by TW Brown
By now, what used to be the Miller girl was only a step or two away. He hated what he had to do next, but there was really no other option.
Ken waited for it to step closer. He thought he heard the mayor saying something, but he was solely focused on the terrible thing that was now close enough that its hands would touch him if the arms were fully extended. Bringing it back and then driving the tip forward with all his might, Ken pierced the face of the Miller girl zombie with the prybar. He’d aimed for the left eye but struck just below.
As if the plug had just been pulled, she dropped to the ground. Her body went still. A gasp sounded, but Ken turned with the knowledge that the mother was climbing the stairs. The mayor would have to endure the steep learning curve.
Looking down at the thing climbing the stairs, he could only vaguely make out the woman he’d known as Sheila Miller. In undeath, her face was slack and with a slight blue tinge. Her eyes were filmed over just like all the other undead and shot full of those black tracers. There was blood drying all down her front.
His eyes darted to the body of what had been the daughter. The blood around her mouth and drying on her chin belonged to the mother. The idea of dying from an attack by a person’s own children struck a raw nerve with Ken.
For days, he’d wondered just how this infection or whatever it was had managed to spread so rapidly. As he looked down at the empty eyes of the thing that had once been Sheila Miller, he understood.
The thought of his Bennett coming at him in this state was unthinkable. He knew as he prepared to kill this abomination that he would very likely hesitate if it was his wife. It would be easy in this moment to say otherwise, but he knew the reality of how he would probably deal with something so terrible.
With one swift swing, he drove the end of the prybar home and ended the shell that was no longer Sheila Miller. She collapsed just as her daughter had and tumbled back down the stairs.
“This can’t be real,” the mayor breathed as he came up beside him.
The sound of the door opening drew Ken’s attention and he turned to see Colton step out of what was obviously a girl’s bedroom. The man surveyed the scene and shuddered when his eyes passed over the dead girl who was now lying in a growing pool of dark blood that oozed from her head.
“It’s real,” Ken sighed. “And if we have one house like this, I am willing to bet there are others.”
“But how?” the mayor asked in obvious disbelief.
“Don’t matter.” Ken started down the stairs. There were plenty of unanswered questions, but at the moment, he just wanted to get back to Bennett.
He was out the door and almost to his truck when he heard the sound of feet coming on the run from behind him. He slowed his pace just enough to let Colton and the mayor catch up. He wouldn’t just leave them behind.
“Are you sure that is the only way—” the mayor started before Ken even turned the key in the ignition.
“Yes.” His tone was forceful, and he hoped it conveyed the idea that he did not care to discuss or debate this anymore.
Colton had climbed in back and, for once in his life, kept his mouth shut. The three men drove back down into the main part of downtown Estacada in silence.
He made the right turn onto Broadway and saw that there was now a very sizeable crowd gathered in front of his little brewery. The mayor mumbled something, but Ken couldn’t make it out. As soon as the truck came to a stop, the man leapt from the cab and waded into the gathered throng of visibly scared and concerned citizens.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the mayor was saying over the buzz of voices. “I realize there are probably many of you with questions and/or concerns. I need you all to bear with us for a short time and we will do our best to provide answers. What I am going to ask is that you all head to your homes. Spread the word to your neighbors that there will be a town meeting in the high school gym…” The mayor paused when Ken raised his eyebrows and gestured with his hands in a way that he thought the man understood. “High school football field.” Ken nodded. “The phones are down, so this is going to have to be spread by word of mouth. Tell everybody you know, but please do your best to be as quick as possible about it so you can clear the streets.”
Ken stepped up beside the man once it was clear he’d said all he could think of for the moment. He had a few things to add.
“I am going to save you all the trouble of relying on the rumor mill.” Ken briefly considered if what he was about to do was the right thing and decided that it was. “We just returned from the Miller residence near the elementary school. The mother and daughter were both infected and had become one of those things you see on television. I had to put them down.”
That caused the ripple of whispered conversation to become a loud buzz. A few shouts of profanity were laced throughout, and even what sounded like angry accusations. Ken didn’t care, nor did he have time to mince words. He was certain things were going to get worse before they came remotely close to getting better.
“People, this is much worse than the folks on the news are telling. If we are sitting here thinking there is gonna be any form of help or assistance from the state or any other government, police, or military, then we are fooling ourselves. We are out here on our own. If we want to survive until something does get done about whatever caused this, then it is going to take some adjusting.”
“What kind of adjusting?” a voice shouted.
“That is what we intend to make clear when we get everybody together,” the mayor offered as he planted himself at Ken’s side. “It would be foolish to lay things out hastily here in this situation. I will be meeting with a few individuals and together we will come up with a plan that will give us all a direction.”
Ken found himself nodding. He felt a sense of relief that he and the mayor were possibly on the same wavelength in this matter. He’d had a lot of reservations about how the man might respond to this situation, but, so far, it seemed like he understood the gravity.
