Something supernatural.
It was the only conclusion that made sense.
Until today, he had always been a die-hard skeptic and believed that such things as vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and zombies were mere figments of man’s dark subconscious. He now knew such horrors were very real. He suspected they had always existed hidden beneath the veneer of modern civilization. In man’s blind quest to build towering cities of glass and steel, he had forgotten the supernatural world, dismissing the superstitions of past generations in the name of science. First with fire and then with electricity, man had pushed back his fear of the dark over the centuries. But the darkness was patient. It lay beneath the modern world like a volcano waiting to erupt, and Jack knew that the time had arrived. But what triggers a supernatural apocalypse? The wrath of God? The end of the Mayan calendar? No more room in hell? He had no answers, but he had to deal with its terrifying aftermath nonetheless.
He stared at the darkened sun. How was he going to keep his family safe in this terrifying new reality?
A burst of rapid gunfire echoed over the countryside, ending his contemplation. He searched for its source and spotted a grain elevator a few miles away. More gunshots rang out, followed by a small explosion. Jack snapped up his binoculars and scanned the site. The heavily damaged elevator towered over a cluster of buildings belonging to a small rural town. Another explosion sounded, and a plume of smoke trailed into the darkened sky.
He wasn’t the only one fighting the newly risen dead.
Jack crossed the roof and started down the ladder. Kate waited at the bottom.
“I was just about to come up and check on you. The zombies started making sounds outside. Are you all right?”
“I got them a little agitated, but I’m fine.” He climbed down to the garage and approached Doug, who was under the hood of the truck. “What’s the name of the town about five miles northeast of here?”
“Harrison,” he said. “Why?”
“They’ve been putting up a hell of a fight against the zombies. I heard gunshots and explosions coming from there.”
“I’m not surprised. The place is full of crazy gun-toting churchies.”
“I wonder if we can make it that far.”
“What’re you thinking?” Kate said.
“There’s strength in numbers. We’ve only got nine rounds of ammunition between us. Apparently, the people in Harrison are better-armed and more capable of fighting zombies than we are trapped here in this gas station. If we could reach them, we might be safer.”
“I don’t know about that,” Doug said, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. “My granddad told me to stay clear of the place. It was a ghost town for years, but lately a group of squatters have moved into the area. Word is they’re a bunch of fundamentalist wackos involved in some sort of Christian cult. You know the type. They love Jesus and hate gays. Rumor is that they cook meth over there, too. Needless to say, they like to keep to themselves.” He slammed down the hood. “The truck’s ready, yo.”
“Good, but the roads look broken up bad. We’re not going to be able to drive very far.
We need to set our sights on someplace close.”
“I say we go to my granddad’s farm. It’s about three miles from here. I wanted to check on him anyway and see how he’s doing.”
“Do you think he survived?” Kerri said.
“Ha, you don’t know my granddad. He’s a tough old man. Served as a Marine sniper in Vietnam. It’ll take more than a few walking undead to kill him.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jack said. “I don’t think the zombies are going to be moving on any time soon. They know we’re in here, but we’re safe for the moment. We can rest for a couple of days and decide if we want to leave.”
“Then I’ll put up the tent.”
* * * *
There was little to do but wait.
Brett stretched out in the pickup bed to take a nap. Kerri chatted with Doug about friends and music as they pulled out the two-man camping tent and set it up in the garage. At least in Doug’s presence, she acted in a civil manner toward Jack.
With her disheveled brown hair hanging in her face, Kate had returned to reading her Bible. It was open to Revelation, and Jack felt sorry for her. Of all of them, she was the one most affected by the nightmare they were confronting. Her faith had been shaken to its core, and she was doing her best to make sense of it all.
