by S. Ganley
Chapter 19
Garrett and Calvin had spent the last couple hours discussing their options, keeping an eye on Kimberly and moving from one room to the next staring out the windows watching for any activity nearby. On two occasions they heard the low distant rumble of explosions and could still see plumes of smoke rising into the sky in different directions from fires that seemed to be burning out of control. The phones still worked and they had but repeated attempts to reach emergency services had continued to prove futile. Trying different news outlets on the television they either got nothing but snow and static or stations that displayed their operating ID along with scrolling text stating that they were experiencing technical difficulties. The fact that news station were not even broadcasting emergency broadcast messages spoke to them about just how fast the outbreak must have swept across the nation. They also realized that it would not be long before they lost electricity and water service as well. With most of those services already as automated as it was, the first outage to occur would leave them in the dark without water and no one on the way to fix the problem. Garrett knew that even when the local utility companies were on top of their game, it was common to lose power in that area at least once or twice a month for one reason or another. They were probably looking at two or three days at the most before all their services came to a standstill. Garrett felt that even with the possibility of a couple more days of available service, there was a good chance they would not be able to remain put long enough to see it finally fail. The region he was living in near the shopping district of Tysons Corner had a population of just over 20,000 people with the surrounding towns boasting in excess of well over a million inhabitants. The majority of the county population was pressed up tightly along the outskirts of where he lived as people preferred housing with easy access to Washington, DC. What all those people were doing right now was anyone's guess, but sooner or later they would start moving around outside in search of help, other survivors, as well as food and supplies, and when that started happening it was not going to be in any of their interests to be trapped inside that small townhouse.
It was early afternoon when Garrett started hearing noises outside his townhouse, from the amount of cars still parked around the complex it had been obvious that many of his neighbors had never left for work that morning so Garrett knew they were still a lot of people in the surrounding units. Looking out from the narrow window next to his front door, he saw the source of the commotion just a couple houses down. He actually wasn't surprised that the first sign of trouble in his neighborhood after the incident with Steve and his wife would come from Carlos and his damn band of troublemakers. It was the sound of smashing glass that had carried to them inside the house, as Garrett watched from his window he saw figures emerging onto the lawn from the broken windows of the living room in that particular home. It looked to Garrett like an individual had jumped through the window and that had started a chain reaction of everyone else inside the townhouse climbing awkwardly out and stumbling into the yard as they went. When Steve's wife and son had made their second floor exit from their house it had been obvious in hindsight that they had done so because they were intent on reaching Steve and himself. In this case Garrett was unsure what it was that had attracted Carlos and the rest of roommates to make a sudden break from their home. It wasn't too hard to tell by the lumbering manner in which the small group of six men moved as they stood and started to walk, that they had all fallen victim to the outbreak and turned into undead. But he couldn't see anything in sight that would account for their sudden interest in breaking out into the neighborhood. The men all moved slowly in meaningless circles taking them to the edge of the parking lot and then turning back towards the row of townhouses as they slowly followed a path to a home just two doors down from their starting point. Every few moments they would stop in their tracks and turn their faces skyward while jerking their heads from side to side as if they were trying to pick up the scent of something on the air and it suddenly dawned on Garrett that was exactly what they were doing. Some kind of smell must have attracted them and lured them outside and they were now following the odor to its source, and from what he could see, that source was the home they were now standing in front of just three houses from Garrett's own. He couldn't hear them making any sounds from inside the foyer where he was watching, but something must have passed between them as they all turned as one and rushed towards the front of that particular townhouse. Bypassing the door either because they realized they wouldn't be able to open it easily or because they lacked even the basic knowledge that it could be a way inside, they simple ran into and through the glass of the front living room window at the house they were interested in. Since those windows on the bottom floor did not drop all the way to the ground there was a foot high base consisting of wooden frame and then solid brick that the first of the men through tripped over, sending them flying like rag dolls into the window and out of sight inside the townhouse.
"What the hell are they doing?" Calvin called out from his observation point at a window in an upstairs bedroom.
"Not sure," Garrett replied, "Something in that house got their attention though, and it looked to me like they were following a scent of some kind."
