Authors: Jason Sanchez
Jason ran over and stepped on his head, smashing it into the floor.
Over and over again he stepped on the undead’s head until it stopped trying to turn his friend into one of it’s own.
Dave dragged himself away from it’s now loosened grip and hugged his knees. Still on the floor, he looked at it and began to breathe heavily. A few tears rolled down his cheek.
“Jay, what was that? Did I just almost..”
“No! We killed it, you’re fine. We’re both fine!”, Jason yelled.
They couldn’t hide their fear anymore. The lives they had taken for granted and the safety they relied on was all but gone. Jason held in tears as hard as he could. He looked outside as he walked to close the door. He noticed three limping figures a few blocks away. They were drawn to the safety lamps of the house.
The irony was not lost on him.
He dragged the ghoul out by its legs into the middle of the street and quietly made his way back into the house and closed the door quietly and locked it.
Dave made sure to lock the other doors and draw the curtains.
Jason was in the kitchen, going through the cupboards. His eyes were red. Dave knew his friend. There was fear written all over his face.
“Hey man, now what?”, he asked quietly.
Jason put a can of kidney beans on the table and squeezed it hard with one hand.
“I don’t know man. I just, I don’t know.” Jason couldn’t hold it back anymore, he cried softly a little bit.
“Hey, Jay, thanks, man. If you weren’t there, I don’t know man, they would have taken me to one of those hospitals and you know.”
“No, we’re fine man, and that’s what counts. I wouldn’t let them do that to you.” He looked up and smiled, eyes still red, “you’re welcome though, dude.”
They both began to compose themselves and sat down on the couch. The steady tone was just background noise now, and it was also the only night in the house.
“We can’t stay here forever. We don’t have enough food and I saw a few of those things wandering around. Should we head to the evacuation site?”
“I don’t know, Jay. I’m kind of scared to go outside with those things. Maybe we should wait until the sun comes up first before thinking of anything.”
Jason got up and looked out the window. One of the limping figures was banging on a door several houses down. Dave came over to look. The ghoul seems to have caught some movement and walked over to the window of the house. It smacked the window a few times before it gave in. The crash echoed through Jason and Dave’s bodies and they watched the creature climb inside.
A woman screamed. She cried. The screams were nothing short of pure terror. She managed to run outside.
The friends watched her run for her life, screaming for help. She was barefoot and her feet were already bleeding from the running on the hard pavement.
“PLEASE! SOMEBODY!!” Her desperate cries fell on deaf ears.
The ghoul limped after her. She ran away from it. The friends were sure to keep a low profile. She banged on every door she passed.
“LET ME IN! PLEASE!! IT’S GOING TO KILL ME!” They couldn’t make out the last few words of her plea. They were drowned out in sobs.
“This isn’t good”, Jason said quietly.
“Do we let her in? We should help her.”
“No! Look how that thing is following her, if we let her in here, then we have to deal with that.”
“But.”
“But nothing, man, I don’t want to deal with that thing. Oh shit, look!”
Other ghouls that were invisible in the shadows made themselves known. The woman’s screams were a beacon to them.
“Oh shit man, I didn’t even see those earlier”, Jason said.
The woman gasped and ran back, she tripped and fell down, she tried to crawl away. Dave pointed at what it was. Three more of the undead were in front of her. They were mere feet away, arms extended and limping quickly to their meal. They even had their mouths open revealing missing tongues and teeth.
She was slowed down, she crawled back into the original beast, the one that had broken her window. He fell on top of her and began to claw at her face and torso.
She screamed for help in vain. She screamed for her life. The other monsters caught up and enjoyed their meal. Her screams turned into cries of pain. They chewed meat off of her legs, making them all but useless. One of the monsters tore off a chunk of her breast with it’s jaws. The original began to bite pieces off her face.
Her arms were flailing around as hard as they could. Eventually, they began to slow down and were merely twitching at this point. Her cries turned into gurgles and then became quiet.
The sound of the monsters feeding shook the friends.
This was real.
This was happening.
“So what happens now?”, Jason asked.
“I-I, cant, I can’t”, Dave couldn’t speak.
They looked out the window at the destroyed woman. There were still chunks of her remaining. She had one eye left and it was looking right at the window, right at them.
“Dave, could we have saved her?”
“No, man, you were right. We would have brought that one and it’s friends that we didn’t see.”
“I wish, I wish I listened to you. Maybe we could have done something, you know?”
“Jay, we can’t stay here much longer. We need to leave.”
Looking out the window again, the woman’s corpse began to make gurgling noises. Her arms moved and the friends watched her try to stand up. Her heavily chewed legs snapped under her weight and she fell to the ground. She began to crawl, dragging her body, looking for a meal of her own.
Other ghouls began to appear around the neighborhood. Her cries had alerted many, many more. It wouldn’t be long until the sun came up.
“Find directions for the evacuation site, Dave. Write down the place. We need to get out of here.”
Dave nodded and went to the TV to get the information.
“We can kill these things, right?”
A voice sounded off on the TV. The broadcast ended. It looked to be a press conference. An African American man in a white doctor’s robe, stained with dried blood, stood at a podium. He looked among the reporters who were all standing and shouting questions at him.
