The Last Blade Of Grass (12 page)

“Hey, John?” I call. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a CPA,” he replies. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering,” I say.
Just wondering if you might have useful skills,
I think to myself. But an accountant who thinks people who prepare are conspiracy people won’t have anything to offer or he would have mentioned it. He probably has never prepared for anything uncivilized in his life.
Good luck, Mr. Matthews
.

I’m about to go into the house when I stop and look to the east, toward a distant sound of an explosion. There are several columns of smoke rising up from that direction. I walk in and find Donald and his son coming out of a room, with boxes.

“We found his main store room,” Donald says.

“Okay, change of plans. There’s smoke off to the east, and I just heard an explosion. We have to get this loading done quickly, but we shouldn’t leave your wife and daughter out there alone, so we will all rotate. One person will always stay out there with the truck, to help keep watch for anyone approaching on foot.”

*

With about half of the room emptied, Joshua and I hear Donald yell for us from outside. We both grab our shotguns and run out to see what he needs, and find he is looking in the distance behind the truck. A lone figure is walking and stumbling up the road toward us from the direction the explosion came from earlier. In the lower light of dusk it is harder to see them walking up, but whoever it is has on white. There are several more columns of smoke in the distance that seem illuminated from below, but they are just being lit up by the last light of sunset.

“I think it's time to go, Donald. I would love to get everything in the truck, but if we stay here too long we risk everything anyway. It’s not safe to load anymore with it getting so dark.”

Just then, the street lights pop on. Not really helping yet because it isn’t dark enough, but giving us all a little extra courage against the approaching night and its hidden demons.

“I think we can get more,” Donald says. “But you stay out here and watch the roads. Joshua and I will keep packing until you think we absolutely can’t stay any longer.”

“Okay, fine, but can you get the truck started so we can just hop in and go?” I ask.

Donald tells Karen to start up the truck and heads back into the house with Joshua, to get more supplies. I keep my eyes on the approaching person, back up to the cab of the truck, and tell Karen, “Turn the headlights on high beam so you can keep an eye on the road up ahead. There is one person coming up the road behind us that I may have to deal with shortly. If you see anyone up front, you yell, or honk the horn, okay?”

The person walking up looks infected. It is a woman, and she is one street light away from the back of the truck now. She is heading toward me in an awkward drunken type stagger, and I am moving slowly toward her. If this was any day but today, I would think she was the victim of some kind of assault, and would run up and ask if she needs help. She is wearing a white top and khaki pants and looks like she would have been a manager or employee at any typical retail store. Her white shirt is ripped open at the shoulder, and blood is running down that arm making the whole sleeve look black in the darkness.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” I say out of habit.
Of course she isn’t okay, you idiot
, I think to myself. She doesn't respond to my question but just keeps coming toward me in her staggered walk.

She’s twenty feet away now. “It’s time to learn what I can.” I say quietly to myself as I lower the shotgun, draw my handgun out, and aim it at her. “Ma’am, you need to respond. Are you okay?” Fifteen feet and I still get no response. “If you keep approaching I will shoot you ma’am. Stay away.” She is now ten feet away and no response. “Ma’am, stop or I will shoot!” I yell loudly. A flash of light and mini explosion as I pull the trigger and my gun goes off. The first shot I aimed at the ground near her, but just to the side, so it wouldn’t ricochet and hit her. She doesn’t stop, run, or even flinch at the shot. With the second shot, I aim at her.

I hit the woman in the right shoulder, and I start backing up. She keeps advancing and has shown no hint that I shot her. Again, no facial flinch, no anger, or fear at being shot. Her face remains blank, emotionless, and she keeps walking toward me. There is a small spot of blood where my round hit, but not what should occur with a fresh bullet hole. I am keeping the ten foot distance between us, and I take my next shot. Flash—
crack
, another bullet shakes my hand as it leaves my gun. This round enters the woman’s left leg above the knee.

The woman still doesn’t respond to the bullet impact and it tearing through her skin and bone. She does fall down on the next step as the leg crumbles under her weight. She falls face down and disturbingly doesn’t try to block or slow her downward motion. Her face smacks onto the pavement. I cringe at the thought of the pain it would cause and can clearly hear the wet crack of impact, even though my ears are ringing slightly from the report of the gun. She lifts her head to look up at me and has broken her nose. As she starts to crawl toward me I put a final round in her head and end my first terrifying lesson in what we are facing.

Donald and Joshua are standing at the sidewalk staring at me, and I’m sure Karen is looking at me from the cab as well. My skin is cold and sweaty, and I realize I am shaking slightly. “I had to kill her. She was bitten and kept coming.”

“We saw it,” Donald says. “I didn’t want to believe it. I still don’t want to believe this is happening. How can someone just keep coming after they are shot like that?”

Now that I see how an infected person reacts I know we are in serious trouble. This was the perfect setting to find out with no other infected around to chase me. I look at Donald and Joshua still just standing there, and say, “You guys need to keep loading stuff, or we should get in the truck and leave.” The loading continues.

I didn’t notice it before, but I can distinctly hear the crackle of gun fire now. It is going off in the distance here and there in various places in the direction we came from, and sometimes off to either side. The side noise is what worries me. This section of town we are in is residential, but I believe there are some strip malls to the north. I know the downtown shopping area is to the south. People were told to stay at home and inside, but it is human nature to seek out news and information. Many people would head to the local markets and shops that still exist to find out what they can. This would make a great buffet for the infected as well as provide a way for us to be surrounded at this house. I assume the infected would head to where they see the most people or hear the most noise, although I’m not sure how well they hear or see. I know they use sight because that woman lifted her head and seemed to look right at me before I shot her.

