Flesh Ravenous (Book 1) (2 page)

Lawrence took two steps out the door. “Get inside!” He said to the female stranger, who was crying and panting manically. She had light brown hair, neck-length. She looked twenty-five or twenty-six years old, roughly Lawrence’s age. She might’ve been attractive if her face wasn’t contorted with the expression of horror.

The female stranger did as told. Sonya grabbed her by the arm and pushed her through the doorway.

“Get in the house, man,” Miles said to the male stranger.

The two dead things drew near. Lawrence aimed and fired his gun, catching Dangle-boob in her lone eye. She stumbled down and rolled twice before stopping to become a
dead
corpse. Blonde-afro never broke his run. Closer the kid came crying out a slobbery roar, like a song with an off tune melody and lyrical gibberish. Lawrence aimed and fired…

He missed.

“Oh shit.” Lawrence couldn’t take the time to aim another shot, Blonde-afro was too close now. Lawrence threw his left forearm up to shield himself.

Sonya stepped to Lawrence’s side and jammed the tip of her poker up the kid’s mouth. The weapon broke out through the top of his head, and his bush of blonde became a sponge for red goop. Sonya must’ve had an abnormal amount of upper body strength to crack a skull with a dull tipped weapon.

There were roars and moans of the dead coming from several directions now. About a half dozen of the monsters charged out from a broken backyard fence across the street.

“Come on, Lawrence.” Sonya hooked her arm in his and abandoned her poker in the dead kid’s head. The two of them ran inside the house. Kasey slammed the front door and locked up.

Lawrence threw himself back onto the living room couch. Across from him, seated on the other couch, was the man and woman survivor. The child survivor was in the dining room, weeping in Ally’s embrace.

“It’s all right, Joni,” the man said, “we’re safe now.” He appeared too exhausted to stand. His face pale and gleaming with sweat and not an inch of his dirty-blonde hair appeared dry.

“Where are you three from?” Miles asked.

“We came from Antlers, originally. “I’m Richard, by the way.” He made a weak head motion to the woman beside him. “This is my wife Therese, and the little one is Joni, my daughter.”

“Antlers?” Charlene said. “Where’s Antlers? Canada or something?”

“It’s here in California,” said Richard. “Way up north, close to Oregon. It’s a very small town, which is why you’ve never heard of it.”

“You’ve passed by Sacramento?” said Sonya, taking a seat on the couch arm next to Lawrence.

“We have,” Therese finally spoke. “Sacramento’s become…The downtown area was swarming with the diseased. There was no military or any order, if that’s what you wanted to know.”

“After leaving Sacramento,” Richard took over, “we decided to head toward San Francisco, but started to run short on food. We stopped here in Felipa, to maybe, scrounge for more supplies. The suburban areas are far less populated with the diseased.”

“What else have you been doing all this time since leaving Antlers?” Miles asked.

“Heard any radio broadcasts about San Francisco?” Kasey asked. “Are y’all headed to someplace safe there?”

“Antlers?” Charlene said. “Are there, like, reindeers around that town or something?”

“Let’s let these people breathe first,” said Lawrence. “We’ll ask questions later.”

“Right, right,” Kasey agreed. “Let’s get you three some water.” She started her way to the kitchen.

“Are you the one in charge here?” Richard asked Lawrence.

“There’s no one in charge here, really,” Lawrence replied. “It’s a bit of a democracy, I guess.”

“Yeah,” said Charlene, “Lawrence is the one in charge.”

“Nope,” Lawrence shook his head. “I said it’s a bit of a democracy, Charlene.”

“You seem to be the one making the decisions in this house, dude.” Charlene wouldn’t shut up.

“Charlene, I would like you to not continue talking.” Lawrence had come up with new ways to politely tell Charlene to shut up. “Please.”

“May I speak to you in private, Lawrence?” said Richard. “Just for a moment, if it’s okay.”

“Sure,” Lawrence nodded. “We can go upstairs.”

Richard handed his pistol over to Therese, stood up, and removed the backpack he carried. He set it on the floor at his wife’s feet. “Joni,” he called to his child, “come here, sweetie.” Joni, with her face red and eyelids worn, came over to her father and hugged him at the waist. The two shared a strong resemblance in their doe-eyes. “I love you,” Richard kissed the top of Joni’s head. “I love you, Joni.”

