Running with the Horde Page 6

  My father had filled it with gas before putting it in the garage and I had three quarters of a tank left from my unfruitful trip down Central Avenue. Something to think about but not worry about for the time being. Eventually, I would need to learn how to siphon gas. I loaded the trunk and back seat with the weapons and gear I thought I might need.

  I was as ready as I was going to get. I did a cursory check of my yard and the street from my front porch, locked up and headed back to the garage to go. After a deep breath I put it in gear and headed slowly out of my driveway and up the block toward Rice Creek Road, the gentle rumble of the engine calming my strained nerves.

  Driving through the surreal landscape with only my headlights and the stars to illuminate my surroundings was nerve wracking. There were road hazards everywhere. Most of the vehicles were wrecked but some just looked abandoned. There were also corpses by the metric butt-load. This made my missing bodies all the more mysterious and confusing.

  With my windows rolled down, I made my way slowly up and down the blocks around my neighborhood. I didn’t know where I was going or what I hoped to find but everything appeared to be the same silent tragedy my own street had been.

  Each house was dark as pitch. Dead bodies decorated the yards or sat entombed in half-packed cars in the streets and driveways. The only thing missing were the survivors. No candles burned in upstairs windows. No help me signs illuminated the rooftops.

  About a half mile from my home I saw evidence of a massive fire, long burned out. It cut a wide swath of destruction through six blocks of Friendly, reducing homes and properties to dust and ash. Only rain or Providence had prevented the fire from taking the whole damn dead city.

  I made plans to search the houses between the fire and my home in the coming weeks. It was true I already had an abundance of things but nothing lasts forever and I didn’t enjoy my water fast at all. These houses were my dirt covered field in the aftermath of war-torn Georgia, I would never be hungry again.

  Leaving the carnage of the fire, I continued my journey into the night. Block after block I drove on, past long dead stoplights and useless road signs hearing nothing. That is until I did.

  I was sitting with the engine off in the darkened parking lot of a burger joint on the corner of University Avenue and 57th Street, enjoying a chilly breeze and eyeballing the large grocery store across the way. Zombies were milling around in the giant parking lot aroused by the noise of my car no doubt but they didn’t seem to be coming my direction. I imagined the inside of the store to be a bit of a horror show between the undead, the rats and all that rotted food.

  That would be fun I would save for a later date.

  I was putting my seatbelt on getting ready to head home when I heard the sound of a truck engine and people yelling. Bright lights weaved a slow zigzag pattern coming from the south on University. Over the sound of the truck I heard that old familiar growl that could only mean a large crowd of the dead were giving chase to the truck.

  This would be my first glimpse of living people in a long time and I was more than a little excited at the prospect. I decided I would help them if I could.

  I had no idea what I was signing up for.

  As the truck came weaving into view, I started my car but left the lights off. It was large with a white cab and a big gated flatbed made for holding hay bales or cargo. The front had been retrofitted with a large cone-shaped plow that rode low to the ground. I guess it was for clearing road debris or crushing zombies. On top of the cab was a crow’s seat with a large machine gun attached. Spotlights mounted on the cab illuminated the area around the truck.

  There was a man wearing a ridiculous cowboy hat sitting in the crow’s seat aiming the big gun at the zombies trailing a hundred yards behind them. Through my binoculars I could see three men in the cab all holding rifles of some kind. Two more men were in the back of the truck standing over bundles scattered around the bed. I couldn’t tell what the bundles were until they turned right onto 57th and came to a stop.

  One of the men grabbed a bundle and pulled it upright. He pulled a large knife from a sheath on his leg and I thought I could hear cries of outrage and screaming above the sound of the zombies. I started to get that puckered feeling a person gets when they are about to witness something awful. It turned out the bundles were people, trussed up like pigs before a roast. The bundle the man had so roughly picked up was an old man.

  He quickly hacked through the bonds while the old man stood meekly at an awkward angle. He didn’t resist but the guard punched him in the gut anyway. The man went to his knees and vomited on the guard’s feet which earned him a rough kick to the face. He dropped like dead weight, his face awash in his own blood.

  Meanwhile, a few hundred zombies closed the distance behind them completely ignoring me in my quiet parking lot.

  My inner dialogue was screaming at me to do something as I watched this melodrama play out. I told my good angel to shut the hell up, I was too far away with a sea of undead between me and the truck.

  I could drive over there but I would most likely be signing my own death warrant. I was stuck watching. I knew it and my conscience knew it but neither of us liked it. It was too much like the day of death back on my street but with one major difference. This wasn’t just the undead versus the living. This was the living doing awful things to other living people. The zombies were just the sharks circling in the water waiting for chum.

  This was evil on a whole different level.

  The guy pulled the old man roughly back to his feet and began cutting his arms with the knife. The other guard in the truck bed had brandished a pistol and was cursing and threatening the people squirming at his feet.

  The sliced up old man, now bleeding freely, sagged to his knees with his head on his chest. His captor turned and nodded at the gunner who smiled and opened up with the machine gun.

