“
Is your arm
okay?”
Mater looked down at her arm. “Yea, just a
scratch.” She brushed away at the tiny spot of blood. “I wonder if
it hurts.”
“
What?”
“
Your heart. If it keeps
getting broken over and over again…”
“
What?”
“
The
Eater’s
bites. Does it hurt if they
bite? Does death come quick? Or do you suffer?” Mater changed the
tune and looked up at Drew with big, droopy, brown eyes. She
fluttered her naturally long and curly eyelashes.
Drew reached for Mater’s arm.
“
Let’s see.”
Drew inflicted a small bite on Mater’s arm.
Mater squeaked half jokingly and punched Drew in the shoulder.
“
Oooo you hit like a
girl,” Drew joked.
The two carried on until
the
Eater
appeared around the corner of the aisle. It clamped down its
small jaws and dashed out towards Drew and Mater. Mater started
screaming and embraced for the attack covering her eyes. Drew
position himself like he was the kicker on the football team and
forcefully kicked the
Eater
sending it flying back down the grocery aisle.
Drew grabbed the terrified Mater and they ducked behind a rack of
hats.
“
Come on Mater, I need you
to pull yourself together,” Drew said trying to speak quietly. “I
need the strong wood chopping girl that I fell in love with as my
friend. Alright? We are going to get out here.”
Mater shook her head and took a deep breath.
She had liked the responsible person that Drew had become.
Drew checked his feet and legs to make sure
he was not bitten. “Did you see that? That thing almost bit
me.”
“
I keep pinching myself
hoping this is all a bad dream,” Mater said as she thought of her
sister Marley, “ I keep having breaks where I want to joke and have
fun to take my mind away from the pain….”
A creaking sound with a
hint of light came from the back end of the store where the
bathrooms were located. Drew slowly rose up to see where the sound
was coming from. He did not know if it was another
Eater
or someone coming
to rescue them. Sue Ellen popped her head around the door giving
Drew and Mater an instant sigh of relief.
“
What are you guys waiting
for? I thought you were behind me!” She motioned with her hand for
Drew and Mater to follow her. The
Eater
made a gurgling sound as if it
had fluid going down the wrong way. It made another mad dash for
Drew and Mater.
Drew got up and pulled
Mater behind him as they quickly dashed to the door. Drew pushed
Mater in front of him as he narrowly escaped the
Eater
biting into his
pants leg. Sue Ellen rapidly slammed the door shut behind the two
as the
Eater
rammed into the steel barrier. The impact made a loud sound
like a dull bell. The
Eater
continued to batter the door until the trio
walked away.
Distant muffled screams
sounded as if it were coming from back in the heart of Wiggins.
Drew shrugged the yells off because he had become accustomed it. He
stared at Sue Ellen as a tuft of hair fell into her eye. He went to
remove the hair but Mater stopped him. Mater reached from her
pocket and pulled out Beetle’s juice and gave it to Drew.
Why did Mater give the juice to me? Sue Ellen is
right there,
Drew thought. He took the
juice and handed it to Sue Ellen.
“
Here is Beetle’s juice,”
Drew said.
Drew stopped short as he noticed that Sue
Ellen was no longer paying attention to them anymore but to
something else. He watched Sue Ellen’s finger as it lifted slowly
pointing at the yellow clunker. The screams were not coming from
the town of Wiggins…. It was coming from the bus.
Little Mr. Drew
Sat on a bus
Eating his crumbs and flakes
Along came an Eater
Who sat down beside him
And scared Mr. Drew away
The bus rocked like a cradle as Drew stood
there. His heart sunk to the bottom of his feet. The bus shook and
bodies move around like scrambling bugs. As they got closer to the
bus the muffled screams became louder.
“
What is going on in
there?” Drew wondered out aloud.
Drew’s walk changed to a jog as he led the
way. Sue Ellen gripped Beetle’s juice tightly in her slippery
hands. Her nerves had finally got the best of her. Drew ran up to
the bus’s door and began to beat on it for someone to let him in.
He took out his pocket knife and pried the door open
forcefully.
“
You guys wait here,” Drew
nervously whispered.
He squeezed through the
narrow space in the bus’s door and was immediately met with
hysteria and panicked students. The familiar smell of strong copper
and human waste filled his nose instantly. The screams were bone
chilling. Drew brought his hands up to his ears for a moment to
block out the horrifying sounds of pain and anguish. The students
were on the bus eating each other, alive. Some scrambled over seats
others fell into each other. It was a mad mangled mess of mutilated
bloody bodies. Drew could not tell at first who was an
Eater
or a
human.
In the midst of the chaos, Drew noticed a
body strewn in the middle of the aisle. As he moved back, he
stepped on something hard like a miniature boulder. When Drew
looked down he noticed that it was the severed ossified head of
Mrs. Bond, the librarian.
Drew closed his eyes to
silently pray that this was not happening. The students who fled
the
Eaters
from
the school had become zombies themselves. More shouts of agony
caused his stomach muscles to clench as he fought off the urge to
vomit. Drew watched on in sheer horror as the students bit into
each other’s flesh not having a care in the world where their teeth
landed. He began to back up cautiously as to not alert the
undead
.
His
stomach began to painfully heave again as he witness chunks of skin
be devoured from necks, arms, ears, and legs. All the
Eaters
resembled each
other. Mangled, mutilated, and bloody. Some of the children were
missing eyes while others had chunks of their faces missing. The
sight was more gruesome than Drew’s scariest horror
movie.