More movement at the far end of the row of homes caught Garrett's attention, "Shit! More company just down the block." He yelled out to Calvin.
Six more of the creatures moved into sight as they rounded the side of the last home on the buildings, they were all running at a steady jog and heading directly for the same house that Carlos and his buddies were working their way into through the window. Just before they reached the lawn of the house, the front door burst open and two figures rushed through it and out onto the opposite side of the lawn. Garrett recognized the woman, she was black, about forty or so and heavy set, he had seen her coming and going from the house in the past and thought she lived alone. The man who had rushed out of the house with her was also black and close to her age, he was in a little better shape and was leaving her behind with every step they took as they tore through the lawn and into the parking lot. It looked to Garrett like the man was fumbling with something in his hands and he thought it might have been car keys, they must have been trying to make a break for one of the cars in the lot. Following only a few steps after them, Carlos and three of his friends burst from the open doorway in hot pursuit of the couple. The remaining zombies in the yard still working their way towards the window now all turned and began rushing across the lawn bound to cut off the two before they could reach whichever car they were heading for.
Garrett heard the drumming of fast moving footsteps as Calvin bounded down the stairs, joining him at the front door window his voice shook as he asked, "Shouldn't we do something?"
Even though Calvin was far from a coward he knew when a situation was just too far out of his hands to handle and the value of living to fight another day, "there are too many of them. If we walk out there and start shooting up the place, even if we manage to get them all, we might as well paint a target on ourselves for any others within a mile of here."
The chilling scream of a woman from just outside echoed throughout the complex. Both men watched in stunned silence as the black woman was hit full speed by three of the charging zombies and knocked the rest of the way across the lawn and sent crashing into the side door of a minivan. The force of the impact against the van left a dent four feet wide across the door as the four figures dropped in a heap to the ground alongside the van. From their point of view it looked like the woman had been dazed by the violent collision. Her head was still visible to them from the snarled mass of intertwined bodies and she was shaking her head from side to side in an effort to recover from the blow. The zombies on top of her suffered from no such impediments and whether or not they had also been dazed from their forceful tackle and subsequent sudden stop, they didn't show it. No sooner had the four bodies hit the ground then the zombies scrambled over top of the woman like ants covering
a morsel of dropped food and the frenzy began. Her screams radiated across the lawn and as they watched they could see her arms and legs flailing uselessly against her attackers. Less than thirty seconds after hitting the ground one final scream rose and was quickly cut off in a gurgling cough while at the same times the woman’s arms and legs went slack and fell to the ground. The three men on top of her never slowed in their attack, even after her body when limp they only pressed in further, fighting against one another for more room as they dug and claw into the her body.
While the assault on the woman was taking place, her male companion had merely glanced back over his shoulder when his lady friend was hit from the side by her assailants. Her screams galvanized him to run that much faster and in seconds he had reached the passenger side of a late model sports car. Ripping to door open he dove across the bucket seats and Garrett and Calvin could see him struggling to sit up behind the wheel while stabbing desperately at the ignition trying to get the key in place. Those zombies who had not zeroed in on the woman pressed forward towards the man and reached the back end of the car at the same moment that the first stutters of the engine turning over could be heard. The guy just may have been able to make it if he'd had enough sense to close the door behind him when he dove into the car. With the passenger door still standing wide open, two zombies managed to squeeze through the door side by side at the exact same time and were on him before he could hit the gas. It did seem that he had managed to get the car into reverse before the attack commenced because at the same moment that they two zombies grabbed onto him the car started rolling slowly backwards until it finally banged into the front bumper of a small truck backed into a parking spot directly across from it. The collision between sports car and truck was minor and not enough to interfere with the vicious attack still going on inside the tight confines of the small sports car. It was difficult for Garrett and Calvin to make out details through the windshield, all they could really see was a blur of motion, but the splattering of blood that shot out to smear the inside of the car’s windshield told them all they needed to know.
