“I was in the Army. So we got military training if we need it.” Bobby didn’t want to think about how they may have to use their military training, but Troy was right. They have heard gunshots and screaming so far. They had also seen an enormous building go down like a game of Jenga right in front of their eyes. Neither one of them knew what to expect next, but they did know sitting in the dirt, not doing anything, would be the worst idea. Another loud explosion rang through the air; the shockwave blew past Troy and Bobby, knocking them down, and slammed the doors shut on the trailer. They quickly decided to go back in the trailer where they knew it to be safer until they could figure out exactly what they were going to do.
“We’ve got to figure out something,” said Troy.
“I know. Let’s just stay in here for awhile until we can figure it out.”
“You know,” said Troy, “staying on the move is what we learned in the Army.”
“That may be so, but having some kind of a plan is more logical than running around like a chicken with your head cut off.”
“Point taken.”
THE STREETS OF FRANKLIN
Sheriff Johnson lay face down in the middle of Finn Street outside of a grocery store in Franklin, Kentucky. The blood had pooled around his body and his uniform shirt was torn to shreds as though a pack of wolves had attacked him. His head lay turned facing the grocery store and his eyes were bulged out giving a dreadful look as though he were wishing for someone to help him. The skin on his face was ripped apart and chunks of flesh were missing from his cheeks. His teeth were visible through the sides of his face. His breathing had slowed down to near stopping point as small blood filled bubbles blew in and out of his mouth.
A loud gunshot echoed through the air as a bullet ricocheted off the pavement about three feet from the Sheriff’s head. Then another loud shot. This time with the shot a body fell next to the Sheriff with blood oozing from its neck. The body belonged to Doctor Greenburg, Franklin’s best orthodontist. The doctor’s body shook vigorously, stiffened as hard as a log, and then fell limp. The oozing blood had stopped.
Sergeant Anderson ran up to the Sheriff with his gun pointed at the doctor. He knows the doctor is dead, having hit him with a direct hit to the neck, but the sergeant is not taking any chances. Especially, after watching the doctor chew away at an arm that looked like it came from a small boy. He kept his gun pointed straight at the doctor’s head as he knelt down next to Sheriff Johnson.
“Glen?” Sergeant Anderson shook the Sheriff’s shoulder. “Glen?” The Sheriff didn’t move. He had died with his eyes open. Sergeant Anderson shook his head and looked at the doctor then looked around, making sure no one else was coming in for the attack. “What the fuck is going on?” he yelled.
A low growling noise came from behind the Sergeant. He turned quickly and flung his gun around straight in front of his body, ready to fire. A woman, who could not have been more the twenty, stood about ten feet away. Blood dripped from her mouth and her lips were pulled back like a dog ready to go in for the bite. Her blouse had torn which exposing her breast. She growled louder and dipped her chin down, starring at the Sergeant as he knelt on one knee with his .45 pointed at her.
“Honey,” he said. His voice trembled and his hand shook. “You just back on up now and we won’t have any problems.” Sergeant Anderson had never shot a woman before, especially one with her breasts hanging out and blood dripping down her face. Hell, he had never shot a doctor before either. The only people he ever had to put a bullet in were Thomas and Andy Winston when he pulled them over. He hadn’t known they were on the run after knocking over a couple liquor stores. The two brothers planned to shoot him, but Sergeant Anderson saw it coming and was faster on the draw. He had emptied his .45 between the two of them.
The woman growled louder and louder. She stooped down and leaped toward the Sergeant. He squeezed the trigger and emptied the rest of his clip into her chest. She fell forward onto him and he pushed her away to the ground. He looked down at his shirt and grimaced at the sight of his gray uniform shirt now turned to blood red. She died before her body settled against the warm pavement. Sergeant Anderson changed the clip in his .45 and jumped to his feet. He raised his forearm and wiped away the blood splatter from his face, then ran back to his patrol car. He opened the door and got in a quick as he could, slammed the door shut and locked it. He tried to catch his breath as he held on to the steering wheel with his gun still in his hand. A shadowy figure appeared in his right eye. He jerked his head to the right and watched as a grocery store clerk ran up to his passenger side window and started beating on the glass.
“Help me!” screamed the grocery store clerk. “God please help me!” He pounded his fists on the window. “They’re trying to get me. Please help me.”
