Dying Days: Death Sentence

by Brent Abell

  Nora lifted her head and sniffed loudly. “Oh shit, I hope I don’t bring any dead this direction.”

  George laughed, “I think we’ll be fine.”

  “Sorry again about that,” she replied and wiped her eyes on her shirt sleeve.

  “So, where were you heading?” George changed the subject.

  Nora looked at him and smiled. “North.”

  “I tell you what, I’m heading to St. Augustine and you’re more than welcome to tag along,” George offered.

  “I can’t do that,” Nora said. Her voice sounded serious and hurt.

  George wondered why she’d turn down the chance to travel with him. He was breaking his latest and newest rule for survival, but he pitied her. She’d lived this long on her own, but how long would they last if they stayed solo.

  “I’d love for you to hang out with me in the apocalypse,” George quipped.

  Nora sat in silence and thought about all she’d been through and if he’d still want to head north with her if he knew. “You don’t…can’t know what I’ve been through.”

  “Look, we all have our scars and things we wish we could undo or unsee. I’ve done and seen my fair share of bad things. Hell, I’ve experienced enough to last me five life times, but I still push on,” George told her.

  “I…okay, I’ll go with you.”

  George laughed, but on the inside he knew he was beginning their relationship with a lie. He told her he’d been pushing on, but hours before he had stuck his gun in his mouth and his tongue still tasted the metal and the faint remnants of gun powder from the barrel. Nora made him want to drive on. She made him want to live. She brought out the things in him he thought had died when he slid the blade into Harry’s brain. Maybe he hadn’t died that night too.

  “Should we head out and make the most of our daylight?” Nora asked.

  “I think we should double check the hotels,” George said.

  “I’m pretty sure the restaurants have all been cleaned out.”

  A big grin spread across George’s face. “Maybe we need to do a room-by-room sweep. Some of the guests had to have had food or bottled water in their rooms.”

  “Do we have that kind of time?”

  “I think we have all the time in the world,” George answered and stood up. “Now, let’s head to the skywalk.”

  ***

  The exit to the skywalk leading to the Rosenblatt Hotel was down the hall on the level they were already on. Along the south side of the hall, most of the doors leading into the main exhibit hall remained closed. A few doors stood wide open and George stopped to peer at the darkness within.

  “That is seriously dark,” Nora said. She whistled and it echoed in the empty hall.

  Nora began to take a step in when George put his arm out to hold her back.

  “Wha…,” Nora started and George put his finger to his mouth to silence her.

  Inside the silence was broken by a low animalistic growl. More and more followed until the whole hall sounded full of zombies. The longer they stood transfixed before the Gate to Hell, the stench of rot and decay finally filled their noses. George’s nose wrinkled and, grabbing Nora’s arm, they backed away from the door.

  “We need to get the fuck out of here,” George whispered.

  “What do we do? They’re coming,” Nora answered in a hushed tone.

  The sound of the herd moving toward the door grew louder. A chorus of moans reached a fearsome crescendo as the zombies drew closer.

  “Run,” George said.

  George and Nora turned to the east entrance and sprinted toward the door. Glancing back over his shoulder, George watched the zombies push and spill out into the concourse hall. Their flesh was ashen gray and others had flecks of blackened skin peeling from their faces. Nora never broke stride and pushed through the door out to the skywalk.

  “Shit!” She hollered. On the other side of the skywalk, milling around the doors to the Rosenblatt Hotel, was a group of zombies. From where she stood, she could see more of them inside the hotel roaming around.

  George ran out the door and saw what Nora was yelling about. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

  “Not good, not good, not good,” Nora repeated.

  “This is not good.”

  “What do we do? The others are getting closer.” Nora pointed to the convention center doors where the first zombies began to pound against the glass. They left crimson trails and black ichor smeared on the doors.

  A few of them began to ram into the glass and the ones with small cracks began to give. The tiny fractures spider-webbed and spread out. Finally, the weight of the dead bodies stacking up against the doors became too great for the doors and the glass shattered. Zombies fell through the openings and more of them pushed through the small openings in the door. The first ones who fell to the concrete patio were trampled and smashed beneath the horde.

  George frantically looked around. Zombies began to march toward them from both ends of the skywalk. They approached slowly, but there were too many for the two to fight off. He noticed more were joining the fray as the commotion grew louder. He glanced around the area and looked down. The drop would be about twenty feet, but he figured they may not have much choice.

  “You’re not going to say we need to jump are you?” Nora asked. Her eyes were full of fear and worry.

  “Maybe…wait, look over there,” George said pointing. Nora followed his finger and saw the small overhang to the right of the skywalk. It was supported by steel cables and had no access from a door. “I don’t think they could get to us there.”

  “But it’s too close to them for us to jump over.”

  “I’ll cover you. Let me rush in and clear a path for you to come up behind me and jump over. I’ll be right behind you, I promise,” George said. He hoped he wasn’t lying to her.

  “Be careful,” she replied and gave him a hug.

  George blushed and turned toward the zombies. “Come and get it mother fuckers.”

  With a bellowing war-cry, George charged the advancing zombie horde. He raised his gun and fired at the first two. Their heads exploded in a shower of blood and brains. They fell to the ground and the others began to fall over them.

