day as their arms stockpiles grew smaller and the dead pushed closer with each wave of rotting flesh leaving the city in search of new meat. People began to desert the line in droves, heading off in search of their own families, whether to say goodbye or to try to start over, Burke had no idea. He stayed to the end until only he and the commanding officer General Stark were left.
They enclosed themselves in the fortified walls of the command bunker and took pop shots at the dead still flowing from the city out into the world beyond. Stark’s thoughts of gloom and hopelessness cut into Burke like a razor more and more with each passing hour.
There was no way he could shield his mind from them trapped in such close proximity. He had no choice but relieve the General. He’d blown the man’s brains out with a point blank shot from his sidearm. He felt no guilt over it. He knew it was what Stark wanted and would have done himself if he’d been able to give him the time to.
Burke had never been a long-range telepath but he tried now. He spent his time attempting to understand his gifts and force them to grow. He would sit perfectly motionless with his eyes closed and reach out into the world seeking someone else alive. He always saw death in his visions and never heard a single other thought which wasn’t his own. In fact, all he could feel in the world was a coldness which seeped into him and made him consider following Stark on to the next life every time he awoke from one of his trances. Today was no different.
His mental searching left him hollow and the food he was opening turned his stomach. He listened to the pounding outside for a moment once more and then let go, simply willing his heart to stop. Burke blinked or would have if he’d still had eye lids in a normal sense. He looked down at his body on the floor of the bunker as shock flooded his mind. What the hell had he become? A ghost?
He didn’t know but he was sure this wasn’t what death was supposed to be like. He reached for his weapon but his fingers glided through it as if the metal wasn’t there. It began to sink in that he was no longer part of this plane of existence though he could see it. He laughed silently at the madness of it all. Deciding he would make the most of God’s little joke on him, he walked out of the bunker and literally through the horde of mindless dead outside to bear witness to the last days of the human species. He hoped deep down that maybe he’d meet another ghost like himself.
DeadTown
The scent of the corpses littering the ground stank to high heavens. The flaming summer sun baking their rotting flesh and us as we stood there didn’t help matters none. I can sympathize with Peter. He didn’t ask for this job like I did. He’s just the sheriff, not a professional killer.
I can tell from the slight glint of tears in his eyes he wants this all to be over with. That this massacre is all it will take to right the world once more. But it’s not. These poor bastards were just the beginning.
Others will smell the blood here or sense the life in Springtown in the valley below and they will come again.
Next time it likely won’t be a few dozen either. It never is after they find you. It will be hundreds, maybe thousands. I have been on the run from them for a while now since I saw the first ones walking around in Mexico. I move north from place to place always warning the folk of what’s coming in my wake and offering them my services. Never found a town that’s held against them yet even my guns added to theirs. But Hell, the money’s good and I ain’t dead yet.
I spit into the face of the closest corpse at my feet as Peter finally gets it together and starts barking orders. Dillon and his brother, Jack, are the only two others left alive in our little hunting party. Peter tells them gather up the bodies and burn them. I don’t bother to help. No one says a word to me about it. Those dead things are scary, but people like me are scarier. That’s why we’ll be the last to die.
Besides I know the whole thing is a waste of time, seen it done before. If Peter wants to try to clean up our tracks and lower the odds of more of the dead things coming down out of the hills, who am I to crush his hope. I think deep down Peter knows the truth too on some level though he would never admit it to the folk in his town or even to himself.
Peter watches the fire as the “brothers dim” get our horses and the sun falls from the sky then we’re all in the saddle on our way back to Springtown. Too bad for us, they have beaten us there. I can smell the dead before our horses crest the hills around the town and we see the fires burning. One glance at the mess below would be enough to tell any sane person to get the hell out of dodge and make dust in another direction, any direction but down there, only Peter ain’t sane when it comes to his town.
He’s got to try to save them. He kicks his horse’s sides, charging down the hill, so fast it surprises even me. The brothers follow him. I pause for a second, taking the time to light up a smoke, weighing my options. The town’s already paid up, no reason for me to go down there but I decide to play the good guy anyway and do them all a favor. I hear the sound of metal scraping leather as my revolver comes free of its holster. My first shot splatters Peter’s skull open before anyone so much as hears the shot.
The brothers are stunned, too confused by my actions to go for their on weapons on instinct. I take out Jack next because he’s the smarter and faster of the pair of idiots. I put a bullet in his face and watch him topple off his horse then I get sloppy. Don’t know why, bad luck, the glare of the stars, who knows? It takes me three rounds to drop Dillon for good. I feel a bit bad about the gut shot, never should have happened but the third one I put in his eye means he won’t be getting up later so it’s not like he’ll be upset about it.
I stare at Dillon’s body still telling myself I took the high road. Peter never had the chance to see his dead wife coming screaming at him with red smeared lips wailing for the taste of his flesh. And for the brothers, my sloppy work was at least cleaner than being ripped apart and eaten.
I turn my horse away from Springtown’s ruins to try to find somewhere else to breathe a while longer but I know even the last to die has to die sometime. Though I won’t see Hell tonight, other than the one on this earth now, I’m still just the walking dead myself. There’s a set of yellow teeth or a bullet out there somewhere waiting for me to find it. And somehow, with the way the world is dying, I think it will be sooner rather than later.
Sunday Watch
The cities were dead. At least that’s the way Travis figured it. Most folk here in Jackson died that first night when all hell broke loose. It’d taken every officer in the department and every able bodied man sheriff Morgan could enlist to clear out the town and bring back some semblance of order. Travis knew Morgan was doing all he could.
Hell, everyone in town was but he still hated sitting out here in the field by the interstate on a Sunday afternoon. He’d rather have been home watching the races except there weren’t any races anymore.
Travis guessed the NASCAR drivers were dead too. He hated to imagine Dale Jr. stumbling around in the pit at some track somewhere, his rotting flesh stinking to high heavens because the poor bastard was too mindless to get out of the sun.
Travis picked up the AK-47 from the passenger seat and opened the patrol car’s door to stretch his legs. Time passed slowly these days whether you were sitting on your ass in a field keeping an eye out for the wandering dead or sitting in the bar with your buddies, it didn’t matter. It always felt like you were just waiting to die.
The once high grass crunched under Travis’s boots as he got out of the car. Even the damn dead getting back on their feet and eating the living hadn’t ended the drought here in Jackson. Everything green was drying up and dying like the rest of the world.
He caught the sight of something moving on the interstate from out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a dead man dressed in National Guard combat fatigues making his way down the interstate’s exit ramp to the road beside the field. Travis checked the silencer attached to the barrel of his rifle and sighed wondering how many of the dead he’d sent to hell over the last few weeks. Had to be going on a hundred, he was sure.
He leaned over the hood of the car and took aim, only squeezing the trigger when he was sure of his shot. The bullet struck the man’s head snapping it backwards before the man’s body stopped in its tracks and toppled to the asphalt.
