Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  “I’m not.” He stepped out into a ray of light from a lantern glowing on a nearby ledge, and she could see dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and an angry rash on his bristled cheeks.

  “Oh God, Mark. No…”

  “Listen to me. You need to get out of this building. It’s not safe to stay.”

  “But where are we going to go?”

  “Not we, Cheryl—you.”

  “She pulled back and hit him lightly on the chest. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “You have to. You can’t stay with me anyway. I’m done. I’m infected.”

  She tossed her head from side to side. “No, you can’t be. You didn’t get bit. I’m the one who got bit. I’ve got the sickness.”

  “What are you talking about? You look perfectly fine.”

  “The mosquitoes…when we were camping…I was bit all over. That’s how it’s transmitted. You didn’t even put on bug spray…they didn’t even touch you.”

  It suddenly dawned on her why. Because he was already infected.

  “No…no…no...no!”

  “I didn’t tell you everything about the dogs and the sickness. None of the men in my unit got infected. That’s because we were guinea pigs for some sort of vaccine. But me, being the stubborn bastard that I am, I refused to take part. I guess it was my “inner rebel” or something that made me spit out the pill when no one was looking. Back then, I didn’t know what the hell they were trying to give us—no one did. I just didn’t want to be any part of a human experiment. I guess I got a little of it in my system, enough to lengthen the incubation period. I thought I’d beat it or I was just immune or something. I was fine…until just a few hours ago.”

  “Mark, I’m sick too. Or, I will be. Even if I didn’t get it from the mosquitoes, I got it from biting that bitch from the sandwich shop.”

  “What?”

  “She attacked me, tried to strangle me, and I bit her. She was definitely sick.”

  “Well you don’t know for sure that you have it, so there’s no point in assuming.”

  “Why do I have to go anyway? I want to stay here with you.”

  He sobbed into her shoulder. “You can’t stay with me. I don’t want to get sicker…and…and hurt you.”

  “Well, I’m not going. What if you pull through, Mark? What if—”

  “No, Cheryl. Go. Go anywhere. You’ve just got to get out.” He pointed towards a window high up on the wall. She could see a glowing orange light waving back and forth. It looked like a baseball bat, wrapped in cloth, and lit as a torch.

  “There’s too many sick in here, and they don’t want them to get out. In a few minutes, they’re going to lock the doors and set the building on fire.”

  Chapter Eight

  He took her hand in an inescapable steel grip, forced her down a hall, and into the kitchen towards a side door. He held her in his arms tightly and kissed the top of her head. After he pulled away, he strapped his rifle onto her shoulder.

  “You remember that day I took you hunting and showed you how to shoot?”

  She remembered. She’d refused to aim at any live creatures and insisted on using cans as targets instead. She’d felt awkward and clumsy with the rifle but eventually managed to hit a few cans off a stump.

  “There are extra magazines in the pants pockets.”

  “I can’t do this, Mark.”

  “Yes you can. And I want you to keep going as long as you can. Keep fighting until the end, you hear me?”

  She nodded, upset that her tears were keeping her from getting one last clear look at his face. She put her hands over the rough stubble on his cheeks and held them.

  How did she know that she wasn’t infected, and this was just a useless effort to try and survive when she was doomed anyway? With all their love making over the weekend, wasn’t it a given that he’d passed the infection on to her? A little voice in her head said, maybe not…not without coming in direct contact with his blood.

  “Go…they’re going to lock the doors any second. With that uniform on, you might be able to blend in for a few seconds in the dark, just enough time to get away.”

  He didn’t give her another chance to refuse. He pushed her out the door, and she heard it lock behind her.

  She found herself in a courtyard next to a garden. There was a group of soldiers near the left corner of the building, busily lighting more torches.

  She walked slowly at first in the other direction with a determined stride as if she was heading towards some important task. But once she got past the garden bed and knew that the soldiers’ view was blocked by the tall sunflowers, she began to run.

  Running. Running. Like a wild animal, she ran. Probably towards greater dangers…

  She kept going through an empty parking lot, past dark stores, and eventually houses as she found herself in a neighborhood.

  Then, out of breath, with a painful stitch in her right side, she slowed to a walk. She’d only gone a few more yards and turned down an alley when she heard a growl behind her.

  Please let it be a dog…a big stupid dog.

  But when she stopped and looked…it wasn’t.

  It was a man. Or at least something that used to be a man. Now, this shirtless fellow with stained shorts and peeling skin was a brainless eating machine, and there he stood on the sidewalk, looking at her like she was his next meal.

  Adrenaline zipped through her, causing her heart and thoughts to race.

  It wasn’t her life that flashed through her mind; it was Mark. She suddenly found herself remembering his proposal to her on the night before he left for Afghanistan. He’d taken her to dinner at a French restaurant downtown and sweet-talked her into ordering the escargot. When it came, she found the ring hidden inside a snail shell. She laughed and cried then they danced on the terrace beneath a swath of starry white lights as a violinist serenaded them from below.

  The memory of that night made her angry.

  This was not how her life was supposed to go. She was supposed to be looking forward to a lifetime with the man that she loved, not standing in some stinking alley with some stupid zombie about to rip out her entrails with its teeth.

