The End

by P. A. Douglas

  Victor nodded and took off running past the others to get to the front.

  With the idea of stealth thrown completely out the window at this point, Victor took the lead. In full sprint, he veered around a corner leading into the back of the building behind two large swinging doors. “This way, we’re real close,” he shouted, not looking back.

  The others followed.

  At the back of the group, Ashley had her rifle locked and loaded. A handful of zombies crept and shuffled from corners of aisles and refrigerators. Each of them with their own distinct flesh wound that painted the brutal way they met death. Ashley counted seven of them so far as she shimmied backward toward the double doors, the others already past them and hopefully well on their way up the staircase to the roof.

  Ten, then thirteen, then eighteen. Zombie after zombie filled the large opening that led to where Ashley stood. With outstretched arms and mouths wide, she instantly thought of Chadwick, and a gut-wrenching pain of guilt and anguish flooded her stomach. She was going to be sick. She opened fire, the rifle jerking in her grip. With a wide birth of fire, she lit up the store. Bullets ripped through merchandise and zombies. Her shots were wild and unfocused.

  Blood and gray fluids poured out in every direction. The dozen or so zombies shook upon being struck, but still pressed on. There were too many of them and they were closing in fast. She had to act, and quickly. She lowered the rifle, pulling out the pistol, aiming it at the nearest zombie. As it scrambled in her direction only a few paces away, she aimed and fired. The creature went down instantly. It was a clear and clean shot, taking off most of its ear and enough of its head to count.

  As the one-eared zombie stumbled to the ground, Ashley Fox took two quick steps back and turned, breaking for the double doors. They swung open with ease.

  Off in the not-so-distant path ahead of her, Victor stood, waving the others to follow him up the staircase. Ashley’s eyes followed his hand gesture and saw that Kieta and Jenny were steadily climbing the metal staircase leading up to where she and Chadwick had originally entered the building.

  Phillip, where was Phillip? He wasn’t up at the top with Victor, and he wasn’t climbing the staircase with the girls. Ashley’s gaze went even wider trying to place the man’s whereabouts.

  Nothing.

  The large black double doors swung open shaking her out of her thoughts. A small mob of zombies followed behind her.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath, looking back up at the people climbing the steps.

  As she jogged across the room past the unopened boxes of merchandise nicely stacked in stalls and racks, she looked up, seeing that Victor’s gun was drawn and he was aiming it in her direction. She looked back and the doors were still wide open. A large cluster of zombies was making their way into the back of the store. There must have been over thirty of them.

  A loud bang rang out from in front of her and a bullet whizzed past her ear. Victor was firing over her head! Not wanting to get killed by an idiot, she kicked into high gear, and reached the bottom of the steps in a matter of moments.

  Climbing the first several steps, three steps per stride, she quickly caught up with the two girls. “What’s the hold up? Let’s go,” Ashley said.

  Kieta was having contractions. The pain was too great, and she was stuck in her tracks. Halfway up the stairs, she just froze, holding her stomach and heaving heavily in pain. Wincing and gritting her teeth, a loud and long grunt exited her mouth. Still, gripping her belt loop, Jenny stood behind her one step lower waiting to move along.

  “What’s the holdup here?” Ashley shouted shoving the two girls.

  “The…ba…bby...” Kieta’s words came crashing out in one long breath between closed teeth and closed eyes.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Now?” Ashley looked up to see the worried look on Victor’s face as he looked down from the rooftop exit, gun still drawn. She took a deep breath while in disbelief, then turned to face the horde that headed toward them. Pulling up her rifle, she sighted the closest zombie lurching its way across the shipping area.

  Dried blood filled the open fissures on the skin of the creature’s cracking face. As it opened its mouth, most of its bottom teeth were missing, and blood poured out and down its pale chin. It’s ragged and tattered clothes were dust and dirt caked.

  She pulled the trigger. Four or five shots littered the creature’s head before she panned the rifle out and into the rest of the oncoming crowd.

