The Dead & Dying

I gathered the supplies from the street and began stuffing them into my pockets, noticing that fortune had decided to smile upon me. There was also a little Bic lighter and an unopened pack of smokes that had been blocked from view by the overturned box.

After everything was neatly tucked away, I raised the binoculars to my eyes and began sweeping across the landscape. Maybe I could find something else in all of this carnage and destruction, anything that would help me live for another day.

And then I saw them. The undead. They were clustered around the base of a church, hammering and scratching at the walls, hurling themselves against the door, scrambling over one another in their zeal to gain entrance. There must’ve been fifty, hell maybe seventy-five, of those filthy bastards attacking this little white building with its bell tower and stained glass windows too high off the ground for them to reach.

So that’s why I hadn’t come across any of the former residents of this town. Something else had caught their interest before I arrived. Something living. Something trapped.

For a while I was like one of those people who see a horrible accident on the freeway but can’t tear their eyes away from it. I watched as their fingernails raked ragged scratches in the paint. I watched while they pounded their fists against the wood and leaped at the windows as if they could sprout wings and crash through them.

Finally I snapped out of it with the realization that sooner or later one of them would see me. And that single corpse would set off a chain reaction. Once it began staggering toward me, the others would follow.

Time to leave.

I tried not to think of whoever it was holed up within that church. Tried not to think of the fear they must be feeling as their former friends and neighbors eagerly tried to break into their stronghold. The boy… he was my responsibility. I had to return to the search, had to find him. Besides, with only three bullets left there wasn’t anything I could do to help the people inside the church. I would get myself killed trying to save them which meant, in turn, that Jason would die to. If he was even still alive.

I lowered the binoculars and slid their strap around my neck as I scooped the shoe box of food into my arms. I had to get while the gettin’ was good as Chris Bryson used to say.

I had just stood when I heard it: a voice, small and muffled from this distance, screaming for help. A voice filled with terror. A familiar voice.

A child’s voice.

I flipped the binoculars to my eyes again. The zombies, which had been pretty damn persistent before, were now like a pack of starving dogs that had cornered a rabbit in the brambles. They writhed and scrambled, clawed, and I swear I even saw one biting at the walls of the church as if she could chew her way through.

“Leave me alone!”

That voice….

I saw books begin to rain down upon the horde, black covers and pages fluttering as they fell and bounced ineffectually off the heads of the attackers. As if God were dropping Bibles into the crowd in the hopes of casting out the demons that possessed them.

The sides of the church and bell tower blurred as I swept the binoculars upward. No, not God… just a small, frightened boy with tears streaming down his grimy face. A boy I instantly recognized.

Jason.

I lowered the binoculars again, realizing now that I had no choice. Somehow, I would have to make it through that sea of rotting flesh. With only three bullets I’d have to gain entrance to the church, grab Jason, and then fight my way back out again.

And it would have to be soon. The last time I’d spied on the zombies, I’d noticed that the wooden door of the church was beginning to show signs of cracks. It was splintering and before long would be smashed into a jagged hole. And once they had that hole, the rest of the door would quickly fall. So if I wanted to save this boy, I needed to think of something. And fast.

“Go away!”

I had no way of knowing at the time, however, that this little town would be forever burned into my memory. That it would haunt my nightmares and constantly gnaw at the back of my mind like a rotter that preferred thoughts to flesh. For this little town would become the scene of my greatest failure… and I would never be able to forgive myself for the events that played out there.

CHAPTER TWENTY: JOSIE

I was so close to the rotter that, from a distance, it probably looked as if we were about to kiss. Its face loomed in front of me, filling my field of vision. The skin was dark and seemed pulled taught against the skull, almost as if it were paper mache that had been stained ebony. Clumps of hair were scattered across the otherwise bald scalp and the neck looked so long and thin that, for a brief second, it reminded me of the little bobble heads people used to place on the dashboards of their cars.

Its open mouth came toward me in what seemed to be slow motion and I pushed with all of my might. The thing was surprisingly light and it stumbled backward, its grasp on my jacket broken. But then it was coming forward again, reaching out with arms I could now see were so spindly that I was amazed I had ever mistaken them for Carl’s.

Somewhere in the swirling veil of snow, the voice was still screaming and I could hear pain and terror in its wordless shrieks as gunshots popped like firecrackers. And then Carl’s voice, sounding as if it were miles away.

“Josie! Josie!”

The rotter was at me again, grasping and pulling at my clothes, trying to position its mouth on the soft flesh just below my ski mask. I tried shoving it away again, but this time its grip was more solid. It staggered backward but tripped over its own feet and suddenly we were both falling, me being pulled down into the snow and landing on its body with a sharp crack that could have been brittle bones snapping.

It struggled to raise its head from the ground and thrashed about like a child throwing a tantrum. I had it pinned however and my fingers were wrapped around either side of its head, pushing back, keeping its teeth from tasting the flesh it so desperately craved.

The screams had stopped now, but I was peripherally aware of Carl still shouting my name again and again, his calls punctuated by gunfire.

At some point during the struggle, my thumbs had slid up the leathery cheeks and slipped into the soft pulp of the eyes. It felt like they were sinking into Jell-O that had frozen just enough that an icy film covered the top. But then there was a slight pop and my thumbs went deeper into the skull, hooking around the eye sockets as something cold and wet seeped into the cloth of my mittens.

But still the creature fought, gnashing its teeth as it flailed its head in an attempt to break free from my clutches. The muscles in my arms had begun to quiver and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold it at bay. Sooner or later, exertion would take its toll. My throbbing muscles would give out, perhaps for no more than a second. But that’s all it would take.

But then, as suddenly as if it had materialized from the snow itself, a brown boot blurred by in front of me. It struck the rotter’s face with enough force that my thumbs flared with pain as they slipped away from the eye sockets. The boot lifted and for a fraction of a second I could see the things crushed face, its features mangled to the point that it looked like a macabre version of a Picasso painting; but then the boot came down again and again and I could hear the skull shattering as I crab-walked backward as quickly as I could.

Doc’s face was filled with rage as he stomped over and over, his eyes large and round, teeth clenched together, and his entire body quaked as if he were having a seizure.

“Stupid rotting son of bitch!”

Spittle flew from his mouth as he yelled and he was now jumping up and down on the thing’s face with both feet.

“I hate you! I hate all of you! Why can’t you just leave us the fuck alone?”

Tears had begun dribbling from the corners of his eyes and the thing had long since stopped moving, its head no more than a pulpy mess forced deep into snow coated with gore. But he continued jumping, stomping, shouting,