by Brent Abell
When he pushed open the office’s door, he heard the banging on the back patio doors. It sounded like multiple fists were hitting the glass. Fear froze him in his place, on his hands and knees, until he heard the shattering of the glass and the sound of the broken shards showering the tile kitchen floor. Quickly, he scrambled to his feet and pulled open the top left desk drawer. The sleek black handgun stared back up at his and he snatched it up. He never kept it loaded, but he always had two full clips with it. The other ammo was in a drawer on the other side of the desk. George locked in a clip and pulled back on the receiver. Once he heard the round click into the chamber, he opened the other drawer and stuffed the two boxes of ammo in his pocket. He took the other clip and put it in the chest pocket of his bright yellow polo shirt.
In the hall outside the door, he heard footsteps and the sound of something dragging on the hardwood floor. At first he thought it sounded like a leg dragged, but the closer it came to his office door, the more metallic it sounded. The steps stopped and George slowly rose up from behind his desk. A loud crash came from the hall and he knew it was the crystal vase, under the hall mirror; Sally put a bouquet in every Monday morning. The orchids were only a day old and he thought of them on the floor with the broken crystal shards and hoped Sally wouldn’t mind the mess. The thought of the water warping the hard wood floor pissed him off though.
He hoped she wouldn’t mind the mess he was about to make too.
The person in the hall began to approach the office. George watched the barrel of an aluminum baseball bat poke open the door. A head slowly peeked around the corner and George didn’t hesitate. The bullet exploding from the Beretta was deafening in the small office, but it couldn’t mask the wet sound it made when it struck the intruder in the face. The body thudded to the floor and George listened to see if he could hear anyone else.
“Didn’t take you low-life fuckers very long,” he huffed and headed to the bedroom. There, he hoped Sally had made a note of where she was meeting the girls for lunch. He became very worried and decided to change into something more comfortable for the apocalypse.
The plaid shorts became a pair of camouflage pants and the bright polo changed into a black tee shirt. His flip-flops gave way to sturdier boots and he put his old boonie hat from Iraq. The varying shades of brown and tans were a stark contrast to the black and greens of his pants. He didn’t hunt anymore, but the pants were still in his closet in case he ever wanted to drive north to pick-up Trent in St. Augustine. After a few drinks, they’d head into Georgia and try to bag a deer or two. Most of the time, they only fired a few shots at deer from a long distance and drank beer.
He hoped the boy could take care of himself. He had to hope, because George could only focus on Sally for the time being. She was out there somewhere with the world unraveling and people eating other people. Everything they ever showed in the zombie flicks he hated was right. Now, he only wanted everything he learned by watching Night of the Living Dead to be gospel truth.
“Time to walk about,” George said and stepped over the headless body bleeding all over the hard wood floor. “Sally’s going to pitch a fit over cleaning this shit up.”
George checked the extra clip and the ammo boxes in his pockets and headed out to greet the new world.
***
Outside, it looked as if the world had moved on and humans were gone; a distant memory to the world. In the short time he’d been in the house, it was like humanity had been snatched from the face of the Earth leaving the scar of their existence across the land. Car alarms blared and the fires still smoldered, but nobody walked the neighborhoods. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the street and bodies hung out from open doors; their seatbelts keeping them from falling all the way out onto the roads. He saw an arm hanging out from behind an open Mustang door and he winced at the blood streaming down to the finger tips and pooling on the hot asphalt. He waited for the fingers to move, reanimated from beyond the realms of death, but they remained still.
Maybe the wreck killed him and caused a brain trauma.
On the passenger side of the Mustang, an old rusted out pick-up truck had smashed into old man French’s brick mailbox. The hood had crumpled like an accordion and the driver’s door was ajar. George squinted to see better, but he failed to see the driver. Holding up the gun, he slowly made his way around the car and, once he cleared the crushed front-end, he saw the truck driver. The burly man limped toward the rusted truck bed and George saw his arm was missing. Blood poured from the ragged wound and he winced at the torn skin hanging loosely from where his forearm used to be. The man tried to form a word, but a lone groan escaped his bleeding lips. George looked at the blood running down from a gash in his forehead and figured the man busted his head on either the steering wheel or the dashboard.
It really didn’t matter; he still looked like he was a few steps backward on the evolutionary scale and knuckle-dragged back and forth between a factory job he hated and the tavern where he could drink the pain of his marriage and life away. George felt sorry for him. Now, the lug lumbered around even more brainless than what he already had been in life.
Slowly, George raised the gun and carefully aimed at the poor sod’s head.
George fired and the gun jerked in his hands. The shell ejected from the side and he could smell the burning sulfur and gunpowder. The shot dropped and struck the man in the throat. A wet gurgling emanated from the ragged hole and blood poured out onto his white tee shirt. It took a few steps toward George and stopped. It turned its head in a confused manner and, after a few moments, began approaching George again.
