Standing in the hallway between the dispatch room and the break room, Sergeant Anderson held onto the wall as he wiped his mouth on his shirt. He was breathing heavily and shaking his head, hoping the image of Daniels’s face would go away. He knew he had to get back in there and get on the radio to check on his remaining troopers. He pulled his thoughts together and turned to go back in the dispatch room when suddenly the slamming of a door caught his attention. He turned to his right and looked down the hallway. The noise had come from the locker room. He pulled his .45 from the holster and held it pointed out in front of him. This is one of the only times Sergeant Anderson has ever been scared in his entire life. He could probably count on one hand the amount of times he had been scared. This one for sure would top the list. Shit was going bad in his Post and he felt like there was nothing he could do. Hell, there was nothing he could do in the entire town. It wasn’t his job, but now with Sheriff Johnson dead as a doornail he was the next top dog. There were no city cops since they were disbanded due to lack of government funding. It was the deputies and the troopers. There was a mutual understanding that they all worked together whether it was in an official capacity or not.
His shoes squeaked with each step he took toward the locker room door. He squeezed the pistol grip of his .45 and had his finger on the trigger slightly pulled back, ready to fire at anything that came through the door. Another loud bang in the locker room nearly caused him to shoot off a round when his finger twitched. He steadied his hand again then started walking toward the door. He wondered to himself who could possibly be behind door number one. Just open it and claim your prize.
“Maybe it’s the son of a bitch that killed Daniels,” he said under his breath.
He walked closer to the door and stopped. He stood three feet away. His throat clicked as he swallowed. He raised his gun to eye level and started walking closer to the door. Now he stood directly in front of it. Probably not the brightest place to be standing and he knows better, he’s a state trooper for goodness sake. He released his left hand from the pistol and reached out to push the door open. His fingertips touched the door and he put his weight behind his hand and pushed it.
The door jerked open. Sergeant Anderson jerked the trigger just as Trooper Anderson ducked down and pushed his uncle’s gun up above his head, sparing himself a bullet to the head.
“Jesus Christ,” said Trooper Anderson. “You almost shot me.”
“Watch your damn mouth,” said Sergeant Anderson as he lowered his gun and put his other hand across his chest, thinking his heart was about to explode. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you in the fucking head...What the hell happened here? What the hell happened to Daniels?”
Trooper Anderson grabbed his own chest, knowing he could have tasted the bullet before it went out the back of his head. He leaned against the open door. “You’re not going to believe this uncle.” He ran his hands through his hair and looked up at Sergeant Anderson. “Trooper West was in the fucking shower...He was singing some Johnny Cash song, like he usually does, then stopped all of a sudden...He screamed this crazy high pitched scream. I thought the damn window was going to bust out. Then, all of a sudden he started growling and ran out of the shower. By that time I jumped up from the bench—”
“Wait a minute. You said he started growling?” Sergeant Anderson looked at his nephew confused.
“That’s right. He started growling and then ran out of the locker room stark naked. He didn’t see me cause I was on the other side of the lockers. He didn’t know I was in here. Thank God, because after what he did to Daniels, I think he would have done the same to me.”
“Go on.”
“At first I thought it was a joke, so I didn’t leave the locker room right away. I thought they were screwing with me, uncle. I really did.”
“Just tell me what happened,” said Sergeant Anderson, raising his voice.
“I left the locker room and walked over to the dispatch room. I really thought it was a joke...I looked in, ready to give them both shit for pulling a fast one on me, and that’s when I saw the blood spurting from Daniels’s neck. I knew right away it was for real, because you can’t make blood spurt like that...” Trooper Anderson started breathing heavily. “West raised up with flesh hanging out of his mouth...I almost threw up right there. I couldn’t help it. I got scared and ran back into the locker room. I didn’t know what to do or what to think. It all happened so fast.”
“How long ago did it happen?”
“Couldn’t be more than twenty minutes ago.”
Sergeant Anderson may not have been a top performer in his class at trooper training nor did he graduate from high school as a valedictorian, but he sure as shit could put two and two together, which equaled out to the sum of a shit sandwich. Twenty minutes ago was right around the same time he stepped out of the coffee shop and saw that Sheriff Johnson lost a few pounds with a little help to some flesh hungry teenagers.
“What’s going on outside, Sarge? Is it bad? I heard a lot of screaming. I should have gone out there.”
“No,” said Sergeant Anderson. “You were better off staying in here. Right now you’re the only trooper I know for sure that is okay. You are okay aren’t you?”
“I guess I’ll be alright. Well, I hope so anyway. I had to put on a fresh pair of trousers after I pissed myself when I saw Daniels’s face.”
“Let’s go to my office and figure this out.” Sergeant Anderson turned and started down the hallway. Trooper Anderson stood up from the doorway and followed him. They passed by the dispatch room and neither one of them looked inside. They had already seen enough to have the mental image embedded in their brain for a while. They walked to the Sergeant’s office and opened the door.
“Alright,” said Sergeant Anderson. “I’m confused as fuck right now and I’m pretty sure you’re confused, too. Have you tried calling your mother?”