Sergeant Anderson starred in horror at the clerk’s meaty cheek hanging down from his jaw, exposing his teeth. The clerk’s neck bled profusely and droplets spattered against the patrol car’s window the more he beat on it. Sergeant Anderson pulled the hammer back on his .45 and made sure a bullet rested in the chamber. He pointed his gun at the clerk and rolled his window down. “Get down,” yelled the Sergeant as he slowly squeezed the trigger.
The grocery store clerk’s eyes opened wide as he looked down the barrel of the .45 then followed the Sergeant’s orders and ducked. Behind the clerk, a screaming old man, who must have been more than seventy, ran at the clerk with his mouth wide open and his lips curled above his teeth, ready to chomp down on where ever he could on the clerk. Sergeant Anderson pulled the trigger and sent a bullet through the old man’s face and out of the back of his head. Brain matter and shards of skull exploded from the old man’s head and landed on the pavement behind him as he fell forward, landing on the clerk. The clerk screamed as the old man’s body landed on him and rolled off to the ground with a thud.
Sergeant Anderson wasted no time starting the patrol car. He wasn’t thinking about the three people he had just killed, one of them being one he knew quite well. His only thought was getting the hell out of Dodge.
At around nine o’clock in the morning when Bobby and Pete were flying into Tennessee on their way to Nashville for their crash landing, Sergeant Anderson was on his way to pick up Sheriff Johnson so they could enjoy a hot cup of coffee at the Coffee House down the street from the Sheriff’s Department. The plan was to return to the Miller farm and meet with Sampson to discuss keeping the news reporters out of the way and away from the farm. The Sergeant and the Sheriff did get their coffee, but never got the chance to taste it when the entire town seemed to unravel and turn into a huge flesh eating festival. Sheriff Johnson ended up in the middle of Finn Street to approach three teenagers who seemed to be wondering down the street aimlessly and obviously having ditched school. They attacked him, one going for the throat, one for his face, and the other wherever he could latch onto, which just happened to be the Sheriff’s belly hanging over his belt. The Sheriff’s gut blocked him from pulling his gun quick enough to take a shot at the youths. This happened while Sergeant Anderson was in the restroom of the Coffee House taking a leak. By the time Sergeant Anderson reached the parking lot, Sheriff Johnson was on the ground in a pool of his own blood and the teenagers were gone. After fighting off a strange attacker who tried to bite his forearm, Sergeant Anderson knocked the person out and pulled his gun to attend to the Sheriff as Doctor Greenburg neared the body.
The patrol car’s engine revved to life and droplets of water spat out of the exhaust pipe when Sergeant Anderson fired it up. He threw it into drive and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. He couldn’t stay at the crime scene where the Sheriff lay dead in the middle of the road. The Sheriff’s deputies would have to attend to that mess.
He grabbed the radio mike and called for Trooper Daniels who apparently thought this would be the best time not to answer the Sergeant’s calls. Sergeant Anderson has bigger issues to worry about now without backup and there are no responses from emergency services either. It’s too dangerous to get back out of the patrol car and find the nearest telephone considering the chaos happening outside of his car is more than any man with common sense would want to get involved in. Sergeant Anderson tried multiple times to dial 911 on his cell phone, but he kept getting a recorded message telling him that all network services are currently down. His top priority would be to get back to Post 31 and find out why shit seemed to hit the fan by the bucket full.
Mike Sampson pulled the curtain slightly back and peeked through the window of his hotel room on the second floor of the Stay Inn. That’s when he wished the USDA would have let him carry a gun for the job. He thought to himself that if he had a weapon, any weapon, preferably a .40 caliber or larger, that he could make it his car and get away from the craziness that seemed to unfold out of nowhere around the restaurants and businesses surrounding the hotel.
“I got to get the fuck out of here,” said Sampson to himself.
Sampson pulled the curtain closed and walked over to the room phone and picked it up. Just as he moved his fingers down to dial 911, he realized the phone emitted a busy signal that vibrated through his ears. He slammed the phone down and went back to the window. He slowly pulled the curtain back far enough to catch a peak outside again. A sick feeling came to his stomach, but he wouldn’t allow himself to throw up. It’s not in his nature. He watched as a man who was wearing a Kentucky Wildcats hoodie and a woman who looked to be in her forties tackled another man who looked as though he was running from the other two. They pulled the man to the ground and began biting him, well, more like eating him. They ripped shreds of flesh from the man’s face and the back of his neck as he squirmed on the ground screaming. Sampson watched the blood spurt from the man’s neck when the woman took a bite and ripped away at his jugular vein. About thirty seconds later the man on the ground stopped moving completely, but the man with the hoodie and the old woman continued to chew away at their breakfast. It had definitely turned into some whacked out death scene from a horror movie.
