The Dark Trilogy (82 page)

They hit the other side of the street and avoided a chain-link fence that had been smashed flat by vehicles traveling back and forth over the grass between the school parking lot and the church.

They crossed the church lawn with Jason running at George’s side. George knew the boy was suffering from the loss of Jennifer, among other things, but as stunned and traumatized as he was, Jason still seemed willing to fight for his survival. That was something, at least. They reached the edge of the church, sliding across the wall until they were next to the glass doors. A quick tug on the handles confirmed that they were locked.

Both the man and the boy were out of breath, wheezing and slumped over as they leaned against the building. After a few seconds, George slapped Jason on the back and led the way to the north side of the building, where the parking lot was. It was farthest from the action. It was also where he hoped to gain entrance to the church without attracting attention.

They crept along, paying close attention to everything behind as well as in front of them. George did his best to scan the area, but it was next to impossible to be sure they hadn’t been spotted. They managed to get to a darkened window and glanced inside at the chapel. It was difficult to see much, but as far as George could tell, the inside of the church looked untouched by the calamity outside.

They kept moving, turning the corner and gliding into the parking lot. There was another set of glass doors and several windows that gave them a view of several vacant classrooms.

Great. It’ll be real tough for these bastards to get at us with all this damn glass,
George thought sarcastically.

The side doors were locked as well. George peered inside and saw another set of doors, wooden ones this time, beyond a vestibule. The inner doors had small panes of glass set at eye level, but he couldn’t make out anything beyond them. He turned and scanned the parking lot, trying to find something that might help them break into the building. An open dumpster sat at the back of the lot.

“Stay here,” George commanded Jason as he sprinted toward it.

There didn’t appear to be any movement beyond the lot, though the battle from the street remained thunderous. The side of the building was strangely peaceful and calm, as if it had a bubble of protection over it. George had already blotted their harrowing experience on the street from his mind. A wrong move out there and he and Jason would have been dragged down in an instant, surrounded and engulfed, but that was in the past. The adrenaline coursing through him had him feeling energized and invulnerable.

He reached the dumpster and leaned over it. The whiff of stale garbage was pleasant compared to the stench of corrupted human flesh that wafted on the air and clung to George’s clothes like cigarette smoke. If he ever made it out of this place alive, the first thing he was going to do was ceremoniously burn the jeans and button-down shirt he had put on that morning.

He pushed several garbage bags and loose trash about, leaning deeper into the container in an attempt to reach the back. As he lifted yet another hefty bag, he spied something that might work for what he needed. It was a broken piece of metal framing. He practically slid into the dumpster to avoid losing the spot where it was buried between several sticky plastic cups and what felt like a bag full of grass clippings. He got his forefinger and a thumb around it and grunted as he inched it closer, before managing to wrap his hand around it. George winced as the sharp piece of metal almost cut into his hand. It dug into the skin but didn’t break it.

George heard a whimper behind him and slid out from the dumpster, scraping up his belly to match his scratched hand in the process. He turned to see where it had come from, but already knew. Jason was on the ground, squirming backwards in a corner of the entryway as a large figure shambled toward him from the direction of the street. George could see others in the darkness behind the intruder and knew they had been followed. He took off running toward the boy.

The man was hulking. A huge gut protruded outward, and the arms, which had a multitude of bite wounds running up and down their length, wobbled as he came at the young boy. To say that the man was obese was the understatement of the decade. It would be more accurate to say that the man was of a size befitting a carnival freak. George estimated he weighed at least four hundred pounds. The wattle of flesh hanging from his chin had been chewed on, but only half devoured. The free-floating skin and greasy fat beneath flopped and slapped against the open wounds on the man’s shoulders as he moved closer to Jason. There were stains running down the front of his shirt and onto his pants. Normally George would assume it was blood that soiled his clothing, but wondered if the behemoth had been caught mid-meal and now wore the remains of his last supper as a human being.

George closed the distance quickly, gripping the shard of metal in his hands. It was thin, but the broken end was sharp and could spear someone pretty savagely. Knowing that there were others coming, he didn’t want to lose the sliver on his first attack.

The huge man noticed George and shifted its massive girth in his direction. No sound came from its mouth, but a bubbling hiss emanated from the wound in his throat, and green goop spewed forth from it as the man silently growled. George rushed forward, launching his foot at the beast’s chest, sending it backwards. He was surprised at how incredibly heavy the man was, even in death. It toppled into the arms of one of the creatures following it.

Moving past the tangle of arms and legs on the ground, George lashed out with his metal weapon at a teenage girl. The metal bent, but the force of the blow knocked her to the ground. The girl had no lips or eyelids and looked cartoonish with her rictus grin and bulging eyeballs. Two more stiffs were behind her, but George could see no others following them. Those last two were still a few feet back.

The final two ghouls were moving slowly enough and were far enough back that George had time to raise his heel and send it down with the full force of his weight onto the head of the girl he’d just smacked with the metal framing. A sickening crunch verified that he had shattered her skull, and he avoided looking at what he was sure would be a grisly scene beneath his foot. He could feel the ooze of mushy organic matter clumping to the heel of his shoe.

George turned to glance at the two stiffs he’d knocked over and was happy to see that the smaller one’s legs were still stuck under the stiff he’d dubbed Gigantor. The diminutive one tried to reach out and grab for George, oblivious to the fact that it would have to extricate its legs from underneath the huge beast in order to reach him.

Jason was back up and moving toward the fray. George waved him back, sending a well-placed kick to the skull of the ghoul trying to grab for him from underneath Gigantor. Its head rocketed to the side and sprayed the asphalt with teeth and what looked to be an eyeball. George looked at his handiwork and realized that, even with the head trauma he’d just caused, the thing was still moving. He kicked it several more times, until its arms stopped twitching.

