I’ll risk the jump, she reasoned, mentally computing the distance of the approaching oldboys. They were each within twenty feet now. She had less than a minute before they were upon here. A ten-foot drop onto solid rock…she might get away with a bad sprain; hobbled, but still able to move. The pain might even provide enough adrenaline to keep her ahead of the newdead as long as it lasted. How far away was the nearest paving? Her thoughts were starting to tumble about, bouncing off each other with a dangerous distraction. This wasn’t like her. She’d been this close to death before. The press of mortality usually slowed her thoughts down, lent them a clarity, a purpose that charged her with life. What was different this time? Why couldn’t she focus? The oldboy behind her was within ten feet. His brother had slowed down, halting at the edge of the thicker tree line at her side. Her eyes remained on the newdead. The swaying had stopped. The broken and twisted hands remained pressed out before it. The mouth had fallen open, gaping at her with a promise that made her shudder. She wondered how much of Ryan was caught between the slivers of those blackened teeth.
The newdead made up its mind. It was at full, frightening speed within the blink of an eye; its movements all-powerful strokes of muscle exerted with no care for preservation. It tore through bush and bramble without slowing; wood snapping of in some places, flesh left behind in others. It was upon her before her mind could fully qualify the sight. So awful were these motions; inhuman in every way, but there was also a stark, terrifying beauty to the scene. It was like watching a scarecrow dance in the wind, its limbs twisting in every direction even as its smile remains in place: the perfect parody of a frail body made to do the impossible. She could not escape such a thing; it was clear now. Whether this monstrosity, one of the slow shambles behind her, or another hungry mouth not yet born, they would eventually possess her; their teeth would eventually grind her apart.
It was almost upon her now. One oldboy had emerged just behind her, the other she could hear breaking free from the cover of trees. The newdead was one bounding, unstoppable stride away. Instinctively she bent her knees and prepared to jump from the edge of the cliff.
Face first. Her own voice caught in her head, flinching away even as the sudden intention was accepted. She would dive head first, presenting her face to the cold stone below. If she was lucky that would be enough to end it. Even if she survived, she hoped whatever was left of her brain would be unable to experience the horrors that were to follow. Whatever came next, her only thought was to give over to the black emptiness before it was filled with something worse than life.
The oldboy emerging from the forest got to her first, before she could get free of the cliff. But instead of seizing hold of her, this creature turned at the last instant and continued down the slope. She only had time to notice how fast it was moving when it slammed into the newdead with a wet and horrible concussion of flesh. The force of the impact carried both bodies off the edge of the cliff and out into the open air. The sight of their descent, the frozen flicker of this sudden and inexplicable shift in fate, arrested her legs before they could follow through on the damning leap. There was only one thought left to the shreds of her consciousness, only one realization sharp and weighty enough to poke through the shell of what she had assumed to be her last moment of breathing reality.
He’s alive.
She watched as the oldboy that had tackled the newdead, and carried them both off the cliff, now positioned himself atop his antagonist as they flew through the air. He landed atop the scavenger, driving his knees down into the chest of the creature with such force that the torso of the newdead audibly popped and sticky streamers of rancid mush sprayed out in all directions.
The oldboy sprang easily from the flattened ruin of the scavenger and turned around to face the cliff. He held out his arms as if to invite her toward him.
“Hurry! Jump!”
She could only stand and stare. Her first thought, strange as it might seem, was that those were the first words she had heard uttered since Ryan’s last cry for help.
“You’re alive,” her own voice managed to cough out.
“So are you.” The man smiled up at her ruefully. He was a tall man, and strong. His face and clothes were covered with layer upon layer of blood and gore in every stage from long dry to fresh and dripping, and it was hard to tell where his wild bush of beard ended and his unkempt mange of hair began. But for all that he was clearly not an oldboy, and even more clearly alive.
“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you,” he continued, his arms outstretched and his broad chest seeming to offer her what security he could. Still she hesitated. It felt like her heart might never start back up. “That granddaddy behind you isn’t alone, kid.”
They stared at one another for a moment. The detached, instinctive part of herself fired back to life. The old boy behind her was only a few feet away. He was already reaching out toward her, a shamble of dislocated and unrecognizable body parts. She needed to move but still she only stared down at this new arrival.
“I can’t help you unless you want it,” the man called out to her. He never glanced away from her but they were both aware how close she was allowing the oldboy to come.
I want it, she thought, and she stepped lightly off the cliff. She closed her eyes and the fall felt much longer than she expected. When she opened them again, he had her in his arms. Ten feet above them, the old boy shambled to the edge of the cliff and stared down at its lost prey. It stood there one long moment before turning about and slowly disappearing back into the bush and brambles.
By the time the creature had gone the man had set her down on her own two feet.
“I’m Frank.” The man smiled as if his face wasn’t painted with death.
“I’m Lucy,” she replied, unable to break his stare.
