Jessie took off
towards
Big Thunder
with Drew close behind. He stopped halfway on the sidewalk to
look back for Mee-maw. He did not hear her footsteps behind him.
His face cringed when he saw that his grandmother was not running
with them but instead standing in the doorway, the 357 Magnum
resting calmly by her side. Drew glanced towards
Big Thunder
and watch as
Jessie swooped Grace up into the big truck. Unbeknownst to the
horrors that were occurring all around her, Grace seemed to be
enjoying the excitement as she flew up into the air like a
bird.
“
Let’s go!
Now
!” Jessie demanded as
she motioned for Drew to come to the truck. “Those zombie kids are
closing in on the backyard!”
Drew ignored her pleas as he walked back up
the porch and to his grandmother. She leaned on the doorway frame
for support. Her color had changed from pale to a deep dark, dusky
color. Mee-maw struggled to keep her eyes open as she fanned Drew
away with her free hand.
“
Go. Go on now…” Mee-maw
slowly said.
“
What?
We
got to go!” Drew cried. He pulled
at Mee-maw’s arm. Upon feeling his grandmother’s flesh, Drew
immediately pulled back from the high fever that escaped from her
body like a hot oven.
“
My road. Ends here.
Drew,” Mee-maw replied in broken sentences.
“
What
are you saying? Mee-maw?” Drew hollered. The tears that
welled up in his eyes threatened his vision.
“
Sick. I am sick, son.”
Mee-maw closed her eyes and licked her lips.
At that moment, Mee-maw was the most
beautiful sight to Drew with her salty peppered hair that fell down
neatly around her face from the once neatly secured bun.
“
It’s nothing that some
cold-medicine can’t fix!” Drew begged.
He heard the all to
familiar sound of tortuous moans emerging from the backyard.
Eaters
. They were
here.
“
Mee-maw, I am
begging
you!
Please
, come on!” Drew
whined as he tugged at his grandmother’s arms again.
“
My journey ends… Here,”
Mee-maw calmly said as she pulled off the bandanna that was wrapped
around her arm. She showed the impression of teeth marks that were
permanently stamped into her skin. The smell that escaped from the
bite was putrid. It smelled like raw fish that had been rotted for
days. The gaping wound was dark purple and oozed black gooey liquid
that looked like thick tar. Mee-maw’s arm flopped down; she
grimaced at the pain of the garment rubbing up against her
skin.
“
Maryann, bit me. Twice,
when I pulled her off of Grace.”
Drew did something he had never done before.
Scream. Nothing or no one had ever broken him before. Not the
countless nights of going to bed hungry, fighting off the bullies,
being kicked off the baseball team, or arguing with his mother’s
countless boyfriends.
The world and time stopped as Drew yelled
loudly falling to his knees. His cries roared like a lion. The
sorrow that escaped from him came deep from within his soul. The
only person in the world who had ever provided an escape route for
him and his sisters had succumbed to the mysterious illness, with
no cure, that was going around.
A stinging, burning sensation to his face
brought him back to reality. He held his cheek as his grandmother
mustered up the last of her strength to pull Drew back to his feet.
Drew held his burning aching throat and wiped his wet face. He
wondered how long it had been since he had lost it. Mee-maw held
him with one hand to his shoulder. She took a deep breath.
“
I leave it to you, to get
to Washington, D.C. I have someone waiting for you and Grace. ”
Mee-maw pointed towards the backpack. “Open that when you are in a
safe place. Everything you need to survive is in there. Trust no
one….”
Mee-maw grabbed her
injured arm. Her skin color had darkened in a matter of minutes.
Her appearance resembled that of the other adults who had been
bitten by
Eaters
earlier. Mee-maw reached over and pulled her grandson into a
tight embrace, in which Drew wished could have lasted forever. She
sealed the departure with a sweet kiss on his forehead.
“
Not much time left… for
me. I can feel it. Now. GO!” Mee-maw shouted as she pushed Drew
onto the porch and closed the door.
Drew stared at the door
for what seemed like decades until the shouts from Grace and Jessie
beckoned him to come to the truck. Drew ran to
Big Thunder
and threw his backpack
with his baseball bat into the backseat. He looked over his
shoulders to make sure Grace was buckled in. Jessie went to turn on
the ignition but Drew halted her.
“
I am sorry,” Jessie
softly said as she scanned Drew’s reddened puffy face. She placed
the 12 gauge shotgun into the dash board securing it.
“
You knew?” Drew asked.
Jessie nodded her head. “Can we pray real quick before we
leave?”
“
Sure, son…” Jessie said,
shocking both Drew and Grace who widened their eyes. Grace hugged
onto her dolls and began to sniffle quietly.
“
Lord, please look over me
and my family as we begin our journey. Please protect us and
other’s as we seek safety. Lord—“
A deafening sound, which
resonated into the truck as a big boom went off inside of the
house. Drew realized the noise came from his grandmother’s 357
Magnum. Another ear-piercing sound went off shortly after the first
round was spent. The deafening silence filled the truck as they all
realized what had just happened. Jessie bowed her head at the
steering wheel and beat on it hardly. Drew came to the realization
that the two bullets in the 357 Magnum were not meant for
the
Eaters.
“
Mee-maw did what she had
to do,” Drew quietly said as he swallowed down the thick lump in
his throat.
It took all that he had in
him not to muster up another panic attack over the loss of his
grandmother and now Maryann. Jessie cranked up the roaring
Big Thunder
and sped
into the unknown.
