by J. Thorn
We stepped our way carefully through the debris and bodies on the floor, working toward a section of the wall that had been blown out by… something. It was hard to decipher, since the debris around it was blackened and charred but not obliterated.
Just as Hendrix stepped through the hole, his gun went off in his hand- on purpose; but it scared the living hell out of me. A strangled moan sounded and then the body of a wandering Feeder slumped to the ground.
We all let out a collective breath that lasted half a second. The sound of Hendrix’s gun rang through the night and upstairs the pounding stopped immediately. It was like I could feel the attention of the horde shift from that metal box to our position downstairs.
The hairs on my neck prickled stiffly, just before all pandemonium broke loose. Hendrix looked back over his shoulder, sharing a look with someone behind me before his eyes met mine in steely determination.
“With me,” he mouthed and just as I gave him a nod of agreement he took of sprinting.
I heard Nelson scoop Page up and the boys behind us were pounding pavement as Hendrix sprinted the way out of there.
The sounds of crashing metal echoed through the night and Zombies started charging us from every direction. They flooded the small Missouri downtown like how waters invaded space after a dam broke. They were everywhere, in every direction, ravaging the space between us and them.
They were mindless, yes- easily killed if you got a good shot to the head and it helped that they were no longer freely thinking human beings. But they were excellent hunters, obsessed with only one thing- eating. Usually they wandered slowly, stumbling around. But if there was a strong enough scent to grab their attention, if they were starving or focused on a kill, they could be faster than any normal human being, more cunning than humanly possible.
That was the state they were in now. Our skirmish earlier must have triggered something, or they were learning to communicate with each other, because there were more Feeders in this area than I had ever seen in one place. There were tons of them, at least fifty and they sounded ravenous as they chased us down.
Hendrix seemed to know where he was going and I pushed my body to its very limits to keep up with him. My pack was heavy and awkward, it was not comfortable to run with guns in both hands and if I was honest, my pants were kind of slipping down. None of that mattered though. All I had to do was run for my life, get away from these Feeders and believe Hendrix had a plan.
Oh my god, let him have a plan.
“Reagan, to your left!” Vaughan called out from behind me and without thinking or slowing I turned to the left and started shooting. On the third shot I hit the Feeder in the throat, adjusted my aim and fired off another shot that landed directly between his eyes before he crumbled to the ground.
I breathed a short sigh of relief before sucking it right back in. They were everywhere, seemingly coming from all directions. They were bloodied, their faces simultaneously slack and fierce. Their eyes were bright with hunger, and their hands clawed at the air in front of them, desperate to capture a meal. The stench of death and decay permeated the air, and my eyes watered against the ferocity of it.
Guns started firing in every direction then. We closed in on each other, while still somehow moving forward. Nelson moved in the middle, Page clutched against his chest, her screams echoing in the space that wasn’t filled with gunshots or the ravening sounds of Feeders.
Finally we reached an abandoned mechanic’s garage, with the lift gate still in place. Hendrix lunged for the rope that connected at the bottom and would pull up the heavy door.
“Reagan, Haley, help them cover me,” Hendrix shouted while using brute strength to lift the gates.
Zombie after Zombie was felled as our unit shot proficiently. Haley and I had stopped missing our targets a while ago, and I could tell these guys were in the same place. It wasn’t that I was born with this natural talent or even harbored some kind of intuitive skill. This capability, to get a Feeder directly between the eyes in one shot, was born out of necessity to live and lack of easily disposable ammunition. I didn’t have time or resources to waste shots and I really didn’t have any desire to become one of them or die gruesomely at their hands.
All it would take was one bite for my brain to stop processing coherent thoughts and concepts and my mouth to start watering specifically for living flesh. Just one, bloody, skin-breaking bite.
And if I got lucky, then I would just suffer through one of them eating me completely. That wouldn’t be a fast death, or a welcome one.
Those thoughts were what fueled each pull of the trigger, each perfectly aimed shot. Those were the thoughts that kept me relentless, kept me focused.
No matter how many guns we aimed at the crowd, it just seemed to keep growing. They were coming from everywhere. We weren’t stopping them, only holding them off, but I knew this couldn’t last. There were just not enough of us, and way too many of them!
“Hendrix, we have to get out of here now!” Vaughan shouted over his shoulder.
With a powerful grunt of force, I heard the garage door lift open all the way just as a gush of stifled air escape the cage the garage had created and washed over my back.
We kept shooting, even more fervently now that our means of escape was exposed. We were the closest to safety we had been yet, at the same time the most vulnerable to death.
With an almost superhumanly quick glance over my shoulder I saw a gunmetal gray Hummer just waiting to take us to safety.
“For real?” I whooshed out a breath of relief.
“Always have a backup plan, Reagan,” Hendrix breathed over my shoulder. His right arm was aimed high and he was back to shooting the semi-circle of Zombies that had closed in around us. With his free hand, he snaked his arm around my waist and pulled me back against his chest. I was too focused to be surprised or react, but I would definitely be analyzing that move to death if I survived this.