“Nice to meet you, Lucy,” his smile flickered. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
Ryan Neil Falcone’s stories have been featured in The Absent Willow Review, Macabre Cadaver, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, Black Petals, Estronomicon, Deadman’s Tome, Death Head Grin, Lightning Flash Magazine, Dark Fiction Spotlight, Necrology Shorts, MicroHorror, and Foliate Oak Literary Journal. His work has been selected to appear in multiple anthologies such as Chivalry is Dead, Winter Chills, Dark Secrets, Unquiet Earth, Closet Monsters...and Other Horrors, and Make a Wish. He is also an active member of Cornell University’s Irving Literary Society.
Now, the path takes us to Houston, the land of ten gallon hats, glass skyscrapers, and zombies. Walkers, they’re calling them, “they” being Andrew, Ron, and Anthony, three coworkers trapped inside one of the aforementioned skyscrapers.
At first, no one understood the cause of all the chaos in the streets, then the military rolled in to deal with the zombies, or walkers as they were called. But our nation’s resources quickly became overwhelmed by the dead, and soon the government all but abandoned Houston, just like Andrew, Ron and Anthony’s coworkers had abandoned them.
Wisely, the three thought it wise to stay put rather than face the walkers head on. Then the radio and television broadcasts went dark, and one can really only scavenge so much food from the office vending machines. So they left Houston as well, and walked for days narrowly avoiding becoming walkers themselves, until they spied help in the distance. Or, is what waits for them beyond the electric fence just another form of hell?
Last Supper
By: Ryan Neil Falcone
If I were a betting man, I’d have wagered that the three of us were good as dead. With two of us hobbled by injures, nowhere to take cover, and a horde of ravenous walkers nipping at our heels, the odds of survival seemed impossibly stacked against us—that is, until we came across Lester Coffey. If I’d known beforehand what would happen once we went inside his compound, I’d have taken my chances with the walkers.
My name is Adam Guillory. I was in Houston on a business trip with two coworkers from corporate headquarters when the blight began. Nobody knew what was making the d
ead come back to life or why they were compelled to consume the living—but within days the horrific situation prompted the government to declare martial law. With the city on armed lock down, air travel grounded, and the army blockading all roads going into and out of Houston, we had no way to leave.
The vice-president of our Houston branch suggested that we hunker down at the office until the military restored order. Our building was a shining glass tower located near the center of downtown—our 20 floor office providing a perfect vantage point for us to observe the insanity below. We watched in horror as people in the streets were attacked by the walking dead or gunned down by soldiers trying to prevent them from leaving the quarantined zone.
These shocking circumstances didn’t stop our panic stricken coworkers from venturing out in droves to get to their families. By evening, Anthony, Ron and I were the only ones left at the office. Staying put seemed prudent…and besides, we didn’t have anywhere else to go. Television reports from around the globe delivered the shocking news that the epidemic had become a cataclysm of global proportions. Within days, the collapse of society as we knew it seemed imminent—as impossible as that was to fathom.
Even the military, hopelessly outnumbered by the walkers, were unable to contain the scourge. We watched helplessly when the army pulled out of Houston, abandoning the city. By that time, telephones were no longer working; even our cell phones were dead. It wasn’t long before television and radio broadcasts went dark as well.
The sobering realization that rescue wasn’t forthcoming forced the three of us to rethink our options. A quick inventory of the office pantry confirmed that our food supplies were dwindling; there were enough abandoned bagged lunches, crackers, and vending machine snacks to last for a few more days…maybe longer if we rationed. We could stay put and eventually starve to death, or we could leave the safety of our barricaded office and try to escape a city overrun by the walking dead on foot. Both options seemed like losing propositions.
After some discussion, we decided to take our chances, gambling that there’d be fewer walkers to deal with once we were out of the city. From there, we would try to find other survivors and get to a safe zone where we might find protection from the zombie scourge. We gathered all of the non-perishable food we could carry, loaded these supplies into backpacks we’d scavenged from the office, armed ourselves with makeshift clubs fashioned from broken office furniture, and headed out onto the treacherous streets.
We encountered our first walker at the bottom of the emergency stairwell. The badly decomposing corpse appeared to be an unfortunate businesswoman who must have gotten stuck in the locked stairwell while trying to exit the building. Her body swayed unsteadily as she lurched up the stairs towards us, gnashing her teeth. It took all three of us to put her down, and it wasn’t until after we’d bashed in her skull with our homemade cudgels that she finally stopped moving. Afterwards, my hands trembled while I stared at the corpse, grimly reflecting on the fact that I’d never “killed” anything before. Rationalizing that the woman was already dead offered no consolation.
Our departure from Houston proper was exceedingly slow. The carnage and devastation in the streets was shocking in magnitude, and because the city was swarming with walkers we couldn’t risk being out in the open for very long. The three of us skulked from building to building, hoping to avoid being seen as we slowly wove our way through city streets that were eerily devoid of living human activity.
Despite our most deliberate precautions, it was impossible to avoid the walkers entirely. Several times, we were forced to flee after being spotted—barricading ourselves inside empty buildings to avoid being attacked. We spent hours hiding in silence, waiting for the walkers to disperse before we could safely continue our journey.
