Eaters: Resurrection

by Michelle DePaepe

  “A brunette…interesting.”

  “Yeah. It’s different. That’s the point. Hey…we really should get on the—”

  Zach and Diego came running toward them.

  “Shhh…” Zach said, with a finger to his lips. “There’s a group of Eaters on the sidewalk out there. They might have seen us.”

  Taking whatever implement they’d decided to hang onto as a weapon—scissors, a heavy hair dryer, or a broken chair leg, they all ran to the back of the shop and crouched in the storage room again.

  “How many?” Aidan asked.

  “Seven. Maybe eight,” Zach replied.

  “They could draw attention to us if they hang out there too long.”

  “I hate to mention it,” Diego said. “But, there’s a pretty big crack in that window. It wouldn’t take much for the glass to break if a couple or more leaned on it.”

  Cheryl knew that wasn’t the only place the glass was compromised. One of the window panes was broken in the lower right corner, possibly where someone had once chinked out a piece to stick the barrel of a gun.

  She felt a sick feeling of déjà vu. Being trapped in a shop in a strip mall reminded her of a situation she’d been in at the start of the epidemic. That place had been a sandwich shop, and when the front windows had been compromised, she and the other survivors had escaped through the back door. It had been a perilous scene, running like the wind with a horde of Eaters on their tail, but they’d eventually made it to safety. This situation was different. If they had to bail out the back door, they not only had to worry about man-eating ghouls coming after them, they had to worry about men with guns, maybe even the whole damn town firing at them.

  The sound of the guys whispering around her broke her out of her reminiscence. She tuned back in just as they were hatching a plan to get some wheels to help them get out of Quimera.

  “…connect the ignition wire to the battery wire.” Aidan paused for a second as if trying very hard to remember something he’d done a very long time ago. “Then you strip the starter wire and—”

  “You got to know what you’re doing,” Vinnie interrupted. “I nearly electrocuted myself once.”

  “A car?” Cheryl asked. “That’s a great idea…but what about gas?”

  “The tanks can’t all be empty,” Aidan said. “There are still some people in this town, and they sure aren’t driving around the streets. We just look long enough…we’ll find something.”

  It still didn’t sit well with her. “I don’t like the idea of wandering around town. I don’t want to hedge my bets that we’ll get away again if we’re spotted. The Sheriff may have put a bounty on us by word of mouth, so there may be lots of eyes on the lookout for us.”

  Zach peered out from the storage room, looking towards the storefront window and quickly snapped his head back . “There are some dead eyes looking at us now.”

  “How many?” Diego asked.

  “Just one,” he said. “But... he’s real creepy. He’s just standing there with his mouth hung open and his hands on the window, looking in like a kid at a candy counter.”

  “He can’t see us,” Aidan said.

  “Probably not,” Cheryl agreed. “But, he may be able to smell us.”

  They sat tight for a few minutes and held their collective breaths as if keeping the air inside their lungs would keep their scent inside.

  Eventually, Cheryl couldn’t take just sitting there any longer. Wanting to assess the risk herself, she dared a peek. She tilted her head just enough to see the front of the beauty parlor and the tall, thin form standing in front of window. He stood there, motionless, with his long, narrow face and hands pressed against the glass. His eyes were so whitish and filmy—it didn’t seem possible that he could actually see anything with them anymore and yet…he seemed to sense that there was something of interest inside the shop. After watching him for a few seconds, she realized what it was. There was a sign dangling from the ceiling just inside the door. It said, AT HAIR PALACE, WE TREAT YOU LIKE ROYALTY. EVERY FIFTH CUT IS FREE! On top of the rectangular sign was the shape of a metallic gold crown. A breeze filtered through the hole in the window and caused the sign to wave back and forth. The afternoon sun was at just the right angle now to cause a reflection from the crown to bounce around the window. “He’s looking at the sign.”

  “Whew.” Vinnie said, closing his eyes for a moment. “I’m sure glad he’s not looking for lunch.”