  Many of the zombies instantly fell with fatal headshots, but most of them keep their persistent pursuit. Victor followed Ashley’s initiative with a steady flow of single shot after single shot. He was no expert marksmen, but a damn good shot at least. Every other shot that rang out hit a zombie in the head, sending it to the floor for good. Still, it wasn’t enough to turn the odds. The zombies crept closer, too close.

  Ashley broke her concentration away from the horde below for a second toward Kieta. She was still gripping the railing, knuckles pressed white. With that same pain-filled expression, she kept heaving and huffing.

  “Pull it together, Kieta! We need to move,” Ashley said, who instantly went back to rifle fire.

  The weapon looked large in her feminine grip, shaking the woman up and down as an onslaught of fire exited the barrel tearing into chests and necks. Above her, the single rifle ceased. Over the loud bursts, she thought she heard something. Then suddenly, she watched as a handgun flew across the room into the crowd below, hitting one of the undead in the chest. The creature shuffled back for a moment, but it did no real damage. They were only feet away from the bottom of the steps now and more were still entering the room from the large open doors.

  “I’m out of ammo,” Victor shouted, holding both hands in the air empty.

  Ashley decided to make a choice and sure as shit hoped that Kieta would comply. She threw her hot rifle around one shoulder and started up the steps, grabbing Jenny with one hand, lifting the girl up off of her feet.

  “It’s time to move whether you’re ready or not,” Ashley grunted, heaving the little girl in one arm.

  She reached up with a free hand and shoved Kieta forward. The very pregnant woman fell landing on one knee, catching herself with one hand on the step ahead of her.

  “Get up!”

  Ashley passed the woman by, jogging up the steps to the top. She dropped Jenny to her feet, then turned to get Kieta, who was still on one knee as Ashley had left her. Eyeing Victor with a nonverbal agreement, the two made it down the steps after her. They both lifted the pregnant woman to her feet, one person under each arm with a shoulder. The width of the staircase was confining, but the two steadied the soon-to-be mother, working to get her up each step.

  It wasn’t easy, and she wasn’t the lightest of people to be toting around. Definitely not Jenny, Ashley thought as they made it up one step at a time. Below them, the first of several zombies broke the second step, making their way up. With the weight of the pregnant woman and the lack of space to move, the zombies made their way up each step with more ease than that of the rescuers trying to get Kieta to safety.

  Suddenly, Kieta kicked into gear. The debilitating contractions had stopped, and she was back in action. They started to make some solid ground. At the top of the steps, Ashley opened the door leading to the roof, and with a large grin, could see that the pilot was ready to go. The large blades were alive and the engine in full swing. Just from the quick glance before sending Jenny out, then turning to help Victor with his girlfriend, she thought she could see someone else out there with the pilot.

  Jenny ran off toward the chopper. Ashley and Victor followed, still helping Kieta along, one person under each arm.

  Ahead of them, she looked up seeing the pilot and Phillip both with weapons drawn and pointed in the direction they had just come from. Ashley looked back to see that she had made one fatal flaw in the escape plan. She left the rooftop door wide open. She was so focused on getting people out that she overlooked the mo
st important detail.

  Zombies poured out onto the rooftop behind her. The pilot motioned for them to get onboard, and as she passed, the pilot and Phillip opened up a torrent of fire on the relentless undead that followed in their wake.

  Victor and Ashley helped Kieta get into the helicopter. Jenny was nowhere to be found. As Victor jumped into the bird, checking on his woman and comforting her, Ashley stepped down to one knee of the rooftop scanning the grounds for the little girl.

  There she was! The girl was off to the corner, crouched down in fear. A small cluster of the large mob approached her, breaking away from the main group that still seemed focused on the two men shooting in on them.

  Ashley screamed for Jenny to run to the chopper. It didn’t work. The girl couldn’t hear her. Ashley watched as the little girl’s dress danced in the violent helicopter wind. Ashley broke away from the chopper and ran for the child. With each of her steps more than twice the pace of any of the living dead, she reached Jenny well before the small mob descended upon her.

