The sky remained dark as the miles slowly ticked off on the odometer. The going was slow. The road partially and sometimes completely blocked by wrecked vehicles or debris. Here and there a zombie could be seen wandering around in the fields or beside the road.
“John look,” Amy said pointing to a house off in the distance.
The house was close to the road on the right side. On the porch a lone figure sat in a rocking chair slowly rocking back and forth. They were to far away to tell exactly what the person was. John slowed as the truck came closer.
It was an older house, asbestos siding, sitting precariously close to the road. It obviously had been there since the road was a single lane dirt road decades ago. The truck stopped beside the mailbox. They could now see that the lone figure was a gomer. A man of eighty maybe although it was hard to tell in the condition he was in. There were patches of hair missing from the side of his head and the scalp seemed to be peeling away from the skull just above the right ear.
A spittoon sat on the buckled clapboard flooring of the porch beside the chair. Beside the steps lay a medium sized dog. A mutt of some kind. It didn’t bother to get up or bark as the truck neared. John watched the dog for a second as its eyes followed them. It appeared to be healthy. Beside it sat a half full food bowl and water.
Amy rolled the window down and readied the shotgun. The gomer stopped rocking and stared at them. A shiver went up Amy’s spine. Without making a sound the old man leaned over the spittoon, opened his mouth and tried to spit. His thick swollen tongue getting in the way. A long stream of thick red spittle or blood streamed from his lips and hit the floor beside the spittoon. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, leaned back and began to slowly rock back and forth again.
Neither John nor Amy spoke. Both fixated by the scene before them. The screen door suddenly opened with a squeak and an older lady emerged from the house and stepped out onto the porch. Her hair, although dirty, was neatly brushed. She wore an apron around her waist. It was white with a large red crawfish and “Don’t Make Me Go Cajun On Yo Ass!” printed on the front. The dog sat up when she came out. She reached down and patted the dog on the head. A little to hard. The dog winced and ducked.
After staring them down for a minute she stepped forward and started down the steps off the porch.
“John lets go,” Amy said rolling the window up.
“It’s ok just sit still,” John said.
“What do you mean sit still?”
“Shh, just watch,” John said.
The old lady’s gomer shuffled out to the road and stopped beside the mailbox. The mailboxes red flag was up indicating there was mail to be picked up. She lowered the flag and opened the mailbox pulling out two envelopes.
“What the hell is she doing?” Amy said.
Fascinated, they watched as she closed the mailbox and with the two pieces of mail in her hand, walked over to the passenger’s side of the truck, tapped on the window with swollen bloody knuckles and grunted. Startled, Amy raised the shotgun.
“Just relax,” John said, “roll the window down a bit. Just a couple of inches.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Just do it, you’ll see.”
Slowly Amy reached for the handle and rolled the window down two inches. The lady raised her wrinkled and bloodied hand and stuck the envelopes through the cracked window.
“What do I do?” Amy asked.
“Take it,” John said as he took some papers from the dash and folded them to letter size.
Amy took the envelopes careful not to touch the area with a red smudge.
“Here,” John said grinning, “hand her these. She thinks we’re the mailman.”
Amy let out a nervous laugh as she took the folded papers from John and fed them through the gap in the window. The gomer took the paper, stuffed them into the pocket of her apron and leaned down close to the glass to look in. A stream of thick saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth. One eye was swollen almost shut and bruised badly. The other wide, unblinking and hazed over like a dead fish. Amy reacted by withdrawing almost into John’s lap. The old lady made a sound as if clearing her throat, waved her hand as if to shoo them away then turned and walked back to the porch. She climbed the steps and sat down on the porch swing near the man. Both turned their gaze back to the truck. The dog sat beside the swing and watched.
“That’s just freaking creepy John,” Amy said. “I am… completely freaked out now. It’s like the couple from American Gothic only with zombies. How did you know what she wanted?”
“I didn’t, but after my experience with the other gomers I didn’t think we had anything to worry about.”
“Well, you were right this time, but what about next time. I think we should leave these gomers alone. Keep moving you know?”
“You’re right. I was just curious. It’s just so strange. The gomers, the demons...”
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Amy said, “trying to figure out what’s going on. I don’t know. There’s got to be more to it than meets the eye you know.”
John put the truck in gear and pulled away from the house. The gomers watched them leave.
Thirty minutes later the rain continued to fall as the truck came into the city of Laurens. A small town peppered with older homes, some dating back to the Victorian age. The kind of town you want to raise your children in. John had never been there. Had no reason to. His only familiarity coming from studying the map to plan their journey. The town had been primarily a textile town until all the Mills closed.
John slowed as the truck came to a blocked section of road at the edge of town. Amy slept soundly in the seat beside him. Cars were parked across the two-lane road blocking it. They looked like they had been put there on purpose. Cars were lined up neatly across the lanes. John had an uneasy feeling about this as he stopped fifty yards away.
