Degeneration (56 page)

             
Another police officer, a female, was hunched over the officer’s eviscerated lower abdomen.

             
She pulled out handfuls of the officer’s innards and shoveled them into her gullet. She looked up at Richard and stood, chewing on a piece of fat as she staggered towards him. She reached a shaky hand out towards him…

             
Richard reached down and grabbed the Remington shotgun off of the floor, quickly leveled it at the woman’s chest, and fired.

             
The woman’s chested erupted out through her back as she was flung backwards onto the ground, sliding back against an emptied beer cooler.

             
Richard chambered another round and watched in horror as the woman struggled back onto her feet. He quickly crouched down and rummaged through the eviscerated officer’s front pockets, but didn’t find the keys. The male office wasn’t carrying them.

             
The female officer staggered towards him with a gaping hole in her chest.

             
Richard stood and leveled the shotgun between her eyes and fired.

             
The blast took off the top portion of her skull and sprayed the beer cooler behind her with hair and bits of brain matter. She stumbled forward a few more steps and collapsed face-forward.

             
Richard chambered another round and cautiously stepped towards the woman.

             
She remained motionless.

             
Richard kneeled down and rummaged through her pockets. He slid his hand down into her left pocket and pulled out a set of car keys.

             
He heard something moving behind him and froze.

             
The male officer was clawing his way across the blood-smeared tile floor towards Richard, snarling, with his innards trailing behind him.

             
Rather than wasting another shell, Richard backed away towards the beer cooler, turned, and ran down another aisle, terrified, sprinting as fast as he could.

             
He bolted outside and collapsed against one of the fuel pumps, breathing franticly, trying to compose himself. He squeezed the keys tightly in his hand, reassuring himself.

             
“You
don’t have time to rest! They’re almost inside my cell!
” Andy shouted.

             
Richard jolted at the sound of his voice and ran towards the Butner police cruiser. He froze as lightning arched across the sky and illuminated the dark horizon.

             
Hundreds of corpses wearing tattered orange jumpsuits were lurching towards the gas station, emerging out from the seemingly vacant shops and alleyways.

             
The lightning subsided and the town was bathed in darkness once more, but the sounds of shuffling feet and low moaning filled the stale air.

             
Richard dove into the cruiser, slammed the door shut, and shoved the key into the ignition with a shaky hand.

The engine turned over effortlessly.

             
The headlights and the blue rooftop police strobes powered on immediately and bathed the area in light. The siren blared loudly, attracting even more unwanted attention.

             
The headlamp’s glare reflected off an enclosing horde of corpses shuffling towards the front of the cruiser. They moved with a slow but determined gait, arms stretched out in front of them.

             
Richard fumbled with the dash toggle switches and powered off the siren and the flashing blue lights.

             
“
Richie! They’re in here! Those creatures! They’re inside my–”

             
Andy’s voice came through the car speakers before abruptly cutting off.

             
“Andy? Andy!?” Richard shouted as he threw the transmission into ‘D’.

             
Andy didn’t respond and Richard started to panic.

             
“I’m coming,” Richard yelled, pressing down on the accelerator, “I’m on my way, just hang on a little bit longer!”

             
The car jolted forward, jumped the curb and spun-out onto the street.

The ravenous horde continued towards the rapidly approaching police cruiser unabated in their determination.

             
Richard didn’t take his foot off of the accelerator.

             
The cruiser sent the first few corpses hurdling over the top of it in twisted and contorted positions and plowed its way through the grotesque
c
rowd of cadavers that cluttered the street.

             
A series of fine cracks spread across the windshield as bodies pelted against it and coated it with a thick impenetrable layer of gore.

             
Richard struggled to peer through the crackled grass which proved to be an impossible task as body after body struck against the racing cruiser and splashed the glass with blood. Within seconds every window in the car was covered from the onslaught as the vehicle jostled its way forward, crushing corpses.

             
Richard didn’t let up; he knew that Andy was in trouble.

             
The car finally cleared the undead horde and gained speed as its blood-slickened tires caught traction on the asphalt.

             
Richard drew his fist back and struck the crackled windshield, blindly speeding forward.

             
The shattered windshield crumbled away and sent a shower of glass bits pelting into the car, striking Richard’s face.

             
Richard quickly shut his eyes and flinched. He reached a hand up, quickly brushed the pebbles of glass off his face, and opened his eyes.

             
He slammed on the brakes, but it was too late.

             
The speeding cruiser, tries squealing, jumped the curb and crashed against a brick sign that read ‘Town of Butner Department of Public Safety’.