Jack decided to continue his rooftop vigil and opened the supply closet to pull out another folding chair. He was surprised to see a dusty bottle of Wild Turkey sitting amid the clutter on a shelf. He licked his lips and felt his palms begin to sweat. It was as if he had uncovered some taboo treasure waiting for him in the dim closet light. Checking back over his shoulder, he saw that Kate was still involved in reading and had not seen his little find. Without another thought, he snatched up the whiskey bottle and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he picked up the rifle and a folding chair and returned to the roof.
Once he was situated in the chair with the rifle across his lap, he studied the landscape. Nothing had changed. The dark clouds continued to twist overhead while the sun remained in shadow. He removed the bottle of Wild Turkey from his pocket and ran his tongue over dry lips. Just a sip to calm his nerves, he told himself. Anyone would want a drink after the fucked-up day he’d suffered. He caressed the label with his thumb. No one could blame him for having a drink. Not after what he had been through. No one, that is, except for his family. Kate would be very disappointed, and Kerri would hate him even more. He unscrewed the cap and breathed in the whiskey aroma. To hell with it. Just down the fucker and the world can go screw itself.
He tipped the bottle back to take a long gulp and stopped.
A lone crow cawed in the sky above. Jack lowered the bottle and studied the bird circling overhead. Since the disaster, he hadn’t seen a single creature in flight. As if answering the crow’s call, hundreds of black birds suddenly descended from the clouds, noisily twisting and diving in the twilit sky. The flock circled over the building like an avian cyclone, and Jack stared in amazement at the spectacle.
“A wondrous sight, is it not?” a familiar rough voice said behind him.
Jack leapt out of the chair and spun around. Puss Cobb stood in a corner of the roof and stared at him with eyes of the blackest obsidian. The eyes of a crow, Jack realized in shock.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Puss nodded at the whiskey bottle. “Go ahead, Jack. Have a drink on me.” His gnarled arthritic fingers opened and closed while his twisted body wobbled as if suspended on invisible marionette wires. “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack should just take a sip,” he said in a voice as rough as sandpaper rubbing the wood of a coffin.
“You can’t be real.” Jack rubbed his eyes and blinked.
“I’m not, Jack,” he said. “The only thing real in your life is that bottle. Help yourself to it. Don’t worry about your family. What the hell? You’ve let them down before and one more time isn’t going to matter. Drink it all, I say. You know you want to.”
“What the fuck are you?”
“A friend,” he said with a toothless grin. “Or your guardian angel. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Jack looked down at the bottle. He thought about his family and the terrible situation they were in. They needed him now more than ever, and he couldn’t let them down. Not when their very survival depended on him.
“Screw this!” He threw the bottle as hard as he could at Puss Cobb, but the man’s image disappeared and the bottle continued over the edge of the roof to shatter amid the zombies below. Jack sat back down in the chair and took a deep breath. He pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes and thought about what had just happened. Was he crazy after all? On top of the incredible events he had witnessed since starting out this morning, he was still seeing and talking to the ghost of Puss Cobb. Maybe nothing was real and he was locked away in some nuthouse or in a coma in a hospital d
reaming the whole damn thing.
Below him, Cobb’s Corner vibrated with a low rumble. Aftershock. He leapt to his feet. The building shook to its foundation and threatened to collapse any second. He grabbed the Marlin and sprinted for the hatch leading to the garage, the tar-paper roof bucking beneath his feet. Kerri screamed below.
Jack reached the ladder and climbed down, but the violent tremor made it impossible to hold on to the metal rungs. He fell the last five feet, dropping the rifle to the floor. Regaining his senses, he stood and looked around. The garage had become a scene of confused madness. Items and tools rattled off the shelves, and light fixtures fell from the ceiling, the bulbs shattering on the floor like bombs of exploding glass. The undead mob outside went berserk and pounded against the garage door in a frenzy. Kerri rushed to save her brother in the pickup bed and passed too close to the cardboard taped over the garage window. It suddenly broke inward. A cadaverous gray-skinned zombie grabbed her hair with both hands and dragged her backward while letting out a horrible moan.