Lawrence got up from the couch and stuffed his gun in the back brim of his jeans. He did so unhurriedly, as to give Richard a few seconds with his daughter. “Come on, Richard, follow me.”

As Lawrence and Richard ascended the stairs, a thud came to the front door. Lawrence, alarmed, paused and looked back. Therese and Joni yelped. Another thud came, a deep, gurgling moan behind the door followed.

“Don’t worry.” Sonya said to Therese and Joni. “They can’t get in.”

It was true the dead couldn’t get in. Lawrence had examined the door and its hinges back when they were in the process of fortifying the house.

Thud…Thud…Thud…
It continued.

The sound was one of the dead attempting to use its body as a battering ram. It had happened a few times before. It wasn’t going to work, but the mindless corpse wasn’t aware of that. The thing would likely do it for hours, maybe even a few days. There wasn’t any fear in the faces of Lawrence’s housemate, only sadness, a sense of despair, as though all were reminded that they could become that mindless thing bashing itself against the door.

Lawrence brought Richard to the master bedroom. There was sunlight in the room. There wasn’t a need to reinforce the windows on the top floor. The dead couldn’t climb the walls outside the house, let alone, find some really tall ladder, carry it, and set it under a second story window.

Richard took a seat at the corner of the king-sized bed. “You look like a smart guy, Lawrence.”

“Really? Do I?” Lawrence was a little overenthusiastic with his reply, mainly because many people he knew thought he was a stoner…which he wasn’t.

“Yeah…Sure…What’s your theory on everything? What do you think caused all this?” He seemed to ask in a casual manner, as if making small talk.

“Well…” Lawrence scratched the top of his head. He did have a theory. “Um…I speculate that this was all some form of scientific experiment, some radical, scientific experiment, funded by some eccentric multibillionaire trying to find the secret to immortality. Haven’t you noticed—well, of course you’ve noticed—that those things don’t die, not from starvation, not from dehydration. They don’t sleep, or tire, or ever wear down. They’ll keep running and running, probably until their legs break off. They don’t feel pain. They’re almost superhuman. They’re almost like vampires, but instead of having to destroy the heart, you have to destroy the brain, and instead of them drinking blood, they eat flesh. They’re like feral, retarded vampires.” Lawrence realized he was rambling and pacing back and forth, and felt he might’ve strayed from the subject by mentioning vampires. He might’ve even sounded juvenile to Richard. “So, yeah, that’s my theory, a crazy multibillionaire with a radical, scientific experiment. So what’s yours?”

“I, I don’t know.” Richard shrugged. “Terrorism, maybe. Forgive my lack of imagination. But I won’t shit on your theory. It does make sense.”

“Thanks,” Lawrence said with much appreciation. “I was afraid you’d think I was a stoner, you know, the kind who thinks they’re on the same level as Einstein.”

“No, certainly not.” Richard smiled. “Look, I’m sorry that I didn’t have much to contribute when coming here.” His eyes went to the floor. He did seem genuinely ashamed.

Lawrence remembered the contributions Miles and his family made when they had begged Kyle and Ally to take them in. Anyone still lingering about Revel Street at the time noticed the thick wooden boards that shielded the windows. Miles, Helena, and France came in with several plastic bags of food, canned and dry foods of course. They had also brought a vast amount of water bottles, candles, batteries, medicines, and some hygiene products. Even Kasey, Kyle’s next-door neighbor, had contributed significantly. After Lawrence, Kyle, and Sonya rescued Kasey from her husband Darren, who had turned, Kyle invited her to stay with them. Kasey wasn’t as prepared as Miles and family, but she offered up anything they could carry out of her house. They had stripped her house of food and first aid materials, took blankets, towels, pots and pans, kitchen knives, books, CD players, DVDs (for when they still had electricity), anything they could grab and move off quickly with.

“I know everyone is glad we opened the door.” Lawrence felt confident speaking for everyone. Richard and his family were decent enough.