  Ashley yanked her up with both arms, turning to make it back to the chopper. What her eyes instantly witnessed almost made her drop to her knees.

  The helicopter had been breached. The mob of zombies made it past the fire that the pilot and Phillip had been laying down. As she watched them descend upon the only way out, Phillip lay dead. Several zombies hovered over his remains, feasting on his bones. The pilot was missing, obviously fallen to the same fate.

  Something caught Ashley’s peripheral to the right. She quickly glanced over and was relieved to see Victor helping Kieta down a fire escape ladder. Ashley quickly followed suit and made her way to their side, passing the little girl down the ladder to Victor. Behind her, Ashley took one last look at the helicopter. Over thirty or forty of those things had fallen upon the bird and were now devouring the remains of her pilot and a man who she was sent to save. First Chadwick, and now this. She had failed.

  Several zombies headed for Ashley. She turned and began to climb down the fire escape before they had a chance to get her.

  Ashley pulled free her handgun aiming it up at the zombies. After two quick shots, one zombie fell.

  Once Ashley’s feet met the cement, her head went heavy and unfocused. The ladder reached down from the left side of the building and overlooked the employee parking. As she tried to focus, she felt one foot stepping in front of another. Ahead of her, she could barely make out Victor getting into what looked like a truck. The girls looked like they were already inside.

  Her focus began to fade even more as she reached the truck. She was losing it.

  “Get in, get in,” Victor’s shout seemed muffled and cloudy in Ashley’s head. Her vision started to blur. The events unfolding before her were too unreal to grasp. So much loss. So much chaos and confusion.

  As she reached up and climbed into the bed of the truck, a rancid face filled with maggots and dried blood lunged forward, grabbing her by the throat. It’s green and black-stained teeth reared open, and a putrid stench of rot and festering flesh puffed out into the air. Ashley’s stomach recoiled.

  As the creature’s teeth bit down into her cheek, tearing out a large chunk of her eye, beyond the pain Ashley imagined it was Chadwick. The blood sprayed from her face as the creature tore the flesh away. Then came the pain and warm sensation of blood spilling forth.

  She reached up to cover her wound, everything coming into focus now. With a loud scream, she leaped back, jerking wildly.

  As she opened her eyes with one hand covering her hot cheek, she realized where she was. In the truck’s cab, with Victor in the driver’s seat, heading down the road.

  “Ashley? You zoned out and dozed off after you climbed in. Bad dreams?” Victor asked, not taking his eyes off of the road.

  Still a little out of it and caught up in her delusion, Ashley jumped up in her seat, looking back at the truck bed. The girls were safe. Kieta sat leaning against the tailgate with the wind in her hair. And Jenny was dead asleep sprawled out on the bed of the truck.

  Ashley’s cheek was fine. It had all been in her head.

  5

  The piece of junk for a truck sped down the highway headed east from Lake City, Florida. With plenty of miles already behind them, Ashley and the others simply waited. The white lines as they passed could seem like seconds and hours all in one. The Chevy zipped along at a steady 80 mph, passing abandoned cars, vans, and trucks of every make and model. The highway was nothing more than a remnant of the last lingering few days that had just ravaged the coastlands of the southeastern state. How far had it spread?

  “How long was I out?” Ashley asked.

  “Eh…not long really. Maybe twenty minutes give or take,” Victor said.

  Ashley sat up, back cramping and head still in a bit of a fog. Way too much had happened way too fast. Her mind struggled to catch up. Processing her thoughts, she brushed her hair aside and out of her eyes. In the passenger side mirror, she could see herself and part of Kieta’s hair flapping in the wind. She looked like hell. She had just been through it too. She lost a pilot, a civilian, and her partner all within the same twenty-four hours. It had been rough on her, and her mind was careworn with stress and disbelief. How could any of this be real?

  “So let me get this straight. Before you dozed off on me again, you mentioned that the coastline was quarantined and that the rest of the planet was okay. If that’s true, then where do you think they are going to send us once we get cleared by the base?” Victor asked.