Sampson looked up and across the street toward a burger joint where he noticed a similar act of violence going on, except it were two women wearing business suits attacking another woman. They must have been together eating breakfast before heading to work when everything went haywire. Sampson looked to his right at the sound of cars crashing into each other on the main road. He watched as people got out of their cars and started attacking each other, biting, ripping away flesh, and ultimately killing each other. Sampson felt for a moment as if he were in the middle of a movie being filmed, except there were no cameras, and no one yelling, “cut.” He looked down at the man lying in the parking lot of the hotel. The man with the hoodie and the old woman were gone.
A loud bang against the hotel room door made Sampson jump back from the curtain. He stepped back and nearly fell over the edge of the bed. Something hit the door again, this time making it rattle on its hinges and causing the windowpane to shake. Sampson didn’t know what to expect on the other side of the door or how quickly it would be coming in to get him, but he knew one thing. He knew he was not about to let some crazy cannibal-looking son of a bitch come in and try to eat him. He planted his feet and raised his fists, ready to fight whoever (or whatever) was about to come through the door and get him.
Another loud bang against the door ripped the lock apart and sent the door flinging against the wall, sending the doorknob through the drywall behind it. The man with the Wildcats hoodie rushed in at Sampson. Blood dripped from his mouth and ran down the front of his hoodie. The Wildcat on the front looked like a picture perfect resemblance of the man with his mouth open and teeth showing, and hands raised, ready to latch onto Sampson.
“Fuck you,” yelled Sampson as he sprung forward and rushed at the Wildcat man. He went head first into the man’s chest and pushed him back like a defensive lineman pushing back to stop a two-point conversion that would win the game. He sent the man hurdling over the railing on the second floor, Sampson screaming and the man growling. The man fell headfirst onto the hood of a Volvo and crushed his skull. Sampson heard the breaking of the man’s neck upon impact. “Take that motherfucker.” Sampson let out an evil laugh of victory.
That was it for Sampson. The fear that he didn’t want to admit of having left his body at that moment. He wasn’t going to wait any longer for Sheriff Johnson and Sergeant Anderson to show up. For all he knew, they were dead or in the same situation he was just in. He ran back inside, grabbed his car keys, and ran out the door. He stopped in his tracks half way down the stairs when he remembered he had left his Stetson sitting on the bed. He turned back to retrieve it. He didn’t give a damn if it was the end of the world happening in Franklin, Kentucky, he wasn’t going without his Stetson.
Screaming and sounds of busting glass and crunching metal from cars crashing and people running from others, trying to escape the madness, filled Sampson’s head as he ran to his car. He stopped just before opening the door when he noticed a Simpson County deputy stop his car in the middle of the street. Sampson’s first reaction was thank goodness somebody’s here to get control of this situation. That thought quickly left his mind as he watched the deputy draw his gun and start shooting at the screaming people that went by. The deputy managed to hit a man wearing one of those donut chain uniform shirts. He put his gun back in the holster and walked over the donut shirt guy, who lay on the ground holding his side where the bullet had gone through. The guy screamed as the deputy knelt down and stuck his finger in the wound, then opened his mouth wide, showing his teeth. He clamped down on the man’s nose and ripped it off with one bite. Sampson stood watching, frozen and not believing what he was seeing with his own eyes as the deputy took another bite out of the guy’s neck. The man’s screams quieted down to a mere whimper, then to nothing at all. The deputy had killed the man. Sampson gained control of himself when the deputy noticed him watching. He got in the car just in time before the deputy could pull his gun and take a shot at him. He started the engine, threw it in reverse, and made the decision the deputy’s services were no longer needed in Simpson County. The deputy managed to get off one shot, which hit the taillight of Sampson’s car before Sampson mowed him down and ran over his head with the rear wheel, popping it like blood filled water balloon. When he was satisfied the deputy was as dead as he could make him by continuing to back up until the front wheel went over the flattened mess, popping the one remaining eyeball that the rear wheel had failed to squish, he drove away as fast as he could down the street.