             
The wrecked car’s engine clunked a few times and then fell silent as it smoldered, dead.

             
Richard lay slouched over the steering wheel, on top of the deflated airbag, barely maintaining consciousness.

             
A few blocks behind him, the massive horde lurched down the street towards him.

3
7

             
A
s Richard teetered on the brink of consciousness, the sound of an approaching helicopter roused him back to his senses.

             
He had crashed in front of Butner’s public safety headquarters. The small town had a
conglomerate
d fire, EMS, and police department that operated out of the one building.

             
The two-story building’s main door was chained shut and the windows were covered by plywood. The adjoining vehicle garage had all three of its doors rolled open and all of the vehicles were gone with the exception of one fire truck that had three flat tires and a shattered windshield. The truck’s doors were open.

             
He heard he infected approaching.

             
He forced himself to move, despite the pain shooting though his body. He shoved himself off of the steering wheel, knocked the deflated airbag aside, and pulled on the door handle.

             
The door wouldn’t open.

             
He turned in his seat and started to kick both feet against the door, striking it as hard as he could.

             
The door made a metallic groan and finally flung open, striking the mangled front-end.

             
The military helicopter hovered low over the street, drawing closer towards the wrecked cruiser.

             
Richard stumbled out of the car and stared down the street at the approaching craft.

             
The helicopter shined its searchlight down into the sea of corpses that were shuffling in the street. The infected seemed to have momentarily forgotten about Richard and were intensely focused on the hovering craft. They clamored together and held their
emaciated
arms up towards the searchlight, reaching for it, staring at it like captivated animals.

             
Richard took an uneasy step backwards, not sure what to do…

Without Andy’s guidance, he felt lost.

             
The helicopter abruptly centered the searchlight on Richard, blinding him.

             
He threw his arms over his eyes, squinting.

             
The helicopter veered towards him and someone announced something over the craft’s loudspeaker, but it came out garbled and distorted.

             
The infected horde stared out at Richard and started shuffling towards him once again, biting, swiping, and tussling with each other as they slowly advanced.

             
Richard ran.

             
He turned towards the public safety building and sprinted into the open garage.

             
The garage was dingy, dark, and barren. All of the firemen’s supply lockers had been raided and picked clean and most of the other emergency equipment was long gone. The equipment on the fire truck surprisingly remained intact, with the exception of the hook ladder.

             
Richard ran into the garage and hid behind the fire truck, gasping for breath.

The helicopter swooped past the building and then banked back towards it, searchlight scanning.

Richard knew that it would draw a lot of unwanted attention.

             
He had to act fast.

             
He searched the garage and spotted the buttons that operated the metallic roll-up garage doors. He hurried towards the buttons and mashed them frantically.

             
No power; no response.

             
He slammed a fist through the drywall, and then searched the garage once again.

             
Near the corner of the garage, he spotted a wooden door next to the restrooms that led into the main building.

             
Richard ran towards the door, throwing a panicked glance behind him as he moved.

             
The corpses wearing orange jumpsuits had shuffled their way onto the parking lot and were lurching towards the garage. The helicopter hovered outside, pointing the searchlight into the garage, creating tall grotesque silhouettes of the encroaching infected along the cement floor and against the rear wall of the garage.

             
There was a frantic pounding coming from the opposite side of the door.

             
Richard froze. He heard the rabid snarling and scratching and he knew that it was not the slow variants of the ‘vaccinated’ undead waiting for him on the other side of the door.

             
He needed a weapon.

             
He quickly turned and ran to the disabled fire truck. He grabbed one of the red fire axes off of the side of the truck and hurried back towards the wooden door.

             
The first shambling corpse entered the garage behind Richard, stumbling quickly towards him. The male inmate’s left arm had been gnawed down to the bone and his jumpsuit was covered with gore. Behind it, an undead hungry army followed.

             
Richard came to a stop at the door and, while holding the axe above his head with one hand, turned the knob.

             
The wooden door flung open and a fireman rushed out of the room, lunging towards him.

             
Richard brought the axe’s blade down into the center of the fireman’s forehead, screaming.

             
The blade sunk deep into the man’s skull, making a sickening noise.

The fireman collapsed as Richard dislodged the blade out of the man’s skull.

The fireman twitched violently on the ground as blood pooled around his head.

             
The shambling inmate immediately dropped down to his knees and started devouring the fireman’s twitching corpse. A swarm of others huddled down around him and tore into the fresh corpse with their bare hands, pulling out his innards and shoveling them into their mouth.