The Dead & Dying

Abandoning caution, I sprinted the rest of the way to the church as the words from the tape continued to drag slower and slower. I was pretty sure the door to the church was locked, but I also knew it had been weakened by the undead barrage; as I neared the top of the steps at full speed, I threw myself into the air and crashed into the wood with my shoulder.

The impact jarred my entire body, but the door flung open with a sharp, metallic ping and I was suddenly rolling across the inside of the church.

The little boy started screaming and I tried to quiet him, to reassure him.

“Jason, it’s me. Carl. Shhhh. They’ll hear you.”

He was lying on the floor beneath a ladder and even from this distance I could see that his left ankle was swollen to the size of a grapefruit and was covered with blue and black bruises.

He must’ve thought I was one of them, because he started trying to crawl his way backward, all the while screaming in a shrill voice.

“Get away from me! Leave me alone! Help!”

“Jason, it’s Carl. I know you’re scared, but you have to be quiet.”

I looked back over my shoulder through the doorway. Good. Apparently his screams hadn’t distracted them from trying to find the person they assumed was hiding somewhere in the electronics store. But how much longer would the tape fool them? How much longer before the boy’s voice drew them back to the church?

“Shhhh.”

Frustration spread like an oil spill within my belly, making me nauseous and tense. I scrambled to the boy and clamped my hand over his mouth, but then there was a flash of pain as his teeth sank into the fleshy parts of my palm.

“Help me! Someone…. ”

“Damn it, Jason, they’re gonna hear you!”

I slapped my hand over his mouth again, fought back the urge to pull it away as he bit again.

In the silence I could hear the tape again. The words were so slow now that they were unrecognizable as English.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

I scooped the little boy into my arms. I was pretty sure we could make it into the woods behind the church before the corpses even realized we were gone. But we had to move now.

The boy thrashed about in my arms and I tried to remind myself that he was terrified and probably hadn’t realized yet that I wasn’t one of them. But every instinct in my body wanted to slap him across the face.

Something tickled the back of my neck and my heart felt as if it had literally stopped. End of the road. Those had to be fingers reaching out for me….

I spun around, expecting to see a rotting face glaring back. But there was only a rope swinging back on forth with tassels on one end. A rope which lead up through a small hole in the ceiling.

“We hafta go now”

I began to run toward the door, but the boy was still fighting like two cats in a sack. He squirmed and flailed and kicked and bit down so hard I had to grit my teeth to keep from screaming as blood trickled down my hand.

“Damn it, Jason, stop it! I’m here to help!”

His hands grabbed onto the rope and he tried to pull himself free even as I was trying to move forward. Overhead I heard the bell toll, a low bong sound that seemed to ring out and waver in the silence.

Silence. The tape had stopped completely.

Jason pulled again, trying to wrestle himself from my grasp, and again the bell above chimed.

“Jason, no!”

Down the street, I saw them stream out of the electronics store. Corpse after corpse stumbled and tripped in their haste and it seemed like they just kept right on coming. The street filled with their mangled limbs and twisted flesh, the freshies leading the charge at a full-blown run.

There was no way we could make it to the forest now. Before we were even halfway there the freshies would bring us down like a bobcat on a rabbit. And the horde continued to draw closer even as the boy kept struggling and that old iron bell rang and rang, tolling out our doom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: JOSIE

“We probably could’ve went with them for a spell.” Carl admitted as we walked. “They’re heading to Florida, we’re going for West Virginia. Right along the way, you might say.”

“Then why didn’t we?”

I was cold and tired and thought of the heater in the Hummer blasting out warm air as Doc and Sadie raced southward. The soft, comfortable seats….

“I turned it over in my head. I really did. But I was afraid when we finally got to West-By-God it would be too easy just to keep right on truckin’.

I felt annoyed and grouchy and wanted to snap at Carl, to lash out at him with my words. But I had to keep reminding myself that this was my choice. He hadn’t forced me to come with him. I’d kind of argued my way into his plans just so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. Just to have more time with him. So I really didn’t have any other option but to play by his rules.

“Where exactly are we going?”

Carl searched through his pockets and brought out a pack of cigarettes which, as it turned out, were empty. He crumpled the pack into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder.

Old habits die hard and I had to chew on my bottom lip to keep from launching into a lecture about litter and how we’re the custodians of this planet. But we weren’t. Not anymore. Trash carelessly tossed aside were the least of our worries now.

“Not far from where I grew up. A little town called Brighton. Probably all grown over by now.”

He was still fumbling through his pockets as he spoke, but I got the impression it was just a ruse. That he knew his hands would turn up empty but welcomed the distraction anyway.

“Can’t believe I’ve got no more smokes. Doesn’t that just beat the devil?”

“What’s in Brighton, Carl?”

I tried to ask the question as innocently as possible, as if I were simply making conversation to pass the time. But I had this feeling that whatever laid in that little town among the hills and valleys of the Mountain State would be the key that would unlock the secrets of Carl’s sadness.

He sighed and his voice dropped to no more than a whisper. I had to strain to hear him through the earmuffs he’d liberated from a freshy two days earlier, but it was important to me to catch every word.

“There’s this little church I want to go to.”

I laughed and shook my head in an attempt to keep the conversation light, to keep it flowing.

“You? Going to church? If you’ve found God, Carl, there’s plenty of churches around here. It is part of the Bible belt you know.”

He smiled, but it wasn’t the same one which caused my heart to flutter with hope and chased the cold out of my chest. This was a sad, knowing smile that never really touched his eyes.

“It’s a little more complicated than that, sweetie.”

“So tell me. Lord knows, we’ve got nothing but time.”

Carl stopped, turned to face me, and took both of my hands in his; his eyes locked onto mine, his gaze steady and unfaltering.

“It took the end of the world for me to find someone who made me realize it wasn’t such a bad place after all. And I want to tell you everything. And I mean everything.”

Carl gave my hands a little squeeze and pulled me to him; he was now so close I could feel the warmth of his breath and see my own reflection in his tired eyes. And the woman I saw there was smiling: a soft, serene smile that would have looked more at home on a painting of the Virgin Mary than that odd, angular face. But I knew the