This Dying World: The End Begins (5 page)

What does that mean against a zombie skull?  Instead of just cracking bone, this little gem will carry the impact well into the brain.  All the impact, half the work.

Sometimes physics can be fun.

A few whacks with the hammer, and the door was reduced to splinters.  If I were being tested on stealth, I would rate somewhere between bull in a china shop and sonic boom.  Tip toeing through the undead tulips didn’t seem to be working out for me.  Every time I tried to be ninja Dan, I fell off, on, or into things.  I wanted to be with my family in a warm car speeding away from there.

I almost jumped out of my skin when the pounding started behind me.  They had broken through my fence, and were making short work of the one separating us.  The wood buckled, swaying under the pressure of the hungry throng.  The wood started to split, hands reaching for me though small openings forming between the pickets.  White eyes peered at me through the small openings, sending them into a frenzy.  Their sounds became an unearthly mix of hisses and deep guttural moans.

I made for the gate.  I had to chance it, regardless of whatever I met once it was opened.  If I didn’t leave fast, I wouldn’t be leaving at all.  I was thankful my old friends were not the beings I saw after throwing the gate open.  That was the only thing I was thankful for, though.

As soon as I stepped into the commons area I saw a mass of the dead making their way toward me.  Their arms shot up when they saw me, graying hands clawing fistfuls of air as they closed.  Blood stained their mouths, trailing down their chins mixing with strings of frothing drool spewing from their lips.  A zombie that had once knocked on my door to spread the word of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was now taking bites out of his housecat.

They all suffered injuries to some degree.  Most of the throng wore bed clothes, everything from night gowns to sweats, and even a few who apparently slept in the nude.  One of the things had every bit of flesh torn from its face above the nose.  Lidless eyes darted back and forth like a macabre ventriloquist’s doll.

I turned to run, and was almost knocked backwards by woman in a blue flight attendant’s uniform.  Her milky eyes stared back into mine, and my knees went weak with fear.  She looked young, maybe mid to late twenties.  The once blonde hair on her right side had been burnt off, blackening the entire side of her head.  The taut skin crackled as it worked its jaw muscles, sending burnt flakes of skin falling to the ground.

She hissed in my face, and my eyes instantly watered.  If smell was a color, my face would have turned permanently green.  It smelled as if this creature had been fed a steady diet of onions and sardines dipped in raw garlic for a month, and I was the recipient of its first burp since those thirty days began.  Had time allowed I would have held a funeral for my olfactory senses right then and there, as I am fairly certain the ones that survived the initial assault committed ritual suicide shortly after.  A fifty gallon drum of mouth wash couldn’t have put a dent in that aroma.

Holding my breath I shoved her away, sending her toppling backwards onto her back.  The hammer came down with a dull thud in the middle of her forehead.  Her body went limp, either from the new dent in her head or from catching a whiff of her own death breath.

I ran…sort of.  Three more were advancing in front of me.  I went wide around the first one.  It reached out for me, not realizing that I was well beyond its grasp.  In a never say die moment, (get it?) it fell to the ground in a monumental overreach.

Hey, A for effort.

My hammer swung in an upward arc, shattering the jawbone of the second zombie and knocking it back on its head.  I kept moving, not stopping to check if it was dead…again.  I caught the third creature in the chest with a one handed sideways swing.  Ribs cracked as its sternum caved inward.  It spun and fell as I went past, moving my injured legs as fast as I could.

I was limping badly.  My left side had taken a beating, and my body was fast reaching its limit as I rounded the last townhouse towards the parking lot.  Directly in front of me was Abby and Katie sitting in a running CRV.  The passenger side door stood open, beckoning me forward to safety.  I felt myself slowing, the last of my reserves failing.

“Run Dan!  Run now!” she screamed.

I suddenly realized my near fatal mistake.  I was limping, not running.  I had stopped to kill Miss Halitosis and to deal with her friends.  But the pursuing creatures never slowed.  Persistent little bastards.

I limped as fast as I could, my legs screaming as I pushed them harder than I knew I should.  Turning around to check how close the monsters were could mean life or death, and I wasn’t really that curious.  Abby’s frantic shouts told me all I needed to know.

Though it only took about half a minute to get to the car, it felt like a lifetime.  I expected a claw or set of teeth to sink into me at any moment.  It wasn’t until I barreled into the car that I realized how close I was to the truth.