  The gunfire split the night with a deafening staccato as bullets eviscerated bodies at the front of the crowd of zombies. They had closed to within fifteen feet of the truck but the gunfire dropped enough of them to create a temporary wall of corpses. The remaining zombies were struggling to get around their fallen comrades to reach the fresh meat.

  I heard the gunner yell “GO! GO! GO!” and stomp the roof of the cab with his foot.

  The truck surged forward almost causing the cutter and the old man at his feet to tumble out. It drove forward another thirty yards and stopped. The dickhead gave the bloody old man a brutal two-handed shove. He landed rather ungracefully on his face in the street. As soon as he was out, the truck sped off up the street, the asshole laughing and firing his gun into the zombies who had broken through the pile of bodies.

  The cold logic of their strategy was evident as the old man rose on shaky feet and turned to meet his fate. I thought the cutting and the blood was overkill because the zombies would have chased him anyway. It would have also been smarter to select a younger person with healthier legs. The objective was clearly to distract the zombies with a meal, allowing the truck an easy escape that wouldn’t lead the horde back to wherever they were living. Cruelty was certainly at play here as well with the unnecessary beating and cutting.

  The old guy never had a chance before the zombies were on him. His single piercing scream was brief as he was lost to me in the darkness.

  Chapter 14

  “On the Hunt”

  The smell of burnt rubber and the screeching echo of the Pontiac’s oversized rear tires gave the night a taste of my boiling rage as I took the corner of 63rd at breakneck speed. I was going to get these fuckers and put them down if it was the last thing I did.

  I sped over University Avenue navigating obstacles like it was my job. I raced miraculously through the curves of Moore Like Drive past the high school in one piece and made a fast stop on Medtronic Drive.

  I killed the engine and listened hard to the night.

  First there was only silence but then the quiet revving of a large engine somewhere across t
he lake by the big Catholic school on top of the hill. That neighborhood was the one wealthy area in the middle-class town that was Friendly. I was pretty sure they were up there squatting in one of those giant houses.

  My car rumbled like a big dog on a leash as I made my way slowly up to the Rose Hill neighborhood. It was a gated community and I planned on walking in. In part to make a stealthy approach but mostly because I didn’t want to lose my car.

  I really loved that son of a bitch.

  I drove around the streets near Rose Hill until I found a house about a mile away that suited my purposes. The garage door was open and it was empty and dark, I drove right in, grabbed my bat and got out.

  The garage was connected to a ‘60s era rambler and the interior door was ajar. I passed through a small breezeway and entered the kitchen. There was a zombie standing in the corner facing the wall. It didn’t even turn to face me before I bashed its skull in with a furious swing.

  I was too pissed off to feel bad about it. I cleared the rest of the house in just under five angry minutes finding nothing but the bloated body of the family dog chained up in the basement.

  I admit that made me feel bad in spite of my mood.

  Rummaging through the kitchen drawers and finally through the dead man’s pockets, I located a set of keys and wasted precious minutes finding the match for the front door until at last a key slipped into the deadbolt and I could lock it. The back door was locked as well but the same key worked.

  I wanted my car in a secure spot I could get back to in a hurry and not worry about zombies getting me while I was winded. I was pretty sure they couldn’t use door knobs but I wasn’t positive.

  With the house secure I went back to the car and pulled the garage door shut and pushed the manual latch into place. I made sure my pistol was loaded and the spare clip in my back pack. Brenda’s big revolver I would stash somewhere inside Rose Hill in case I needed a fall back weapon on the run. The shotgun I would carry along with all the ammo I could hold. I went back through the house and exited the front door locking it behind me.

  Jogging quickly down the long driveway, I made it to the street where I nearly shit myself to find I wasn’t alone.

  There were zombies on the street and in the yards just standing there. I had run right by a small group of them. They were just standing there, squarely between me and the securely locked door, staring at me with their terrifying rotting faces and bodies. I had nowhere to go, I was screwed.

  Chapter 15

  “No Longer on the Hunt”

  My anger was gone, replaced by sweet icy terror with a fecal twist. I was grossly outnumbered with nowhere to hide. The buffet was open, the zombies had me dead to rights.

  But still they made no sound, nor did they advance on me.

  I did a slow turn with the shotgun ready. There were fifty or sixty that I could see, all just standing there looking at me. Young, old, big and little, the gang was all there, minus some key parts I suppose.

  A million images past through my mind as I waited for them to rush me. Happy snapshots from my life that I would have given anything to time warp back to just then. It’s true, life does pass before a person’s eyes when death appears imminent.

  I remember making a decision and putting the barrel of the shotgun awkwardly under my chin. I wouldn’t be one of them. I would go out on my own terms just like Brenda did.

  As I was fumbling for the trigger, the zombie nearest to me grunted and turned away. I took a moment to take this in as some of the others followed suit. Most didn’t move but definitely seemed to lose interest in me.

  This was so surprising I nearly shot myself by accident, my finger fortunately hitting the trigger guard instead.

  Was this a trick? Were they fucking with me?

