“Holy hell!” Danielle said. “A horde of those things must’ve torn them apart!”
Jed said, “I don’t want to go in there unarmed. You have a tire iron?”
“How about an aluminum bat? I keep one under the seat.”
“Stay here,” Jed said. “Honk the horn if anything comes at you.”
He cautiously entered the general store, which was a mess. Not only were windows smashed, but also glass display cases. Canned goods, produce, all kinds of things were all over the floor, bloodied and trampled. Jed swung the aluminum bat as hard as he could and smashed the glass front of a gun cabinet. He grabbed two rifles, rummaged till he found the ammunition, and loaded the weapons.
* * *
At St. Willard’s School, some of the kids were crying and others were too scared to cry or even move, except for Bertie the whiner. Janice Kimble was patting him and cooing to him, trying to get him to be quiet. Sister Hillary was kneeling in a corner, praying.
Father Ed and Annie Kimble were looking out two different windows, trying to monitor the ghoul activity outside, through shattered glass and nailed-up boards, when suddenly they heard a car honking loudly and insistently. Annie spotted it and shouted, “Someone’s coming! Look, Father Ed! Maybe we’re gonna be rescued!”
He darted to her window, peered through it, and said, “That looks like Kyle Samuels’s car!”
Bertie jumped up and said, “Yay! It’s my daddy!”
He ran to where Annie was, anxious to catch sight of his father.
But zombies were already closing in on Kyle Samuels, and he didn’t dare get out of his car. He was frozen in fear. The zombies, led by Johnny, Barbara, and Karen, started pounding on his car with rocks and sticks and pulling at the convertible top, their ghoulish hands poking through the weak glassine rear window.
Bertie was utterly horrified, his face a mask of fright and despair as Father Ed yelled, “Bertie! Don’t look!”
Bertie wailed, “My daddy … my daddy…”
The six-year-old boy broke for the door and tried to get it open, but twelve-year-old Annie was much stronger and was able to pull him back, though her eyes were filled with bottomless pain.
Outside, flying glass shattered by a rock showered into Kyle’s face, and he covered his eyes with his hands. The convertible ripped open and now zombie hands were clawing at him from all sides. He desperately thought of starting the car up again and twisted the key in the ignition and slammed it into gear. He gunned it out, trying to make it closer to where he could perhaps make a run for the hoped-for safety of the school. But the Karen and Barbara zombies were hanging across the hood, blocking his view through the windshield. Then a third zombie flopped through the ripped-apart glassine rear window onto the backseat—and began choking Kyle from behind, pulling his head back and making him let go of the steering wheel.
The car went out of control and rammed into the log pile with a loud clatter. The impact tossed the Johnny and Barbara zombies clear and almost flipped the car over, but instead it careened it right toward the one-room school, where it crashed and exploded in a ball of fire. A huge hole was ripped in the wall as flaming shrapnel flew everywhere and Janice Kimble was struck in the back and went down, her clothing on fire. Her daughter Annie ran to her to try to smother the flames with her own body, but luckily she saw it was no use—Janice wasn’t moving one bit as the fire consumed her.
Father Ed yelled, “Quick, everybody! We’ve gotta get out! The back door!”
Bertie screamed, “No! My daddy!” and tried to bolt toward the flaming car.
Sister Hillary grabbed him and held him back, saying, “We can’t help him now except with our prayers.”
Bertie continued to wail, and the ten other kids of various ages cried and panicked, too.
The exit used disastrously by Pete Gilley was the only hope of escape, and Father Ed led the way. There were few zombies in the backyard right now because they had been diverted by the smell of Janice Kimble’s flesh smoldering inside the building. Father Ed ran toward the log pile and snatched up a thick piece of kindling, yelling, “Grab something to bash them with!” The others hastened to do what he said—but two zombies were almost upon him, and he bashed one of them in the face. It fell, then kicked and writhed on the ground like a badly wounded animal.