“Help!” she cried out in terror.
Jack snatched up the Marlin and aimed it at her zombie attacker before realizing he couldn’t take the chance of hitting his daughter.
“Try to get out of the way, Kerri,” he shouted.
She twisted around and pounded the zombie’s gaunt face with her fists. “Let go of my fucking hair!”
The thing responded by sinking its gruesome teeth into the back of her right hand. Kerri screamed.
“Screw this!” Jack said and charged forward.
He put the rifle muzzle against the zombie’s forehead and pulled the trigger. Dead brains exploded out the back of its head in a spray of black rot. The horror released its bite and fell from sight behind the garage door, but before he could cock the Marlin again, another pair of undead hands lunged through the broken window and grabbed the rifle barrel.
“Fuck!” Jack tried to wrestle the Marlin from the thing. He pulled back with all his might. A baldheaded zombie with a bloodstained face emerged halfway through the window. Jack attempted to twist the rifle to shoot him but couldn’t break the zombie’s inhuman grip.
“Watch out!” Doug said at his side and pulled the cord on the Husqvarna.
The chain saw roared to life and sliced through the zombie’s wrists. The amputated hands fell to the floor as Jack cocked the Marlin and shot a hole through its head. Showing raw stumps for arms, the zombie fell away only to be replaced by another who clutched at him through the broken window. Jack stepped back out of its reach, realizing that the aftershock had ended, but the frenzied undead continued to pound against the door. He glanced down. Only one bolt still held the hasp to the floor.
Behind him Kerri sobbed. He had almost forgotten about her in the noise and mayhem. As he turned around, his heart sank in despair. The zombie bite had taken a gory chunk out of her right hand and she wept in pain. By now, Kate and Brett had reached her side.
“Oh my God,” Kate said as the last remaining bolt holding the door broke free. “She’s been bit.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jack jammed a wrench from a nearby workbench into the garage-door track. The maneuver stopped its upward progress but left a three-foot space between the door and the floor.
“Get in the truck!” he shouted to the others. “They’re coming in!”
“What about you?” Doug said while placing the idling chain saw in the pickup bed.
“I’ll get in back. When I give you the signal, you drive the hell out of here.”
Doug nodded and jumped into the cab as Kate rushed the children into the front seat.
Cocking the Marlin, Jack prepared to shoot the first zombie crawling under the door. He was shocked to discover it was a boy about Brett’s age wearing a dark suit and tie. He looked as if he’d just come from Sunday school, and Jack’s finger hesitated on the trigger. He thought the child was one of the living until he saw the rotting gray flesh of his face. The boy had been dead for a while, and Jack felt a deep pity well up inside. It wasn’t the child’s fault he hadn’t been left to rest in peace.
The dead boy showed stained teeth and grabbed for Jack’s ankle. More zombies followed the child’s lead and started slithering their way into the garage. The Ford’s engine turned over and roared to life behind him. Jack threw himself into the truck bed and took aim with the Marlin. The zombie boy climbed onto the tailgate and grabbed once more for him. Sympathy for the pitiful thing had dissipated. Jack realized the kid was nothing but an empty husk of dead flesh—the meat puppet of some unknown hand. Survival was now a battle between the living and the dead.
He pulled the trigger, and the rifle bucked against his shoulder. At point-blank range, it was hard to miss. The bullet tore through the boy’s face, blasting out a good portion of his skull. The shot’s impact blew the dead child off the tailgate as other zombies staggered to their feet to take his place.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Jack shouted and lay flat in the truck bed.
Doug stepped on the gas and slammed the truck into reverse. On screeching tires, the vehicle raced backward, smashing through the garage door with a loud rending of metal. Jack ducked low as the panel of corrugated steel flipped over his head. The Ford plowed through the waiting zombie mob until a jarring impact halted the truck in its tracks. Jack slid around in the bed and bounced his head off a wheel hub. A splash of stars filled his vision and he lost his hold on the rifle. Dazed, he struggled to sit up and see what they had hit.
