When he said he was gonna shoot us if we didn’t say somethin’, I started tryin’ to talk but it was like my brain had forgot how to make words. There was kind of this feeling in my throat like maybe I had tried to swallow something a little too big and my belly felt all warm and sick.
Mommy jumped in front of me and threw up her hands.
“Don’t, please, for God’s sake, no.”
The man looked like he was glad Mommy had said something, like maybe he really didn’t want to shoot us after all. But now I think that it was all just an act.
So the man said his name was Carl and he said there were a bunch of those things headin’ our way and we’d best be movin’ on if we knew what was good for us. Then he asked if he had any weapons or anything.
Mommy told him we didn’t, that it was just her and me and she didn’t understand what was going on and just wanted to keep me safe and was trying to make her way to my Grandpa’s farm. She started crying again and it was real hard to understand what she was saying after that.
Mr. Carl kept lookin’ over his shoulder the entire time and he kinda bounced from one foot to the other like he had to pee real bad. But he listened to everything Mommy was saying and for a minute it looked like he was about to cry too.
“You two better come with me.” he ended up sayin’. “You won’t last long out here without any weapons or nothin’.”
So Mommy scooped me up in her arms and waded out of the creek, but the man looked at me and kinda frowned. He told Mommy that those things were really fast and if she was gonna carry me the whole way she better be darn sure it would be quicker than me runnin’ alongside. He said those things didn’t care if I was a kid or the King of England… that they would snatch me up the minute they had a chance.
When he was saying all this, I just wanted to lay my head on Mommy’s shoulder and cry. Maybe if I cried long and hard enough I would wake up like I sometimes do and find out this was all nothin’ more than just a bad dream. But there was another part of me that told me to be a big boy, so I blinked really fast and held my breath until I didn’t feel like I had to cry anymore.
The rest of the day we spent wanderin’ through the woods. Sometimes Carl would tell us to wait by a tree or a rock while he went to take a look up ahead. And he would always say that if he wasn’t back in ten minutes then we just needed to run and keep on runnin’ and not worry ’bout what had happened to him. And sometimes, when we were waiting for him, we would hear gunshots and Mommy would try to cover my ears but it was already too late.
It was after one of these times that he came back with blood all over his clothes and that was probably the only time I ever saw him cry. He just kinda plopped down in the grass and held his head in his hands like he had a headache or somethin’. But Mommy knew right away something more was wrong with him, just like she does with me.
“Carl,” she said, “what’s wrong? What happened?”
He looked up at us and his eyes were all watery and it was weird but his face somehow looked longer than it had before. He opened his mouth like he was about to say somethin’ but instead he made these noises almost like he was chokin’. And then his entire body started shakin’ and he started cryin’ just as hard as if he’d just seen his favorite puppy get run over by a truck.
Mommy went over and crouched down beside him and started rubbin’ her hand across his back like she does when I’m sick. She was whisperin’ to him, but I was far enough away that I couldn’t really hear her very good. And Carl just kept sayin’ over and over again, “It ain’t right. It just ain’t right.”
So I was just kinda lookin’ around, not really knowin’ what to do, and I heard this rustlin’ in the bushes. I remember thinkin’ that maybe it was a deer and I got a little excited ’cause I’d always wanted to see a real live deer and never had.
I turned around to ask Mommy if I could go look at the deer, but she was holding Carl now and his head was buried in her shoulder as she rocked back and forth, pettin’ his hair and still whispering to him. So I thought she wouldn’t mind, not so long as I stayed where she could see me.
I walked over to the bushes as quiet as I could and had almost made it there when the branches started shakin’ and rattlin’. I stopped in my tracks and held my breath and watched the leaves as they moved and for the first time I started getting’ a little afraid.
What if it weren’t a deer in there at all? What if it was a monster? The bushes were big enough that two or three of ’em could probably fit in there and I wouldn’t ever know.
I bit my lip and kept watchin’ the bush, but by now the shakin’ had stopped. I tried to listen real hard. To see if I could hear any monster noises.
“They don’t make no noise.” part of me thought. “Remember? They don’t growl or nothing.”
My heart had started beatin’ really hard and I wanted to turn around and run back to where Mommy and Carl was. But I was afraid. Afraid that if I turned my back the monsters would leap out like a jungle cat.
I thought about yellin’ for help, but what if it wasn’t a monster at all? What if it was just a rabbit or squirrel or somethin’? I had been tryin’ real hard to make Mommy think I wasn’t afraid or nothin’ because I wanted her to be so proud of me.
And besides, I remembered how fast those things were when they were chasin’ us through the house. What if I screamed for help and they jumped out at me? They would have me before Mr. Carl would even be able to pick up his gun.
The bushes rattled again and I knew that whatever was in there wasn’t no rabbit. Anything that could make them shake like that had to be big.
I felt like I was about to throw up and I wished I never woulda walked over to where I was. I shoulda stayed by Mommy and Mr. Carl, stayed where I knew it was safe.
My whole body had started shakin’, just like those bushes, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.
Because I knew.
I knew there was a monster in there.
