First Thrills

My father owned a Colt; he kept it in his drawer by his bed, and I raced to retrieve it, my fingers shaking as I loaded it with six bullets. I was in my nightdress, but I didn’t care. With slippers on my feet I went tearing from the house and down by the docks.

I didn’t believe what I saw.

Something. Something like a man.

I could hear him. I could hear him eating, hear him drinking, human flesh, for he had torn open one of the dock workers, and another lay at his feet, and a woman was torn in half just a few feet away. The creature, the thing on the docks had picked up human beings and ripped into them like a man might tear into ribs at a barbecue.

I was frozen. Then I came to life. Screaming, I headed for the thing, my father’s very trusty Colt raised high.

I started shooting.

It didn’t fall. It did stop eating. The horrible, frenzied slurping sound stopped.

The thing turned toward me and was staring. Then, with uncanny speed and agility, it was running at me, and running hard.

I was dead. Worse, I was about to be gnawed to death, ripped in half, my flesh consumed before my heart ceased to beat. I was so horrified that I was barely aware of the sound of the horse’s hoof beats behind me, and I couldn’t even scream when I was swept up off the street, and thrown over the neck of a horse.

It was then that I heard Brent, who had rescued me from the road, shouting above the sound of screams and terror. “Get into your houses. Get your swords, you have to remove the head… swords, people, swords, bullets do nothing, aim to decapitate!”

He whirled his horse around, and still, so casually rescued and tossed, I could see little. People came to the streets then bearing their infantry and cavalry swords. One fellow had his machete; he had once worked in the sugarcane fields.

I was righted at last. And I thought he was going to set me upon the ground. He looked at me and then did not. “Sit tight,” he said. He drew his sword and we road hard down the docks, leaping to bit of poor shoreline at the end. I screamed as I saw something rise from the water; Brent did not. He swept his sword out in a mighty arc; the head of the thing went flying, and the body crashed down to the water, lifeless.

I heard screams of triumph, and knew that the island folk were now holding their own.

And then, it was over. Brent called out orders, and people started a bonfire, and the stench in the night air grew sickening. As the body parts were collected for the fire-those killed as well as those who had done the killing-I saw that some of the things had been Federal navy. Men from the schooner.

Daylight came. Exhausted, Brent sat back at the table outside the tavern again. I took the bench opposite him. He looked up at me miserably. “I think it was a girl in Richmond. Johnny was Johnny then. Soldiers on the street were harassing her, calling her a monster. Johnny stopped them, but the next morning, he looked like hell. He told me that she had been a monster.”

“You still say Johnny did this? The men from schooner did this. I saw their bodies, Brent.”

“And how do you think they became what they are?” he asked me wearily. “I found a doctor, a surgeon, a man with the Union. That’s when I was captured. He’d seen it before; he was trying to find a cure. I prayed that Johnny would die, or that this man would find the cure. But…”

“I don’t believe you,” I told him. “Johnny didn’t do this.”

Brent started when we heard shouting again. He jumped to his feet. We ran back to the place where the smell of burning flesh was so terrible now, where the bonfire burned.

I heard Brent cry out and fall to his knees and I knew why.

He had found Janey Sue. Her throat had been ripped out; her left cheek was gone entirely.

I watched as Brent sobbed, and I was too numb to find tears myself for the girl who had been my best friend throughout the long years of the war.

Brent stood, ordering that she be burned like the rest. I set my hand on his shoulder. “Brent, you can bury her-”

He swung on me. “No, don’t you understand yet? Johnny is-he’s a zombie. And everyone he touches becomes the same.”

I pushed away from him, still refusing to believe. “Stop it, Brent, stop it! Johnny would never, ever, in a thousand years, have hurt his sister.”

It was daylight. I could no longer bear the horrid odor that rose to the fresh summer sky, or the sight of the bodies. I ran back to my house.

A few hours later, I decided that I was leaving. I would find my father. I would take one of the little sailboats, and if there was no wind that day, I would row. I was going in to Charleston.

The sun was falling; it was the perfect time to start the long journey. Night would save me from the heat, and the light house would guide me. At first, my plan was perfect. I caught a bit of a breeze, and the darkness fell, but the air was balmy and I was fine. Then, I felt the first thump against the boat. Then another.

And, in that balmy breeze, with the sea so gentle and the stars blazing in the sky above, the thing crawled aboard. It was Johnny. For a moment, his eyes were dull and dead. He came toward me and I scrambled swiftly, ready to leap overboard. He caught my shoulders, his strength incredible. He opened his mouth, aiming for my throat.

Then he paused. To my astonishment, tears came to his dead eyes. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, oh, God, I remember you…”

“Johnny, let me go, for the love of God, Johnny,” I begged.

I felt the boat bump again.

Rescue, I thought, somehow, rescue.

Johnny jerked around. I looked past him.

It was another of the things.

I looked hard. My heart sank. It was one of them.

And it was my father.

He leaped at Johnny, rocking the small boat precariously, and I thought he had come to save me. But he wrenched Johnny from me, and then, I saw his eyes.

Dead eyes. Once, a dancing brown shade. Now, dead.

“Father, no!” I screamed in terror and misery. But he would have bitten down upon me, ripping and tearing, if Johnny hadn’t pulled him away. Johnny was still crying, and suddenly, my father was crying, too. But still, they weren’t battling to save me.

They were fighting over their prey.

I was desperate. I leaped off the small boat, though I knew that they could swim. I tried freeing myself from my cumbersome skirt and boots while they fought, unaware that I was gone. Then I set out for the island. I was a good swimmer, but still, I had come far from shore.

I was crying myself, gulping too much water, fighting the numbness of terror. I had left the island, and I had done so with the Colt, but little good that did me now. I’d never had a sword, nor had my father. I had to pray that I could swim hard enough, fast enough.

My exhausted limbs could barely continue moving, but I began to believe that I might make it.

Then, I felt the tug upon my ankle. And gasping for air, I went down. In the dark, murky seawater, I could barely see. But it was Johnny. Dead eyes blank, wide open, blank. No more tears. No sign of life or memory.

He took my shoulders. I was done in. I closed my eyes; he would rip out my throat. It wouldn’t last long.

But I was ripped away from him. No matter; hope didn’t even float in my soul. It would be my father, claiming his portion of the kill.

But I wasn’t ripped to shreds. I was tossed back. I fell hard and realized I was almost on the little patch of beach south of the harbor area. I could stand, and I staggered to my feet. Then I saw Brent. He swung his sword, and Johnny’s head was swiftly severed from his body, and lost to the waves. The headless body stood for a minute, then fell. Brent turned to me. He shouted, and lifted his sword. I thought he meant to kill me; that he believed that I had been bitten, infected, and that he meant to kill me, as well. But he strode past me.

“Don’t look, Jules, don’t look!” he shouted.