The Dead Don't Bleed: Part 1, The Outbreak (25 page)

"If you can handle her by yourself, I'm going to help Steve make it to my living room." Garrett called out to Calvin who replied with a thumbs up as he reached into the truck to scoop Kimberly up in both arms.

Garrett reached Steve's side and as he bent over to help him up he lifted his face towards Garrett and opened his mouth to try and speak. Garrett's knees went weak when the smell hit him, he wasn't sure if it was coming directly from Steve's open mouth or just a combination of something on his breath and the surrounding piles of putrid vomit in the nearby grass and all across the sidewalk. Garrett was no stranger to the smells associated with rotting flesh and decomposition, what he was confronted with at that moment was the very same odor. If he still had his doubts about a zombie causing virus the realization of what was happening to his neighbor erased them from his mind. The virus coursing through his body must have been hard at work at breaking down his internal organs, the blood and clots of shit he had been throwing up were not a result of his last meal, it was because his body was slowly dying from the inside out. The smell of rot coming from the bile surrounding him and also from his puke stained mouth told Garrett all he needed to know to convince him of Steve's fate. He doubted there was anything any medical facility could do to save him at this point, but he also couldn't just leave the man out there on the edge of the parking lot to die and then simply resurrect again a short time later as a zombie just like the rest of his family. Grabbing him by the fleshy part of his arm Garrett helped Steve to his feet, he had to keep his head turned away from the man to avoid choking on the noxious odor pouring from his mouth as he helped him stagger the short distance up the sidewalk and to the open front door of his house.

Easing Steve gently down on the floor next to the love seat in his living room, Garrett placed a pillow behind his head and then darted off to his kitchen to grab a mop bucket and some towels, the last thing he wanted was for that noxious smelling rancid puke to end up spewed all over his carpeting and furniture. Calvin followed along shortly behind him carrying Kimberly and he eased her gently down onto the couch and covered her lower body with a throw blanket. Calvin ran back out to the truck and grabbed several bags out of the back of the crew cab and hauled
them over to just inside Garrett's front doorway. Shutting and locking the front door, both men then went from room to room to ensure all doors and windows were locked, meeting once again in the kitchen once they were done.

"Shit!" Garrett exclaimed as he noticed the time on
the digital readout from his microwave, "late for work on the first day, I don't think that going to look good.”

The first gun shots outside her bedroom window came a little after four in the morning. Miranda had instinctively rolled off her bed and laid on the ground covering her head with her hands and shivering in terror for over an hour as shot after shot had rung out followed by screams of terror and cries of pain. When she was reasonably sure that the shooting was moving further away from her apartment she gathered up the courage to slither across the bedroom on her belly and make a desperate grab for her cell phone on top of her dresser. Six calls to 911 all with the same results, an automated recording telling her that all lines were busy. She had tried calling Mrs. Carpenter and her husband but their line just rang and rang without so much as going to voice mail or an answering machine picking up. The only other numbers she had in her phone were for friends and other people back in and around Philly, no one that could do a thing for her in this situation.

With every passing minute Miranda was sure that at any second she would hear the approaching sirens and see the reflections of flashing emergency lights as police and ambulances rushed to the scene around her apartment complex. As the sun started coming up and she had yet to hear the first signs of responders and there had been no further shooting or yelling for over an hour she realized that she was going to have to take a look outside and see what was happening. She had no idea if it would be safe to remain alone in her apartment like this, it was possible that the police had even already arrived but had done so silently and may even now be searching for residents like herself who had sought shelter from the gunfire.