  “What?” Ashley asked, still focusing on the road as it moved away from her in the side mirror. She hadn’t caught half of what Victor had said.

  “Where do you think we are going to get shipped once this is all said and done?” Victor restated from behind the wheel, only taking his eyes from the road for a second. “You know… us,” he said pointing with his thumb at the passengers in the bed of the truck.

  “No idea. I just do the field work. There haven’t been many survivors, and that was what we expected. So hypothetically, you three are a miracle. Probably get the same basic treatment we’ve been getting. Once we get to the base, they will end up running half a day worth of tests on us just to ensure we didn’t catch the death-walk thing, and then who knows? A fresh set of clothes and a meal, for sure.”

  Victor’s reached up with one hand, cupping his belly, giving it two good slaps with a smile. “One thing at a time, I guess.”

  *

  In the back of the truck, Jenny had finally awakened from her little nap. It was hard to actually fall to sleep in the bed of the truck, with the wind blowing so hard overhead and the engine roaring so loud. Squinting into the daylight, in an attempt to take a nap, Jenny leaned against the back of the cab facing Kieta. Her golden-brown hair danced about out in front of her, the shorter strands occasionally popping her in the eye. She was tranquil and quiet, too quiet.

  Kieta was worried, worried about Jenny in a bad way. She was acting odd when they had found her screaming her head off. Victor was her neighbor and could hear her screaming from the driveway. She had been locked in her house and he rushed over to help. Her parents were nowhere to be found, which was odd to leave a child that age alone. But after Victor broke a window and rescued Jenny, they spotted a half-eaten woman in the garden. Thank goodness Jenny hadn’t noticed it too.

  It was then the three of them made for Victor’s work, feeling that it would be a secure place to hide. They had met up with Phillip along the way, but that didn’t matter anymore. He was gone.

  It took Jenny almost the entire day to quit heaving and crying before she calmed down and passed out. After she awoke, locked away with the others in the office of Victor’s work, she never came to her total senses. Kieta had known the girl well enough with her soon-to-be husband living next to the kid’s parents. Needless to say, Jenny was once a vibrant child filled with laughs and love. And now, every bit of that was gone. All that was left was dried up to dust. The girl looked as if she had aged rapid
ly. Across from her, Kieta watched as the girl blankly stared off at nothing. A somber expression plastered to the child’s face.

  Behind Jenny, in the cab, Victor and Ashley were talking and pointing at something out ahead of them.

  Looking over the roof of the truck without taking her butt off of the rusty bed, Kieta saw what they were pointing at. The sky was graying, with thick, dark clouds some ways out. Kieta scooted up, tapping on the glass to get the front passengers’ attention.

  Ashley reached and slid the back window glass of the truck open.

  “Looks like it’s going to rain pretty hard,” Kieta yelled, holding one hand on top of her head to keep her hair from getting too out of control.

  “Yeah,” Ashley shouted in response. “But, that is the least of our worries.” Ashley pointed out past the light drops of rain already hitting against the windshield to the road ahead.

  It was then that Kieta noticed the truck had been slowing down. Looking out at the winding interstate ahead of them, she could see the worries Ashley had referred to.

  The road a few miles up was congested with cars, and the small overpass was utterly impassable.

  As the truck moved closer to the mountainous wreckage blocking their path, the raindrops turned into rainfall. The steady sheets of rain became heavy within moments, the clouds finally deciding to open up right on top of the Chevy and the passengers within and without.

  “What do you want to do?” Victor asked leaning forward and looking up at the dark clouds overhead, the rain steadily falling.

  Not even the slightest bit concerned with the rain, Ashley scanned the surrounding road filled with parked cars. There was no way around them. They were four and five cars deep, wall-to-wall leading up to the overpass. And from there, who knew? Ashley couldn’t see that far. A large semi blocked the view. It wasn’t like that really mattered anyhow. It was too bad for them to care about making it across.