The truck sat idling in the middle of the road. The windshield wipers flopped back and forth as the rain slowed to a drizzle. John switched the wipers to intermittent and nudged Amy to waken her.
“What is it?” Amy said rubbing her eyes.
“I’m not sure,” John said, “get the shotgun ready. This doesn’t look good.”
Amy sat up and looked at the blocked road ahead. She checked the shotgun, rolled the window down and rested the shotgun’s barrel across the door.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” John answered staring intently forward.
Amy noticed movement on the other side of the cars in the street. She raised the binoculars and saw that there were walking corpses everywhere she looked.
“I think you better take a look at this.”
“What is it?”
“Just look, you’re not going to believe it.”
“John lifted the binoculars to his eyes and had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was. There were zombies everywhere he looked. But not just zombies. Gomers. All of them.
“Unbelievable,” he said.
“How do you think that happened?” she asked.
“Got me. Strange. Very strange,” he answered. "It's funny how they walk differently from the regular zombies."
"I know,” Amy said laughing. “They raise their feet then slap them back down... it's like they're wearing clown shoes or something.”
Gomers were walking on the sidewalks, sitting on porches and one was even trying to walk a dog. Another appeared to be trying to do yard work and yet another attempted to push a lawn mower. There was even a mailman on foot with a mailbag slung over his shoulder. He was wandering around in the street as if lost.
“What are we going to do?” Amy asked becoming serious again.
“We need to get through.”
“Ok, so… what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Any ideas?”
“How far to the other side of town?”
“Five miles maybe. Then another fifteen to the interstate. We�
�ll lose a lot of time if we try to backtrack and go around.”
They turned and looked at each other for a moment, neither wanting to make the wrong suggestion.
A piercing scream interrupted the moment. As they looked up, a demon jumped up on the hood of one of the cars blocking the road and raised its arms in the air.
“Oh shit,” Amy said.
No sooner had the words left her mouth than a burst of automatic gunfire ripped the air over the cab of the pickup truck. The demon’s head exploded as it flipped over backwards and tumbled to the pavement. The gomers nearby looked up then went back to whatever it was they weren’t doing.
“Where the hell did that come from?” John said.
“Uh oh,” Amy said looking out the back window, “look behind us.”
John turned to look. A large F-250 four-wheel drive pick up truck was inching down the road behind them. A bank of four spotlights mounted on rolls bars in the bed of the truck were bright and blinding even in the daylight. John looked around frantically for an escape route but there was none. The only way out was the way they had come. The truck pulled up behind them and stopped. The diesel engine causing the smaller pickup to vibrate. Two men jumped out of the back and cautiously approached them. The rain stopped again.
Both men carried assault rifles. They were attired in hunting clothes complete with safety orange hats. Each wore a hospital mask over his face. One was a rather big guy of at least three hundred pounds, six foot four maybe. The other was tall and thin.
Amy,” John said quietly, “we’re out gunned. Put the shotgun on the floorboard and don’t make any sudden moves.
“But we…”
“Amy!”
Amy put the gun down and shot John a searing glance.
“I’m not going down without a fight John.”
“Me either, but this isn’t the time. You make the wrong move and we’re dead. You see the weapons those guys have? Well, they can put thirty rounds each into us before we can even get out of the truck.”
Amy’s eyes grew wider. “Ok,” she said, “you do the talking.”
“Just watch me and do what I do.”
John rolled the window down and put both empty hands out. Amy followed suit.
The men walked up to the back of the truck and stopped.
“Hey, get out of the truck and lay down on the ground,” the big man said.
John and Amy climbed out of the truck with their hands up.
“We said lay down on the ground,” the other man barked.
“The roads wet,” Amy shot back, “we’ll get soaked.”
“It’s ok,” the big man said still pointing the rifle at them, “just put your hands behind your head and don’t make any sudden moves.”
“What are you doing here?” the thin man asked.
“We’re trying to get home. That’s all,” John answered.
“It’s not safe out here and I’m not just talking about them… zombies,” he said with a heavy emphasis on the word zombies.
The thin man laughed through his mask as he slung his rifle over his shoulder evidently no longer feeling threatened.
“What’s so funny about that?” the big man demanded obviously irritated with his companion.
“It’s just funny that’s all. Every time you say zombies, you pause then go…zombies,” the skinny man lowered his voice and made quotation signs with his hands for effect, “it’s just funny.”
“You’ll have to excuse my brother here. He thinks a bad case of hemorrhoids is funny.”
“No, it’s only funny if you have them.”
“Just shut up will you?”
John and Amy exchanged glances feeling a little more at ease after the two men’s exchange. They seemed harmless and just as scared as they were. The rain stopped altogether.
“You can put your hands down now,” the big man said, “sorry but you can’t be too careful these days. That’s the second one of those things we’ve seen today. Hope it’s the last. You guys married?”
John looked at Amy and grinned. “No, no we’re not. We just met this morning. I’m John and this is Amy. I’m trying to get back to Charleston. My wife is there and I’m trying to get Amy back to Columbia.”