Drew observed a slight
movement in the corner of his eye. A young boy was hiding
underneath a seat in the middle row. He reached out to Drew
anxiously with his quivering hand. He shook his head at the boy and
tried to prevent him from making the slightest of noise. Drew stood
as still as a statue to prevent any sudden movements that would
alert the
Eaters
to his presence. The boy’s face was wet with tears. He
reached out towards Drew again.
Help me
, the boy mouthed.
Drew brought his finger to his lips to quiet
the frightened boy. He was shaking so bad his own self that his arm
made jerking movements.
Be quiet,
Drew mouthed the words slowly as he calmly backed
up.
A familiar face stood out to Drew as it
slowly but steadily shuffled its way from the back of the bus
towards his direction. The body with matted black hair sniffed the
air like it smelled bacon. It staggered towards Drew gnashing its
teeth with soft groans escaping its jagged mouth. As Drew looked
closer he recognized the familiar face all to well. The black frame
broken glasses and braces….
Beetle.
He held out his arms as if
he were trying to balance himself. He continued to stumble towards
Drew. The geeky friend who had saved his life had apparently died
and turned into an
Eater.
The boy who had saved him from Mrs. Westwood’s
classroom now opened his mouth wide and was ready to devour him to
pieces. Blood seeped from Beetle’s lacerated tongue and lip
apparent from a grand mal seizure. The brackets and wires on
Beetle’s braces were pulled apart and hanging out of his mouth. The
other
Eaters
had
taken note and followed Beetle with their hands out in front them
like they were trying to guide themselves through the
dark.
Crawl under the
seats,
Drew mouthed. He motioned for the
boy to scoot underneath the seats towards him. The boy was so
terrified that he did what Drew hoped that he would not do….
panic.
“
Don’t
leave
me!” The boy
shouted.
The final judgment was
written. Beetle, who led the attack towards Drew, quickly turned
his attention to the boy. Beetle began making loud gurgling sounds
as he set his unseeing eyes on the new victim that waited for him.
The other
Eaters
became alert and joined Beetle in attacking the boy. The last
image that Drew saw of the terrified boy was that of pure bodily
torture. The boy squealed out like a pig as a flood of bites
inflicted the back of his legs. The sounds of bones crushing
accompanied by high pitch cries was enough to send Drew running to
the door.
An
Eater
grabbed Drew’s leg causing him
to fall. He could not decipher whether the zombie was a male or
female because its face had been gobbled to a bloody pulp. The
golden necklace with the ballerina slippers gave away secret to the
identity of the
Eater
…. Olivia. Drew reached back with his free leg and kicked
Olivia in the face. Olivia
caught his shoe
with in her mouth and with one bite clamped down on the rubber
sole.
“
Ugh!” Drew grumbled as he
tried to work his foot away from Olivia’s mouth. Drew knew that the
pile of mutilated mass had no intentions of letting his shoe go. He
slowly reached up and wriggled himself free from the tennis shoe.
Drew watched as Olivia continued to chomp away at his shoe. He
slowly scooted back on his hands towards the bus’s door.
Sue Ellen and Mater, together, pulled the
door apart wider for Drew to come through. Drew tumbled down the
stairs to the ground backwards and then quickly sprung to his feet.
He slammed the door shut in the nick of time against Olivia.
Olivia’s entire body resembled a pile of red tomatoes as it
slithered down the steps. It was a fact that the entire bus had
turned into a live eating machine.
The pressure was too great as saliva filled
Drew’s cavity and his stomach muscles tightened. He desperately
tried very hard to fight the gastric contents that made its way up
to the back of his burning throat. He became very dizzy as he
leaned on the front side of the bus for support and violently
vomited. Mater came over and rubbed Drew’s back as he continued to
hurl up everything that he had been trying to hold down since the
early morning.
Drew slowly walked away from the front of
the bus. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. His eyes
were red and bloodshot. The dizziness…. He felt like he would faint
at any moment. He did not know how much more he could take.
“
Are you okay?” Mater
asked as she walked with Drew.
Drew nodded his head. He stood there for a
moment staring at the bus in disbelief at what was taking place. He
would never know if there were any other survivors. Those images
would stay in his mind forever.
“
Where is your shoe?” Sue
Ellen asked as she shivered from the gruesome noises that were
taking place on the bus. Her face looked hollow and
worn.
“
Digesting in Olivia’s
stomach,” Drew hoarsely said.
“
Olivia turned too?” Mater
asked.
Drew nodded his head.
“
I guess they got Tarynn
and Beetle as well,” Sue Ellen murmured.
Drew was going to explain what happened to
Beetle but looked around and noticed that they were the only ones
outside conversing. Vehicles occasionally trickled in and turned
down the road that led to the Fairgrounds Center. Sue Ellen pointed
at a family of five walking from the rural area of Wiggins on
Highway 26. They were coming from the direction where Drew’s
grandmother lived. The father pulled two rolling suitcases behind
him while he had a boy on his back that appeared to be around three
years old. Two other children who looked no more than six and seven
trailed behind their mother quietly. It seemed as if the family had
walked a long distance.
A Humvee rolled by loaded with soldiers. It
stopped on Highway 26 before turning down the road that led to the
center. A tall lean man with black spiky hair and bright green eyes
stuck his head out of the window.
“
Hey! You kids need to get
to the Fairgrounds Center! And now! That’s an order!” The lean man
stuck his head back inside the Humvee and ordered the driver to
go.
“
You heard the man. Lets
go. I have had enough of this. I don’t know how much more I can
take,” Drew weakly said.
“
Be careful what you say,
Drew, because just when you think you can’t handle anymore…. more
death and destruction can lurk around the corner,” Sue Ellen grimly
said.
“
Point taken. I am just
ready to see my Mee-maw and sisters. I am quite sure you guys are
ready to see your family too,” Drew slowly said as he began to
walk.