Leaving their empty cups behind,
they headed downstairs. They passed the two large visitation rooms
and the formal office for bereaved customer consultations. They
passed a closet where they kept the embalming chemicals, and then
stood quietly at the next door. They listened for a moment. Hearing
nothing Scott opened the door, turned on the light and led the way
downstairs.
The area was bright and open, two
stainless steel tables stood at the center of the room, surrounded
by cabinetry full of chemicals and equipment used to prepare the
bodies of the dead for their eternal rest. They didn’t have a
crematorium on the premises but Scott was hopeful that in the next
three years they’d be able to afford one and the accompanying
expansion to house it. To the right of the tables was a walk in
refrigerator where the bodies of the dead were stored. It was
closed, and that’s exactly how they both remembered leaving
it.
As they stepped closer they could hear a thumping
noise. It was a gentle noise, but one that began to repeat itself.
As they stepped closer it became more erratic and forceful.
Scott paused, looking back to the steps, but since
Judy stepped forward he had to as well. They now stood at the door,
ready to open it. Scott stood near the lip of the door with his
heart beating wildly and his mind filling with childlike wonder.
Judy held the handle and readied herself to open it. Scott gave her
the nod to open it, and she did.
CHAPTER 2:
Under the skies of
doom
It was a warm night. Bugs flitted through the
air and chirped in the tall grass surrounding the campsite. The
trees lurched upward to the pinpricked backdrop of the evening sky,
like rockets bound for space. And if they were capable of it they’d
be foolish not to go. A ragtag group of individuals had only
stopped to rest in the sanctuary of the woodland retreat for a few
hours, come morning they would continue toward Titan City to find
their families, friends, and other loved ones. The woods were
filled with more than the usual creatures tonight. The unnatural
sounds of the living dead haunted the earth, even in the most
serene of locations.
A young man sat by the wheel well of his car
scribbling notes, and thoughts into a warped notepad. His eyes
looked tiny, dry, and bloodshot. His stubble was transforming into
a beard and when he couldn’t think of something to write he
scratched at his stubble with the eraser side of the pencil.
“Look at this fucking guy,” says Frankie.
“Snap out of it! You’re not turning into a zombie on me are
you?”
“Huh? Heh, no, not yet you bearded bastard. I
hope you got another one of those Bud’s for me,” said Eddie,
closing his notebook, the pencil holding the page.
“For you? Hell’s no, not on me at least,
there’s a cooler behind the passenger seat. We’ll have to make a
run later and pick up some more,” Frankie almost looked happy about
it.
“Shit, there’s never gonna be enough. I’m
sure we’re minutes away from the last cold beer on earth, but…fuck
it, it’s not like we’ve never had warm, skunky beer before,” Eddie
said.
“Well, now we don’t have to worry about the
cops breaking it up and pissing on the fire,” Frankie replied, even
though they were both of age now.
They both turned to look at the growing pile
of burning bodies, it seemed like they would always have fire.
Whether they were in the woods, or on the road the dead had a way
of finding them. Luckily, they had gotten good at protecting
themselves and dispatching of the dead things that sought their
flesh. Not everybody was keen on burning the bodies. They all had
reasons, and some of them good, but in the end majority rules and
majority ruled that the dead sons and daughter of bitches and
bastards would burn as bright as the stars in the sky, and that was
that.
On their way back to Frankie’s truck neither
one of them could help from staring at the blank face's of the
people with which they now traveled. They were all travelers on the
road to nowhere. Some of the early survivors figured out how to put
the dead things down for good, and eventually the news media picked
up on it and shared the information before going off the air.
Destroy the brain, remove the head, or otherwise incapacitate them;
burning had become a surefire bet. One bullet was usually incapable
of dispatching the creatures. A shotgun was feasible, or something
like a high caliber hunting rifle could do the trick if used
properly. Most of the survivors used baseball bats, crowbars and
the like when it came to one-on-one combat with the dead. It
allowed them to conserve ammunition and create less noise. It was
also easier to brain the creatures than it was to make several
headshots, though most of the time when it came to this sort of
combat it was to escape death rather than deal it—so, of course the
damage wasn’t sufficient to keep them down. The dead had made a
habit of coming back.