But now there were more zombies in the backyard, and three of the children never got a chance to pick up sticks from the log pile. The ghouls swarmed them, pulled them down, and started feasting on them as they screamed and struggled.
The rest of the people, led by Father Ed and Sister Hillary, ran toward the woods. But on the way, two more children got pounced on by zombies who leapt at them from behind trees and bushes. The survivors kept running, hoping to find some semblance of safety, however temporary, as a half dozen zombies pursued them, shambling in their slow rigor-mortis-inhibited gait, drooling and hissing hungrily.
* * *
Danielle drove dangerously, almost too fast for the sharp bend in the blacktop.
Jed said, “I’m scared of what we’re gonna find. That sounded like one hell of an explosion.”
“Yeah,” she said, “look at the smoke above those trees. That’s where St. Willard’s is.”
A couple of minutes later, she braked at the edge of the gravel lot. She and Jed were struck dumb by what they saw. The school building was being consumed by fire. A car plowed into the black flaming timbers was nothing but a skeleton of twisted metal. Zombies backed away from the flames, carrying pieces of human flesh. Some of them hovered over remnants of the children who were killed when they tried to escape after the explosion. The undead creatures fought over scraps of meat like a pack of starving wolves.
Jed said, “There’s nothing we can do here. Obviously they were overrun.”
“There would’ve been more of them,” said Danielle. “Where do you think they could have gone?”
He saw something dangling from a bush at the edge of the clearing, and went over to have a closer look. “A scapular,” he said. “Look at the trampled-down weeds. Some people must’ve escaped.”
She thought about it, then said, “We should try to find them. They’re probably not armed, and we are. They could probably use our help. Especially any of the kids who might still be living.”
* * *
Father Ed and his group of survivors were at the edge of a small clearing and staring at a cave they had spotted in a rocky cliff. It looked like a safe place to hide if they could get up there, but not only was it a steep, hazardous climb, but four ghouls hunkered at the base of the cliff, munching on the remains of recent victims.
The children whimpered and stared, anxiously waiting for the adults to think of something that might save them.
Father Ed said, “Look at that cave. If we could drive the ghouls away and climb up there and barricade it, it’d be almost impregnable.”
Sister Hillary said, “We could drive them away with fire, but we don’t have any. I never thought I would say this, but I wish we had guns.”
Annie, being a bright little girl, mused that they could have made torches from their sticks and the fire at the school, but they never had time to do it—they had to get away or else be devoured.
“If we could circle around and get up on top of the cliff, we could lower ourselves down into the cave,” Father Ed speculated.
Annie said, “How?”
He said, “We’d need a bull rope or something.”
Sister Hillary said, “We have nothing. We’re poorly equipped for survival, Father. Our lifetime of prayer has put us in good shape for the next world, but not this one.”
“Don’t despair,” said Father Ed. “God is on our side.”
Just then shots rang out—a sudden vicious volley—and the four feasting ghouls at the base of the cliff were blasted down. Two rough-looking men with AR-15s and sidearms emerged from the woods into the clearing.
Sister Hillary gasped and said, “Oh, thank the Lord!”
She blessed herself, immediately viewing the men as saviors. But Father Ed was more cautious, and he just stared at them. They wore boots, jeans, flannel shirts, and leather vests, and were laden with bandoliers of ammunition. Father Ed jerked his head around as a blue van motored out of the trees across the way. It pulled up and braked and another rough-looking man got out. “Well, well, what’ve we got here?” he said gruffly. He eyed the kids as if he wanted to smack them—or do worse. The kids cowered closer to the priest and the nun.
One of the men who had gunned down the ghouls said, “More hostages. More zombie feed, Blaze.”
His buddy said, “I don’t wanna deal with any more adults, Butch.”
Butch said, “Yeah, Stan, we’re on the same page.”
Father Ed pleaded, “Whatever you’ve done, we can’t tell on you. We have no cell phones, we have nothing.”
Sister Hillary said, “Please … don’t harm the children.”
The men sneered. The one called Blaze said, “Maybe God’ll protect them from us—and from the ghouls.”