As one we started backing toward the car, until Vaughan called out the order to go.
We all dove for the Hummer, Hendrix never let up his grip on my waist until I was sufficiently shoved into third row back seat. Haley scrambled up after me. Page was tossed in on the other side and then Nelson, King and Harrison crawled into the second row seating. Vaughan and Hendrix were the last to jump in the front seat, with Vaughan driving. He started the vehicle immediately, keys already in the ignition.
All the windows were rolled down, which seemed unsafe to me at first and I expected them to get rolled up before we took off. Instead, every brother but Vaughan, who was driving, aimed their guns out the window and began shooting while Vaughan plowed ahead through the tightening ranks of Feeders.
Haley and I threw our bodies over Page, maneuvering her in between us and then covered our ears as gun shot after gun shot rang out loudly in the night. The poor child quaked with fear, screaming at the top of her lungs, but the sound was drowned out by the heavy gun fire.
The Zombies came without pause, and the guys shot back just as fiercely. The only break in their incessant shooting was when they needed to grab a different gun or quickly and expertly reload the one they were using.
Vaughan’s window was a glaring weak spot, since he couldn’t shoot and drive at the same time and that was where the Zombies seemed to focus. Nelson did his best as he leaned out the window and King climbed up through the sunroof and stood on the seat so he could pick them off from his bird’s eye view.
Vaughan plunged forward, through the crowd that would happily eat us, knocking bodies over right and left without managing to kill them. I glanced through the back window only to watch them rise again, sometimes dragging barely hanging body parts with them- such was their need to feed, the addiction to warm flesh so desperate they could no longer feel their own pain until they felt the kill shot to the brain.
They were swarming us now, rocking the car as Vaughan stomped on the gas, but got nowhere. A clawed, curled finger swiped through Harrison’s window, clawing
at the seat where it missed Harrison, only to have him hit it a second later with a bullet through the eye. Blood splattered all over the outside of the car, and on the inside of the door; smelly, decaying bits of flesh sticking everywhere it landed.
My stomach rolled, but I kept it together. I had to. There was no losing it, not this close to safety.
Finally, fed up with our slow progress, Hendrix let out a loud growl of frustration and swung his body out the passenger window. Holding on to the roof with his inside arm, he aimed his semi-automatic machine gun and let loose on everything in front of us. Zombies en masse were felled by the spray of his gun, eventually clearing a path for Vaughan and the gigantic Hummer.
Vaughan stomped down on the accelerator and we were thrown back against our seats as the car finally made forward progression. Hendrix cursed as the momentum swung him precariously from his window ledge perch and his gun shot off in the air.
Once he regained his balance, he swiftly traded his multiple-fire weapon for a simpler handgun and picked off the stragglers as they held on with scary strong hands. One by one, they were released from our vehicle and this life, and we were left to breathe through the remaining adrenaline and now palpable silence.
This strip of road was clear, and hopefully stayed clear for a while, although I knew that was too much to ask. Eventually there would be debris; eventually the Hummer would run out of gas. But right now, we had transportation and all of our limbs. No one was lost tonight- well no one that could still be considered of-the-living. And Haley and I had held on to our packs.
Vaughan rolled up the windows when everyone, and every gun, was safely tucked back inside and we sat in silence for twenty more minutes before anyone made a sound. Haley and I kept our arms wrapped around a still trembling Page, and each other.
Tonight had been a close freaking call.
We’d had them before, but suddenly with Hendrix, Vaughan and all their siblings, the stakes seemed incredibly higher- there were way more people that could die.
When my heart started to beat a normal rhythm again and the Zombies were miles behind us, I found my strength and spoke up. “You can drop us anywhere, Vaughan. The sun should be up soon and we don’t want to get too far off course.”
“Reagan,” Haley whispered and nodded her head in the direction of the just rising sun- to our left.
“Oh, that’s probably not necessary,” Vaughan coughed out, keeping his eyes firmly on the road in front of us.
“Turns out you sold us on the south, Reagan,” Hendrix explained evenly. He turned in his seat so he could look me in the eye. “Remember what we agreed earlier?”
My heart slammed into my chest, coming to a complete stop before starting up again at an insane pace. He couldn’t possibly mean that he wanted me to stay with him- always. I shook my head to indicate I didn’t remember what he was talking about.
We just met.
There wasn’t anything between us to where he would risk his life for me. He had a family to think about, a little sister who was curled into my side so tightly it was painful- not that I would ever push her way. But for all I knew, I was leading them on a suicide mission. And the reluctant hope that started to flare in my chest when I thought this man- this incredibly loyal, capable man- wanting me was way more emotion than I was ready to deal with.
“You don’t remember?” Hendrix asked with narrowed eyes. “Then we’ll talk about it later. I’ll help you remember.” His voice was smooth sex appeal as it washed over my body and I shivered involuntarily.
My breathing became shallow and I felt the distant pang of butterflies attack my stomach. Hendrix turned back around in his seat, his shoulders back, his posture commanding and dominant even while he sat down.
