by Doug Ward
The day hadn't been too fruitful. We had headed out west from the cabin toward Conneaut, Ohio, but had a little bit of a problem near a place called Lake City. Five or six deer leapt to the road in front of us. Amber screamed and I almost put us into a drainage ditch. When we got out to investigate, three rabbits, an adult, and two young ones, followed the deer toward the other side of the pavement.
"I don't like this," called Frank, still seated in the back seat. "We should get out of here."
"Amber," I said as I watched a groundhog hurry across the road. "I think Frank's right!"
That's when the first zombie emerged from the undergrowth. He was a big one, easily three hundred pounds and about six and a half feet tall. His plaid, flannel shirt and jeans were stained black with gore and other unknown substances.
Two more averaged-sized creatures followed in his wake; one missing an arm from the elbow down, the other just plain hideous.
"Shoot 'em!" Amber yelled, her shotgun barking twice before I could bring my gun to bear.
She caught the big one on the shoulder, the powerful blast taking a good-sized hunk of flesh, but the zombie didn't even slow down. The other shot missed completely.
Hastily aiming my 9mm, I fired a wild first shot, merely grazing the huge monster on his right cheek. Before I could fire again, he was on me. I stood, trying to push the behemoth away as I heard more shots ring out from my girlfriend’s position and also from the Humvee.
The giant was slow but strong, and relentless as he tried to sink his teeth into my flesh. Blood flew wildly from his wounds as he fought for a bite. It spattered my clothes and face as we wrestled for position.
His clothes crunched as I gripped them, the dried gore giving way under the pressure of my hands. I was losing ground quickly as my heels hit the edge of the road’s berm. The gravelly surface caused me to slide, pitching me backward as the behemoth fell with me.
A loud boom sounded to my right and all went black, my ears ringing from the close proximity of the loud explosion. In a panic, I squirmed under the pressure of my assailant’s large bulk, waiting to feel his teeth find their mark. Then, I realized he was all dead weight.
It seemed like an eternity before my friends pulled the still corpse from on top of me. My clothes were soaked with his dark, foul blood. A salty taste filled my mouth and I spit a huge gob on the road. As I followed it to the ground, I dropped to my knees, putting my face inches from the phlegm. There was no mistaking it. My spit was red with the creature’s blood.
Amber, unnoticed by me, had also come down and was examining it closely. She roughly jerked my face around, pulling my lips away from my face in search of a wound. There was nothing. The zombie’s blood that had sprayed on my face was what had been in my mouth.
I tore out of her grasp and crawled into the weeds, heaving uncontrollably. I emptied my gut, hacking out long strands of stomach lining. My eyes watered fiercely with the effort.
As I regained my composure, I could hear Amber crying loudly behind me. I felt like a man on death row. I returned to my girlfriend, the first one I've ever had, and took her in my arms. She was still sobbing as I gripped her tightly, never wanting to let her go.
"Guys," came a shaky voice from our transportation. "I really think we should get going. There may be more."
Even as Frank said those words, the emaciated form of a woman shuffled into view. Her worn pantsuit clung to her scrawny form, plastered with grime and bodily fluids.
I stood quickly, dragging Amber to her feet with me. As one, we ran, never breaking our embrace. At the front of the Humvee, we separated, hands touching until the last second, breaking only to enter on our own sides.
I moved mechanically, turning the ignition and starting us down the road. Three more zombies joined the woman, and I rammed right through all three. The woman, who I had missed, followed behind us, arms outstretched as if to try to grab our fleeing vehicle.
We drove on in silence. I maneuvered the Humvee woodenly, following the road instinctively as my mind pondered what was going to happen to me. I felt fine. Well, as fine as a man who just wrestled an undead giant and vomited the entire contents of his body could feel.
We passed very few houses. They all looked abandoned, grass growing wildly and going to seed. I wondered how many of them held hidden survivors, people barricaded inside trying to wait this plague out. I'd been trying to do the same thing, but now that I was out, I was quite possibly going to turn into one of them; a zombie.
"What happened back there?" asked Frank, breaking our long silence.
"I … " I couldn't finish my response.
"Drew might have gotten some of the big zombie’s blood in his mouth," Amber finished my sentence.
I could see Frank shift in his seat, his handgun nonchalantly shifting to point at me. I understood his reaction.
"I feel fine," I assured him.
"Should he be driving?" Frank asked Amber.
"I think it's ok," she answered.
"Do you think he'll turn?" he asked her.
"I hope not," she said mournfully, looking at me.
"He looks a little pale and red around the eyes," he pointed out.
"Stop talking about me like I'm not here!" I said angrily.
"He seems to be getting irrational," Frank continued.
"That's it!" I barked. "If I turn, I'm going right for you Frank Frawley! I'm gonna eat your brains!"
"Stop it!" Amber shouted.
"Not that it'd be more than a mouthful," I mumbled.
"Drop it!" she warned. "Drew's gonna be just fine!" she said with passion. She loved me. I finally have a girlfriend who loves me and now I'm going to become a zombie. How's that for irony.