Ole Drew Jacks, Jacks, Jacks
All dressed in red, red, red
With a wooden bat, bat, bat
All down his back, back, back
I asked him, him, him
To lend a hand, hand, hand
To rid the Eaters, Eaters, Eaters
Of all the land, land, land
Big Thunder
hauled it down the dirt road sparing nothing that
crossed its path. Drew squinted his eyes and finally saw Highway 26
come into sight. A staggering body, near the highway, fell into the
road. The person was still far off to where they could not decipher
who it was. Drew figured it was an
Eater
until the figure got up and
started jumping up and down. It seemed as if the person was trying
to get the occupants in the truck’s attention. Drew looked over at
Jessie and wondered if she would stop. Jessie pressed the
accelerator further into the floor board. She was on a mission to
kill anything that did not look human.
As they neared closer, the person must have
realized that the truck did not have any intentions on stopping.
The tiny figure took off running in the opposite direction towards
the highway. Drew recognized the big French braid that flapped in
the wind.
“
Jessie, stop! That is
Mater!” Drew pointed, “It’s Mater!”
Jessie careened her neck in closer to get a
better look. She eased her foot off of the accelerator, as they got
closer to Mater Butler. Mater had apparently changed clothes and
donned all black from head to toe. She was jumping up waving two
shiny pieces of metal that flickered underneath the gray, gloomy
sky.
“
She made it….” Jessie
said out loud to herself, “the girl actually made it.”
Jessie stopped
Big Thunder
and allowed
Mater to crawl into the back with Grace. She slid in behind Jessie
and neatly tucked her two pieces of metal into her worn duffle bag.
Drew turned around in his seat and watched as Mater took a deep
breath and closed her eyes.
“
I’m glad you made it,”
Drew said. He attempted a smile.
Mater scanned the truck and blinked her big
brown eyes. “Where is your Mee-maw? And Maryann?”
Drew shook his head. “Didn’t make it…”
Mater let out a big sigh and closed her eyes
again.
“
And your mom? Did you
find her?”
“
I was too late… My little
cousins, who had turned into
Eaters,
got to her first,” Mater
squeezed her eyes closed as she tried to relive what had happened.
“She made it as far as the yard, in front of the car, but they got
her. It was so many of them.”
Drew shivered at the
thought of losing his grandmother and sister. “I’m glad you are
okay,” he reached back to grasp Mater’s hand, “I don’t see how you
made it out. So many
Eaters
were coming from your way and made it into our
yard.”
Mater pulled out of her duffle bag two shiny
hatchets with wooden handles. It appeared as if Mater might have
tried washing them off and was in a rush because of the tiny blood
spots that were dried on the wooden handles. Mater hit the hatchets
together making a clanging sound.
“
I made it out alive
because of my babies. I would be dead without them. No doubt,”
Mater said with a half smile. She frowned again when she thought of
her mother and sister. “I only wish I had these before all of this
happened. Maybe my mother and Marley would still be
alive.”
A loud thud was heard
as
Big Thunder
rolled over a huge bump in the road.
“
What was that?” Drew said
as he turned his attention back to the road and Jessie’s erratic
driving.
“
I ran over one of those
dead looking, zombies, or
Eaters
or whatever y’all kids are calling them now,”
Jessie said biting down on her neatly manicured nail.
“
Are you sure it was
an
Eater
? And it
was dead?” Drew asked.
Jessie nonchalantly shrugged her shoulders,
“If it wasn’t dead, it is now.”
Drew bucked his eyes and
slid down in the seat. Mater produced a sly grin in the back while
Grace carried on playing with her dolls.
Big Thunder
continued to roar down
Highway 26 towards its final destination. Drew turned his head as
they passed the accident involving the coach’s white car and its
horrific scene. They finally pulled up to Airport Road where the
Fairgrounds Center was located. The road appeared desolate with no
traffic coming in or out. A huge cloud of white and black smoke
shot up high from behind the Fairgrounds building.
“
Where is everybody?” Drew
asked. “Where are the soldiers?”
Jessie continued to drive on in silence as
they neared the center. The same cars, about a hundred or so, were
still parked in the lot undisturbed. There were no lines of people
or children running about. The buses that were lined up to take the
scarred, scratched, and wounded evacuees were no longer there. The
kennels were gone.
Drew noticed a heap of
debris that appeared like rubber in the same area where the buses
were originally parked. He could not tell what the pile was because
it was still a distance away from where
Big Thunder
had entered. But he did
realize that this pile all of a sudden magically appeared out of
nowhere.
“
There is no where to
park,” Jessie said pulling over to the side of the road. She turned
off the trucks loud engine and sat for a few minutes surveying the
area. “My gut is telling me, we should leave and leave now.”
Jessie’s long eyelashes fluttered rapidly as she scanned the
area.
“
But, I promised Sue Ellen
and Tarynn that I would be here, Jessie. I could never live with
myself knowing that something happened to them because I lied,”
Drew begged.
Jessie shook her head as
if she was about to bail at any moment. She held out her hand
pointing towards the Fairgrounds Center. “
Something
is not right.
Where
are the people?
People don’t just disappear like that.”
“
Maybe they all evacuated
already?” Mater suggested.
Drew continued to study the area until he
saw something move out of the same pile that he had noticed
earlier. “What is that? Something is moving out there!”
“
Where?” Jessie and Mater
asked together in harmony.
“
Over there!” Drew
pointed, “Where the buses were lined up.
Something
is moving out of that
pile!”
They all waited eagerly and watched as a
human arm popped out of what appeared to be rubber garbage. Drew
leaned in closer as they all continued to observe another human arm
followed by two legs come out of the rubbish. Then a head with
long, thick, red hair finally emerged from the heap and struggled
slowly to break free.
“
Tarynn!” Drew
shouted.