by Byrd, Daniel
***
Joel stomped on the brakes as he came upon a roadblock of cars near the block his son's apartment resided on. He had attracted a lot of unwanted attention from the undead along the way, but time was running out, and whatever got him to his son faster worked for him. He kicked the driver side door open and called out for Katherine to follow him as he rushed ahead with his rifle at the ready. She hobbled out and sprinted after him, eyes inspecting every area around them for any undetected threats. An urban place like this was an easy place for the zombies to intermix among the frightened living. Joel's tunnel vision would have screwed him, but Katherine didn't see anything hostile within biting distance. Luckily the car was faster than your average fresh body.
Joel made it to the front door of the apartment complex and nearly kicked it off of its hinges. Katherine followed him in, but lost him as he ran into a room halfway down the hall. She stopped when she spotted the body on the bloodstained green carpet. Her shadow obscured most of it from view, but the daylight that filled in around her illuminated enough of the traumatic sight. She covered her mouth and stepped back, fighting the urge to scream as she looked at the carcass lying on its side with a fire poker through its chest. She had reached the gaping front door of the building again when gunshots rang out from the room Joel had entered, making her cover her ears. Seconds later, he emerged with a grave look about him. A cry for help came from a room towards the end of the hallway, and Joel raised his rifle and set off after the noise. Katherine wanted to follow, but Joel had told her to keep a safe distance away from him if he had to play hero. She waited anxiously as another burst of gunfire came from the room he had entered. She wanted to obey his words, but couldn't just stand alone in the hallway. Another burst of gunshots kept her firmly planted where she stood, and it wasn’t until she heard Joel’s voice after the ringing stopped that she decided to move. She quickly made her way to the room and stood in the doorway to witness Joel kneeling over a large man holding himself up on a turned over chair. He was clenching his shoulder, where a gruesome wound had been inflicted that tore through his collared shirt. Nearby was a woman with multiple gunshot wounds to her head that had torn the flesh away to leave a mangled mess of a presentation. The man was struggling to speak, but Joel was desperate to talk with him.
"Mr. Archer, please, have you seen my son?” Joel pleaded. “Is he okay?"
The overweight man raised his hand and motioned for Joel to lean in closer. Joel turned his head to listen, hopeful for word of his son's safety.
"Left with a man...Orlok...they're trying to...escape."
For a brief moment, Joel appeared relieved, then that relief quickly shifted to fear. His son was still missing in a city crawling with zombies, and if they were trying to escape, they were only targets to the forces surrounding the area. There was no comfort to be found.
"There are about...nine of them. Joel…I don’t trust…that man.”
Mr. Archer’s head slumped over onto his shoulder. He wouldn't make it much longer. Joel stood up and walked away from the bodies, taking Katherine's hand and leading her away from the room.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," he told her.
"I've seen a lot today. I'm really sorry about your son…"
They had just reached the front door when they heard a thud from down the hallway. Joel turned back and brought the rifle up once more. Mr. Archer emerged from his room in the back of the hall and looked in their direction. Joel kept the big man’s head centered in the scope and waited to see what actions he would take next. To his surprise, Mr. Archer called out to him.
"Joel! Do it! Shoot me now! I'm not going to become one of those blasted things! Do it!"
“Katherine, go outside,” Joel instructed.
“But-”
“You don’t want to be here for this.”
Katherine didn't argue anymore than that and turned to take her leave. Once Joel was sure she wasn't going to see anything, he hesitated, but powered through and squeezed the trigger. The overweight man's head snapped back, and his entire frame rocked backwards and hit the floor. Joel shook his head and swore, then proceeded back to the car. Katherine kept close to him, unsure of what to say. Joel kept a stern face and got into the driver's seat. Before Katherine could even close the door, he had already pressed the accelerator to the floor and sent the car speeding backwards. He snatched the wheel around and sent the front of the car sliding forward, and then put the car in drive and sped back towards the Westminster Bridge.
