A whistling noise was heard in the air, faint but
fast. Those that heard it looked to the northern sky. They couldn’t
see anything at first, but then a noise was heard and a gigantic
plume of smoke and debris rose into the air. The smoke rose as high
as the distant skyline and then further still. The city of angels
would not be the only city to fall today. Titan City now lay wasted
as well. A titan turned to ash, and the ash only a fading
memory.
As they stood and stared, in something worse than
disbelief, another noise was heard in the distance. A moment later,
in proximity to the first tower of debris, rose another. It was
twice as devastating. The world never seemed so bleak—so punished,
so doomed. It could’ve been New York City, Jersey City, or Liberty
City—any other city close by for that matter. Alan, a good friend
of many of the men there, had turned his gun to himself without
drawing any attention till it was too late. They all stared at the
magnificent destruction in the distance. He opened his mouth,
letting his teeth scrape against the cold metal. Alan was but one
breath away from oblivion.
They stared at the massive clouds of burning debris
that disintegrated into ash as the mushroom shaped cloud continued
to form. Alan didn’t look at any of his friends. He closed his
eyes. The plumes of smoke rising higher. Not a single tear rolled
down his cheek. He leaned up against a car, his back to the fallen
Titan, bit down on the barrel, cracking and chipping his teeth as
he awkwardly pulled the trigger. The skyline was erased. A single
shot rang out in the immediate area and those that weren’t too
stunned to look immediately regretted having done so. The noise
barely registered. His head slumped forward with the barrel of his
rifle lodged in his mouth. The back of his head was blown out
across a white Toyota Camry. Some of his friends noticed it then.
Disgusted, heartbroken, Davis stared at his friend.
Less than a minute after the gunshot, Alan twitched.
His body spasmed and he lifted up his head. His dead eyes gazed
upon his friends. Davis stared into those dead eyes with eyes as
equally empty. Alan reached up and murmured some sort of noise,
“sssshhhlsssseeeellllf.” He sounded like a snake but Davis shot him
dead a second time before he could bite. Jeff vomited. No one was
able to well up enough tears to cry—it seemed they were dried up of
emotion at the moment. All they could do was stare into the
billowing clouds of smoke, and at what remained of their friend.
Davis shed a tear for those who couldn’t and quickly wiped it
away—it may have been the last one he had left.
The ham radios crackled with frantic voices but no
one listened to what they were saying. The only hope they had was
that the bombs weren’t atomic. The nuclear fallout resulting from
three bombs would be a global concern. Radiated debris could travel
great lengths by way of the wind, possibly contaminating food and
water supplies. Fallout shelters are rarely maintained, a few might
still be functional due to the increase of terror threats in recent
years, but on the whole fallout shelters have just become
additional storage space for the buildings that house them. They
are hardly more than a relic leftover from the cold war, one that
New Haven certainly didn’t maintain. They had one at the church,
and one at the school.
Laura greeted Walter and her son at the door upon
their return home. She could tell immediately that something
serious was weighing down on their shoulders. Walter kissed her and
held her close. He walked her outside and pointed to the North. She
began to cry. Maria and Barbara were playing with the children.
Once the kids saw their father walk through the door Wally, Sandra,
and Tommy ran to him. His solemn expression broke and a smile
emerged as he knelt to the ground and opened his arms wide. His
smile was sincere but it only served to hide what he was thinking
on the inside.
“
Daddy,” the kids screamed, as he
wrapped his arms around them.
Maria too, could tell something was off. Once Jeff
knelt down she could see beyond him through the picturesque
silhouette of the door frame and saw her in-laws wrapped in each
others quivering arms. She walked over to Jeff, and Barbara
followed behind her. Maria looked to Jeff for an explanation but he
refused to give one in front of the children. Barbara pulled Maria
by the arm and the two of them joined Walter and Laura outside.
They too looked to the North, but neither of them was prepared to
see the giant mushroom clouds dissipating into the grey sky.
Jeff refused to move away from his kids. He sat and
watched them play. He buried his feelings deep inside and hoped
they’d be obedient enough to stay there. He began to tremble. If
only he could put time on hold and live in a moment. All he wanted
was to keep his family safe, but how could he protect them now? He
chewed on the thought, but all he ended up with was a mouthful of
blood and chewed up lip.
CHAPTER 8
: Siege
From the shadows emerged a veritable swarm of the
undead. In all the varying degrees of rot, they moved forth. Moving
in an almost tidal fashion, swaying side to side, back and forth,
they staggered closer. They verbalized their hunger for warm living
flesh with guttural sounds and slurring hisses that could almost be
words. In the hoarde of creatures were all walks of former life;
death did not spare the young, the elderly, the rich, the
beautiful, the crippled, or the undecided. They all marched forward
in need. Their pride or shame died when they came back, leaving
only hunger.
Inside the school, Jon-Jon, weak from blood loss and
general exhaustion, refused to rest. As far as he was concerned
he’d sleep when he was dead, so long as someone was kind enough to
destroy his undead brain. He, as well as many others, was doing a
fair job of barricading the building. The building itself was as
strong as they came; it was the windows that worried them. Luckily,
they sat high in relation to a person’s height and, as in most
schools, they were shatterproof. Though shatterproof was a relative
term and a barrage of blunt force would prove it so; tenacious,
unending blunt force at that. These things didn’t stop unless they
were stopped, and barricading themselves in was the first in a long
list of things to do to stop them, at least enough of them, in
order to survive another day, another hour, or just for another
minute.
Gerty sat on a toilet seat in the woman’s rest room.
She took deep, painfully sharp breaths as she clutched her chest.
She had a metal shard sticking out of her skin, and by the way it
felt she knew it had pierced her lung. She wasn’t sure how bad it
was, she’d been running on adrenaline for the last few hours and
only began feeling the pain sometime during the drive down route
519. Her shirt was soaked with blood, but she was able to remedy
that, at least.