Miranda tentatively got to her feet, taking special care to keep out of sight of the bedroom window, even with the shades drawn she didn't want to risk her shadow possibly being seen from the outside. Keeping close to the wall, she worked her way out of the bedroom and into the hallway where she felt more confident about moving quicker until she reached the living room. The couch was pressed up to the wall just under the window and she was able to hide behind the tall cushions while peaking from the edge of the window curtain into the yard out front. Easing the curtain slowly aside and only lifting her head just high enough to see over the couch, she could see nothing unusual off to the left of her apartment. She could see no one moving or anything that looked out of order, but she could also see almost all the way to the manager’s office across the parking lot on that side and there was certainly no sign of any police presence. It was when she moved the curtain further to the side to continue looking across the front of her building that she started to see the first signs of something amiss. She spotted a figure laying prone on the ground, flat on their belly with their legs and arms splayed out to their sides, it was a man and from the thinning and gray hair that she could see on the back of his head she thought he must be on the older side. A little closer to the building she could just make out a bare leg of another person who must have also been down on the ground, she could only see as far as the calf before the rest of the body disappeared from sight but she was reasonably certain from the smoothness and lack of hair of the leg that it was most likely a younger female. Further away and towards the edge of the parking lot on that side of the building there was a strip of grass that dipped down out of sight before reaching the row of parked cars. Along the top and rim of the dip she spotted four more people sprawled out on the ground and unmoving, she couldn't make out many details from her window, but one man was shirtless and she could see that his chest was soaked in blood and she was pretty sure he was dead from the odd angle that his body was contorted into. Out in the parking lot itself beyond that group of bodies she saw the first signs of life, eight people were walking around in between the parked cars and out into the street. Something about them didn't seem right though, they appeared to be wandering aimlessly and without any obvious direction or purpose. As she watched them she started to think that they looked like they might be sick or injured, the possibility of shock also occurred to her. She had heard of cases where witnesses to traumatic events could find themselves in a state of shock where they lost touch with the reality around them for a time. Not knowing any of her neighbors by sight, she wasn't sure if they were residents in her own building, the nearby buildings or from somewhere else. One thing that she was certain of was that people were clearly hurt and in need of assistance and there was no sign that any help was on the way. She tried her cell phone again with the emergency line and still got only the recording tell her that the lines were all busy and to try again later.

Something new caught her attention, floating down from the sky towards the parking lot she saw a sparkling rain of ash that had just filtered into view from the edge of her building. It looked like black confetti but with glowing and shimmering edges. The puff of grey smoke that followed behind the confetti suddenly told the story, there was a fire somewhere along the far end of her building. The smoke and ash she was seeing was raining down from a point
too high to have come from a grill or something burning near ground level. A slight wind had picked up outside and was now pushing the smoke back down the row of apartments and towards her window, she was starting to pick up the thick scent of melted paint and scorched wood. Unlike the pleasing and calming smell of wood burning in a crackling camp fire, this had the unpleasant tinge of burnt plastics, scorched carpet and a heavier metallic smell mixed in with it. She realized that the smell was not just coming to her from the window in her living room. She was sure that she was also detecting the smells from a point further into her own apartment, it was coming in through the ventilation system as well as seeping in from the cracks around her front door. She felt a renewed sense of panic start to take hold of her as she realized that at least one or more of the units in her building were on fire. In a building like hers it would take no time at all for an out of control fire to spread from one end to the other, right on cue she started hearing the telltale buzzing of a fire alarm in one of the adjoining apartments. It sounded like it might be coming from the apartment just on the other side of the wall from her and if that was the case then there was a good chance she didn't have more than a few minutes to escape before it jumped to her own home.

She looked back to the people in the parking lot, from their vantage point they should be able to
easily see the blaze in her building, the smoke was much thicker and darker between her window and the outside now and burning ash and pieces of debris were raining down on a regular basis. Some of the debris was falling in the path of the people walking around in the lot and from what Miranda could see they seemed almost oblivious to it. None of them was showing any more than a passing interest in the burning building. They didn't seem to be paying attention to anything at all in particular they just continued to follow meaningless patterns around the parked cars and through the open lot. From Miranda's point of view they just looked dazed and confused but completely uninterested in the burning apartment building on a few feet away from them.

A distressed scream for help came from a point just out of her view and up closer to the far end of her building, she moved the curtains a little further to the side and stretched her neck as far as she could to see if she could spot the source of the cries. She was not the only one attracted to the sounds, everyone in the parking lot had now directed their attention back up towards the building. She saw two new figures emerging from the smoke, a middle aged woman was struggling towards the parking lot while half dragging along a man who was covered in black soot as if she had just dragged him out of a burning apartment. The man appeared to be conscious but in serious pain, his right leg was flopping uselessly along beside him and looked as though it had suffered severe burns. The woman was yelling out for help and Miranda could hear her as she cried that others were still trapped inside burning apartments. She thought that the sudden appearanc
e of this woman dragging a burn victim had finally pushed the people in the parking lot into action. As a single unit they all turned towards the woman and started rushing up the sidewalk and onto the grass in her direction. Miranda could not see their faces as they were sprinting towards the woman, presumably to help her with the injured man she has half carrying, but something about the expression on that woman's face suddenly told her that she didn’t perceive them as coming to her aid. Instead of looking relieved that help was coming, her face turned into a mask of terror. She started to scream again and this time Miranda was sure that it was a scream of fear as she yelled at her rescuers to stop and leave her alone. Even her injured charge was now holding out one blackened and burnt arm as he tried to wave off their would-be saviors. The group was now just reaching the patch of grass at the end of the sidewalk, and were only a couple yards short of reaching the woman and man when she suddenly shoved the injured man free of her shoulder and let him fall roughly to the ground at her feet. Still screaming for help, she turned back towards the burning building and started running, but she only made it three or four steps. In a flash, they were on her, but instead of trying to help, they brutally knocked her to the ground like football players mobbing a quarterback. Through the swirling smoke and growing haze of heated air, Miranda watched as not only did most of the group pounce on the woman as soon as she hit the ground, but two of their numbers broke off from the pack and slammed themselves down on top of the injured man as he was desperately trying to crawl away from the them while throwing his blackened arms in the air in a frantic effort to ward them off.