  “Oh…he’s looking for lunch,” Cheryl said. “They never stop doing that. We’d better stay back here and keep quiet until he leaves.”

  The ghoul was mesmerized by the sign for another twenty minutes before he lumbered off, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass.

  After seeing the souvenir on the window, Vinnie got nervous again. “We need to go soon. I don’t like it in here anymore.”

  “It wouldn’t be smart to leave before dark,” Aidan told him.

  “I guess you’re right, but if we’re hanging here much longer, maybe we should wash off that handprint. It looks like the place is marked.”

  None of them volunteered for the job. They decided to stay huddled inside the shop instead of risking being seen by someone alive or dead outside.

  They busied themselves over the next several hours by creating survival bags with things they found around the beauty parlor, packing up the obvious useful things like scissors, antiseptic, and toilet paper, as well as power chords to use as rope, big plastic aprons that could be used tied together to make a tent or used as a tarp to shield them from rain, and sections of wood from the front counter that had long embedded nails and could be used as weapons. They also took the couple hundred dollars from the cash register, even though they figured the paper was basically worthless.

  When the sun started to sink in the sky and long shadows filled the shop, they shared a couple of petrified candy bars they’d found and mentally prepared themselves for the challenge they were about to take.

  Cheryl decided to warn them about something she’d been worrying about. “When we leave here, there’s something we ought to keep in mind. If we kill an Eater here, and it’s somebody’s friend or relative, it may bring a whole mob down on us.”

  “I know you’re right,” Aidan told her. “It just seems so stupid, though. When they’ve turned, they’re dead. They aren’t who they were before. They don’t feel a damn thing anymore.”

  “We know that, but apparently there are still some people out there that can’t understand their loved one is truly gone when they still see them stumbling around town. Let’s just keep it in mind when we’re out there, all right?”

  “Well…” Vinnie said. “I for one am not going to risk my life to spare someone’s feelings if their girlfriend wants to take a bite out of me.”

  That-a-boy. Cheryl’s lips curved into a slight smile. She liked seeing that spark of fire within him, and knew he was going to need every bit of it once they walked out that door.

  Chapter 12

  After the sun dipped below the western horizon, and the beauty salon had become an unnavigable maze of gray and black shapes, they grabbed whatever implements they were using as weapons, slung their packs over their shoulders, and headed out on foot to look for wheels. With no power in the town, the streets were black, and they only had the dim light from the sliver of a moon and pinpricks of stars to keep them from tripping over their feet. They wandered down several blocks, searching for the ideal vehicle—an older model that would be easy to hot wire, had gas in it, and was hopefully something fast enough to outrun anyone who pursued them.

  There were plenty of cars in Quimera. They were parked in driveways, abandoned in parking lots, and crashed in the streets. Having sat for many months, they were all caked with dust, and they found it difficult to see inside to look at the gas gauge until they found a flashlight on the backseat of a minivan. After walking almost a dozen blocks, and encountering no one—dead or alive—they found several vehicles with enough gas in their tan
ks to be potential transportation, but they were vetoed by Aidan and Vinnie because they were either too difficult to hot wire, had a flat tire, or weren’t fast enough.

  Strangely, they didn’t find any corpses inside the cars.

  “The town’s been cleaned up,” Cheryl said as they headed into a residential area. “They must’ve buried or burned all the bodies.”

  “You hear that?” Aidan said, stopping.

  They stood on a sidewalk and listened to the faint sound of music coming from one of the houses just up the street.

  Diego wrinkled his nose. “Smells like garlic too…and…”

  “Something disgusting,” Zach finished.

  “I don’t want to go that way and be asked in for dinner,” Vinnie said. “Let’s turn here.”

  They rounded a corner lot, skirting the split rail fence and thick branches of a pine tree. Aidan, still in the lead, suddenly stopped in front of them, almost causing a pile up.

  “What is it?” Cheryl asked.

