“What the fuck—who the hell are you?” Alan shouted as he pulled out of Carla and rolled off the bed hitting the bedside lamp with his feet as he went.
All he could hear was Carla screaming as he grabbed the baseball bat from the side of the bed—he smashed the bat over the head of the assailant that was attacking her and then turned and smashed the heads of the others that had broken in; once they looked to be dead, he grabbed his clothes and headed out of the room leaving Carla to look after him and she grabbed her own clothes covering her nude body.
“What’s the matter with you—you left me back there to fend for myself!” Carla screamed as she caught up with him outside.
“You’re just baggage—it’s kill or be killed now, you saw those fuckin’ things!” Alan answered shaking his arm free from her grip.
“You’re an asshole—I’m not baggage and I can take care of myself!” Carla answered angrily as she slapped at him.
“I might be an asshole but this asshole is gonna survive this shit—you’re on your own.” Alan answered as he turned and headed toward his pickup truck that was parked nearby.
That was when several more assailants appeared and started after her as Alan sped out of the area—Carla ran from them down the hill but she tripped over a tree root and sailed headlong into a gully tumbling head over heels; once she regained her sense she noticed that the creatures were headed straight for her and she was about to cover her eyes and give up when a gunshot suddenly sounded as a powerful bullet tore through the face of the first assailant, more gunfire followed and the creatures fell to the ground dead after having taken rounds in the head. Carla looked in the direction that the gunfire had come from and seen a man dressed in bib overalls standing there gawking at her—he briefly turned his head to the left to spit a mouthful of tobacco before grinning at her again.
“You’s purty—don’t worry, those things ain’t gonna get back up.” He stated as he began to chew again.
Carla cringed in disgust at the man but she knew that she needed to show some gratitude as he had saved her life, she got to her feet aware at that point that she had barely had time to dress in the aftermath of the attack and her thong underwear was showing—probably what her foul, tobacco-chewing savior was gawking at.
“Name’s Bobby Joe Harris—nice to meetcha.” He stated grinning once she was on her feet.
“Carla…Carla Bloom…what the hell are those things anyway?” She answered after several seconds had passed.
“Thems’ dead and messed up—they’re all over the place, don’t recon that there are too many folks left who haven’t been affected in some way…” Bobby Joe answered turning to glance her way as he led the way toward an old green and white pickup truck that was loaded down with bodies of the same assailants.
“What are you doing with these bodies?” Carla asked as she followed him up to the side of the truck.
“Sum bodies’ got to gather ‘em up and give ‘em proper burial…guess that chore falls on me.” He answered as he placed his rifle on the gunrack on the inside of his rear window.
Carla feeling that he was her best hope of survival, climbed into the passenger side before he sped away down the roadway toward the main part of town; toward the middle of town at that same time, a young woman named Christy Donahue was heading out of her apartment to head to the local library. She got into her red Jeep Cherokee starting the engine—the moment the radio came on she heard a bunch of chatter from the local station regarding the incidents that had engulfed the entire countryside.
“Not this shit again…” She stated to herself as she turned the radio off.
She was what many considered to be a skeptic and she didn’t believe in anything that she had been hearing on the news the past few weeks—let alone these new incidents that seemed to be flooding in over the airwaves; she was just a few blocks from the library when she passed by an ambulance with its lights and sirens blaring and she rolled her eyes as she pulled into the parking lot of the library. She grabbed her keys taking them from the ignition before opening her door, she started walking toward the doors when someone suddenly plowed into her knocking her to the pavement—it took a few seconds for her to regain her wits but when she did she seen that the person who had knocked her down was covered with blood; so much of it that it was spreading all over the ground and sidewalk. She quickly got to her feet and got the first good look at this person seeing that the whole right side of their face had been torn off and they were missing their right eyeball—her attacker lunged at her clacking their teeth together in what she could only guess was an attempt to take a bite out of her; she managed to dodge the creature and get back inside of her vehicle before speeding out of there as fast as she could.
“W-What the hell was that thing…?”
“What the hell just happened back there…?” She kept asking herself as she got closer and closer to her apartment.
She started noticing people running through the streets, yards and wherever they could so more of those same things started appearing all around—she passed by one side street where an elderly lady whom she sometimes helped lived and was horrified to see that one of the creatures had killed her and was eating her corpse right there outside of the woman’s garage door; Christy quickly looked away as she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex and she parked getting out and dashing to the doors heading inside. Each room door she passed she noticed traces of what was happening outside—several areas of the walls were covered with bloody handprints and a good number of the doors she passed had been broken apart as if something or someone had forced their way in; she arrived at her door and fumbled with the keys finally getting it unlocked before she ran inside and locked the door behind her barricading it in the process.
“Those things aren’t going to get me…I’ll just lay low for awhile and when I think it’s safe, I’ll go look for help.” She told herself in a low voice.
