The momentary flare illuminated the pale faces of the recently dead surrounding him. “Damn it.” He shouted even though the sudden appearance of fire caused the zombies to halt. He stumbled forward and snatched the bottom of the burning table leg with his good hand. Sensing that the element of surprise was wearing off and the ghouls were closing in again, he swung the torch like a weapon in a wide arc. The strange sound of wind through fire accompanied the distressed hissing of several mouths.
In the split second he had to make his decision, he weighed the options of going back inside with a hurt arm and no one to help him, or trying to cover a half-mile of zombie-infested streets before his torch burned low. Steeling his resolve, he shot forward up the paved drive and into the street. The doctor ran by the elementary school playground full of eerie moving shapes. As he neared the highway, he passed a gas station surrounded by zombies now slowly dispersing as if the object they had pursued had disappeared or been consumed. A few of the creatures noticed him, and stretched out their arms looking forward to holding him down and feasting.
Even as tired as he was, Eric had no problem leaving them behind. However, when he reached the strip, he noticed that while the fire scared them, they also followed it. A gathering mass of the deceased formed behind him as they chased the warmth from his torch. He had enough cognitive capacity (despite trying to dodge the oncoming creatures and outrun the ones behind him) to realize that he was leading them to the only haven that he knew. Enraged that he was bringing the threat with him, he stopped to do battle.
The doctor knew that he would die if he tried to kill them all; there were simply too many. Instead, he planned on creating a brief distraction to lose the bulk of pursuers. As he turned around, only a few scattered ghouls were at his back and far enough away so that he was not immediately concerned. As the throng facing him mercilessly moved forward, he thrust the torch into the first one, setting the undead boy’s letterman jacket on fire. The zombie swung its arms wildly, twirling into the crowd. The beast vainly tried to escape the growing flames, and the creatures around it fearfully scurried away. As they watched the burning body run wildly about, Eric pumped his legs as quickly as he could, running toward the church. The torch fell from his hand somewhere along the way, leaving a bright flame in the middle of Temple Avenue.
After two blocks, he passed an open pawnshop door. A sudden movement in his peripheral vision caused him to look. His pace slowed as the horrible sight forced his attention at the crawling monster. One hand reached forward, fingernails dug into the asphalt as best they could. The bottom jaw had been ripped off and a limp, bloody tongue stretched down to the ground as it slid forward. Without the throat and mouth to hide it, the tongue looked impossibly large and swollen, a plump pink tentacle slightly twitching.
Horrific fascination gripped him and he stepped forward to look closer. Within arm’s reach, the creature’s weak hand shot out and grabbed the doctor’s ankle. The sickening filthy touch sent him into a panic. He shrieked and stomped on its head with his thin dress shoes. The first blow did nothing to the creature. The rush of fear sent the heel crashing down again and again. Each kick softened the bone until Eric felt his foot sink into the brain matter. He extricated his foot from the mess and stepped away, feeling the loose fingers slide off his pants leg.
Eric looked around at the others starting to gather around him. He glanced back at the pawnshop wondering if there were guns inside. Outside, he was quickly becoming surrounded. The outstretched hands and gnashing mouths convinced him that the only course available was to retreat inside. As the semi-circle closed in, he lashed out shoving one of the beasts squarely in the chest, knocking it back into several more monsters. In those brief seconds, he darted toward the door and the crowd surged forward after his warm flesh.
Spinning right inside the doorway, he tried to close the shop but someone had previously shot the lock off. The door slowly eased back open as he abandoned it to search for a weapon. “Damn, damn, damn.” He frantically searched the cases and racks but most of the stock was gone. He found an unloaded pistol but found no ammunition to accompany it. The only rational thing left to do was to find a back door and escape. He groped blindly at the back of the store as the army flooded the entrance. He heard a cacophony of moans and hisses, sounds of items being knocked to the floor and the persistent rumble of footsteps. His fingertips found a groove and followed it down to a doorknob. He gave it a quick twist but the door did not respond. He felt above the knob and turned the small raised latch over to the unlocked position.