“We’re almost finished,” Donald announces from behind me, making me jump slightly. I had tuned out the sounds of them moving the boxes and totes of supplies, and didn’t expect the human voice to call out.

She didn’t make any noise
, I think to myself. The whole time she was approaching me, I didn’t hear anything but her footsteps. She didn’t yell or cry when I shot her. She didn’t growl or moan like they do in movies. Just silence, stealth. That must be how they can get people. She was moving slowly. I could keep away from her walking backward, so they must use silence to keep from being detected.

This thought makes my hair stand on end, and just in time to coincide with another stomach churning realization, I hear another uneven footfall in the distant darkness that sends a chill down my spine. Mingled into the night are the sounds of continuing sporadic gunfire and the occasional scream carried through the air.

The maker of the footsteps appears under a streetlight from a side street up ahead. He is limping very slowly but not staggering like the woman. He looks like he is just injured or freshly attacked and not yet turned.

“Help! Is there someone there? Help me,” the man yells as he starts toward me and the truck.

“Have you been bitten?” I yell, but the answer starts playing itself out in front of me. Another person runs out of the same side street and tries to help the man over to me, but the injured man collapses on the road about fifty yards away, right below the streetlight.

I hear the man that is trying to help say, “Dad, get back up. You’ve got to get up.”

But the man that was his father won’t be getting back up. His body starts twisting around on the ground and for a few seconds it looks like he is having a seizure. The twisting and shaking stops, and the man’s fallen father starts slowly getting back up.

I yell to him as I start advancing on the pair, “Get away from him. Your father’s infected, you need to move.”

He looks at me approaching with my gun raised, and says, “Hey, put the gun down. What are you doing? He’s okay. Look he’s getting back up.”

It’s too late at this point. The man is standing right next to his father. They are facing each other when the father grabs his son and bites him on the neck. I stop my advance but am already close enough to see a bloody wound appear, and thick pulses of blood spurt out as his father pulls his head away.

I want to pull my trigger and end the attack, but I can’t get a clean shot with the son standing between me and his father. I know he is already infected because of the bite, but I’m not ready to start shooting people that aren’t showing signs of infection yet. As I start backing up the two men collapse on the ground. The son falls on his own, probably passed out from the immense loss of blood, and the father drops down to him and continues his meal.

I return to the back of the truck keeping an eye on the scene of the attack as I retreat. It seems the infected people will continue assaulting their victim instead of moving on to a new one if the victim can’t get away. I don’t think the son will be getting back up. His father is just doing too much damage to his son’s neck. Unless this disease can cause the dead to rise, which it better not. I just have to keep an eye on the father and look out for any other infected people approaching.

The dad eventually gets up from his meal. I can only assume it is because his victim has finally died. This guy is moving much faster than the woman did. He’s moving at a walking pace but with a limp because of the wound on his leg. I don’t like the idea of them moving fast like that. The faster they move, the more dangerous it is for us.

With them moving at these speeds, we don’t have time to be doing any more loading tonight. I raise my shotgun and shoot the approaching man in the head when he is about twelve yards away from me. Another infected person soon appears from the same side street that father and son did, and heads in my direction immediately. I still don’t know how their hearing is. This thing could have turned toward me because he just chose to or because of the sound of my shot. I don’t think I’ll bother to ask.

The horn on the truck blares, and I look to the front of it and see about four people run across the road, again north to south. These people were moving fast and didn’t care that we were here, so they aren’t infected, or at least aren’t turned. It does mean that the infection is in front of us as well, and moving toward us from the strip mall portion of town.

Donald and Joshua come out of the house with their guns. “We need to go now, Donald,” I say. “There is another one coming up slowly behind us, make that two. And some people were running up ahead so these things are almost here.”

“I think we’ve gotten everything anyway,” he says and heads to the trailer to close it.

I look at the progress of the two infected people coming from behind and go lock the house. A stupid habit, but there might be more supplies inside somewhere, and I don’t want to give up anything that may help us all survive. I walk around the back of the truck, shoot the two closest infected. Four more have come from around the same corner behind the other two, but I turn and jog up to the cab, and climb in.

Infected people are starting to walk out from the road in front of us. There are six spread out and moving in our direction, but the truck doesn’t move.

“You’re going to have to run them over,” I say, but Donald just sits there staring out at the people in front of us.

“Donald, there are more of them coming out from that street now,” I say, almost yelling. Being in this closed cab with infected people surrounding the truck is making me feel like I’m in a coffin, and if he doesn’t get the truck moving that’s exactly what it will end up being.

I yell at him, “We are either going to stay here or you will have to run them down! They aren’t going to move for us!”

Karen puts her hand over her mouth and gasps. I look out the windshield, and coming out of the side street, I see there is a young girl about the size of my five year-old dragging a doll by the leg. Karen begins to cry, and my stomach twists into a knot of fear. The infected people have reached the truck and are clawing at it attempting to get at us, their food prize locked in the cab. The collective sadness in the truck turns to a bone chilling fear when we hear our first moan. The sound is part scream and part gurgle, and the infected people outside seem frustrated that they can’t get to us.

So they do make a noise when they can’t get to their prey
, I think.

The little girl with the doll finally makes it closer to the truck and walks into the light of the headlamps. The girl is missing a part of her face, it is just a bloody pulp, and we can see now that it isn’t a doll that she is dragging by the leg.