Darkest Days: A Southern Zombie Tale (32 page)

“But it didn’t happen to you!” Stephanie yelled. A weird silence filled the room where no one knew how to proceed. Each of them came to realize that no one more than Stephanie had the right to decide the victimizer’s punishment. However, they could not let a rapist who had already tried to intimidate during his entry to the church walk free among them.

“Bryant, what do you think?” Cara asked.

Bryant looked around the room at everyone, expectantly waiting for a solution. He shrugged and looked back at his girl.

Cara addressed everyone as a committee. “Does anyone object to locking him in Daniel’s closet?”

No one answered except Rick who glanced around and asked, “Who the fuck is Daniel?”

Hands roughly grabbed him and pulled him down the stairs. Once he was locked inside the former quarantine closet, everyone felt a little more at ease, but still apprehensive. As long as Rick lived, he was a danger.

***

In the early morning air, a solitary living man with an Uzi blindly ran through the streets. Being a native of the town, he recognized most of the monsters chasing him. Some snarling faces belonged to neighbors, co-workers, and sometimes family. He knew that none of them saw him as anything except prey.

Russell had always fancied himself a vigilante type, hence the small arsenal he had almost exhausted in his trek across town. Last night he had tried to ride out on highway 171 to Tuscaloosa but a several-car pileup on the two lane road halted all escape attempts. He’d backtracked several miles, taking the 159 fork to Gordo. A tractor blocked the road and the steep ditches on either side mocked his SUV. Going all the way back into Fayette, he turned west, trying for 96 which eventually led to Columbus, Mississippi. Before he left the city limits, a bottle neck of stalled cars forced him to slow to a crawl. As he weaved the bulky auto through the narrow opening, the damn things swarmed out of the trees around him. They quickly smashed the windows and reached inside. One of the abominations even used a thick branch to bust up his vehicle.

In the panic, Russell did not remember much of his escape except using the sunroof and shooting a few of them to clear a path. Most of his small arsenal still waited in the trunk even though he had moved half a town away already.

A zombie in the typical orange inmate jumpsuit shambled toward him. Russell aimed his Uzi and fired a short burst into the monster’s face, knocking it flat on its back. He mentally tallied the number of shots left in the clip, realizing that he could easily lose track with the gun set to fully automatic, which was illegal for the civilian. He steadied himself for the next attack. Looking down the street, he knew he needed to change direction. They were definitely thicker heading north through town.

He turned around to head back to Five Points, but the creatures had converged behind him making that path suicide. Forced to proceed as planned, he faced forward and fired into the thinnest part of the throng. One of the demons fell twitching. The stranger fired again and tried to rush the line and break through. The force of his body threw several monsters to the ground and he scrambled over, stepping on faces, chests, and other body parts. He made it through and sprinted out of reach. His face brightened in a euphoric rush as he chanted “I’m so bad; I’m so bad.”

Passing through Five Points, he glanced back at his pursuers. The mass moved like a school of fish changing direction. His momentary thrill vanished. “Christ, I’m S.O.L.” He spotted the sea of dead flesh ahead of him surrounding McDonalds. A line from
Charge of the Light Brigade
suddenly came to him. “Cannons to the left of me. Cannons to the right of me.” He may have paraphrased it but he felt Alfred Tennyson would have forgiven him under the circumstances. It looked like Russell, like it or not, had to make his stand. He slid a fresh clip in his weapon as he neared the fast-food restaurant.

***

Inside the Micky D’s cooler, Robert had woken up but still held Debbie. She had also awakened but pretended to still be asleep so she could hang onto his warmth without explanation. Getting into the reasons why could get messy. The white boy from the grill made her feel comfortable. He contained just enough affection to set her at ease without putting her guard up. She felt him stroke her hair and found herself enjoying his touch a little too much.

They both heard the sound at once. Robert vocalized it though. “Oh my God, are those gunshots?” He shook Deb, having fallen for her ruse. “Get up, get up. Someone has come to rescue us.”

In the excitement, neither of them thought that it might possibly be a random yahoo with a gun (which it was). In a brief moment of what can loosely be classified as telepathy, they both thought about the military sweeping in like saving angels, killer angels.

