He hadn’t even bothered trying to get to his feet. He’d just slithered forward on his belly like a snake in the dirt and clamped both hands on the ankle of the man who’d fallen forward. When he got enough leverage he pulled his head back and bit through the ankle, severing the Achilles tendon in one bite. His hands were gripping the foot tightly as he began to work his way up the leg. Unlike foot-zombie he wasn’t taking his time savoring the meat. He was biting and swallowing rapidly, trying to get in as much as he could. Within seconds the entire lower half of the leg was nothing but a raw mess.
The other men turned around and backed up a step. A couple screamed and took off running. This was far beyond anything they could understand. They stared dumbly at Donny as he munched on their fallen comrade. I could hear one of them calling to him.
“Donny? What are you doing, boy? Stop that now!” It was Donny’s dad. I hadn’t recognized him from the back. He bent down to grab Donny away from the leg but Donny snapped at him viciously, moving faster than I had seen any of them move so far. His dad barely managed to pull his hand back quickly enough. One of the other men looked like he’d had enough as he took two shuffling steps back and then turned around, apparently in an effort to take off running.
The foot-zombie stood behind him. While none of them had paid attention he’d just risen casually to his feet and stood there. Broken bones jutted out at odd angles from his body and he was hunched over oddly but he was still capable of standing. His open mouth gleamed wetly and broken teeth spilled out.
He lunged forward and ate the guy’s face. No lies and no exaggeration. Just ate his face. The guy fell down in a heap with the zombie riding herd on top of him.
The rest of them scattered like sheep and took off running. Foot-zombie and Donny were still chomping away. They stopped almost in unison and faced Donny’s dad where he still stood there, resolutely yelling at Donny for eating his friend. Both were silent as they stood, one in front and one behind his dad. Neither of them attacked for some reason. Maybe it took a few minutes for their “food” to digest.
The other two dead mean on the ground changed from being food to hunters in a magical instant that seemed to fill the air. I swear I felt a tingle in me when their limbs started to twitch. I’m sure it was just Fannie Mae gripping me tightly where her tears soaked through my shirt. The other two rose to their feet silently and they all stood in a ring around Mr. Marsters. He looked at them wordlessly, his face, if it were possible, losing even more color. He was as pale as a sheet of paper and getting even paler.
One word ghosted through the air:”Fuck.”
Then the zombies set to with a will and tore him limb from limb. His guts spilled out on the ground and were gobbled up like so many sausages. They tore hunks of meat from him like they were butchers and he was the side of beef. One of them – Donnie, actually – finally pulled his head loose from his neck with a twist and walked away from the rest of the group carrying it and casually eating the ears off.
I doubted that Mr. Marsters would be coming back.
He was one of the lucky ones.
12.
Right about now you may be wondering what was going on inside my trailer and asking the question – the very good question – of why the three of us didn’t do anything about it. We were standing witness to a terrible, terrible tragedy and had the firepower to do something about it. If your mind can wrap itself around the tableau in front of us and still think of other things, that is. You may be calling us all cowards and wussies and say that all those deaths lay at our feet.
And you’d be right.
Fannie Mae stopped watching at some point and cried helplessly into my shirt, gripping me in a tight bear hug. Barrett came around to see what she was screaming about and promptly threw up on my floor. The sound and the smell of his putrid bile about made me throw up but I hadn’t eaten much so I managed to keep it all down. And me?
I stood there watching it all stoically, bearing witness as my punishment for being the one who’d started all this.
I could have picked the gun up from the couch and rushed out madly, Indiana Jones-style. I could have fired on foot-zombie and maybe hit his head without taking out anyone else. Doubtful, but it was possible. Or I could have charged in and shot Donny Marsters as he scrambled forward to eat the leg of the man who’d come to his aid. And maybe me shooting a shotgun into that group of men wouldn’t have harmed any of them. Maybe I could have done it without harming anyone else.
Or maybe, since I’d never actually shot anyone before, I’d have only managed to kill one of the other men in the group and they would have promptly attacked me. Or maybe none of my shots would have gone true and I’d have faced the pack of zombies that stood out there now, eating the ruined shell that had once been Mr. Marsters.
Then maybe that pack would have come after me and I’d now be one of them, shambling around looking for a nice little snack.
That was the most likely thing to happen.
That’s not to say I logically thought this through when this all happened. The truth is that I did reach for the shotgun with every intention of trying to target shoot but that’s when Fannie Mae grabbed me and gripped me tightly and wouldn’t let me go. She kept sobbing and whispering
And it honestly took longer to tell it than it did for it to happen. The whole experience from the time we’d seen the zombie chewing on the foot to the time the street had emptied out and there were now four zombies wandering around was maybe three or four minutes. The bastards were quick when they wanted to be.
Plus that was about the time that a dreadful screeching and grinding sound began to permeate through the trailer. It started slowly and was little more than a whisper. It was like the sound I’d heard on my first watch in the hour before dawn. Like something was being dragged slowly along the exterior of the trailer. Then it was joined by another one on the back side of the trailer. We couldn’t see anything out of any of the windows.