I knew it was waiting for me to make one wrong move.
Waiting to pounce.
CHAPTER SEVEN: CARL
The boy. Sometimes I still wake up in a sweat, his voice echoing through my head like a ghost trapped somewhere between the realm of sleep and reality. And the image of him from the nightmare lingers on for a moment: usually he’s crying but sometimes he’s just standing there staring at me; his eyes as hard and cold as two pieces of coal, his teeth clenched in anger, radiating accusations without actually voicing the words.
You killed my mother….
Looking back, I’m sure he hated me and, to be perfectly honest, he had every right to.
You killed me….
How do you say “I’m sorry” for something like that?
I was supposed to be their protector, their shining hero in a world gone to hell; and look what happened. Shit, in the end I couldn’t even keep myself safe, could I? And, despite what Doc always told me, I can’t shake the feeling that I deserve this. Maybe this is what Josie’s karma is really all about: I killed a little boy and his mother and now am paying the price.
“That,” I hear Doc say in my mind, “is so much bullshit…. ”
He was the only one I ever told about the boy. After that, I kind of locked it away in my head. I thought if I pretended it never happened then maybe I would be able to convince myself that it had all been some sort of dream. But, as much as you wish it did, it just really doesn’t work that way.
I still remember the day I told Doc what had happened as clearly as if it were only a week or so ago; but we were actually several months into the infestation by then. Long enough to know that once the corpse’s muscle tissue started breaking down they weren’t quite as fast as the ones freshly dead. Long enough for our society to have collapsed entirely with no hope of it ever rising from its ashes like a silver winged phoenix. By then we knew that we were utterly alone. The military, FEMA, the Red Cross… no one was coming to save us. We only had each other and what meager supplies
we could scavenge to see us through.
Fifteen miles out of Bloomburg, the engine started sounding as if one of those damn corpses had crawled up under the hood and was pounding away with a hammer. About the same time, that ’ole temperature gauge started creeping up and threatening to ease its way into the red. Doc eased up off the gas for a fraction of a second as he slammed a fist into the steering wheel, causing the horn to overpower the growl of the engine for the same amount of time it took him to curse. But then both hands were back on the wheel again, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white as bone.
“Can’t stop now!” he yelled over the sound of the engine. “We’d never stand a chance out there.”
He was right. Though most of the scenery was nothing more than a blur, it was all too obvious that those people out there weren’t bored locals who just up and decided to take a leisurely stroll down the interstate. And this late in the game I didn’t have to actually see them to know what they looked like: I was more than familiar with the festering wounds that even maggots wouldn’t touch; I’d seen bones jutting through flesh, little kids with half their faces looking like the skin had been peeled back, refugees from a burn ward staggering along as bits and pieces dropped off. After a while, your mind kind of goes numb and you really don’t think too hard about that old man with a screwdriver sticking out of what used to be his eye or that pretty young girl dragging her intestines along behind her.
“Bout ten more miles or so and we should be outta the ’burbs.” I yelled back.
Personally, I wasn’t quite so sure the old Chevy would make it another five miles, much less ten. It’d taken quite a beating when we tried to force our way through the downtown district. In the movies, you could always just plow your car through small groups of them and they would go flying and rolling off the hood. In reality, a person – even a dead one – does quite a bit of damage to a vehicle. There’s this thud that you feel all the way in the pit of your stomach and the hood just kind of crumples up. Sometimes they do bounce off the top of the car but more often than not they just kinda disappear a fraction of a second before there’s a bump in the road that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I could tell ’ole Doc was having a hell of a time trying to keep the steering wheel from jerking right out of his grasp but I was only seeing that out of the corner of my eye. Mainly, I was watching the plume of steam that had begun rising from the buckled remains of the grill and cussing myself for talking him into coming this way.
By the time we hit the on-ramp, the notion of just busting our way through anyone or anything that stood in our way had been left with our front bumper back at the corner of Oak and Swanson. So I just braced myself against the window with one arm as Doc swerved in and out of the mangled hunks of metal that used to be cars.
Part of me had expected the Interstate to be virtually clear of the dead, but they were everywhere. The rotters shambled along as quickly as their decomposing tissue would allow and tended to cluster in small packs; the freshies, however, were a different story. Once they’d broken through the initial rigor mortis, they still pretty much had control of their muscles. They ran behind the car like a pack of wild dogs chasing down a rabbit: zigzagging through overturned buses and multi-car pileups, leaping over barrels that had fallen from trucks, crashing through clumps of rotters….
To make matters worse, the sound of our engine was like a beacon for the bastards. They scrambled up embankments and fought to break through the glass of the cars they had died, and subsequently become trapped, in. Every ramp we passed was already congested with a rush hour of rotting flesh by the time we got there and I began to taste that metallic tang of fear in the back of my throat.
“This ain’t looking good, Carl. This ain’t looking good at all.”
Even though Doc was practically standing on the pedal, the car was beginning to lose speed. Every few seconds it would shimmy and lurch as the gears whined in protest; something that smelled like a cross between burning rubber and ozone flooded through the vents, causing my eyes to water and the little hairs in my nostrils to tickle as if I had to sneeze.