She tried to keep as quiet as she could over the next several hours but more and more sounds could be heard not only from outside but from inside of the apartment complex around her—screams of the creatures as well as occasional shouts from other people still alive; at one point during the small hours of the next morning there was what sounded like automatic gunfire from somewhere close. Christy thinking that she was being rescued, jumped up from where she had been sleeping and ran to her front door where she started moving the barricade that she had made the previous day and she started unlocking the door when one of the assailants suddenly hit the outside of the door with so much force that it nearly knocked her over—she regained her footing and fought with the attacker as it now had its right arm through the crack of the door and was trying to use its body weight as leverage to get in at her; she instinctively grabbed a large kitchen knife from the drawer in the kitchen and started stabbing the arm of the creature repeatedly. After over a dozen stabs to its arm, it withdrew back through the crack in the door but it didn’t stop pounding on it from the other side—from the sounds of things outside there were more of them coming and Christy stood there bewildered not knowing what to do.
“I’ve got to get out of here somehow…” She told herself as she ran into her bedroom and climbed up onto it checking the window behind the headboard.
She managed to get the window latch unlocked and raise the window a little but the drop down to the ground was more than fifteen feet and she could see more of the same creatures stalking around outside—that was when the sounds of the door splintering was all she heard and seconds later at least three of the creatures plowed into her and began ripping her flesh from the back of her shoulder and neck with their teeth, her screaming the whole time as blood sprayed all over the room. The young 17-year old high school student named April Dempsey ran for her life down the back alleyways through town—her whole world had been turned upside down the previous day when she had narrowly escaped from her two roommates,
who had transformed into some kind of flesh-eating monsters; she came upon the rear entrance to a local pawn shop and she checked the doorknob to see if it would open, it was however locked. She then used the pickaxe that she had picked up earlier before and pried the door open slipping inside and hunkering down as more of the same creatures could be see stalking through the street in front of the shop—realizing that she had left the back door open, she quickly closed it and blocked it off before getting an idea on where everything was around the shop; she soon after found the gun case where handguns and revolvers as well as ammunition for all sorts of other weapons was kept and she looked around wondering how she was going to get inside of the glass display case without having to break that glass and alert those things outside of her presence. She looked around behind the register and soon found the keys to open the case and she quickly done so choosing a .45 revolver that looked like it would be easy enough for her to use—she then grabbed all the bullets that she could find stuffing them into the pocket of her jacket.
“I need to get to someplace public…surely there’s got to be other people still alive and fighting those things…city hall ought to be a good place to start looking.” April told herself as she quickly and quietly went to the back door and pushed the things that she had blocked it off with aside.
The moment she stepped out into the street she heard a scream as one of the creatures that had been a middle aged woman before turning spotted her and came at her in a sprint—April raised her revolver and fired blowing a hole through the middle of the creatures’ upper torso; the force of the bullet knocked the creature back but then it started for her again and April pointed her gun at the thing again and once again fired hitting it in the head. The creature fell back to the pavement and ceased to move and April didn’t wait around to see if anymore of them would show up, she ran through the streets in the direction of city hall arriving there some time later to find a few more survivors—the first being a young college girl who introduced herself as Melanie Roberts; the second was a middle-aged man named Eddie Sykes who had been a minister down at the local church, a few others were there as well including Carla Bloom and Bobby Joe Harris.
“You’s a survivor too ‘eh?” Bobby Joe asked as she noticed April and the revolver that she had tucked into the front of her blue jeans.
“What the hell is going on in this town?” April asked in a bewildered tone once she was able to catch her breath.
“We don’t know what caused all this mess—from what the news was saying before everything went black, this shit has been going on for weeks now around a few different parts of the country…” Melanie answered as she worked to try and console April knowing all too well what she was feeling.
“Is it some sort of a biohazard?” Carla asked stepping toward them.
“Hell if I know…all I know is that when I came home on the 21st my family seemed fine, then the next morning they had all become those things and they tried to kill me.” Melanie answered with a dark look.
“I hate to break it to ya, but we need to get this place barricaded up—a blind cow could get in ‘ere as it is now.” Bobby Joe interrupted suddenly.
Everyone nodded and started looking for supplies to use to board up the doors and windows and several minutes later one of the nearby outer exit doors flew open and a surge of the creatures sprinted into the room—Bobby Joe fought against the first one but was knocked backward into a radiator that was against the wall; the impact of his body unknowingly knocked the gas line loose. Melanie and April were fighting against several of the creatures with pieces of wood and Eddie was trying to help Bobby Joe—Carla had ran into the nearby restroom and locked herself in; Melanie cried out in pain as one of the creatures bit into her right forearm and she fought it off smashing its head with the piece of wood that she had been using. The bleeding was bad and she tore off a piece of her windbreaker and wrapped it around her arm—that was when she glanced over at Bobby Joe as he aimed his rifle at one of the creatures and fired; seconds later the spark from his bullet ignited the gas line and the whole building went up in a massive explosion killing everyone inside…
[HGB] Humanity Gone Bad: The Dead Chronicles Page 106