She pulled a tube of crazy glue from her bag, a
nearly exhausted roll of duct tape, and a winged sanitary pad. She
always kept Krazy Glue on hand to fix her key chains. Gerty had an
impressive amount of key chains, and they always seemed to
break.
They were usually keepsakes from vacations or gifts
from friends, who went on vacation and brought them back for her.
She tended to crack them and break them often given that they
usually were not of the greatest quality. But regardless of quality
they held tremendous value to her. She’d rather glue them than
discard them. They were her memories and it was better to have
broken memories than none at all.
Once she saw the wound, she immediately thought of a
story she heard about Krazy Glue; that it had been invented as a
suture-less solution for field surgery in the Vietnam War. She
wasn’t entirely certain on the validity of the story but knew that
it could be used as a skin-glue. She didn’t have many options and
feared going to the group for help. If they thought she could
become one of those things, someone might just kill her on the
spot. Or they may leave her behind as well. Either way there wasn’t
much any of them could do for her anyway. She didn’t think it was
worth the risk. If the glue didn’t work she’d always have the
option to ask for help anyway.
Gerty bit her lip and pulled out the metal shard.
The pain hit her, and she watched as bright blood streamed from the
wound. Her skin color grew pale quickly as she ripped open the
sanitary pad and pressed it firmly to her wound. She held it there
tightly as she watched it fill with blood. She began to cough and
wheeze as her lungs took in some of the vital fluid.
After about two minutes of keeping pressure on it,
she pulled the pad away from the top of the wound just enough to
fill it with some glue. The blood had stopped oozing but if she
released the pressure too much the flood gates would surely open.
She carefully began gluing the ends of her flesh back together,
making sure to put glue inside the wound as well, no matter how
painful it was. She used a lot of her supply of glue, and after a
moment she put the pad back on full force.
She waited a good long while before she moved the
pad again. Eventually she removed it, and duct taped a fresh pad to
her chest before returning to the gymnasium to rest. She had lost a
lot of blood, and feared the damage to her lung may be mortal. Her
cough had worsened—a sure sign of fluid in the lung. She went to
sleep.
The dead things had reached the building. Their cold
fingers clamored at the brick exterior, feeling for a way in. They
soon swarmed the front of the school in layers three, four, and
sometimes five deep; all lurching forward to get inside. Some of
them reached for the windows but none with any strength to shatter
them just yet. There were so many of them, and so many of them
unique in their grotesque appearances. One in particular had most
of its face chewed off, so much so that its skull was more
prevalent than what was left of its face. Another had her innards
dragging behind her and splinters of bone coming through her leg
and chest, as if she’d been hit by a truck.
There were cops, and firefighters, paramedics, and
other emergency responders—even a national guard member, whose
uniform was so badly shredded he might as well be naked. None of
them were pretty: they all had wounds, some more gaping than
others. They came in droves, seemingly out of nowhere, backlit by
the stars and moon casting their shadows towards the school.
Ben had walked away from the others. He went outside
to the fenced in area behind the school. The creatures had made
their way there as well, and their dead fingers wrapped around the
chain links of the fence like eagle talons grasping their helpless
prey. The fence wouldn’t hold forever, he thought, but walked up to
it anyway. He could tell it excited the dead things. From his
pocket he pulled out a knife. He stood directly next to the fence,
close enough so that the dead things could almost touch him, and he
could smell their rot oozing off like dew on the morning grass. He
smiled a twisted smile and jabbed the dead things with his knife.
He stabbed at their faces, fingers, and anything else he could
reach. He relished at the thought of catching an eye with the
knife, maybe he’d even be able to pluck one out.
As he performed his wretched little version of
Whack-A-Mole, he noticed on the overhang in the back of the
building there was an access ladder leading up to the roof. He
feverishly stabbed at the things as they continued to react to his
presence. And when he felt contented he wiped the blood from his
knife and walked back inside.
Ben rejoined the others. “Found a way to get to the
roof,” he announced.
Some people looked excited at the news, others
seemed unimpressed. Most just wanted to get some rest.
“
That’s awesome! We can go up
there and pick off the troublemakers when we finish this up,” Boone
said, getting up from the floor, leaving Sarah and Mila to
themselves.
“
Sounds good,” Ben replied,
licking his lower lip.
Eddie and Joseph sat on the floor
next to their mother, Janice. They were the shattered remains of a
family. Janice looked like she crawled out from the pits of hell.
Her face was mostly expressionless but she perked up when her sons
sat next to her. She tried to smile but it was almost as if it hurt
her face to do so. She was paper-thin, the desire to eat had left
her and anytime she tried to eat, more often than not, she threw it
back up. She no longer cared to live. She didn’t exactly want to
die, but life had lost its luster for her. She only wanted to do
what she could for her remaining children and if that meant
surviving, then that’s what she would try her hardest to do. The
three of them had been through a lot, but Janice was the one who
witnessed it all first hand. She was the one who watched her
husband being eaten alive by a swarm of the undead bastards as they
invaded their home. His last words to her were garbled and
intermixed with bloodcurdling screams between every other syllable.
But somehow she understood him:
get the
kids and go, I love you
.
But she couldn’t get the kids: Lizzie and Shaun were
upstairs and the stairway was blocked by the mayhem she was
witnessing. She ran outside and screamed up to the window, calling
to them. The kids came running to the window, but they were being
chased by one of the shambling dead things that had managed to make
it upstairs into their room. She screamed for them to jump, but
they were too afraid. She screamed so loud it hurt her teeth, and
Shaun jumped to her but not before the creature had bitten his
throat out. He died in her arms as she watched her only daughter
get eviscerated on the windowsill.