A young female reporter with messy, short blonde hair caught his attention.
“Doctor! What are these things?”
“We don’t know.”
A young man with black hair wearing a blue blazer asked.
“Doctor, we have received reports that these people are coming back after being pronounced dead. Is this true?”
“Yes.”
He quickly followed up.
“What is the cause of this?”
“We have had patients who after coming into contact with the infected, whether it be through bites or any other contact with the mucous membrane, or even killed by one of these…things, they become another.”
An older, seasoned reporter asked, with a hint of desperation in his voice,
“Is there a cure or-or treatment?”
“We don’t know.”
The older reporter quickly asked another.
“Is there a way to stop them? Will this illness pass?”
The doctor paused and took a deep breath. He knew what reactions were coming.
“You kill them. You destroy the brain, smash it, shoot it. Don’t try to talk to them. THEY ARE NOT HUMAN! THEY TOOK MY daughter.”
He grew silent and pensive.
“They took her away from me. She was one of them.”
The reporters grew angry. Some of them stood in their chairs holding their faces in their hands. Some of them visibly wept. Other shouted about ethics and inhumane treatment.
“Ethics?! ETHICS? You talk to me about mercy for these-these, ABOMINATIONS?”
The doctor grew angry.
“You talk to me about ethics, only after you’ve seen your colleagues get torn apart by them. You talk to me about ethics after you watched your co-workers and friends suffer and die and then turn into one of these things. You talk to me about ethics after you watch everything you have literally eaten in front of you!”
The doctor recalled his daughter’s screams.
He looked down at the floor.
“No more questions.”
The reporters yelled for more information.
“You destroy…the brain? Like smash it? There’s hope, Dave! We can kill these things!”
“Doctor’s orders.”, Dave replied, gaining his composure back. “But, you first.”
The sun was rising. The streets were lighting up. The blanket of darkness hid a few more of the undead.
“Dave, we really need to get out of here.”
“I have an idea!” Dave lit up and ran off upstairs.
Jason waited and tried to think. He opened his wallet and looked through his items. It was a habit he formed to offset nervousness.
“$60, a bank card, a sandwich club card, driver’s license, and a picture of Jesus. We’re really going to need your help on this one”, Jason said softly while looking at the picture.
Dave came back with a duffle bag he’d quickly put together.
“Dude, check it out! Remember when I worked at that summer camp a few years back? Check this out!”
Dave opened the bag and emptied the contents out on the couch. A few wooden baseball bats fell out, a hockey stick, some baseballs, and a catcher’s mitt fell out.
“We could totally use this, Jay!”
“Alright, we need to gather some supplies though. Some food and water, you know things like that. The evacuation site is a ways away. Who’s driving?”
Dave picked up a bat and swung it around a little.
“Well, Jay, I don’t have a license, I lost it at this bar one time and..”
“Seriously? Fine, give me the keys.”
Jason picked up a bat. It had a solid and heavy feel. It was red on the upper half and left naturally colored on the bottom half. It read “big stick” near the tip.
“Hey man, look!”, Jason pointed to the wording. “How fitting right?” He laughed.
“Freud would have a field day with you.” Dave replied.
“Dude, shut up. Give me the keys and let’s go.”
They both laughed a little bit. It felt good. Carrying the bats and the baseballs that Dave decided to leave inside of it, they left the house for the last time.
They quietly exited and made their way to Dave’s blue sedan.
“Dude, this is the last time you’ll probably see your house in a long time. We’ll get through this and things will be the same again in no time.”
“I’m ready, Jay.”
Jason started the car. It aroused the attention of the nearby ghouls who limped towards the now speeding off car.
“We need to stock up. We should probably make a few stops.” Jason said.
“Like where?”
“I was thinking…a mall?”
“What?! No!”
“Oh come on man. We could get some cool shit there, stock up on some food…”
Dave’s stomach rumbled a bit
“Oh shit man, I forgot to eat!”
“Me too, so mall it is!”
Jason pushed the gas pedal down and zoomed past the blinking red lights. Dave’s heart sank a little bit each time they passed a crowd of the undead. There were a few corpses picked clean on the road and several blood trails. Severed limbs were not uncommon either.
The car sped off. They had many more miles to go. They rode in a comfortable silence.
Margie
The church became smaller and smaller on the horizon as the truck sped away. It didn’t take a genius to realize how bad the situation had become. The stop lights weren’t working, but the shock of seeing all the carnage kept Margie from showing much surprise whenever Mr. Fontaine dodged a car or walking corpse.
Including her, there were five people in the car. Kara, the young makeup artist, Paul, a young grease monkey, clutching a bloodied wrench, Tommy, Mr. Fontaine’s son, was shivering and covered in blood, and finally, Mr. Fontaine, who was just staring at the road, nothing could break his focus.
“Sorry about your dad, Margie.”
“Thanks, Kara.”, Margie replied.
Being the pastor’s daughter came with a little bit of respect. She knew just about everyone who came into the church and thus, knew just about everyone who was reanimated and killed. Her father had a great reputation around the town, as did Margie.
An awkward silence that seemed like an eternity was interrupted by Mr. Fontaine.
“Any ideas as to where you kids wanna go?”