“Well shit,” George muttered and brought the gun up again. This time, when he fired, the shot was true and struck the man in the forehead. First, a small hole appeared in the man’s wrinkled brow and a split-second later his brains splashed across the side of his truck. This time, the man dropped to the street and remained still.
“George!” Someone cried out from the house on the other side of street from him.
George snorted in satisfaction and turned to Mrs. Houseman’s familiar voice. The old woman poked her head out from behind her screen door and waved frantically at him.
“Vera, you okay?”
“Kurt is milling about the backyard with a squirrel hanging out of his mouth,” she replied surprisingly calmly.
George tried to stifle the laugh he felt swelling deep in his belly. Not an ordinary laugh, but a deep-throated one he’d only get from watching that old bastard dead and with a large tree-rodent dangling from his jowls. A small snort escaped his lips and he wiped the smile from his face before he responded. If Kurt had a dead animal in his mouth, he’d been turned.
This is shit is spreading quickly and I need to find Sally.
“Sorry, I need to find Sally,” he yelled back.
He watched as a pair of bloodied hands pushed through the screen door knocking Vera to the porch. Kurt fell on her and began to do the same thing he’d witnessed the others do, eat a person. George shook his head and left the old woman to her husband’s undead wrath.
He didn’t know for sure, but the way people were acting made him think zombies were indeed returning to life and feasting on human flesh. George grew up with Romero’s masterpiece and he had never imagined he’d be living it. The idea of the dead returning to life seemed absurd yesterday, but today it was real and totally legit.
“Fuck my life,” he whispered and began to walk back to the house. He needed to grab the car and go figure out where Sally had gone for lunch.
***
When George’s Audi pulled up in front of Kellie’s Deli, he grew apprehensive. Thick black smoke bellowed from the Deli and people ran into the streets. Up and down the block, everyone seemed to have lost their minds. Some fled to the side streets and others tried to drive away from the carnage.
A woman revved her engine and looked up and down the street for a space to clear so she could pull out. Before she could pull out, a man limped up to
her car and began to punch at the window. His clothes were covered in blood and it smeared his face, leaving him with a crimson smile. The woman frantically honked her horn and George watched her scream at the man. He couldn’t hear her, but he saw the frightened look in her eye.
Screams erupted from inside Kelli’s Deli and he turned his back on the woman in the car. Before he set foot inside the smoking restaurant, he heard the car’s door window give way and the audible cries for help from inside. George pushed the begging out of his head and entered the deli to find his Sally.
***
Inside the deli, the smoke didn’t seem as thick. It stung his eyes and it burned his throat with every breath he took, but wasn’t worse than anything he’d endured in the Middle East. He’d take the smoke over the sand any day.
People crawled on the floor and he felt them brush by him on their way to the door. The air smelled of acrid smoke, burning meat, and the coppery aroma of blood. Someone growled in the deli’s back corner booth. George approached it and a woman staggered out. Blood soaked her yellow blouse and dripped from her frothing mouth. She held out her hands at George and he could see the bits of skin beneath her nails. He couldn’t tell if they were painted crimson from blood or polish.
“Marie,” he muttered.
The thing that was once one of Sally’s friends snapped her jaws at him and he backed away. She snarled and grabbed at him. He turned to avoid her grasp and pushed her back. Marie slipped in a growing red pool on the floor and fell back into the booth. George looked horrified at the pool under the raging woman.
Oh, Sally.
George froze and watched with his mouth agape as Marie climbed back to her feet. Anger rose in him and he rushed his wife’s friend. She tried to grab his arm, but he drove straight through her advance and pushed her against the wall next to the corner booth. She toppled over and, before she could fall, George caught her by the shoulders and pushed her back against the wall. Her bloodied mouth grinned at him and he saw nothing human in her eyes. Releasing her shoulders, he gripped her face and screamed. She tried to bite him from the side of mouth and he slammed her head into the shiplap wall.
Her head made a wet thud and she struggled harder in his grasp. George thought about the puddles of blood and imagined his Sally dead under the table. He unleashed a primeval howl and began to bang her head repeatedly into the wall. Blood splattered on the distressed gray painted walls and her head split open. Blood poured from her ears and George felt something hot on his fingers on the back of her head. He pulled his hands away and they looked like he sported red gloves. Marie’s eyes went blank and she dropped to the floor. George backed away and sobbed.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he turned with his hand raised. Sally shrank back and held her hands up. “I surrender!” Sally shouted.
George’s tears of loss turned to ones of joy and relief. He embraced her and held her close. His fingers stroked her hair and he breathed deeply of her scent. It was something he thought he’d never be able to do again.
“Oh, Sally, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you…I thought you were…,” he stammered.
Sally stroked his hair in return and hugged him tightly. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m right here.”
“I thought I had lost you when I saw the blood.”
“Well, let’s get home and we’ll talk about it there. I love you George,” Sally said.
“Ditto,” George responded.
Together the pair exited the Deli and headed back to their home and their prison.
***
“Holy shit,” Harry said.
“I tried to limit my time out on searches and never let her go out into the open. Maybe if I’d let her walk with me, she wouldn’t have tried to reach out the window like she did.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Harry offered.