“Who are you?” Amy asked.
“I’m Dean,” the big man said. “And this is my brother Jim. That’s my wife driving the truck. Her names Beth and Jim’s wife Tracy is back at the shelter with the kids.”
The truck door opened and Dean’s wife stepped out and walked over to the little group.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Beth.”
“This is Amy and John,” Dean said pointing to the two.
They nodded greetings.
“How many kids you guys have?” Amy asked looking at Beth.
“Three. Two belong to Dean and I and the other one is Jim’s. They’re boys eight and twelve and a girl six. Mine are boys, the girl is Jim and Laura’s.”
“Wow,” Amy said, “seven people and none of you were effected by the outbreak.”
“Nope,” Jim said, “don’t know if it had anything to do with it but we were in the fallout shelter.”
“Fall out shelter?” John said.
“Right,” Dean said, “a fall out shelter. You know, H-Bombs, duck and cover, the ruskies.”
Jim laughed again. “Our Grandfather built the thing back in the fifties. It’s in my back yard now. I moved into the house when he died back in the late eighties. Why he thought they would target this town I’ll never know but that was the thing back then. Cold war paranoia.”
Dean reached up and pulled the mask down exposing a neatly trimmed beard.
“The night it started,” Dean said, “I came home from the second shift around twelve thirty. I sit up late watching movies. Drink a beer. Read or whatever. It’s hard to come home from work and go straight to bed. At least it is for me anyway. Sometimes…”
“You going to tell this story or you want me too?” Jim interrupted.
“My little brother was a pain in the ass when we were kids and he’s still a pain in the ass.”
“Dean, just tell the story for God’s sake,” Jim said.
“Don’t pay them any attention,” Beth interjected, “they’ve been like this all their life.”
Dean cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said scowling at both Beth and Jim, “I fell asleep in my recliner and woke up about four thirty and got up to get in the bed. Right before I was about to turn off the TV, the news channel broke in with breaking news. They said that people were starting to get sick and die all over the world. They didn’t say anything about no zombies,” he shot Jim a glance, “but they did say it was spreading everywhere. So I got up, woke Beth and told her to get the kids up and dressed that we had to go to the fallout shelter. She thought I was crazy but I explained what I saw on the news. Better safe than sorry. Jim here lives right next door so I ran over to his house and woke them up and got everybody down to the shelter by 5:00 a.m. We shut ourselves in and waited. We listened to the radio until about eight. Then the station went dead. But not before we learned about the zombies and how they were coming back to life and killing people.”
“We didn’t come outside at all yesterday. We had food and water so we waited until this morning,” Jim said.
“I went out first,” Dean said, “and checked out everything around the house. Everything was clear.”
“We were in such a hurry we forgot to take our guns down in the shelter with us,” Jim said. “All we had was a pistol that I keep down there.”
“Yep, so the first thing I did was take more weapons down to them. One thing’s for sure. You’re not going to survive in this new world of ours without guns and ammo.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” John commented.
“As far as we knew,” Beth added, “we were the only survivors. We haven’t seen any others until you came along.”
“On the other side of those cars there,” Dean said nodding toward the barricade, “zombies. A
nd don’t you do it,” he said pointing at Jim.
“Who put up the barricade?” Amy asked.
“We don’t know. It was there when we came out,” Dean said. “Nothing but zombies on the other side. Different kind from that one I shot while ago. Damnest thing. That screaming fellow was the second one of them we’ve seen today.”
“We call that kind demons,” Amy said.
“Why demons,” Beth asked.
“They’re just evil. Like demons.”
“Well, that’s a pretty good description,” Jim said.
“The rest of them are, I don’t know what to make of it. They try to do things like they were still alive,” Dean said.
“Gomers,” Amy said.
“Whaters?” Jim said.
“Gomers,” John said laughing, “you know like Gomer Pyle, not too bright?”
“Oh,” Jim responded.
“And then there are the regular type of Zombies,” Amy said.
“What do you mean regular type of zombies?” Beth asked.
“You know, the kind that are slow and dumb but they still attack you and try to kill you. They’re not smart like the demons and not passive like the gomers. And they walk differently. They drag their feet. Gomers lift them.”
“Don't think we've seen any of those yet. Just those two demons and the gomers as you call them,” Dean said.
“We went a little ways into town earlier today and all we saw were them gomers. None of ‘em tried to attack us.”
“We went to a drug store,” Jim said, “my little girl got up sick this morning and we needed to pick up some medicine.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” Amy said, “is she ok?”
“Yeah I think so. She’s got a fever, sore throat and an earache. We got some antibiotics,” he said, “hopefully that’ll take care of it. And it looks like one of the boys is coming down with it too. You know how kids pass colds around.”
“One of those gomers was behind the counter at the store,” Dean said, “when we tried to leave it blocked the door so we shot it.”
The Demon Dead Page 6
