When They Come (9 page)

Are we there yet?

Margie, Paulie, and Kara were tired. They had spent the last few hours both running and walking and hiding. Some cars were driving off road, shooting at anything that moved. Any distant outline of a human went down whenever the trucks went by.

“What the hell are those things?”, Kara said.

Paulie looked at the navy blue truck going by.

Margie cringed when she heard the people inside screaming victoriously and making cowboy noises.

“They look like vigilante squads. They kill anything that moves since they probably think it’s a zombie”, Paulie worriedly said.

Margie sensed the worry in his voice and clutched her gun tight.

“So, that’s good right. They kill those fuckers and step by step the world goes back to normal. It works”, Kara replied back quickly.

“Normally, that’d be fine, but did you see that last one? I don’t think one of those dead things would wave it’s arms like that and then cover it’s face when it sees a gun”, Paulie said back, now his eyes wide open, keeping a look out for that truck.

“We need to get to that mall, and fast. That truck might circle back and we could be next”, Margie said. She began to walk faster towards the mall now. It wasn’t too far anymore.

“What do you guys think happened to Tommy?”, Kara said sadly.

“Why should you care? You wanted Margie here to kill him!”, Paulie yelled back.

“It was for his own good! He was gonna die anyway! It doesn’t matter!”, Kara defended herself.

“But, still, it’s not right. He could have had a chance. You don’t know with these things!”, Paulie said back with tears in his eyes.

“I should have killed him”, Margie quietly said.

“I should have shot him right in the head”, Margie said louder

Paulie and Kara got quiet. They were both stunned.

“I could have put him out of his suffering and been done with it. God would have forgiven me. I was showing mercy to him! He had lost his father and I could have made it so that he joined him sooner, but now he’s probably just like one of those things! He’s doomed to walk the earth for…”, Margie began to rant, Kara cut her off.

“Y-You did the right thing. If it wasn’t for that distraction, we would all have a bunch of those things on our tails right now. We would not have been able to get this far”, Kara said back with sympathy in her voice.

“Tommy, Tommy was nuts already. He probably wouldn’t have done much good. Maybe even done more harm than anything else if we left him. I think Kara’s right. You did the right thing, Margie”, Paulie said back without any anger in his voice.

Margie nodded. “Then how come it doesn’t feel right?”, she whispered to herself.

“YIP YIP YIP YIIIIP”, echoed through the group. They all became paralyzed with fear.

“I GOT SOME MORE HERE, JEB!”, a deep southern accent yelled.

The blue truck sped towards the group quickly, kicking up dust behind it. The group ran as fast as they could towards the mall. It wasn’t too far now.

“Th-The noise. Won’t it attract those things?”, Kara forced out.

“Yeah, it will, we need to get to the mall, and fast!”, Tommy yelled.

Crack

Crack

“YIIIIP YIP YIP! YOU BETTER RUN, YOU SUM BITCHES!” Those words echoed as hard as the gunshots to the group.

One whizzed by Kara’s head as she dropped to the ground.

“KARA!”, Margie yelled. She stopped to pick her up.

“Come on! HURRY!”, Paulie yelled. He slowed his run to a jog so the girls could catch up to him.

Kara grabbed his hand. The crack of the gunshots rang through their minds and seemed to echo for an eternity.

Margie ran past Paulie and Kara and hid part of her body behind a tree.

“Margie, what are you doing? We need to get to that mall right now, it’s our only chance!”, Paulie yelled.

Margie ignored him and uttered a short prayer. She drew her gun and held it out with both hands.

“Lord, let my aim hold true. Protect us in our hour of need.”

She carefully lined her shot, growing more and more anxious by the second at how close the truck was getting. Margie saw the man in the passenger seat pointing his rifle at the biggest target.

He was aiming at Paulie and Kara.

With the driver in her sights, she fired, but she heard two shots.

The truck swerved around before flipping over several times, rolling a few dozen feet.

Paulie fell to the ground, screaming in agony.

The rifleman in the passenger seat managed to hit his mark.

Paulie was shot in the leg. Kara was able to catch him before he hit the ground. She carried most of his weight as they continued to limp past Margie, who was still stunned at what she had done.

Kara was right though. Many of the ghouls that were freshly killed and, ironically enough, some of the victims of the men in the truck were beginning to come to and descend on the wreckage.

Margie kept her gun on the wreckage. “Come on! We need to move!”, she yelled to Kara and Paulie. He began to get alarmed at the amount of blood he was losing; he was having a hard enough time holding in the pain.

Margie stood behind as Kara, with Paulie putting much of his weight on her, hobbled by as fast as they could. With her arms getting tired from aiming at the doors of the wrecked vehicle, she began to see a shambling hoard of the undead descend on the doors. Margie heard the screams of those trapped inside as they were torn apart. She ran away, feeling like the zombies were doing a good enough job disposing of the twisted living.

Margie succeeded in hearing the gunshots ripping through the flesh of the zombies, but failed to see one that made it out of the vehicle and ran off ,leaving his friends behind.