In only a second, Eric stood out behind the building in open air. He glanced to his left and saw a mechanic’s shop and knew which direction to head. He turned to his right, empty-handed and praying that he could make it more than a few blocks. Eric passed the public library without incident. The wind dried the sweat from his face as he desperately sprinted toward salvation. The cool night air chilled his clammy, pale skin.
The Methodist church loomed above him and he knew that he only had one more block to the Baptist church. The muscles in his legs began to fill with lactic acid, causing trembling until his calf muscle cramped. His pace slowed and he felt drained. He sneaked around to the rear, trying not to attract attention. The back door to the church was heavily barricaded. He pulled on the door and felt it give an inch. He tried pushing but the reinforcement prevented it. The doctor ran around to the front entrance, hoping for better luck.
As Eric rounded the corner, he noticed the parking lot across the side street. Normally, it was filled with teenage boys drinking in the beds of their trucks. Now, the truck radios had nothing to say. No laughter or vulgarities filled the air. No one revved the engines. No fights broke out. It resembled a car lot. Vehicles sat owner-less and inert.
Eric’s heart sank. No headlights on the streets, no kids getting into trouble. It seemed an age ago that he heard a live human voice. He closed his eyes and knew that the town was dead. It had been dying for some time according to the locals. Oneita textiles had closed down and so had the cotton mill. The town, given up and broken, pulled the train tracks up. The events of today were just a rather spectacular death rattle.
Eric spied the double doors, atop two white flights of stairs on opposite sides mirroring each other and converging at the door.
The prospect of entering that way made him even more fearful. Those things were mostly on the larger roads in town. One might see him and then more would come. However, sitting alone and unarmed outside would surely get him killed.
Eric decided to go for it. He ran around the corner to the front door, mounting the stairs. He cut his eyes to the road and back to his path. Yes, they saw him and had changed direction. He reached the door and began pounding with both fists. “Open the door!” He madly shrieked, “I’m a human. Hurry!” His ears caught the sound of objects being dragged across the floor and the heavenly click of a lock being turned. Eric glanced back to see a ghoul placing its foot upon the first white step. As the door cracked open, Eric pushed his way in.
Another rabid scramble to re-barricade the door ensued. Eric did not have time to even look around and meet the people who had just saved him. When the pews had been pushed back against the door and it was obvious the structure was not going to give, Eric turned to meet the survivors. Six people stared back at him. A tall man wearing a black shirt and clerical collar greeted him.
“I am Father O’Brien. I’m glad to see there are more of the living than just us.” He spoke in a kindly tone. He motioned over to a young man and a girl that Eric recognized from somewhere before. “This is Bryant and his girlfriend Cara.” That was it - she had asked him for birth control pills. Bryant solemnly nodded at him. Cara gave a short wave. Neither of them smiled. The priest pointed into a far corner of the room at a middle-aged man clutching his two children close to him. One was a boy at the age of ten, the other a girl of only eight. “That man with the two children was here when I arrived. He won’t speak to me and refuses to help with the furniture when new people show up.”
Eric dumbly stared at the priest. “Excuse me Father, but aren’t you in the wrong church?”
The old man smiled good-naturedly. “We are all welcomed into the house of the Lord.”
Something inside him finally snapped. Eric sat down on the floor and started laughing hysterically.
***
Martin calmly spoke even though he was worried. “The radio said go to the First Baptist Church but the radio station has quit answering the phone. So, I really don’t know if it is still safe.” The preacher’s eyes drooped as he held the bandaged wound. Stephanie sat in silence, the shame still fresh in her mind.
“Come on. Ideas? Suggestions? Anything?” Only silence responded. “Where do we go?” Martin had been led for so long that he could not bring himself to take control even though both of his companions were almost catatonic. The interior of the car smelled of stale fast food and Martin cracked the windows to allow some fresh air in. He turned down another side street trying to figure out where to go. Eventually, he found himself pulling into a random driveway to turn around.
The swinging headlights illuminated a yard with a few sparse pine trees and a parked Power wheel abandoned beside a few shrubs. Lights shone inside the house but that did not mean anything; lights were on all over the town but all they had seen for the past twenty minutes were walking corpses. He stopped, making the brake lights cast their red glow behind the vehicle. He pulled the lever upward into reverse and twisted his neck to look out the back window.