  I took a few steps up the street and turned to see if those closest to me followed, they did not. I approached the zombie who had grunted me out of suicide. With my heart hammering in my chest like a tight drum, I got very close and poked him gently with the barrel of Dave’s shotgun.

  He turned slowly to look at me and grunted again but did not attack. I tapped him on the chin. Still he did nothing. He seemed confused but I suppose I was imagining that emotion on his face.

  I grew bolder as I circled him, touching him roughly with the gun barrel on his head, shoulders and belly. He was pretty much in rhythm with me until I realized we were doing a bizarre kind of macabre two-step.

  The other zombies were paying us no mind. I determined with a quick glance that we had the dance floor to ourselves. I put the shotgun on my shoulder and slapped the zombie hard in the face. He grunted again but otherwise did nothing. I looked at him carefully for the first time.

  He was a little shorter than me but not by much. In life he must have been a businessman of some kind. His hair was dark and parted at the side, held in place by a high-quality hair cream. It looked fresh from the stylist.

  He’d been physically fit and somewhere in his thirties with a pleasant face, though his chin was discolored. He was wearing a dress shirt that had once been white and dark pants. One of his shirt sleeves had been ripped away and he had a rather ghastly wound on his bicep. I assumed that’s how he’d become infected because he looked to be in good shape otherwise.

  I shined my flashlight in his face. He didn’t turn away but did shut his creepy eyes. The stain on his chin appeared to be blood that had dried long ago. I turned him around, and gently patted his backside finding the wallet I’d hoped would be there.

  His name was Gerard Peters. I imagined his friends had called him Jerry. His address said he lived on this street, I wondered briefly if they all did and why they hadn’t wandered off since turning.

  “Jerry,” I said as I stood facing him again, “What the fuck does all this mean?”

  He did not answer me but did try and open his eyes again. I felt bad for shining the light in his eyes so long so I turned it off. I was feeling a strange amount of affection for Jerry. It hit me suddenly, he had kind of saved my life.

  My legs started shaking as I thought about what I’d almost done. I felt the immediate urge to hug Jerry but decided on a nice ruffling of that finely coifed hair instead. I went to rub his head and was startled when his entire scalp came free in my hands with a wet ripping sound.

  I looked down at the soggy hair cap in my palm, horror taking it’s time to catch up with the moment. When I realized what I was holding, I violently shook it free from my hand and it hit the street with a plop. I dashed to the boulevard grass, went to my knees and threw up until my eyes were watering and my stomach was empty.

  I tried my best to wipe the remaining Jerry residue on the grass but I didn’t think I would ever be entirely comfortable with my hand again.

  When I felt like I could stand, I looked around for Jerry. He was still there but he looked like shit now. I felt bad about his hair, he seemed to have put a lot of time into it and then I went and ruined it.

  Adjusting the shotgun on my back, I took off walking up the street still feeling depressed about Jerry.

  The night was dark and gloomy which matched my mood. I was still going to try and help the people I’d seen tied up in the truck but gone was the righteous indignation I had felt earlier. I was too focused on trying to figure out what had just happened to me.

  I considered Jerry and the others on the street where I left my car. I supposed it could be a fluke but I didn’t think so. Moments going all the way back to hospital flashed through my mind. I realized there were only two possible explanations for why I had remained unscathed by the zombies since everything began.

  The first was pure dumb luck. If I was that lucky, I should have been a frequent lottery player years ago. No one was that lucky.

  The second and most likely explanation, was that for some reason the zombies were deliberately not attacking me.

  This implied something was different about me than my neighbors or Jerry or the countless other people who’d been turned up until this p
oint. Something my old man did to me. Something so life altering it had put me into an extended coma.

  It was no coincidence my extended nap occurred right around the time the world at large came down with a Sickness that turned people into zombies. Alcohol poisoning? I was a monumental idiot for buying into that nonsense.

  Whatever he had done marked me as off limits to zombies. I knew they could see me. Lord knows I had felt like a zoo animal plenty of times in my house. They left me untouched when they tore through wood, glass and other barriers to get at my neighbors. That should have told me something at the time but I was too busy being terrified to think about it clearly.

  I recalled my brilliant battle from that first night I left my house when I took down five of them in one short burst of violence. I went through the whole routine in my head and realized why it had been so easy.

  The zombies never moved on their own except to look at me. They never fought back as I swung away at them with the bat. The only times they reacted at all were due to involuntary reflex after being struck by my bat.

  It had been like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Then there was Dave but he wasn’t even menacing as he shuffled toward me as if to ask if I wanted cream with my coffee or something.

  There it was. The simplest explanation is usually on the money. The zombies were not interested in me, thanks dad!

  Chapter 16

  “Back on the Hunt”

  Wariness and stealth were still top of my mind as I moved along the streets toward Rose Hill. I was getting much more comfortable being out among the undead but I wasn’t ready to fully trust my new found fortune just yet. I was still jumping every time I saw movement but soon there were zombies everywhere around me. I had a feeling we were going to the same place.