The car rocked with the force of the first zombie hitting the cold steel seconds after I slammed the door shut.  Faces filled the window, trying in vain to bite their way through the glass.  Abby fed the engine, wheels chirping as we cut left towards the parking lot exit.

As we hit the street, I took one final look at my house.  I felt the car slow and I knew Abby saw it too.

Joe and Mary were in the window, Maddy standing between them.

Chapter Six

“That was...” a tearful Abby said.  She cut the wheel right, swerving around the wreckage of a car surrounded by the undead.  The back tires lost traction, screeching across the asphalt until Abby brought the car back under control.

“I know!” I said, holding on for dear life.

“We have to help them!  We have to do something!”

“Abby, they’re gone!  There’s nothing we can do.”  The last part I said more for my own sake than for hers.

It was a cold and harsh reality this new world had put on display for us.  The only blessing we took from it was that Katie had not seen her lifelong friend.  Her face was buried in her hands.

Visions of my family and friends sped through my mind.  Who was alive?  Who wasn’t?  How many more of those close to me did I lose that night, and how many more in the days to come?  What about Abby’s family?  They were as close to me as my own blood relatives.  Abby kept her thoughts to herself, but I knew she must have been asking the same questions I was.

Of course the biggest question at the moment…what the hell was happening?

We sped down the smaller residential streets towards the main streets.  Everywhere we looked there were groups of the dead feasting on the masses of fleeing humanity.  The growing blaze had forced people from their homes where they might have had some chance to hide and hold out.  We were the lucky ones; most didn’t make it past their own front yards.

When we hit the main road, we found they were barely passable.  Static vehicles in the middle of the roadway forced us to slow to avoid collisions.  Many others were not as careful, slamming into the unmoving cars.  More than once we bore witness to life and death struggles.  Victims were locked inside with the things that must have started out their trips as living people.

“It can’t just be the bites,” I thought out loud.  “There’s too many of them too fast.”

I watched a group of zombies that had gathered around an old Buick that had crashed into the side of a Wendy’s restaurant.  The driver’s window was shattered, trails of blood streaking the door panel.  They huddled close together near the car fighting over the last few scraps of the driver’s skeletal remains.  They were like animals, positioning themselves around a kill.  Stragglers would attempt to move in only to be pushed aside by the largest of the creatures.

“Pack mentality,” I said under my breath as we drove past the carnage.  “No real leader though.  More like a feeding frenzy, sharks or piranha, biggest eats first.”

“Ahem!” Abby glared at me.  “You want to stop playing Wild Kingdom and help me figure out what we are doing?”

“You never did like nature shows.”

“Dan!”

“Sorry.”

“Can you please be serious for a little while?”

I raised an eyebrow at her.  “I never really have a good answer for that question.  I mean can a fish survive on land?  It can for a little while, but does it really want to?  I suppose I could…”

Her fist had already connected with my arm before I had seen it leave the steering wheel.

“Ahh shit!  Message received!” I said rubbing my bicep.  I had no doubt that there would be a bruise waiting for me before the sun came up.

“Good.  What were you mumbling about?” she asked.

“I was trying to see how they behave.  If we can figure that out we may be able to avoid them.  Or at the very least out maneuver them.”

“Makes sense,” Abby said as she swerved around another crash, this time a utility truck had gotten intimately close with a light pole.

“Then why did you hit me?” I asked.

“You yelled at me.”

“What?  When did I yell at you?” I demanded.

“When I woke up, you yelled at me before coming up the stairs,” she replied.

“Are you serious?  You’re going to bring that up now?!”

“Want me to hit you again?” Abby glanced at me.

“I’ll be good,” I said covering my arm.  I didn’t think I deserved to be held accountable for my actions while getting sized up for a zombie snack, but Abby has a mean right hook.  My arm still ached from the last one, and I thought it may be better to live to fight another day and not start an argument.

“So, are we headed to Chris’ farm?” she asked.  She cut the wheel sharply to the right to avoid another mass of wreckage.

“You were paying attention after all!” I beamed.  “And here I thought you were just humoring me.”

“I was, but you really never shut up about it.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

Abby slammed on her brakes as the sudden appearance of a Lexus SUV threatened to shear off our front end.  The Lexus shot out of a driveway, tires screaming as the occupant tried to veer away from us.  He over steered and sent the vehicle into a spin that careened into a tree.  Spinning tires spit dirt and rock upwards as the driver tried to gun the engine forward, but the car was not going anywhere.

“Should we help?” Abby’s question was tinged with uncertainty.