“What about the Millers?” somebody called. “Are we supposed to take Ken Johnson’s word that they were some sort of monster that he had to kill?”
That prompted far too many shouts that sounded like agreement for Ken’s liking. These idiots had no idea what they were talking about. He made it a point to scan for a few of the faces. He wanted to remember them.
“I was there as well,” the mayor shouted above the growing din of discord that was gaining strength. “You people have no idea what we saw. However, I will share all that along with a few other things when we meet at the football field in a few hours.”
Another surge of angry voices started, but the man simply stood there and stared back at the crowd with no expression for several seconds. At last, he dropped his head and shook it before lifting it again and once more addressing the throng.
“Please have everybody that you can find gathered at the stadium. Be there in…” he glanced at his watch, “…two hours. We will deal with the situation at that time. Until then, I need Mr. Johnson and the two men that went to the Miller residence to meet me inside.”
The man didn’t wait for any further reaction from the crowd. He simply turned and walked inside the door of Fearless Brewery. Ken stood there for a moment and watched the energy seem to visibly deflate from the crowd.
A part of him wanted to laugh. It was just this sort of thing that used to infuriate him about the mayor. Hell, it probably still would, but at the moment it wasn’t being used on him.
Mayor Sean Drinkwine had a way of simply shutting down a conversation. Right now, that was a trait that Ken had to appreciate.
3
Public Display
Ken looked around the table at the people gathered in the conference room of city hall. Other than the mayor, these were all his people. Most of them had been on that run to bring food back to town. If Sean Drinkwine felt outnumbered, he sure didn’t show it. He wasn’t talking like he was the outsider in the group.
“…and the
first thing we need to do is get a few teams to go door-to-door. I have a difficult time believing that the Millers are the only ones who have fallen to this…illness or whatever they are calling it now.” The mayor paused and took a sip from his coffee cup. “We need to do this right away, but I doubt we have enough people until after the meeting. So, Ken, I will put you in charge of selecting the teams and getting the city checked out.”
“Isn’t there some way we can get people to check themselves off when they come to this meeting?” Ned spoke up from where he was leaning against the wall.
Ken glanced at the man. There was something in his voice that sounded…wrong wasn’t the correct word. Off, he decided. There was something off about him.
At well over six-feet-tall, Ned Sanders looked the part of a man who worked the land. He was thick-chested with arms that put a strain on the seams. He had a full, thick beard and bushy mustache that, like the dark, curly hair on his head, was beginning to show the occasional strand of gray. He was prone to smiling, which gave him an almost permanent crease at the corners of his mouth along with crow’s feet perched at the corners of his eyes. Despite how much he ate (or drank) the man did not show even the slightest signs of a gut. In short, Ned was what many might consider a “man’s man” in his stature and mannerism.
The man in this room was not that Ned. This guy was still very pale, and he looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. Ken couldn’t recall ever seeing the man look so scared or, at the least, nervous.
“That might be something we can do,” the mayor said with a thoughtful nod. “We’d need to have some sort of map or diagram with the residences listed.”
“Google earth?” Colton piped up.
Ned’s cohort, Colton Becker, also was not sounding himself either. Ken couldn’t really blame the guy. He’d been trapped by the Miller girl and probably thought he was about to die.
Colton was an unlikely comrade-in-arms to Ned Spencer. He was an opposite in so many ways. Where Ned was quiet and reserved, Colton couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was a bit scrawny, but you couldn’t tell by the way he was always getting into people’s faces. He ran as hot as Ned did cool.
“Excuse me?” the mayor asked, obviously not following the young man’s suggestion.
“We could print up overhead shots of the area.” The young man spoke like he was addressing a child, but, to his credit, the mayor did not appear to get annoyed or offended. He simply nodded.
“That could very well work.”
A loud crash outside caused everybody to jump. As a group they all ran for the door and out onto the street. Up on the curb at the intersection of Highway 211 and Broadway Street a small car had been hit broadside by a black SUV. Steam was rolling up from the front of both vehicles.
Ken looked into the front of each vehicle to try and assess who might be worse off and was surprised when the two people in the compact car were actually getting out of their vehicle, but the person in the SUV remained slumped over the wheel.
“He just crossed over and slammed into us,” the man climbing out of the small car howled.
Ken was already heading for the SUV and had closed to within just a few yards when he caught the first whiff. It was a stench he was becoming all too familiar with over the past several hours. He skidded to a stop and threw out an arm to keep back the men that had followed him.
A small twitch of movement was the first visible indicator that whatever was in the driver’s seat of that vehicle was active. A heartbeat later, there was a soft moan and the man’s head turned to look out at Ken and the others. His filmed over, tracer-riddled eyes were proof enough.
Ken continued to watch as the thing that had once been a man sat up and began to strain against the shoulder harness and paw at the now deflated steering wheel airbag that had gone off during the crash. He realized that he had not bothered to grab his prybar that was leaning uselessly against the wall in a corner of the conference room. This was something he needed to make himself more aware of at all times. In fact, once this meeting was over, he was returning home to grab a pistol to keep on his person.