He and Butch aimed their sidearms at Father Ed and Sister Hillary and he barked, “Down on your knees! Now!”
The kids were wailing and crying.
Father Ed and Sister Hillary both knelt and started saying Acts of Contrition. But they didn’t get very far into the prayer before Butch and Blaze shot them in their heads.
Jed Harris and Danielle Greer were working their way along a path when they heard the gunshots. They started running, but they were at least a hundred yards from the gunfire. When they burst out into the clearing, they were almost too late. The last of the kids had their hands tied with rope and were being herded toward the open rear door of the van.
Jed and Danielle reflexively aimed their rifles in the direction of the would-be abductors but momentarily held their fire for fear of hitting the kids. Then they glanced at each other and knew what to do. They aimed higher and blasted a volley of shots just over the men’s heads.
“Run, kids! Run!” Jed yelled.
Blaze jumped in behind the steering wheel, and Stan slammed the rear door shut. Butch dived into the front passenger seat, but Stan didn’t make it. With the kids out of the way now, Jed squeezed off a round that struck Stan in the chest. The van peeled out. Jed and Danielle blasted away at it. But it kept going.
As the blue van made it out onto the blacktop, Butch said, “Shit! I thought we’d have lots of kids to ransom! Now we’ll have to collect more.”
“But we’ve got a shithouse full of loot in the back,” Blaze said. “And with Stan gone, it’s only a two-way split.”
But their gloating didn’t last long. All of a sudden they heard a police siren. A county patrol car was coming up on them from behind, with its lights flashing.
Blaze hit the gas harder. In the rearview mirror he saw that the driver of the police car was in uniform. But the passenger was wearing the same sweaty, rumpled suit he had been wearing for three days. “Oh, fuck!” Blaze said when he recognized Sheriff McClelland.
“That’s the van we been lookin’ for,” the sheriff said to the cop who was driving. “Don’t lose it.”
Behind the patrol car were two military trucks full of National Guard troops. Slower than the patrol car, they had to struggle to keep up.
In the clearing at the base of the rocky cliff, Jed patiently looked down at Stan. He was going to transform, and that’s what Jed had to wait for.
A distance away, Danielle huddled with the kids. She tried her best to soothe and comfort them. And brave young Annie Kimble was helping.
Jed watched over Stan as he groaned and sweated, in severe pain from his chest wound, till he finally died. Then, in a little while, he “revived.” He sat up, moving stiffly. But instead of giving him a chance to stand up all the way, Jed shot him in the head.
“Good for him!” Danielle called out.
“Amen!” said Annie.
Then the sheriff’s patrol car pulled into the clearing, followed by one of the National Guard trucks full of soldiers.
Sheriff McClelland got out of the car and listened to the fusillade of gunfire in the distance. He knew that the soldiers in the other truck were taking care of business. This was a severe emergency, and they were giving no quarter to the bad guys. The ones they had chased down and cornered were done raping, killing, and robbing.
There was a look of gratitude and relief on the faces of the ones they had saved. Now the sheriff would find out what their story was.
THE GIRL ON THE TABLE
by Isaac Marion
A girl lies on a table in the basement of a stranger’s home and wonders why she feels so wrong. She’s hurt. She’s sick. But there’s something else. A hush inside her body, like all her cells are an audience awaiting some terrible show.
She searches for answers in her parents’ faces. They’re supposed to have them all. All her life, they’ve insisted they do. But the girl finds no clues in the sweaty furrows of their sagging flesh. Her mother looks sad and helpless. Her father looks angry and scared. But they always do.
The girl’s arm is missing a chunk of flesh. Under its thin layer of pale skin, her meat is bright red, like the roast her mother was preparing just a few hours ago. Her mother needed wine. Her father needed cigarettes. A quick trip to the store while the roast soaked in dark marinade.
* * *
“I’ll get your cigarettes, dear,” her mother says. “No need for us all to go.”