Before I could answer, a short middle aged man popped open the driver door.  He had a round face, grime from his balding head shining in the moonlight.  He wore old dirty jeans and a “wife beater” t-shirt, with a flannel jacket as his only protection against the cold.  He looked as though he had no business behind the wheel of such an expensive vehicle.  A point that was punctuated by the 9mm pistol he raised in our direction.

“Go!” I yelled as his first bullet punched into the road, throwing asphalt up into the air in front of us.  Our engine growled as Abby put the pedal to the floor.  Katie screamed and covered her ears as the passenger mirror exploded in a shower of glass.  We were at least eighty feet away when I heard a third report.  Sparks flew from an abandoned car in front of us.  Abby topped eighty before we could no longer hear the shots.

“Abby, slow down.  It’s okay, we’re clear,” I said, placing my hand on her shoulder.  She was shaking violently; the color had completely drained from her face.  She clenched so tightly to the wheel her knuckles had turned as white as a zombie’s eyes.  Tears streamed from her wide open eyes as she skirted around the myriad of obstacles in the road.

“Abby!” I said more forcefully.  “You are going to kill all of us if you don’t slow down!”  She veered around a smashed Mini, my head rebounding off the closed window next to me.  She looked over at me nursing my head, and it seemed as if her senses came back to her.

The engine calmed as her foot lifted from the accelerator.  The car slowed as she allowed it to roll to a stop on the side of the dark road.  She put the car in park and bolted out the door.  She sat on the front bumper, head in her hands and staring at the ground.

I followed her outside.  The area looked clear enough for the moment, but we couldn’t sit there long.  We were not far enough away from population yet.  When she looked up at me a torrent of tears erupted.

“What...the...fuck...was...that!?” she screamed into the night.

“Abby, that might be what we will be facing a lot more often.” I sat next to her, putting my good arm around her.  “People are scared.  A lot of them will do anything it takes to survive, including killing us to take what we have.  We have to be smarter than them, and be very careful from now on.”

“Can you drive?  I can’t right now,” she said as she stood and walked away.

“Yeah, I think we need to get off this road for the night anyway.  Maybe maneuvering in the daylight will be a bit easier,” I said.

I would always jump at the chance to take control of the wheel regardless of the reason.  I love her dearly, and I will pay for saying it, but Abby’s driving could make a grown man cry.  Compounded with the fact that we were running for our lives, I was sure I was only slightly safer with her driving than I was in the yard surrounded by the undead.  She is officially the only person in my family with an act of road rage named after her.  Taking the wheel was an act of self-preservation.

She stood by the passenger side, looking over the remains of the mirror.  The glass was gone, shattered into fragments laying in pieces on the road a couple miles back.  The frame hung loosely from the door, swaying back and forth suspended by a single cable.

“You shot my new car you asshole!” she shouted back down the road.

“There’s the Abby I know.  Welcome back, I missed you,” I said, smiling at her as I climbed behind the wheel.

“You want really to mess with me right now?” she glowered at me.  Right back into the frying pan I go.  I’m not even sure what I did that time, but I know I was in trouble for it.  If I still had my room, I would send myself to it.

Hope that a safe hiding spot would magically appear on the road ahead of us faded quickly.  We were only about fifteen miles from our house, and already we had driven into one of the many rural areas of Illinois.  On our right was farmland that had recently been relieved of its drought stunted bounty of corn and soy beans.  On my left, gated communities dotted the landscape.  A strange mix, but high income families ate it up.  No pun intended.  We rolled to a stop to peer inside.

The decorative iron gates did not protect those within.  The living fled in any direction that took them away from the growing multitudes of the dead.  People were beating on closed doors but found no mercy.  Screaming victims were pulled down kicking and howling in pain as the ghouls ripped into their bodies.

Every fiber in me wanted to turn in and try and rescue someone.  Just to get anyone out of that nightmare.  I looked in the mirror to see Katie staring out the window and into the nightmare.

There were children in there.  There were babies in there.

Abby touched my hand.  I had been absentmindedly rubbing the eye shaped scar.  She shook her head.  Her glistening eyes told me she knew what I was thinking, and that it was a bad idea.

She was right.  The thought of Katie being attacked because I tried to pull off some half assed rescue made my blood run with ice.  No matter how much of my soul I would leave behind, I wouldn’t put my daughter in jeopardy.  I had a duty to keep my family safe, even if it meant I had to leave another’s behind.

I felt the first bit of my humanity chipped away as we drove off, leaving those poor people to their fates.