Garrett turned away from the bloody carnage as zombies ravaged the remains of the unlucky couple. More zombies were appearing from different areas around the rows of townhouses and he saw that two other homes across the lot from his now also had the empty remains of broken glass surrounding the large window frames of their front rooms, evidence of the occupants following Carlos and his boys lessons in just crashing out into the wild. Garrett was even more astounded when he saw one of the doors on another home that was hanging freely by only a single hinge where it appeared that someone had crashed through it from the inside. The doors on all of the homes in this block were just like his own front door and that was very solidly constructed, he would have thought it highly unlikely that anyone could force their way in, but he had not considered how much force would be necessary for someone already in one of these homes to break through the door given that they would be going against the door hinges. These things were much stronger than he would have anticipated and with the damage they were capable of withstanding, even one on one they were extremely formidable, he now counted well over thirty of them within sight of his front door. For the most part those not already involved with the gruesome task of tearing the older black couple to shreds and consuming their remains seemed content with just wandering about through yards and the parking lot. Every now and then one or more would stop and appear to test the air as if starting to get a whiff of something interesting but then it would be gone and they would continue on with their mindless tasks. Whatever type of scent they were attracted to seemed to come and go, but after seeing Carlos and his little bunch bust out of their home specifically to go after that black couple, Garrett thought it was possible they were able to pick up the smell of living humans and track them effectively and if that was the case it was not going to take long with all of them just outside his own home before they realized there were three other tasty snacks nearby. As luck would have it just as that thought was crossing his mind of all the creatures outside at that moment Carlos just had to be the one to come just to the edge of the small plot of grass of Garrett's front lawn with his nose sniffing wildly in the air as he scanned the windows of Garrett's and the neighboring home. The damn pot smoking pain in the ass must be catching the smell of something he liked because he moved a little closer to a spot just between the two homes while continuing to study each structure with intense interest. Garrett thought that he noticed an actual smirk cross his just an instant before he let loose with a monstrous cry that attracted the attention of six or seven of the closer zombies. As a group, the zombies moved directly to the front of Garrett's home and looked to be on their way to the front door. Garrett and Calvin dropped back into the kitchen where they each grabbed an AK from the table and stood firmly in the hallway ready to start hosing down zombies as they poured through the door and front windows.
When almost a minute passed and none of the creatures had forced their way into the house, Garrett carefully worked his way down the short hallway from the kitchen towards the front door while motioning for Calvin to remain in place where he had a clear shot of both the door and the outside windows into the living room. Reaching the edge of the small coat closet just before the front foyer, Garrett was able to look out one of the narrow windows running alongside the front door and breathed a quick sigh of relief at what he was saw. Backing his way back towards the kitchen he returned to Calvin's side.
"Steve created a distraction for us, but I don't think we have long. They are right at the bottom step to my front porch and it is only a matter of time before they realize we are all inside." Garrett whispered.
"They're eating his damn body?" Calvin shuddered at the thought, for some reason it bothered him more that they were willing to make a meal of the dead as well as the living. Everything that had happened in the last twelve hours was quickly starting to sink in with him as far as the reality they were facing and he felt the unfamiliar feeling of panic creeping up on him. He had stood toe to toe against terrorists wielding rocket launchers and machine guns in combat before, but at least he understood that enemy. In this case the enemy was alien and unpredictable, not to mention capable of visiting horrors to a human body that even the most twisted terrorist he had ever come across in the Middle East would never have entertained.
Garrett shook his head in reply, "Unfortunately we didn't drag him further away, they’re like piranha going at him. I’d give us another five minutes at best. I am not sure what it is exactly that they are able to smell that attracts them, but Steve left behind a nice stain and puddle of shit in my living room and with the three of us in here they are going to get through with him and be coming in that window after us."
They stuffed the extra ammo and supplies back into their bags while Garrett quietly said, "Your truck is wrecked, mine is out front to the left, three spaces down. If we go out the back we can come around the far side of the building and up to the passenger side."
Stopping what he was doing Calvin stared at Garrett as if his friend had lost his mind, "dude, you saw how that worked out for your little neighbor out front. Those things are too fast, there is no way we can out run them. We will also be carrying all this shit and let’s not forget Kimberly. I don't mind being the one to throw her over my shoulder, but it’s going to sure as hell slow me down."