Once seated on the back of Frankie’s black,
beat-to-hell Dodge Ram Eddie managed to take only one swig of his
not-quite-cold brew before old man Ricky Rickerbocker came by to
fill the comfortable silence with his brand of nervous noise. Too
bad Ricker never drank, maybe it would calm his ass out, they’d
thought.
“Anybody making a run tonight?” He asked,
biting on his dirty fingernails.
Almost afraid to answer, Frankie said, “not
sure, nobody’s been talking much today.”
“That blows, I sure could use some more
smokes…” as if nobody knew what he wanted when he came over in the
first place, grubby bastard. “Any of you boys got,” he
continued.
“C’mon Ricker, you know neither of us smoke
just like we know you don’t drink…yet.” Eddie chimed in. He was
halfway done with his Budweiser, trying to savor it but not really
being able to.
“Ricker, you old leech, I got a few!” shouted
Dawn. Dawn was a chain-smoking waitress with a mouth like all the
other chain-smoking waitresses that worked at Pete’s Pit Stop Diner
on Route 9.
Ricker made his way over to her with one hand
out and the other fishing for a light in his pocket, but there
wasn’t one in there. He was convinced his fingers were lying and
that one of them would eventually come clean. As if she knew he
didn’t have a light on him, she used the lit end from the smoke she
had hanging off her pinkish-orange lips and lit it for him. She
gave it to him and it had her colors around the end of it. Either
not looking or not caring, he put it into his mouth and puffed
away. He nodded his head in thanks, looking her over as he did; she
wasn’t bad looking…so long as she didn’t talk much. Ricker hated
any woman who talked too much. Eddie cracked open another, his pace
just behind Frankie’s, making sure he didn’t jump ahead on his
pal’s stash.
He had just swallowed his first swig when the
dead things crept up on the group. There weren’t many of them, but
it’s never good to be caught off guard by a dead thing that wants
to eat your skin, no matter how many. It looked as if most of them
were kids, scouts by the look of their uniforms. Out for a retreat
at the campgrounds, one from which they never returned home.
From behind them charged Gerty, short for
Gertrude, brandishing a very used Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
She had no remorse as she bashed in the first child’s head. A brute
of a human, let alone a woman. Frankie jumped to his feet pulling
his shotgun from behind the passenger’s seat. Eddie grabbed a bat
from the bed of the truck. The three of them took care of the small
group of scouts. Their scout leader staggered out from the same
patch of woods alongside another gentleman, clearly older, and
another youngster. Gerty turned to swing, knocking the older of
them off to the side, where Frankie blasted his face clear off,
getting gristle and chunks of grey matter all over his shirt and
arms as the noise of the blast echoed through the woods. Gerty kept
swinging. Eddie was batting clean up with a splintered bat that had
gore dripping from it. The three of them had the same look of
intensity in their eyes. The same look of thirst, blood thirst.
Eddie knocked the last youngster’s jaw into oblivion, screaming
like some wild savage. He continued bashing the freckle-faced Cub
Scout into the dirt, grinding his face into a puddle of dark red
mush. The savagery pulled noises from the child’s body that
contradicted the thudding of the wooden fury. The sounds made those
who watched gag, and as inevitable as it was, someone puked.
Someone always does.
This time it was Eddie’s slightly younger
brother, Joseph, who, hours earlier, was doing the same thing to a
man old enough to be his father. It hadn’t been easy for any of
them to kill. They did it because they had to. The smart ones lost
themselves into the necessity of the action and were able to pull
themselves out when it was over.
The viciousness ran its course and everyone
walked away, except Scott and Judy, who went to drag the bodies to
the burn pile. They both used what looked like ice picks of some
sort, hooking the bodies just under the ribs. They did it as if
they had always done it. The killing three walked back to where
they had been before the violent scene, in an odd state of utter
disgust and acceptance at what they had just been capable of doing.
