The mother dropped across my chest on the ground and pinned my arms behind her thin body. She bit at my face with her giant teeth. I clawed desperately and caught hold of the bra strap behind her back with my left hand. The bra stretched pretty far. I extended my arm as far as it would go. She jerked back slightly just as her teeth clamped shut an inch from my nose. She opened her mouth for a second try and breathed cold death up my nostrils. I gagged and jammed the hunting knife from my right hand blindly at the back of her head. It plunked through with a hollow sound that vibrated through her frame into my chest with a low tone. Her mouth fell slack and her tight features drooped.
Pain shot up through my right wrist to remind me of a previous injury.
Once the entire family was dead, I let go of the strap snapping her back hard enough to shake her entire body. I shoved the mother’s light body off of me and rolled the little girl off my leg. I was worried she might have leaked into the thorn cuts on my legs. As I got up I saw that the little girl’s torn head had come to rest on the mother’s collapsed stomach. I also saw zombies falling over the fence onto their heads in the yard with me.
I sheathed the knife and turned to run. I kicked the .45 in the grass. I reached down and picked it up as the zombies were getting up to follow me.
Doc tore through the back of the space between the fences and plunged through the small pine trees behind the backyards without me. I scrambled over the back fence and followed as the zombies emerged out from between the fences one at a time.
There were more thorns, but I gritted my teeth and ripped past them with excruciating speed as I ran to catch up with Doc.
We got away from the woods and started crossing fields. Even before the mob behind us came out of the trees, other bodies that were walking toward the gunshots across the field angled into our path. We angled out between their lines.
We jumped another wood post fence onto the bed of the train tracks. Doc looked up the tracks and then back at me. I shook my head violently. He shrugged.
He reached down on the heel of his left hand that he had been holding out from his body. He tried to pull the shafts of wood out, but hissed with the pain. He ended up snapping them off nearly flush to his skin leaving the rest embedded inside. The zombies were closing in on us from more than one side. He shook his hand several times and then jumped the next post fence on the other side.
I followed.
We went back into trees on the opposite side of the field from the neighborhood. We slogged through the deep leaves under the hardwoods. We were going more slowly now. I could hear others pushing through the leaves behind us. We emerged onto a road near an intersection with a gas station and a flower shop on the corner. There was a triple X bookstore in a building by itself across from us.
Doc stared at it for a moment. I thought he was considering going inside. The cheap walls were peeling away to the metal framing underneath. Huge sections of the women’s faces were peeled away. One stared down at us with a giant, sultry gaze from her one eye.
Doc said, “I know where we are. Come this way.”
We ran down the street away from the intersection and the buildings. The dead were already coming out of the trees on the street with us all along the road. We followed the street as they followed us.
We came out of the tree lined road among more houses. I bent over and grabbed my knees. I couldn’t do this again.
***
Doc tapped me and pointed up at a large brick building with several wings. We crossed the road and climbed a grassy hill to another chain link fence. I climbed over with him, but fell onto my side instead of on my feet. He reached down and pulled me up. I picked up the .45 I had dropped as he got me to my feet. I held it out to him and he pushed it into his belt with his other empty gun.
He said, “We’ll be safe soon. Come on, Mutt.”
We crossed the lawn and reached a double set of doors under an overhang with a dead camera aiming down at us. We stepped over a skeleton face down on the concrete landing with the back of its skull crushed. Doc pulled the doors, but they were locked.
The zombies reached the fence behind us and clanged it as they pressed dumbly and tirelessly against it.
Doc pulled at a small black box on the wall with a lifeless keypad next to the door. It wouldn’t budge either.
The zombies started falling over the fence behind us.
Doc looked around. He reached into the back of the skull on the ground behind us. It crinkled and ground against the concrete. I was worried he was going to cut himself. I didn’t know the risk of infect
ion in this context. He pulled out a rock that was formed from broken concrete. It had one sharp corner and then revealed pebbles locked inside the concrete on the broken side.
The dead were halfway across the lawn as they growled behind us.
Doc smashed the sharp point of the rock against the black box over and over again. It finally tore off the wall and clattered at our feet leaving thin, exposed wires behind. I pulled on the doors again, but they were still locked. I started to run away, but Doc kept smashing the loose, black box on the ground by the locked doors.
The dead were close enough that I could hear the swish of their feet through the grass over the growing volume of their moans. They were closing around the sides cutting off our possible routes of escape.
Doc kept smashing at the box.
I pulled the doors again, but they would not open. The cover came off the black box. He reached in and pulled out a small key. He pushed it in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. He pulled it out with an effort and a ringing sound before pushing it back in and trying again.
The dead along the edges of the group got pressed against the brick walls on both sides of us along the building. They jostled each other as they closed the spaces between them and became a solid wall several bodies thick.
The door opened and Doc pushed me through he stepped in and held it open as he fiddled to get the key out of the lock. The bar on the inside finally popped back out, but he couldn’t get the key to come out of the lock.
They grabbed at his hand.
He left the key and pulled his hand inside. They locked their hands around the edge of the door and pulled it open. He grabbed the handle below the crash bar and pulled back. He slammed the door against a couple of their heads. He began losing again as the mob pulled back.
I reached out into the snapping teeth and grabbed below his hands to pull too. We pulled the door into the frame, but it wouldn’t latch with their hands inside. I started kicking at the fingers I could reach. The door pulled open again. The dead near the bottom grabbed and bit at my foot. I felt their teeth along the sole of my shoe. The dead higher up clawed at our hands on the handle and pulled on the door.
