Those Lazy Sundays: A Novel of the Undead (6 page)

J
ACK LOOKED DOWN at the twisted figure twitching in the street. He and Kate would have to stay on their toes to warn any oncoming traffic, so the poor guy didn’t get run over a second time. Cars coming around the bend wouldn’t have much time to slow down.

“Do you think we ought to do something?” Kate asked, joining Jack at the side of the injured man.

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know. First Aid or something,” Kate said. “I don’t know much… I took a First Aid class a couple of years ago. You’re supposed to take their pulse and check for fractures and burns and things like that,” she said.

Jack raised his eyebrows, looked down at the man writhing on the ground, looked back up at her, and gave her a condescending look.

“I’m pretty sure the guy has a pulse, Kate.”

She looked down, embarrassed.

“And we pretty well know what’s wrong with him as well,” Jack continued. “He got run over by a van.”

“Okay, I get it,” Kate replied, a hint of anger in her voice. “I just hate standing here and not helping or anything.”

Jack gave her a slight smile and nodded.

“I know how you feel,” Jack said, though Kate wasn’t sure that he did.

“As long as he’s moving around like that, he’s conscious and breathing. We should probably leave him alone. If he stops and loses consciousness, then we probably need to do something.”

Kate nodded.

“Hopefully they’ll be back soon,” Kate said, looking down the road where their friends had gone.

The sound of an approaching vehicle caught their attention. A black Ford Explorer blasted around the curve, headed straight at them. Jack and Kate began yelling and waving frantically, hoping to get the attention of the driver.

Instead, the SUV sped forward with no sign of slowing down. Kate looked nervously at Jack, and down at the man lying in the road.

“Shit. Quick, grab him by the legs and pull him to the side of the road!” Jack yelled, grabbing the man at the calf. Kate looked down at the man’s left leg, bent ninety degrees at the knee, and hesitated.

“Where should I grab?” Kate asked frantically.

“Anywhere! Just grab and pull!”

Kate grabbed the man’s leg and started pulling, the man’s knee crackling like dry fall leaves under a parade. The SUV blew by them just as they reached the shoulder, swerving only slightly before disappearing around another curve.

“What an asshole!” Jack said angrily. “We should’ve gotten his license plate number.”

Kate nodded, still staring down the road.

“The good news,” Jack began again, gesturing at the man on the ground, “Is that he still seems okay. At least, he doesn’t seem any worse than he was.”

Kate looked at the man for a few moments and then looked up. He was still thrashing around, occasionally snarling at them. Looking at him made her want to throw up, and she turned her back to him.

“I’m going to try 9-11 again,” she said.

She took her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. After dialing the number and listening for a few seconds, she pushed the “end” button and put it back in her pocket.

“Still nothing?”

“I barely got a signal, but it’s busy again,” Kate replied.

“Weird,” Jack said. “So weird…”

A chilly breeze swept over them, rustling the orange and yellow trees. Jack breathed in deeply, taking a lungful of crisp fall air. On any other day, the breeze would have been a near-poetic autumn moment, the colorful foliage swaying, the sun shining almost horizontally through the trees, illuminating the bright colors of the season.

They stood in silence for several minutes, Jack alternately staring down the road and occasionally glancing at the injured man to make sure he was still conscious. Kate purposely looked down the road, at the trees, at the sky – anywhere but at the mangled, insane man lying a few feet away.

The time ticked by as they waited anxiously for their friends to return. Jack continued watching the road, hoping to see the green van – or a police car or some other rescue vehicle– come around the corner. He looked at his watch. It was almost five-thirty. His friends had been gone for twenty minutes. He wasn’t sure exactly how far they were from Allentown, and twenty minutes wasn’t an unreasonably long time for a two-way trip, but he felt himself getting more anxious and worried – more than he let on to Kate. He looked at her briefly, and she looked back and smiled. She had her arms crossed, and shuffled from foot to foot every few seconds. She was looking down the road toward town as well, and he could tell she was as anxious as he was.

He opened his mouth to say something, when Kate pointed down the road, in the direction of the town. A man was coming around the curve towards them. He looked about average height and was dressed in a pair of dark gray slacks, a white button-up shirt, and a red tie. From a distance, he looked like an unremarkable businessman or office worker.

“What do you think that guy’s doing?” Kate asked.

Jack didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes fixed on the man.

“I don’t know,” he replied finally. “Something’s not right, though. What’s he doing walking out here in the middle of nowhere dressed like that?”

“Maybe he—“ Kate began, but stopped mid-sentence.

Something about the way the man walked was familiar. His movements were jerky and unnatural, like a marionette being yanked on by an unskilled puppet master.

“Can’t be…” Jack mouthed, his mind spinning.

Their nervousness grew as the man approached. His head was cocked to the side, his mouth hanging open. A long, thick string of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth, over his chin, and down to the collar of his shirt. His dark brown hair was greasy and disheveled, and his arms hung limply at his sides.

“You think it’s one of those guys from the store?” Kate asked.

“No,” Jack replied flatly. “He’s coming from the wrong direction. And they couldn’t have made it this far that fast. But he definitely looks like he has the same…” He paused, searching for the right words. “…problem… that they had.”

“What should we do?”

“Let’s just step out of his way and let him pass. But we definitely need to keep an eye on him until he gets far enough away.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Kate wondered out loud. “You seriously think that all those people are just drug addicts?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Jack said, his eyes still fixated on the approaching man. “At the store I might have bought that. But with this guy too… drugs seem pretty unlikely.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of disease or something…”

Jack shrugged. “Could be. We have no way of knowing anything at this point.”