None of them cared to wipe the blood or gore off, though they
probably should have. It was as if they temporarily shut down.
Joseph went up to his brother putting his
hand firmly on his shoulder. He turned to look at him with an
exhausted stare. They looked at each other, and it never felt so
strange to him as it did now. It felt like he was looking behind a
plate of streaked glass.
The night carried on, it was quiet and the
stars were bright. There were no electrical hums, no cars beeping,
no stupid cell phone jingles–only the crackling and blistering of
dead flesh. It smelled horrendous, but everyone seemed to be
getting relatively used to it, especially Scott and Judy, who were
roasting marshmallows. Most of the group thought them to be sick in
the head. Almost everyone had heard the Cliff Notes version of
their story; husband and wife, ran a funeral home in North Amber
and had bodies year round in the home they slept in. Scott
supposedly ate, off of a plate of course, sitting on the chest of
his cadavers if they so happened to be delivered during, and
interrupting, his mealtime. If you were to ask him about it he’d
have a different take on the story every time.
Some of the group started falling asleep,
mostly the younger kids who were exhausted and scared out of their
minds. Not that everyone else was taking the new world order in
stride. Everyone was scared to hell, but you couldn’t survive like
that; some people had to step up and the lead the way, while others
simply followed. Luckily for this group, many of the folks had
stepped up. They had a few good people helping to get everyone
safely to their destination. Boone, who was practically running the
show, Gerty, Eddie, Frankie, Alexis, Jon-Jon, and Big Cups were all
doing a lot to get them to Titan City so they could be with their
families and close friends. They did more than they could handle.
And that was how they handled the new world, by keeping busy and
finding something to do and someone to help.
Titan City seemed like a world away. It was
everything they needed it to be. It was a destination, it was hope,
it was the green grass on the other side of hell that surely had to
be better than the grass they were standing on now. They were
almost out of Middlesex County, near rural towns like Sheffield,
Perch, and New Haven.
They had wanted to be out of Middlesex County
yesterday and find a place to get some solid walls around them and
rest. They needed rest something fierce. Good rest, not the
sleeping on the road kind of rest that they had been getting. The
campgrounds were a step in the right direction but it had still
been hell on them. The woods had been both a blessing and curse,
not being seen was great but not being able to see what lurked in
the darkness of the brush was not.
Everyone of a decent age took turns keeping
watch while others slept. It was only fair to share the
responsibilities of keeping the group safe. Along with traveling
they had raided strip malls, convenience stores, and gas stations
to get what they needed and be on their way to where they needed to
be. They did their best to stay off the main streets and highways,
which, for the most part, were lethal and impassable, but every
road held a hidden danger.
Jon-Jon groggily climbed out of his van. It
was an old blue Chevrolet Astro Van with rust spreading out from
its wheel wells. It had dents and dings on all sides. The front
grill was spattered with blood and chunks of skin. Jon-Jon wore a
trucker cap, maroon with piss-yellow letters that spelled out Milf
Hunter. It was the kind of hat that nobody else could have gotten
away with wearing, but he did. He also sported a brown vest over a
two-day old flannel, he snatched on the last raid, though it
could’ve just as easily been something hanging in his closet.
“Does anyone have any fuckin’ toilet paper,”
he yelled more than asked. He waited a moment, took off his hat and
scratched his forehead, put it back on and closed his eyes. “None
of you fuckers got--”
Before he could finish his next few words
Gerty rifled a four pack of Angel Soft at the back of his head.
“Quit yer yelling faggot! Pop-a-squat and let’s raid that Mal-Mart
we passed on the way here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, picking up the bucket
on the side of his truck. “If you hear me screaming I may need help
wiping my ass, so hurry over.”
“If that’s the case, your fucked, don’t be
too long. I’ll round up some of these other faggots,” she shouted,
then continued to tie up her shit kickers and put on her finest
insulated flannel which was a hell of a lot older than two
days.