The Last Days (8 page)

“There is a damn kid lying on the road. I’m going out there and kick his or her ass and get them out of our way. This shit is going too far.” Mike yelled.

The smell hit him full force as he opened the door. A mixture of burning wood, RV’s and something that made him gag.

Mike slammed the door and walked to the front of the RV. He started to yell. “Get the hell off the road! You want to get yourself killed? This isn’t a game!” Mike yelled over the screaming and cries echoing throughout the campground.

He turned on the flashlight and shined it on the legs of the figure on the ground. Blood pooled out all around the figure.

He shined the light further up the length of the body. It was soaked in something red. When he saw the midsection was ripped open and intestines spilled out beside the body, the sickening smell made him cover his mouth in an effort to keep his dinner down. He moved to the head. It was a blond girl. He was surprised she wasn’t wearing a mask.

Half her face was missing. Her remaining eye was open and stared lifelessly into the dark.

“Come on get up and get out of here.” He yelled. He was pissed, but he was sort of impressed at the quality of their ghoulish costumes. The body looked so lifelike. This getup was much better than ones he had seen those girls wearing earlier today.

He studied the face. He bent down and touched the face. He was shocked the face felt warm and so real.

His foot slid in the blood on the ground where he was hunched down. He had to put his hand on the ground to keep from losing his balance.

The thick warm liquid covered his hand.

He held his hand in the light from the flashlight and looked at his hand.

He moved his fingers and rubbed them together as he looked at the red liquid.  It felt like blood. It looked and felt just like the blood he had gotten all over his hands the last time he had shot and gutted a deer during hunting season.

“What the hell?” Mike said out loud.

In the shadows of the light beam at his feet he saw motion.

He moved the light on the girls face again. The eye that had been open and a bright blue color a minute ago was now a milky white color.

The eye started to rapidly move around in the eye socket. Next the girl’s jaws started opening and closing. The head snapped in Mike’s direction. The girl’s mangled face was now staring up at him. Blood started to seep out of the girl’s mouth as it opened and closed.

Her color had changed.

The healthy glow of her skin had become a dull gray color. A low growling sound started to come from her throat.

Mike jumped upright and took a step back as her arms started to flail in the air. Her legs started to move. Whatever had ravished her midsection must have broken her spine, as the upper and lower body began moving erratically, but as much as she tried, both ends didn’t seem to be able to work together and she couldn’t get up.

Mike stood, shocked at what he saw.

He looked around the campground at the bodies that were illuminated by the fires.

The other bodies that had been lying motionless were all starting to move.

He shined the light down on the girls face again. The look of pure evil and hatred reflected back at him as it growled and started to flail violently again on the ground in front of him.

Mike had seen enough. Prank or, or, or who knows what this was, it was just too much.

He wiped the blood from his hand off on his shorts. He would have to change these shorts when he had a chance.

He ran back to the driver’s door of the RV, threw it open, got inside and slammed it shut.

“Lock your door!” Mike shouted.

“It is locked!” Kelly replied stunned by Mike’s body language.

“Check it again!” He shouted.

“What’s going on Mike?” Kelly cried.

“I don’t know, but we going to get the stuff we left at our site and get the hell out of here.” He shouted.

Kelly stared in stunned silence as Mike turned the wheel wide so he could drive around the girl on the road.

He drove the fifty feet to their camp site and pulled onto the pad.

“Stay here and keep the doors locked.” He yelled as he got out of the RV and slammed the door behind him.

He started to walk towards the cooler when he heard a weak cry coming from Chuck’s campsite next door.

He shined his flashlight in the direction of the sound.

Next to the dying coals of Chuck’s fire pit were two bodies.

Mike moved cautiously over to the bodies, keeping the light on the bodies as he moved.

He stopped as he recognized what was in front of him. Chuck was lying next to his wife, Sue.

They were both bloody and mangled. Sue’s head had been smashed in. Chuck laid next to her. He looked like he had gone through a shredder. His one arm outstretched above him. Mike gasped when he saw a large bloody rock clenched in Chuck’s hand.

Mike moved closer. Chuck tried to move his head when Mike shined the light on his face. A clear brown eye looked up at Mike. Chuck’s other eye had been ripped from the socket.

“Chuck?” Mike said sadly.

“Mike is that you?” Chuck whispered. He could barely speak as he struggled weakly to move his mangled body.

“My God Chuck, what happened?” Mike asked softly as he knelt down next to Chuck’s body.

“You have to get out of here!” Chuck struggled to speak. Blood started to run out of the corner of his mouth. “Take Kelly and Kimmy and get as far away from here as you can.”

“What happened?” Mike asked again, holding the light on Chuck’s face.

Chuck coughed and the blood started to flow more freely out of his mouth. “Right after you left to go to dinner we were sitting by the fire. All these zombies started to come across the road. We started to laugh. We thought it was all those kids coming over to the campground to give the campers a thrill.”

Chuck coughed again. This time he sounded much weaker.

“But it wasn’t the kids!”

“Who were they?” Mike asked.

“No!” Chuck struggled. “What were they?”

“What?” Mike asked.

“They aren’t human.”  Chuck whispered weakly. “They came into the campground and started attacking everyone. They tore people apart. They stumbled into things, knocking tables, chairs and hanging blankets into the fires. The fires started to spread and started to catch the tents and RV on fires. The screaming and cries were horrible.”

Chuck coughed and spit blood down his chin. His eye closed and he stopped moving.