“Is that…?” one of the men behind him gasped.
“Yep,” Ken answered as he looked back over his shoulder.
The mayor was over talking to the man and woman that had gotten out of their destroyed little car. The conversation looked animated and he was glad that he’d gone to the SUV despite the zombie staring out at him.
“Anybody got a weapon?” Ken called, not expecting an answer.
“I got my belt knife.” Colton stepped up beside him and handed him the weapon, handle first.
Ken looked at the five-inch blade and shrugged. It wasn’t the best possible zombie killer, but it would get the job done. He walked over to the open window and grabbed the thing by the hair, plunging the blade into its eye socket.
“What the hell!” a voice screeched from behind him.
Ken turned to see the woman from the small car staring at him with open-mouthed horror. She staggered back a step when he made eye contact and then dashed to hide behind the man who was looking around trying to figure out what had her so shaken up.
“Calm down, lady!” Colton snapped. “That dude was already dead.”
Not exactly how Ken would’ve put it, but it was true. This is going to be what wipes out humanity, he decided. People were refusing to wrap their minds around what was happening. And while he didn’t necessarily understand it, he’d quickly adapted. He accepted the situation for what it was and had to hope the meeting today at the football field went a long way toward getting others on board.
A low moan from behind him brought his attention back to the SUV. Sitting up in the rear passenger seat, where she’d been obstructed from view, was a very large woman. Her slack face gave her away. Shadows obstructed his ability to see her eyes, but he didn’t have to at this point. When she opened her mouth and let loose another of those low moans while trying to reach over the body of the driver, Ken was hit with an idea.
Colton was looking over his shoulder and Ken had to ease the young man back a bit. As he started over toward the mayor, he muttered, “Don’t let anything happen to that thing.”
He was surprised when there were no questions. Reaching the mayor and driver of the compact car, Ken gave a slight nod to the man who looked like he wanted to dart back inside his vehicle and lock the doors. The woman actually flinched and Ken couldn’t prevent the look of disdain that oozed from his eyes.
“We need to go grab a trailer or something,” Ken said to the mayor.
“Why is that?” the man questioned, still looking at the frightened couple, his face showing almost no emotion at all.
“There is another of those things in the back of that rig.”
Sean Drinkwine’s expression registered just a hint of surprise as one eyebrow arched slightly. Ken made a mental reminder to avoid playing poker with this man. His demeanor was far too calm and composed for everything being dumped on him at once.
“And why does that necessitate the use of a trailer?”
“For the town gathering in the stadium.”
Ken apparently found the man’s breaking point. The mayor spun on him, his eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water for a few seconds until he finally found his voice.
“And just what do you intend to do?” the mayor asked once he finally able to form words again.
“Show it to our people so they realize what we are dealing with,” Ken replied calmly. He had to force himself not to sink to the level of enjoying the emotional shoe being on the other foot for a change.
“Have you lost your mind?” the normally calm and outwardly cheerful man exploded. “You want to bring one of those things into our high school stadium with everybody? Are you an idiot, or simply trying to come up with the worst possible idea ever?”
Ken held his tongue. He was not fond of anybody calling him an idiot, but after a deep breath, he could see why the man mig
ht think that way on first blush. It was lacking details.
“Hear me out,” Ken said once he was certain his voice would not come across as hostile. “If we get that thing totally secured, we can keep it under control. We show them just what they are up against.”
“And how do you plan to demonstrate?” the mayor challenged.
“I think we all know how those things have to die, right?” He got a curt nod in response. “But the problem people are having, or will have, is seeing these things as human.”
“And you have a way to change that?”
“I do.” Without another word, Ken walked back over to the SUV. As he did, he whispered to Colton who fell in behind him.
Once he reached the vehicle, he held up Colton’s knife for everybody to see. The handle had a small ceramic knot at the end and he smacked it against the driver’s side rear window. The glass went white with spider webbing cracks and then shattered. Not more than a few seconds later, the large woman in the back had managed to crawl over to the window. She reached out with her hands for Ken who promptly drove the blade into and through one.
A variety of reactions came from everybody gathered around. Most were gasps of shock or horror. Only Colton’s differed.
“Whoa…cool,” he hissed as he stepped around Ken to get a better look.
Ken turned back to the group and saw that the woman who had freaked out earlier had bent at the waist and began to be sick. Her companion looked like he was about to join her. If they were upset by what he’d just done, they were really going to lose it now.
Grabbing the handle, he jerked the knife free. Through it all, the zombie had not wavered in its attempts to reach for him. In addition, it had made absolutely no indication that it was even aware it had taken a knife through the hand.
The zombie woman had just enough of her head and shoulder jutting through the window that Ken was able to drive the blade into the top of its shoulder. Again, he stepped back so that the knife was easy to see. The sound of retching told Ken that the companion had joined the woman who was still dry-heaving.