“Thank you,” Richard replied, with a small yet gracious smile. “I’d like to know what your story is. You seemed to have had good foresight. This house looks well prepared for an army of those things.” Lawrence found it funny that Richard also called them “those things.”

“Can I know your story after?”

“Of course.”

“May I get you some water?” Lawrence still noticed the exhaustion in Richard, in his quiet panting and constant sweating. Richard appeared feverish.

“No need.”

“All right. Just let me know if I can get you anything.”

Richard nodded.

“Well,” Lawrence began, “before all this, we lived here with Kyle, an old friend of mine, and Ally, you know the girl who was in the dining room, the one with long black hair with blonde, highlighted tips and some other red streaks going on?”

“Yes, the one who was with Joni? A sweet girl that Ally is.”

“Yes,” Lawrence continued, “she and Kyle were considerably our landlords. Me, that Hispanic girl Sonya (he couldn’t remember what Sonya was, he just knew she had some kind of South American heritage), Tristan, the guy carrying a…medieval sword, and Charlene, that one Asian girl, all lived here as boarders.” Kyle and Sonya had the master bedroom, Ally and Charlene had shared the downstairs room, while Lawrence and Tristan had their own rooms. There were five bedrooms in the house. The spare room was for mutual friends who would spend the night. Now, that room was storage for all the additional junk they’d hoarded for their long-term survival. “On the news, we started hearing about, psychotic men breaking into people’s homes, smashing windows and so forth, biting people on the streets, and you probably know the rest. The news said it was the start of an epidemic. They said it spread through bodily fluids and wasn’t airborne. I’m sure a lot of people were happy to hear that, thinking it wouldn’t spread so aggressively. They were wrong, and I was wrong. Now it began somewhere in Europe or Asia—I don’t recall, but as soon as I heard it hit the East Coast, I convinced my housemates that we needed to prepare.” Lawrence didn’t feel he was self-horn-tooting, it was solely his idea to prepare, and it had taken him a while to convince Kyle to do so. Once Kyle followed, Sonya and Ally followed, and shortly after, Ally’s best friend Charlene went along with it, as did Ally’s longtime admirer (more like ogler) Tristan. “With our savings, everything we had, we bought food, water, any kind of medicine we could get a hold of, a bunch of other survival equipment, and loads and loads of lumber to secure the downstairs windows. You probably knew how quickly it spread from the East Coast.”

“Yes,” said Richard. “Less than a month, I believe.”

“Yeah, it was fast.” Lawrence pondered for a moment and continued. “Later, Miles, the older man with the glasses and beard, his wife Helena, and his daughter Francine came from a few streets over. Helena is the slim woman, who kind of looks snooty, but she’s not, she’s a good woman. Francine is the young one here, the one who sort of looks pissed off—yeah, her face just looks like that. The three of them joined us a few weeks after we converted this place to a fort. Then Kasey came. Kasey’s the black woman. She joined us after her husband turned. My friend Kyle, he had also turned. We lost him.”

“We lost someone, too,” said Richard. His gaze left Lawrence and turned to the window. There was an empty look in his eyes. “My younger daughter. She was five. She turned.”

Lawrence swallowed hard. The thought of a young girl, a baby almost, becoming one of those things instantly made him ill. The thought seemed to squeeze his stomach and cause him lightheadedness. “How long did it take her to turn?” He regretted asking the question, wishing he had said something sympathetic.

“Two days.”

As Lawrence recalled, Kasey said it took her husband nearly a day after the bite, and for Kyle, it was a few minutes. It might’ve varied from person to person, like the start of puberty.

“I’m sorry, Richard.”

“What were you before all this began?” Richard asked. It was off the subject. Perhaps he wanted to change the subject. “What did you do for a living?”

“I was a custodian.” Part of Lawrence wished he were living those days again. Clearing urinals of chewed gum and pubic hairs and scrubbing vomit from stainless steel drinking fountains wasn’t all bad, compared to now. It was better than being confined in a house for months, unsure if you’d live another few months, better than having loved ones victimized by dead, cannibalistic maniacs or become dead, cannibalistic maniacs themselves. The only real fear as a custodian was what was beyond the stall door when the overpowering stench of shit was in the air.