Jack and Kate stepped further off the road, out of the path of the man. They warily monitored him, watching him stagger and stumble down the road, his head remaining cocked to the side in the same position, his eyes seemingly looking straight ahead, completely oblivious to everything else around him.

A few dozen feet away from Jack and Kate, he stopped. They were standing just on the edge of the tree line, several feet from the side of the road, but in plain view. They hadn’t thought to hide. But then, they hadn’t expected the man to stop.

Kate opened her mouth to say something, but Jack put his hand up, signaling her to keep quiet. She closed her mouth and waited, wondering what he was up to. The man slowly turned in their direction. Kate’s heart began to race. When he turned completely around, she let out a weak gasp. She looked at Jack, who was staring intently, not taking his eyes off of the man. He was now close enough that they could make out his features clearly. His skin was unnaturally pale, as if all blood had been drained from his face, and his head hung limply to the side, an odd, rubbery look to his neck that reminded Kate of the little Gumby figure she used to play with as a child.

The man grunted loudly and stepped off the road. He sped up, staggering towards Jack and Kate who backed towards the forest. The man stumbled in the rougher terrain, tripped over a grapefruit-sized rock, and fell face-first into the dirt, where he continued to writhe and moan.

“Kate, let’s get the hell out of here,” Jack said.

“But what about the guy we hit?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it's safe out here. There's something weird going on. That guy isn't right either. Let's walk towards the town. Hopefully, we’ll run into Andy and all of them on the way back.”

“What if we run into more of those people?” Kate asked.

“We’ll avoid them. They don’t seem to be particularly quick. We can still get help for that guy." He paused. "If he can be helped.”

Together, Jack and Kate hurried down the street, trying to leave the man on the ground, and Gumby-Neck, well behind them. Gumby-Neck, losing sight of his dinner, stopped in the street. He turned and looked behind him. For a brief moment, he thought he saw fresh meat, but smelled nothing but dead flesh. First two, then three, then four people like him emerged from the woods and staggered onto the road. He looked at them all hungrily, but ignored them.

Gumby-Neck began staggering down the road again, walking in the direction that he last saw his meal. The other four people followed in tow, all five creatures staggering and stumbling their way down the Vermont road, on their way to what they hoped would be a nice feast.

L
ESS THAN A minute after entering downtown Allentown, he saw why his brother had sounded the way he had. He drove straight to the police station as Mike had recommended, swerving to avoid the people who were walking nonchalantly in the middle of the road ˗ a lot of people.

He parked his BMW in front of the police station next to his brother's cruiser, two spaces over from an SUV with 'Allentown Police Department' printed in plain letters on the side, and ran inside the building. He found Mike sitting at his desk in the small Allentown Police Station with an open First Aid Kit, wrapping a bandage around his arm. He hadn’t seen his brother in nearly six months, though they lived less than an hour away from each other. They hadn’t always gotten along well as kids, but the last year had definitely been the low point. Brothers have a special relationship, their dad used to tell them, and there are only two things that can kill it: girls, and money. In spite of their dad’s advice, they’d fallen prey to both. Their relationship had never died. Not completely. But for the past three-hundred sixty-five days, it had been on a respirator.

Mike greeted him less than warmly, though somehow, Brent detected relief in his brother’s voice. He grabbed a chair and sat down, looking at a pile of bloody gauze sitting next to the First Aid Kit.

“Mike, you okay?” he asked.

Mike nodded. “Yeah. One of those things bit me.”

“Things,” Brent repeated, slightly confused. He assumed his brother was talking about the people outside, but the word "things," for some reason, sent a chill through his body. Mike took his job serving the people seriously and usually talked very respectfully about the citizens in “his town,” as he often called it. He wouldn't call people in Allentown "things." No way.

“Yes,
things
,” he replied with an out-of-character coldness that continued to make his brother's alarm bells ring. “There’s something wrong with them. They’re crazy. Not human.”

“A lot of people cops deal with are either crazy or dirtbags,” Brent replied. “It was the same shit in the service. But at least according to the guy who gave us our powerpoint ethics classes, we’re supposed to pretend they’re real people.”

“No Brent, I’m not speaking in some cynical philosophical code. I mean they’re really crazy. And dangerous.”

Mike told him the whole story, this time going into full detail about everything that happened: finding ˗ and later, shooting ˗ the Anders family, the attack by Mrs. Samuels, Carl the mechanic, his inability to contact his deputy, and how he was injured. Brent listened without saying anything. When he finished, Brent leaned forward.

“Jesus shit Mike, you killed four people?”

“I told you what happened,” Mike replied. “Those people are not people. They would have made me their next meal if they could have, I have no doubt about that. Hell, they’d not only just killed one person, they were eating her, Brent.”

He stopped.

“Sure Mike, but I mean, goddamn. Do you have any idea how this is going to look? Four unarmed people dead with your gun.”  He shook his head. “Shit. I always assumed if one of his was going to pop off, it’d be me.”

“Do you really think I would have done it if there had been another way?” Mike asked. “Did you see those things out there in the street? They’re violent and dangerous, and there are dozens and dozens of them. It looks like the whole damn town has got it.”

“I know man, I get that there’s a fuckin’ crisis going on… but damn.” Brent said, shaking his head. “For all we know the National Guard is going to roll in here in a few hours with a truck full of pills and cure everyone. What then?”

"If the National Guard does show up, it'll be a while. I can't even get ahold of the State  Police fifty miles away. Getting a damn busy signal every time." He stopped.