“I tried with my cellphone from the locker room, but I kept getting a network down message.”
“That’s what I got, too.” Sergeant Anderson turned and picked up his landline and put it to his ear. It was completely silent. “Damn. Nothing here either.” He slammed the phone back down on the receiver, nearly knocking it off the desk.
“What should we do?” Trooper Anderson looked at his uncle with sad eyes, waiting for him to give the perfect answer he always does to make everything better. His uncle always knew what to do in the most odd situations they were in as troopers, but he failed to realize this was no situation that any man had ever been trained to deal with. There had been nothing in the trooper manual about dealing with flesh eating civilians rampaging around town.
“I don’t know,” said Sergeant Anderson. He ran his hands through his hair and starred down at his desk. He remembered at that moment that he was supposed to pick up Mike Sampson at the Stay Inn across town. “Oh shit,” said Sergeant Anderson.
“What is it?” asked Jeffrey.
“I forgot to pick up Sampson. I hope that guy’s got his shit together.”
Sergeant Anderson wondered if things were the same way over at the Stay Inn as they had been in the main part of town. Of course they were the same because he had seen similar things happening on his way back to the station. He felt like he wasn’t doing his duty of stopping to help, but what could he really do? He had to get back to the Post to get his communications back on line. He shook his head as he thought about Daniels’s dead in the dispatch room and no other way to get ahold of his remaining troopers. He wondered if the same things had been happening elsewhere in the state or the country for that matter. A sudden thought occurred to him. A couple of the faces of the people who were chomping away at other’s faces looked familiar. He just knew he had seen them somewhere before, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“I think we need to get out of town and to somewhere safe. Maybe up to Bowling Green or somewhere bigger.” Jeffrey sounded desperate.
“Why would you say that?” asked Sergeant Anderson.
“We need to get help, Sarge. People are being killed out there and there is nothing we can do. We don’t have the manpower or the firearms to handle a situation like this.”
“You’re right about that part.”
“What about the Sheriff? What are his guys doing right now? Maybe we can pack together and get the hell out of here.”
“The Sheriff’s dead.”
Trooper Anderson sat looking at his uncle. There was a long silence between them. Jeffrey glanced down at the floor and shook his head. He knew right then if the Sheriff was dead and Daniels’s was dead, there wouldn’t be that many law enforcement officers within several miles of the area that surrounded them. “Same thing happen to him that happened to Daniels?”
“Yeah.” Sergeant Anderson stood up and walked over to the window. He looked outside into the grass behind Post 31. He looked at how green it had gotten from the past couple weeks from the rain. He looked up at the trees and thought about how most of the leaves would soon be falling off with the change of the season. There couldn’t be more than nine or ten thousand people in Simpson County and it occurred to him that there could be half or maybe a third of that by now. That’s if things were happening all across the county like they had been from what he had seen so far this morning. He turned back and looked at Jeffrey and saw how he sat there. He felt like he was looking at himself when he was a young trooper, looking lost and desperate for someone to show him the way. Someone to let him know that everything happens for a reason and everything will be fine. He wanted so badly to tell his nephew that everything was going to be okay. That this was just some crazy off the wall thing that would be temporary and would pass like a bad cold. But he knew it wouldn’t be something that would just pass. He wasn’t having a premonition, but he had gotten the feeling that something wasn’t right since the other day when they pulled up on Miller’s farm. He could feel it in the air.
They both jumped at the sound of screeching tires coming to a stop outside of the post, followed by a loud crash of metal on metal.
“What was that?” Jeffrey ran out to the hallway and toward the front entrance. Sergeant Anderson followed quickly behind him. They both drew their guns and were ready to shoot at anything or anyone that would try to come through the front door. Whoever it would be would have a hard time getting through the security door, which has a tight lock, is made out of thick steel, and has a bulletproof glass pane from midway to the top. It also stops loud mouth suspects when they won’t stop rambling on about how they are going to get the troopers back for “setting them up.”
Outside in the parking lot they could see the car that smashed into the Mobile Command Vehicle. They wondered who was behind the wheel. Trooper Anderson could see across the street, running toward the man, a pack of about eight people all covered in blood from the chin down to the waist. They sounded like a pack of wolves, growling, and hissing as they ran toward the crashed car. They were hungry and whoever was in the car looked mighty tasty to them.
“Oh shit,” said Trooper Anderson as he tapped his gun against the glass, trying to point out the pack to his uncle. “You see them. They’re coming after him. That’s what West looked like when he ran out of the locker room. He had that same look on his face. The teeth clinched and his lips were pulled back just like that.”
“Yeah, I see ‘em.” Sergeant Anderson looked back to the car and saw the man finally shove the car door open enough to get out. The man had a Stetson hat resting on his head. A smile broke onto Sergeant Anderson’s face. “I’ll be damned. That’s Sampson.” He reached down and punched the numbers to the combination lock that secured them from the craziness outside. The door was the only thing between them and the pack of wild, flesh eating human beings running toward Sampson.