***
The scene was still the same at the London Eye. People were scrambling up the rim and shrill screams of pain and torture swept across the area to saturate Charlie’s ears. He had no idea what to do. People were crying out for help above him, and the undead were finishing their feast of flesh in the bottom capsules. Some were actually beginning to find ways to climb up to the other capsules. Charlie looked for a weapon, desperate to assist everyone, but the only thing nearby was a suitcase. Some people had attempted to take all that they could with them, but even valuables weren’t worth much in the face of fear. Charlie grabbed it off of the ground and ran for the first inhuman thing in his sight.
“What the hell am I doing, what the hell am I doing, what the hell am I doing?” he uttered with each step, coming upon a deranged man in the back of the undead crowd near the Eye. With all of his strength, he swung the suitcase around and connected with the man’s head. The case wasn’t properly closed, and the belongings spilled out onto the sidewalk as the zombie sprawled out among them, stunned but still very functional. Charlie spotted something as it rolled into his foot. It was an aerosol can of deodorant. Hygiene was a thing, after all. Still, it was what his eyes fell upon next that got his mind racing. A flip lighter had spilled from the suitcase as well. He’d seen it on TV. He could do it.
A tall man in a torn suit sprinted for him, and Charlie decided to go for it. He lunged for the lighter and flipped it open, thumbing the flint wheel and sparking a flame as his other hand lifted the aerosol can. The man’s mouth was right up to the flame as Charlie sprayed. The burst of flames surged into the man's gaping mouth, but all it did was force him back as his skin blistered. Charlie let loose with another spray of flames that swept over the man, but it wasn’t doing much besides slowing him down. Charlie had little time to assess the effectiveness as more of the horde took notice of the easy to access flesh nearby. Charlie was a young man with a makeshift flamethrower against a platoon of zombies.
"Shit."
Most began to run, and all were hungry for him. Charlie sprayed and swept fire across the scene before him, but the fire only went so far and dissipated before contacting most of his targets. He wasn't fast enough to fight them all off. He ran forward tried to clear a path with his puny pyrotechnics. Faces were burned and some of the horde even had to shy away from the blasts of heat. Still, it had little effect, but Charlie wasn’t going to give up yet. He dashed through the gardens and reached the Ferris wheel. Both bottom capsules were filled with the undead gnawing on human remains. The rest were full of screaming refugees. Charlie thumbed the flint again and moved head. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd do, but he had to try something to save these people.
***
The body of an elderly woman bounced off of the hood of the car as Katherine screamed. Joel had thrown the rules of safe driving out of the window, and was driving under his own rule-set; stop at nothing, and if it moved irregularly, run it down. He grimaced as he hit a small boy that had noticed the car and came after it. Any other day and he would have thought that the boy wanted a ride, but today, with the blood soaked shirt, Joel was sure he had just run over another zombie. At least, that's what he kept telling himself.
Katherine was weeping quietly in the passenger's seat. Joel looked to her for a brief moment and felt remorseful.
"Sorry. I promise you, I'm not enjoying this."
She uncovered her eyes. "What is this? Did we anger God? What have we done?"
"It's nothing we've done. It's an act against God's will that made these beings to begin with."
She brushed her blue hair out of her face and looked ahead. The flower shop on the left would have been a refreshing sight had it not had two men feasting on another in front of a window with a display of roses. She shuddered and covered her face with her hands once more. Joel wrapped an arm around her shoulder and worked to soothe her as he swerved around the debris on the road.
"How old is he?" she asked him in a shaky voice.
"Charlie's nineteen. He's a bright young man. Got it from his mother. He's majoring in Civil Engineering. The way I see it, he wants to distance himself from my career as much as he can."
"Is he not proud?"
Joel shook his head. "He just wants to be around more than I was. Sometimes he attributes that to his mother's passing. She raised him on her own for the most part. I was always away. Things happened, and I wasn't there."