Robert led in the mad rush for the small freezer door. They could not go through the building because the things were inside and they would have to move the racks and other trash blocking the door. He opened the small hatch and immediately felt the influx of warmer air. In addition, disgusting gray-green hands reached through swiping at him. The closest zombie tumbled inside with the living. Robert responded to the invasion by kicking the intruder in the head. Another creature grabbed the stainless steel walls and pulled itself through. Robert jumped at the newest one and kicked it in the chest trying to drive it back outside. The cold hands brushed his shoe in a failed attempt to grab its dinner. Failing to push it out, he lunged around the monster and swung the door closed. As he lowered the handle, rough finger nails dug into his shoulder. He threw himself backward, landing on top of his attacker.

The first intruder had risen to its feet and lumbered toward Debbie. She screamed as loud as she could, hoping whoever had the guns would hear her. Unfortunately, Russell had already met his maker and now resided in the digestive tracts of nine zombies.

Robert cried out and punched the second menace in the face twice before the beast bit off two of his fingers. The third punch connected with an open mouth which snapped closed like an alligator. When the boy pulled his hand back, the thumb and half of the index finger where missing. He jumped back and used his one good hand to pull a metal set of shelves down on top of the prone zombie. Luckily, a heavy steel support beam split the creature’s skull open, ending its existence.

Seeing Deb in trouble, cornered by a ravenous beast, he jumped across the carnage on the floor that he had just caused and ran to her. With the momentum of running at full speed on an icy floor, Robert did not even try to stop. Instead, he grabbed a handful of the corpse’s hair and used all of his weight and force to slam the head into the wall. The first hit probably killed it but Robert, working with only one arm, pulled back and hit it again. The cranium leaked fluid and chunky bits of matter, some of which stuck to the wall at the point of impact.

When everyone was safe, Robert swayed a little and reached out to steady himself. Debbie caught him when he missed anything that might have saved him from a fall. She eased him to the floor, straining under his weight. She pushed open the door to the cooler and pulled him by his pant legs. He moved easily on the slick layer of frost under him. In the cooler, she wrapped his hand in a dingy towel she found under a box of orange juice packets.

When he regained consciousness, his first words struck her as heart-breaking and funny. His eyes fluttered open and he said, “It’s cold.”

Deb stroked his forehead. “Well, it is a cooler.”

Robert forced a weak smile. “I’ve got to say something.”

“Don’t start any of that ‘if I don’t make it’ shit.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get us out of here. I hope you’ll remember me in a good way.” He let his eyes close as he had seen so many times in the movies, expecting to drift into a permanent sleep. He could still hear everything around him, the hum of the fans, Deb’s breathing above him. Then he realized he had to wait for death a while yet. He opened his eyes and saw her looking down at him with a slight smile on her lips.

“Trying to check out too early?” Deb leaned down and kissed him. “I never thought I’d fall for a white boy.” She gingerly examined his hand. The bleeding had slowed. “Maybe we’ll stick around long enough to figure this out after all.”

Robert reached up with his functional hand and traced her lips with his thumb. “Maybe it’s the blood-loss talking, but I’m happy to be here with you.” He chuckled even though waves of pain crept up his arm as if he had caught fire and then been doused with ice cold water. “Happy to be here with you” he repeated.

***

Everyone felt a queer normality to the curious home life that started to take shape. The group gathered in the kitchen and prepared a dinner of fried luncheon meat sandwiches, supplied by the prisoner. One person waited to eat so that an armed guard could watch Rick when he was let out for meals. Tommy played with Bryant and Cara; occasionally he would play with Stephanie as well. After the meal, Bryant took the child to the roof for target practice. The boy even treated the priest as a kindly old grandfather. Right before dusk, the couple locked themselves into a third floor office for some time alone. Martin felt pangs of jealousy while the priest sighed at their blatant disrespect for the church. Eventually, he laughed it off saying “Why do I care? It’s not even my church.” The day passed in relative ease until nine P.M. that night.