Trooper Anderson held the door open as Sergeant Anderson ran out into the parking lot.
“Sampson,” yelled Sergeant Anderson as he ran toward him. “Get the hell over here quick. They’re coming.” He pointed his gun to the pack that was now in the middle of the street and moving fast coming into the parking lot. They seemed to be picking up speed now that they had seen two potential victims.
Sampson turned around and caught a glimpse. His quick walked turned into a sprint that could have won him a Gold Medal in the Olympics if that had been his profession. “Fuck.” The only word that could escape his mouth by the time he reached the door, nearly passing up Sergeant Anderson on the way in. “Let’s get inside. Those crazy ass people will try to eat us.” He ran through the door and nearly tripped on the threshold going in. “Hurry up. Close that fucking door.”
“I know. I’ve seen them do it already,” said Sergeant Anderson as he raised his gun at the pack of people running toward them. He knew he couldn’t take them all out, but he had to at least try and take out as many as he could. Having eight, bloodthirsty people beating on the door, there would be no telling how long the steel frame could resist the beating. He could see the whites of their eyes and the blood dripping from their teeth. He felt like he was living out a horrific nightmare, but shook his head and reminded himself that this screwed up situation is for real. He took careful aim with the few seconds he had and squeezed the trigger. He hit the man in the front that seemed to be leading the pack. He went down, but the other seven trampled over him and kept coming. He squeezed off three more shots, taking out three more of the growling people. There were four left. He raised his gun again and took aim. He squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. The .45 just clicked. He was out of bullets. Sergeant Anderson felt his heart skip as he took in a quick gasp of air. The four remaining crazy people were now only twenty feet away from him. He turned to run back inside.
At the time Sergeant Anderson squeezed off his first shot, Sampson looked at Trooper Anderson and wondered if he was going to stop being a sissy and go out there and help the Sergeant take care of business. After the other three shots, Sampson grabbed the gun from the trooper’s hands since he obviously wasn’t going to do anything with it. He rushed back through the door and aimed it at the four people that were still running at them. Sergeant Anderson had turned around to run back inside and was met with a .45 sticking in his face. Sampson pushed the Sergeant out of his way and unloaded all ten bullets, hitting all four. He watched them fall to the ground over top of each other. Sampson and Sergeant Anderson rushed back inside the building, slamming the heavy steel door shut behind them.
“Holy shit,” yelled Jeffrey. “I thought they were going to come in here for sure.”
Sergeant Anderson looked at his nephew and shook his head. “Boy, you’re about as useless as an ashtray on a motorcycle.” He double locked the door and pulled the shade down, blocking the sunlight from coming in through the window. Sampson leaned back against the wall and handed Trooper Anderson his gun back.
“Here,” said Sampson. “You might want to reload it.”
“I can take care of that myself.” Trooper Anderson grabbed the gun and stuck it in his holster. He looked at Sampson as if to say that he’ll reload it any damn time he pleases. Of course, right now would be a perfect time to stick a flesh clip into the gun. None of them would know if there would be more growling, hungry people coming for them, but Jeffrey was not about to allow some G-man to make suggestions to him inside his own trooper post.
“How did you make it out? Out of the hotel?” asked Sergeant Anderson.
“I had to pretty much run some people over,” said Sampson as he titled his Stetson back on his head. “What I want to know is why they’re like that and we’re like this. Those crazy sons of bitches are ruthless. I even watched as one of the deputies shot a man and then started eating his damn face.”
“What do you mean?” said Trooper Anderson.
“I mean those people out there have clearly turned fucking psycho and we seem to be perfectly fine.”
“I’ve been doing a little thinking about that,” said Sergeant Anderson. “Let’s go to my office.” Trooper Anderson and Sampson fol
lowed the Sergeant as they quickly walked down the hallway.
They gathered around Sergeant Anderson’s desk and pulled the chairs close. The coffee in the pot in the break room was still fresh because Daniels had made it about ten minutes before he checked out. They each had a full cup of in their hands that they sipped from as Sergeant Anderson began to give his views on the ongoing massacres happening in the small town of Franklin. They all three came to a quick agreement that if it was happening in Franklin, and the landlines and cellphones didn’t work, then it was probably happening just about everywhere. A quick check of the television in the break room only revealed a snowy background with the familiar white noise emitting from the speakers. The only form of communication that seemed to work was the police radio, but none of the other troopers were answering and they couldn’t get anybody from the Sheriff’s Department to come through either. This pretty much left them on their own for the time being until they could devise a plan to get somewhere where they could find out if things are as bad everywhere else as they are here.
Sampson set his coffee cup on the desk and took off his Stetson. He sat it on the desk next to his coffee cup and looked over to Sergeant Anderson, who was sitting behind the desk. “If this is happening in other places, it’s probably going to be a lot worse than here. This is a small town with a very small population. At the rate people seem to be going down out there, it won’t take very long before the population is diminished to an even lower number. Hell, I could probably count on one hand all the people who actually looked normal I saw on my way over here. They were taken out like it was nothing by those crazies.”
The Gorging Page 12