As we passed the national game lands on the right, the desolate landscape gave way to dirt roads cutting through the woods. We explored the roads, driving past what looked like empty camps. Some were small buildings that were roughly constructed and made for weekend getaways, while others looked pristine and well built. I made a mental note that they would be great places to move to in the event our present place got overrun.
My present condition brought the realization that mental notes may not stay with me very long, so I shared my thoughts with the others. They nodded and agreed with the idea. I wondered what I would remember when I did turn. Would I remember this place? Would I come here in search of my friends to try to eat them? Pushing those thoughts from my mind, I tried to relax, hoping it would delay the progress of the disease.
"Maybe we should be getting back," Amber blurted, voicing her thoughts.
"It's still early," I said, emerging once again from my self-pity.
"Henry's still at the cottage," she said, her head bobbing up and down as if silently agreeing with her own statement (or maybe it was a sympathetic response to get me to accept the idea). "He might be able to do something."
"There's nothing to be done. If the ghoul's blood contained the parasite, it was probably too late from the first instant. I really do feel fine, though," I assured her. "Honest!"
Conneaut was a town about the size of Slippery Rock. The virus had ravaged them also. I don't know why I expected anything else. As we drove through the outer reaches of the town, zombies were drawn to the noise of our Humvee. They streamed from everywhere all at once; front yards, woods, even exiting through ruined doors. It was like we were ringing the dinner bell.
What looked like an entire little league team emerged from a local park. Gloves and bright yellow caps were still worn by many of them as they continued on their intercept course. I drove straight through them, catching most in my deadly strike.
As we drove on, I felt cold. It was one thing to kill an undead person, but killing those children... "Children!"
"It's ok. They were all zombies," Amber reassured. "You didn't do anything wrong.”
"No. Where are the children?"
"I think he's starting to turn," Frank mumbled,
sitting forward and repositioning his gun.
"You just drove through a bunch of them, Honey."
"No!" I said, having trouble making my mind work in sync with my mouth. "Back at the cabin. We haven't seen children since we arrived. Where are the kids?"
It was true. We'd been at the cabin for about two weeks and made many scouting and foraging missions. I hadn't seen a single child while I was on any of those expeditions. That's weird. Why hadn't I noticed it before?
"What do you think it means?" asked the beautiful woman sitting next to me.
"Maybe they're eating their young?" said my friend from the back seat.
"I don't know what it means. And, no, I doubt they are eating their young!"
"I was just sayin’," he said apologetically. "It’s happened before."
Amber spun about. "It's happened before?"
"Cannibalism, not zombieism," I corrected while avoiding a large woman dragging a leg. "But, if they were eating their dead, wouldn't it be happening everywhere? There were kids everywhere else. This place is teeming with them.”
As if to emphasize the point, a once-cute little girl in a Catholic school uniform shambled into our path. I couldn't do it. Spinning the wheel, I narrowly avoided striking her full-on. Grazing her shoulder, she spun to the road.
It was amazing. The longer we spent in this world, the more accustomed to it we became. A few zombies lurching around our moving vehicle brought little concern. Maybe if we were in a small hybrid car it would've been different, but in this heavy military vehicle, we were provided with little comfort but lots of protection from the clawing hands of death all around.
"It's getting too thick," Frank said, perched forward in his seat. "Maybe we should turn around?"
"My thoughts exactly," I said, spinning the wheel to the left and making an arc through someone's front yard.
The Humvee's turning radius wasn't great. I guess you had to give some things up for safety. Comfort, turning radius, and fuel consumption were all sacrificed.
As my long orbit returned to its origin, I heard a thump on the left side. Checking the side view mirror, I saw the undead schoolgirl lying still behind us. For some reason, my heart sank.
She was so young. When the outbreak started, she probably didn't understand. She was probably so scared. Her parents, I could imagine, tried to protect her, to defend her. But, at some point, she had succumbed. What terrors had she gone through? What horrors had she witnessed?
She was probably better off this way. Her nightmare was over. Now, she could rest.
I might've been thinking these thoughts because I felt my own demise approaching. She was a mirror that I was looking full on into. Was I going to be joining these legions of undead?
"Where to now?" Amber said anxiously. "I think we should go back. Let Hank have a look at you."
"All right!" I grumbled, a little short. Maybe she's right. My stomach was a little queasy.
We were nearing the state game lands when we saw a police car in the distance ahead. It was coming our way. The roof mounted lights turned on, strobing dizzily.
"Crap!" I exclaimed.
"What are we going to do?" said my girl hastily.
"Maybe they won't remember us," Frank cried in desperation.
"See that side road ahead?" I said flatly. "When we get there, hang on. We're gonna make a run for it!"
"But, what if they're the good guys?" Frank begged, sliding back into his seat and buckling his safety belt.
"I'm not going to take that chance!"
We were going to make it to the side road just before the cops would. Not speeding up, I tried to make it look as nonchalant as possible.
At the intersection, I veered right and pushed the gas peddle to the floor. A road sign reading Rudd Road caught my eye. The diesel motor roared as we surged forward. A moment later, I heard tires squeal as the law enforcement vehicle made the correction and gave chase.