After several days of being trapped in this surreal, perpetual nightmare, I became anesthetized to the horror. My squeamishness about killing dropped away when I stopped thinking of the walkers as people. Instead, they were dangerous, rabid animals that needed to be put down to ensure our survival. It was either us or them.
Step by step, building by building, we inched our way closer toward the city limits. The walkers were everywhere—trundling aimlessly through the streets, trapped inside of stationary cars, sometimes even lurking inside abandoned buildings—always on the prowl for fresh meat to consume. We couldn’t afford to drop our guard; we had to be patient.
By our fifth night on the move, we were nearly out of downtown. We took shelter in the lobby of an abandoned skyscraper that had once been Enron’s headquarters. Ron distributed a few packets of saltines from our supply bag and we munched in silence, ravenously devouring this stale, woefully inadequate meal.
I lay down and tried not to think about how hungry I was. Nearby, Ron busied himself inventorying our remaining food while Anthony went to search the offices upstairs for additional supplies to scavenge. I had just begun to drift off to sleep when all hell broke loose.
My dream of being seated at a table overflowing with food was interrupted by shouts coming from inside the building. I instinctively leapt to my feet and tried to locate the source of the commotion. Still dazed from being startled awake, it took me a moment to piece together what was happening: Anthony must have inadvertently come across walkers who’d been locked inside one of the offices. He fled down the stairwell, pursued by the shambling horrors as he shouted out a warning to us.
He burst into the lobby at full speed, and we ran toward the barricaded front doors, knowing that we had to get out of there before the walkers got to the lobby. But as we approached the doors, we screeched to a halt when we saw what was outside: dozens of walkers…wandering aimlessly in front of the building. Going through those doors would be suicide.
“The bathrooms,” Ron bellowed, hitching his thumb toward the lavatories located on the opposite side of the lobby. Our sneakers squeaked on the marble floor as we fled across the lobby, reaching the men’s room just as the first walker who’d been chasing Anthony appeared at the bottom of the stairwell. I knew from previous trips to the latrine that there was a window in the bathroom. Our best chance of escape was to get through that window before the zombies inside the building got into the bathroom. Of course, if there were walkers outside that window like there were out front…
We’d cross that bridge when we came to it; there was no time for a Plan B.
We burst through the door leading into the bathroom, and Anthony threw himself against door to close it, bracing himself against the mass of rotting flesh that began to push on the other side. “Get that window open,” he snarled at us as fists began to pound on the bathroom door.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I picked up a metal trash can and hurled it through the window. The sound of shattering glass echoed throughout the restroom, but it wasn’t loud enough to block out the horrible sound of the walkers trying to force their way into the bathroom; Anthony wouldn’t be able to hold them off for long.
I scrambled through the window as quickly as I could, ignoring the jagged shards of glass still embedded in the frame as I squeezed myself through the shattered pane and dropping the short distance to the ground below. I struck the pavement hard, but rolled to my feet preparing to run if any walkers appeared. Much to my relief, none were in sight.
Ron tossed the packs out to me before pulling his more ample frame through the opening. Before letting himself drop, he shouted for Anthony to run for it. I caught Ron as he fell, knowing that it would be a race against time for our friend. A wave of relief flooded through me when Anthony began to climb through the window frame, but before he could escape, one of the walkers inside the bathroom seized his legs.
Anthony began to thrash, howling as he tried to wrench himself free. Dropping our packs, Ron and I rushed forward and each seized one of his arms, shouting instructions in unison as we engaged in a desperate game of tug-of-war for our friend’s life. The split second before we yanked him through the window, Anthony cried out in pain when one of t
he walkers bit through his shoe. The three of us tumbled to the ground in a heap but were on our feet moments later, snatching our packs off the ground as we sprinted across the parking lot to get away.
Throwing caution to the wind, we fled downtown, pausing only when we were safely hidden inside a backyard shed on the outskirts of town. It didn’t afford much protection, but it was better than being out in the open. Foot smarting, Anthony collapsed to the floor and removed his shoe. He grimaced in pain when Ron examined the bite, but the wound didn’t appear to be that bad.
We’d gotten lucky…or so we believed.
We hotwired an abandoned car but had to abandon it only a few miles outside of town after discovering that Interstate 45 was too congested with derelict cars to drive on. Reluctantly, we headed toward open country on foot, the abandoned city shrinking from view behind us as we left it behind.
Ron suggested that we head northwest and drift into Colorado, theorizing that there was likely to be fewer walkers in the higher elevations of mountain country. We decided that it would be best to avoid cities while we traveled, for fear they’d be swarming with walking dead like Houston had been.
We trudged along for several days without incident, making good progress in spite of the oppressive summer humidity…that is, until Anthony began to wear down. The wound he’d sustained didn’t seem to be healing—not surprising, given how we’d been walking non-stop for days. The fact that he’d only been able to wash the wound once using some unsanitary water we’d found in the sink of a deserted roadside diner didn’t help matters either. Despite how feverish he looked, Anthony assured us that he was fine, but his worsening limp suggested that he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long.
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