Martin guarded Rick on the ground floor. Stephanie curled under a blanket on one of the padded pews reading a large, ornate Bible. Tommy, Bryant, and Cara played Go Fish with a deck of 52 playing cards and their own set of rules. The priest sat quietly in one corner, staring outside and thinking about the rest of the world. Eric had wandered upstairs and they occasionally heard his footsteps as he moved from room to room. Suddenly the rhythm of his feet sped up and everyone could hear him shouting as he descended the stairs. “Come quick. I’ve found something!” He appeared as a brief flash in the doorway and quickly disappeared back to the third floor. With the exception of lonely Martin on the first floor, everyone followed. The entire building roared with the noise of six people trampling up a stairwell. Eric led them to an office and spun around, pointing to his find.

“Viola! I found it in a closet up here. It’s black and white but picks up well.” He pointed at a thirteen inch television screen resting on the desk. “Just in time for the news.” He twisted a small knob on the ancient contraption and a picture faded into existence.

The voice from the speakers used the crisp tone of an experienced anchor-woman. “. . .It is apparently the biggest in the city’s history. The hospitals have been complaining of blood shortages for weeks. The local Illinois state government responded by donating 1.2 million for updated facilities. The hospital was thankful but still urged that money does not solve the problem. Only helpful citizens can supply the much needed O positive.”

Stephanie laughed. “The world seems so normal.”

The priest spoke to no one particular. “This must be the national news.”

Unexpectedly, the phone rang. Everyone gasped in surprise before Eric jokingly whined. “Every time I sit down in front of the TV . . .” He reached over and plucked the receiver from the cradle and greeted whomever. “Hello?”

An ecstatic voice crackled through the line loud enough for the entire room to hear. “Hello? Survivors? Are you really okay?”

No one watched the television now.

Eric replied in a lackadaisical tone, trying to not let on how desperate the situation was. “Yeah, may I ask who is calling?”

“My name is John Raymond. I’m barricaded in my house. I’ve been calling numbers all day. You’re the first person I’ve gotten a hold of.”

Eric thought the man might have been crying by the strange sounds he kept making. “Wow, how did you decide to call the church? Did you hear the radio message?”

“This is a church? I had no idea. I just started at 0000 and dialed one digit higher each time. I give each call six rings.”

“And we’re the first people you’ve gotten in touch with?” Eric felt more frightened by this knowledge. Surely the destruction could not be that complete.

“I’ve gotten a ton of answering machines and busy signals but no live people until you.” Now the man was definitely crying.

“Holy shit.”

“Yes” the caller said as if Eric’s profanity summed up everything. “Do you have any way to pick me up? The house is surrounded.”

“Sorry, we’re in the same boat.” Eric felt genuine regret that they could not help him. “Do you have anyone with you?” The caller said no. Eric felt a little worse. At least he was part of a group to help protect each other and keep him company. This guy on the phone was liable to go crazy from solitude.

No one could decide whether to listen in on the conversation some more or watch the news. The anchorwoman then spoke of another story. “Here in the nation’s capitol, the victim of a drive-by shooting survived six shots to the body. Apparently he was in such good shape that the paramedics, with the help of sheriff’s deputies, had to subdue him.” The newsroom dissolved into a shot of a policeman. A microphone and a pasty white hand floated under his chin at the bottom of the screen.

The Washington D.C. police officer told the story of how the victim continued to struggle and attack any medical personnel that came within reach. The viewers in that small church in western Alabama tried to tell themselves that the epidemic of the living dead only happened in their hometown, that the rest of the world was still safe. That shooting victim possessed amazing fortitude and that was all.

“In world news, an American journalist was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for . . .”

Everyone wanted to comfort each other but the next story shocked them even more.

“Al Jazeera has been playing a tape, widely claimed to be a hoax, of the executed man’s head still alive. Extremist Muslim leaders are citing this as evidence that the demon lives with Westerners.”

Stephanie cried out. “Oh God no, it’s happening everywhere.”

Bryant and Cara looked at the fear in each others’ eyes. The prospect of the catastrophe spreading worldwide frightened them in a direct way. If the whole world had to deal with their own local outbreaks, help would be sometime in the far future, if ever. Cara whispered to Bryant that they needed to safeguard morale. Of course, he agreed and immediately set out on that task.