A thud startled him into snapping his head back around. Glassy eyes stared through the windshield as a housewife in a nightgown crawled over the hood. Her nails dragged across the glass, leaving red smudges. Matted hair covered with dirt and dark, thick fluid hung in clumps in front of her face. When she chomped at the air, Martin saw blood and bits of flesh dripping from her lips and rotting between her teeth. She continued to paw at the glass like an animal. The overall effect terrified the car’s occupants. To Martin, she represented everything about his hometown twisted around into a monstrous perversion of what it once was.
Reflexively, he turned on the wipers to clean off the dripping blood. The once-female thing on the hood grabbed at the wiper a few times, finally catching it. She then pulled it away from the glass surface, warping the wiper blade.
Martin shoved his foot on the gas pedal and the engine roared as the car rocketed backward. The creature fell off the hood and struggled to stand. After whipping the car around, he threw the gearshift back into drive and headed back downtown. He was taking them to the church. It was the only idea anyone seemed to have.
***
Rick woke up with a headache. Slowly, memories came back to him. Martin had betrayed him, even after he let him hang out with his friends on the strip. “Ungrateful shit.” He muttered and tried to stand. His equilibrium was off. A missed step sent him sprawling into a wall. He felt around, trying to ignore the agony in his head, and found his weapon. The young man pulled the shotgun closer. This time a burning hatred that had broken free helped him to stand. “I’ll teach him and that bitch a lesson.” He smiled at his own deviousness. The preacher would be dead by then and no one would ever know when the mess was cleaned up. Two bodies shot in the head wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
Rick walked forward with a goal, a renewed sense of purpose. When he passed through the school doors, Rick sucked a lungful of fresh air, trying to clear out the fog in his head. “I’ll teach that bitch and him a lesson.” He repeated over and over as his malicious mantra. The creatures were primitive, but despite Rick’s fully functional brain, he was rapidly degenerating to a comparable level. With the single-mindedness of an animal, he committed himself to hunting down those that had left him to die.
In the parking lot, he searched for a truck to hotwire. He needed a truck because that is what guys drove around there. A guy driving a car was likely to be a queer and Rick was not a queer. “Ask Stephanie,” He laughed at his own joke. “That stupid bitch probably came anyway, so she shouldn’t make a deal out of it.” The throbbing in his temples did not let up. He made a mental note to steal some aspirin if he had the chance.
Rick saw a truck that looked a lot like the one he had left crashed on the Strip. He smiled and thought about how he had learned to hotwire a car. “Hot damn, that was a fun night.” He had been at a friend’s house, probably one of the guys on the team. “Anyway, we were piss drunk in the dude’s garage.” He spoke aloud to the shadows and the silence of the desolate schoolyard. “We took turns trying the wires on the inside of the steering column. Numb-nuts Nathan shocked himself so bad; the tips of his fingers were black.” He let out a shrill laugh. “I got it though. Two red wires, if you can’t find them, then twist together any two wires of the same color. You’ll get it.” He paused. “Or maybe it was the red and yellow wires?”
The adolescent stopped and peered in the window of his new truck. Something moved inside! Of course, the former owner did not know that he was trespassing in Rick’s new vehicle. The twisted face flashed into view and the mouth moved in a pantomime of dialogue. The seventeen year-old pressed his cold hands to the equally cold glass and slapped several times. A raspy noise escaped the monster’s throat as it became aware of its most delectable choice of sustenance. “Meat is good” was one of the few real thoughts in the beast’s expiring frontal lobe. Soon nothing would be left but instinct. Luckily, this particular creature would never have to experience the lengthy decay of his body.
Rick knew not to blow the window out. He might need that little barrier later. Instead he sheathed the shotgun and drew out a pistol. His right hand clutched the weapon while his left snaked forward and pulled on the handle. Mechanisms sprung to life and the door popped open. The creature moved quickly and flung the door wider, lunging out to greet his foolish dinner. Rick readied himself for the rush and fired into the classmate’s face twice at point-blank range. He didn’t bother observing the damage.