“Come on, come on damn it, come on!”
We weren’t going to make it. The certainty of this hit me like an cold fist in the gut. Our car was going to shudder and die. And within moments we would be overtaken.
An image flashed through my head of ants clambering over a crust of bread that I had dropped onto their hill as a child. I remembered how quickly they had descended; how, for a moment of two, not so much as a speck of white could be seen through the densely packed bodies that swarmed over their prize. And then they began ripping and tearing at it, carting away jagged little pieces….
We’d dropped to about thirty miles per hour by then and the little icon of an engine was flashing red on the dashboard while this bell chimed out over and over.
“We had quite a run, huh Doc? I just want you t’ know…. ”
“Don’t you talk like that, Carl! This ain’t over, my friend. Not by a long shot.”
We were coming up on an overpass and by now were going so slow that I had time to notice the lone zombie standing up there. Strangely enough for a second or two I felt this wave of sadness wash over me. As if this walking corpse with his missing left arm and tattered clothes were looking out over the Interstate like the Indian in those old commercials from the seventies: surveying all the damage that had been wrought as a single tear slid down the oozing flesh that had once been his cheek. In my mind, I heard this voice, this narrator, say in a deep baritone: “People start pollution; zombies can stop it.”
I felt a laugh bubbling up within me and knew I had to fight to keep it down. I was afraid that if I started with even the smallest chuckle, it would keep right on growing to the point that I wouldn’t be able to stop. I could all too clearly imagine them tearing and biting and gouging while I continued to cackle like some exile from the loony bin.
Doc was so focused on the labyrinth of twisted metal and decaying bodies that he didn’t see what happened next. I’d already been watching that zombie on the overpass, though, so I saw everything as it played out. It couldn’t have been more than just a fraction of a second, but time seemed to kind of slow down; it was almost like I were a character in a movie and someone who knew what was coming up had decided to hit the slow-mo button on the remote.
The freshy on the overpass looked as if it jerked to attention, almost like the roar of the engine below had startled it from a state of reverie. Without a moment’s hesitation, it vaulted over the concrete wall, launching itself into the air as if it would be able to soar like a bird of prey on the wind currents. Gravity had other plans, though, and I remember noticing how the shredded shirt covering its body flapped in the air like streamers as it fell.
“Doc, look ou…. ”
The falling corpse smashed into our windshield, releasing a spider web of cracks through the glass. It’s one remaining hand sought for purchase, clawing at the smooth surface as if it thought it could dig its way in; but then it’s entire body slid off the car and tumbled across the pavement. At the same time, Doc had lost all control: the car spun in circles for what could have been an eternity or merely the amount of time it took to blink an eye before a bone jarring crash stopped it’s momentum.
Doc blinked his eyes a couple time and shook his head as if trying to get the world around us to stop spinning.
“Son of a bitch!”
The engine had died when we smashed into the side of an overturned tanker and Doc frantically turned the key in the ignition. It whined in protest but tried to turn over none-the-less.
“Start damn it start…. ”
For a moment, it caught and the car sputtered to life.
“Hot damn!”
Doc slapped the transmission into reverse and, as he did, the entire car shook like we had suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an earthquake. There was a loud pop from under the hood before the car flooded with the smell of gasoline and died again.
<
br /> “Shit shit shit!”
Through the shattered windshield, I could see a small cluster of corpses about half a mile away, shambling toward the bridge that stood between us and the next off-ramp. From that distance, they looked to be mostly rotters.
“What the fuck happened?” Doc’s normally deep baritone now bordered on a squeal and dark stains had begun to spread around the armpits of his t-shirt.
“Zombie. Jumped off the overpass to try t’ get us when it saw us comin’. We hafta get out of here, Doc. We hafta get out of here now!”
A freshy had burst through the pack of rotters on the bridge, toppling several and leaving others reeling in the wake of its enthusiasm. Though too far away to actually see its eyes, I had no doubt that they were solely focused on our wreck of a car.
“Damn it, Carl, you think I don’t know that? Shit!”
A quick glance over my shoulder caused a chill to settle into my body so completely it was as if I’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen.
“Doc, we’re in it deep my friend.”
The interstate behind us was swarming with the dead we’d already attracted. They were practically shoulder to shoulder, packed so densely that the freshies among them had to claw and climb their way over the top of the throng.
Doc stole a glance and what little color he had left drained from his face. He was silent for a moment as he gnawed repeatedly on his lower lip.
“Well,” he finally said, “there’s definitely no turning back.”
Ahead of us, more and more corpses joined the slow march toward the bridge. Two more freshies were fighting their way through and the original one had closed half the distance between them and us.
“Just a matter of minutes, now.”
I pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in my pocket and studied it for a moment. I looked at the little tears in the paper, the dark stains where it had gotten wet and then been allowed to dry again. Doc may have thought I was trying to play it cool, but in reality I was wondering if my hands would stop shaking long enough for me to actually light the damn thing.
The Dead & Dying Page 3