Gigantor was desperately trying to get up off of his back, but like a turtle that had been flipped over on its shell, he was having a hard time of it. He could wait.

George turned to face the last two monsters that were closing in on him and Jason.

They had been soldiers. The first’s uniform had been ripped off to the waist, and he was a few organs short, though his ribcage was still intact. Most of the visible meat on its arms had been ripped clean off, with only bones and ligaments remaining. The other one had one arm, and only two fingers remained on the mauled hand at the end of the appendage.

Dropping the piece of metal, George charged at them. His fist nearly dislocated the first soldier’s jaw as it plowed into it. The blow knocked the creature back and gave George the time he needed to grab the other ghoul by its lone arm and spin it so its gnashing teeth couldn’t reach him. He sent the ghoul skidding across the pavement as he let go, leaving a trail of gristle behind. The one George had punched was already moving back for more, and the stench emanating from its open chest cavity was horrendous. He grabbed both sides of its head before it could react and drove the skull down onto his knee. Pushing the head away, he watched the body tumble before him. To ensure that the job was complete, George brought his heel down on the skull and then raced over to finish off the other soldier, who had managed to get back to his knees. A quick kick to its hindquarters dropped it to the ground again. George placed one foot on its back to hold it down while he stomped on its head with the other until his shoe was soaked with brain matter.

George bent over, exhausted. He was going to have to deal with Gigantor still, but knew the fat man was probably still trying to get off his back. Filling his lungs with corrupted air, he tried to lower his frantic heart rate.

Despite the grim chores he had just completed, George felt exhilarated. How these slow, stupid creatures had conquered the human race within just a couple of weeks was incomprehensible. Unless he had to face off against the entire horde on the street, he was certain he could manage just fine against them.

Taking a deep breath, George turned, ready to deal with Gigantor. What he saw sent shockwaves through his body. He had already been stunned several times that night, but nothing compared to what he was seeing now.

The boy who had been nearly catatonic only minutes earlier had managed to regain his senses enough to pick up the piece of metal George had dropped and beat the fat ghoul to death with it.

After it stopped moving, stopped grabbing for him, Jason continued pounding on the head of the corpse, sending sprays of blood and some sort of black, oily discharge squirting out of it as the sharp piece of metal connected with it time and time again.

The look George saw in the boy’s eyes was that of a stone-cold killer. There was no anger, no rage, just focus. He made no sound; no screams passed through Jason’s lips. He just kept beating on the dead man, obliterating the flesh and bone of his skull.

George hesitated before moving closer to the boy. At that moment, he was afraid to try to separate Jason from the lump of dead flesh in front of him. All the bravado he’d felt at his meager victory against the ghouls slipped away in a heartbeat. It was like a cold splash of water to his face as he watched the twelve year old in his care take out all his frustrations on the monster.

The boy was not just splattered with guts, he was drenched with them. Bone chips and a stringy substance, the identity of which George did not even want to guess, dangled from the boy’s tightly curled hair as he continued pounding on the corpse with the bent piece of metal.

“Jason!” His voice carried over the muffled sound of battle out on the street. He used the same tone of voice he used when he was angry with his children. He prayed to God it would have the same effect on the orphan as it did on his daughters. George got what he wished as the boy stopped the gore-drenched piece of metal from descending into the innards of the ghoul’s head once again.

“Stop that NOW!” George stood with fists clenched, trying to display an anger he did not feel, but needed to dredge up if he had any hope of saving Jason from oblivion.

Jason looked at George for a moment, and then his eyes dipped back toward the dead man at his feet. After a beat, perhaps to ensure that the man was indeed dead, he looked up again. Lifting his hand, he offered the thin strip of metal to George. The look on the twelve year old’s face was the same hollow, shell-shocked look that had been there earlier, back where they had hidden in the bushes beside the high school.

There was something else there too. Through all the dirt and gore that covered Jason’s face, George could see tracks of tears running down it, leaving a trail of purity in a field of blood-caked nightmare. The middle-aged man felt like crying as well, as he realized that despite all Jason had been through, the boy’s soul was intact. It was pummeled and damaged nearly beyond repair, but it still remained. But for how much longer?

George held back the tears and gave Jason an affectionate slap on the back, smiling. His grin had not returned, but he still felt relieved. They were survivors. More importantly, they were still human.

George and Jason, Part 4

The tears did flow as George sat in the room with the unread romance novel open on his lap as he relived those last moments standing outside of the church. He wept for Jason. He wept for Al and Jennifer. He wept for the family to which he still hadn’t returned. But mostly, he wept for a world that was lost forever.

***

They managed to make it inside the church. The metal shard had enough left in it to shatter a window too high for George to crawl through. He boosted Jason up to it, and the kid was able to climb inside. He unlocked a lower window, and George climbed in and locked it behind him.

The bright flashes of light from explosives and spotlights diminished as the night went on, so it was difficult for either of the refugees to see much inside the room in which they found themselves. The tiny desks indicated that they had made it to a preschool classroom. They didn’t feel up to exploring, so instead they huddled behind the teacher’s desk.

The sounds of battle diminished, though George couldn’t help imagining more screams out on the street. The logical part of his brain knew he couldn’t hear them from where he was hunkered down, but that didn’t make the waking nightmares any less real. The only comfort was that the drone of the undead was greatly reduced and appeared to be getting farther away as the night wore on.

George knew what that meant, but he tried not to dwell on it. The ghouls had broken through the last barriers and were inside the schools, tearing through the last of the living.

We’re alone now.
The cold, harsh thought stayed with George throughout the night.

Dawn broke after a couple of sleepless hours. George was shocked when he realized Jason had dozed off shortly after they’d gotten through the windows and settled in behind the desk.