The pickup’s bumper had caved in the side of one of the gas pumps. Jack looked in dismay as a stream of gasoline poured from the ruptured unit and flowed in a widening pool under the truck.
“Drive!” he shouted to Doug. “Now!”
The truck’s clutch plate made an awful grinding sound as it tried to slip into first gear. He remembered that Doug had told him there was a problem with the clutch. Panic rose in Jack’s throat as a dozen zombies swarmed the stalled pickup in a mindless attempt to reach him.
“Get us the fuck out of here!” he said.
The clutch continued to grind. Something grabbed Jack’s left arm and he turned to see a gruesome-looking zombie in a blue work shirt. He hit the thing in the face with his fist and snatched up the Marlin. A female grabbed his right jacket sleeve. He jabbed the rifle stock hard into her mouth and heard teeth shatter. More undead hands reached for him.
The truck lurched into gear and shot forward, flinging zombies off its sides. The violent motion caused Jack to fall hard against the bed. Before he could get his bearings, something grabbed his leg with an iron grip. He looked up to see Shep, still wearing his OU cap, reach over the tailgate. He cocked the rifle, aimed for the obese zombie’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
The weapon was empty.
Shep gnashed his bloody teeth and dragged Jack toward him like a side of beef. His gory mouth opened wide to take a bite out of his leg. The truck bounced, and something solid landed against Jack’s shoulder. He heard the low throb of an idling motor.
The chain saw!
He grabbed the Husqvarna and activated the saw. “Try biting this!” he said. He jammed the whirling chain saw into Shep’s mouth and cut upward, splitting his skull like a rotten melon. A spray of bloody gore splattered Jack’s face, and he fought back the urge to retch from the taste. Shep’s decapitated body slid off the tailgate and rolled along the ground behind the truck. Jack let out a sigh of relief and shut down the Husqvarna before laying it aside.
The truck skidded to a stop. Doug jumped out of the cab and picked up Shep’s bloody OU cap off the ground. “Damn,” he said, looking at Shep’s headless corpse. “You chain-sawed that fat OU homer real good. That’s sick, Mr. Garrett.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jack said, wiping the gore from his face. “We’ve stopped?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” He climbed out of the truck bed and sat exhausted on the bumper.
“You showed yo
ur skill at killing zombies. It’s my turn, yo,” Doug reached into a toolbox mounted in the back of the truck and removed a roadside flare. “Just watch.”
“What’re you doing? Let’s just keep going before they catch up with us.”
“That ain’t going to happen,” he said, imitating a hillbilly accent. He struck the flare, causing the end to burst into a flower of red flame. “We’re having us a zombie barbecue. Yee-haw!”
Too tired to protest, Jack watched Doug run back toward the station holding the burning flare like an Olympic torchbearer. The walking dead had regrouped under the canopy and staggered amid the spreading pool of gasoline. From twenty-five yards away, Doug flung the flare into the zombie mob before racing back full speed. The gas pool ignited with a whoosh. A second later, the pumps exploded in a fiery geyser, sending the metal canopy flipping end over end into the sky. A second blast followed due to the detonation of the buried gas storage tanks, and Cobb’s Corner was obliterated in a massive fireball. Building debris and flaming zombies were thrown fifty feet into the dark sky. A concussive heat wave knocked Jack back.
“Holy shit!” Doug said. “That was the bomb!”
“It was cool.” Jack slipped off his gore-covered jacket and wiped off his face.
“Cool?” the young man said, running back to join him. “That was the freaking shits, Mr. G—I mean Mr. Garrett.”
“Call me Mr. G now. You earned it.”
“Okay.” He flashed a smile and raised his right hand. “We showed those zombies not to mess with us, didn’t we, Mr. G?”
“We sure did, but I’m too tired to give you a high-five.”
Undead Flesh Page 7