  Every atom of fear in her body turned to rage, and she unshouldered the rifle.

  The Eater took a few shuffling steps towards her and growled again. She aimed.

  “Eat this!”

  Cheryl fired one round straight into his head. It exploded like a melon, splattering mashed red fruit all over the pavement.

  She turned wordlessly and continued on in the same direction as before, trying to be a little quieter and blend into the night.

  What else could she do but keep going until the last tiny shred of hope was gone? Not for herself, but for Mark. It was what he’d wanted her to do.

  PART II:

  DARK JOURNEY

  Chapter Nine

  Cheryl Malone had been running and hiding like a rat, weaving in and out of the yards in a strangely vacant neighborhood for hours. Spurts of adrenaline shot through her veins and made her skin tingle as she looked down at the body lying on the sidewalk under the amber glow of the street lamp.

  She’d shot him.

  Using Mark’s AK, she’d pelted his forehead with a spray of rounds that blasted his brain into an infected pile of goo that was now leaking out in a blackish-red puddle. The tall skinny kid with eyeballs like pearled onions and peeling gray cheeks had been covered in blood before the bullets hit. Now, he looked even more dead than he had when he’d popped out from behind a parked car and started shuffling towards her with a hollow walrus-like moan.

  Was it murder to shoot someone who was already dead?

  She heard a chorus of groans coming from the far end of the street, and she knew there wasn’t time to stay and ponder the fact that this was the second infected ghoul she’d shot on this hot July night.

  Over a half dozen figures ambled across the front lawn of the house on the corner, coming towards her.

&n
bsp; The gun still had some ammo in it, and she still had a couple of magazines in the cargo pockets of her borrowed camouflage pants, but it was a risk to think that she’d have time to reload if the Eaters caught up with her. If she had any chance of surviving, she figured that it needed to be a rule that she’d flee from any more than two.

  Run! It was a voice near her shoulder that sounded a lot like Mark’s.

  She obeyed, and her feet grew wings. She flew down the street, running…running…running to where?

  There were seven Eaters on her heels. How could she know that there weren’t two dozen or more up ahead?

  Just keep going. It was Mark again in her head—his angelic voice, guiding her from above. No time to think about it.

  She gained another block then decided that there was no point in staying out in the open, being a constant target. She had to find shelter before she ended up being cornered somewhere. All the houses she’d seen so far were dark, and some had boarded up windows. Even if she went up to one and pounded on the door, it was unlikely that she’d be let in. They’d be afraid that she was infected—and maybe she was.

  A painful stitch started on the side of her torso, and she was beginning to wheeze from the overload on her lungs. Some of the streetlights were out, and the darkness slowed her progress. She tripped on a tree branch in the road and fell hard on her elbows. As she picked herself up, she dared a glance back.

  She didn’t know if they had seen her with their dead eyes or sensed her with some strange new dog-like power that came along with the fatal disease, but they had definitely honed in on her somehow, because they were gaining on her.

  Still in excruciating pain, Cheryl darted around the curb and down the next street, where she spied a house down on the right that had a light on in an upper window like a beacon. She aimed for it, figuring that she could at least hide behind the large junipers in front if she couldn’t get inside.

  When she reached it, there was no time for a polite knock on the front door. She threw herself underneath the bushes, ignoring the stabs from the sharp needle-like foliage and rough bark on the trunks.

  She held her breath when the Eaters drew near then paused near the end of the driveway, grunting like a herd of pigs.

  Could they smell her?

  She prayed that they couldn’t, and honestly didn’t know what triggered their voraciousness and powered their unbelievable hunting skills. They did seem to be attracted to the smell of anything rotten and the mere presence of living people. Like a carnivore, motion or sound might also pay a role. She suddenly got an image in her head of the young police officer that had started firing on a group of them in the park until he’d run out of bullets and they swarmed his car. It was possible that the sound of the gunfire attracted them.

  She realized just how close she could be to being one of them. Why hadn’t she gotten sick yet? Or, was she infected, and it was just a matter of time before she started losing her mind and the uncontrollable cravings began? She knew that she could be a ticking bomb. If she was still well, and hadn’t been infected by mosquitoes or the evil woman at the church, it was a good thing that she was wearing Mark’s heavy oversized camouflage uniform. Though it was uncomfortably hot, it protected her from being bitten, at least by small things. Inside the heavy material, sweat ran in rivulets down her body, and she was still panting, as quietly as possible, trying to catch her breath and make herself tiny and invisible.

  There was just enough room near the ground below the junipers for her to lay her head and see through the underside of the branches. The group of Eaters wasn’t leaving. They just stood there, yards away, grunting and snorting, as if they had no idea where she’d gone, and not enough viable brain matter left to figure it out.

  That hope immediately left her body along with every ounce of oxygen as one suddenly parted from the group and came up the walk towards her. There was just enough light from the moon and a streetlight to see that it was a man in firefighter gear—only he wasn’t coming to save her. The man in the yellow suit looked like a corpse excavated from a grave and dressed up in someone else’s uniform. His thin limbs hung like tree branches in the heavy garb, and his face looked like it had been through a meat grinder, with skin hanging in flaps down his cheeks, and crusty rivers of dried blood in the remaining trenches. Worst of all, his eyes were opaque like white ping pong balls, and his jaw kept opening and closing like a steel trap on some sort of broken remote control.