It seemed like we were in slow motion as the powerful police cruiser flew up behind us. Lights still blazing, its motor was designed for this type of situation. I remembered the list of stuff we'd given up for these heavily armored Humvees. Comfort, turning radius, fuel consumption and exactly what we needed right now; speed.
A single shot ricocheted off the driver’s side door. "We're not gonna get away!" Frank screamed while hunkering down in his seat.
"We're going to make it!" I barked, looking for a way out.
"We're not gonna make it!" he said again as another shot sounded.
We flew down the road in a deadly chase, our vehicle pushed to its limit.
"We can't outrun them!" Amber said, strangely calm.
"I don't think we'll have to," I informed them.
The bridge ahead was blocked by a bunch of disabled cars. It looked like a small pileup had occurred, possibly at the beginning of the outbreak. To the side, a small dirt pull-off lead down to the trout stream that the bridge spanned.
"Everybody hang on!" I warned in a loud, commanding voice as we swerved onto the dirt track and plunged into the water.
The windshield became a blur as the stream’s flow splashed across it, obscuring our vision. The Humvee slid a little to the right but almost immediately found traction and pushed on ahead. Its wheels were completely submerged, indicating the depth of the water.
Almost instantly, the police cruiser plunged into the current behind us. The much lighter vehicle floated for a second, then submerged, water nearly halfway up its windows.
I found a dirt egress on the other shore and drove up, out of the stream. Water poured from the Humvee onto the path as we continued up the other side. A last wild, parting shot sounded from behind as we pulled onto the road and accelerated out of reach.
"That was close!" Amber said, pulling her fingers through her hair.
"What happened?" remarked Frank, rising from his crash position. He'd tucked his head between his knees in an effort to survive.
"We left them stranded at the riverside," I informed him, mimicking the lyrics from an old Rush song.
We followed the road and at the next intersection made a left, heading east once again, toward the cottage. We had never explored this road. As we drove on, we passed a few homes, mostly spread out with no nearby neighbors. We also passed a school.
"Talk about rednecks!" Frank said, looking at the abandoned elementary building. "Who puts a school right next to a pig farm?"
He was right. Situated right next to the single story school were about a half dozen long buildings. The sign out front had the image of a large hog with a dust-covered nameplate. The smell was horrendous. The odd thing was that there was no farmhouse.
"Oh," Amber said, covering her nose. "That's horrible."
"I'll bet the school got the land for free," I surmised. "The farm must have had some way of masking the smell."
"I sure hope so," she said in a nasal voice, pinching her nose closed with her thumb and pointer finger. "Those poor kids."
"I wonder what their team mascot was," Frank joked. "The Fighting Pork Chops?"
I knew when school was in session it couldn't have been this bad. It was probably coming off the pigs. Not being taken care of for over a month, the animals were probably dead and rotting. This image brought me back to my own dilemma.
Not a hundred feet down the road, a sign came into view.
"There's a gas station ahead," I announced to no one in particular.
"Do we need gas?" asked Amber cautiously, leaning close to check the gauge. I could see by her actions that she was wary of my condition.
"We could use some, but we should check it out anyway and see if it has a good supply," I answered. Mainly, I wanted to get out of the vehicle and see if it had been damaged. Back in Conneaut, we'd driven through a lot of ghouls, and I just wanted to make sure there weren't any stuck in a wheel well or something.
We pulled into the fueling area, twigs an
d cinders crunching under our tires. The place looked empty and completely untouched by the zombies, although showing no evidence of undead didn't mean it was pristine. It was amazing how fast our normal buildings and grounds went to pot as soon as we couldn't maintain them anymore. Rain and wind made debris pile up quickly. If left for a year or more, I wondered how much of the paved lot would be totally obscured by nature.
I located the round cover where fuel tankers deposited their load and quickly jimmied it open. Dean had rigged two pond pumps that we had scavenged from a local hardware store with hoses so we could pump gas. I lowered one end of the hose into the hole and put the other in the Humvee's tank. Plugging the pump into one of the receptacles in our vehicle started the homemade contraption. Within seconds, we were filling our tank with diesel.
It didn't take long to top off our supply, so we filled both of our two five gallon portable tanks for good measure. Frank and Amber, all the while, covered my back.
"All done," I said, switching off the pump. I retrieved the hoses and hung them outside to dry out.
Returning to the driver's side, I cut the engine. Silence.
The world probably sounded much like this when Native Americans were the only ones living here. The only sound was of distant birds and the soft breeze. To me, it was unnerving. I was used to noise, used to the sound of cars and people. In the former world, there was so much background clatter that we never really experienced true quiet. Natural quiet. The low din of human existence was so normal to us that this complete silence felt strange. Spooky.
"Should we check inside?" asked Amber while shifting her shotgun toward the building.
"I think we should leave altogether. Get out of here!" objected Frank.
"Let's have a look," I answered, taking command. "It couldn't hurt."
This is the end of chapter 2 in the exciting sequel called Symbiote; The True Story of the Zombie Apocalypse. Look for it at your favorite eBook retailer today.
About the Author
Doug Ward currently lives in Western Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of Slippery Rock University. He has a BFA in Fine Art. Doug spends much of his time doing oil paintings which incorporate mythology and science.
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