Haley grabbed my knee and squeezed tightly at the same time she dropped her head to hide a smile. Looking up at me from under her still messy hair, she shot me a mischievous wink. It was overdramatic enough that I finally cracked a smile and let out a whoosh of air.
That was until I glanced back up and caught Vaughan’s angry stare in the review mirror. There was just enough light from the rising sun that I could see his attention was firmly fixed on me, his emotions roiling behind his dark blue eyes.
His expression made me rethink every bit of relief I’d just felt. With a more confident voice than I felt, I argued, “Really, you don’t have to change your entire life plans for us. Haley and I can make it. And you have Page to think about.”
Vaughan and Hendrix both shot forward in their seats, ready to argue with me, but it was Nelson’s calm voice of reason that brought the final decision to a head. “Reagan, we’d already decided to stick with you girls before the Zombie’s attacked tonight. We’re safer with numbers, especially knowing that you ladies can actually use those guns you cradle around. There are not that many decent living beings left on this planet, probably best we stick together when we find each other.”
“And you’re not going to try to convince us to go north?” I asked carefully, ready for the other shoe to drop.
“Not yet,” Hendrix replied. “We didn’t know anybody up there with a firsthand account; we were just reaching at straws. With that phone call you had with your dad’s cousin, you have more than we ever had.”
“Alright,” I breathed out slowly.
“Alright,” Vaughan echoed.
“Alright,” Haley snickered, still amused with Hendrix apparently.
“At least it will be exciting,” Harrison spoke for the first time since I’d met him.
We all let out a charged laugh. The atmosphere in the Hummer relaxed a little, even while all our eyes stayed sharply focused on the horizon and every other direction. The morning sun was rising in the east and we had at least a few more miles of clear road ahead of us. We survived the night, made new friends and our weapon’s store- although admittedly depleted after our Battle Royall- was greatly improved since the night before.
We survived another night.
And with any luck we would survive another one.
Harrison was right, this would be exciting.
Among a whole hell of a lot of other things in this world of decay.
I looked down at Page who had released her tight grip on me and finally fallen asleep. Then over at my best friend in the whole world who had miraculously survived with me this far.
Okay, things would be exciting in this world of love and decay.
Episode Two
Chapter One
653 Days after initial infection
“It’s the hard knock life for us,” King started out slowly, drudgingly- like a funeral march.
Harrison joined in and hit the high notes in a screeching falsetto, “It’s the hard knock life for us!”
“Steada treated,” Nelson continued, “We got tricked.”
“Steada kisses,” now all together in unison, “We got kicked.”
“It’s the hard knock life,” King took it back out on a solo.
“Oh, my god,” Haley grumbled. “I’m in a Zombie musical.”
I snickered from the back seat. “How do you guys even know that song?” I asked, wondering where their knowledge of show tunes could have possibly come from. “What’s next? The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow?”
“Is that a Jay-Z song?” Harrison asked in all honesty.
Haley and I shared a look and then she smacked him on the back of the head. “You’re young, so I will forgive you for that.”
“For what?” he asked in his squeaky, barely-pubescent voice.
“For thinking Jay-Z didn’t rip that song off a classic movie about little Orphan Annie and Sandy, the loyal but filthy dog that stole all of our hearts,” Haley lectured with a stern voice full of conviction.
“I didn’t understand any of that,” King admitted, shaking his head slowly back and forth.
“Neither did I,” Nelson laughed.
Haley spun around in her seat to send him the evil eye but he only grinned in response. He slid forward and jabbed
her in the back with his long legs and she jerked forward. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise before she recovered and did the whole “I’m watching you” two-fingered point back and forth between them.
“Haley?” Page interrupted their adorableness, tugging on her shirt sleeve. “Will you tell me about Jazzy and the orphan dog?”
“Nope,” Haley looked down at Page, who sat in between her and Harrison in the middle seat. Page’s face fell, but she tried to hide it as best she could. Haley smiled at her lovingly and relented, “But I will tell you about the Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy.”
Page bounced in her seat, excited all over again. “And J-“
“No, I will not tell you about Jay-Z, ever. And thanks to the Apocalypse you might never, ever have to hear about that entire genre of music for your entire life.” Haley shook her head. “But you may ask me about any of the following, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Mumford and Sons and Simon and Garfunkel.”
“Simon and Garfunkel?” Vaughan and Nelson spit out in unison.
“I’m eclectic,” Haley shrugged.
Nelson snorted. “You’re a music snob. There’s nothing wrong with Jay-Z. He owned an empire before the infection.”
“Ha!” Haley laughed. “Going by your pre-Apocalypse standards, the same could be said for P. Diddy.”
Nelson opened his mouth to vehemently argue that point but Hendrix beat him to it, “Diddy.”
Haley turned her angered attention on him, “Excuse me?”
“Uh, Diddy. He just goes by Diddy now. Or then. Or…. before.”
“Haley, tell me about Orphan Annie! I want to know about Orphan Annie!” Page’s eyes were big with exasperation and I could easily sympathize with her.
“Alright,” Haley gave in. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who didn’t have any parents.”