  As he came closer, crunching over dried grass that hadn’t been watered in some time, she wondered if she’d have time to hop out and turn the gun on herself, but then she realized that her dead body would be devoured by the Eaters like a chunk of beef and going down without a fight didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

  Shhh…stay where you are.

  It was Mark again. Or, was it God? She didn’t know and didn’t care. Not having any better options, she decided to go along with the advice. She played dead like a possum as clunky boots appeared near her head.

  Even though she was trying to hold her breath, the stench was unbearable: layered notes of rotten flesh, garbage, and sickness. The foulness made tears leak out of the corners of her eyes as the boots stood just inches from her head. A few seconds later, they swiveled around, dragging and scraping on the concrete patio and lumbered away.

  She allowed herself a quiet sigh and a deep breath of fresh air, watching as the skeletal fireman rejoined the group underneath the shadow of an immense spruce tree near the driveway.

  Without warning, they scattered like a flock of birds, flying from one side of the street to the other. Metal clanged as they knocked over trashcans, rummaging through the debris to search for any sort of rotten, slimy thing to eat or, if they were lucky, some discarded body parts.

  Her attention was so focused on the departing army of hungry predators that she didn’t notice the gun pointed at her until she felt the cold metal on her neck.

  Chapter Ten

  “Don’t…fucking…move.”

  She didn’t. If she’d been frozen with fear before, she was a concrete statue now—a solid chunk of flesh with a heart beating like a hummingbird.

  He pressed the shotgun into her skin. “If you’re one of them walking dead things, you got two seconds to get off my property before I blow your head off.”

  “I’m not,” she squeaked, too afraid to move.

  “What’s that?”

  There was a click as he cocked the gun.

  “I’m not sick,” she said a little louder, slowly raising her head and lifting her hands in the air, ignoring the tug on her hair that was caught in the sticky needles of the juniper.

  “Prove it. Let me get a look at you.”

  With great care, and a bit of pain, she began to extricate herself from the bush. Her legs and arms filled with pins and needles as they unfolded, having gone to sleep from the cramped position that had cut off her circulation. She stood, stumbling when she rose to her feet, aware of the gun still strapped to her shoulder.

  “I’m not convinced. You look like shit.”

  Cheryl knew she probably did. Her shoulder-length blonde hair hadn’t been brushed in days, her makeup was probably smeared all over her face, and there were likely still traces of blood from the carnage she’d fallen into when this had all begun earlier in the week.

  She stuttered a response. “It…it’s been a rough f...few days. I could use a place to stay…”

  Sensing the pause that momentarily reduced the chance of being shot, she dared a look up at him. He looked to be in his late twenties, close to her age, but he was dressed like a frat boy in a white t-shirt with a Coors ad on the front, plaid shorts, and rubber flip flops. He had a round unshaven face and a wild tangle of curly dark hair that added to the impression that he was in vacation mode. Well, except for the gun in his hands that was still pointed at her head.

  “How do I know you’re not infected?”

  Not certain herself, she wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I won’t be any trouble. I can sleep on the couch…the floor…in the garage, wherever. I’ll leave in the morning.”

  He took a step backwards. “I’ll think about it, but, I want to see you in the light first. You stay there…” he said, holding his hand out in the universal halt gesture. Then he backed up to the open door, reached inside and flipped on the porch light.

  He came back, keeping the gun aimed at her. “You look even worse than I thought. Bet you clean up good, though. Might even be pretty. Alright, you can come in, but you do everything I say, got it?”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He motioned for her to go around him, so he could keep the gun trained on her back.

  She was thankful to have found some shelter, but it was awkward going into a stranger’s house. She decided that he looked harmless enough. Even if he turned out to be creepy, she figured it was better to take her chances with him than on the streets with untold numbers of roaming Eaters.

  She was almost to the door when he said, “Wait. Gimmee your gun.”

  No.

  “I said gimme the gun.”

  “Fine.” She unshouldered it and turned around to hand it over. “But, I’m not leaving without it.”

  “If you’re going to be sassy, I might change my mind.”

  The sound of a grunt made them both stop and look down the street. The group of Eaters had returned.

  “Get inside,” he whispered.

  She wasted no time, darting inside the door. He followed, quickly shutting the door behind them, and locked the deadbolt.

  “Shouldn’t you shut off the porch light?”

  “Not now. It might get their attention. Stay there,” he ordered. He ran into an adjacent room and peeked out through heavy curtains, dingy from a layer of cigarette smoke.

  Alone for the moment, she glanced around. There was a dim glow from a lamp in the living room, just enough light for her to see that the house was a pigsty. In the living area, amidst the worn furniture, there were video games, cereal boxes, beer cans, and even what looked like dirty tissues strewn about the dingy brown carpet. It smelled bad, too, like something rancid mixed with a more pungent scent, something decaying. She didn’t like it.