Miranda could only sit opened mouth and in utter shock as she watched the people she had only moments early thought for sure had been
guardian angels suddenly turn on the pair of innocent victims. The smoke was growing thicker between her and the ongoing attack but she could see just enough to know that the mob didn't stop at merely knocking the woman down and jumping all over her, she could see rapid movements and shadows that told her they were working her over with everything they had. She had a better view of the two people who had jumped on the injured man and at that moment she wished that the smoke had been thicker to prevent her from seeing it. One man had him in a bear hug around his lower back and was pressing his face into his belly while his teeth were gnashing and struggling to tear away the tattered remnants of the guy’s burnt shirt. In one single motion he smacked his face hard against the soft midsection and tore free a strip of fleshy fat leaving behind a clearly visible pink tract of raw and bloodied meat across the exposed belly. There was no mistaking the intent of this attack, the man holding onto his belly was fully vested in eating into his abdomen. It was like watching a cannibalistic scene in a low budget horror film, but this was live and in person and actually happening only several dozen yards away from her living room window. As if the belly attack wasn't bad enough, the second man had him pinned down by laying across his chest from left to right, this attacker prevented Miranda from seeing the face of his victim and Miranda was guiltily grateful for that. From the piercing cries of pain she could hear from the poor soul, she did not think she could stomach seeing the agony he must be experiencing etched across his face. Even without seeing his face what she could see was more than enough to send shivers of fear running down her spine, the man lying across his chest had a firm hold on his right forearm and was holding it tight to the ground. The attack had only started maybe ten seconds earlier but already this man was pressing his face back towards the injured mans trapped hand and as she watched he proceeded to bite off a third finger, the other two missing digits having already been swallowed in a few hasty bites. The screams of pain coming from the man as he was being devoured by his attackers were overshadowed only by the higher pitched cries of agony coming from a little further away as the woman who had rescued him was dealing with a similar fate. The worst part of the entire scene was when her screams reached a new pitch of terror and then suddenly just stopped all together. As ferocious as the attack on the man was, she was pretty sure she understood what the sudden silence from the woman signified.

She had seen enough of the gruesome encounter and slunk down into the couch pulling her knees up to her chest into as tight a ball as she could as the suffering cries of the man with only s
even fingers continued to echo inside her head. Miranda knew she couldn't let the fear consume her as it had when she had heard gun shots earlier, the smell and building smoke of the spreading flames told her that she didn't have much time, she had to get out of her apartment in the next few minutes before she was trapped. A loud splintering crash punctuated that thought as a portion of the building further down from her apartment must have collapsed. Smoke billowed even thicker into her living room immediately following that and she could now hear the crackling of flames nearby. The temperature inside the apartment was quickly rising along with the accumulating smoke and when Miranda looked at the wall that separated her unit from the next, she saw that the paint was noticeably peeling from the building heat she knew that she was out of time, it was now or never.

The air inside her apartment was already growing thick and harder to breathe, when she stood from the couch she noticed that it was also much more difficult to see as well. Miranda dropped to her knees and crawled across the carpet to the small foyer by the front door. She felt the door knob for a moment and was relieved that it was still cool to the touch, at least the fire had not yet reached that side of her apartment yet. She almost laughed out loud as that thought crossed her mind, her apartment, she hadn't been inside the door more than twenty four hours and still had not had a single utility turned on in her own name and she was already leaving it behind to be consumed by a raging fire. After what she had witnessed going on just outside of her building she felt guilty as she found herself being thankful that it was still the weekend and Mrs. Carpenter would not have been able to deposit her down payments on the place
yet.