  “NOW!” George cried out.

  Nora sprinted to the edge of the skywalk and when she should have leaped across to the overhang, she hesitated. George shoved a zombie over the railing and it fell to the street below. It sounded like an over-ripe melon hitting the asphalt with a dull wet thud.

  “What are you doing? Go!” George yelled.

  “I can’t,” Nora said and shoved another zombie over the rail.

  Reaching to his side, George unsheathed his knife and stabbed a woman in the head. Her eyes went dark and she toppled over. Nora began to shove more over the rail when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It felt cold and slimy. She looked at her shoulder and saw a trail of bloody finger prints on her shirt. Turning around, she pushed it to the ground and gasped at how close the zombies from the convention center side were to them.

  “Now, go!” George ordered.

  This time Nora listened and rushed to the rail. Climbing on top of the black metal rail, she held her breath and jumped.

  George turned and watched her flail her arms as she flew through the air and landed on the overhang. Her hands caught the steel support cables and she pulled herself up on top of it.

  “George, hurry!”

  He looked both ways and saw he didn’t have much time left before the zombies would be on him. The fight had backed them up a little, but he needed to move. He climbed up on the rail and, when he jumped, a hand reached out and grabbed at his foot. It caught enough of it to throw his flight off-balance and he hit the overhang’s edge with a thump. His feet dangled off the side and kicked wildly trying to swing his legs up.

  Nora reached for his hand and grabbed it. She felt his grip loosen and he began to slide down the overhang’s side. Sneaking a peek up at the skywalk, she saw the zombies were pushin
g each other up against the rails and knocking each other to the drive below. Each one, in their decayed state, smashed apart from the impact. The smell of all the rotting corpses falling to pieces as they fell hit her nose and made her gag. The bodies exploding on the pavement released the gases of decay from their rotting prison. A foul cloud wafted up and kept assaulting Nora and George.

  “Shit, pull harder!” George said.

  “I’m losing my grip!”

  George swung his legs and his boot caught the edge. His grip on the overhang slipped again and he looked up to Nora. He saw the strain in her face and part of him wanted to let go. Part of him wanted to let go so she could run. George wanted her to escape to fight another day, but she couldn’t if she wasted her time trying to save him. He let his feet fall off and he dangled from the overhang. His fingers held on and he looked down.

  “Let me try, Nora.”

  Nora nodded and bit her bottom lip. George let go and dropped to the ground below. She heard his body hit the pavement and she looked down to see if he was alright. When she scanned the drive that led back to the parking lot, she saw him standing there wiping off his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Come on, I’ll catch you,” George yelled up to her.

  Nora looked and saw the zombies on the skywalk look down at George and they began to go over the edge again. A few of them landed on some of the other’s remains and climbed to their feet. George was down there alone. She went to the edge and her fear of heights began to creep into her mind. She knew she needed to get to the ground, but her body wouldn’t move.

  “Nora, they’re coming!”

  Nora took a deep breath and backed up to the edge. Slowly, she slid her left foot off and let it dangle out in the open air.

  If I can make the jump, I can do this too, she told herself over and over.

  Hesitating, she began to let her right foot fall from the side. Her grip tightened on the ledge and she let her body hang from the overhang. The sensation of hanging in the air terrified her, but being eaten terrified her more.

  “Drop down, I’ve got ya!”

  Nora wanted to look, wanted to see how far George’s outstretched arms were from her, but didn’t. In the short time she’ known him, she trusted him fully. The other people she’d met during her travels never gave her the same gut feeling like George did. She held her breath and let go.

  The sensation of falling felt good. She felt free and she smiled. Silently, she hoped it’d never end, but she landed in George’s arms and both fell to the ground. She heard the air leave his lungs and she regretted dropping into his arms now.

  “Shit, you okay, George?” Nora asked. She rolled off him and stood up.

  The zombies who hadn’t become a pile of dead meat on the pavement began to rise and shamble toward them. Nora held her hand out to George and he slowly took it. He grimaced and let her help him to his feet. He looked and saw the zombies slowly making their way toward them.

  “We need to get of here,” George grunted.

  Nora could tell he was in pain from his fall and her landing on him. “Can you run?”

  “I think so, but I don’t have to go real fast to outrun these assholes.”

  “Well, I’ll meet you at the I-4 interchange!” Nora laughed and darted off.

  George watched her bound off around the back of the hotel and he felt like a teenager following the movement of her body while she ran. Nora was an attractive woman, but he knew he was too old for her. He took a few steps to test his ankle. It had rolled under him when he had landed and it had buckled under him again when he had caught Nora when she dropped from the overhang.

  The first step didn’t feel too bad, so he started off doing a brief jog. It didn’t bother him, so he sped up and took off after Nora. He hoped, once they were back on the interstate, they’d be zombie free for a while.

  ***

  “What took you so long, old man?” Nora chided George when he appeared at the top of the on-ramp.