“Wasn’t it?”
Both men sat in silence and listened to the crickets. The night was peaceful and they enjoyed the quiet break. The air was heavy and still. George surveyed the area and stood up.
“What’s up?” Harry asked.
“Checking to see if the area looks secure for the night,” George replied.
Harry pointed to the rest stop’s main building. “You think it’s safe for the night?”
“One way to find out,” George said.
George stood and made his way to the double glass door into the building. To his surprise, the glass hadn’t been broken and, when he pulled on the handle, he discovered it was locked. The plain brick building looked big enough to house bathrooms and an office. The vending machines were in a small open enclosure to the side and, from where he stood, he could tell they had been broken into and ransacked long ago. George was disappointed; he was hoping to find one soda or maybe a small bag of over-priced pretzels.
“Nothing?” Harry asked.
“Not a damn thing,” George answered.
“I’m not surprised. I wonder if it’s worth even going inside then.”
George thought about it for a second. “It’ll be hot as hell.”
“It’ll be easier to defend,” Harry pointed out.
George felt the cold metal against the back of his head in the warm night. He loved the way it felt on his skin, but hated it was a gun.
“Hands up, boys,” a deep voice instructed them. The voice reminded George of Isaac Hayes. Harry thought it sounded like Chef on South Park. Neither knew they were thinking about the same guy.
George slowly put his hands behind his head and laced his fingers together. Harry held his hands high in the air and sighed. He’d never really seen a gun before, but in the last couple of days he’d seen more than his share of barrels and was seriously getting tired of it.
“We don’t want any trouble,” George said.
“That’s what they all fucking say before I have to shoot them for doing something stupid,” the man replied.
“I assure you, we don’t want to do something stupid,” Harry said.
“Good, now slowly turn around and keep your hands up. Any wrong move and I’ll make you zombie feed.”
George and Harry did as they were told and found themselves staring down the barrel of a .357. The man holding it looked nothing like his voice, however. The man was only a hair over five feet tall and skinny as a rail. He had on an old cowboy hat and two feathers dangled down over his right ear. The pink button-up shirt he wore sported stains over most it and his beard looked scraggly and wiry.
“Are you guys gonna be cool?” the man asked.
“Yeah, I think we can do that,” George answered.
“How’d y’all get here? I haven’t seen a living person in weeks.”
“We’re heading to St. Augustine,” Harry answered. He looked over at George to make sure it was good he answered and George nodded back at him in approval. Harry thought George was the leader of the pair, so he wanted to make sure he wasn’t overstepping his bounds.
“There ain’t nothing there. Hell, there ain’t nothing anywhere,” the man scoffed.
George’s stomach tightened. “The camps?”
“They were overrun before I came here a month or so ago. Hell, time don’t mean anything anymore.”
“Are there zombies around here?” Harry wondered aloud.
“Just the ones I put out on the highway.”
“Why?” George asked.
“Boredom.”
“I guess it’s true about them migrating south then,” George said.
“Every one of them I’ve seen has been heading that way, so yeah, I guess they are. Oh, sorry about my manners’ I’m Jay by the way.”
“I’m George and the young man with me is Harry.”
“You guys seem okay. Put down your hands and we can go sit at the picnic tables and have us a conversation,” Jay offered.
George and Harry relaxed and let their arms fall to their sides. Jay lowered the gun and stuffed it in the pocket of his loose fitting jeans. They were ratty and the knees were worn away, leaving
two large holes. His knobby knee caps stuck up from out of the holes. He didn’t appear to be dangerous at all, except for the hand-cannon he carried.
“Hot in the building?” Harry inquired.
“Lord, yes! Hell, I was sleeping next to the door when y’all tugged on it. I woke up and came out to kill some zombies,” Jay guffawed.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that with the door. Good thing I didn’t kick it in like I thought about doing,” George apologized.
Jay sat down at the picnic table and motioned for George and Harry to sit on the other side, across from him. They sat down and Jay placed the .357 on the table, pointed at them. He pulled his hand away, but his fingers danced across the grip and the chambers. Trust was a hard thing in the world and, as much as he thought George and Harry were okay, he couldn’t bring himself to trust them enough not to have a gun on them.
“I’ll start the show,” Jay said and grinned. “Tell me why you think there’s anything in St. Augustine.”
“It was the last place we heard there was a FEMA camp set up… and my son was there when the bottom fell out,” George explained.
“We’ve only really heard bits and pieces about everything. My dad had a ham radio I used for a few weeks until the people broadcasting stopped. St. Augustine was where everyone was heading when the signals all died,” Harry added.
“Well, I can assure you it ain’t worth going. Your best bet is to head north and never look back,” Jay said.
“Why north?” Harry asked.
“They are all heading south. Nobody knows why the fuck why, but they all seem to be heading to the bottom of the fucking world,” Jay cackled.
George crossed his arms and studied Jay. “What about Mexico or Canada? Have the other countries been infected too?”