  “There she is!” He said, breaking into a run.

  She turned out to be a bright yellow Mustang GT that had crashed nose first into a fire hydrant. The white stripes on the hood had brownish streaks of blood bisecting them and the windshield was cracked in a zig zag lightning shape.

  “Not exactly subtle,” Cheryl said, thinking the car looked like a big yellow neon sign on wheels.

  “No car on the road is subtle anymore. Fast with gas. That’s all we need.” He set down his pack and leaned inside the open driver’s side window. “Doesn’t look like any major damage. Just a dented grille. I’m going to check the radiator.”

  After popping the hood, he and Vinnie inspected the engine.

  “Radiator’s got a dent,” Vinnie said. “Open it up. Let’s see if it’s got fluid.”

  After deciding that it looked okay, Aidan closed the hood as quietly as he could. “Oh yeah…this’ll do just fine. It’s got aV-8 too.”

  “Yeah…but can you start it?” Cheryl asked.

  “I’d bet my life on it.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “They keys are still in it.”

  “Smartass…” She said under her breath.

  After Diego called shotgun, they tossed their packs in the trunk, and the five of them piled into the car: Aidan at the wheel, and the rest of them squeezed into the back seat. Cheryl’s worries began anew. Would the roads be clear? Would they get a mile out of town then have to abandon the car, because there was a multi-car wreck blocking their path? The plan was to scream out of Quimera as fast as they could and head towards Albuquerque. If they didn’t run across a friendly group of survivors along the way, they were going to try to find a remote area with a home or a cabin that they could fortify and use as their new home. Then, they’d go into the city and look for supplies and a truck they could use to haul them.

  Aidan tried to start the engine. It whined instead of turning over.

  “Shit!” he said, banging on the steering wheel.

  Diego raised a hand up, trying to calm him. “It’s been sitting for months, amigo. Battery’s low on juice. Try it again.”

  Whir-whir-whir.

  He gave it a rest and was about to try a third time when the car when the shadows outside the car grew darker.

  “Oh no…” Vinnie said from the back seat.

  They were surrounded by figures on all sides. Instinctively thinking, Eaters, Cheryl reached for the nail-studded board near her feet, and the others also grabbed their weapons. There was a loud thump on the hood, not from a dead, gnarled hand, but from an aluminum baseball bat.

  “Get out of the fucking car!”

  There were seven or eight of them, all bearing baseball bats, crowbars, or iron pipes who must have come from one of the houses nearby. The man issued the command again, but they all sat still with no intention of complying.

  “Try again! Try again!” Diego yelled, trying to shake Aidan out of his shock.

  He turned the key again and gave it some gas. This time, the engine gave a little chug then died.

  The gang shouted and pounded on the car creating a deafening noise.

  From his middle seat, Vinnie leaned towards Aidan. “Try again…but don’t flood it!”

  He gave it another try as the back window shattered.

  Cheryl screamed.

  Covered in glass, she leaned forward trying to get away from the hands reaching in, trying to grab her hair. A second later, from her crouched position, she realized they were moving backwards. At first she thought the men were pushing the car, making it roll. Then, she heard the growl of the motor and saw their attackers banging on the hood and screaming curses at them.

  Aidan hit the gas and wrenched the wheel around to the left to escape the mob coming after them. There was a sickening thump, and she was sure they’d run over at least a foot if not an entire body. Then, he floored the pedal and they sped down the street. Along the block, they slammed into a metal trash can in the middle of the road and thumped over something else that could have been an animal or a body.

  They kept going, turning the corner onto the next street…and the next. The sound of the car brought people out of some of the houses as they passed. Some bore guns and others just ran out, gawking as they seemed to wonder what the commotion was. Aidan didn’t bother stopping to see if any of them were friendly, and Cheryl was glad he didn’t. After being ignored by visiting townspeople in the jail, it didn’t seem likely that any of them would help out what seemed to be a group of convicts racing through the town.