  George gave Nora the finger and doubled over trying to catch his breath. His chest burned and he felt like he going to vomit fire. His shins ached and could feel his cancer causing his lungs to seize up. A few coughs later, it felt better and he wiped the blood off his hands. When he looked up, he noticed Nora was watching him carefully. He wondered how much she really saw and what she’d say about it.

  He didn’t know if he should tell her or not. They’d only known each other for a day and he wanted her to stick around. As hard as losing Harry was and as much as he hated to let someone else in, he hated being alone. He’d always had somebody by his side and he knew he’d need someone in the coming days.

  “We going to just walk this part, old man?” Nora chuckled. George wanted to say something about the ‘old man’ jabs, but kept quiet. She seemed to enjoy having him around to harass and it didn’t hurt him to let her have some fun. She was young and didn’t deserve the world they found themselves in. Hell, nobody deserved it, but it was still where they found themselves.

  “I say we walk on up the interstate. It should be easier to spot and hide from hordes if we run across any,” George answered and stood up straight. The coughing fit passed and his breathing calmed back to normal.

  “Do you need a few minutes?”

  “Nah, if I don’t keep moving, my old ass joints will freeze up and you’ll have to carry me down the highway,” George joked.

  Nora smiled and waited till he strolled up next to her. “Let’s go, George.”

  “What, no old man comments?” he smirked.

  “No, I’ll let it slide this time. You look tired and you’re making it realllly easy right now,” Nora smirked back.

  Nora gave George a pat on the back and began to walk up the interstate. George shook his head and followed after her. He had a date with St. Augustine.

  ***

  The mid-day sun baked the asphalt they trudged along. Each step George took, he thought his boots were going to sink into the hot black tar. Cars littered the landscape and they checked each one as they passed. They hoped to find crackers or something, but instead they found baked bodies and dusty bones. All the coolers they opened were empty and all the cars they rummaged through yielded nothing to eat.

  “I’d eat a zombie right now,” Nora mused.

  “I’d drink out of a toilet right now,” George added.

  Nora began to feel faint in the heat and humidity. She marched on, but each step took more and more out of her. Glancing over at George, she wondered how bad it was on him if she felt as bad as she did. “You okay?”

  “Never better darlin’,” George replied. He winked and saw the concern in her expression. He knew she wasn’t faring much better. “Maybe we need to go off and hunt a gator or something.”

  “I don’t know about that. If we go off the highway and close to the swamps, I’m afraid we’ll come across one or more of those damn boas and pythons they say are loose in the Everglades,” Nora said.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t sound very fun does it,” George quipped.

  “I saw on the news once they were getting so bad the state paid for hunters to come in and kill them.”

  “Can you imagine if they were zombies too?” George added. The thought made him shiver in the heat.

  “I haven’t heard of any animals being infected,” Nora said.

  George stopped walking. “Thank the Lord for that. The human ones are bad enough. Could you see fighting off a pack of dogs or birds if they were infected? We’d all be one of them by now.”

  “No, I think they’d keep on us until we were devoured,” Nora said.

  George was glad ending up as food for a zombie poodle wasn’t on the agenda. He began to wonder what she’d heard about the zombies. All he still knew was that they spread it through bites, could only die again by destroying the brain, and they liked to migrate south for an undetermined reason.

  “Why’d we stop?” Nora asked.

  “I wanted to rest for a moment and try to f
igure out our plan. There is an exit coming up in another mile or two we could check out,” George said pointing up the interstate.

  “Do you really think there’d be anything worth a shit?”

  “Oh, have a little faith,” George answered.

  Nora stared at him and tried to look serious, but ended up snorting.

  “Did you just snort at me?” George asked.

  The snort turned into laughter and Nora doubled over. “Yeah, yeah I did.”

  “Well, if you can compose yourself, we can head to the exit,” George said. He tried to sound indignant, but sounded ridiculous instead.

  Nora stood back up. “Did you just try to sound serious?”

  This time, George snorted and began to laugh. “Maybe.”

  “Okay, just checking. Now, let’s go and have a little faith.”

  Together they began their trek up I-4 again.

  ***

  They reached the exit as the sun began to set. The oranges and reds lit the horizon and touches of purple painted the edges. Below them, there were three gas stations and two fruit stands. Burned out cars, trucks, and SUVs dotted the parking lots and the weeds were in the process of reclaiming the world as their own. George studied the area and part of him liked seeing nature take back what was once hers.

  “See the one with the scorch marks,” George said pointing to a gas station east of the exit, “I think we should try it first.”

  “Why the burned one?”

  “I think if it had been on fire, people would’ve ignored it when scavenging for supplies. Would you go into a burned house looking for a soda or some cookies?” George inquired.

  Nora began to walk down the exit ramp. “Let’s go, we also need shelter for tonight.”

  George followed her and hoped he was right. If he wasn’t, he wondered how much time they had left.

  ***

  Willie’s Gas Mart was a burned out husk. Black marks painted the sides and the glass looked like it had exploded out in the fire. The pumps appeared to be fine and the left side of the building looked like it didn’t take as much damage as the main convenience store area. George and Nora cautiously moved between the cars and trucks watching for zombies or booby-traps. If his time in the Middle East had taught him anything, it was everything could be a bomb or any place with over-grown vegetation could hide trip wires.