Katherine stared at the world in front of them, unable to think of anything to say. Sorry didn't seem fitting, and was overused anyway. Joel placed his right hand back on the wheel as the road became more treacherous.
"I was going to surprise them one day; didn't tell her I was coming home from deployment a week early. Came home to see her kissing my best friend goodbye. I took everything to Hell after that. Confronted her about it, went to his house, held a gun to his face...I got lucky. I didn't pull the trigger, and he didn't press charges. The deal was that nothing would happen, but I had to leave. I moved out, and Charlie stayed with her. I knew I'd lose him in court, so I just accepted it. A year went by, and…”
Katherine remained silent. Joel swerved the car and went up on the sidewalk to crush a zombie under the wheels. He didn't show any emotion. Katherine assumed it was his way of venting his feelings at the moment. After correcting back onto the road, he continued.
"She took her own life seven years ago when she burned the house down, and Charlie wouldn't forgive me. He moved in with me for financial reasons, but the second he got a chance to go to college, he left. He's here now because he can't stand being near me."
Katherine couldn't stay quiet anymore. "But it wasn't your fault! You're the victim in that!"
Joel chuckled. "Things aren't always as they seem. Sure, I'd be the protagonist in that, seeing as though my wife and best friend went behind my back, but to my son, I'm the villain that ruined his life. I wasn’t there to stop anything."
Katherine was done being upset. She had to say something to make Joel feel better about the situation. She placed her hand on his arm and got his attention.
"If he has the will to live like you, I'm sure he's fine," she told him in as calming as voice as she could manage, "just focus on getting to him."
Joel turned his head around to her to her to smile, but caught sight of the scene unfolding across the Jubilee Gardens in front of the London Eye.
***
Charlie hosed a dead woman’s face with flames long enough to melt skin, and that caused her to stumble past him and trip onto the ground as she struggled to see. By sheer force of will he had managed to survive long enough to cross the gardens, but fatigue and fear were weighing him down in the face of the undead. A teenage girl in a light-blue dress grabbed hold of his arm and prepared to sink her teeth into him, but a fist to her face later and she was on her back. Charlie ran for his life with seven more of the creatures at his heels. He stood at the base of the Eye with no way to escape. The undead were closing in on all sides, and more were emerging behind him. He held the can and lighter, circling in place to keep an eye on all of his points. The aerosol was almost gone, and these things weren’t going to falter at the sight of a tiny flame. Above him, voices cried out for him to run, but there was nowhere to go. He was worse than cornered. He was surrounded.
***
After making sure Katherine was safe in the car, Joel stood before the gardens and readied the bullpup rifle. With a full magazine ready to feed and a round in the chamber, he intended to inflict death among the deathless. He sprinted toward the Eye, stopping only to take accurate shots at nearby walking corpses that were an impending threat to his goal. It was just as he had feared. His need to help others was going to put him in harm's way before he could save his son. At the base of the Eye was a massive gathering of the creatures. Joel got closer and began to fire into the crowd. The outer layer of zombies took mostly bullets to their backs. Joel was within a few yards when he began to focus their heads. Bodies began to hit the ground as he reloaded and continued the onslaught. At this point, many within the circle of the dead had shifted their attention to his ruckus. Joel ceased his advance and began to back away as the remainder of the horde turned their aggression on him. Joel sighted them in through his scope and fired away. They fell before him one by one as he quickly shifted; left, right, left, right. He didn't pay attention to their faces. He didn't notice features other than blood and gaping mouths. He didn't hear the shrieks of horror above him. He didn't hear the cry for help over the sounds of the undead. He didn't understand why one of the figures was pushing through the others towards him, covered in blood and dragging two more with him as they clawed away. He didn't hesitate as it approached him. He didn't know until he had finished the slaying. He didn't know why. He didn't want it to be real. He didn't want Katherine's arms around him as he cried out. He didn't want to believe he had done it. He didn't want to live.