“Chuck?” Mike said, thinking his friend was dead.

Chuck’s eye opened as he gasped for air. “They attacked Sue. They bit and tore her up something terrible. I managed to pull her into the RV and she died in my arms.” Chuck sobbed.

Mike looked at Chuck and Sue by the fire pit. He started to think. “If Chuck pulled Sue inside the trailer, why are they laying out here? This doesn’t make sense.”

Mike looked at the Bloody rock again in Chuck’s hand.

He didn’t know what to believe.  Everything he was seeing was unbelievable. Nothing he was seeing made any sense.

Chuck started to struggle and began to speak again.

“When these things kill you, you don’t stay dead. I was holding her for about ten minutes as I listened to the horrific sounds coming from everywhere out here.

Then I felt her moving in my arms. She was dead, I know she was dead. Her heart stopped and she wasn’t breathing. Her body was getting cold in my arms. I looked down, my heart was racing. My Sue was moving.

When I looked down, what was moving wasn’t my Sue. The eyes were a milky white. Her skin was a sick gray color. The look on her face scared me. She started to attack me. She was biting me. She ripped chunks of skin out of my arms. I struggled to get away from her, but I couldn’t. She was so strong. My Sue was never very strong. I managed to get free when she ripped half my arm off. I got the door open and fell out on the ground. She was on top of me before I could believe it. I grabbed a rock from beside the fire pit. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to.” Chuck’s weak voice drifted off.

He coughed again. I tried to sit up. All the bodies that been scattered around the campground when I pulled Sue into the trailer, they all started to move.”

Mike thought of the blond girl he had stopped for at the entrance.

“The dead got up and started helping those things attack the campers that were still alive.” Chuck looked weaker. He struggled again and spoke his final words. “Mike. Run while you can. Go before it is too late.”

Mike looked down at his friend. His eye remained opened, but Chuck no longer moved.

Mike turned off his flashlight and stood.

He turned and looked around the campground. He could see the dark outlines of bodies in the glow of the fires. They bodies were everywhere. Some were staggering around and many others began to get up from the ground and make their way across the campground.

Mike was stunned. He didn’t know if he was having a nightmare or if he had just woke up in the middle of the night to see a horror movie on the screen of the TV he forgot to turn off before falling asleep.

If he was dreaming, Kelly’s scream from inside the RV had just woke him up. He looked back at the RV. The flames from a fire burning on the other side of the RV showed a dark figure banging at Kelly’s window.

He ran over to the RV and grabbed the handle on the driver’s door and pulled.

The door didn’t budge. Kelly had followed his instructions and locked the door after he got out.

Mike put his face up to the window and yelled. “Kelly. Let me in!”
Kelly stared, frozen at the sight of the figure trying to get in through her window.

Mike yelled again and started to bang on his door.

The banging got Kelly’s attention, but she screamed, thinking it was another crazed figure trying to get in the other side of the RV.

She looked at the driver door as she screamed.

Mike called out her name. “Kelly. It’s me Mike!”

After a second, Kelly recognized Mike’s voice and jumped across to the driver’s seat and opened the door.

Mike jumped into his seat, pushing Kelly off the end of the seat and onto the floor.

He slammed the door a second before a face slammed into his window.

Mike turned the key that was still in the ignition. The RV roared to life. Mike threw the gearshift into drive and hit the gas. He didn’t try to back out of his campsite. He drove over the grass at the back of his campsite and onto the road. He gunned the engine and sped down the road that circled the campground. The road that would eventually take him past the welcome center and to the road he would follow out of the park.

The bumpy drive over the small ditch between the campsite and the road had bounced Kimmy off the couch and onto the floor.

She scrambled to the front of the RV and desperately grabbed Kelly’s arm as Kelly was pulling herself off the floor and onto her seat.

Mike sped down the road past the edge of the campground. Mike had struck a half dozen staggering figures that had walked out onto the road in front of him.

Kelly screamed. “Mike you’re hitting those people.”

“They aren’t people!” Mike shouted back as he struggled to keep the RV on the small curvy park road.

“What are they?” Kelly cried. She was scared and confused. She couldn’t understand what was going on. It was all happening so fast. She hugged Kimmy and held her face against her shoulder so she wouldn’t see the figures bouncing off the front of the RV or the blood that now flowed across the windshield.

Mike took a fast glance at Kelly and Kimmy. “We have to get away from here as fast as we can. Buckle your seat belts and hold on.”

Kelly held Kimmy with one hand as she pulled the seat belt around her with her free hand.

“Mike what was going on back there? I don’t understand.” Kelly cried.

“I’m not sure I understand either, but it’s a God Damn massacre back there.” Mike said, his voice shaking.

Kelly was too stunned by what had happened to notice that Kimmy didn’t say “Daddy used that God Damn word again.” Kimmy was still half asleep. The half that was awake was dazed by the rapid sequence of action happening around her.

Kelly just stared not knowing what to say.

“I’ll tell you what I saw and what Chuck told me when we find a safe place to stop.” Mike said as he watched the sides of the road for more moving figures.

“Chuck was back there?” Kelly whispered.

“He was.” Mike replied. “He’s dead now.” Mike added lowering his voice.

They drove past the Park Welcome Center. Flames jumped high into the air, outlining the silhouettes of hundreds of grotesque figures standing between the fire and the road.

Kelly shrunk down into her seat as she watched the shapes turn to face the moving RV and begin to turn in its direction as they drove by.