“Get inside, GET INSIDE!” Kara yelled to Paulie. The mall’s doors were still open. Throwing all caution to the wind, Paulie ran through the doors, not even looking at his surroundings. Taking his actions as a sort of sign of safety, the girls followed in with him.

Suddenly, the group heard the noise of glass being shattered, it sounded like a store window and something heavy falling to the ground. They heard glass being cleared and two male voices talking in the distance.

“Let’s stay away from them. Who knows if they are friends of those guys outside”, Paulie whispered while grabbing at his leg.

“I don’t know. The voices didn’t sound hostile”, Margie replied.

“Guys, we need to find something for Paulie’s leg. It just doesn’t look good”, Kara said. “We should go to Bulls-Eye. They would definitely have something for him there.”

“Alright, let’s find a directory and head over to Bulls-Eye. Maybe we’ll find something useful and maybe some change of clothes, too.”

Kara ran over to a flickering directory.

“Look, there are different stores here. There’s a gun shop around here, too! Let’s go!”, Kara panted while she spoke.

Paulie was getting pale. His injury was worse than the group had thought.

“Is there anywhere we can get some sort of first aid for Paulie? He looks real bad”, Margie said.

“Guys, don’t worry. It’s nothing. Just go find something to arm yourselves with. This place..”

He paused to breathe.

“This place, just gives me the creeps.”

Paulie coughed up blood.

“Paulie…”, Margie said.

“There’s no time. We need to find something that’ll help us”, Kara desperately said.

The group heard heavy breathing and dragging feet behind them. Margie turned her gun at where the noise came from, but nothing.

The group, with Kara carrying Paulie, proceeded into the mall.

While they scampered into the mall, looking into the shops, all destroyed and emptied out, Margie began to imagine the scene where crowds of people were running around, trampling others, breaking windows and taking everything, even if it wasn’t useful to them. She shook her head trying to clear her mind in the thought. Only when she slipped in a small pool of blood was when she was knocked right back into the thought, only she was living in it’s aftermath.

The noise they had heard before grew louder and louder and was followed by low mumbling.

“Margie, did you see anyone get out of the car?”, Kara asked with obvious fear in her voice.

“No, I saw a bunch of those
things
going into it, but that was…”

Crack

A gun shot rang into the air and Paulie got much heavier.

The air around them grew quiet and time froze.

Paulie fell off of Kara and hit the floor hard.

Margie turned back just in time to see the lone survivor of the wreck aiming his rifle at the group. She stopped breathing when she realized that he had hit his mark.

Paulie was dead.

“RUN!!”, Kara yelled and immediately dashed in a random direction.

Margie stood there, staring at Paulie’s corpse. Not even a minute ago he was talking and hanging on to his life. She found it ironic that it was another survivor, not one of those beasts, that claimed him.

Realizing where she was, she ran after Kara.

“I’ll get you all, y-you killed them. They were all I had, you dumb bitches.” The voice of the twisted survivor rang in both Margie and Kara’s ears.

They ran towards the direction of the noise they had heard earlier. The shattered glass would prove an obstacle for the crazed man.

The girls ran. The last two of a once medium-sized group, without direction through the mall, ran up a flight of stairs, seeing the broken glass.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”, the man yelled.

The girls ran through the glass, Margie taking the lead. She ran to a dark figure, wearing a hat. She outstretched her arm towards him and he extended what looked like a gun at her direction.

Unable to choke out any words Margie left her hand in the air.

Kara looked behind them and saw the man standing at the end of the hallway. He struggled with something on his shoulder. He was in extreme pain. Kara saw blood pouring out of his shoulder and onto his clothes.

The man with the hat shot his gun and the crazed survivor shot his gun into the floor. He went down.

So did the freshly resurrected corpse of Paulie, with a chunk of the man’s shoulder in his mouth.

The man with the hat had shot the zombie.

Margie jumped onto him and they landed on the floor. Kara could not take her eyes off of the dead figures.

“Jay?!”

The present danger was all but over. Margie quickly got up and the man in the hat, pushed her down and held the gun at her.

“A-Are you one of them?”, he stammered.

Margie’s breath left her. She was scared.

He pulled back the hammer.

“ANSWER ME?!”, he yelled.

Kara ran over with a strip of metal from the floor, screaming loudly, she slammed the stranger in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.

He fell to the ground again near Margie.

“KARA!”, Margie yelled.

“He was going to kill you! I can’t lose anyone else, not like this”, Kara replied.

Another man ran out of the shop with a shotgun in his hand.

“Jason?! Shit!” He held the gun at the two girls.

“Who-Who did this?!”, he yelled.

“I-I’m sorry”, Margie said quietly.

He pointed the gun at her and motioned the girls to stand together. He went over to his friend and nudged him with his foot.

The man on the floor stirred a little.

“Get out of here! The both of you! Just…just go!”, he yelled.

Kara and Margie ran off.

“I’m sorry”, Margie said again.

He lowered the gun and the girls, more assured of their safety, ran off down the stairs.

“Where do we go now?”, Kara said.

“I don’t know. Just, out of here”, Margie replied.

Dave

Dave stood over Jason’s body, looking around to make sure any danger was gone. He walked over to the man’s body. He kicked the gun away.