Katherine tried to pull Joel to his feet, but he just continued to cradle the body. Joel was hysterical, and she knew he wouldn't be able to defend her anymore. She didn't know who the young man he was holding was, but she had her fair assumptions at the moment. It was definitely someone important to take away his will. It was like he had died himself. She gave up on getting him to rise from his tragedy, and was close to giving up herself. Katherine knew she wasn't a fighter. She was too weak; Joel was the only reason she was even alive right now.
The remaining undead near the Eye had begun to take notice of the duo standing amid their fallen brethren. Some of them relinquished their efforts to claim the out of reach banquet above and made their way to Katherine and Joel. Katherine saw this, and began to whimper when she realized that it was up to her to keep them both alive. She had no idea what to do. The appalling creatures that were once just as human as she was were now descending upon them. Katherine shook violently, and then the adrenaline kicked in. She realized that for the first time in her life, she didn't want to just accept being helpless. She had always been the brunt of jokes in school for dedicating her time to studying and learning in the hopes of leading a successful life unlike those that berated her daily. Her professor whom she’d interned under was always cruel to her, and talked down as if she was nothing. This was her moment to prove even herself wrong. She wasn't going to concede any longer. She didn't want to end up like the mindless killers around her. She wanted to repay Joel. She wanted to live!
Pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose, her eyes narrowed on the one thing that could spare her from detriment. Reaching towards his thigh, she fumbled with Joel's holster and brandished his pistol. This was entirely alien to her. Her hands had always held books, not weapons. She had never fired a gun in her life, but she always valued herself as a smart young woman, and now was the time to learn fast if she wanted to live. The idea seemed simple, but her mind was struggling with the task. She attempted to will herself to hold the gun up, but her hands wouldn't stop shaking. Death filled the surrounding area, and it was tearing away at her psych. She was breathing erratically, and her thoughts stopped making sense. Time was slowing down all around her as her mind desperately tried to get a grip on the surrounding scene. She was too terrified to act. The monsters around her were killing machines, and she was just a weak, frail girl trapped in a situation that demanded so much of her for survival. She looked to Joel, but he was still stuck in his trance, rocking the body back and forth in his blood soaked hands and muttering something she couldn't understand. She only
caught bits and pieces of his rambling.
"Ellen…I didn't…I killed you both…monster…God…"
To see her hero fallen and broken into a disturbed state of mind only backed her despair as it sank in. He had saved her life with no hesitation, and she was powerless to do the same. She closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She didn't even know how to operate the gun in her hands!
She held the pistol up and tried to line up the head of a girl that had to be her age, if not close. Her strawberry-blonde hair was the only normal thing about her, as her skin was torn and cut, her mouth was agape with dried blood, and her jacket had tears in it from her own fatal encounter with the undead. Katherine watched helplessly as the iron sights swayed back and forth, failing to keep up with the moving target.
"Joel…please, help me…"
She reviewed no answer. The girl was getting closer, and Katherine was falling back, tears running down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and held her breath as she attempted to squeeze the trigger. Nothing. She had no idea what was wrong, and time was up. The girl turned away from her and set her sights on the man still sobbing on the ground, but before the zombie's eyes left Katherine's, she saw something in them. It was faint, and she assumed that she had probably imagined it, but she saw herself reflected in the fading pupils of the dead girl. She looked vulnerable and frightened, and she hated that. She hated that this always happened to her. She always gave in to the fear. She was already afraid of failing at everything; at finding love, at being there for someone who needed her, and at being happy with her life. She hated the fear, and that hate was taking over.
Katherine blinked away the tears and shook her head. "No more…"
She began to take inventory. The magazine was indeed in, and imitating what she'd seen the characters do on the big screen on her rare movie dates, she pulled back the slide and loaded the weapon. For once, she was glad the few boys that had actually taken the time to ask her out were immature kids who thrived on testosterone-fueled action flicks.