  There was a sound of police sirens somewhere in the distance behind them. Had word gotten back to the Sheriff that they’d been spotted? Cheryl really wished they still had the motorcycles. They’d have a lot more maneuverability to get away if they were being chased down clogged streets.

  “Take that exit to Highway 40,” Diego said, pointing at a sign ahead.

  Aidan didn’t reply. He drove past the exit, and the car began to swerve a little to the right and drifted toward the median. As the front left tire scraped against the curb, Aidan’s head listed to one side then snapped upright.

  Diego grabbed the wheel. “What are you doing?!”

  It was only then that Cheryl noticed that the driver’s side window had been shattered. She saw a trickle of blood snaking down the back of Aidan’s neck behind his left ear as he smacked Diego’s hand away.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Aidan yelled at him.”

  “Me? You’re the one that’s bleeding.”

  “I’m fine. I just missed the turn. I’ll go back.”

  “Don’t go back!” Diego yelled after a glance in the side mirror. “We’re being followed.”

  Cheryl, Vinnie, and Zach whipped their heads around, looking through the open window behind them. Sure enough, there were strobing red and blue lights approaching fast.

  Aidan sped up. He was doing better now, keeping the car between the lines on the road as they headed into an industrial area of warehouses and storage sheds. A skeletal figure with hunched shoulders and a drooped head meandered across the road in front of them. He swerved to avoid it, but he hit the creature’s back side, causing it to thump over the hood and bounce back down to the road.

  “You should pull over and let me drive,” Diego growled.

  “I’m fine. There’s no time to stop, anyway. This service road ahead should lead us back to the highway.” He pointed towards a two-lane strip ahead and took a right turn onto it, going so fast that the wheels screeched as he took the curve.

  They were almost a quarter mile down the road when they saw a police car and a pickup truck approaching behind them. Cheryl looked back, expecting to see their pursuers closing the distance. She was surprised to see the police car slow down and pull over to the ditch. The truck sped past it as a man stuck his head out the passenger window, yelled something, and fired a shot into the air with his rifle.

  “Woo!” Vinnie whooped. “They’re not following us. S
ons-a-bitches…they gave up!”

  Cheryl didn’t join his celebration. “Why?” she asked. “Why are they giving up?” Were they in another sheriff’s jurisdiction now? Were they headed into a dangerous zone controlled by gangs? An area overrun with Eaters? She shared her fears with the men, but they all seemed more elated than worried.

  Zach chided her. “Come on…we just made it out of Quimera, honey. Relax a little, will ya? Maybe, we finally got a lucky break for once.”

  The car started drifting towards the center line, but Aidan straightened it out just before Diego grabbed the wheel again.

  “Aidan’s not looking so lucky,” Cheryl said. “You should pull over so we can have a look at your head, and maybe let Zach or Diego drive for a little while.”

  He eased off the gas and glanced back at her. His green eye looked hazy like it might nod out at any moment. “I’m all right. Really. I’m going to keep driving a couple more miles to make sure they’re not following us.

  Aidan kept going, not as fast as he was before when they were being tailed, but a little too fast for someone who was clearly having trouble concentrating. Every few seconds, he started to drift to one side or the other and had to correct himself quickly to keep the car on the road. He also nearly missed slamming into an overturned SUV that bisected the road, even after they all warned him it was there.

  They were all white knuckled and fearing for their lives by the time he pulled over underneath an overpass. As the Mustang’s nose tapped into a concrete beam, finally stopping, Aidan collapsed onto the steering wheel.

  Chapter 13

  After glancing around to make sure no one was coming up the road and no one was hiding in the tall weeds nearby, they all jumped out of the car.

  Vinnie rushed to the driver’s door first and opened it, causing a shower of glass from the broken window to fall to the ground. He leaned down and shook Aidan’s shoulder. “Hey man…hey man…you all right?”

  Aidan popped up and gave him a hard shove. “Get the fuck off me!”