Her father stands up without looking away from the news broadcast on television. “I don’t like you out there alone,” he says, and snatches the keys from his wife. “The world’s gone crazy.”
This man. Da-da, Daddy, Dad. Barely forty but already ruined. Bald, stooped, crushed by his scowl, crumpled inward as if hiding from the air itself, an omnidirectional retreat. He says the same thing every time he watches the news. It doesn’t matter what it’s about—the war, the protests, the latest outrage in music or fashion—it’s always the same. The world’s gone crazy.
“Get your shoes on, baby,” the girl’s mother says.
“Can’t I stay here?”
“You’re not staying home by yourself,” her father says. “You’re only fourteen.”
The girl sighs and follows them to the car. The sun is almost down. It’s Friday night. She closes her eyes and imagines she’s going dancing.
* * *
She doesn’t know how long she’s been on the table. Time is taffy; it stretches and bends and dangles as she drifts in and out of dreams.
Last year’s school trip to New York, the bus like a scuba tank full of compressed excitement, seventy young people getting their first glimpse of the city. The girl pressing her face to the glass: the gleaming towers, the infinity of the place, the endless possibility. Movie star, stockbroker, dancer, singer, senator—she’ll need to live to three hundred to fit in all these lives.
“It’ll chew you up and spit you in the gutter,” her father says when she gets home. “You want to live in a leaky roach nest next to a bunch of thugs and perverts?”
“It’s boring here. It’s too small. I want to be out in the world.”
“Baby,” her mother says before her father can start yelling, “you don’t need to be thinking about all that yet. You’re just a little girl.”
She drifts out of memories and into shapeless fever dreams. Orange and black, hot and sticky, a gnawing hollowness in her belly, her mouth, her fingers and teeth—
* * *
“Take the boards off that door!”
“We are staying down here!”
The girl wakes up. They’re shouting again. All the old arguments amplified by terror. At home, it was just the sneering and sniping of a restrained but obvious loathing, a rich broth of unhappiness in which they seemed to enjoy simmering. Now, here in this basement, their misery has risen to a boil. Every time the girl surfaces, their voices scald her.
“I know what I’m doing!”
“How are we going
to know what’s going on if we lock ourselves in this dungeon?”
The girl’s arm twitches. Her stomach knots. How long ago was dinnertime? Was it days ago? Years? Are the maggots and flies enjoying her mother’s roast?
* * *
They drive in silence to the grocery store. That long, straight stretch of Pennsylvania road, the daily commute to school, to church, to anywhere. The big rock, the broken tree, the same scenery over and over like the background of a cheap cartoon. Her father clicks on the radio. Something about exploding satellites, radiation from space, a string of murders; he opens his mouth to say it again, the world’s gone crazy, and his wife changes the station with a violent twist of the knob.
It lands on static. But the static is strange. Not the usual oceanic rush but a rhythmic pulse of low, abrasive noise, like a monstrous heart pounding in the dark.
“What is this?” the girl’s father says. He glances at her in the rearview mirror. “Is this what you kids are calling music?”
The girl does not know what this is. It is not what she calls music. It rises to a high, sour shriek and her mother clicks it off.
“It’s probably that radiation they were talking about.” Her tone is dismissive, but the girl sees the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She feels her own doing the same. No one speaks until they arrive at the store and pull into the nearly empty parking lot. An overturned cart near the entrance. Groceries scattered and smashed. Red wine soaking the pavement.
* * *
The bite itself no longer hurts. Its searing heat has dissipated throughout her body and she feels the same thing all over. When she locks herself in the bathroom to read Rolling Stone and Cosmopolitan and other forbidden texts and her legs fall asleep on the edge of the toilet seat, she feels this. A black-and-white crackling like TV static in her nerves, a confused noise of numbness and pain. But not just in her legs now. Everywhere.
What is happening to her? She knows she’s sick, but there’s more. She feels something coming. Rising up from black caverns in the cores of her bones. She’s afraid. She’s excited. She doesn’t know why.
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